pressure altimeter to hold them level at 500 feet as they approached the coast. He sneaked glances outside, searching for the beach, convinced that seeing it would be a good omen.
He was still looking when Tiger called feet dry to Black Eagle and started the elapsed-time clock. Then Tiger rotated the safety collar around the master armamanet switch and turned it on.
After a minute the pilot noticed the muzzle flashes, small arms close to the plane. The stuttering blasts of a large weapon, perhaps fifty-seven millimeter, shot through the fog. Four rounds to a clip, white trace yes, it was a fifty-seven. He estimated visibility to be about a mile, sufficient to see the streaks of tracer in time-but not the SAMs. Doing some arithmetic in his head, he figured that a SAM at mach three would traverse the last mile in about two seconds.
The pilot checked the radar altimeter and wiped the sweat from his eyes.
The radar altimeter came into play over land, and he descended to 400 feet.
Flak poured randomly into the sky, a poison spewed reflexively at the sound of approaching engines. A man coming in supersonic would have a quiet ride, Jake thought, because the gomers wouldn’t hear him coming. But these gomers can’t get us, even at only 420 knots. Nothing can get us, he told himself, and he waggled the stick. The sharp, agile movements of the plane provided reassurance.
The antiaircraft guns were usually in a line, from two or three to half a dozen, on roads on top of the paddy dikes. The reddish-orange tracers from the belt-fed lighter weapons-12.7, 14.5, and 23 millimeter floated aloft in long ribbons. Tonight the fog pulsate with their glare. Within the cockpit, though, the deafening thunder was inaudible amid the background noise of the engines, the squawks and screeches of the ecm and the static of the radio.
“Only two knots of wind,” Cole told him. The bombardier was checking the computer readouts.
To keep track of the aircraft’s position and accurately solve the attack problem, the computer needed to know not only the aircraft’s precise position, but the amount of wind affecting the aircraft’s track over the ground as well.
The wind would also affect the trajectory of the bombs after they were released. Any corrections that the bombardier made to velocity errors were understood by the computer to be extra wind.
Tonight the minuscule wind readout meant the INS, the Doppler, and the computer were humming perfectly: they were “tight.” Cole identified the I P for the power plant without trouble. As they approached the initial point, Grafton went to full power.
“I P . New heading two eight seven.”
Jake turned and let the machine climb to 500 feet as he retrimmed for the increasing airspeed. The sensor lights on the instrument panel blinked ominously and the beeps of radars seeking to acquire them sounded in his ears. But the plane was too low to be detected, still safely hidden in the ground cover of the earth. Jake concentrated on staying level at 500 feet and on course. Random muzzle flashes dotted the darkness on his left, like flashbulbs popping in a gigantic stadium.
“I’m on the target and in attack.” The computer-driven display on the v d i assumed a new complexity. The target symbol, a solid little black box, appeared just below the horizon in the center of the display. A highway, or pathway, led from the bottom of the display to a point on the horizon just above the target. On this apex rested the steering symbol, a hollow rectangle, that the computer skewed right or left to show the pilot the proper course to the calculated release point. Jake tuned the display right above a Mig the aircraft to keep the hollow box centered in on the target symbol. On the right side of the display a black fine appeared, the release marker. It began to sink gradually toward the bottom of the display.
The instant it dropped off the vdi the computer would release the weapons.
Without taking his eyes from the radar, the bombardier configured the dozen switches on the armament panel. Jake noted this performance and was impressed. he still had to visually check armament switches.
Pulsating tracers loomed out of the fog. The fireballs were huge-traveling in slow motion and did not change their relative Position-and Jake lifted the plane over the oncoming stream. As he did so a Firecan guns control radar at ten o’clock locked them up.
He punched chaff and descended once he had passed over the fiery flow. He punched off one more bundle of chaff, just to be sure, and was astonished at a bright flash under the aircraft.
“What was that?”
“I R flare in the chaff,” Cole said.
Angry with himself for being startled, Jake divided his attention between the dancing steering symbol and the molten currents of flak.
“Thirty seconds or so,” Cole said. “Ground lock. The pilot could see only darkness ahead. But the power plant was there. Cole said it was. “Gimme a discrete lock, baby,” cole muttered at the Intruder’s tracking radar. If it would lock on the plant, the Computer would read the range information. “No discrete tonight.
Only the track’s depression angle was going to the computer.
Jake dived 200 feet and let a flak stream pass overhead. After five seconds he pumped the stick to get back to altitude so as not to jiggle the accelerometers. “Steady.” Cole whispered “Easy.”
The release marker fell relentlessly. As it dropped off the display Jake squashed the pickle with his thumb backing up the computer’s release signal with a manual one.
The four bombs were gone in a fifth of a second an he let the plane climb 200 feet as he turned hard left to ensure that he would not be caught by bomb fragments if a Snake-eye fin failed to open.
Behind the speeding aircraft the bombs flashed. Jake looked back in time to see the explosions, then looked ahead.
Now for Hanoi.
The steering symbol lashed off to the right. “Ignore that. Cursors running. Your heading two oh five.”
“What’s wrong “Ah, fuck “It’s the the INS or the cursor damn it.”
Tiger administered a healthy kick to the pedestal between his legs.
Actually, this was one of the unwritten procedures taught by experience for freeing the rotary-drum computer that represented state-of-the-art technology-in 1956. This time kicks and curses failed. Cole gave up on the computer and adjusted the radar cursor manually to the weapons-release range he had calculated on the ship. Without the computer, their chance of hitting the National Assembly decreased drastically.
Jake set the switches on the armament panel for the last eight bombs. He decided to leave the mode selector switch in “train,” which meant that instead of dropping the bombs in two sets of four-the “salvo” mode- they would release them one at a time. This increased the likelihood of getting at least one hit, though the damage a hit would cause would be less. Cole nodded his agreement.
As they flew southwest at almost 500 knots, Tiger gave Jake small heading corrections.
They blasted across Bac Ninh at 400 feet, the guns below firing up and the big-caliber tracer shells so bright as they zoomed across the top of the plane that they lighted up the cockpit.
Jake swallowed hard. Hanoi would be heavily defended.
When Cole called ten miles to the target Jake continued to hold the plane low at 400 feet. The flak was getting thicker.
When Cole called eight miles, Jake decided to wait until five miles before climbing. In the glow of the ordnance he could see the outline of the city.
“Six miles.”
Jake pulled the stick aft, reaching 1500 feet before the threat indicator illuminated, warning of Firecan ahead and behind. He continued up and leveled at 2500 feet, where he was not sheltered by ground return. He noted that the visibility was better than he had expected.
A large battery of belt-fed guns exploded into action ahead. Ignoring Cole’s heading calls, Jake turned the plane on a knife-edge and sliced through a gap in the fire.” You gotta hand it to the little fuckers: they give it their best.
He then quickly leveled so that Cole could reidentify the target.
“I think I have it. Right five.”
The pilot yanked the stick to get on course as fast as possible.
He could see the city spread out before him.
It looked unearthly in the flicker of the tracers, and more and more tracers darted up from every street corner.
