The Phantoms had spread into a wide pattern, converging on the fleet from all points of the compass. They planned to attack simultaneously and for a few seconds saturate the defenders. The crews remembered Jack’s description of the most likely survival tactic: “one pass, haul ass,” or as Thunder put it, “shoot and scoot.” A crew from the 378th zigzagged through the defenders, heading for the Sirri. Its Wizzo pinpointed its bright return on his radar and the Maverick’s infrared seeker-head was sensing the unbelievably bright target at six miles. He drove the crosshairs onto the heat-signature and locked on. The pilot grunted when his wizzo told him he was cleared to pickle, then headed into a gap between two small patrol boats escorting the Sirri. He popped to twelve hundred feet to fire the Maverick and hit the pickle button, sending two missiles with their one-hundred-twenty-five-pound warheads toward the ship. But before he could jam his plane back onto the deck to escape, a crossfire of Triple A from the patrol boats ripped into the fuselage, building a huge fireball in the night.
The late pilot’s wingman marked the crossfire, teeth grinding, and headed for the two escort boats. He was able to avoid the trap his lead had fallen into and rippled off two Mavericks at the boat on the right, then jinked hard, pulling to the deck and leveling off fifty feet above the water as a stream of tracers etched the sky above him. His wizzo noted that the two Mavericks had blown the patrol boat apart and that the Sirri was burning as they ran for home. At least some payback…
A crew from the 377th now arced across the water toward a heavily camouflaged Polnocny-class landing ship in the van of the fleet. The wizzo’s RHAW gear was screaming its loud warbling cry at them, telling them they were in the beam of a guidance radar. He checked the RHAW scope and didn’t see any flashing symbols that indicated a missile was tracking them, so he punched off the system’s audio. Probably a malfunction, he told himself, willing to rely on visual warnings on the scope.
The crew never saw the two missiles that blew them out of the sky…
Wrango, a Wolf from the 378th, was tail-end Charlie. He circled the fleet three hundred feet off the deck, selecting a target, counted twelve fires and decided to hit a ship that was coming to the aid of a burning freighter. When his wizzo couldn’t make the system lock on as he ran in, Wrango had to break off the attack run. “We’ll have to come back another day,” he told his Wizzo. But neither saw the stream of thirty-millimeter tracers reaching for them from the burning ship as they turned away, presenting their exposed belly to the ship. Two explosions promptly rocked the Phantom. Wrango’s telelight panel flashed warnings at him as the stick shuddered in his hand and he had to fight to control the violently shaking plane as he yelled at his wizzo to retard the throttles while he ballooned to a higher altitude. For three minutes he kept up the fight for control as smoke and fumes filled the cockpit. Finally, unable to take his hands from the stick, he yelled for his backseater to eject them.
It was a clean ejection, the Martin-Baker performing as advertised, and they landed unhurt in the water less than a thousand feet apart. The wizzo had released his parachute risers when his feet touched the water and was pulling himself into his one-man dingy when he felt a sharp tug at his foot. Before he could check it… he figured his boot was caught in a parachute shroud… two more sharks hit him, one ripping off his leg, the other gouging him in the side. The man’s scream carried a quarter-mile over the calm water. Wrango never heard it. Two sharks had hit him before he could release his parachute risers, and now his inflated parachute dragged him, lifeless, through the water.
Sergeant Nesbit handed Waters a note telling him the C-130 from Mildenhall had called in and would be landing in ten minutes with a VIP code-six on board. “What the hell’s a general coming in here for?” Waters said, collecting Jack and heading for the bunker the wing was using to muster the next group to be evacuated. They found Stansell in front of the bunker when they drove up. “Rup, get all the women out quick as you can.” Waters paused and looked at the clipboard Stansell was holding. “Get most of Intel out too.” If the base was overrun, he sure as hell did not want Intel captured.
“Colonel,” Stansell said, “the women aren’t asking for any special favors, let’s go with the priority we’ve established. Intel, okay, we don’t need them now—”
Their exchange was cut off by the howl of the C-130 as it taxied to a halt in front of the bunker, the crew-entrance door opened and Shaw stepped onto the ramp as the engines spun down. Stansell was rushing the next group aboard the ramp at the rear of the Hercules.
“Well, Colonel Waters, you’ve got yourself into one hell of a mess,” Shaw said, shaking Waters’ hand.
“What’s going on here?”
Waters quickly filled him in, including how he was trying to shuttle his people out before the base was attacked by the oncoming fleet.
Shaw motioned at the C-130’s flight deck, signaling Pullman to join them. “I need a command communications net. Is there one at Dhahran?”
Waters shook his head. “Dhahran only has a small message center. But Nesbit’s got the 45th’s command net up and working.”
“So I’ll stay here and scream for help. Maybe the Air Force will listen to a general that’s on the spot. Chief, you go with the C-130 at Dhahran and keep the shuttle going from that end—”
“General,” Waters interrupted, “wouldn’t it be better if you ran the show from Dhahran? Things are going to heat up around here… ”
Shaw gave him a drop-dead look, then pointed to the C-130. “Get going, Mort,” and the sergeant ran back aboard as the number three prop started to wind up.
“It’ll be a few minutes before the Hercules can take off,” Waters told the general. “We’ve got birds recovering.”
Jack drove the pickup as the three then returned to the command post, where the launch-and-recovery board was mute testimony to the high cost of attacking the ships. Four recovery squares were open and two planes that had made it suffered battle damage that made it doubtful if they would fly again. Shaw stood at the back of the room while Waters ordered Maintenance to turn the birds ASAP, Farrell to switch the crews on air-defense alert with the recovering crews, and Nesbit to check with the GCI site for movement of the fleet. “Jack, get with the crews and find out what happened. Work up some new way to go against those ships.”
Jack looked away, not wanting to tell that he was fresh out of ideas.
Before Jack could take off, Nesbit relayed a report from the GCI site’s radar: the invasion force and the ships were heading directly for Ras Assanya.
“We’ll hit them again,” Waters said.
A lousy situation, but Shaw had at least seen enough to convince him that Waters was in control of it. He watched Waters in admiration. The colonel’s strength was the galvanizing factor that kept the men going. Muddy, he realized, was a for-real leader. It was something he’d never really accepted about his old friend until now. Shaw turned, commandeered Nesbit and his communications net and set to work spurring the shuttle on.