He’d wangled his way out to Jefferson in the Med just in time to take part in the Black Sea conflict.
“Well, maybe they should have,” Gator said. “If I had to guess, I’d say there’s a reason the admiral wants Cuba’s air assets worried about the north. We’re already getting I and Windications and warnings that they’re launching more of them and vectoring toward us.”
“If I’d been planning it, I would have waited until the weather was better.” Bird Dog glanced overhead, looking for any patches of clear sky. No luck. “Where are our playmates, anyway? The ones we’re supposed to be diversioning. If we’re gonna boogie, we might as well do it.”
“I hold a MiG on two-seven-zero at fifty miles,” Gator answered.
“About time you switched into targeting mode, don’t you think?”
‘Too far away.”
“The bad guys won’t know that, will they? No, they won’t,” Gator continued, answering his own question. “Get it through your thick skull. Bird Dog the point of being up here is not to engage another aircraft, it’s to make someone on the ground think we’re up to something interesting. That spells targeting illumination, simulating every electronic and radar signal we generate when we’re actually attacking.
Get with the program.”
Bird Dog sighed and switched the powerful AWG-9 radar into illumination mode. The ESM sensors arrayed along the coast of Cuba and perched on its highest peak would undoubtedly detect it within seconds. “There.
Are you happy?”
“I am. The question is are the Cubans?”
The small RHIB-rigid-hull inflatable boat slid smoothly up the side of one swell, picking up speed as it descended into the trough. The eight SEALs on board held grimly to the ropes around its hard rubber sides.
Their bodies had gotten accustomed to the rhythmic movement thirty minutes earlier, and even the greenest of them was well past worrying about seasickness.
Not that SEALs got seasick. Or that they’d ever admit to it if they did.
A cold front had moved into the area yesterday, increasing the difference between wet-bulb and dry-bulb temperatures to less than two degrees. Consequently, dense fog was forming on the surface of the ocean, wafting up and enveloping the Special Forces platoon in a cloaking mist.
Overhead, low clouds were rolling in, spitting short bursts of rain that left their wet suits gleaming in the low ambient light diffused about them. Each man held his weapon with his free hand, close to the chest. Not that they’d need them-at least, they wouldn’t if everything went well.
“Three miles,” Huerta said softly. He stretched his legs, twisted his torso to loosen the muscles growing stiff from the cold and damp. “Be ready.”
One by one, the team members flashed a silent hand signal in acknowledgment. As if it were needed. SEALs were always ready.
The brief mission was relatively simple in planning, with the potential for unexpected complications in execution.
They were to go ashore and take a quick sneak and peek at the Cubans’ facility on the southwest corner of the island.
The overhead imagery revealed new construction on the base, as well as the possibility that the downed American pilot was being held hostage there. Their orders allowed them to take action, if they could do so without compromising the unit’s safety, to free him. Every one of them had firmly resolved to do just that if at all possible.
In addition to the normal bag of tricks, Huerta carried a few extra goodies. A low-light camera, capable of concentrating the ambient light to take pictures even under the worst of conditions. Two small, portable motion detectors, each barely larger than a small tape recorder, for mounting at the entrances to their areas of surveillance.
And finally, the piece of gear responsible for the particularly grim expression on their leader’s face a microcircuitized Geiger counter.
The muffled hammer of the specially silenced engine attached to the RHIB soaked into the fog around them.
Barring exceptionally poor luck, the team was undetectable.
“Shore,” Sikes said finally. He pointed forward in the fog.
Barely discernible was the dark outline of land. The SEALs made their final preparations for disembarking, careful to keep metal from hammering against metal and alerting a randomly patrolling sentry.
The boat ground ashore with a harsh rasp, small pebbles and rocks digging into the thick rubber bottom. Minutes later, the boat was dragged out of the water and safely concealed under a clump of brush in a small grove of trees.
The eight SEALs broke into two teams of four, the first headed for what satellite imagery showed as the new construction area. The second group slanted away from them toward the highly fortified encampment that intelligence specialists suspected contained the captive pilot.
They would meet back here in two hours, with or without the pilot and with or without the information they were after.
The insistent beeping of the ALR-45 radar warning and control system shattered the silence of the cockpit. Gator moved quickly to silence the alarm, then called out the identification. “MiG just watching.”
Bird Dog swore quietly. At this range, the MiG could be on top of them in ten minutes. His orders were to avoid an actual confrontation with any Cuban aircraft. It ate at his gut to have to run, but if he allowed the Cuban to approach them, the other pilot would quickly see through their deception. Still, to let the Cubans think that the mere presence of this MiG could make the Americans turn and run was distinctly distasteful.
“Bird Dog, get us the hell out of here,” Gator ordered.
“We could have some fun with him,” Bird Dog suggested. He held the Tomcat steady and level.
“I mean it. You know what our orders are.” The RIO’s voice notched up two notes on the octave. “There’s no point in being a diversion if we blow it the second they come out to take a look.”
“But what would be a more realistic deception than to go toward the MiG? The rest of the flight can turn tail and run, but the presence of one aircraft lingering around here is bound to get ‘em interested.
Besides, there’s only one launching, right?”
“As far as I can tell,” the RIO admitted grudgingly. “This is one of your worst ideas ever.”
Bird Dog reached forward and flipped off the radios.
“Jefferson will see what we’re doing,” he continued blithely.
“If they want us to RTB return to base they’ll let us know.”
“Not with the radios off.”
“Who says the radios are off? Communications problems are not unknown in the Tomcat, you know.” He could hear the RIO’s disgusted sigh over the ICS-the interior communications system.
“You’re going to do this no matter what I say, aren’t you?” Gator said finally. “To hell with your career, my career let’s give it all up so you can play grab-ass with the Cubans. You’ve been missing that ever since we were on patrol in the Spratlys.”
“Think of it as a diversion within a diversion,” Bird Dog suggested.
“The rest of the flight turns away, and I’m the diversion that lets them go. It makes sense perfect sense.”
“There’s only one thing wrong with this plan. A really critical factor.” The RIO’s voice was harsh.
“What’s that?”
“Somebody forgot to tell the Cubans it’s just a diversion.
What if they take it a little more seriously than that?”
The SEALs slipped silently through the vegetation, invisible in their woodland-patterned cammies and face
