“It’s fifty,” the adviser told him.
“Will the fleet return if we come under heavy attack?”
“The fleet will support you but must remain outside the theater for now. It’s one of our bargaining chips,” the President said.
“Allow me to position MAC for a quick evacuation—”
“Can’t do that, Lawrence. The PSI would interpret it as a signal of our intentions to withdraw unilaterally in the near future. As I’ve tried to make clear, negotiations are too delicate to send a signal like that at this time. I assure you I’ll withdraw the 45th at the proper time but I will make the decision when to do that. Lawrence, don’t overreact to this situation.”
“I may have to consider other options,” was Cunningham’s reply, placing the possibility of his resignation in front of them.
The President had an answer to that ploy. “I’ll only accept your resignation after this is successfully concluded. You will remain subject to my command until then.”
Without another word Cunningham left the Oval Office reasonably satisfied that he had enough leverage to protect the wing. Did the President realize he’d given him that much? He suspected the smart bastard damn well did.
Sergeant Nesbit’s hands trembled slightly as he handed Waters the message off the high-speed printer. “Sundown is talking directly to the operator at the Watch Center,” he told the colonel. “It’s almost like being in the same room.”
“Why doesn’t he use the voice feature of the net?” Waters asked.
“Mostly because encryption and decryption is much faster and more accurate. We spend a lot of time synchronizing the voice scramblers when you transmit over long distances and some of it still comes through garbled,” the sergeant told him.
“Okay, acknowledge that I’m here.” Nesbit’s fingers flew over the keyboard, then punched the transmit key. Moments later the printer spit out the message it had been holding for his eyes only. “Get Stansell and Locke in here,” he ordered.
Jack couldn’t believe the message. They were denied permission to strike at Bushehr? And had to establish a defensive ring around the base at only fifty miles? “Don’t they know the basic correlation between time and distance? We’ve got to press this fight on our terms—”
“Calm down,” Waters told him. “The President has made his decision and we’ve got to live with it. No one ever said you had to like it. Now get back to the drawing board. See what you can come up with to defend this base.”
Waters proceeded to bring the base up to a pre-attack status. No sirens went off, no one ran to shelters. Instead, a last-minute positioning of equipment and personnel took place. Under the cover of darkness a convoy of trucks moved onto the narrow isthmus road that connected the base to the mainland and erected a series of radar reflectors intended to create a confusing pattern of returns on the radar scope of an attacking aircraft. A team planted anti-personnel mines and strung barbed wire on the beaches while two boats dropped mines into the shallow waters, forming a series of expanding rings seaward that any landing force would have to penetrate.
Meanwhile Jack and his people had come up with enough of a plan to present it to Waters, who nodded in agreement and told his Maintenance chief to download all bombs from the Phantoms and upload with air-to-air missiles.
Farrell could scarcely contain his elation as he brought his aircrews in for a new briefing.
Waters had sent most of the pilots and wizzos back to their quarters, telling them that they would have plenty of warning when the attackers sortied from across the Gulf.
Jack dragged a lounge outside and stretched out near the Intelligence chief, Carroll. Neither man said a word as they stared across the taxiway that ran past the COIC, sharing the tension of waiting. Carroll, assuming the pilot had fallen asleep in the long silence, was surprised to hear: “Intelligence is really the key, right?”
“Yeah,” Carroll replied. “It’s an enemy and a friend. An enemy when it takes the form of that trawler out there that haunts every move we make, a friend when it tells us when the Gomers are going to attack.”
Carroll started to doze off… only to see a big warbird that moved silently down the taxiway, towed by a small tug. The soft red glow of the cockpit’s lights lit the crew chief’s face as he hunched forward in the front seat, arms dangling over the sides of the canopy rails. Only the subdued hum of the tag’s engine broke the silence as the F-4 filled Carroll’s vision, its angular lines giving meaning to the name “Big Ugly.” Then another image came to Carrolclass="underline" the Phantom was totally functional, an instrument of caged power, lethal. But it was also a symbol of the system that made it work, a complicated organization that ranged from mechanics to the pilots that flew it. And like the system, it was incredibly complex, a machine designed to carry destructive power into a wide variety of hostile environments, from the air-to-air arena to attacking ground targets.
Its stark functional grace made it a beautiful machine, but only because of the way it fulfilled its purpose. A shudder ran through him as he realized that here, in the still of a desert night, he was mulling over such heady staff as function, utility, purpose — and death. And coming to a conclusion about beauty? Maybe he’d been in the desert, and at war, too long, he decided…
“Okay, warbird,” Jack said, shaking him. “You’re in it now, just like the rest of us suckers.” But, Carroll noted, he was smiling when he said it.
Waters and Farrell sat at the back of the room while board plotters behind Plexiglas sheets posted incoming information in grease pencil. C.J.’s squadron checked in first as each flight of four ships came on status. Waters cracked a smile when the commander of the 378th checked in. “Rup wanted to lead them,” Waters said. “He claimed that they would shape up if someone kicked their butts out of the starting blocks. I reminded him that he wasn’t current in Big Ugly but he could fly in the pit of the squadron commander’s bird. You should have seen his face.”
“He’s Jenkins’ wizzo,” Jack said, surprised that the egotistical little lieutenant colonel would submit to being number two in a fighter.
“Right, and he ran out of words when Jenkins told him that he would rather have Doc in his pit.”
“Some people will do anything to fly,” Jack said, wishing he could find a fast way for himself.
An announcement drew their attention to the situation board as the first plot of the incoming wave of ships was marked up. Their speed identified them as hovercraft and fast patrol-boat escorts, and the doubts that had been building in Jack’s mind quieted some when the lack of enemy aircraft was confirmed. He had assumed the enemy CAP would hold their launch until the 45th launched its Phantoms. He nodded to Waters, his heart beating fast. “Now.”
“Scramble twelve aircraft from the 377th,” Waters ordered the controller.
C.J.’s twelve Phantoms were airborne six minutes after they were scrambled, each bird loaded with two external fuel tanks and eight air-to-air missiles.
“Do your thing,” Jack said quietly, counting on the trawler to warn the PSI of the launch. The Floggers had to be coaxed into scrambling early if they were to separate the attacking boats from their air cover when they were inside the fifty-mile perimeter.
C.J. was the bait.
Waters selected the GCI frequency on the radio and turned up the volume. Jack studied the older man with envy. He had so much self-control. Seven minutes later they heard Mary’s voice as she called out ten approaching bandits, sounding just as she had when she directed Jack and Fairly against the Libyan MiGs.