“Tell those mortarmen to adjust their aim!” Maziulis screamed. “Charlie and Echo companies! Move! Move! Move! Alpha and Bravo need cover fire! Tell Third Battalion to move at best speed or we’ll lose the west flank!”
“Units on the ground reported Lithuanian partisans trying to attack the Commonwealth troops on the base,” the electronic-warfare officer on board said. “The ground units said that partisans surrounded the base and appear to be converging on the security headquarters building. They are heavily armed, including tanks and Zeus-23s.”
“That doesn’t help us much,” the pilot grumbled. “Who are we supposed to blow away? And—”
“Triple-A search radar, ten o’clock!” the electronic-warfare officer reported. “Another triple-A up … looks like a Zeus-23-4.” The electronic-warfare officer on the Spectre centered a circle cursor on the two “A” antiaircraft-artillery symbols on his radar threat-scope. That action fed position information to the Spectre’s targeting computer and instantly computed the position of the ZSU-23-4 mobile gun. “Target feed on the triple-A coming in.”
“I got it,” the FLIR sensor operator said. The targeting computer slaved both the low-light TV and infrared scanner to the new threat, and the FLIR operator saw the distinctive outline of the quadruple guns on the armored vehicle. “New primary target, FICO.”
“I got it,” the fire-control officer reported. “Laser firing. Range, three miles …”
“Ground forces said the Zeus belongs to the partisans,” the electronic-warfare officer said. “I don’t care if they belong to the goddamned Pope,” the pilot said. “If they try to lock me up on radar, they die. FICO, clear to launch.”
“Missile away,” the fire-control officer reported. At that, he unlocked a red-guarded switch on his control panel and pressed a trigger. One Hellfire missile, this one from the right wingtip, leaped from its rail and streaked earthward. Following the guidance signals from the laser beam, the missile hit dead-on. The crew was rewarded with a spectacular sight in their TV monitors of a deadly antiaircraft-artillery vehicle disappearing in a cloud of fire.
“Sweet kill,” the FICO confirmed. They could hear cheers from the four gunners and the loadmaster / spotter in the back of the aircraft. The fire-control officer hit a button, and all the sensors returned to the target-building area to search for more targets.
“Looks like a column of troops moving in on the security building from the east, another group trying to approach from the west, and a group of defenders on the east side of the runway trying to hold ‘em off the STV sensor operator summarized. “Call it, someone.”
“Our target is the security building,” the fire-control officer reiterated. “The troops defending it must be the bad guys, and the ones attacking it must be the good guys. I say we target the defenders.”
“Agreed,” the navigator said.
“I’ll buy it,” the pilot said. “As long as they all stay away from the security building. Anyone who comes near it, unless they’re U.S. Marines, we hose. Coming left.”
The pilot began a slow, 20-degree bank turn to the left over the security building, then transitioned from his forward HSI to the low-light TV monitor-and-attack-coordinator mounted on the left window. By following the steering cues, the pilot set up an orbit precisely eight thousand feet above ground level.
From this point on, the sensor operators, the navigator, and the fire-control officer picked and attacked targets, with occasional warning messages from the electronic-warfare officer. The two sensor operators had almost complete control of the 25-millimeter cannon, letting loose with one- to two-second bursts at any group of soldiers that might be a field commander or communications crew, heavy-machine-gun nest, mortar crew, or rocket-propelled grenade-launcher crew. The FICO picked targets for the 40-millimeter cannon, alternating control with the sensor operators as they located suitable targets.
The pilot adjusted his orbit over targets designated for the 105-millimeter cannon, attacking tanks and destroying buildings close to the security building that might screen oncoming enemy troops from the Marines. The pilot felt a rush of adrenaline as he watched the incredible sight through his TV monitor. The power unleashed by that simple action of his left thumb was truly amazing. One squeeze of a trigger, and huge armored vehicles thousands of feet below him simply mushroomed into twisted hunks of burning metal. “Target destroyed,” he announced calmly, choking back the urge to cry out an excited “Yes!!!” Instead: “Safeties on. Gun secured, clear for safety check. Gimme the next target.”
“Clear.”
“I got another Zeus-23!” the electronic-warfare officer shouted.
The crew’s attention was diverted instantly — the ZSU-23-4 could easily bring down a Spectre, and the standing order was to destroy or avoid them at all costs. The fire-control officer immediately slaved the sensors to the threat-warning receiver, and four sets of eyes searched for the tiny white dot that might be the deadly tracked weapon. “I can’t see it, dammit, I don’t see it…
Suddenly, a fast deedledeedledeedledeedledeedle! erupted on the intercom, and a flashing AAA LOCK light appeared on every instrument panel in the plane.
The ZSU-23-4 was just off to the right and close — too close.
“Triple-A lock!” the electronic-warfare officer shouted. “Break left!”
The pilot threw the AC-130 gunship in a tight left turn — with the big cannons hanging out the left side of the aircraft, left turns in a Spectre gunship are always tighter than right turns — and the EWO ejected radar-decoying chaff from the right-side ejectors.
“I see it! Continue left turn… roll out!” the copilot cried out as hundreds of winks of light and beads of death curled up from below, heading right for the aircraft. The beads swept across the right wingtip, and the entire aircraft shook as if a giant hand had kicked the plane like a child’s toy. “We took a hit on the Hellfire pylon!” the copilot cried out. Flames and bright bursts of light enveloped the right wingtip. “Jettison right weapon pylon!”
The fire-control officer immediately opened a clear cover over an illuminated button that read RT WPN PYLON FIRE, reached in, and pressed the button. The right Hellfire-missile pylon popped off its hardpoint seconds before one of the missiles cooked off and exploded.
“I can’t roll out,” the pilot said on interphone. “I’ve got a jammed aileron … copilot, get on the controls. Help me straighten out..
Immediately they heard, “Rattler Three cleared in hot, continue your left turn to clear.” One of the four Marine Corps AH-1 Sea Cobras that had stayed behind in the embassy compound had launched from the embassy, rendezvoused with the AC-130, and now dove in on the second ZSU-23-4 mobile gun. With the antiaircraft gunner’s full attention on the bigger target, it was too easy for the Sea Cobra’s weapons officer to find the target from the flash of its four guns, lock on to the target with its laser designator, and fire a single Hellfire, destroying the target instantly. “Target down,” the Cobra pilot reported. “I’ve got a visual on you, Congo Two. I see large sparks on your right wingtip.”
Even a one-second burst from a ZSU-23-4 was menacing — that meant two hundred radar-guided shells as big as a hot dog peppering your aircraft. The murderous fire from the second ZSU-23-4 created a massive fuel leak from the right wing. “Congo Two is hit,” the pilot radioed on the command channel. “No engine fire, but we’re leaking fuel.”
Everyone on the two Hammer aircraft knew what that meant — the Spectre was going home. An AC-130 gunship was too valuable and too high-profile an aircraft to lose over Lithuania.