“Have you changed your mind?” asked Al-Fasr.
“No.” The question irritated Rittmann. It was more of that same old condescension, that verdammt superiority. This brown-skinned Semite liked to pose as if he were some kind of aristocrat, removed by several degrees of breeding from the likes of Rittmann and the other mercenary fighter pilots.
Oberleutnant Wolf Rittmann, formerly of the German Democratic Republic Air Force, considered himself the equal of any fighter pilot in the world. Or so he had been before the union of the two Germanys and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Since then life had been uncertain. Unlike several of his colleagues, he had not been invited to join the new MiG-29 Staffel of the German Luftwaffe. He was forced to seek employment as a MiG instructor first in Bangladesh, then Libya, and most recently in Iraq. In each case they were shit jobs, low-paying and dangerous. Low-paying because the compensation was always in the worthless local currency. Dangerous because the incompetent peasants whom he attempted to train were not qualified to drive oxen.
“Are you frightened, Rittmann?” A half smile played across Al-Fasr’s lips.
Rittmann felt like telling the Arab to go fornicate with sheep. No matter how long he stayed here, he would never shed his feelings about this inferior race of people. To him they would always be desert dwellers whose circumstances had changed only because vast oil deposits existed beneath their feet. Otherwise they would be huddling in their miserable tents, cooking over camel-turd fires.
“Frightened? No.” Rittmann gazed over at the sleek shapes of the other MiG fighters. “Am I worried? Ja, bestimmt. With only three of us to counter an entire strike force, what do you think? Of course I am worried.”
“It will proceed exactly as I planned it,” said Al-Fasr. “Carry out your orders, and you will be a wealthy man.”
Rittmann had no idea how it would feel to be a wealthy man. Very nice, he suspected, but it didn’t matter. Wealth was not the reason he had come to Yemen. Fixed in Rittmann’s mind all these years was a different motivation. He wanted to fly in combat against a Western adversary. Not in simulation, not in training as they had done for decades in the East Bloc. He wanted to witness at close range the fireball from an American fighter that he had shot down.
For over ten years his theater of operations had been East Germany and its Warsaw Pact neighbors. Never had he actually confronted a foreign adversary. Instead, he had skimmed the edges of the three air corridors into Berlin, tightening the sphincters of American and British airline pilots. Once he had roared across the rooftops of West Berlin at supersonic speed. According to the newspaper reports, he had shattered shop windows for three kilometers along the Kurfurstendamm, the city’s main artery. It was the closest he had ever come to inflicting damage on an enemy.
Until now. Al-Fasr was giving him an opportunity. His compensation — if he lived to collect it — was on deposit in an account in Luxembourg. A hundred-thousand-franc retainer, with another thirty thousand for each combat mission flown, plus a fifty-thousand-franc bonus for each American aircraft downed. It exceeded the total of everything Rittmann had earned in his life.
The plan was deceptively simple. A strike force from an American aircraft carrier would be arriving to pound what they thought was Al-Fasr’s base, but what in fact was a collection of empty tin-roofed structures that Al-Fasr had erected in the highlands. As the strike fighters were entering their weapons-delivery profiles — when they were most vulnerable — Al-Fasr, Rittmann, and the Czech pilot, Novotny, would come blasting out of underground revetments. Using the old British Petroleum access road as a runway, they would stay low and accelerate, pouncing on the Americans without warning. Three more MiGs would remain concealed in the revetments, to be committed in later battle.
Three against a force of forty or more. Al-Fasr, he suspected, might be crazy. If so, he was also brilliant. Despite Rittmann’s deep-seated ethnic bias against Arabs in general, he had to admit that this one was a competent fighter pilot. In their initial training sorties in Sudan, Al-Fasr had impressed Rittmann and the other mercenaries in one-versus-one air combat.
Their survival today depended on the element of surprise. Al-Fasr had assured them that the presence of the MiGs had not been detected. Rittmann found this hard to believe, but since Al-Fasr himself was leading the mission, Rittmann tended to believe him. If nothing else, Al-Fasr’s intelligence network was superb. He had timed the delivery of the MiGs from Libya, via Chad to the old BP complex here in northwest Yemen, precisely during the window in which the Americans’ Big Bird surveillance satellite could not peer down on them.
Standing next to the MiG he would soon be flying, Rittmann ran his hand along the slick leading edge of the wing. For all its complexity, the MiG-29 was suited to primitive environments like this. Designed as a self-contained fighter, the big jet could be loaded, started, and launched with a minimum of ground equipment. Despite its outdated technology, the MiG-29, with its brutishly powerful Klimov engines, was faster than the Super Hornet, more agile than the F-14 Tomcat. Its weapons were dated but deadly. The AA-11 Archer heat-seeking missile, with its broad off-boresight capability, was superior to the American Sidewinder.
He noticed Al-Fasr looking at him. That condescending smile still played on the Arab’s lips.
Rittmann bristled. “When the Americans learn about these bunkers, they’ll blow your compound to hell.”
The smile stayed frozen on Al-Fasr’s face. “Do not concern yourself with matters beyond your responsibility. Your task is to kill enemy fighters. Nothing more.”
Rittmann wasn’t willing to drop it, but then he heard a pulsing beep. It came from the transceiver attached to Al-Fasr’s flight suit.
Al-Fasr turned away and put the handset to his ear. He listened for a moment, his head nodding. “Very well,” he said. “Inform all stations.”
He turned back to Rittmann. “This discussion is ended. Go man your aircraft. It is time for you to earn your money.”
CHAPTER SIX
DECEPTION
From twenty thousand feet, the complex looked just like the recon photos. Maxwell could pick out what Morse had assured them was the headquarters building, a sprawling, metal-roofed structure with two extended wings. Arranged around it were a half a dozen smaller buildings, reported to be barracks and weapons storage facilities.
The complex lay in a wide valley with terraced hillsides on either side, opening to a sprawling plateau. Only one item seemed to be missing. Maxwell saw no sign of a road, no other access to the complex. The faded landscape might have been the surface of Mars.
It was spooky. No sign of life, no vehicles moving, no troops running for cover. If Al-Fasr possessed antiaircraft batteries, they were eerily silent. No missile alerts were coming from the strike fighters’ RWRs or from the AWACS.
The HARM shooters had preceded the strikers, launching ADM-141 tactical decoys to trick the enemy into lighting up air defense radars. If a target-tracking radar came on-line, a HARM missile was poised to destroy it.
So far, no HARMs had been fired. What radar the enemy possessed was staying off-line.
Likewise, the four-man crews of the EA-6B Prowlers had been frustrated. Their job was to jam the enemy’s air defense systems with their suite of airborne electronic warfare equipment. There was nothing to jam.