She began to roll, picked up speed quickly since her fuel load was now confined to what was in the wing tanks. Barr passed the south end of the runway as the tanker began swerving to the right, too hard.
Maal corrected, she straightened out, achieved lift, and rose slowly from the airstrip. Maal, with his experience with flying models, had tutored all of the pilots — since any of them might end up flying the RPVs — to not make abrupt moves with the remote controls. It could rapidly translate into stalls, lost lift, and pancaked airplanes. A radio controller didn’t feel the attitudinal changes made by RPVs. Maal had admitted crashing six or seven models while learning to fly radio control, and he was a pilot. The revelation was not a morale builder.
There were a few cheers on Tac Two as the C-130 gained altitude.
Maal reported, “The data feedback says I’ve got gear up and airspeed. I’m taking it cool, and we’re out of here.”
“Nice job, Thirsty,” Wyatt said. “Wizard, we’ll see you on the other side.”
The two C-130s would join up, climb for altitude, and head north.
By the time Barr had reached the northern end of his circle, Yucca Five was on the runway.
“I’ve got a nice picture on the screen,” Zimmerman said. “That is, the resolution is nice. The view is dismal.”
“Any time you’re ready, Five,” Wyatt said.
“Going to afterburner.”
The end of the runway lit up, and the F-4C leapt away. She built momentum quickly, missed the chuck-holes, and rotated.
The F-4D was off the airstrip, retracting gear and flaps, by the time Barr completed his next circle.
“All right, Yuccas, let’s form up,” Wyatt said.
Barr ran in some throttle and closed on Hackley as they eased into a heading of 010. Seconds later, the two of them joined with Wyatt and Gettman in a finger formation. They climbed for two thousand feet AGL, providing enough control-correction tolerance for the RPVs, and staying low enough to avoid radar for awhile.
“Let’s kill the formation lights, Yuccas. Heading zero-one-three, speed four-zero-zero knots.”
Barr reached out and flipped the toggle on his lighting panel. The wingtip lights blinked out. As they gained altitude, however, the day brightened. He could make out the silhouettes of the Phantoms ahead on his left.
Somewhere, fifty miles ahead, and at the same altitude, were the Hercs.
Somewhere, a half-mile ahead of them, were Yuccas Five and Six, flying point for the combat formation. The two RPVs were supposed to be flying about two miles apart to prevent an accidental collision.
The red-lit chronometer on his instrument panel read: 0454.
“You notice, One,” Barr said, “that we’re six minutes off schedule. Pretty sloppy, that.”
Formsby asked, “Does the CIA give out demerits?”
“Only for spending Uncle’s money on champagne,” Barr told him.
“Does this parachute work?” Forrnsby asked.
Sixteen
Janice Kramer was zapping burritos in the microwave at seven o’clock in the evening.
The telephone rang.
She gave up watching the burritos to step to the opposite counter and pick up the phone. Through the window, she could see the shadows lengthening, slowly overcoming the day.
“Yes.”
“Miss Kramer, this is your friend on the East Coast, returning your call.”
She thought it was Church’s voice, and she wouldn’t yet, if ever, describe him as a friend. At least, he had called after she left her message on the machine.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“I want a status report.”
“Miss Kramer, we can’t…”
“Those are my people” she said. “I want to know if they landed safely.”
Church, sighed, hesitated, then said, “It’s underway.”
“What! But it…”
“Yes. There’s been a change. At any rate, it’ll be over in a couple of hours.”
Her stomach clenched up on her. “Will you call me as soon as you know?”
“I will.”
He hung up, and she carefully placed the receiver in its cradle.
She wasn’t hungry.
Cancelling the microwave’s timer, she went into the living room and curled up on the couch.
She curled up in a foetal position. Her stomach hurt.
God. She had thought it was five days away.
Another change.
Another chance for error.
Turn back, Andy. Come home to me.
“You want to take her for awhile, Neil?” Demion asked.
“Marvellous, James! I would like that.”
Outside of a few small aircraft he rented on weekends, Formsby did not often get a chance to fly. He especially did not get a chance to fly military aircraft, even the lumbering, four-engined Hercules.
“Would a barrel roll be appropriate?” he asked.
“I think you’d get some complaints,” Demion said, crawling out of the pilot’s seat.
“Some people just have no sense of adventure.”
Demion descended from the flight deck, found the pot of coffee Littlefield had made, and brought two mugs back to the cockpit.
“You might have thought about me,” Kriswell said.
He was seated in the flight engineer’s position, leaning forward to peer out the windscreen at the C-130F. The tanker was a half-mile ahead of them, at the same flight level of two thousand feet AGL.
“You’re too busy, Tom,” Demion said, “and my hands are too full.”
“I haven’t told Denny to make a correction in thirty or forty seconds,” Kriswell said.
Maal, seated at the joystick controls down at the console, was flying the tanker with the telemetry feedback plus oral instructions from Kriswell over the ICS.
Demion gave him one of the mugs, then went back down to the crew compartment for another.
Sam Vrdla, also at the console, was in charge of the radar, and he asked, “Command pilot, can I have a radar check?”
Demion told him, “Two sweeps, Sam. But keep the power down.”
“Roger.”
A few seconds later, when Demion was back in his seat, Vrdla reported over the intercom, “All systems check out, Jim. We should get our one-ninety-mile scan at thirty-five thousand.”
Aboard the original E-2, with its massive radar antenna enclosed in the radome, the search area could be extended to 250 miles. With the modified antenna protected by a fiberglass bulge on the C-130’s fuselage top, they had managed only 190 miles. It was not quite what they had hoped for, but Wyatt felt that it was adequate.
The MiGs they were going up against had a radar range of twenty-two miles, less than that of a production F-4. The modified radar in the fighter, Kriswell had told him, gave them a hundred-mile edge. That ability to say, “I see you” first might be all that was necessary to insure success. Even though, for weight and range considerations, the Phantoms were carrying short-range missiles, the radar superiority would increase the preparation time or the evasion advantage.
Formsby felt, rather than saw, a shadow on his right, and he glanced out the side window to see the F-4s pulling alongside. Wyatt was in the lead plane, with the three others in echelon off his right wing. He looked up and saw the two RPVs several hundred feet above and spread far apart.
“Actually, James, this is rather exciting. I am glad I decided to come along.”
“Actually, Neil I’m amazed that we’ve got all eight planes in the right configuration at this point in time. My better instincts and a few laws of probability say we should have lost at least one to equipment failure by now.”
“Speaks worlds for the design team,” Formsby said.
“It does, doesn’t it?”