But still there were at least twenty-five more Hinds pressing the attack. Hunter could see more than a few fires burning on the carrier, and one of the frigates was burning out of control. The Moroccan troopship, docked on the eastern side of the waterway, was also burning.
Hunter shot down another Hind, but now there were buzzers and lights going off all over his cockpit control panel. He wasn’t just low on fuel — he was running out. He radioed the four airplanes to check on their fuel supply. He determined that the two Tornados would have to go in first, then the 16. The Viggens could stay up just a little longer and give them covering fire.
The first Tornado landed without much trouble — concentrated fire from the Rocketeers held off the Hinds long enough for the British jet to set down. But the second jet ran into trouble immediately.
As the plane was making its final approach, a Hind shot an air-to-surface missile at one of the frigates. The missile crossed right in front of the slow-moving jet, clipping its nose and forcing the pilot to abort the landing. Its nose smoking, the pilot had trouble controlling the airplane. As Hunter watched, the jet shot straight up, its engine straining. An opportunistic Hind laced the plane with a burst of cannon fire. The pilot ejected. Seconds later the airplane exploded. “Damn!” Hunter seethed. “There goes another one!”
Now it was his turn to land. He made his way through the buzzing Hinds and the smoke, rockets’ glare, and AA fire and set the 16 down. The deck was a scene of mass confusion. The deck hands were struggling to get the first Tornado onto the carrier elevator to get it safely to the hangar area.
In the meantime, the Spanish rocketmen were launching missile after antiaircraft missile at the attacking helicopters. The French-manned Phalanx super-machine guns were going off with businesslike regularity. Even the Moroccan troops on the eastern side and the Aussie-Gurkha force on the western side were getting into the act. They were launching Stinger missiles and firing at the Hinds with their rifles. The action was as intense as anything Hunter had ever seen. Yet, despite all the danger, the BBC crew was rushing about the deck, recording all the action on video.
Two deck monkeys rushed up to Hunter. “No time to take it down,” he yelled to them. “Fuel me up right here! And load up the cannons! Hurry! Those Viggens got about ten minutes of fuel left and then they’re coming in!”
The two monkeys were joined by five others and together they broke the record for servicing the F-16. Within five minutes he had a full tank and about eighty percent ammo for his Six Pack. Then he and the monkeys literally pushed the 16 to the catapult and hooked it up.
All the while the confusion of the battle swirled around them.
“You got a bad fuel leak on your starboard, major!” one of the monkeys yelled to him.
“I know,” Hunter yelled back, climbing back into the cockpit. “But I don’t have time to worry about it now!”
He strapped in and immediately fired up the engine. His instruments went “hot” in forty-five seconds and he was ready to go. The deck officer, ducking the debris from a near-miss explosion, gave Hunter the go sign. The next thing he knew, he was thrown back against the seat of the 16 as it rocketed off the deck.
He immediately found himself on the tail of two Hinds as they swooped in to attack one of the frigates. He twisted once, then sent a long stream of cannon fire into one of the tail rotors. The chopper immediately broke up, spun out to the right, and smashed into its partner. The midair collision caused a spectacular explosion. As one, the two burning choppers fell into the water.
Then Hunter saw one of the Viggens get it. Three Hinds had ganged up on the slow-moving Swedish fighter as it was coming in for a landing. The airplane was simply obliterated by a concentration of cannon fire. Hunter immediately started pumping cannon fire back at the trio of Hinds, scattering them and allowing the remaining Viggen to set down.
Finally, the Hinds started to back off. Hunter got two more as they were fleeing off to the south, and a Moroccan Stinger team took down two more. Just in time too, as it turned out, for seven aircraft from the second attack force, plus the two Jags, were now returning to land on the carrier.
These pilots had bad news. Not only had three of their jets — two Viggens and a Tornado — been downed. They also reported that a large combined land and sea force was moving toward the carrier.
“Three battleships are just twenty miles away, coming on fast,” one of the pilots told Hunter as he orbited above the carrier. “Also, there are at least ten divisions coming up on the eastern side. Lucifer landed a bunch of his troops and they got transport.”
Ten divisions. That meant more than 150,000 men. If they were on trucks, they’d be in the area soon. So would the approaching battleships.
And Hunter knew, in his gut, that Lucifer was on one of those battleships …
Chapter 42
The Moroccan troop commander looked out over the trench line and saw a nightmare.
Focusing his electronic binoculars, he at first thought the vision was a mirage. But as it became clearer he realized that what lay before him wasn’t a trick of the sun. “Allah have mercy on us,” he whispered.
There were more than 100,000 foot soldiers heading right for his line. He knew by reports from the carrier planes that there were 50,000 more troops somewhere behind those he saw. He looked at his own troops — all 7500 of them. They had battled the Hinds fiercely — now they would battle this approaching enemy with the same tenacity.
“Troop, attention!” the commander yelled. His soldiers all the way down the lines were suddenly bolt upright. The commander then stood up, a sword in hand, and yelled: “Troop, forward!”
Hunter had seen the approaching troops of Lucifer’s army too, through binoculars from the very top of the carrier’s conning tower.
He had been forced to land shortly after the Hinds departed the battle area, as the fuel leak in his wing had grown worse. Now, he was having the quickest patch job on record being done on the fighter. He had told the monkeys to forget about the nicks and dings on the 16’s nose and canopy and the fact that more than half his avionics was not working. “Just get it in flying condition,” he had told them.
The carrier was in rough shape, he knew it. A quick conversation with Yaz confirmed it. “All our work,” Yaz had said, “half of it went down the drain when the Hinds attacked.”
Many sailors had been killed or wounded in the attack. Heath had taken a cannon shell directly on his shoulder and was now wearing bandages rivaling those of Sir Neil. To his credit, Sir Neil had stayed on the bridge throughout the attack, directing the carrier’s defenses, an effort that brought down more than half of the attacking Soviet choppers.
But the Saratoga itself had paid dearly. The catapult was just barely working, as it had taken several direct rocket hits from the Hinds. The carrier’s communications room was in a shambles, and O’Brien was having trouble just keeping the controls working in case the carrier should have to move quickly. Power was again intermittent, and they were running out of ammunition of all kinds.
One question that Yaz posed to Hunter was why the Hinds didn’t attack the oiler or the supertanker filled with volatile jet fuel. Hunter knew why. “Because the Hinds were under Soviet command,” he told him. “Their orders were to attack the carrier and the frigates and that’s what they did. There’s no freedom of thought in the Soviet military. Just follow orders, even though, in a military sense, a well-placed rocket into the supertanker would have blown us all sky high. And they would have been rid of us. But they are too rigid, too robotic.”