contingency. They were sluggish, weighed down by their equipment and hampered by the dark.
Or maybe it just seemed to Gunny like they were moving in slow motion. The two buildings where they’d expected resistance lay twenty feet ahead, across a large ditch lined with antitank obstacles. The buildings were quiet.
Which didn’t mean they were empty, of course.
The missile launchers had apparently been moved closer to the water, nearly four hundred yards further south of the spot briefed. Small-arms fire was coming from that direction. The finicky light from the Somalian flare showed pointed shadowns around the slight rise there, but they were too far away to see anything, let alone attack it.
There was a thud, then a series of thuds.
Nothing.
No mines.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” shouted Gunny. “They moved everything to Purple site.”
“Incoming!” yelled someone ahead. “Tank!”
Gunny threw himself to the ground. A large-caliber shell, possibly from an M47, splashed through the trees at the right. The sergeant pushed himself back to his knees, and for the first time realized all hell was breaking loose at the north end of the site, where Captain Gordon and his team had gone.
“Get the SPG on that tank,” yelled Gunny. “Com!” Com!” he added, calling for the radio specialist. “Where the hell are the F-16’s?”
As if to answer, a tongue of fire lit from behind the Somalia lines and two huge fists leaped from the earth.
“Two launches, eleven o’clock!” shouted Smith as he saw the missiles flare off their launchers. His RWR skipped out warning bleats as he jinked hard and kicked out tinsel, metal chaff designed to fool the radar of the acquiring missile.
In some respects, the Somalians had done them a favor by turning on their radars and firing the missiles. Powering up his HARM missiles, the pilot of Poison Two calmly dotted the offending radar van on his threat scope and released the antiradar missiles. With the targeting information downloaded into their miniature onboard computers, the radiation-seeking missiles were in can’t-miss mode – even if the radars were to turn themselves off, the missiles would fly directly to the target points and obliterate the gear.
But that didn’t account for the surface-to-air missiles that had been fired, or pure bad luck. The SA-2’s were equipped with terminal guidance devices that allowed them to home in on an enemy even if their ground units were wiped out. Worse, as far as Knife was concerned, were the SA-6’s – nasty medium-range missiles that weren’t supposed to be here, but were now sending his warning gear into a high-pitched shriek.
And the SA-3. Not to mention triple-A, which erupted with a red cloud to the northeast.
Knife’s head swirled in a tempest of colors and sweat. The warning receiver was still bleating. He pulled the Fighting Falcon over, yanking the F-16 nearly backward in the air, altitude dropping abruptly as he fired off more chaff.
Pulling back on the sidestick at fifteen thousand feet, he found the target area in his windshield. Someone had even fire a flare to show him where everything was.
Thoughtful.
Knife forgot about the SAMs and the antiair and the RWR as he saw the muzzle flash of an ancient M47 tank foam red about three o’clock in his screen. The tank was his primary target if the ground team ran into trouble.
Which obviously it had.
“Poison One, targeting tank,” he said. His pipper slid over the dark shadow of the turret before he realized he hadn’t had any communication from the ground team at all since the helo had called with their time-to-landing.
It was too late to worry about that now. Red fingers jabbed out toward his eyes; he ignored the flak and pushed the trigger on his stick, pickling two five-hundred-pound bombs into the tank. As he started to pull out he saw another ground missile launch; he nudged his stick to the right and called the launch, at the same time riding forward to dump iron on the launcher. If Poison Two acknowledged, its broadcast was lost in the blur of gravity and the roar of his F-16A’s GE F-110 turbofan as he pickled, then jerked hard to get away from the new missiles.
They had just targeted the tank when a loud whistle sounded above them. before Gunny could shield his eyes, the night flashed white. The tank erupted in a two-fisted swirl of fire, dirt, and metal sailing in every direction.
“About fucking time,” growled Melfi, picking himself up. “Forward, forward! Tank’s history. Go, girls!”
One of his men began screaming on his right. Gunny ran up and found Lance Corporal Gaston curled over a large splash of tangled uniform, half his side blown open by bomb fragments. The medic reached him in the next second; Gunny saw him wince and realized Gaston wasn’t going to make it. He straightened, saw that half the kid’s arm was lying on the ground.
“Get those fucking ship missiles,” Melfi yelled, pulling his M-16 to his side. He ignored the complaint from his knee and began to run forward toward the heaviest gunfire.
Smith whipped back toward the target area, finally satisfied that he had ducked the SAMs. A wall of tracers illuminated the coastline, thrown up by four of five Russian-built ZSU-23 antiaircraft guns. It occurred to him that he was only seeing a fourth or fifth of the actual bullets being fired, since only the tracers showed in the dark. A shitload of lead was being propelled into the sky.
Fired blindly, but dangerous nonetheless. Knife clicked his radio, asking Poison Two for his position.
No answer.
“Two, this is Poison Leader, posit?”
Nothing.
“Two? Give me your position. Two? Posit?”
“Poison Two blind,” his wingman finally replied. “Two-one-one for one-three off egress.”
Smith blew a long sigh into his mask before plotting his wingman’s position with the bearings he’d broadcast. He thought he’d gone down.
“All right, you’re five, six miles south of me, due south,” Knife told him.
“Poison One, copy. I have you on radar. I’m Angels twenty-five. Out of arrows, Knife. I took some flak but I’m okay. Engine’s fine. Controls responding.”
“You’re hit?”
“Roger. Fuel’s fine. Nothing bad, but I can see burn marks on the wing and I felt it.”
Knife glanced at his own fuel gauge, calculating that he had enough for perhaps five move minutes’ worth of action before hitting bingo, the theoretical turnaround point. He was still carrying four GBUs under his wings.
They were intended for the Silkworms. But the ground team still hadn’t checked in, which meant that they weren’t in position to illuminate the targets with their laser designators.
He’d have to do it himself. No big deal, as long as he could find the targets beyond the wall of flak.
Assuming his wingman was okay.
“Two, if you can hold an orbit, I’m going to mop up.”
“Copy. Go for it, Knife. I’m fine.”
Smith tried hailing the ground team as he plotted a course toward the Silkworms. He climbed to just over twenty thousand feet, well out of reach of the flak. But the air seemed to percolate with it, Viper shuddering as he came up on the dirt landing stripe that marked the western end of the target zone.
The radio static cleared as he eyeballed the master arm panel.
“Poison One, we are sparking the target. Repeat, sparking your target.”
About fucking time, he thought, acknowledging and leaning slightly on his right wing. He was ten miles from the site. Eyes pasted on the video screen, he hunted for his target. There were vague blurs, but no cues, no nothing. The LANTIRN targeting gear was having a hell of a time sorting through the battlefield smoke. In the meantime, the cloud of flak had moved in his direction.
“Poison One, have you acquired?”
“Negative,” he groused. “Just make sure you got it on.”
“We’re taking fire.”
Yeah, no shit. Join the party.
