He pushed Hawk Two into a rolling dive to reverse course and overfly the bunker again.
“Missiles launched! Flak batteries are shooting unguided in grid A-1. Evasive maneuvers,” said the weapons officer.
“Losing control connection for Hawk Two!” warned the Flighthawk computer.
“Nancy, we need to double back,” said Zen as he struggled to put Hawk Two’s camera on the bunker complex. He jerked his right hand instead of his left, cursed at the infinitesimal delay.
“We have SA-2’s in the air,” said Cheshire calmly.
“Jam them.”
“We are. But we’re not taking any unnecessary risks now that the team is down. Evasive maneuvers.”
Zen felt himself being pushed sideways as the Megafortress beamed the SAM site’s pulse-Doppler radar. He lost Hawk Two and had to throw One’s throttle to the firewall to try to keep up with the EB-52. The Libyans had launched no less than twelve of the high-altitude surface-to-air missiles at them. while the Megafortress’s ECMs had no trouble thwarting their radars, there were an awful lot of them in the air, just dodging the debris was a chore.
Sixty 57mm antiaircraft guns were filling the air below the missiles with lead and cordite. The flak rose in plumes, hot coals for Raven and the U/MF to dance across.
The computer brought Hawk Two into a wide arc south of Raven as Jeff flew Hawk One to the east, cutting back on an intercept as an SA-2 exploded overhead. Sweat poured from Jeff’s neck and back as the small U/MF began to jitter up and down, buffeted by a second explosion he hadn’t seen or anticipated. He gunned the throttle, but got no response; the plane suddenly began nosing down and he tasted metal in his mouth, felt his stomach go sour with a wave of dread. For a moment he thought he was going in – he saw ground loom and shapes dance, and his head began to spin. Then the U/MF picked herself up and he had only blue sky in front of him; he was clear, accelerating and climbing. The Megafortress was a bare two miles ahead.
“SEAL teams have secured the perimeter,” reported Cascade. “SEAL teams are inside, encountering only token resistance.”
“The prisoners aren’t in the bunker,” said Zen. He was on the interphone; only the others aboard Raven could hear him. “Where was that encrypted video transmission?”
“About fifty miles, south by southeast,” said the weapons officer.
“Jeff?”
“Bree, get us back there. That’s where Smith and the others must be.”
“No offense, Major, but I’m flying this plane,” said Cheshire.
“I’m sorry, Nancy. The bunker is a bluff. The trial broadcast didn’t stop when the satellites were hit.”
“He’s right,” said the weapons officer.
“Why do you think it’s coming from that site and not somewhere else in Tripoli?”
“It’s just a guess. Intuition,” said Jeff. The computer noted that Hawk Two was now ‘fully communicative,” and he acknowledged, though leaving it under the computer’s command in the trail position. “The Navy’s covering Tripoli. Let’s go.”
“Jeff, you’re talking about deviating from our flight plan based on a hunch,” said Cheshire.
“I trust hunches,” said Breanna. “And I trust Jeff.”
Thanks, babe, he thought as Cheshire jerked the Megafortress onto the new course.
Over the Mediterranean
24 October, 1050 local
Jed sat back at the JSTARS console while Ms. O’Day left her desk in the White House Situation Room to take another call. The attack on Tripoli, planned by Madcap Magician and carried out mostly by the Navy, was still proceeding. But already Saudi and Syrian governments had taken to the back channels to assure Washington that they had no interest in the Greater Islamic League.
It helped that they trusted neither the Iranians nor the Libyans. It also helped that America was demonstrating how easy it was to obliterate nearly a billion dollars’ worth of military equipment.
Now if they could only complete the rescue.
“Jed, are you still there?” asked Ms. O’Day, coming back on the line.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, sitting back at the console. The major was waving at him – he was needed on the other lines, where he was helping the SWAT team and Raven in contact with each other.
“Do they have our men?”
“Not yet,” he told her.
“When?”
“Maybe soon,” he said. The major was waving violently. “Ms. O’Day, I’m sorry, I have to go,” he said, cutting her off by switching the simple twist knob that controlled the circuit input on the panel in front of him.
Felt weird. He’d never cut off his boss before.
What if the President had been listening in?
“Cascade, this is Big Bear. Can you get Raven to give us a feed on the base area?”
“Uh, I’m not sure,” he said. He looked around for the major, but he’d gone off to help someone else. “Hang on.”
The screen before him was a live situation map. It showed Raven heading south, away from Tripoli.
Shit. Why the hell were they doing that? And where the hell were their prisoners?
Obviously not in the bunker, if Big Bear was looking for a feed.
“Bear, I’m going to have to get back to you,” said Jed, twisting into the Megafortress’s frequency.
Libya
24 October, 0955 local
Even with the Steiner glasses, they were much too far from the action to see anything, not even smoke on the horizon, though all of the Whiplash members fixed their eyes in the direction of the coast. The Osprey pilot had moved the rotorcraft to the foot of the hill and was monitoring the raid via the SATCOM circuit back to the JSTARS command plane. He’d alerted Danny when the raid started; laconic to a fault, he remained silent as the attack continued.
The desert before them gave a little hint of the battle raging seventy miles away. The sand seemed permanent, uncaring; the only sign of mankind was a highway about twelve miles to the northeast, as barren and destitute a stretch as Danny could imagine.
“Captain Freah, Raven is hailing you,” said the Osprey pilot over the com set.
“Patch me through.” Freah stood and looked directly down over the side of the cliff, as if that would somehow help the pilot turn and switch and allow the connection.
“Raven proceed.”
“Danny, this is Breanna Stockard. Are you on the line?”
“Affirmative,” said Freah. He could feel his heart pounding now in every part of his body, worried that the Megafortress had been hit.
“Stand by for Major Stockard,” Bree told him.
“Captain, we have an encrypted microwave signal being beamed to a satellite from a grid in B-2, we think about eight miles easy of you. What do we have there big enough to house a transmitter?”
“Stand by.”
Freah dropped to his knees, carefully pulling the maps and satellite images from his rucksack. There were only two candidates. One was a small military post, the other an abandoned railroad depot with some old warehouses and support buildings. The sites were separated by about a mile and a half. He gave the positions.
“What do you think of checking them out?” Zen asked.
“We’re en route,” said Danny, not even waiting for the explanation as he signaled his men to reboard the Osprey.
The broadcast had ended a few minutes ago, before they were able to pinpoint it; both sites were close enough to have been the source. Zen worked Hawk Two ahead toward the coordinates of the military base that Freah had supplied. It seemed logical to start there.
The threat screen was blank. Gray asphalt rose beyond the desert sand, bounded by trenches and a ramshackle fence. Two long, dull yellow buildings stood at the far right; a pair of ancient antiair guns were behind sandbags in the middle of the installation. Behind one of the buildings was an earth station, surrounded by a tall chain-link fence.