He lifted his head and went back to scanning the sky through the false green brightness of his night vision gear. The APG-79 was excellent for aerial combat, but it didn’t have nearly the range of the massive APS-145 radar array carried by the E-2D Hawkeye.
Per standard operating procedure, the E-2D was hanging back outside of the engagement area, supplying Airborne Early Warning coverage for the fighters. With its superior radar sensors and crew of air controllers, the Hawkeye could provide real-time target-cueing and tactical instructions to the American fighter pilots, allowing them to coordinate with a speed and precision that most nations could not even approximate.
Hammer Flight was one of three divisions assigned to the fighter sweep for this mission. Each division was composed of four F/A-18E Super Hornets, which could fight as a single coordinated unit, or split off into two independent sections to engage separate forces.
Monk was wingman to Lieutenant Dan Coffee (callsign Grinder), the division lead of Hammer Flight. His job was to keep Grinder in sight, follow the senior pilot’s orders, and shut the hell up until his input was asked for.
Monk didn’t mind. They’d be getting the order to engage any minute now, and then it would be time to give some Chinese pilots a taste of what they’d given Poker.
Somewhere, about a hundred miles back, was the strike package: a mixed-bag of Hornets and Super Hornets, tooled up for anti-surface action. Their mission was to take out the Chinese carrier with Harpoons and Mavericks.
Monk wasn’t thinking about the strike package. He wasn’t really thinking about the mission at all. He kept seeing the Chinese air-to-air missile blast through Poker’s canopy. No warning. No provocation. Just a shot in the face, and the smoking wreckage of Poker’s plane tumbling into the ocean.
The Air Controller’s voice came over Monk’s headphones again. “Hammer, Bandits three-zero-five, for sixty, Angels two-zero.”
Grinder’s single word acknowledgement came a second or so later. “Hammer.”
Monk glanced at his radar again. Still no enemy contacts, but the screen now showed eight hostile air symbols, being fed to his system from CED, the cooperative engagement data-link transmitter aboard the Hawkeye.
Monk’s knuckles tightened on the stick. It wouldn’t be long now.
He felt his lips move, and heard the low repetitive murmur of his own voice, but it took him a few seconds to realize that he was actually speaking. It was nearly a chant. “Payback time. Payback time. Payback time. Payback time…”
He chopped it off short, and went back to scanning the night sky for visual contacts. Within a few seconds, the chant started again, apparently of its own accord. “Payback time. Payback time…”
“Hammer, Bandits three-zero-zero, for forty, Angels two-two, hot. Commit!”
Monk grinned. That was the magic word—commit. The keys to the kingdom. Go after your assigned targets, and kill them.
Grinder’s response was as laconic as ever. “Hammer.”
A half-second later, Grinder turned left out of the formation, and began closing on the Bandits, trailed by the other three pilots of Hammer Flight: Chuck ‘Barnstormer’ Barnes, Sheila ‘Redeye’ Lewis, and Monk.
Grinder’s voice came over the ‘back’ radio, the circuit assigned to Hammer Flight for internal comms. “Hammers, sort by desig.”
Target designators appeared on Monk’s head-up display, bracketing two of the hostile aircraft symbols, identifying the enemy planes he was assigned to kill.
Monk keyed his mike. “Two, sorted.”
This was followed immediately by acknowledgements from Barnstormer and Redeye.
“Three, sorted.”
“Four, sorted.”
Using the old radio-only method, the target sorting process could have taken two or three minutes. With the help of the CED data-link, it was finished in three seconds. Everyone knew who their targets were. Now, it was just a matter of closing to missile engagement range.
Grinder climbed to 35,000 feet and poured on power, gaining speed and altitude for the coming engagement.
Monk adjusted his own speed and altitude to maintain position off Grinder’s starboard wing. “Payback time. Payback time…”
At 34 nautical miles, an electronic chime told Monk that his APG-79 had acquired radar contact. He glanced down at the display to confirm that both of his targets were now on the screen. They were.
He selected two AIM-120 AMRAAMs, designated one for each of his assigned Bandits, and allowed the fire control computer to give them their first look at the targets.
The Normalized In-Range Display — better known as the NIRD circle—appeared on his head-up display. One of his Bandits was sliding into the engagement envelope, but the second hostile was still slightly out of range. He held fire until the range bar for the second Bandit slipped past the six-o’clock position on the NIRD.
Both targets began to sheer off. Shit! Their threat-receivers had detected his radar lock! The range bars for both Bandits scrolled to the left, rapidly approaching the maximum range caret. He had maybe a second and a half before they slipped out of the envelope.
Shoot now? Or wait for a better opportunity?
It wasn’t a conscious decision. He thumbed the weapon selector, shut his eyes, and jammed the trigger twice.
“Fox Three! Fox Three!”
That was the code phrase for launch of an active radar guided missile.
Through his eyelids, Monk could see two green flashes as the missiles tore away into the night. The image processor circuits in his goggles were programmed to keep the output of the light intensification algorithms from harming his eyes, but there was no sense in spoiling his night vision.
The AMRAAMs blew through Mach 2 within seconds, and began gobbling up the distance to the Bandits. The 13,000 foot altitude advantage put the missiles into a dive, gravity and inertia giving them still more speed as they streaked toward the turning Chinese warplanes.
Off Monk’s port wing, Grinder pumped out two AMRAAMs of his own, and executed a tight left turn to bring his flight into a lag pursuit behind the J-15s.
Monk nudged his throttle and banked left to maintain his position on the lead plane.
The Bandits dropped chaff, jinked and jived impressively in their attempt to break missile-lock, but the AIM-120 missiles were too close, and moving too fast. A pair of fireballs in the distance told Monk that both of his birds had found their targets.
Grinder’s AMRAAMs caught up with their Bandits a couple of seconds later, and two more explosions illuminated the night sky.
Then Monk’s own radar warning receiver was shrieking. Somebody had radar lock on him.
A flashing arrow on the HUD told him that the threat was four-o’clock low. He keyed his radio. “Two, spiked, four-o’clock low! Breaking right.”
Without waiting for a reply, he broke hard to the right, trading speed and altitude for a violently-sudden change in position. His g-suit clamped down on him like a python as the leg and abdominal modules constricted to keep the blood from pooling in his lower body. He grunted repeatedly through the turn, using voluntary muscle contraction to force blood pressure into his upper torso and brain. His cone of vision narrowed, but he knew where his physical limits were, and he didn’t come close to graying out.
The tone was silent when he rolled back into level flight. He had slipped out of the radar lock, for the moment at least.
The adrenaline in his veins screamed for him to go after the threat, find and kill whichever bad guy had locked onto his plane. But that was not his job.
He brought his nose back around to the left, and began to look for Grinder. He keyed his radio. “Two, naked and blind.” This is Hammer-Two. I have broken free from enemy radar lock, but I cannot see my flight lead.