He heard the dull moan of the rocket engine as the SAM zoomed past him. Not close enough to detonate the proximity fuse.
Peering over his shoulder, he saw the missile wobbling in a ballistic arc. Without a target, the SAM was flying an unguided descent back toward the earth.
He had escaped. But just barely.
Pearly eased back on the stick, leveling the Hornet at only two hundred feet above the terrain. For the first time since he saw the SAM, he resumed breathing. The feeling of relief flowed over him like a warm bath.
But only for a few seconds. The feeling was rapidly replaced by a fresh emotion: rage. Those ragheads tried to take me out with that goddamn rocket!
The anger swelled in Pearly Gates as another thought took hold of him. They’re still down there, the bastards! Loading up another one to shoot at us.
He heard the Hawkeye calling: “Runner Two, status check. Do you have battle damage?”
Pearly’s left thumb went to the mike button to acknowledge. Then he removed it.
“Runner Two, do you read Battle-ax? Answer up.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, his fingers went to the stores page on his multipurpose display. He had no air-to-ground weapons with which to fight the SAM. Except one. He selected A/G GUN.
Gritti sat in the Hummer and stifled a yawn. Jesus, a short nap would be heaven. He’d never been so tired in his life.
But he couldn’t sleep now.
Hewlitt was giving him a worried look. “Maybe you’d better chill out, Gus. You can keep the Hummer and run the operation with—”
“Fuck that! I’ve been fighting this asshole for three days. Do you think I’m gonna miss the last hour of the battle?”
“Just thought I’d ask.”
The sounds of the skirmish across the valley had abated. The Sherji had put up a brief fight when the marines broke out of the perimeter, trying to defend what was left of their armor and artillery. With the Whiskey Cobras and a flight of Hornets spewing high explosives on them, they quickly ran out of enthusiasm.
“How many prisoners?” Gritti asked.
“Over a hundred. Those that couldn’t haul ass quick enough.”
Gritti could see them squatting in the clearing, guarded by a couple of marines. They looked less like soldiers than frightened tribesmen. Two intel specialists, with the help of a linguist, were pumping them for information about the Al-Fasr complex and the remaining Sherji force.
“Casualties?”
“One, a gunny in Delta company. A 7.62 round in the calf. He’s already been evacuated along with the wounded from the TRAP team.”
Gritti realized he had already asked that question. He removed his helmet and massaged his temples with his fingertips. Shit, he was tired. He was starting to forget stuff.
Darkness was less than three hours away, and he had no intention of spending another night in Yemen. But even more than the impending nightfall, he had another worry. At any time he expected to receive the order to withdraw. Before that happened, he intended to be inside Al-Fasr’s compound.
Pearly kept the Hornet low, a hundred feet above the deck, paralleling the ridge. The high ridge protruded from the scruffy terrain like the spine of a dragon. In tactical language this was called “terrain masking” — using topographic features like the ridge to obstruct the view of air defense radar.
As he skimmed the undulating terrain, a thought nagged at him: I’m going to catch hell for this. Maxwell is gonna kick my ass from here to Bahrain.
Pilots weren’t supposed to go after a SAM site by themselves, and certainly not with guns. It was the business of the EA-6B Prowlers or another package of F/A-18s to hammer the sites with HARM missiles. The HARM — high-speed antiradiation missile — homed in on the briefest of emissions from a fire control radar. Best of all, it could be fired from a safe standoff distance.
He put the thought out of his mind. He was a man on a mission. Like all fighter pilots, he hated SAMs and the evil bastards who fired them. Enemy fighter pilots he could regard as equals — warriors with whom he shared a code of battle. But the sneaky little shits who fired missiles at you were like rattlesnakes in the weeds.
Five miles. Almost to the pullup point. He needed at least three miles to pop up, acquire the target, and roll in. The site was concealed in a patch of trees at the end of a high, twisting ridgeline.
Nudging the throttles forward, he watched the airspeed notch over five hundred knots. He wanted lots of energy when he popped up.
At this speed and altitude, Pearly’s view amounted to a narrow cone of vision directly ahead. On either side, the terrain unrolled in a brownish blur. He had to concentrate, gently moving the stick to keep the Hornet just above the earth. One second’s lapse, and he would be a grease spot in the desert.
Still no RWR warning. Either the fire controllers weren’t picking him up yet — or they had hauled ass. The launcher and fire control radar were mounted on tracked vehicles. He prayed that they hadn’t yanked up their gear and headed for cover.
Three miles. Time to unmask.
He pulled the Hornet up hard, grunting under the four-G load. With the nose thirty degrees above the horizon on his HUD, he peered through the canopy at the drab brown Yemeni landscape, looking for the SAM site.
Nothing. Where was the goddamn missile site?
The warbling sharpened in pitch. They were getting a lock. Any second now he would see the flaming telephone pole streaking toward him. Where is the fucking site…?
Over there! He had been off by a couple of miles. Farther to the west, beyond the ridge line, pointing like a monolith through the canopy of trees and camouflage net. Moving, swiveling on its self-propelled launch chassis.
Toward him.
Rolling inverted, Pearly hauled the Hornet’s nose back through the horizon. He shoved the throttles full forward.
He guessed the range was two miles, maybe less. The warbling RWR changed pitch, telling him that the acquisition radar was locking onto him. The thought flashed through his mind that he perhaps should have let the HARM shooters do the job.
Too late. The long tapered nose of the missile was swinging toward him. Pearly and the SA-6 were both committed.
Diving at a shallow angle, the Hornet gathered speed quickly. Five hundred knots. Five-twenty.
He could see the site clearly. The missile was dark brown, nearly twenty feet long, slender and menacing. Another missile was nestled next to it, ready to fire. He remembered the intel details about the SA-6. Labeled “Gainful” by NATO, it had been around since the 1970s and ravaged Israeli jets during the Yom Kippur war.
The SA-6 was aimed directly at him. The warbling sound became frantic in his RWR.
Smoke was billowing from around the self-propelled launcher. The thing is launching!
He squeezed the trigger.
Brrrrrraaaaappppp. The first burst hit the earth twenty yards short, kicking up a storm of dirt and rocks.
The second caught the missile as it cleared the launcher. The high-explosive shells ripped through the missile’s cylindrical body.
The missile’s warhead detonated.
Twenty-millimeter cannon fire continued raining down on the SAM site. The second missile, still on the launcher, exploded. In succession, each missile in the stockpile exploded. Smoke and orange flame gushed into the sky above the site.
Pearly squeezed his eyes shut as the Hornet punched through the cloud of debris.
He gave his engine display a quick glance. Temperatures, RPMs, fuel flows still okay. No damage.
As he cranked around to make another firing pass on the missile battery, he saw that it wasn’t necessary. The self-propelled launcher was a smoldering hulk. A thirty-yard-wide hole had been cleared by the explosions of the missiles. The radar and fire control vehicles looked like shattered toys.