“They’ll think you’re getting into firing position,” Gator warned.
“That’s what I want ‘em to think. Let’s see if we can get him to play our game.” Bird Dog tightened his stomach and torso muscles, forcing blood up from his extremities into his brain to prevent graying out.
“I’m staying in search-right radar mode, so he shouldn’t have any reason to get excited.”
“Cubans don’t need a reason,” Gator gritted.
The construction churned up the vast field to their north, raw, black dirt furrowed and rent, bearing an odd resemblance to the sea they’d just crossed. Past the square of disturbed earth, the field resumed its green march to the hot horizon, low shrubbery and tall grass surrounding the construction.
Sikes nudged his partner and pointed. Black iron girders jutted out of the ground at improbable angles. To the right, a yellow crane sat silently waiting, poised at the edge of the disturbed surface like a praying mantis. Just to the right of the crane, a stack of neatly arranged metal and wooden boxes rested. The metal ones were at least forty feet long, and bore the scrapes and gashes Sikes associated with shipping containers. The wooden boxes were smaller, measuring merely six feet in length. Associated equipment, he supposed. Based on their intelligence, there was little doubt in his mind as to what the larger crates held.
The girdered structure had the look of something almost complete, as though the addition of a few more support members would transform the collection into a stark, meaningful machine, one capable of handling the missiles he was certain were nestled in the longer boxes.
He glanced to his right, and saw his partner had already extracted the portable Geiger counter from his carryall.
Huerta pointed the probe toward the field.
The light on the face panel, which glowed a barely discernible zerozero-zero in the dark, shivered, the movement then picked up by the other two digits. Figures mounted rapidly, rising well above the threshold of what Sikes knew was regular background radiation.
He shivered despite the warm night. The trip to shore on the boat, the silent creep through the quiet compound, hell, even his last operation in the Middle east none of it chilled him more than those three green digits staring at him now out of the gloom.
“He’s onto us!” Gator twisted around in his seat to try to maintain visual contact with the approaching Cuban aircraft.
“Got a VID-visual identification?” Bird Dog queried.
“No.” Gator rapped out the word more harshly than he’d intended as a twinge of pain spasmed through his lower back. Turning around to look over his shoulder in the cramped confines of the cockpit probably provided more business for chiropractors than he liked to think about.
“Doesn’t matter. We know who he is.”
“And he knows who we are.”
“That’s the whole point of it, isn’t it?”
“Not if that puts him in a shitty mood.”
Gator gave up trying to see through the clouds and mist and turned back to the radar display. The other aircraft was plainly visible on the scope, a fluorescent green solid mark against the scattering of returns generated by the thicker storm cells in the area. Solid, its edges well defined and moving toward them at six hundred knots. He tried one last time. “Bird Dog, we need to rethink this.”
“Ain’t nothin’ to think. Gator. He’s close enough now, I’m going to turn tail and let him chase us.”
“Missile lock!”
Bird Dog swore. Without responding, he tipped the nose of the Tomcat back toward the water and began trading altitude for speed and distance. Distance most of all with the MiG, he needed at least another five miles of separation before he’d feel even relatively safe.
“Still no visual too much haze,” Gator said rapidly, his fingers flying over the peculiarly shaped knobs and buttons around his seat. Each one had its own special shape, one that no RIO could forget, even if there was no illumination. Bird Dog might be able to fly the aircraft by the seat of his pants, but Gator could launch weapons by the feel of his fingers.
“We’re out of range,” Bird Dog announced. “Especially if he’s carrying” “It’s not falling off. Bird Dog,” Gator said urgently. “It should have by now.”
“Jesus! What the hell? Hold on.” The Tomcat’s dive steepened, throwing both aviators against the ejection harnesses that held them in their seats.
“Watch your altitude.”
“I am, I am! Get ready with the chaff.”
Gator’s world narrowed down to the small round scope in front of him; nothing else was important. A few small surface contacts. Fishing boats, probably, one part of his mind noted dispassionately. Then the one aft of them, the only radar contact that mattered. Indeed, unless Bird Dog was successful with his latest maneuver, nothing else would matter in the next five minutes except his view of the Almighty. Or, more important, how the Almighty viewed him.
He knew what his pilot was planning on doing, and the idea frightened him almost as much as the approaching missile. Get down low, get near the churning, violent sea below them, and try to hide within the spatter of radar returns generated by the ever-changing wave structure of the surface of the ocean. It was a chancy move, but that coupled with countermeasures such as chaff and flares might be enough to distract the weapon long enough for them to get away.
“Might be.” With a regular missile, it would have been, of that he was certain. But given the extended range on this one, a range he’d never even heard hinted at during intelligence briefs, who knew what else was new? An improved seeker head? A more accurate radar capable of distinguishing between sea clutter and the sweetheart metal contact that the Tomcat would generate on its sensors? He shook his head, shuttling the fear back to some small dark compartment of his mind. He couldn’t get distracted now, when his primary task was to serve as a second pair of eyes and make sure the Tomcat stayed out of the water.
It would really suck if we lost the missile and slammed into one of the masts on the fishing boats. He frowned, knowing how close to the water Bird Dog was likely to get and how high the antennas and booms extended from some fishing boats.
A brief thought of his wife, Alicia, flitted through his mind. He allowed it to stay there for a microsecond, then compartmentalized it as well. No time for danger, no time for thoughts of love and family all that mattered was getting away, now.
Bird Dog, he had to admit, was one of the best. He’d proved it repeatedly during the Spratly Islands conflict. But this scenario, with the young pilot, slightly rusty from his tour on staff duty, playing grab-ass with a missile of unknown capabilities, was more than either of them had bargained for.
The second SEAL squad had followed the same peek-dart peek transit maneuver that the other one had, with less success. Their target was still over 150 feet away, and under the circumstances, it wasn’t likely that they’d be getting any closer.
“That’s it,” Garcia said quietly, careful to turn the s into a th sound. It was a habit born of long training, turning sibilant consonants that carried for long distances into fricative soft sounds.
“Got to be.”
The other men nodded. They were crouched down in landscaping shrubbery surrounding what appeared to be an administrative building, complete with flagpole out front and decorative bricks around the steps leading up to it. Due east from their position, a two-story cement block building without windows was surrounded by two storm fencing perimeters. The outer one was topped with razor wire.