though he had no hope of ever matching its speed.
“Twenty seconds.” Tomboy began counting down the time to intercept.
Tombstone kept his hand glued to the weapons selector switch. There it was, a tiny black speck on the horizon, barely discernible to the naked eye. His gut tightened down into a thin hard knot, and more intimate parts of his anatomy attempted to snug up to the rest of his body. The thought of the sheer destructive power contained in that tiny object that could’ve been a dirt speck on the canopy was overwhelming.
“Ten seconds.” The moments clicked by inexorably, the missile growing larger with each ticktock of eternity.
Finally, he could see it all. The slim, almost graceful looking fuselage of the missile. White, with cruciform fins standing out from the body. It was moving fast, so fast had he ever encountered anything so awesome in the air?
Even normal air-to-air combat weapons couldn’t match the sheer grace and power of this devastating land attack missile.
It was by him in a flash, almost too quick to see. His retinas shone with the afterimage of it, white against the brilliant sunrise behind him.
“Two seconds,” Tomboy said.
Tombstone’s finger tightened, then initiated launch. Two Sidewinders leaped off the wings, one from each side, and started streaking out into the empty air in front of the Tomcat Although the missile was still behind him, there was no way he would ever catch it once it was past. No, the only option was to shoot before it got to him and hope he’d calculated the intercept correctly. It was a long shot, maybe the longest one he’d ever taken. And the most important.
As the missile shot through his field of vision, he automatically toggled the weapons selector to guns and ripped the atmosphere apart with a continuous barrage of pellets from his gunport. It had little chance of downing the titanium-cased missile, but there was a chance the impact would jar some delicate triggering mechanism inside it, maybe prevent it from detonating or maybe detonating it early, it suddenly occurred to him. If that happened, he’d never know it. For a moment, the thought of the hellfire fireball that would erupt so close to the Tomcat shook him.
An instant later, he was certain that was what had happened. A brilliant flash of white light filled the air, brighter than the rising sun 180 degrees offset from it. He yelped, slammed his eyelids down, too late. The fiery incandescent ball seared his eyes, immediately invoking a protective flood of tears. He dabbed at his eyes ineffectually with one hand, wondering why it was taking so long to die.
“You did it!” Tomboy’s voice was jubilant. “Damn it, Stoney, I don’t believe it you hit the intercept dead- on.
That was the Sidewinder igniting, not the missile those poor suckers on the ground below,” she finished, suddenly quiet. “Shit, I hate to see what happens to anything underneath those two.”
“It didn’t detonate,” Tombstone said wonderingly. “I thought it might” “It was a chance we took,” Tomboy said quietly. “You made the right decision. Again.”
Tombstone drew a deep, shuddering breath, suddenly filled with a joyous exhilaration. He was alive, still alive he’d just faced down the deadliest weapon known to mankind and survived. After this little encounter, the Cuban command and control center would be a piece of cake.
“Come on, shipmate we’ve got a mission to finish.”
“Lost video,” the lieutenant commander manning the weapons tracking console announced. He glanced uneasily at the two civilians and the one admiral standing next to the command console. He hadn’t tried to overhear. God knew he hadn’t.
But duty inside this war-fighting center of the most powerful nation in the world occasionally made him privy to discussions that no lieutenant commander should ever hear. So far above his pay grade that he couldn’t even begin to breathe in the rarefied air of power filling the unexpectedly small compartment. Would he survive this tour? He shook his head, not knowing. Junior officers who happened to overhear discussions not intended for their ears sometimes found themselves with an immediate, high priority posting to a billet as fuel officer in Adak, Alaska, there to languish out a three-year tour waiting to be passed over for promotion. No one ever said it, but there were ways that the admirals and generals had of communicating their desires to the promotion boards.
A flurry of angry shouts and enunciations filled the air behind him.
The lieutenant commander hunched down behind his console, desperately wishing he were somewhere else.
Finally, it was over. He heard feet moving rapidly behind him, a harsh, barked order from a Marine sentry, then silence. One set of footsteps started toward him, paused, and finished the short trip over to stand behind him. He didn’t dare look up.
A hand landed on his shoulder, squeezed it reassuringly; then a familiar voice said, “Son, none of this happened today. You understand that?”
The lieutenant commander nodded. “Yes, Admiral Loggins. Nothing happened.”
“Look at me.”
It was definitely an order, and the lieutenant commander obeyed. He tore his eyes away from the green spikes and blips still streaking across his console and gazed into the hard, craggy face of Admiral Loggins. Senator Dailey was standing two paces behind the admiral, looking grim. His urge to jump to his feet was almost overwhelming.
“You just saw me keep faith with an entire battle group out there on the front line,” Admiral Loggins said. His voice was soft and ragged.
“I know what you’re worried about hell, I sat in that chair when I was a lieutenant commander.
For the record and I have a witness,” he said, nodding at Senator Dailey, “I take full responsibility for the actions that took place here. You understand?”
The lieutenant commander struggled to find his voice.
“Yes, Admiral. Although,” he dared, “nothing happened today. I’m sure I wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.”
The admiral’s face cracked into a small grin. “I didn’t think you would.”
“Some things never change, do they?” Senator Dailey added. He shifted his gaze to the admiral. “Still build ‘em like they did when I was in the Navy. Admiral, I see a lot of potential in this man. I think I’ll be taking a personal interest in his career from now on. You hear that, son?” the senator queried the young officer.
The poor lieutenant commander struggled to find his breath. One wrong move, the wrong interpretation, and “Quit messing with him, Tom,” the admiral said good naturedly. “I’ll take care of him. We always take care of our own in the Navy. You remember that.”
As the two senior officers walked away, the lieutenant commander drew a shaky breath. He looked back down at his screen, and stopped in mid-exhalation. “Admiral I think you might want to see this.” Damn it, it was the right thing to do, call the admiral back, as much as he’d been relieved to see the two men step away from him. “That Tomcat it’s inbound on the Cuban command center.”
From some yards behind him, the admiral’s voice said, “I know that, son. The senator and I are going to watch the last part of this from my console. When it’s over we’ll tell you what actually happened. You got that?”
“Aye, aye. Admiral.” The lieutenant commander hunched back up to his controls and settled in to wait.
The prior air strike had silenced most of the antiair batteries on the ground. A few sites spat up tracers, but the Tomcat avoided them easily. Antiaircraft fire was no big deal when there were no overlapping fields of fire and when the Tomcat owned the air.
“Time to rejoin the world.” Tombstone reached out and flicked on the communication circuitry. His earphones immediately filled with the loud tactical chatter from the furball still going on out to the east.
From the sound of it, the Americans were continuing to dominate. Not surprising though he wished he were there himself to see it. Still, maybe that’s what getting more senior earned you going head-on head with UAVs
