“I will do all I can, General. Alas, any chance of success lies in the hands of the Japanese. They will be hunting us, and the odds are on their side.”
20
Puffy clouds floating in a calm summer sky greeted the Japanese pilots as they climbed out of Khabarovsk headed for their tanker rendezvous. There were sixteen Zeros divided into two gaggles of eight. Colonel Handa led the eight planes of the high echelon. He had allowed his senior commanders to choose where they wished to fly, and they all wished to fly high, with him. The glory was in shooting down enemy planes in combat, not strafing hangars and barracks.
Still, the commanders put their very best subordinates in the eight airplanes that were going to strike the base.
Colonel Handa had intended to exhort his pilots at the briefing to do their best for the honor of Japan and the Zero pilot corps, but then he thought better of it. I have watched too many American movies, he told himself.
“They’re coming,” Lee Foy shouted as he slammed down the telephone. “Headed this way. Over a dozen. Took off ten minutes ago.”
The American pilots went into the dispersal shack — an old hen coop that they had commandeered, cleaned, and moved to the parking mat — for their final briefing. Everyone was checking his watch. The pilots managed to avoid one another’s eyes.
Bob Cassidy was glad the Japanese were on their way. The suspense was over. He had known the Japanese would attack eventually; he just hadn’t known it would come so soon.
His people were ready. He had just six planes available, so he divided them into three flights. He would take Paul Scheer north of the base and wait until the Sentinel missiles had forced the Zero pilots to shut off their radars. Then he and Scheer would go in among them.
Dixie and Aaron Hudek were going out to the northwest of the base, Preacher Fain and Lee Foy to the southwest. They would come in when Cassidy called them.
Each plane carried eight Sidewinders and a full load of ammo for the gun. Cassidy had ordered the AMRAAMS left behind. He was betting that the Sky Eye data link would work. If it didn’t, this fight was going to be a disaster. He was also betting that the Japanese would avoid Chinese airspace and come in from the east, the most direct route from Khabarovsk after avoiding China. If the Zeros circled and came in from another direction, they might find a pair of F-22’s with their radar and drop them both. Every choice involves risks. Life involves risk. Breathing is a risk, Cassidy thought. He and his pilots needed some luck. If they got a little of the sweet stuff, they could smash the Zeros right here, today, once and for all. And if luck ran the wrong way…, well, you only had to die once. Cassidy stood in front of the blackboard. He already had all the freqs, altitudes, and call signs written there from the planning session. “Okay, people. They are on their way. They’ll hit the tankers and motor over our way, we hope. Let’s go over the whole thing one more time, then suit up. We’ll man up an hour and a half before they are expected, and take off an hour prior.”
No one asked a single question. Eyes kept straying to wrist watches. When the brief was over, Cassidy walked outside, went around behind the shack, and peed in the grass. Finally, he suited up, taking his time. He was standing outside the shack, looking at the airplanes, thinking about Sweet Sabrina and little Robbie and Jiro Kimura when he heard the satellite phone ring. Lee Foy answered. Fifteen seconds went by; then Foy shouted, “Sixteen Zeros. They’ve finished tanking and are on their way here. ETA is an hour and twenty-eight minutes from right now.”
“Let’s do it!”
“Let’s go.”
They grabbed gear and helmets and began jogging for their planes.
When the planes were level at altitude after tanking, Jiro Kimura slid away from the other flight of four Zeros that was assigned to the ground attack mission. He was wearing the night-vision helmet that he had borrowed from the helo pilots, but he didn’t have it turned on. He wanted to try that now. First, he checked his three charges, Ota, Miura, and Sasai. They were precisely in position, as if he had welded them there. They were good pilots, great comrades. Satisfied, Jiro engaged the autopilot and began fiddling with the helmet. Before takeoff-he had turned the gain setting to its lowest reading, as the helo pilot had advised. Now he lowered the hinged goggles down over his eyes. The battery was on, so the goggles were working, or should be. His eyes slowly adjusted to the reduced light levels. Oh yes, there was the other flight, out there to the right. He turned his head from side to side, taking in the view. The view to both sides was limited, and he couldn’t read the instruments on his panel, but in combat, he wouldn’t need to: he could find every dial and switch blindfolded. The real disadvantage to the helmet was weight. In a helicopter a twelve-pound helmet on a healthy man was no big deal if he didn’t have to wear it too long, but in a fighter, pulling G’s, the story would be much different. At five G’s, the darn thing would weigh sixty pounds, which would be a nice test of Jiro’s neck muscles. Ten G’s might be enough to snap his neck like a twig. It just stood to reason that if the Americans had figured out a way to cancel visible light waves, their airplanes still might be visible in the infrared portion of the spectrum. Giro’s oxygen mask was lying in his lap. The helo helmet had no fittings to accept the mask. The Zero’s cockpit was partially pressurized with a maximum three psi differential, so even though the plane was at 25,000 feet, the cockpit was only at 9,000. If the canopy was damaged or lost, Jiro would have to hold the mask to his face with his left hand while he flew with the other.
The F-22’s took off in pairs, Cassidy and Scheer first, then Dixie and Hudek, then Fain and Foy. The enlisted troops stood on the ramp watching the planes get airborne, basking in the thunder of the engines. As the wheels came into the wells, the pilots turned on their aircrafts’ smart skin. The noise of the engines continued to rumble for minutes after the planes disappeared from view. After the noise had faded, the senior NCO told the troops to get in the trenches, freshly dug by a backhoe that was sitting near the dispersal shack. They could safely stay out of the trenches for a while but the NCO was too keyed up to wait. Better safe than sorry.
The Zero symbols appeared on Bob Cassidy’s tactical display at a range of two hundred miles. He was fifty miles north of the base at twenty thousand feet, cruising at max conserve airspeed, about.72 Mach. Scheer was on his left wing, out about a hundred yards. The symbols were so bunched together, Cassidy couldn’t tell exactly how many bogeys were there.
The main problem with Sky Eye was that at long ranges the symbols were grossly compressed, and at short ranges they were unreliable. The gadget seemed to give the best presentation when the bogeys were from five to fifty miles away. Inside five miles, he would be forced to rely upon the F-22’s’ infrared sensors; the data from all the F-22’s was shared, so the computers could arrive at a fairly complete tactical picture.
At least he had dodged the first bullet today: the Zeros were coming in from the east, right up the threat axis.
Cassidy checked the position of the other two flights of F-22’s. He thought Preacher Fain was too close to the base.
“Preacher, this is Hoppy. A few more miles south, please.”
Preacher acknowledged.
Cassidy checked everything: the intensity of the HUD displays, master armament switch on, the proper displays on the proper MFDS, cabin altitude, engine gauges … He was ready.
Preacher Fain tightened his shoulder harness and ensured the inertial take-up reel was locked, so that he would not be thrown about the cockpit. He adjusted his oxygen mask, wiped a gloved hand across his dark helmet visor, and checked the armament panel.
Fain glanced at his tac display: Lee Foy was right where Fain wanted him, about five hundred feet out and completely behind his leader. With Foy well aft and off to one side, Fain was free to maneuver left, right, whatever, without worrying about a midair collision. And the wingman was free to follow the fight and keep the bad guys off Fain’s tail while the leader engaged.
The high Zeros were only forty miles from the base. The low ones were thirty miles out. Eight in each flight. Fain eyeballed the rate of progress of the top group and tightened his turn radius. He wanted to come slicing in behind them just after they got into the Sentinel zone, when they were certain to have their radars off. He wanted to knock as many down as possible in the first pass, then dive to engage the lower ones. The Zeros down low were
