1328 Local
Tomcat 201
“That finishes that.” Bird Dog tried to feel the same sense of
victory he’d felt on the bombing run over the island, but it was slow in
coming. It was one thing, he thought, to scream in above the landscape and
drop ordnance on anonymous opponents on the deck. You didn’t look at them,
didn’t see their faces turn pale and eyes grow wide as you approached. It
was sanitary, somehow.
But this had been different. Even at 250 knots, he’d had a few
seconds to look at the faces of his opponents. No matter that their
Kalishnikovs were turning to bracket him, and that if they’d had their way
he’d have been a small greasy spot on the surface of the ocean. No, it was
still different, he decided. Watching their faces, seeing them crumple in
response to his gunfire, and coming back over for a second pass on the
motionless figures made it personal.
“The submarine?” Gator prompted.
Bird Dog cast an uneasy look in the rearview mirror. “Yeah, yeah, the
submarine.” He banked the Tomcat to the right, coming back around toward
the stern of the boat. From fifteen thousand feet of altitude, the Oscar
was still visible, her conning tower just breaking the surface of the
ocean. The 540-foot-long submarine looked small next to the carrier, but
Bird Dog knew that it was among the largest submarines in the world.
Certainly the largest, most potent antiship boat. Looking at her now, even
from five hundred feet up, he could well believe that one torpedo from her
tubes could crack the keel of the carrier, rendering his airport
permanently inoperative. “Let’s go get those Rockeyes.”
Forty-five minutes later, rearmed with Rockeyes, Tomcat 201 was
airborne again. Bird Dog pulled out from the cat shot and arrowed straight
out toward the submarine.
“You’re too close,” Gator warned. “Move out to at least a mile and a
half.”
“I’m going, I’m going. I just wanted to get a look at her first.
Those guys on the deck back there …” He let his voice trail off.
“Ugly, wasn’t it? Just as nasty as what we’d look like right now if
they’d had their way about it. Same thing with the submarine.”
“I know. But that’s one good thing about flying backseat, Gator–the
only thing. You don’t have as good a view of it.”
“Save the soul-searching for later, buster,” the RIO snapped. “We’ve
got our range now, now, now. Get that bastard off the wing.”
Bird Dog toggled the weapons selector switch to select the Rockeye
stations. Waiting until his targeting gear beeped a solid, reassuring tone
at him, he fired. The Tomcat lurched as the heavy missile streaked off the
wings. Bird Dog waited two seconds, targeted the second missile, then
fired again.
“Jesus, look at those bastards,” he breathed. Although he’d fired
several practice Rockeyes before, they hadn’t been the true heavyweights of
an actual missile.
The bright burn from their rockets seared his eyes, and he looked away
for a moment. When he glanced back, the missiles were still in sight,
something that wouldn’t have happened if they’d been anti-air missiles.
The huge anti-ship and -submarine Rockeyes moved much more slowly through
the air. Almost too slow, it seemed, to stay airborne. Compared to the
quick flash of a Sparrow or Sidewinder, they looked like dirigibles.
Ten seconds later, the first missile struck. It impacted the water
just forward of the submarine, just missing its intended target.
The explosive force of the warhead lofted the bow of the submarine up,
and the forward part of the hull broke the surface of the water. The
second missile arced down, spilling bomblets in its wake. Two seconds
later, it hit the exposed hull of the submarine dead-on. Water geysered up
and out, reaching a height of almost seventy-five feet and spewing water
droplets over a two-hundred-yard radius. A buffet of displaced air caught
the Tomcat, rocking her gently, and Bird Dog banked hard to the right to
avoid the airborne blast of seawater. “Time for some BDA,” Gator
suggested. Bird Dog nodded, somehow relieved that this kill was not as up
close and personal as the last. He put the Tomcat into a gentle orbit a