Destroying a training camp known to include citizens from the US, UK, France, and other allied nations would have a high political cost, but the president had made his intentions clear.
There would not be any exceptions.
Space-based assets and unmanned aerial vehicles had confirmed the nature of the threat at the secluded compound.
Ricardo and Amanda rapidly approached the coastline with their exterior lights extinguished, flying a low-altitude profile.
Deedle, deedle.
Amanda frowned and glanced down at the flight control system (FCS) caution light, which indicated an error in the fly-by-wire system. Advanced jets typically used a computer to convey the pilot’s flight control inputs to the corresponding flight control surfaces. In the case of the F/A-18E, it was called the flight control system, and a caution light could indicate a possible malfunction — meaning the computer may not convey the correct fight-control commands.
Stabbing it with a gloved index finger, she reset it, and the light vanished just as the Super Hornet rushed inland from the south, fast and menacing, before turning northeast, skimming the rising terrain. They would attack the compound from the west, popping up at the last second to deliver their weapons from a low-angle dive. Off the target, they would egress in a southerly direction, remaining low level until reaching international waters to avoid Iranian SAMs, then climb to meet up with the KC-135 tankers en route back to Vinson before the sun came up.
That’s the plan, anyway, she thought as they followed the desolate topography and she inched her control column to the right, following Ricardo’s northeasterly turn before adjusting it back to place the Super Hornet in a shallow climb to clear the mountain range.
Maintaining radio silence, they loosened their formation while arming their Joint Direct Attack Munitions. JDAM technology converted unguided bombs, in this case standard MK 82s, into smart munitions called GBU-38 JDAMs — meaning they could place the five hundred pounders on the ground with ridiculous accuracy.
Amanda had just taken her hand off the Master Arm switch when she heard the familiar deedle, deedle again.
“Perfect fucking timing,” she deadpanned to herself.
After checking for other problems with her jet, Amanda quickly reset it again, and the caution light once more went out.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she shifted her gaze back to the tail of her flight leader as he—
Deedle, deedle.
“This can’t be happening!”
Hesitant to break radio silence as they approached their target, now less than forty miles away, Amanda again reset the FCS. The light went out, and everything seemed to go back to normal.
Glaring at the FCS caution light as if it were a rattlesnake, she started to thumb the radio switch and then stopped. We’ll be off the target in another few minutes. Suck it up, Miss Iowa.
Hugging the terrain twenty miles south of the compound, she shadowed Ricardo’s turn to their run-in heading, flying perfect formation and praying the flight controls would cooperate for the next few minutes.
When Ricardo’s aircraft began the pull to initiate their pop-up maneuver seven miles out, Amanda followed and began edging away from her flight leader to avoid a midair collision should her questionable fly-by-wire system decide to act up again. She could not wait to pull off target and head for mother Vinson.
When the F/A-18Es were almost vertical, Ricardo began his roll into the target roughly a mile west of the airport, and Amanda began her roll behind—
Deedle, deedle.
“C’mon!” she screamed, but continued to roll the aircraft, attempting to reset the FCS while momentarily losing sight of her flight leader. She eased the throttles back to maintain separation.
Seconds from bomb release, she saw the glow from Ricardo’s twin engines. Safely behind him, she concentrated on delivering her bombs on target, taking solace in watching the GBU-38s drop from her underside pylons.
But as she began a high-g pullout, bottoming out close to the ground, her fighter began an un-commanded roll to the left.
Deedle, deedle.
“For the love of—”
Amanda cocked the stick full right, but the aircraft continued to roll to the left. She instinctively pressed on the right rudder as the plane passed 110 degrees of bank.
But as she started to reach for the ejection seat handle, the jet began to respond. Sucking in a lungful of oxygen, she wrestled with the flight controls, frantically trying another reset.
No luck.
The nose of the fighter jet continued to rise higher as Amanda used the trim switch to bring it down to the horizon. The “trim” was basically a set of small control surfaces hinged to the end of the ailerons and elevators that could be used to partially counter the erroneous FCS commands.
“Ricky, I’m in trouble,” she said, finally breaking radio silence.
“Diamond, say posit.”
“I’m headed eastbound. FCS failure.”
“I’m heading your way, ease your power.”
“Easing the power,” she replied in a strained voice. “I’ve got a soup-sandwich going on in this fucking Rhino. Total FUBAR.”
“Hang in like you-know-who,” he said.
As hard as she tried to get the aircraft to turn right, it continued to roll left and yawed in uncoordinated flight, and the trim mechanism didn’t have enough play to counter it fully.
Amanda decided to try a shallow turn to the left and continue 270 degrees until the erratic jet pointed due south.
“I’m trying a two-seventy to the left.”
“Copy that,” Ricardo replied, knowing that Amanda was in serious trouble, but all he could do was follow her and hope that they were able to make it back to the ship.
He made a large heading change to where he thought her jet would be. “Diamond, flash your lights.”
“Roger.”
He searched the sky for her.
“Do you have a visual, Ricky?”
“Negative,” he replied in a worried voice.
Amanda continued to muscle the plane in an awkward turn to the left. “I’m headed north and coming around to the west.”
“Copy, let’s have the lights, Diamond.”
She left them on for six seconds. “Do you have me?”
“Negative. Say altitude.”
Keeping a level turn, she watched her flight instruments. “I’m at six hundred feet passing through west looking for a southern heading.”
“Copy that,” Ricardo replied. “I’m leveling at seven hundred feet.”
“Roger,” she replied, breathing hard, considering turning on her AN/APG-79 AESA radar, capable of tracking air targets, to locate her flight leader. But they were over Iranian territory and doing so would paint a big X on her back for the Sayyad-3 SAM stations that the intelligence briefing indicated were guarding the airport. She considered contacting one of the E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes airborne early warning and control planes overseeing all of the sorties, but their flight had taken them just north of the radar range of the nearest E-2D circling over the Arabian Sea. “This is a nightmare.”