“Hell, he’s the bird dog on this mission,” the pilot grumbled. “I’m just batting cleanup.”
“You mix any metaphors you want as long as you get me back to the boat,” his RIO answered.
“Commander, I think you’d better come here,” the senior Spetsnaz commander said.
“Problem?” Rogov paused from inventorying the stores, and walked over to the small group of worried commandos. “What?”
“Listen.” The commando thrust his hand-held radio toward Rogov. “Started five minutes ago.” He turned up the volume on the radio.
Rogov shook his head. “I don’t hear anything except static.”
“That is the problem, exactly. Someone is trying to jam our communications.”
“Jamming? But how-” Rogov whirled around and glared at the SEAL still held captive at the end of the cavern. “I see,” he said, his voice more calm.
“It appears to be a static source. It hasn’t changed in intensity, and it’s still strongest from a single direction.”
“So what can you do about it?”
The commando shrugged. “There are no choices. There are intruders on the island, and we’ve lost communications. My standing orders are for my patrols to take cover in the event that something such as this should happen. I suspect they even now have our entrance under surveillance, and are prepared to kill anyone that approaches that door.”
“You find this transponder,” Rogov said harshly. So close, so close to success, and now this. Unreasoning rage boiled in his stomach, making its way slowly to his head. “Find the men who brought this and kill them. Do you understand?”
The same unnerving smile Rogov had seen on the submarine returned. “It’s what we do best, Colonel,” he said, looking eager.
Huerta looked up at the sky. “An hour, you think?” As much as he’d like to believe that, it didn’t seem possible. Gusting williwaw winds were already pounding the thin shelters, screaming through every tiny crack between the two sections mated to form a fragile barrier against the environment. He’d risked one peek outside, for what it was worth. Now more than the horizon had disappeared — all he could see was blinding snow and ice pelting him in the face, banging against the two flaps tied together to form the door to the shelter. The other clamshell shelter, only four feet away, was invisible. There was no chance that they were moving anytime soon.
“Maybe not soon,” Morning Eagle said, unconsciously echoing the SEAL’s thoughts. “Sometimes these blow over quickly.”
“And other times?” the SEAL demanded.
Morning Eagle shrugged. The SEAL felt rising frustration, which he stifled.
Truly, there was no help for it. The storm would end when it ended — not a moment sooner. Giving the young Inuit an ass-chewing for underestimating its duration would do no good. After all, they would have gone ahead with the mission anyway, even if they’d had an accurate weather forecast. No way they were leaving the boss behind — no way.
The SEAL rummaged in one pocket of his parka, finally found what he was looking for. He extracted two high-calorie protein bars, and offered one to the Inuit. The other waxed covering was dull army green, and the bar itself tasted like it would match the protective wrapper. “Beats whale blubber,” the SEAL offered.
The Inuit unwrapped his bar, studied it, sniffed it, and then took a small, tentative bite. He chewed for a moment thoughtfully, and an odd expression, half apology, half disgust, rose in his eyes. “Not by much,” he said, then swallowed hard.
“The weather’s not holding,” Bird Dog said, in a singsong tone of voice. “Although why I expected anything different, I’ll never know. How much time do we have left?”
“Three minutes,” Gator answered. “That is, if you think we can make it.”
“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.