The jumpers fell away from the airplanes like stones.
Over silo two, marines leaped in pairs from each of the Hercs, and so on, until the transports had overflown and dropped recon teams at all six silo sites. Then they turned northward, toward the sea.
The Prowlers followed faithfully.
At that moment a SAM control radar near silo two came on the air, probing for a target.
The Prowlers with the Hercs picked up the signal, of course, and two of them dropped their wings to turn back toward the threat.
Forty miles south of silo two, Schuyler Coleridge also picked up the SAM radar, an old Soviet Fansong. As he slaved the HARM to the signal, his pilot, Marcus Gillispie, turned the plane ten degrees to point at the offending radar. Although the new missiles could be fired at very large angles, a quick turn by the launching aircraft shortened the missile’s flight time by a few seconds.
“Fire,” Coleridge ordered, and Gillispie punched off the HARM, which shot forward off the rail in a blaze of fire.
Coleridge keyed the radio. “Fox Three,” he said, letting everyone on the freq know that a beam rider was in the air.
The HARM zeroed in on the side lobes of the radiating Fansong, whose operator was trying to lock up a Here for an SA-2 launch. The operator never realized the beam rider was in the air.
The missile actually flew into the back of the antenna dish at almost Mach 3 and went several feet through it before the warhead exploded.
The warhead contained thousands of 3/16th-inch tungsten-alloy cubes, which were three times denser than steel. The warhead blasted these cubes in all directions, obliterating the radar antenna and wave guides, shredding the trailer on which the antenna was mounted, and knocking out the equipment in the trailer. The flying cubes also killed the radar operator and severely wounded the three other occupants of the trailer.
Another HARM launched by one of the F/A-18 Hornets on the Prowler’s wing arrived six seconds later and impacted a tree just a few feet from the smoking, gutted trailer. Although the target radar had been off the air for six seconds, the missile’s strap-down inertial allowed it to fly to the place where the computer memory believed the radar to be. The shrapnel from the warhead severed the tree and sprayed the shell of the trailer yet again, killing one of the already-wounded men.
Major Carlos Corrado was sleeping off a hangover when the roar of a Tomahawk going over woke him. His eyes came open. He heard the staccato popping of bomblets from the Tomahawk, but had no idea what caused the sound. He thought the Tomahawk was a low-flying airplane.
Groggy, aching, sick to his stomach, he was hugging a commode when another Tomahawk went over. In ten seconds the sound of the bomblets detonating on the planes parked on the flight line reached him though his alcoholic haze. Then one of the planes exploded with a rolling crash that shook the barracks.
Corrado staggered outside and looked toward the flight line, where at least three planes were burning brightly.
“Holy Mother!”
Suddenly sober, Corrado went back inside and hastily donned his flight suit and boots.
He was jogging toward the flight line when another Tomahawk went over scattering bomblets. The missile flew on, out of sight.
As Corrado rounded the corner and the flight line came into view, the first cruise missile that had scattered bomblets dove into one of the hangars. There wasn’t much of an explosion, but in seconds a hot fire was burning in the wooden structure.
Corrado’s personal fighter was parked between the burning hangar and another, which would probably be struck within seconds. The maintenance men had been working on the plane today, which was why it was not on its usual parking place at the head of the flight line.
Running men helped Corrado push the plane away from the burning hangar, the wall of which was perilously close to collapse.
“There is no fuel in the plane,” someone shouted.
“Get a truck,” Corrado roared in reply. “And ammunition for the guns.”
The words were no more out of his mouth when the second missile crashed into the untouched hangar.
Corrado seethed as linemen fueled his plane and serviced the guns. He was still on the phone in the dispersal shack talking to someone at the base armory when the truck carrying missiles braked to a squealing halt near the fighter, a silver MiG-29 Fulcrum. Now he called the sector GCI site. The telephone rang and rang, but no one answered.
Corrado stuck an unlit cigar in his mouth and stomped out to the plane. “Careful there, fools. Do it right. Do not embarrass me.”
He was watching the last of the 30-mm cannon shells going into the feed trays when one of the Havana colonels showed up.
“You aren’t going up in this thing, are you, Corrado?”
“We are servicing it as a joke, dear Colonel. Every Saturday night when the Americans attack we put the cannon shells in, then take them out on Sunday morning.”
“Don’t trifle with me, Major. I won’t stand for it.”
“You pompous limp-dick! Go find a whore and let the real men fight.”
“Do not insult me, you sot. You stink of rum and vomit! Show some respect!”
“Why should I? Your putrid face insults you every day.”
The colonel was so angry he spluttered. “I absolutely forbid you to fly this airplane without written orders from Havana.”
“Court-martial me tomorrow.”
“The Americans will destroy this airplane if you take it off the ground. To fly it is sabotage, a crime against the state. If you attempt to fly it, I will shoot you.” The colonel pulled out his pistol and showed Corrado the business end.
Corrado ignored the gun. “You are a traitor,” he roared, “who wants the Americans to win. Defeatist! Coward!”
“I will shoot anyone who helps you defect in this airplane,” the colonel screamed. He pointed the pistol at the troops closing the servicing doors on the MiG-29. “Counterrevolutionaries! Saboteurs!”
Corrado used his fist on the colonel. The second punch, in the ear, did the trick. The man went to his knees, then onto his face. He didn’t get up. One of the linemen picked up the pistol while the major massaged his knuckles. His hand hurt like hell but didn’t seem to be broken,
In truth Corrado wasn’t much of a man. He abandoned a wife and child years ago and hadn’t heard from them since — didn’t want to hear from them, because they would probably want money. What money he got his hands on he drank up; he even sold military equipment on the black market to pay for alcohol. His ability to fly a fighter plane was his sole skill, his only worthwhile accomplishment in thirty-six years of life. Now, unexpectedly, miraculously, he had a chance to use that skill to defend something larger than himself, to make his miserable life mean something — and no strutting Havana rooster was going to cheat him out of it.
Carlos Corrado gestured at the men. “Get the missiles loaded, you lazy bastards,” he shouted. “There’s a war on.”
Richard Merriweather rode his parachute into a cornfield. At least, he thought it was corn — long, stiff stalks, head-high. He checked himself over; he was sore, but nothing broken. He stood and wrestled the chute toward him, then began scooping out a hole to bury it. He was finishing the job when he heard someone coming toward him.
“Sergeant?”
“Yo. You okay?”
“Yeah,” said Kirb Handy.
“Set up the GPS. Figure out where we are.”
With the parachute disposed of, Merriweather put on his night-vision goggles and took a careful look around. He was well out in the center of this field, near as he could tell.
Merriweather sat down in the dirt beside Handy, who was also wearing night-vision goggles. Handy punched buttons on the GPS.