“They’ll think you did it, you know,” Williams said softly. “Some sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome you should be able to blame it on that. They might even let you keep your retirement.” The senator smirked. “I’ll say I tried to stop you, but if they compare our records, they’ll know who’s really behind it. You were all the way; it was all your idea.”
“No,” Loggins said, his voice strong and firm. “I don’t think so. You see, if nothing else, war has taught me a little bit about being prepared.” He leaned forward, pushed a button on the speakerphone.
“Senator, did you hear that?”
“I surely did,” Senator Thomas Dailey said. The strong Midwestern drawl was unmistakable. “So did the rest of us, Admiral.”
“And Arsenal is taking the appropriate action?” Loggins said, a savage good humor fighting its way up out of the depression that had plagued him for the last several months.
He glanced at Williams, saw the man wilting visibly in the chair. “Has it?”
“The chairman gave the order three minutes ago,” Dailey said. “The warhead is disarmed. Too bad they didn’t build a self-destruct function into it. As it is now, it will impact the target as strictly a conventional warhead.”
“Thank God for the pickiness of nuclear triggering circuitry,” Loggins said.
“You knew all along,” Williams said, his voice defeated.
“Where did I screw up? What made you think I’d really do it?”
“Just a promise I made to myself a long time ago,” Admiral Loggins said softly. “And whatever else happens, those men and women on the front line will know I kept the faith.”
“It’s below us,” Tomboy warned. “Altitude, two thousand feet.”
“Roger.” Tombstone nosed the Tomcat down slightly, quickly trading altitude for speed. Lower altitude, lower speed, as the air created more friction. The airspeed he’d gained by descending would be quickly bled off fighting the thicker air. Still, it wasn’t as though he had much time. Or choice.
He craned his head aft, searching through the clear bubble of the canopy for some sign of the weapon. According to Tomboy’s radar picture, it was almost on them, less than one mile aft. He’d matched altitude with it, 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.”