Troy blinked a couple of times as he entered the dimly lit hangar and did a double take. There were two Lockheed Martin F-16C aircraft parked side by side, each with AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles attached to its wingtip rails. Neither carried any markings except consecutive civil registration numbers. They were registered in Guatemala as civilian aircraft.
"You must be Loensch," a red-haired man in jeans and a T-shirt said to Troy as he approached from behind and extended his hand. "Preston, Andy Preston… used to be with the 35th Fighter Squadron, deployed overseas to Kunsan, Korea."
"Right," Troy said, shaking Preston's hand. "Troy Loensch. I was with the 334th Air Expeditionary Wing in Sudan."
"Heard you got a MiG," Preston said.
"Yeah," Troy confirmed. He was going to clarify that by saying that he'd also been shot down by one, but he decided to leave it at that.
"I'll let you boys get acquainted," Joe said. "Preston, show Loensch to his quarters. Briefing at 1300 hours." "How long you been in country here?" Troy asked. "Twenty-three hours," Preston said, looking at his watch.
"Look like almost new birds," Troy said, walking over for a closer look at the nearest F-16. "Where'd they come from?"
"I was told that they were bought from Chile out of the ones they got from Lockheed back in 2006."
"Don't look like they have much time on them," Troy said. "That's good. Have you picked one?"
"Neither one has a serial ending in thirteen, so I say we flip for first choice."
"Tails," Troy said as Preston pulled a quarter out of his pocket.
Chapter 23
"You're both familiar with the Su-25 Frogfoot, right?" Joe Turcios said, glancing up from his clipboard. They were sitting around a desk in the shack adjacent to the hangar that served as the Firehawk command post.
Troy Loensch and Andy Preston both nodded. The Frogfoot was a twin-engine ground attack jet designed in the 1980s by the Soviet design bureau, Sukhoi, and widely exported to Soviet client states. Hundreds were still in use throughout the Third World, most having been passed from one air force to another to another a time or two.
"Well, our intel says that at least two, and possibly as many as four or five, have wound up with the Zaps," Turcios explained, using the popular slang for Zapatista rebels. Despite the presence of state-of-the-art weaponry, the briefing was extremely low-tech and informal by comparison to the slide shows and live satellite feeds that the pilots had experienced while serving in the U. S. Air Force.
"They appear to be based here in the jungle up in Chiapas," Turcios said, unfolding a fairly detailed Michelin road map. "The Russkies designed the plane to operate from crude landing fields, and that's exactly how they're being used. In the past two weeks, Guatemalan government convoys have been hit here, here, and here in three separate raids. Our job is to intercept the Frog-foots or Frogfeet, or whatever the damned plural is, and shoot 'em down."
"How will we know where and when?" Preston asked. "Are we supposed to fly combat air patrols?"
"No, you don't have to fly a CAP," Joe assured him. "That would be a waste of Firehawk's. gas. No, we got a guy working ATC radar in the main tower across the runway here at Mundo. He gets a little on the side from Firehawk to help take care of us. His air traffic control coverage includes the border region. You guys will be on alert. When we get the word, you launch and track the Zaps on your own radar."
"What if they see us coming and run across the border back to Mexico?" Troy asked.
"Go get 'em." Joe smiled. "The Mexicans aren't gonna complain if you kill a Zap airplane. You get one free ride in this deal. The Zaps have no idea that we're here with F-16s. The first time you go out on an intercept and they see you coming on radar, they'll think you're commercial traffic, and they won't run. They know that the Guatemalan Air Force consists of pretty much nothing but helicopters and trainers. They will not be expecting F-16s."
"That's just the first time," Preston said. "After that, they'll know about us."
"I expect that they will have lost half their air force in the first engagement, so there shouldn't be much more than two or three for you guys and the job will be done."
"Speaking of air force, I guess I can't really imagine that the Zapatistas are sophisticated enough for this kind of equipment," Troy said.
"I don't imagine that the guys flying these Frogfeet are actually Zapatista rebels," Turcios said.
"Who are they then?" Preston asked.
"Firehawk isn't the only PMC in the world," Turcios said. "And not all the PMCs in the world are working for Uncle Sam and his friends."
Over the next two days, Troy and Preston logged more than eighteen hours in the cockpits of the two F-16s.
Unfortunately, during all of the hours, the cockpits were parked ten feet off the ground in the hangar. They ran up the engines a few times, but other than that, time was spent in the most boring form of just sitting around.
It was at about 0945 on the third day that Joe Turcios came into the hangar shouting, "Crank 'em up and roll 'em out!"
At last.
The man in the Mundo Maya tower quickly put a ramp hold on an Aviateca flight that was about to take off for Cancun and cleared the Firehawk F-16s for a runway.
Other than the thunder of two fighter jets taking off, the passengers hardly noticed. Their delay getting off the ground was about four minutes.
Troy and Preston climbed out fast and leveled off at about eight thousand feet, high enough to avoid ground turbulence but low enough to intercept an aircraft on a ground attack mission. Troy took the lead with the call sign Firehawk One, but the two F-16s flew in tight formation so as to appear as one on the radar in the Frog-foot cockpits.
On the F-16 scopes, the two Frogfeet were distinctly separate, circling a point about sixty kilometers inside Guatemala and ignoring the oncoming Americans.
Within ten minutes of wheels-up, Troy had a visual on the two Su-25s. He even glimpsed a contrail leaving the wing of one of the aircraft. It was possibly a Kh-25 air-to-surface missile, although the Frogfoot was often equipped with simpler, unguided ground attack rockets.
Two plumes of smoke were rising from the jungle canopy beneath. The attackers had found some targets. However, these attackers were about to become targets themselves.
As the F-16s approached, neither Su-25 seemed to notice.
When he was sure that he was close enough, Troy locked on to one of the Sukhois and fired a Sidewinder. With only seconds to live, the pilot continued his attack. Troy saw ordnance drop from the pylons beneath his wings just as the aircraft erupted in a ball of fire.
The pilot of the second Frogfoot pulled back on the stick and started to climb when he noticed that his wing-man had been hit.
"Fox Two," Preston said in a low calm voice.
Troy broke right as he saw the Sidewinder streak toward the climbing Sukhoi. The pilot's urge to climb away from danger proved fatal. It reduced his already slow airspeed and made him an easy target.
Preston banked left and formed up on Troy, who was already headed back toward Mundo Maya. He gave Troy a thumbs-up, and Troy waved back. They deliberately kept their communications to a minimum to avoid the prying ears of eavesdroppers. Even with state-of-the-art encryption, there was always someone who cracked into secure channels.
Both pilots made tracks for Mundo. The less time they spent over the target area, the better. They had caught their quarry completely by surprise, and perhaps neither of the Frogfoot pilots would have had a chance to report that he was being attacked by another aircraft.