“Weismann.”
It was the operations officer at New Amsterdam. “Herr Colonel, there is pandemonium at the wells!”
“Let us not have it here. What is happening?”
“We are being attacked!”
“We?”
“The wells, Herr Colonel. Twenty Soviet aircraft. The American stealth planes also. We have lost nine fighters and four tanker aircraft.”
Weismann shook his head. The tankers. Unarmed aircraft. The Americans and Soviets were diabolical.
“What is Schmidt doing?” he demanded.
“I do not know. The attackers are just now reaching the oil field.”
Zeigman’s defenses had not held up. Still, there were fifteen fighters left, apparently.
Though probably not enough.
“Keep me posted, Major.” He slapped the telephone down.
“It is bad, Albert?”
“Not good at all, Max,” he said, then turned to the noncommissioned officer. “Corporal, you go find that banker’s son. We are launching immediately.”
As soon as the Tornadoes dove on the Tern Flight MiGs, Volontov advanced his throttles to military power and put his nose down.
He reset the radar range to thirty kilometers, to make the blips more distinct.
Below, the ice gave off a dim luminescence. Ahead, the platforms had extinguished their red warning lights.
The well the Americans had labeled number seventeen was twenty kilometers away. The Tern Flight was nine kilometers away, pulling well apart from each other as they lined up on their assigned targets.
Two more kilometers and they could begin targeting with the lasers, locking a laser dot onto a dome in precisely the right spot, high and away from the wellhead. The computer would hold the dot in place, and the missiles would home on it. The objectives, as McKenna had related them, was to demonstrate that Soviet and American fighters did not fear attacking the wells, to disrupt the operations, and to create panic and a loss of morale among the platform personnel. It would make the landings by American, British, and Soviet troops go very smoothly.
The four Tornadoes seemed hesitant, unable to choose among so many targets.
“Condor Two, you will shoot down the westernmost airplanes.”
“Of course, Condor One.”
It was too easy. His radar could track up to eight aircraft at once.
Volontov used the miniature stick guiding the target flower on the screen to encircle the lead aircraft, clicked the button to lock on to it, then circled the second Tornado and locked on to that one also.
The beep in his headphones of the missile heads confirmed that the missiles had secured their targets, the Tornadoes’ active radars, and would not let go.
He depressed the commit button on the stick.
The computer thought about for a halfsecond, decided the time was right, and launched two AA-11 missiles.
They dove into the night, trailing hot white fire.
Munoz extended the range of the radar as they came out of the clouds.
“We’ve got four comin’ from the southwest, jefe. Another four convergin’ from the west. Hey, Do-Wop! You see ’em over there?”
“Got them, Tiger.”
Nitro Fizz Williams said, “There’s three more headed this way from the northeast, but I see MiGs hot on their tails. I don’t think they’re going to make it… nope. Boom! One down.”
McKenna scanned the screen, evaluating positions.
“We can beat the interception before the first pass, Deltas. Go over to rockets for two seconds on my mark. That’ll boost us out of the interception course, but we’ll have to use speed brakes before we reach the ships.”
“Roger that, Snake Eyes,” Dimatta said.
“Wilco, since I’m playing navy,” Conover acknowledged.
“Mark!”
Delta Blue accelerated from 700 knots to Mach 1.5 in six seconds.
McKenna shut down the rocket motors and checked the radar screen. The Germans had been left far behind.
“Cottonseed to Delta Blue.”
“Come on.”
“You’ve got the lead time. Info item: ASW choppers from the task forces are dropping ashcans on submarines. Watch out for those choppers on your way back.”
“Got it, Cottonseed.”
McKenna focused his attention on his battle group of ships, the one located on the south-center of the platforms. They were coming up rapidly.
Each of the MakoSharks was taking on one battle group before their attacks on the wells.
McKenna dumped his speed brakes, fighting to get down to 700 knots, to improve the accuracy.
“Range forty miles, Snake Eyes. I want the payload bay, save our wing-mounted stuff.”
As the speed came down, McKenna opened the payload bay doors, extended the first rack of missiles, and armed all four of them.
“There you go, Tiger.”
“Good. It’s all ASM.”
Twenty miles.
The three ships ahead of him were already firing flares. Either the Tornadoes behind him had raised the alarm or the ships were tracking the radar.
The orange circle darted about the screen under Munoz’s control, picking out each of the ships and locking missile heads onto the targets.
“I’m usin’ two Wasps off the outboard pylons also, amigo.”
The Wasps weren’t large enough to cause extreme damage to anything as big as a destroyer or cruiser unless the depleted uranium, armor-piercing warhead penetrated the steel plates at water level. McKenna was hoping to cause enough damage on deck, or maybe fires, to create some panic.
“Any time, Tiger.”
Munoz launched the six missiles just as the ship in the center, the cruiser, launched four SAMs at them.
“Shut her down, Tiger.”
The radar went passive, disappearing from the ship’s tracking system.
He put the nose down and headed for the water, leveling off at a thousand feet. He retracted the forward missile rack and lowered the aft rack, arming the missiles.
“We got two strikes, Snake Eyes,” Dimatta called. “Lookin’ good.”
Delta Green was a few miles closer to her targets.
“Goddamn!” Munoz said, watching the night-vision screen. “Love those Wasps. Right on track, right on target.”
Ten miles.
Flares erupting everywhere.
On the screen, the greenish-white trails of all six Wasps winked out almost simultaneously, followed by six green eruptions.
“Six hits!” Munoz said.
Glancing through the windscreen, McKenna saw the blossoms dying out as flames began to spread.
The four SAMs shot by, three thousand feet above them.
“Give them a couple more, Tiger.”
“Roger, codger”
Two more Wasps leaped from their rails on the aft bay rack and began to home on the cruiser.
The frequency of flare firing diminished.
Five miles.
The Hamburg was clearly defined in the light of her own flares. McKenna saw both missiles slam into the bridge and detonate.
Blue-yellow-green-red-orange flame everywhere.
The antiaircraft guns opened up, but the concentration of fire was erratic and almost purposeless.
McKenna nudged the hand controller and banked to the left, passing the ships in a three-mile arc. As he rolled upright, he looked to his left. All three ships had fires of some degree raging.
The firing from the ships died away.
“Come right three degrees,” Munoz ordered.
“Right three. How about you, Cancha?”
“We’re through the heavy stuff, Snake Eyes. Lining up on number six.”
“Josie says we got them licked,” Williams added.
“Con Man?”
“Fuckers got my right aileron.”
“You canceling?”
“Hell, no. We’re flying this mother.”
“You sure it’s all right?”