The major grinned. "You better let me tell them. Generals don't like to be scolded."
"Tell him we just missed being investigated by an armored personnel carrier and a hundred armed troops. They went past us four hundred yards to the east. I don't intend to let him and his colonels endanger the lives of my men."
"Right, Commander. I'll impress him with the gravity of the situation."
Murdock found Holt, and talked on the SATCOM with the American contact officer who had escorted them to the MLR.
"Yes, Lieutenant. We're here, no problems. More North troops moving into the area. We'll be coming out at first dark tonight. Hope you can provide us with a fake attack along the line somewhere. We don't want to have to fight our way through more than fifty to a hundred NKs along here."
"You'll have it. Let us know when you leave the hideout, and about when you'll get to the MLR. It's on the books. Everyone here is anxious to get the package back safely."
Murdock grunted and handed the set back to Holt. "Keep the box turned on and tuned to his frequency. Just in case they want to get in touch with us."
"That's a roger, sir."
Murdock touched the Motorola mike. "Listen up, guys. I want every man to build himself a hide-hole. I don't care if a platoon of NKs come through here, I don't want them to see a one of us. Keep in the perimeter defense, but dig in and cover up. Let's get going on that now. Lam, you stay on the northern side watching for more troops coming."
"Roger, Cap," Lam said.
For the next hour the men of Third Platoon of SEAL Team Seven worked one of their specialties. They called it playing Chiricahua. That tribe of the Apache nation became so adept at hiding themselves in the desert Southwest that they could put a hundred warriors on a flat, desert plain and be invisible. Then when the quarry rode into the trap, they would lift out of the sand and attack. It was said that the only time you saw a Chiricahua was when he wanted you to see him, and that was a fraction of a second before he killed you.
Lam was the best at making a small dug-out hole and camouflaging it with native materials. Here in this woodland i t was easy, with lots of native material to work with. Lam had his hole made and himself hidden within ten minutes.
Lam played a little game with himself. He lay on the point of a slight rise in the woods, which gave him slightly longer sight lines to the north. He sectioned the field, going over each part slowly, critically, watching for any movement, any signs of life.
On his second check of the section farthest north he spotted movement. He watched it again, put his 6 x 30 binoculars on it. Yes, had to be. He scowled for a moment. He had to be sure.
Another two minutes passed and he was sure. He checked his lip mike.
'"Commander, we've got some trouble up here. I'm on point farthest north. You need to look at this."'
"Be right up," Murdock said.
A few minutes later he slid in beside Lam's hide-hole and lifted his own binoculars.
"Just past that farthest-out patch of woods, Cap."
Murdock studied the area. "Shit fucker, what are they doing out here?"
"Moving up to the front, I'd say."
"Yeah, three NK tanks, the big ones, T-62's."
"More bad news, Cap. Now I can make out troops behind them. Must be fifteen or twenty men trailing each tank."
"The worst part, all three tanks are headed directly at this patch of woods," Murdock said.
Then he scowled. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
"Cat Two-Twelve, this is Home Base."
"This is Cat Two-Twelve. Go, Home Base." "We have a report of three aircraft heading your direction from the north from our E-2C Hawkeye. Expect some older-class MiGs. They are at fifteen thousand and about forty miles away closing your position at eleven hundred knots. Meet and greet."
"Our pleasure, CAG. Changing course now."
The three F-14 Navy fighters swept into a graceful turn heading due north, their radars reaching out to find the targets.
Cat Two-Twelve was Lieutenant Forest Corey, "Corny" to his buddies. "Got anything yet, Marsh?"
Corey asked his RIO in the backseat. The Radar Intercept Officer, Marshal "Marsh" Landower, had his nose buried in his readout radar screen.
"Nothing yet, Corny. Should be coming up fast. We're closing now at twenty-four hundred knots?"
"Near to it."
"That's twenty-seven-sixty miles per hour or over forty-six miles a minute. We should be halfway there by now."
Corey spoke on the plane-to-plane TAC to his two wing men.
"Gents, they'll probably split when they spot us. We'll take left, right, and middle, as always. Good hunting."
"About time we got some action up here," Pete Platamone said.
"Roger that, Leader man," the other pilot, "Ham" Jones, said. "Free beer for a week for whoever nails the first bastard."
"I've got them," RIO Marsh Landower said. "You're right, they are splitting, still out about twenty miles."
"Stay with them, guys," Corny said. "I've got the middle one."
"No radar-friendly recognition signal from the three," Marsh said. "They are not friendly. I repeat, the targets are not friendly."
"Light them up, Marsh, let's do it."
Marsh had the radar turned on and worked to get a lockup of his signal on the blip on his screen. The MiG was still eighteen miles away and turning hard to the left. "Stay with him, Corny. Almost had him. Damn. Now, now."
"Weapons free, fire when ready," Corny said.
"I have lock-on and… yes, that's a Fox Three," Marsh said. It was the traditional call for a Phoenix missile being fired.
At once the heavy Tomcat aircraft lurched several feet upward as the one-thousand-pound missile dropped from it and the solid-fuel rocket fired, jolting the thirteen-foot-long missile ahead at a speed that would soon reach Mach 5. It left a long cotton white contrail arching into the sky, then turning to the left following the radar input on the target.
The Grumman F-14 is the only aircraft in the U.S. arsenal that can fire the Phoenix. It takes a Hughes AWG-9 or AWG-17 radar/fire-control system, which the F-14 has. The system can be set to track while scanning and lock onto six separate targets while simultaneously guiding six missiles to their targets at the same time.
With its 127-mile range, the Phoenix would have no trouble reaching the MiG less than twenty miles away.
Marsh watched the enemy plane's radar blip do quick and sudden maneuvers to try to outwit the Phoenix, but it never had a chance.
The AWG-9 pulse-Doppler radar in the F-14 never lost contact with the MiG. Seconds later the blip dissolved from the RIO's radar screen as the Phoenix slammed up the tailpipe of the MiG and shattered the complex aircraft into metal confetti that rained down on the Korean land below.
"Splash one MiG," Corny reported on the Home Base and plane-to-plane frequency.
"Damn, lost mine," Platamone said. "Bastard hit the deck and then dodged behind a small hill. The Phoenix liked the mass of the hill better than the MiG. He's to hell and gone down there on the deck. Must be scraping his undercarriage on some of those rice paddies."
"Still playing tag with mine, Corny," Jones said. "Almost had him nailed, then he slipped away. There it is. Yes. We've got a Fox Three on the Phoenix. Shouldn't be long now." "Home Base, this is CAT Two-One-Two. Anything cist for us?"
"The Hawkeye shows that your lost MiG is streaking back north less than fifty feet off the terrain."
"That's a splash on the second MiG," the calm voice of Jones's RIO said.
"Halverson, don't you ever get excited?" Corny asked.
"Hey, it was just one MiG. Want us to chase the other one?"
Home Base cut in. "Two out of three, good hunting. Don't chase the third one, Jones. All three of you stay CAP in that general area. You're now about forty miles north of the MLR. Stack at thirty, twenty, and ten thousand. Good shooting."