on this one. Because if there was anything that made a carrier nervous, it was having undetected submarines in the area. What you couldn’t see, you couldn’t kill, and the only thing that worried them more than submarines was chemical or biological weapons.
“Dropping two,” Rabies said, nodding at the copilot. She dropped a sonobouy at the indicated point, then watched as he navigated from point to point as directed by the TACCO. When he finished, the electronic plot indicated a long line of sonobuoys.
“All buoys cold and sweet,” Greenberg reported, indicating that each of the new sonobuoys deployed was working properly but not detecting any contacts. “Hold it—
“Let’s go get them,” Rabies said gleefully. He put the Viking into a sharp turn heading east. They were at the very edge of their assigned area, maybe just a touch closer to the coast than he would like, but well outside of the known Iraqi shore-based missile ranges.
Known ranges. He wondered if anyone else noticed that little phrase.
“I’m holding a diesel engine, a couple of pumps, sir,” Greenberg said, his tension evident only in the fact that his voice was a little faster than normal. “Could we make a pass and check out the surface?”
“You got it,” Rabies said, putting the aircraft into a descent. It was a sanity check of sorts, to take a good look at the surface of the ocean where you thought you had a submarine to make sure there were no ships in the area that corresponded to it. It was an especially necessary precaution in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, all of which had heavy merchant traffic.
Thor sat ramrod straight in his ejection seat, his head turned so that he could watch the catapult officer. He circled the stick, got a thumbs-up in return, and nodded with grim satisfaction. Of course the Hornet’s control surfaces worked well. They always did. The light, easily maintained fighter was always in perfect condition — at least, the ones that he flew were. The Marine Corps quality-assurance technicians made certain of that.
On signal, he eased the throttles forward to full military power. They clicked past the detente and into afterburner. The catapult officer stood, snapped off a sharp, proper salute, then crouched down and touched the deck and pressed the pickle. In the space of a microsecond, Thor returned the salute, faced forward, and braced himself.
As always, the first jolt was hardly impressive. An instant later, what began as a gentle jolt changed into crushing pressure on his chest as the light fighter slammed down the catapult. The Hornet rattled, steam boiling up from the shuttle, clumsy and ungainly while still bound to the carrier by the shuttle, yearning to be away from the steel and in her natural element. Finally, when the noise had built to an almost unbearable level, he felt the sudden, sickening drop and release of pressure that told him he was airborne.
Now, the trick was to stay that way. He let her grab the air and pick up speed before putting her in a steep climb, heading for altitude to wait for his wingman to join on him. Ten seconds later, he heard the announcement that his wingman was airborne. Precise, exactly as scheduled — just the way the Marine Corps liked it.
They joined up with the ease of two pilots long used to working with each other and headed for the fighter sponge. It was a designated bit of airspace where the fighters would assemble in an orderly stack, waiting till the flight was at full composition, then breaking off into fighting pairs to seek out and engage the enemy. It took far less time to actually execute than explain, and soon Hornets were peeling away from the stack.
“Hornet 102, vector. Bearing zero-seven-zero, range ten. Probable Forger. Good hunting.” The E-2’s voice reeled off initial vectors for the rest of the flight, disbursing them along different angles of the approaching wave of aircraft.
“Going to be hot,” Red Tail remarked. “Damned SAM sites. They ought to let Special Forces loose on them.” Understood, but not voiced, was the assumption that if Marine units had been ordered to destroy or neutralize the SAM sites, there would have been no question about it.
“Just like playing dodge-’em ball in grade school,” Thor said. “You ever play that?”
“No, not that I recall. What was it?”
“You take about thirty of those damn red bouncy balls, you know, the kind you never see anywhere except grade school. Maybe a volleyball or two. Put them all in the center of the gym and divide the kids up into two sides. At the whistle, everybody races out and grabs a ball, streaks back to the line, and then does his damnedest to nail somebody on the other side with a ball. Hell of a lot of fun, as long as you keep moving.”
“I like the sound of that,” his wingman said, his voice studiedly casual. They both knew they were simply making conversation for something to do while they waited. “Maybe we should get a gang up on the flight deck to play.”
“No. Have to be the hanger bay. We’d lose too many balls over the side.”
“Good point. Still, it sounds like fun.”
The topic of childhood games exhausted for the moment, both fell silent. On their HUDs they could see the array of Hornets, the spacing between them increasing as they headed toward feet-dry. Once they were dry, they didn’t know exactly what waited. They thought they did, but you could never be certain until you were actually in the middle of a furball.
“Tallyho,” Red Tail said, his voice tight. “You see it?”
“Yeah, I got it. Take high.”
Red Tail peeled off and ascended, dropping back into the classic fighting-pair position. Thor descended slightly, the two targets heading for them now visible.
Most of the world’s combat air fleets had learned their tactics from watching the United States Navy and Marine Corps, so it was no surprise when opponents assumed a similar disposition. Thor felt a hard sense of amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You may know what it looks like but you ain’t got a clue how to use it,” he said softly. “Come on, asshole. Bring it on.”
Abdul’s gut tightened as he surveyed the line of American aircraft heading toward his shore. He felt a moment of shame and then dismissed it. It did not matter what he felt — what matter was what he did. And, whatever else happened, he expected there to be a lot fewer Hornets in the air when he was done.
“Wait,” the ground-intercept controller snapped over the common circuit. “Maintain your positions. They must be within range of our support forces. Do not engage over open water.”
The line of death, the pilots had taken to calling it, even though the commander had indicated it was to be called the line of glory. But all of them knew what would happen if they ventured over that line themselves. The shore-based missile operators were not sufficiently skilled in telling the difference between enemy aircraft and their own, and there was every chance they would be taken out with friendly fire. Any Iraqi pilot who wanted to stay alive had better plan on staying behind the line of death.
Oh, but in front of it — that was where the glory would be. It troubled him on some level that his commanders felt that they needed to rely on missile sites rather than the fighters. There had been some discussion of the Republican Guard during Desert Storm and Desert Shield, and how they’d had cut and run at the first contact with the enemy.
Without being entirely aware of it, Thor absorbed the information displayed on his HUD. There was something about the formation that bothered him, bothered him on a level he couldn’t entirely grasp. There was a long line of antiaircraft sites along the coast, spaced with a regularity that resembled the Maginot Line. Then, just behind that, a line of aircraft laid out in a straight-line geometric pattern. Their intent was obvious — have the shore installations take the first shot, then follow up with their fighters to take out whatever made it through that line. The entire concept of layered defense was something United States Navy had worked on for decades.
