“They’re firing,” reported Jeff.
Two Navy Prowlers as well as Raven clicked on their fuzzbusters. The interference was so severe the U/MF control computer immediately complained, giving him a red light on the radar altimeter and then warning that it was having trouble maintaining the connection with Hawk One.
“Raven, I need us closer to the Flighthawks,” said Jeff, switching back into Hawk One as Two completed the run of the antiair guns. He flew up the coast, the plane responding well to his controls despite the computer’s admonitions that the signal was degrading.
Somewhere offshore in the JSTARS, the operations coordinators were studying Zen’s feed to make sure they had all of the SAM sites properly targeted. They were like defensive coordinators sitting in the press box during a football game, checking to make sure the blitz they’d called would work.
It did. With a vengeance.
Jeff caught the shadows of laser-guided missiles closing in on the SAM sites as he began to turn Hawk One south. The Libyans hadn’t had a chance to launch.
Secondaries.
Turbulence.
A lot of shit down there.
He was between the two planes, spreading out over the coast. Fuel good, heavy air, almost stormy. His controls felt a little sloppy. Maybe it was the computer reacting to the wide spectrum of ECMs.
He could handle it. Zen nudged the stick up. The signal bar on Hawk One flittered into the red area, got strong again.
“Jeff, they’re asking for another pass on the bunker,” said Jennifer. Her voice seemed to descend from the clouds.
Zen told the computer to bring Hawk One closer. Then he pulled Hawk Two back in the other direction, away from Raven under a heavy cloud of black smoke and exploding tracers. Helos were coming from the northeast; he saw a pair of Sea Cobra attack helos letting loose with rockets on an official building a half mile from the bunker. Jeff hunkered down, pushing his head into the windscreen, backing off the throttle, slowing down for the longest possible look at the bunker.
The east side of the facility was defended only by an armored car. He tilted his wing and banked off, the assault helicopters right behind.
He circled, watching them land. Raven was almost overhead now, beginning to orbit back. Hawk One flew in its set position behind the left wing. Jeff pushed Two around, came in on the bunker once more as the SEALs blew the cover on the southwest air-exchange portal. They immediately began disappearing down the large vertical shaft.
A second Seahawk came in over the back entrance of the bunker. An armored car moved toward them.
Zen was nearly lined up for a shot with the U/MF’s cannon. He prodded the throttle slide but before he could activate his cannon, one of the Sea Cobras obliterated the vehicle.
“They’re in!” shouted someone over the command circuit.
“How’s the trial going now?” said Breanna sarcastically.
“It’s still going,” said the weapons officer, surprised.
Zen saw the main entrance to the bunker implode as he began a fresh circuit. Three satellite dishes collapsed with the dust as the front half of the football-side-sized upper building collapsed.
Had he said the trial was still going?
He pushed Hawk Two into a rolling dive to reverse course and overfly the bunker again.
“Missiles launched! Flak batteries are shooting unguided in grid A-1. Evasive maneuvers,” said the weapons officer.
“Losing control connection for Hawk Two!” warned the Flighthawk computer.
“Nancy, we need to double back,” said Zen as he struggled to put Hawk Two’s camera on the bunker complex. He jerked his right hand instead of his left, cursed at the infinitesimal delay.
“We have SA-2’s in the air,” said Cheshire calmly.
“Jam them.”
“We are. But we’re not taking any unnecessary risks now that the team is down. Evasive maneuvers.”
Zen felt himself being pushed sideways as the Megafortress beamed the SAM site’s pulse-Doppler radar. He lost Hawk Two and had to throw One’s throttle to the firewall to try to keep up with the EB-52. The Libyans had launched no less than twelve of the high-altitude surface-to-air missiles at them. while the Megafortress’s ECMs had no trouble thwarting their radars, there were an awful lot of them in the air, just dodging the debris was a chore.
Sixty 57mm antiaircraft guns were filling the air below the missiles with lead and cordite. The flak rose in plumes, hot coals for Raven and the U/MF to dance across.
The computer brought Hawk Two into a wide arc south of Raven as Jeff flew Hawk One to the east, cutting back on an intercept as an SA-2 exploded overhead. Sweat poured from Jeff’s neck and back as the small U/MF began to jitter up and down, buffeted by a second explosion he hadn’t seen or anticipated. He gunned the throttle, but got no response; the plane suddenly began nosing down and he tasted metal in his mouth, felt his stomach go sour with a wave of dread. For a moment he thought he was going in – he saw ground loom and shapes dance, and his head began to spin. Then the U/MF picked herself up and he had only blue sky in front of him; he was clear, accelerating and climbing. The Megafortress was a bare two miles ahead.
“SEAL teams have secured the perimeter,” reported Cascade. “SEAL teams are inside, encountering only token resistance.”
“The prisoners aren’t in the bunker,” said Zen. He was on the interphone; only the others aboard Raven could hear him. “Where was that encrypted video transmission?”
“About fifty miles, south by southeast,” said the weapons officer.
“Jeff?”
“Bree, get us back there. That’s where Smith and the others must be.”
“No offense, Major, but I’m flying this plane,” said Cheshire.
“I’m sorry, Nancy. The bunker is a bluff. The trial broadcast didn’t stop when the satellites were hit.”
“He’s right,” said the weapons officer.
“Why do you think it’s coming from that site and not somewhere else in Tripoli?”
“It’s just a guess. Intuition,” said Jeff. The computer noted that Hawk Two was now ‘fully communicative,” and he acknowledged, though leaving it under the computer’s command in the trail position. “The Navy’s covering Tripoli. Let’s go.”
“Jeff, you’re talking about deviating from our flight plan based on a hunch,” said Cheshire.
“I trust hunches,” said Breanna. “And I trust Jeff.”
Thanks, babe, he thought as Cheshire jerked the Megafortress onto the new course.
Over the Mediterranean
24 October, 1050 local
Jed sat back at the JSTARS console while Ms. O’Day left her desk in the White House Situation Room to take another call. The attack on Tripoli, planned by Madcap Magician and carried out mostly by the Navy, was still proceeding. But already Saudi and Syrian governments had taken to the back channels to assure Washington that they had no interest in the Greater Islamic League.
It helped that they trusted neither the Iranians nor the Libyans. It also helped that America was demonstrating how easy it was to obliterate nearly a billion dollars’ worth of military equipment.
Now if they could only complete the rescue.
“Jed, are you still there?” asked Ms. O’Day, coming back on the line.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, sitting back at the console. The major was waving at him – he was needed on the other lines, where he was helping the SWAT team and Raven in contact with each other.
“Do they have our men?”
“Not yet,” he told her.
“When?”
“Maybe soon,” he said. The major was waving violently. “Ms. O’Day, I’m sorry, I have to go,” he said, cutting her off by switching the simple twist knob that controlled the circuit input on the panel in front of him.
