their silos that we don’t know about.”
Tombstone sighed. “If we don’t know about that for certain, we’d
better assume the worst case. I want vectors back to the silos, the
ones you know about. I’ll drop a few HARMs at the command center and
save the five-hundred pounders for the three silos we identified. Are
there any others?”
“No new reports of them. But Stoney, you’d better hurry,” Batman said,
his voice taking on a new note of urgency. “We’ve got targeting
indications.”
“On my way. Just keep the Libyans and the Cuban air power occupied to
the east for a bit while I take care of business, okay?”
“You got it.” Tombstone could hear Batman giving a series of orders to
someone in the background. Finally, he came up on the circuit. “Think
you can manage a little air-to-ground attack strategizing?”
Tombstone chuckled. “After what I’ve been through today, I think I
probably can. But if you try sending me up against a satellite, you
can forget it.”
0712 Local (+5 GMT) Fuentes Naval Base “All systems green,” the senior
missile officer reported. He glanced up at Mendiria. They’d done this
so many times as a drill surely this wasn’t the real thing? The echoes
of the bombs that had exploded around him yesterday still rang in his
ears. Yes, he conceded, his hands suddenly sweaty and shaky: This was
it. The moment they’d been training for, the decisive point in the
battle that their Libyan advisors had been coaching them for for the
last two years. One strike, they’d all agreed, and the U.S. would
crumble. They’d never be able to stand the political pressure at home
following an attack from the Cuban mainland.
He wished he were as certain about that as his superiors.
He laid his hand over the launch button, and tried to stop his finger
from trembling.
0713 Local (+5 GMT) Tomcat 202
As Tombstone bore in on the target, he rolled the Tomcat over and
stared downward at the ground through the canopy. Land streaked by in
a haze of brown and green, the colors almost indistinguishable at this
speed. He watched for a few seconds, craned his head to get an
accurate visual on his IP, then rolled the Tomcat back over into level
flight.
Four seconds later, he was over the command center bunker. He flipped
the weapons release switch, felt the Tomcat leap up into the air as
missiles left its rail, then jerked the aircraft away to the right in a
hard, screaming turn.
The two HARM missiles seemed to hang in the air.
Suddenly, something seemed to catch their attention the invitingly
enticing scent of electromagnetic radiation. Rocket motors kicked in,
seeker heads aligned on the emissions, and the missiles dove in on the
target.
When they were seconds away from impact, the radiation suddenly
ceased.
No matter they were too close now, too certain of a kill, to disarm or
detonate harmlessly. The two missiles exploded, the first one half a
meter in front of a delicate microwave communications assembly and the
second at the base of a high-frequency antenna whip.
The microwave structure exploded into a hail of shrapnel, shredding two
guards located outside the front of the command center. The
destruction of the high-frequency antenna was less dramatic, but
equally telling. The thirty foot whip exploded up out of the ground as
though it were a javelin, arcing across the compound to clatter to the
ground just outside the officers’ club. Wires that were ripped out of
the ground and out of the power supply trailed around it before
settling into awkward, half-described circles on the ground. The base
structure sputtered once, then shorted out in a spray of sparks.
“Commander! We’ve lost data link with the launch site.”
The senior missile officer felt a vague trace of relief, then felt
guilty over it. It was wrong to be relieved that a commander’s
strategy had been foiled, entirely wrong.
Nonetheless, if he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn he was
grateful for it.
0714 Local (+5 GMT) Tomcat 202
“Come right, steady on zero-one-five,” Tomboy ordered.
“Twenty seconds to IP.”
The Tomcat groaned as it took the high-G turn, racing between ground