with an itchy trigger finger an illuminated target.
“I’ve got the target, CAG. Steering’s good.”
The infrared screen was mounted above the radar screen on the BN’s side of the instrument panel, and both were concealed inside a dark, collapsible black hood that shielded the displays from extraneous light. “This mist in the air is degrading the IR, CAG. Maybe if we go lower …”
“Strike, Shotgun is gonna make that pass at a thousand feet.”
“Roger.”
Jake shoved the nose down. Only eighteen miles to go. “Are you ready, Dog?”
“Uh … Yeah…. He’s a nice little target, easy to see. System’s tight.” Reed adjusted the presentations on the displays without removing his head from the scope hood, while Jake set the radar altimeter to give an aural warning if he descended below 800 feet.
“Have you got the ECM on?” Jake could see that the electronic countermeasures panel was still dark.
“Oh, shit. I forgot.”
Reed turned it on. It would take a while to warm up. Better be safe than sorry, Grafton decided, and dropped the left wing. “Strike, Shotgun is doing a three-sixty to get set up.”
“Jeeze, I’m sorry, CAG,” Reed said. “I guess I got too busy.” He checked all his switches again. Jake visually checked the master armament switch to ensure that it was off and examined the symbology on the Analog Display Indicator (ADI), a television-like screen mounted in the center of the panel in front of him. This instrument had replaced the Vertical Display Indicator of the A6-A and presented all the information the pilot needed to fly the plane. At the top of the presentation, compass headings moved from left to right as the aircraft turned.
As Jake rolled out of the turn back on course the ECM was on the line and gave them a visual and audible warning of an X-band radar dead ahead. Jake punched off two bundles of chaff and the warnings flickered out. “What do they have that transmits in X-band, Reed?”
“Uh …”
“This is for fucking keeps, kid. You have to know this shit.”
Ten miles. Reed was tuning the IR screen.
They would never see the boat in the mist at this altitude with the IR, Jake decided, and lowered the nose as he advanced the throttles. He reset the radar altimeter warning for 450 feet and dropped quickly to 500, where he leveled. 480 knots. Five miles. The plane felt sluggish, no doubt because it was still full of fuel.
“The bastard will probably turn, Reed.”
The bombardier dropped his gaze to the scope and reached for the cursor control. “He’s turning left.” Jake’s steering slewed left slightly and he eased the plane left to follow.
“I see him,” Reed announced. The X-band was back. More chaff. The X-band radar stayed with him.
“I don’t see any missiles.”
“Nothing?”
“Well, there’s something on the deck, but it’s covered up with something and I can’t tell what it is.” Reed sounded frustrated.
Jake pulled the commit trigger on his stick grip to the first detent and instantly the usual symbology on the ADI was replaced by the infrared video.
There was the boat! They were almost on top of it, looking straight down at it. There was something under a dark cover on deck, all right, but Jake couldn’t tell what. Even as he looked, the boat was changing aspect as the turret under the plane’s nose swung to keep the boat in view. Now the boat appeared upside down, as if the plane were diving over it.
The radar altimeter warning sounded. The pilot’s eyes flicked to the gyro. Inadvertently he had eased the nose over. He released the stick button and pulled the nose back to the artificial horizon as it replaced the IR video on the ADI.
Jake reported what they had seen to the strike controller. No doubt the admiral, Cowboy Parker, was listening to the radio conversation. He couldn’t be enjoying what he was hearing. Under the rules of engagement dictated by Washington, the admiral could not use weapons except in self-defense. As currently interpreted by the Pentagon, this rule meant that U.S. ships could not open fire unless the target “demonstrated hostile intent,” i.e., shot first. One was left with the frail hope that the evil in the rascals’ hearts would spoil their aim, a straw that apparently gave the politicians some comfort.
“He’s back on his original course,” Reed reported. No doubt the admiral was moving his destroyers and frigates forward to intercept the intruder and keep it away from the carrier.
“Shotgun Five Zero Two, Strike. We have just launched another A-6. In the interim, drop a flare on the bogey and attempt a visual ID.”
Which means, Jake thought grimly, the admiral wants us to troll and see if the bastard will open fire. “Shotgun wilco.”
Reed turned the safety collar on wing station two and pulled the station selector switch down. Then he set the armament panel to release one flare. Jake turned the aircraft back toward the boat. He decided to drop the flare at a thousand feet to give himself a little time to look around underneath as the flare parachuted toward the water.
A minute from the boat, he turned on the master armament switch, which put electrical power to the panel. “Let’s drop the flare about five hundred yards in front of the boat,” he told Reed.
“Roger.” Reed’s head was firmly against the scope hood as he slewed the radar cursors.
The X-band warning squawked. Jake eyed it as he continued inbound. He squeezed the commit trigger as far as it would go, authorizing the computer to release the flare. The release marker marched relentlessly down the ADI display as they approached the boat, then dropped off. The flare was gone.
A few seconds later a brilliant light illuminated aft and below them. “Strike, flare’s burning,” Jake reported as he dropped the nose and left wing and began a descending spiral turn.
He was below the clouds a few seconds before the flare came out. The naked white light, a million candlepower, reflected from the black sea and the ragged tendrils of dirty cloud which covered it. He saw the boat.
He contented himself with glances at the boat as he constantly rechecked his altitude and nose attitude. It would be desperately easy to fly into the water under that artificial sun, which fooled his sense of the natural order of things and gave him vertigo, the aviator’s name for spatial disorientation.
“Do you see any guns, Reed,” Jake asked as he concentrated on the attitude instruments and fought the temptation to roll the plane to put the flare directly overhead.
“Nope.” Reed had never removed his head from the hood. He was staring at the IR scope, using the camera’s lens magnification to see much more than Jake could with the naked eye.
The flare was drifting beneath them now, which increased Jake’s disorientation. He kept the plane circling and limited himself to peeks at the boat. He toggled the stick trigger and glanced at the IR display, remembering to cross-check the gyro and the other flight instruments as he did so. He was perspiring profusely. This was hairy, dangerous flying. Any mistake would be fatal.
“Strike, Shotgun,” Jake said. “The surface bogey has something we can’t identify on his deck. No guns visible. He’s headed your way, over.”
“Concur.” The ship also had him on radar. “Drop another flare.”
Jake put the plane in a climb while Reed reset the armament panel. Dropping flares was not going to solve the admiral’s problem. If the boat had a missile and got within range of the American ship, their close-in weapons systems, the Phalanxes, would have to knock the missile down before it reached its target. These automated guns were aimed by computers and each of them fired fifty very heavy bullets a second at the incoming missile.
The Phalanxes had better work, Jake whispered to himself. He knew Cowboy Parker was at this very moment thinking the very same thing as he stared at the NTDS displays, weighed the options, and maneuvered his forces. Aircraft, ships, guns, missiles, and lives — many lives — men with moms and wives or sweethearts, men with pasts and maybe futures, all packed into these gray ships on this dark sea. And Rear Admiral Earl Parker was the officer responsible for them all. To shoot or not to shoot? Justified or unjustified? Decisions made in seconds would be weighed for weeks by men who had never made a life-or-death decision in their lives, politicians who read the newspapers and keep wetted fingers permanently aloft.
When the second flare was burning, Jake carefully descended again and circled the boat at 500 feet, about
