“Me neither,” Jake grunted. “I have a sneaking suspicion we’re trying to steal the cheese out of a mousetrap.
They had only two practical choices on the method of attack: go in high above the mountains and the cloud tops, or go in low on the deck below the clouds. If RockEyes were released too high, the clamshell opened too soon and the bomblets would disperse so widely that the pattern density was unacceptably low. So they really had no choice at all. Jake thought about these matters as he followed the computer steering for the coast-in point Cole had chosen twenty miles north of Vinh. They would approach the coast from the southeast. He leveled at 20,000 feet and scanned the distant horizon. He could see the land obliquely on his left and the clouds on the mountains that rose beyond the coastal plain.
Jake instructed the other crews to reengage the scramblers. “Devil Three, since you have GP bombs, you may have to pop up high enough for the fuses to arm.” Corey Ford clicked his mike. “Just don’t get so wrapped up in the attack that you hit a ridge.”
“Roger that.”
“After you drop your load, climb over the ridges and beat feet. No rendezvous.”
“I gotcha.”
“Boxman, how’s your radar?” Since Grafton was the leader, he let his concerns show.
“It’s fine, Jake. A sweet system.”
“You may have to S-turn or slow down a little to let me move ahead a bit before you drop.” Corey clicked his mike. Jake wanted to make sure that Corey would delay his release so that Jake, down low, would not be struck by his bombs or caught in their blast. A second or two delay would be enough.
Jake thought of one more point. “This hole’s probably heavily defended. So if anyone takes a hit and goes down, he’s on his own. Don’t stay and watch for chutes or any of that crap. Everybody else haul ass out of there.” Mike clicks were his reply.
They flew on in silence. Jake’s mouth was so dry he took a swig from his water bottle. He offered the bottle to Cole, who took his mask off, tilted the bottle, then passed it back.
Jake eased the nose over and trimmed for a descent. Each crew worked through the combat checklist. Passing 10,000 feet, fifteen miles from the coast, Jake reported to the airborne controller that he was strangling the parrot and secured the IFF. They were on their own.
He checked his wingmen and told them to spread out some more. When each plane was about one hundred feet away he turned his attention to the land ahead. Rice paddies reflected the afternoon sun.
Frank Camparelli and Cowboy Parker huddled over a chart in Mission Planning. The skipper had three aircraft on the way to a well defended target, in daytime, without adequate planning, and the possibilities for disaster ate at him.
“How do you think Grafton will go in?”
“Jake’ll go straight at ‘em, Skipper. He thinks feint and deceptions in a theatre this small just give the enemy more time to alert their defenses “That’s true.” Camparelli went to the flak chart over the wag. Pins bristled around the airfield- “I think they’re waiting for us in that valley. “Maybe so, but they’ve baited the trap with real Migs.” Parker joined Camparelli at the wall chart “The MiGs are there,” he said, thinking of the electronic intelligence report that described Migradar signals as emanating from the Nong Het airfield for the last two hours. “The hard fact is we can afford to trade plane for plane,” Camparelli turned slowly and looked over Cowboy from head to toe. “You’ll make a good admiral someday, Parker.”
Cowboy reddened. “Skipper, I didn’t mean-” I know, I know.”
Camparelli cut him off with a gesture and scanned the charts and tables as he ran his hand over his hair. Six men, three airplanes. Six lives and eighteen million dollars worth of hardware at risk for one or two fifteen-year-old single-seat day fighters that in the air would be mincemeat for Phantoms. “Why don’t you go to Combat and listen in on the Strike frequency.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Parker left immediately.
The skipper wandered from chart to chart. He stopped at the SAM-threat display and examined it with interest. From the Nong Het airfield his gaze meandered north toward Hanoi. Because Grafton was on his mind he looked at the area around the power plant at Bac Giang.
“Steiger!” The commander strode to the door of the photorecon space.
“Steiger! Where’s Steiger?”
Thirty seconds later a flushed Abe Steiger stood before the SAM-threat chart staring through his glasses at Camparelli’s finger, which tapped imperiously on the black dot on the railroad labeled Bac Giang. -“Why aren’t there SAM sites here? Where are those sites that shot at Grafton the other night?”
The air intelligence officer opened and closed his mouth several times.
“I told you I wanted those sites that shot at Grafton spotted on these charts. I told you specifically to make sure they were in the intelligence report.” The finger pointed. “Get me that report, Mister Steiger. Now. I need-want to see it.”
“The sites aren’t in the reports, sir.” Abe couldn’t lift his eyes. The hand on the table was absolutely still.
“I think you had better come down to my stateroom Mister Steiger, and we’ll have a little chat.”
The intruders crossed the coast at 480 knots at 600 feet, still descending.
“Devil flight, feet dry,” Jake told the HawkEye circling somewhere in the Gulf of Tonkin. He received the usual reply. “Good hunting.”
The cloud base seemed to be at about 2500 feet, but Jake kept descending.
If they were going in low in the daytime, they had better skim the trees to give the gunners the toughest shots. And the lower they were the fewer the people who could see them.
They passed directly over a crossroads village at 100 feet descending.
Flashes in the air revealed flak, so all three planes jinked slightly while holding their formation. When they leveled at 50 feet, just above the trees there was no room left for jinking- All they had was speed. Jake advanced the throttles to the stops, expecting to be told if someone could not keep up. In less than a minute, Corey’s voice came over the radio: “Gimme a couple, Jake.”
Grafton Pulled two percent RPM off the engines and tightened the Erection lock that would prevent him from inadvertently advancing the throttles. He concentrate on the task of threading the machine over the occasional tree lines. The warplanes rushed over acres of rice paddies, a road, shacks, more rice paddies, another road, a tree line, and more paddies. The sensation of speed was sublime.
“We’re in the valley,” Cole told him.
He saw the Powerline almost as he crossed over it missing by inches.
A flock of birds burst from a tree right under his nose- Jake saw them flash beneath and knew the birds would be slammed back into the trees by the down blast from his machine.
Guns on the road ahead. Muzzle flashes. A row of them, like flash bulbs popping. The Intruders rocketed toward the road and in an instant it lay behind.
The valley floor was rising. There were more trees now. The sensation of speed was lessening. Unconsciously he pushed the throttles, then remembered the friction lock and checked that he still had the proper power setting. I’ll die of old age before we get there, he thought.
Within half a minute the walls began closing in and the planes picked their way up the valley. Thick tropical foilage covered the flanks of the hills, whose ridges reached higher and higher until they touched the clouds.
Jake checked the altimeter. They were 1700 feet above sea level.
Back in the States, Jake Grafton had taken great pleasure in flights like this along training routes over stretches of wilderness where the legal altitude was a minimum of 500 feet above the ground. Being young and full of himself, he often flew as low as his nerves allowed just for the sheer hell of it. In those days, when military planes were still permitted to fly under visual flight rules, he would occasionally return to NAS Whidbey Island over the Cascade Range at 200 or 300 feet above the floor of the craggy valleys, shoot through the passes at full throttle and snake his way down between the cliffs, following the streams until they emptied into rivers that flowed into Puget Sound. He had wondered what the hikers had thought of the man-made eagle that split the solitude with a roar, then disappeared as quickly as it had come. Higher authority had finally stopped the illegal flights. Now he was glad he had had the experience.
The valley became serpentine. The altimeter revealed they were climbing rapidly. Not much farther now.
