warrior.”
“Armstrong, Fracture.”
“Go ahead.”
“We got intercepted by Russian fighters from that carrier,” Boxer said.
“Oh God,” Gonzo said. “We have limited sensor coverage of you for the next three minutes, Fracture, and you’re out of range of Salalah radar. We’re almost blind right now.”
“Pass our situation along to Central Command,” Boxer said.
“Ask if there are any Omani fighters at Salalah that can chase these Russians away.”
“Roger. Stand by.”
“Our proposal is this, American bomber: Eject out of your damaged bomber and let us have our fun with it,” the Russian pilot radioed. “If you do this, we will let your tanker aircraft stay in the area to assist in recovering you from the ocean. If you do not respond, or if we see you make any turns or see your bomb bays open, we will open fire on both of you. You have sixty seconds to reply.”
Boxer angrily flipped over to the GUARD channel: “Hey, bastard, you would be a cowardly chickenshit if you downed an unarmed tanker!” she shouted.
“Ah, the woman bomber pilot,” the Russian pilot said. “Greetings, madam. That unfortunately is the spoils of war, my dear. You have fifty seconds to eject.”
“Let us get closer to shore, closer to Yemen.”
“You are much closer to shore now than our comrade was when you shot him down,” the Russian said. “Forty seconds.”
“Frodo…”
“There’s nothing I can do as long as they’re directly behind us,” Frodo said. “I can jam their radar side lobes with the lateral emitters, but I can’t touch the main beams. Besides, they’re well within heater-missile range, and even if we could decoy them with flares, they can close into gun range in seconds.”
“We can turn into them, lock them up, and shoot.”
“The second we turn, they’ll fire. We might be able to get one before they launch, but the other three will nail us and the tanker.”
“Thirty seconds, madam.”
“Can the jammers protect the tanker?” Boxer asked on intercom.
“Not against heat-seekers or guns,” Frodo said. He started to tighten his ejection-seat straps in preparation for bailout. “Dammit, Boxer, this is all your fault! If you hadn’t gone down after that task force, we’d all be safe! Now we have no choice but to punch out to save the tanker!”
The Russian fighter pilot radioed, “Twenty…” But at that instant Boxer saw an incredibly bright streak of light shoot across the sky coming from directly above, and the transmission was cut off. Another streak of light erupted seconds later, this one seemingly aimed directly at them but passing behind them, missing by what seemed bare inches.
“What just happened? What were those things? It looked like they came in from above us!”
“The lead fighter in the first formation disappeared!” Frodo said. “The wingman isn’t transmitting yet.”
“Nail those bastards, Frodo!” Boxer shouted, and she threw the Vampire bomber into a tight left turn, flying between the fighters and the tanker. As soon as she did so, the lateral laser radar emitters locked onto all three Russian fighters, the forward bomb-bay doors opened, and in fifteen seconds three AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles were in the air. At the same time Boxer popped chaff and flares to decoy any missile launches that might be aimed at the tanker.
Two of the Vampire’s AMRAAMs hit their targets…but the third missed. The surviving Su-33 fighter accelerated and fired two missiles at the KC-767 tanker. Both radar-guided missiles were decoyed away from the tanker by the cloud of chaff billowing through the sky and by the Vampire’s heavy jamming…
…but when they detected the jamming and the chaff, they automatically switched to infrared guidance and locked onto the biggest heat source in their line of sight: the EB-1C Vampire bomber. The two missiles exploded above the exhaust nozzles of the number one and two engines, blowing the left wing completely apart. The stricken bomber cartwheeled several times vertically through the sky, flipped upside down, then spiraled into the sea.
NINE
Half the failures of this world in life arise from pulling in one’s horse as he is leaping.
– JULIUS AND AUGUSTUS HARE, “GUESSES AT TRUTH”
THE WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM, WASHINGTON, D.C.
LATER THAT EVENING, EASTERN TIME
“This is just freakin’ unbelievable,” President Joseph Gardner said. He had just received the initial report on the engagement in the Gulf of Aden. Now he was watching a computerized three-dimensional holographic replay of the incident as reported by the aircrew and verified by Armstrong Space Station. “We told them we were coming, and they said as long as we followed international law, they were fine with it.”
“That’s the part we can’t figure out, sir,” National Security Adviser Conrad Carlyle said. “There should have been no surprises. The aircrew did as the Russians told them: They changed to their radio frequency and put in a transponder code that made it easier for the Russian radar controllers to track them. The Russians engaged anyway.”
“Our guys did it by the book, Mr. President,” Secretary of Defense Miller Turner said.
“Oh, no, not quite, Miller, not by a long shot,” Gardner said, shaking a finger at him. He entered commands into a keyboard to speed up the holographic animation floating above the conference table. “The Russians repeatedly warned the crew away; they kept on coming, which in my view wasn’t a smart move.”
“Legal, perhaps,” Secretary of State Barbeau said from a secure videoconference link from Beijing, China, “but we don’t know what was going on with the Russian fleet. They could have had some other sort of emergency, or were under some other kind of attack, and they warned our plane away thinking it was part of the other emergency.”
“That’s speculation, Stacy,” Turner said. “We don’t know that.”
“In any case, Miller, the smart thing would have been to reverse course and get out of there,” Barbeau said. “Why risk your life unnecessarily? It was a stupid move on that pilot’s part.”
“Exactly right,” the president said, pointing at the hologram. “And then look at what she does-”
“‘She’?” Barbeau exclaimed. “A woman bomber pilot?”
“Colonel Gia Cazzotta, the squadron commander,” Carlyle said, glancing at his notes. “Veteran bomber pilot, engineer, unit commander, lots of flying hours, experience in Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan.”
“Sounds like a cocky type A jet jockey,” Barbeau commented. She thought about her last encounter with a type A but laid-back jet jockey, Hunter Noble-he was actually a spaceplane jockey-but then remembered how that encounter ended, and quickly dismissed the memory.
“Friend of Patrick McLanahan’s, too, I heard,” White House Chief of Staff Walter Kordus said.
“What?” Barbeau asked, her eyes flashing in complete surprise. “Well, that explains a lot.”
“Here’s where the fighter attacks, sir,” Secretary of Defense Turner said, pointing at the hologram. “Our guys didn’t do a thing wrong, but they were shot at!”
“She should’ve bugged out and gotten out of there,” the president said. “Instead…” He stared at the holographic replay in amazement. “Look at this-she’s diving out of the sky, fighters on her tail! Now she’s skimming over the water…now she’s supersonic, for God’s sake, heading right for this destroyer. More warnings on the radio. The ships are trying to lock her up, but she’s too low and fast and jamming them…Jesus, no wonder they thought they were under attack! Somebody tell me what in hell she had in mind here, please!”
“Sir, without having interviewed her myself yet, I believe Colonel Cazzotta was conveying to the Russians that
