Tombstone shifted uneasily. He wanted to be out there! In the cockpit of 201, vectoring toward those hostiles!
With burning eyes, Tombstone watched the pair of Tomcats banking starboard off Jefferson’& bow in choreographed unison, his squadron mates, his friends. Damn, he wished he was going with them.
Silently, he cursed Admiral Vaughn, the Navy, and himself.
0746,26 March ; Tomcat 216
• Batman glanced at his VDI. The radar screen was becoming “… increasingly fuzzy, and it was difficult to tell the true targets ; from random smears of light. Somewhere out there, Batman i’ concluded, an enemy electronic countermeasures aircraft was ‘; doing its thing.
“Hey, Malibu. You see Army anywhere?” The two Tomcats of BARCAP One had separated to launch their attacks on the incoming Styx missiles. Now the jamming was so bad it was difficult to see anything beyond a range of a few miles.
“Negative, Batman,” the RIO replied. “I’m getting a lot of
fuzz on the scope. Someone’s doing some serious jamming.”
“Yeah,” Batman replied. His VDI showed broken patches
of glare that partly obscured the oncoming bogies. “It’s the
ECM boys’ war now.”
“Viper Two-one-six, this is Victor Tango One-one,” the
-.. Hawkeye called at last. “We have a target for you.”
“Copy, Victor Tango.” A target? The sky was filled with / targets, or at least it had been when he could still see!
The Hawkeye air controller began passing on new information. “Come to new heading zero-four-one at angels base plus one-niner.”
“Roger that, Victor Tango. Zero-four-one at base plus one-nine thousand.”
He stood the Tomcat on its tail, grabbing for the sky. The “base” of the controller’s orders had been set during Batman’s pceflight briefing that morning: eleven thousand feet. By saying angels base plus nineteen, the Hawkeye was telling Batman to go to thirty thousand feet without giving potentially
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Keith Douglass
useful information to an enemy who was almost certainly listening in.
The simple code was used only on combat missions, and then only when there was a real threat to ships or aircraft from what the enemy might learn.
Its use reminded Batman of how serious their situation was.
“Tomcat Two-one six, Victor Tango One-one,” the Hawk-eye controller called. ‘ ‘New target now at your zero-four-two. Range six-eight miles. Do you have him, over?”
“Nothing, Batman,” Malibu said. “That’s the center of the worst of the ECM.”
“Zap him, Mal.” By pouring more power into the beam, the AWG-9 radar might bum through the enemy radar interference, at least across a narrow area. The disadvantage, of course, was that the added power made their aircraft light up like a Christmas tree on the scope of any watching enemy plane. ‘ ‘Fry the son of a bitch with a goddamn microwave oven if you have to!”
“Okay!” Malibu said. “Pegged him, I think. Hard to read through the clutter.”
“Roger that bogie at zero-four-two,” Batman called, reading die display duplicated off Malibu’s screen. “Range six-eight at angels three-five.” Using the base code this time could have given it away to the Indians.
“That’s the one. Two-one-six,” the Hawkeye controller replied. “Target is probably Eye-el Thirty-eight, suspected hostile ECM aircraft. Engage with Phoenix and destroy. Over.”
“Copy, Victor Tango.” Well, I’m not going to ask him to dance, he thought. “Commencing run.”
An Illyushin. The Indians used the 11-38, code named “May” by NATO, for reconnaissance. This one must have been outfitted as an ECM and EW aircraft.
He could hear Malibu in the backseat, muttering range and bearing to himself as he readied the Phoenix for launch. The RIO had forgotten to switch off the ICS.
“Take it down nice and cool,” Batman said. “We have time.”
“Rog,” Malibu said. “Okay, we have AWG lock and are tracking.”
“Let ‘er rip!”
ARMAGEDDON MODE
195
“Fox Three!” The radar-homer ignited beneath the Tomcat’s belly and streaked into the sky, climbing to reach the target’s altitude.
Batman checked his VDI. It was difficult to make out anything through the hash on his screen, but he could see that a number of antiship missiles were still on their way northwest, closing on Jefferson. To the north and west, unidentified aircraft were gathering, apparently still milling about at marshaling points as more and more aircraft joined them.