“Oh, we’ll make it in all right,” Bird Dog said grimly. He pulled the Tomcat out of its orbit and pointed its nose toward the island. The eastern half of the small outcropping was already obscured by the storm. The clouds had advanced at least halfway across the rocky cliffs that were their destination. “Let me know the moment you have a lock on the lasers.”
“Right.”
As they approached the island, winds buffeted the Tomcat, tossing the ungainly, heavily laden jet in the skies in a seemingly random pattern. Bird Dog swore softly, and focused his concentration on his controls. He tried to feel the jet, to anticipate her movements, and to correct for the sudden and sickening drops in altitude. This close in, it wouldn’t do. At the altitude at which they were going to have to be, a sudden downdraft could be deadly.
“Two minutes, thirty seconds,” Gator said calmly, his voice a reassuring presence in the decreasing visibility and increasingly violent movement of the cockpit. Bird Dog didn’t answer, instead concentrating on the wildly roller-coastering motion of the aircraft.
One hundred feet above the churning ocean, Bird Dog watched the island rush toward him with terrifying swiftness. His hair-trigger reflexes shouted warnings, screaming at him to pull up, pull up. He waited, knowing in just a few seconds he would, pulling the Tomcat into its parabolic maneuver that would toss the weapons precisely toward the laser-designated point. Ahead of him, he saw the ass end of the JAST bird.
“Two more miles.” He tensed, readying himself for the final maneuver.
Suddenly, his targeting gear screamed warnings. The churning clouds to the north had finally made a quick dash over the island, completely obscuring the small red points of light aimed on the rift.
“Shit! We’re icing,” he heard Batman snarl over tactical. “That damned deicing kit — it was giving us some problems on the deck, but I thought they’d gotten it corrected. Bird Dog, it gets any worse and we’ll have to abort. I can’t take this bird in like this.”
Bird Dog swore violently and made a lightning-fast decision.
Too much was riding on this mission. The safety of the team on the ground, the fate of the captured men, and indeed, America’s first response to an incursion on her territory. He stared ahead at the point where the target had been before it was obscured by blowing clouds of ice and fog, memorizing its location, praying that the hours of training over Chocolate Mountain would pay off. He screened out the loud protests and questions from Gator, knowing that in a few seconds the RIO would look up and see his dilemma. It wasn’t impossible to get the bombs on target without the laser designator. Just very, very difficult, as decades of strike warfare in earlier wars had proved. It took good reflexes, a superb sense of direction, and an instinctive ability to calculate the myriad factors that went into a launch. Airspeed, altitude, effect of gravity on the missiles, and the safest direction to exit the target area. He felt his gut churn. That was the critical part, at least for the two aviators in Tomcat 201. Getting clear of the spewing debris, rock, and ice before it could FOD one of the turbofan engines was critical.
Forty-five seconds remaining. He squinted, ignoring the sweat breaking out on his forehead, rolling down into his eyes and stinging. In front of him, the JAST aircraft broke off its attack run and turned back toward the carrier.
“There he is!” Morning Eagle pointed at the sky. The Tomcat was a tiny black dot, skimming over the ocean, blending in with the dark, blue-black, whitecapped waves.
“Too low,” Huerta said. He shook his head. “He’ll have to abort — there’s no way he can do it.”
Morning Eagle stared at the aircraft, which was now large enough that he could make out its features. The sleek, backswept wings, the double bubble of the canopy perched almost too far up on the aircraft, its sleek, aerodynamically sound nose. And the weapons, the most important part of the aircraft for his purposes today. He stared at the undercarriage, which looked bulky and ungainly. The two huge bombs, flanked by the smaller air-to-air missiles, hung down below it like some phallic symbol.
“Look out!” Huerta shouted. He took two steps forward, grabbed Morning Eagle, and pulled him back away from the rift. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”
Morning Eagle blinked, startled out of his fascinated reverie of the deadly aircraft. He whirled, following Huerta, and took five steps forward before the world disappeared in a blinding whirl of white.
“Bird Dog! You get the hell out of there!” he heard Batman snap. “You don’t have a solid fix on the target. You miss, and you hit friendly forces. Break off; we’ll try again when the weather clears.”
“Can’t,” Bird Dog said tersely. “I’ve got a solid lock on this — I can feel it.” He tried desperately to regain his fix on the target, momentarily distracted by the sight of white-clad figures scurrying away from his impact point.
Damn it all, what the hell did they think they were doing? he thought angrily. Couldn’t someone have briefed them? The SEAL should know better at least than to stand that close to an IP. Even with advanced avionics and pinpoint targeting, there was still an error of five to ten feet built into launch calculations. Even under the best circumstances — and these were hardly those — there was a good chance he’d miss the exact spot at the rift. He shook his head angrily.
There was no help for it now — he was too heavy and too low to recover. In order to gain altitude quickly and clear the worst of the peaks, he had to get rid of the bombs. And it made no sense to jettison them harmlessly, not this close to the IP. He concentrated, bearing down on the target.
“Whiteout,” Morning Eagle screamed. He swung his arms wildly, felt them hit something, and pulled it toward him. Huerta grasped at him like a drowning man. With a firm grip on each other, they dropped to the ground, lessening their wind profile.
Huerta heard Morning Eagle shout something, the words unintelligible, swept away by the gale-force winds. He shook his head, then realized Morning Eagle couldn’t see the gesture. He reached for the other man’s hand and held it up, pointing it in the direction of the aircraft.
And the rest of their team — they’d been well back from the rift, he remembered, reviewing the last scene he’d been able to see clearly in his mind. With a little bit of luck, and some decent piloting, they’d be safe as well.
The laser designators. For a moment, he felt a flash of real fear, remembering how close the Tomcat had been when he’d last seen it. He turned his head, looking in the direction of the rift. There was nothing there except a solid white wall of flying ice crystals in the snow. Frustration replaced fear, as he realized the laser targeting information would no longer be visible to the pilot.
Absent skill, there was always luck. The chief SEAL started to pray.
“You’re never gonna make it, Bird Dog,” Gator said, his voice insistent. “Dump ‘em.”
Bird Dog shook his head, not bothering to answer. Concentrating on the spot where he’d last seen the targeting data took every ounce of concentration he had. He flipped the ICS switch off, locking out Gator’s voice completely. They’d either make it or they wouldn’t, and there was nothing Gator could tell him in the interim to change the odds either way.
Five … four … three … two … NOW. Bird Dog toggled the weapons release switch and felt the hard thump of ordnance leaving the undercarriage as the bombs dropped free. He wrenched the Tomcat up into a sharp climb, already feeling the difference that the loss in weight made, climbing for altitude as hard as he dared push the Tomcat. The sleek jet shook as it approached the stall envelope. Bird Dog dropped the nose slightly, hoping it was enough. He spared one glance at the altimeter — three thousand feet — and then cut the Tomcat hard to the right, praying he cleared the tallest spires.
The hard thunder of military engines at full afterburner cut through the high-pitched scream of the wind. It was a sound at least as much felt as heard, a deep, bone-jarring growl and rumble that cut through viscera and skin alike, settling into the bones with a comforting aftertaste.
He made it, the Chief SEAL thought, marveling. How many pilots could have pulled that off? For a moment, a deep surge of pride replaced the fear and anxiety he’d felt watching the aircraft approach. Damn, some days it was
