A second A-10 crossed behind the first, only to disappear in a blinding flash of light. Tel never slowed as he ran.
Maggot was waiting when Bag taxied to a halt outside the shelter. The ground crew swarmed over the jet, inserting safety pins and hooking up a tow bar. In less than two minutes the A-10 was backed into the shelter and the big doors were cranking shut. A boarding ladder was placed against the right side of the cockpit, and the pilot climbed down. Halfway down the ladder he paused and looked at Maggot. He shook his head and dropped to the ground. A crew chief handed him his helmet. “She okay, sir?” he asked, wondering about the status of his jet. Bag gave a little nod in answer and headed toward Maggot. Together they walked into one of the rooms built into the shelter’s sidewall.
“What happened to Lurch?” Maggot asked.
“I don’t know. We turned inbound, he was a mile in trail. I could see the bridge. It was clear. I saw a flash at my deep six, and Skid called me off. I broke right and saw where he went in. Smoking hole in the ground. No chute. All things considered, it seemed like a good idea to abort the mission.”
They fell silent, waiting for the two pilots from the second flight, Skid and Waldo, to join them. Skid was the first to arrive. “I never saw what hit him,” he said.
Maggot tried to focus on what Bag and Skid said while a sergeant from Intelligence debriefed them on the mission. But he couldn’t get past two burning facts — he had lost a pilot and two aircraft under his command. He wanted to rationalize it, telling himself that it went with the territory, which all combat commanders had to deal with. But there was no escape. Finally the sergeant was finished. “Where’s Waldo?” he asked.
“Right here,” Waldo answered. He had walked over from the shelter where his Hog was parked, and his flight suit was streaked with sweat. “A SAM” was all he said, telling them that a surface-to-air missile had destroyed the Warthog and killed the pilot.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Bag shouted. “Lurch was in the weeds. What kinda SAM can do that?”
“I saw a rocket plume,” Waldo told him.
“Maybe one of the newer SA series,” Maggot said. The latest generation of Russian-built SAMs was reported to be good down to thirty feet. “If Russia sold the Chinese any.” He steeled himself for the coming messages. “We need to get an Op Rep out.” An Op Rep was an operations report detailing the results of a mission.
“Are we going back after the bridge?” Waldo asked.
Maggot hesitated. Then he shook his head.
Twenty-eight
The airliners formed an unbroken procession in the night as they took off from Changi Airport and headed straight ahead for Pulau Tekong, the large island four and a half miles away. The pilots were careful to maintain runway heading and not climb above two thousand feet until they were abeam of the island’s reservoir. Then it was a hard-right climbing turn to the south and, for the relieved passengers on board, the promise of safety. But in SEAC’s makeshift command center in Singapore’s basic military training camp, which was located on the island, it was a constant roar that made face-to-face conversations difficult and turned telephone conversations into screaming matches.
The Air Force major who escorted Pontowski and Gus into the command center was typical of SEAC’s Young Turks: educated, well trained, and smart. He shouted his apologies above the din. “The operations planning staff is with the general,” he said. “They should be free in a few moments to meet with you about the ATO.” He hurried off to make it happen.
Gus played with his right earplug in a futile attempt to make it fit. A plane rumbled overhead, lower than usual. “They need to move,” he shouted.
Pontowski looked around, and wasn’t sure. The truck bomb that had leveled SEAC’s headquarters in the city had also flushed the old leadership, leaving the Young Turks in command. Everywhere he looked, there was a crispness and focus that announced SEAC was a military organization and not a collection of generals playing at politics. “Or have Changi change their departure procedures,” he replied. Gus sat down to wait while Pontowski studied a wall map. After a few minutes he wandered outside for a breath of fresh air. A string of aircraft anticollision lights winked in the night as the airliners turned almost directly over his head.
Gus joined him, massaging new wax earplugs. “Changi should be taking off to the south,” Pontowski told him. “If they’ve got to take off our way, then the pilots should make an immediate climbing turn as soon as they get the gear up.” Gus agreed with him, and they stood there watching the string of departing aircraft. “Oh, no,” Pontowski said, pointing to the sky. A short plume of flame reached up from the narrow Johore Strait that separated Singapore from the Malaysian mainland and headed for the string of anticollision lights. Then it went out. Pontowski had time to say “Rocket motor burnout” before a bright flash consumed an anticollision light.
Gus’s voice was icy calm. “What type of surface-to-air missile was that?”
“Probably a Grail,” Pontowski answered, his eyes padlocked on the stricken airliner. “Or some similar type of shoulder-held missile.” Now they could see flames trailing from the right side of the airliner. “He’s turning back for Changi.” The big Airbus flew directly overhead, its one good engine bellowing at full power.
“Will he make it?”
Years of flying experience could not be denied. “No. He’s turning into the dead engine. He’d be better off ditching straight ahead.” But the Airbus pilot kept the turn coming. “Ah, shit,” Pontowski moaned as the aircraft approached a stall. The Airbus seemed to shudder as it fell off on its right wing and tumbled into the water, less than a half mile from them. Almost immediately the water turned into a sheet of flame. There would be no rescue attempts.
“I’ll relay your suggestion about the departure pattern,” Gus promised. A siren started to wail in the main camp. “That’s an air-raid warning,” he said. “Perhaps we should go inside.”
Pontowski followed Gus into the relative safety of the sandbagged walls of the command center. He sat down, chin on his chest, while Gus worked the phones. Now he had to wait. Will Changi change the departure pattern? he thought. Do they even have a choice? It was the age-old dilemma of all commanders — making decisions when there were no good alternatives. It helped not knowing who went down on the Airbus. They were just faceless numbers, just so many casualties. Outside, he heard the siren sound an all-clear. The major escorting them came back. “Any damage reports?” Pontowski asked.
The major checked the clipboard he was carrying. “One missile hit the causeway.” The causeway spanned the Johore Strait, linking Singapore with Malaysia.
“That’s one lucky hit for a Scud,” Pontowski said, thinking of the missile’s notorious inaccuracy.
“We don’t think it was a Scud,” the major replied. He stepped up to the wall map and pointed to the Taman Negara in Malaysia. “Our early-warning radar tracked it from here. Given the range and accuracy, perhaps it was a CSS-7?” The CSS-7 was a Chinese-built tactical missile with a range of 530 kilometers. “Unfortunately, the aqueduct under the causeway was cut.”
“How serious is that?”
Gus overheard the conversation and joined them. “Very,” he said. “Because of our small size and dense population, water is always a problem. We treat over one million cubic feet a day and have many reservoirs, but without the aqueduct…” He shook his head, not able to estimate how long before the reservoirs ran dry.