“Affirmative, Cowboy. God hell!”
“He sounds pissed, man,” Teejay observed.
“Negative, Teejay. He just wished us good luck.”
Coyote keyed the tactical frequency again. “Takk, White Lightning,” he
said. “God hell! We’ll be back!”
0801 hours Zulu (0901 hours Zone)
MiG 501
Over the Norwegian Sea
The new aircraft must have been hiding, sheltered by the mountains around
Trondheimfjord. Terekhov could see them now, black specks spreading across
the sky directly ahead. Selecting one, he locked on, then triggered the
launch.
Its contrail curling left as the missile tracked its prey, the Alamo
missile streaked into the distance. Moments later, Terekhov was rewarded by
the sight of a far-off flash and a puff of smoke. Udar! A hit!
Then the line of Russian MiGs penetrated the enemy force. One of the
specks grew rapidly almost directly ahead through the MiG’s windscreen,
swelling from speck to fighter in seconds. It passed Terekhov to the left,
his adrenaline-fired senses translating the blur of metallic motion into
myriad details.
It was an F-16, the American aircraft known as a “Fighting Falcon.”
Norway had had four squadrons of the vicious, highly maneuverable aircraft, he
knew, a Mach-2 killer in both the air-to-air and ground-attack roles. He
glimpsed the red, white, and blue rounders of the Royil Norwegian Air Force
painted on tail and wings, and the clear, bubble canopy–designed to give the
pilot an almost unrestricted view in every direction–perched far out on the
flattened fuselage.
Then the Falcon was gone, flashing astern as quickly as it had appeared.
If the Norwegian pilots were any good at all, this was going to be a tough
fight.
“Harvest Reaper, Harvest Reaper,” he called as he stood his MiG on its
tail, swinging up and over in a sharp course reversal designed to put him on
the Falcon’s tail. “All aircraft, engage independently! Execute!”
The Soviet line parted, the separate MiGs scattering across the sky as
they strained to come to grips with the Norwegian dog-fighters.
0803 hours Zulu (0903 hours Zone)
Intruder 502
Over the Norwegian Sea
Lieutenant Commander Barney J. Dodd held the A-6E Intruder steady only a
few feet off the deck. The sea was a blue-gray blur beneath the aircraft and
spray lashed at the windscreen like heavy rain.
Dodd’s call sign was “Sluf,” a nickname that reached back ten years to
the first attack aircraft he’d driven for the Navy, the Vought A7 Corsair II.
The Corsair, gape-mawed, squat, and deadly, had been known throughout the Navy
as the Sluf, the Short Little Ugly Fucker–“Fella”–when discussed in polite
company. Dodd had started flying Slufs with VA97 off the Carl Vinson in 1987;
he’d taken the nick name with him when he switched to Intruders five years
later.
The name fit. At five-six, Dodd was short for an aviator, wiry, and
horse-faced ugly. Now he belonged to VA89, the Death Dealers, and his A6
sported that squadron’s insignia in low-contrast grays on its tail–a grinning
Grim Reaper holding five aces of spades. The Intruder was even uglier than
the Corsair, in Sluf’s opinion, but it was a rugged flying machine, capable of
delivering eighteen thousand pounds of ordinance with pin-point accuracy
across over a thousand miles in any weather. Sluf’s favorite example of the
march of technology was the fact that the mighty B-17 Flying Fortress of World
War II had normally carried bomb loads of four thousand pounds … though it
could manage seventeen thousand pounds for special, short-range missions. The
B17 had had three times the Intruder’s range on internal fuel, true, but then,
a Flying Fortress couldn’t refuel in flight, had twice the wingspan, and
outweighed the A6 by three tons.
“Target acquisition, Sluf,” his B/N, for Bombardier/Navigator, said at
his elbow. Lieutenant “Spoiler” Fracasetti lifted his helmet from the round
black-rubber hood that enclosed his radar screen, shielding it from outside
light. “Range six-one miles.”
Unlike the Tomcat, which positioned the pilot’s seat directly in front of
the RIO, the Intruder placed aviator and B/N almost side by side, with the
pilot slightly above and ahead of the weapons system operator.
“Roger that,” Sluf said. “What we got?”
“Can’t sort it all out yet. At least three strong contacts, but I can’t