‘You’re looking good, a little high, ease off the power…’
Sandy’s head drifted up to look once again through the Heads Up Display, and then his arm moved of its own accord from the throttle to the armament switches on the control panel before him. Sandy flipped the switch’s security cover off and activated the Hornet’s ordnance array as with another switch atop his control column he switched the HUD from landing settings to ground — attack display.
‘Keep it comin’, you’re looking good.’
Sandy moved the control column and rocked the throttles without conscious thought, keeping the Hornet on a near — perfect glideslope designed to ensure that the fighter’s arrestor hook snared the number three wire. Too low, and the aircraft risked smashing into the “fan tail” at the ship’s stern. Too high, and it risked missing all the wires and shooting a “bolter” right off the deck and into the air again.
‘A little high,’ the LSO warned, ‘come off the power.’
Sandy could see his leader’s F–18C taxiing across the deck, its wings folded up to conserve space on a deck crowded with crew and parked aircraft and helicopters, the ship an immense floating city and airport all in one. The movement and the aircraft’s colorful tail markings, denoting the Commander of the Air Group’s personal jet, caught his eye and his gloved hands twitched on the controls.
‘You’re high and wide,’ the LSO called.
Sandy barely heard the LSO as he turned the F–18C Hornet and lined up the aiming reticule in his HUD onto the taxiing aircraft’s gray fuselage. The voice in his ears grew loud and panicked.
‘Razor Two, wave off, wave off, power!!’
Sandy smiled as he moved his thumb across the fire switch and slammed the Hornet’s engines into full afterburner. The fighter lurched forward as flames blazed from its twin exhausts and the aircraft roared overhead the deck, and Sandy chuckled to himself as he squeezed the launch button twice in quick succession.
The Hornet’s fuselage shuddered twice as powerful charges propelled the two five hundred pound incendiary bombs off the inner wing pylons. Sandy pulled back on his control column and reached out to retract the undercarriage and flaps as suddenly the Hornet rocked violently from side to side.
Sandy looked over his shoulder as he rolled to one side in a steep climbing turn and saw his bombs impact the carrier’s deck with twin blossoming fireballs that raked across the parked aircraft. Two parked Hornets, their wings laden with live ordnance, exploded amid the massive fireballs and Sandy saw bodies hurled off the deck to spiral into the ocean below as his earphones screeched with horrified commands.
‘Razor Two, desist immediately! Razor Two, do you copy?!!’
Sandy heard only a distant cacophony of cries as he held the throttles wide open in full afterburner despite his perilously low fuel supply. The Hornet climbed vertically away from the ugly clouds of black smoke billowing from flames sweeping across the carrier’s deck, fuel lines and bomb trolleys ablaze as Sandy watched through the top of the canopy as his Hornet came off the top of a loop two thousand feet above the carnage.
Sandy kept pulling, kept the throttles wide open as he began to dive, keen to see the results of his efforts. The Hornet soared downward and accelerated wildly, and then suddenly the G — forces increased and slammed Sandy down into his seat, pulling the blood from his head and brain as his G — suit inflated to prevent his blood from pooling in his legs.
Sandy blinked as though coming awake from a dream, and before him a kaleidoscopic milieu of color sharpened into focus and he saw the deck rushing up at him and a scene of utter carnage, of running crewmen trailing flames, of bodies scattered in pieces across the scorched deck, of burning aircraft and helicopters and corpses.
Sandy’s scream joined the terrible cacophony even as his Hornet slammed vertically into the carrier’s bow with the force of a fallen angel at four hundred knots and vanished in a superheated fireball that spread across the deck.
IX
‘Fire team, cover Echo point.’
Lieutenant Larry Bryant of the 48th Infantry Brigade’s Combat Team eased alongside the crumbling wall of an abandoned compound, the sun blazing off the baked walls and scorched earth, sweat beading on his forehead and itchy beneath his combat fatigues as he cradled his M–16 rifle and peered around a corner.
The desolate Iraqi desert stretched away to his right, while to his left meagre towns built it seemed from the very earth itself, the walls as crumbling and abandoned as the deserts, stood forlornly to reach up into the hard and unforgiving blue skies.
‘Bryant, Echo, standing by.’
Larry waited for the command to enter the compound, glimpsing through his sunglasses the shapes of his fellow troops forming up into covering positions, their weapons held at the ready. There was minimal chatter on the RT, and when any voice was heard it was clipped and short, tight with tension that made Larry’s jaw and temples ache.
The briefing had been just that — brief. A tip off. A location, abandoned, far out to the south of Basra. Unreliable source, a hostage sighting. Proceed with extreme caution. Everybody knew what that meant. As a former regular US Army soldier and now Georgian reservist supporting the fledgling Iraqi army as it fought to control the country against the ferocious rise of Islamic State, Larry was well used to combat situations, but this one was a tight — wire even for him. Just get us in there for Christ’s sake and get it over with.
‘Eagle eye, in position.’
The snipers were ready, covering from higher vantage points further back in the district. There was little wind and they were “sun down”, the sun behind them and thus not restricting their vision, perfectly placed to pick off any ambush attackers.
There was a moment’s pause and then the commanding officer’s voice crackled down the radio.
‘Entry team, fire team, go now now now!’
Larry burst into motion and dashed into the compound as behind him twenty more soldiers, all heavily festooned with webbing, weapons, water and other battle kit thundered across a deserted courtyard. Larry’s eyes swept the scene as he moved, hyper — alert for any sign of a threat.
Debris was strewn across the courtyard, desiccated weeds poked from cracked cement, broken down walls surrounded open doorways that were as black as night inside. The walls were pockmarked with impact craters from mortars and small arms, the ageing signs of conflict from two major wars fought by US forces over the decades. No vehicles, few footprints, no enemy fire.
Larry made straight for the main entrance, the doors hanging from their hinges having been blasted in long ago by some other fire team, probably clearing the building of insurgents a decade before. He slammed against the wall alongside the entrance as two of his men hurled flash — bangs inside and took up positions alongside their lieutenant, eyes down, gloved fingers in ears. Larry pulled off his sunglasses, his eyes closed and one finger curled over his rifle’s trigger.
A double boom thundered through the building and Larry whirled and rushed inside, his M–16 held before him as he hunted through the gloom. A cloud of gray smoke swirled from the flash — bangs as he plunged through it, all around him soldiers shouting as they advanced through the long abandoned home.
‘Clear left!’
‘Clear right!’
‘Eagle eye, no movement.’
‘Fire team, advance! Bravo, hold position!’