“I have contact with the A-10s,” said Golden. “They’re waiting for a target.”
“There’s an erector hidden beneath the highway in that culvert,” Wong told him, pointing out the shadow in the distance. He was just about to hand the glasses to the sergeant when he noticed a pickup truck and what seemed to be a large APC approaching on the highway. A brown tarp flapped loosely over the rear of the carrier. “Excuse me,” he said, putting the glasses back to his eyes to examine the trucks.
He watched as they approached the culvert. He was not surprised to see them stop, but Wong at first wondered why the larger vehicle did not pull down under the roadway with the pickup.
And then he saw why.
“Humph,” he said.
“What is it?” asked Golden.
“I have not seen SA-9s for some time now,” admitted Wong. He watched a pair of Iraqis adjust the netting that helped camouflage the mobile missile launcher; the battery appeared ready for action. “Frankly, I had not considered that we might encounter them.”
“Problem?” asked Golden.
“Problem is a relative word,” said Wong, handing the sergeant the glasses. “But I would not describe this as a positive development.”
CHAPTER 18
Hack cursed, unable to sort out the bandits in the chaos. More than fifty contacts crowded into the F-15’s powerful radar, and now he had another problem— the RWR warned that a ground radar had just popped to life north of him.
The Piranha’s radio frequency— in theory assigned only to them— jammed with talk from two other flights as Hack’s brain began swimming with the black chaos of battle-induced stress. He flipped his radar back and forth through search modes, but he still couldn’t get a positive contact.
The AWACS did. The airborne controller identified the two Iraqi planes rising off the runway as MiG-29s and said they were on course for a flight of F-111s and a lone A-10, which was orbiting in the bushes at ten o’clock.
“Drop tanks,” Hack ordered his wingmate. Letting go of the extra fuel rigs beneath their wings would increase the F-15s’ maneuverability and speed.
Didn’t help the radar, though. He couldn’t even find the A-10.
Saw the F-111s now, though, cutting hard to the west, out of the line of fire.
The radio blared with static and more cross talk. The AWACS controller asked for silence on the circuit, his voice several octaves higher than at the start of the mission. Then he gave Hack and Johnny a new vector.
“Okay, okay!” Hack shouted as the Eagle’s APG-63 radar flicked two contacts about where the MiGs should be, ghosting them on the heads-up display at the front of the glass. That didn’t absolutely mean it had found the Iraqis— the vast majority of planes in the air were Coalition bombers tearing up Iraq. And he still hadn’t found the A-10, which he assumed would have a wingmate somewhere behind him. Hack “tickled” the contacts with the Eagle’s electronic query system, checking the planes for their IDs.
No IDs.
MiGs.
Or coalition planes too shot up to have working transponders.
Possible. Where was that damn A-10?
“I’m spiked!” Johnny yelled. An unfriendly radar had found and targeted him— and they hadn’t even sorted the enemy fighters yet. “That MiG is on me.”
One of the unidentified contacts disappeared from Hack’s radar. He didn’t have time to wonder why— the other, apparently the one that had turned its radar onto Johnny, began angling for his wingmate.
Bandit?
Or a confused allied plane with battle damage?
The Eagles and the unidentified contact were moving toward each other now at just under 1200 miles an hour. They were thirty miles apart; Hack had sixty seconds to decide whether to fire.
Maybe less. The RWR warned that a ground radar ahead had begun tracking him. Hack ignored it, trusting that the Eagle’s advanced avionics and his altitude would protect him, at least for the moment.
The bottom of Hack’s heads-up display indicated he had four Sparrow III AIM-7 air-to-air missiles, ready to go. He took a breath, narrowing his focus on the boogie. He was just coming into range.
He queried again. Still no ID. His heart was pounding on overdrive, but something in his head was warning him away — the plane wasn’t acting like a MiG, he thought.
“Tiger, I’m locked on a target,” he told the AWACS controller as calmly as possible. “I want IDs. I can’t find that A-10.”
But the transmission was overrun. He tried again; if he got through he didn’t hear the reply.
“Piranha One, I’m still spiked,” said Johnny.
If the boogie was a MiG-29s with beyond visual range weapons, Hack’s wingmate was going to be history in about twenty seconds.
If it was a beat-up Warthog, friendly fire was going to claim its first victim of the air war.
“Fox One, Fox one!” he shouted to his wingmate, warning him that he was firing a medium-range radar missile.
CHAPTER 19
As soon as Doberman heard the Eagle pilot call the radar missile shot, he slammed his plane back toward Wong and the rest of the Snake Eaters ground team. Their radio frequency buzzed with static; he worried that maybe the MiGs had been coming after them.
“Devil One, this is Snake Eater. Please reply,” said Wong. The transmission crackled and broke up.
“Devil One,” said Doberman, pointing his nose back in the direction of the highway. He was roughly eight miles south of the village. “Hey, Wong, you got a target for me?” he snapped.
“We have a tel erector approximately three miles west of Kajuk beneath a culvert on the highway,” Wong told him.
“Okay, good. Yeah, okay.” Doberman could see the hill in front of him on the left; the culvert would be almost dead on. He immediately began a sharp turn west, deciding to work the Hog down to a thousand feet for the attack. He’d swoop out of the north, turning around the village, riding down toward the culvert, trading a little bit of angle for a longer, better view.
“There are other developments,” said Wong before he had completed his turn.
“Yeah?”
“A Gaskin SA-9 mobile launcher has been set up on the hill behind the erector, immediately to the north. Excuse me,” added Wong. “I’m told another is approaching.”
Doberman cursed but didn’t alter course. The Gaskin was a seventies-era missile with a heat-seeking warhead. Compared to missiles like the SA-2, its range and altitude were relatively limited— but it was sitting just to the side of his attack route.
It would fire as soon as he pulled up. He could let off diversionary flares and jerk his butt around, but it’d be tight.
At best.
Doberman’s eyes hunted through the terrain, spotting the hills where the village was located. He was too far away to make out any buildings there, let alone the highway and SAMs.
He could go for the antiair first, but that would be a bitch with two of them. By the time he splashed the first— if he splashed the first— the second might be ready to fire.
And without a wingman.
“Give me the layout, Wong,” he said. “Are those SAMs set up or what?”
“One definitely is. The other has taken a position at the south side of the road. The mean time for launch… ”
“Yeah, yeah, okay.”
It was too risky. Especially since he’d have a hard time seeing the launcher under the roadway.