The light on the face panel, which glowed a barely discernible
zero-zero-zero in the dark, shivered, the movement then picked up by
the other two digits. Figures mounted rapidly, rising well above the
threshold of what Sikes knew was regular background radiation.
He shivered despite the warm night. The trip to shore on the boat, the
silent creep through the quiet compound, hell, even his last operation
in the Middle east none of it chilled him more than those three green
digits staring at him now out of the gloom.
0350 Local (+5 GMT) Tomcat 201
“He’s onto us!” Gator twisted around in his seat to try to maintain
visual contact with the approaching Cuban aircraft.
“Got a VID-visual identification?” Bird Dog queried.
“No.” Gator rapped out the word more harshly than he’d intended as a
twinge of pain spasmed through his lower back. Turning around to look
over his shoulder in the cramped confines of the cockpit probably
provided more business for chiropractors than he liked to think
about.
“Doesn’t matter. We know who he is.”
“And he knows who we are.”
“That’s the whole point of it, isn’t it?”
“Not if that puts him in a shitty mood.”
Gator gave up trying to see through the clouds and mist and turned back
to the radar display. The other aircraft was plainly visible on the
scope, a fluorescent green solid mark against the scattering of returns
generated by the thicker storm cells in the area. Solid, its edges
well defined and moving toward them at six hundred knots. He tried one
last time. “Bird Dog, we need to rethink this.”
“Ain’t nothin’ to think. Gator. He’s close enough now, I’m going to
turn tail and let him chase us.”
“Missile lock!”
Bird Dog swore. Without responding, he tipped the nose of the Tomcat
back toward the water and began trading altitude for speed and
distance. Distance most of all with the MiG, he needed at least
another five miles of separation before he’d feel even relatively
safe.
“Still no visual too much haze,” Gator said rapidly, his fingers flying
over the peculiarly shaped knobs and buttons around his seat. Each one
had its own special shape, one that no RIO could forget, even if there
was no illumination. Bird Dog might be able to fly the aircraft by the
seat of his pants, but Gator could launch weapons by the feel of his
fingers.
“We’re out of range,” Bird Dog announced. “Especially if he’s
carrying” “It’s not falling off. Bird Dog,” Gator said urgently. “It
should have by now.”
“Jesus! What the hell? Hold on.” The Tomcat’s dive steepened,
throwing both aviators against the ejection harnesses that held them in
their seats.
“Watch your altitude.”
“I am, I am! Get ready with the chaff.”
Gator’s world narrowed down to the small round scope in front of him;
nothing else was important. A few small surface contacts. Fishing
boats, probably, one part of his mind noted dispassionately. Then the
one aft of them, the only radar contact that mattered. Indeed, unless
Bird Dog was successful with his latest maneuver, nothing else would
matter in the next five minutes except his view of the Almighty. Or,
more important, how the Almighty viewed him.
He knew what his pilot was planning on doing, and the idea frightened
him almost as much as the approaching missile. Get down low, get near
the churning, violent sea below them, and try to hide within the
spatter of radar returns generated by the ever-changing wave structure
of the surface of the ocean. It was a chancy move, but that coupled
with countermeasures such as chaff and flares might be enough to
distract the weapon long enough for them to get away.
“Might be.” With a regular missile, it would have been, of that he was
certain. But given the extended range on this one, a range he’d never
even heard hinted at during intelligence briefs, who knew what else was
new? An improved seeker head? A more accurate radar capable of
distinguishing between sea clutter and the sweetheart metal contact
that the Tomcat would generate on its sensors? He shook his head,
shuttling the fear back to some small dark compartment of his mind. He