“How many planes?” he asked.
“It looks like three or four formations, mí general. We do not know yet how many planes are in each formation. One is in front.”
“That is their fighter sweep, dammit! Where are you sending our boys?”
“To intercept that formation, mí general!”
Hernandez fought to remain in control. The watch captain had never seen such a formation, and inside 100 miles, he had only minutes to scramble his fighters. In their “training,” they had intercepted just one contact: a low/slow flyer, in clear air, daylight hours. Not three dozen fighters — a formation the size of the entire AMV fighter force! A formation coming at them with multi-mode sensors and long-range missiles and flown by the Americans, the finest in the world! Sending his Vipers into that buzz saw was suicidal.
“No, you idiot, that formation is ready for them! Send them south — to draw the Americans away from here. Maybe we can come in from their flank.”
“Sí, mí general!”
In the darkened control room, Hernandez watched the scope as the cursor rotated to illuminate the heavy radar return from the east. He paid special attention to the blips emerging from the storms. The controller at the console was talking to his fighters on the radio, and the communication was piped in through an overhead speaker. Hernandez heard his nervous pilots acknowledge the instructions as they maneuvered to intercept. Employing their heat-seeking missiles required them to see the target at close range.
They didn’t have a chance. Hernandez couldn’t bear it.
“Turn them south! Now!” he fumed.
“Sí, mí general! We have radioed the instructions!”
Hernandez heard the excited pilots transmit that they had contact on the Americans and were turning to engage them over the Columbus Channel, fifty miles east. He saw the blips turn left into the maw of the American missile envelopes.
“South! Now, I say!”
After lifting his MASTER ARM switch to ARM, Wilson transmitted to the Slash divisions. “Tapes on, Armstrong.”
Up ahead, the Blockers, a tactical formation of transonic Super Hornets, saw the two bogeys turn left and south at thirty miles. It appeared to be a strategy to pull them away from San Ramón. Chasing down the bogeys — declared by Nightlight as bandits — would cause the American formations to bunch up in the vicinity of the airfield with an increased chance of a blue-on-blue engagement. A disappointed Blocker lead had to skip this opportunity for an air-to-air kill.
The job of the Blockers was to shoot down anything in front of the strikers, which would allow them to offset left and roll in on the runways to the right. This gave the strikers the shortest and most direct line back to the relative safety of “feet wet,” despite the proximity of Río Salta. Pulling off target with a bag of knots, the strikers would quickly skirt the heavily defended port
Then, the bandits turned back into them, and the four Rhinos, in eager anticipation, sorted and locked them inside launch range. Three of the four aircraft fired radar-guided AMRAAMs, and, from miles behind, Wilson watched tiny points of light separate from the Blocker aircraft and rise on their profile toward the Venezuelan jets. They now knew the Venezuelans were ready and fighting back. And over San Ramón, they saw AAA mixed in with the lightning.
In the far distance, as one of the Blocker missiles found its mark, Wilson saw a flash followed by a jagged and descending trail of fire. Another distant explosion to the southwest produced excited cries from the Blockers. “Splash two!” they transmitted as another curling trail of light fell earthward. The Blockers had knocked down the bandits. They had done their job.
Now, approaching the initial point, Wilson and the Slashes had to do theirs.
With high altitude winds at their backs, they were now over 600 knots of ground speed and would be at their roll-in point in minutes. Wilson’s senses were becoming overloaded. His Radar Homing and Warning gear was booping and deedling in his headset which meant enemy radars were watching him, illuminating him. To his left, he saw the fiery trails of HARMs fired by the Lances arc high overhead. Their purpose was to home in and silence the enemy emissions as the Volts jammed them. Disconcerting, however, was another cloud.
It was a stationary thunder cell, one they could avoid by going around or over. The problem was it was parked at the point in space from which Wilson needed to lead the Slashes to attack on San Ramón’s runways. The plan was offset left, roll-in right, but, with two minutes to go, the cloud was right there. Wilson watched it on the radar, hoping for rather than sensing any motion, knowing he needed to make a call— soon. “Come on!” he muttered. Wilson knew the others could see the same electronic blob on their cockpit radars. This was a contingency they hadn’t briefed, and Wilson had to make up a play and hope everyone understood. You do a buttonhook. You go long.
“Slashes, we need to go mirror image, offset right, roll-in left. Repeat; offset right, roll-in left. Come off northeast, and get feet wet ASAP!”
His eleven wingmen, in order, acknowledged the transmission as they set themselves up on Wilson’s right side, all of them breathing deep as adrenalin pumped through their bodies. The long chute of jets would roll into a steep dive, one by one, and line up on their aimpoints — just like the dive-bombers and attack jets of yore. The 20th-century weapon delivery would send a political message to a 21st-century adversary in a new and undeclared conflict that, one week ago, was on no one’s radar. Wilson and the eleven jets next to him would do this for Washington. It was their job, their oath, and they followed orders, even stupid ones to cut the frickin’ runways. And, if required, they would come back to recut them. Venezuela needed to be taught a lesson, and if they dishonored some damn diplomat — never mind the societies they destroyed by the poison they mass-produced — they would get theirs.
None of that mattered in the twelve Slash cockpits. To them, the reason they were there was the last thing on their minds. They were now in tactical formation over dark and hostile territory, watching their FLIR displays build and sweetening their aiming diamonds as the briefed landmarks and reference points came into view. The Blockers were off right, at the moment heading north toward Río Salta, and the Lances were lobbing HARMs into the boiling kettle of San Ramón’s defenses. They saw lightning to the southwest, AAA bursts in front and below. The bright booster rocket of a SAM burst from its launching pad. When Wilson heard cries on the radio that one of the Slashes was spiked and breaking formation to evade, he continued to count down the range, count down the seconds, check wingmen positions, and watch AAA shells rise single file into the sky. Despite another lightning flash to the left, everything was silent in the Slash cockpits — except for clipped radio transmissions, the hum of electronics, and their own deep breaths and elevated heartbeats.