supercockpit display's touchscreen and speaking computer commands-he was back in the lab or in the sim, where he really belonged. Whatever it took to get his head where it needed to be…
'We've got two SA-lOs, one just nine miles east of the IP, the other forty miles west-northwest,' Wickland reported. 'Looks like they moved them since this morning when those Libyans scouted them.'
'The target run will put us just inside lethal range of the second SAM after we're IP inbound, and he'll be alerted if we have to fire on the first site,' Tanaka said. 'What's the computer say?'
'It says let's get the fuck out of here, go home, and have a beer,' Wickland quipped. He turned to Tanaka, smiled, and corrected himself, saying, 'Nah, that was me-but I'll do what the computer says: descend to computergenerated lowest altitude, replot the IP to bypass the first SAM, and attack the second SAM with one antiradar missile. It'll take the first SAM at least thirty seconds to acquire us, and by that time we'll be just a few seconds out of detection range and within a minute of flying out of lethal range. We save one antiradar missile for later.' He punched up instructions on the touchscreen. 'Center up on the bug to the new IP. I've got COLA terrain- following mode selected, minimum safe altitude is on the barber pole.'
'Roger, me,' Tanaka said. Yep, he thought happily, he's back. 'Here we go.'
Grumble, this is Lion Seven,' the Mi-24 pilot radioed. 'I copy you have declared an air defense emergency. Do you need us to reverse course and reenter the security ap-
proach? We are five minutes from bingo fuel, and we have wounded on board. We must land immediately. Over.'
The S-300 battery commander had a decision to make. The proper procedure was to kick all aircraft out of the airspace and have them reenter the restricted area, usually on a different ingress route to be sure they were familiar with all the routes, not just the one they filed for. But this guy was bingo fuel, and he obviously saw some kind of action.
Well, the lieutenant thought, all that wasn't his fault. That hot prickly sensation was still hammering away on the back of his neck-no time to ignore it now. 'Lion Seven, reverse course and reenter through checkpoint oneone- nine at three hundred meters.'
He heard the pilot radio a muttered 'Insha'allah,' which in this case probably more closely meant 'Who do you think you are, God?' rather than 'If God wills it.' But the pilot responded curtly, 'Roger, Grumble Twelve. Reversing course.'
'He sounded pretty mad, sir,' the radar operator observed.
'If he runs out of fuel and crashes, I'll take the blame for it,' the lieutenant said. 'But as long as we follow procedures, we can't be faulted too badly. Clear your screens and report.'
The radar operators switched their radar briefly from short-range tracking and identification to long-range search. The short-range tracking gave altitude information and more precise tracking information, but sacrificed range, so the radar had to be manually reset for longerrange scans on occasion. The Mi-24 helicopter briefly disappeared from the radar display when the mode was changed. 'Radar is clear, sir.'
'Very well. Continue tracking Seven to the ingress point.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Comm, ask him his fuel state again. If we need to, we'll have to coordinate an off-base refueling.'
'Yes, sir.' He turned to his radios; the lieutetlant lit a cigarette while they worked. But moments later: 'Sir, no reply from Lion Seven!'
The creepy-crawling sensation on the back of the lieutenant's neck was raging now; he crushed the cigarette out with a stamp of a foot. 'Radar…?'
'He just disappeared off the scope, sir,' the radar operator reported. 'I had his transponder signal and primary target just a moment ago-now it's gone.'
'Any ELTs?'
The radio operator switched his intercom panel-and sure enough, they heard a ping-ping-ping-ping! signal on the international emergency frequency. The ELT, or emergency locator transmitter, activated automatically upon impact if the helicopter crashed.
'Shit,' the lieutenant cursed, 'he crashed. I thought he said he was bingo fuel-he should've had at least a thirty-minute reserve. Those hot dog helo pilots would rather kill themselves than admit they screwed up and stretched their fuel past safe tolerances. Give me a bearing to the signal, notify Units Ten and Nine and have them triangulate his position, then send it to Brigade to organize an immediate rescue.' He picked up the command phone. 'Brigade, Twelve.'
'Go ahead.'
'Sir, we have lost contact with Lion Seven. We are picking up an ELT; he may have crashed. He reported he was low on fuel, but he first reported that he…'
'Sir, unidentified fast-moving aircraft inbound, range thirty-five kilometers and closing! '
'Release all batteries!' the lieutenant shouted, still with his finger on the phone's call switch. He threw the phone into its cradle. 'Release batteries and fire!' He looked at the radar screen-it was a hopeless jumble of streaks, dots, swirls, and radiating electrical noise.
'We are being jammed, sir! Heavy jamming, all frequencies!'
'Switch to optronic control, search along the last known bearing. Switch the radar to short-scan multifrequency to simulate missile guidance uplink-let's see if he switches his jammers to counter the uplink. Where's the optronic crew? Report, dammit!'
'Optronics crew searching along predicted flight path… Sir, optronic crew has detected a fast-moving target!'
'Match bearings and reacquire in medium-scan mode!'
'Target reacquired.. target locked in medium-scan mode.'
It was a crapshoot after this: time for the missile to fly to its target minus ten seconds, the minimum amount of time it took to lock on with the more precise short-range scan, then transmit the uplink data to guide the missile to its target. No time for guessing now… 'Release batteries and launch two.'
The deputy commander hit the 'LAUNCH' alarm, flipped a switch guard, and then reached down inside the switch to a covered button underneath. Moving the switch set off another alarm in the command cab; the lieutenant silenced the horn with a commander's 'pickle switch' that he held in his left hand, which issued a consent command to the launch controller.
Outside, at a launcher two hundred meters away, a three-thousand-pound missile popped out of its launch tube from a slug of compressed nitrogen. The missile flew straight up for about seventy feet before the solid-rocket booster ignited, quickly accelerating the missile to well over five times the speed of sound.
'Twenty seconds to impact.' Three seconds later, they heard a second loud blast from outside-the second 5V55K missile had popped out of its launch tube and was following the first on its way to the target. 'Second missile away.. fifteen seconds to impact.'
'Stand by to switch to narrow-beam mode.. now.'
The engagement officer switched radar modes. 'Target acquired in narrow-scan mode… target locked, sir! Ten seconds to-'
Suddenly the entire command vehicle violently rocked on'its eight wheels. The I radar of the S-
300 was carried aboard the same semi-trailer truck as the command unit. The lights flickered, then went out completely. Moments later, a second object struck the vehicle, harder than the first. A burst of fire erupted from the control console. 'Evacuate! Now!' the lieutenant shouted. The crew members ran outside just as thick black smoke began billowing out of the command cab.
As the command crew assembled outside, the lieutenant quickly determined the cause of the double explosion-a Mil Mi-24 attack helicopter, just a few kilometers away, was firing guided antitank missiles at the S-300 battery. He realized then that the Mi-24 hadn't crashed-it had just ducked down below the S-300's radar coverage, cruised in, and attacked. It was flying perhaps ten meters above the desert, flying at just thirty or forty kilometers an hour, slowly and carefully picking its targets. Occasionally a blast of machine-gun fire erupted from its nose cannon, followed by a streak of fire as its laser-guided missiles sped off their launch rails and hit home.
In seconds, it was over-and the entire S-300 battery, eight launchers and a I vehicle, had been destroyed, and the Mi-24 helicopter simply disappeared into the night sky. Soon, only the sounds of burning vehicles and screaming men could be heard.
King Sayyid Muhammad ibn al-Hasan as-Sanusi, on board the Mi-24 helicopter in the flight engineer's station,
