“Rhodes Leader!” shouted Rhodes Two.
“Aren’t we relieving Kostas Kelipolas and his band of renegades?”
“Rhodes Two, no names. We will relieve Corfu Formation in fifteen minutes. We’re going to hit the deck, come up under them, do a visual pass, a quick wiggle, and then they’re off for a well-earned rest.”
“Rhodes Leader, this is Corfu Leader. The day you and your boofus bunch sneak up on us is the day I buy Metaxa brandy for all!”
“Hey, Kostas, if we lose, it’s retsina we’ll buy!”
“Skita, posti! You’re a cheap bastard, lo annis Corfu Leader teased Rhodes Two.
“No names, I said,” Rhodes Leader repeated.
“Rhodes Leader, this is Air Defense Control. Report your position.”
“Air Defense, Rhodes Leader; we are passing south of Khora Station. Maintaining one two five altitude at four hundred knots.”
“Roger, Rhodes Leader, do you have bogeys southwest of you? We showed what I thought was an airliner outbound Tripoli Flight Information Region, but radar is now reflecting six to seven bogeys northbound.”
“Negative, Air Defense Control. If you want, we can depart track and take a closer look for you.”
“Roger, Rhodes Leader; come to course two two zero to free radars.”
“Rhodes Formation,” Demetri broadcast, “come right to course two two zero.” The four Mirage F-is turned as one, the sun highlighting the two French Matra Mica air-to-air missiles under each wing.
The formation leveled off. The four pilots continued in a diamond formation as each watched their assigned radar sector for the unidentified aircraft.
“Rhodes Leader, Rhodes Three; I have multiple bogeys bearing two eight zero, crossing feet dry Palaiokori.”
“Impossible! There are no other aircraft scheduled for this morning.” Palaiokori was a small coastal village south of the air base at Chania, Crete, where the Greek Air Force shared the runway with the United States Navy’s Souda Bay base.
“Air Defense, this is Rhodes Leader. Do we have other Hellinikon Air Force aircraft airborne in the vicinity of Rhodes Formation?”
“That is a negative, Rhodes Leader. Our schedule shows only you and Corfu Formation airborne at this time. Next flight not for two hours, though Chania has a ‘takeoff and landing’ evolution scheduled in thirty minutes.”
Rhodes Leader passed the radar sighting information to Air Defense and waited for further instructions.
The controller at the Greek National Air Defense headquarters, located across the runway from the United States Naval Support Activity Souda Bay, strolled over to the window.
He put his small cup of strong Greek coffee on the window ledge before lifting his binoculars to scan the skies for the aircraft that Rhodes Formation reported and his radar reflected. A summer haze shimmered over the runway. Already going on nine thirty and the summer sun promised another record-breaking day. Good for tourism and hell on those who kept their clothes on. He’d drive down later after work, drink a cold Amstel beer at the beach bar, and watch ‘hose white tourist titties bounce across the beach — good for a man his age. Not bad for his wife either when he arrived home with that twinkle in his eye. He smiled. His wife would smile. Life would be pleasant in the Nicholas Skoumopolis household.
Skoumopolis was born in Thessaloniki. He was six foot even and weighed two hundred fifty pounds. When the Greek Army had drafted him forty years ago at the age of seventeen, freeing him from a life of schoolwork, he had been the same height, but a hundred pounds lighter. He had no idea what army life was going to be like, but he quickly found it a welcome change after years of Father slapping his ears to study and Mother pushing his head into schoolbooks. Every male did two years’ mandatory conscription in the service of his country. His father tried everything to get the authorities to defer the draft, including bribing the local draft board chairman, but Nicholas breathed a hidden sigh of relief when Athens eventually refused the request. He discovered to his surprise that he loved the Army and made up his mind to break the news to his parents, thereby shattering their dreams, that he intended to become a career noncom. That was, until four months before the end of his two years of government service, when the small night patrol Nicholas was with stumbled across a group of armed Albanians with automatic rifles on the Greek side of the border. In the fire fight that followed, Nicholas’s company pushed the armed gang back across the border into the chaotic environment of Albania, killing four and wounding no one knew how many. For Nicholas, his Army dreams ended with a bullet through the left side, which miraculously missed his stomach, intestines, other vital organs, and blood vessels, but destroyed one kidney. His fellow soldiers had backtracked after the fight to find him bleeding and unconscious. A month later he was discharged with a small disabled veteran pension. He returned to the polytechnic to finish his degree and then worked his way slowly up nondescript technical jobs as a civilian, to where he was now one of three senior Air Defense controllers in Chania, Crete. Along the way he married a Cretan girl, who gave him three boys to brag about and challenged him in pounds. Through his own efforts in the bars, Nicholas Skoumopolis the wounded soldier became Nicholas Skoumopolis wounded, disabled war hero.
Nicholas pushed the window in front of him farther out and flipped the fan on high, then tilted his cup and drained it in one gulp. He wiped his lips to shake the coffee drops off his thick mustache. His thoughts partially on the beach life in nearby Chania, he lifted the binoculars and returned to scanning the skies to the south. Almost immediately, Nicholas saw seven aircraft in tight formation headed toward the runway.
Damn, he was going to have someone’s ass for this.
Fighters! Americans most likely. They never remembered to file a country clearance before entering Greek air space.
Damn them! They think they own this country. If they thought he was going to give them permission to land they had better think again — short of fuel or not. They’d better have a better reason than “We forgot to file.”
He hurried to the radio and jerked up the microphone.
“Unidentified aircraft approaching Chania Airfield, this is Greek National Air Defense Control. Identify yourself.”
He received no reply. He repeated himself. By the third repeat, he was screaming at the pilots, who refused to acknowledge his demand. South through the open window, Nicholas watched the warplanes break off into a spread pattern as if positioning themselves to land. Not at his damn airfield!
“Unidentified aircraft, this is Greek National Air Defense Control. You are not cleared to land and you are interfering with the air traffic pattern. Break off and call Air Defense Control immediately!”
Rhodes Formation listened to the controller. Rhodes Two shrugged his shoulders at Demetri, flying about fifty meters away and able to see lo annis clearly.
“Rhodes Formation, this is Corfu Formation. What’s the holdup? We want to go home and we need you here to turn over. Or are you trying to sneak attack us?”
“Corfu Leader, we have unidentified aircraft approaching Chania and Air Defense has asked us to make an identity pass. They’re over the airfield now, so as soon as he tells us who they are we’ll turn back to your area.”
“Roger, we’ll stay on this frequency and monitor.”
Rhodes Leader clicked his mike two times in acknowledgment.
The Air Defense controller slammed the microphone down on the table and with binoculars in hand walked to the front of the tower, mumbling obscenities at the strangers. When alone he seemed to walk without any signs of the wound affecting his left side. He twisted the focus as he visually tracked the unidentified aircraft approaching the runway. The sun blinded him momentarily. He moved his glasses and waited for their flight path to clear the morning sun. When he made out their side numbers Nicholas was going to file violation reports. What the hell did they think they were doing? He reached in a nearby drawer and pulled out the short one-page forms. The Greek government would give it to the American Embassy in Athens and then they could work it out. If they were going to land they’d better lower their landing gear. It would be amusing to see the Americans land with wheels up, even if it closed the runway, like in 1996, when an Orion had used the entire runway — a runway long enough for it to take off and land three times without going around — and still kept going off the end for another hundred yards to crash. He grinned at the thought even as his mind began to register the fact that the aircraft in his binoculars were Libyan Mig-23 fighter-bombers.