“Maybe an An-12 Cub? Didn’t the Russians sell those things all over North Africa?”
“Yeah.”
“What’re you going to do?” Toad asked.
“Rendezvous so you can give the pilots the Hawaiian good luck sign.”
“Well, we can’t just shoot ’em down,” Toad said acidly. “We can’t just blast ’em out of the sky.”
At ten miles Toad said, “Looks like this guy has a gun turret or something in the tail. That’s no Herc.” It’s no airliner, either, Jake thought as he looked through the heads-up display and picked out the speck in the sky near the symbol that was the transport.
He came out of burner and let his speed drop as he approached the turboprop from the stern. There was a man in the gun turret, but the twin barrels remained pointed upward as the fighter rapidly traversed the last mile and Jake pulled the engines toward idle and cracked the speed brakes to kill his speed.
He slid up on the right side of the transport. A four-engine turboprop. An Antonov An-12 Cub, all right, with a glass chin for the navigator to peer out of. The Americans hadn’t put a chin like that on a plane in forty years. This plane was painted in desert camouflage but lacked markings of any kind. That’s curious, Jake thought. Not even a side number.
He let the fighter drift forward so he could see directly into the transport’s cockpit. Both pilots were looking this way. He used his left hand to signal a turn to the left. Nothing. They just stared. Jake flipped the switches on the armament panel and triggered a short burst from the Vulcan 20-millimeter cannon mounted in the port side of the F-14’s forward fuselage. He could feel the weapon’s vibration as the tracers shot forward and disappeared from sight.
The Cub continued on its heading. Jake signaled vigorously for a left turn. Nothing. “They’re a thick bunch,” Toad muttered.
Jake triggered another burst. Still the plane continued on course. “What if the weapons aren’t in there?” Toad demanded.
“What do you want me to do? Let him go to Africa and drop the bomb next week on New York?” Jake reduced power and let the transport pull ahead. Maybe a few rounds right over the wing would change this guy’s mind.
He glanced left just in time. The twin barrels in the tail turret were swinging this way. He rammed the stick forward and orange fireballs flew across the top of the canopy. The negative G slung the two men upward as far as the slack in their harness restraints allowed. Jake dove under the transport and added power and kept the nose down.
“What do you want to do now, Tarkington, you goddamn flea on the elephant’s ass. Got any ideas?” When Jake was several miles ahead of the Cub, he began a turn. “How many people have to die before you’re willing to get your hands dirty?” He craned his neck to keep the transport in sight. It turned the opposite way and dove, trying to flee, a fatal mistake. Jake relaxed his turn and reset the armament switches. “No smirches on your lily-white soul. What do you think Farrell was fighting for?”
The Cub was in the forward quadrant now, several miles ahead as Jake completed the 270-degree turn. The tailgunner was blazing away but the shells were falling short. Jake put the pipper in the heads-up display on the plane, and got a rattling tone in his ears, the locked-on signal from the heat-seeking Sidewinder that had given the missile its name. He squeezed the red trigger on the stick pistol grip. A missile leaped off the rail in a blaze of fire. It tracked. Jake got another tone and squeezed the trigger again. The second missile shot after the first.
The gunner shot at the missiles. It was futile. They slammed into the engines of the Cub at two and a half times the speed of sound. Their 25-pound warheads flashed. The Cub rolled onto its right wing and began a spiral. The nose fell steeply.
Jake dipped a wing and watched the transport going down. It was going too fast. A piece of wing came off and the plane began to roll about its longitudinal axis, out of control, going down, down, down. Jake added power and eased the Tomcat into a climbing turn toward the north, still watching the falling plane far below. Then it exploded.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Toad said.
Jake took off his oxygen mask and wiped his face. He felt like he was going to be sick. “I’m sorry, too,” he muttered to the Gods, who were the only ones who could hear.
“Do you think they had the bombs?” Toad asked.
When Jake had his mask back on and adjusted, he said, “I doubt it.” Qazi didn’t seem the type to let himself be waylaid quite so easily. “Get on the radio. Find out where that frigate thinks that Red Cross plane is and ask the tanker to fly straight east at top speed. We’ll rendezvous with him and get some more gas, then try to catch the east-bound jet.”
“You don’t think it’s a Red Cross plane?”
“That has the earmarks of our colonel friend. An airline flies certain known routes every day, so you can’t just pretend you are an airliner without confusing the controllers. He needed a one-time flight plan.” Toad did as requested.
Or, Jake thought, Qazi could do what Jake was doing right now, which was fly around illegally without a flight plan and hope the controllers had their radars tuned to just receive transponder codes, not skin paints. But Qazi didn’t run risks like that. Oh, no. He would be covered, with a perfectly legal international flight plan filed days in advance. For a one-time trip.
The II-76 with Qazi, El Hakim, and the weapons aboard was circling, waiting. The fighters were late, Qazi heard one of the crewmen say. They had been circling for ten minutes. Out his defective window he could see only the blue of the ocean and the changing shadow of the wing as the transport flew a lazy circle.
El Hakim had never understood the importance of timing in clandestine operations, Qazi reflected. This ocean was an American lake, with missile-carrying surface combatants sprinkled at random. There was a carrier battle group off Cyprus. When the Americans sorted out the mess aboard United States, they were going to be in a very pugnacious mood, and Sovietbuilt transports wandering erratically in international airspace were going to attract unhealthy attention, especially if escorted by fighters. El Hakim’s time was fast running out, and he didn’t know it.
Noora and Jarvis were in the last row of seats in the module, their heads only occasionally visible. The guard with the Uzi had looked that way four or five times and was showing an increasing interest in their activities. That Noora, she could be relied upon to put her pleasure first. Qazi permitted himself a hint of a smile. He had not considered the possibility that she would be attracted to Jarvis. I am getting too old, he thought ruefully.
He sighed and watched the guard crane his neck, trying to see. The sexual curiosity of the Arab male could also be relied upon. He folded his hands across his lap and closed his eyes and tried to relax. The plane continued to circle.
The guard stood. It was too noisy to hear him, but Qazi sensed it. He opened his eyes to slits. The man was at the end of the aisle, looking aft. Then he passed behind the row of seats Qazi was in. Qazi lifted his right leg and drew the Walther PPK from his ankle holster. He thumbed the safety off. He laid it on his lap and covered it with his left hand.
Jake approached the tanker from the stern. The refueling drogue was extended. He flipped the refueling switch, and his refueling probe came out of the right side of the fuselage just under and forward of his cockpit. He added power and began closing on the tanker.
The drogue on the end of the fifty-foot hose hung down and behind the tail of the Intruder. Looking exactly like a large badminton birdie, the drogue oscillated gently in the lower edge of the tanker’s slipstream. The air displaced by the nose of the Tomcat would push the drogue away if Jake closed too slowly, so he used the throttles to make his closure brisk and sure. But at this altitude, at this low indicated airspeed, only 210 knots due to the tanker’s capabilities, the Tomcat was sluggish, responding sloppily to the controls. There, he snagged it. He pushed the drogue toward the tanker until the lights above the hose exit in the tanker’s belly turned from amber to green. He was getting fuel.