“Would John Wayne use a goddamn missile?”
That attitude had grown out of the Navy’s Top Gun program. Tombstone, one of Jefferson’s resident Top Gun aces, gave regular training sessions and exercises for the other pilots. He liked to point out that Navy aviators had been getting into deep trouble early in the Vietnam fighting because they relied too heavily on missiles … and had forgotten how to dogfight. That piece of lore was basic to every lecture on ACM and was now drilled into Navy aviators from their first day in the air.
Army didn’t disagree with the concept, but he was a technical pilot, flying by the book and making his decisions by the book. No hot-dogging or seat-of-the-pants flying for him! If an aviator had a million-dollar high-tech missile with which to blow an enemy out of the sky before that enemy even knew he was being tracked, so much the better. As Patton had once put it, “The idea is not to die for your country, but to make some other poor bastard die for his.” Combat, whatever the kids with their aviator’s sunglasses and fighter jock jackets said or thought, was not a game, not a courtly joust between gentlemen, not a test of chivalry. It was fire, pain, and sudden death. “Chivalry,” he’d said during more than one Ready Room bull session, “gets you dead.”
“Grand slam!” Dixie called. “Splash one bogie!”
On his VDI, his second Phoenix closed relentlessly on another target. On the radar screen, he could see the bogie twisting away toward the south, trying to outrun its Mach 5 nemesis …
Lieutenant Commander Ravi Tahliani pulled back on his stick, urging the Sea Harrier to climb above the waves. Smoke still boiled into the sky a mile ahead where Lieutenant Venkateraman’s Harrier had vanished in orange flame and fragments.
“Viraat! Viraat!” he called. “Blue King Leader! We are under attack!
Blue King Three is hit!”
“Roger, Blue King Leader. Overwatch reports several enemy fighters north of your position, range thirty to forty miles.”
“Blue King Leader, Blue Five!” another voice interrupted. “They’ve got a lock on me!”
Tahliani twisted his head, trying to see. Blue Five had been nearly four miles behind him and to the right. “Break left, Blue Five!” Gods!
How could the Americans kill over such a distance?
He snapped his Harrier into a hard right turn, his eyes still scanning the eastern sky, looking for Blue Five. The pilot was Lieutenant Rani Gupta, son of an old family friend, and one of Tahliani’s proteges.
There! He could just make out Rani’s Harrier, a speck just above the water, streaking south. In the sky to the north, a white contrail was plunging toward the fleeing plane.
“Chaff, Rani!” he yelled into his helmet mike. “Chaff!”
There was no answer, but the speck was rising now, fighting for altitude, a standard maneuver for trying to disengage from a radar-homing missile after strewing clouds of chaff in its path.
It didn’t seem to make any difference. The contrail continued to plunge from the sky. Faster than Tahliani’s eye could follow, it stopped, merging with Rani’s plane.
A puff of flame and black smoke smeared the sky, followed by a much brighter flash as Rani’s fuel and weapons detonated. Flaming wreckage continued to climb straight into the sky, paused a moment, then fell back toward the sea. If the young Indian flyer had managed to eject, there was no sign.
“Viraat, this is Blue Leader. Blue Five has been destroyed.”
“Roger, Blue King Leader. Continue the mission.”
Continue the mission. Tahliani’s face settled into a hard scowl behind his dark visor. His primary mission had been to engage the American fighter cover protecting their carrier, opening the way for ground-based strike aircraft. Only after the ground-based aircraft were engaged were the Sea Harriers to turn their attention to the American and Soviet ships. For that purpose, Blue King’s aircraft each carried two Sea King missiles slung beneath their down-canted wings.
But for air-to-air combat, all they had were four R-550 Magic air-to-air missiles and their cannons. Magic was comparable to the American Sidewinder, IR-seekers with a range of perhaps two miles. He had nothing, nothing with which to counter an enemy still thirty-five miles away!
How was he supposed to carry out his mission when he could not even get close enough to the enemy to fire?
But possibly there was a chance. He had his Sea Harrier in a steady climb now, gaining altitude to extend the range of his Ferranti Blue Fox radar. Maximum range for an aircraft-sized target was about thirty-five miles for the system. Perhaps … There it was, a lone aircraft at the very limit of his radar’s range, traveling toward the northwest. If it was an American Tomcat, it had a top speed of better than Mach 2 and could easily out-pace his Harrier.
But perhaps there was another way …
CHAPTER 19
“You sent for me, Mr. President.”
“Yes, Admiral. Come in.”
Admiral Magruder approached the enormous desk. He’d never seen the President looking this worn. The crisis of the past two days had drained the man.
As it had drained him, he admitted to himself. Magruder had not slept well — or long — these past few nights. He didn’t expect to sleep this night either, not with the latest reports coming out of the Arabian Sea.
“I thought you should know, Tom,” the President said. “The battle group is now under full attack.”
Magruder felt his stomach knot. Matt … “No hits, no casualties that we know of yet,” the President continued.
“But once the storm breaks, it’s going to be bad. I’ve … I’ve requested the presence of the Indian ambassador. He’ll be here in another fifteen minutes. Maybe we can still work something out … a disengagement, a cease-fire. But …” He left the rest unsaid, and Magruder nodded his understanding. If Indian warplanes were already airborne, the chances of recalling them were slight.
The President leaned forward, his hands clasped on his desk. “Matt, this is the crunch. The reason I brought you here. I need your help.”
Magruder couldn’t tell if the President was referring to his summons to the office now, or the whole purpose of his transfer from the Pentagon.
Perhaps he meant both. “I’ll help anyway I can, Mr. President.”
“We still have one chance, you know.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Disengage. Break off and run for it.” The President held up one hand as Magruder’s face showed his surprise. “No, don’t say it, Tom. Wait until I’m through. The whole question is whether our claim to those waters ten thousand miles from this desk is worth the lives of several thousand of our boys.”
Magruder tried to smile, and failed. “Mr. President, it’s a little late to reconsider now, isn’t it?”
“Admiral, the man who sits at this desk thinks of carrier battle groups as a tool. A way to reach out and influence other parts of the world, other leaders. Okay, threaten, if you prefer. But in international politics, a threat is generally a lot more effective than a plea. It’s the way the damned system works.”
“Granted. You used us a time or two, remember? At Wonsan? In Thailand?”
“That’s why I called you, Tom. Your battle group is really up against it this time. When I sent you into Korea, we both knew you’d be outnumbered, but it was a quick, sharp action. Get the Marines in, get our people, get them out. And the Koreans didn’t have much to threaten your ships with beyond some outdated strike aircraft armed with free-fall bombs.”