“Phoenix armed and hot,” he confirmed. He flipped the target-designate switch with his left hand, watching the computer-generated graphics on his Vertical Display Indicator. “Okay, Dixie. Punch it!”
“Fox three!” Dixie announced. The Tomcat bumped as the heavy missile cleared and ignited. “Missile away!”
“Line up another one, Dixie.”
“Set! Acquisition! Locked and hot!”
“Punch it!”
“Fox three! Fox three!” The second Phoenix roared into the night.
“Krait Attack, Krait Attack, this is Mountain! Be advised we have small, high-speed targets, bearing two-seven-three your position on intercept course.”
Singh searched the sky through his cockpit. He could see nothing around his aircraft but stars partly blocked by a line of clouds behind him and the acquisition lights of the other Jaguars of his flight.
“Mountain, Krait Attack Leader. I don’t see-“
Suddenly, a Warning tone sounded in his headset. “Mountain, this is Krait Leader! We have missile-lock warning! Repeat, missile-lock warning. Someone is tracking us!”
“Krait Attack, we read two long-range air-to-air missiles. Range one-zero! Evade! Evade!”
“Krait Flight!” Singh snapped. “Do not evade! Maintain course … fire.”
He thumbed the release switch. There was a two-second pause. Then his Jaguar leapt skyward. Exocet weighed 660 kilos — well over 1,400 pounds — and he had his hands full for a moment battling to control his aircraft as the weapon dropped clear.
The missile’s engine kicked in as its autopilot brought it down to an altitude of fifteen meters above the wave tops. Cruise speed was just under Mach 1.
At that speed it would reach its target in a little less than three minutes.
“Batman!” Tombstone called. “Get in the game!” The VDI showed the other Tomcat five miles to the west.
“We’re in! Looks like the bad guy CAP decided to get out of Dodge!”
“Rog,” Tombstone said. “Let’s splash these attack planes before they-“
“Tombstone!” Dixie interrupted. “Targets scattering. I read six … no, ten bogies! Ten bogies!”
“Shit!” His VDI was set to repeat the tactical data from his RIO’s screen. He could see the close-grouped radar targets separating now, just beyond the computer graphic representations of the two Phoenix missiles already on the way. The bandits were launching on the Biddle.
Tombstone had two AIM-59s left, and Batman had four. The Indians were launching their Exocets, and there just weren’t enough Phoenix missiles to go around.
The maddening tone of missile lock continued to sound in Singh’s ears as he pulled the stick to the left. He looked again. Still nothing … A pinpoint flare of light came out of nowhere, twisting in a sharp, left-hand corkscrew as it bore down on Lieutenant Colonel Nijhawan’s Jaguar from the west.
“Himmat!” Singh shouted, “Watch-“
Orange flame fireballed against the night. For an instant, the glare illuminated the front half of his friend’s aircraft and one shattered wing as the Jaguar crumpled, folding up on itself as though it were a balsa-wood model crushed by a child’s hand.
The second explosion came a pair of heartbeats later, blasting the left wing from Krait Four before the flare of the first explosion had faded away. Singh glimpsed a secondary flash as the pilot rocketed into the night on his ejection seat.
Colonel Singh had first learned fighter combat while attending a special air combat training school for foreign pilots at Frunze, in the Soviet Union. Later, he’d flown with the RAF while learning to handle the SEPECAT Jaguar. He was one of the best pilots in the IAF, but this was beginning to feel more like target practice than combat … with his squadron as the targets.
“All aircraft, launch and return to base.”
The missile-threat warning was off. Perhaps there had been two, and only two missiles. If they had a few more seconds …
“Victor Tango One-niner, this is Viper Leader,” Tombstone radioed. “We have air-to-surface launch … probable Exocet. Six ASMS …” Two more blips appeared, moving quickly behind the others. The two surviving Indian planes had released at maximum range, then turned away. “Make it eight ASMS in the air, targeting Biddle.”
“Confirmed, Viper Leader,” the Hawkeye replied. “We have them. Protect Biddle. Target priority is Exocet launch.”
Tombstone had already arrived at the same conclusion. Wings laid back along its flanks, Tombstone’s F-14 howled along an intercept course. At his instructions, Dixie had already timed the lead of two closely spaced missiles. The Tomcat’s AWG-9 had what is known as “look-down/shoot-down” capability, meaning it could track objects below the F-14, moving only a few feet above the water. At a range of ten nautical miles, Dixie announced a target lock and stabbed the launch button. Their last Phoenix dropped clear, then ignited, rocketing into the darkness on a vivid comet tail of flame. Tombstone watched the graphics on his VDI, counting off the seconds as the AIM-54 closed the gap on the lead Exocet. Ten seconds after launch, the two blips merged.
“Hit!” he called.
“Target destroyed!” Dixie confirmed. “Holy … Second target gone! We nailed ‘em, two for one!”
The twin detonation of almost five hundred pounds of high explosives on the two missiles a few feet above the water had created a terrific shock wave. The second Exocet had flown into the blast and either been torn apart or driven into the sea.
“Two-one-six, fox three!” Batman’s familiar voice sounded over Tombstone’s headset. “Don’t be greedy, Stoney. Save some for us! Fox three!”
Tombstone’s VDI was becoming a confused tangle of targeting symbols and radar returns. He felt a sinking sensation as he watched the wave of missiles crawling across the screen. “Viper Leader is dry.” With no more Phoenix missiles slung under his Tomcat’s belly, there was little more he could do to halt the storm.
“Viper Two,” Batman added. “Down two. Firing two. Fox three! Fox three!”
Batman’s last two Phoenix missiles joined the clutter of radar blips.
Four more incoming Exocets died.
Two Exocets remained, vaulting the last small gap to the American frigate at the speed of sound.
The terrifying aspect of modern naval warfare is its sheer speed. In 1805, when Admiral Nelson faced the Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar, the enemy had been in sight for hours by the time they finally opened fire; Nelson could have taken the better part of an afternoon deciding on tactics or changing his plans had he wanted to.
Modern warfare did not give the combatants that kind of luxury. Blows were exchanged, casualties taken, within a space of minutes, sometimes of seconds.
Biddle’s Close-in Weapons System, or CIWS for short, commonly pronounced “sea-whiz,” housed its tracking radar, six-barreled Gatling gun, magazine, and control electronics inside a prominent, white-painted silo fifteen feet high; hence, its other popular nickname, “R2D2.” The weapon, also called Phalanx, was mounted aft on Perry-class frigates, high atop their helicopter hangars and overlooking the helo pad on the fantail. As soon as the Indian Jaguars had launched, Captain Farrel had immediately ordered the ship turned away from the oncoming missiles in order to give the CIWS an unobstructed view of the targets.