0742 hours, 26 March Tomcat 216
Batman brought his Tomcat down to within two hundred feet of the ocean’s surface, skimming westatMach i.5. The F-14’s wings, folded all the way back along the hull, transformed the Tomcat into a giant, pale gray arrowhead. Somewhere ahead, one of the enemy missiles was already between him and the carrier, now some twelve miles ahead. “Gimme a vector, Malibu!”
“You’re fine on this heading,” his RIO replied. “Range three-one-double-oh.”
“I’m goosing it.” He pushed the throttles all the way forward into Zone Five, watching the F-14’s speed build past Mach 2. The air this close to the water was heavy with moisture. White clouds boiled off the Tomcat’s wings as water droplets were shocked into visibility by the fighter’s passage. They were well within the area covered by the CBG’s missile defenses now and rapidly approaching the innermost point defense zone. Jefferson was only nine miles ahead.
“Range two triple-on!”
186
Keith Douglass
ARMAGEDDON MODE
187
Batman eased back on the throttle. It wouldn’t do to skim past the target so quickly he couldn’t even see it. Malibu continued to read off the decreasing range as the same numbers flickered past on his HUD. “Twelve hundred . . . one triple-oh . . . eight hundred . . . Still closing!”
Damn! He should see the thing by now. The Tomcat’s radar lock was projecting a small square on the HUD, defining the bit of sky where the target was located. The square jittered just below the horizon, but he couldn’t see anything inside it but water.
He cut the throttle some more, then opened his spoilers, letting the F-14 sink closer to the surface. If he could see the target against sky rather than sea . . .
There it was! A flicker of motion, no more, just above the horizon line. Now that he saw the thing, it rapidly took on greater definition and detail, expanding as the Tomcat bore down on it from astern.
“Tally-ho!” Batman called. “I’m going to guns!”
Styx missiles were nearly as large as a small aircraft: twenty-one feet long, with a nine-foot wingspan. Traveling steadily at Mach .9, they offered a marksman’s dream, a target that was slow, steady, and completely predictable. He should have a chance of knocking the thing down with his M61 cannon.
The Styx was still little more than a black speck inside the targeting reticle on Batman’s HUD. Coming in hard on the target’s six, he didn’t need to draw much lead or try to anticipate its next move. He switched his gun-speed selector to its lowest setting, 4,000 rounds per minute. At less than five hundred yards, he pressed the fire button.
The Tomcat’s M61 six-barreled Catling shrieked in a brief, precisely controlled burst. And again. And again . . .
Black smoke puffed from the missile’s tail. The target was close enough now that Batman could see its blunt-nosed, dirigible shape, the three evenly spaced tail fins and the stubby wings amidships, the sustaining motor beneath die fuselage. Suddenly the Styx swerved up, nosed over, and plunged silently into the sea.
“That’s a kill!” Malibu said.
“Splash another Styx,” Batman reported over his radio.
“Roger that,” their Hawkeye air controller replied. “Nice shooting, guys.”
The gray mass of the U.S.S. Jefferson appeared on the horizon, swelling rapidly as Batman and Malibu hurtled toward it. He eased back on the stick, pulling the F-14 into a climb.
That missile had come far too close to the Jeff for comfort.
0742 hours, 26 March
CATCC, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
•_ “Hit!” a technician announced. One of Army’s missiles had just tagged another Styx. “Splash five . . .”
_v “Ninety-nine aircraft, this is Homeplate,” CAG said, using the code meaning all planes in the air. “Break off attack on incoming missiles. Repeat, break off! CIC says to leave something for the boys at home.”
j . Tombstone watched the radar blips identified as Jefferson’?, Tomcats. The missile wave had pulled them all in tight, clustering around the Jefferson as they tried to deal with the Styx missiles one-on-one. That kind of clumping would play havoc with the carrier’s ability to defend herself. It was better for Tomcats to veer off and leave the Jefferson room to swing. “Roger, Homeplate,” Army’s voice said. “BARCAP One copies.”