They knew they were next.
The guns crews were not yet at their posts when the Jaguars appeared. The small, aging jet fighters were flying very slowly four abreast and coming in on a slight angle. After passing over the blazing cruiser, they simultaneously opened up on the first four destroyers with their powerful nose cannons. The combined barrage caught one ship broadside, perforating it, killing any sailor unlucky enough to be on its starboard side. A succession of secondary explosions followed immediately.
The four jets passed over their first victim, and started riddling another — a smaller destroyer escort. The rain of deadly cannon shells walked up the side of this ship and quickly found their way to its magazine. The vessel’s ammunition went up, obliterating everything from its forecastle to its stern. The explosion was so quick and so sudden, two of the Jag pilots had to yank back on their sticks to avoid being caught up in the conflagration their cannon fire had caused.
One by one, the destroyers were attacked by the slow-moving Jaguar foursome. Those ships lying directly in the jets’ line of attack were caught helpless and with no room to maneuver. No return fire was offered in defense. They were chopped up like lambs in a slaughter.
Further down the canal, word had reached the group of twenty troop-carrying vessels that the fleet was under attack. But these ships too suddenly realized their vulnerability.
Two armed tugs were leading the troopships, followed by fifteen large, open, square river barges of the type used to carry wheat, coal, or garbage in peaceful times. Now they were filled with the advance troops of Lucifer’s Legion. The soldiers, already weary from spending so much time packed like sardines on the barges, panicked when they heard the approaching sound of jet engines. Out of the blazing Middle Eastern sun, they soon saw the outline of the four Viggen jets.
The overstuffed bombs, also known as Greendogs, were just that. Cannisters filled with HE, wrapped in an overstuffed layer of plastic explosive. The devices, an old trick Hunter had picked up along the way, precluded the need for a fuse or any kind of sophisticated arming mechanism. The bombs simply exploded on contact with anything, be it the metal side of a barge or the water nearby.
The Viggens had arranged themselves in a single file and separated themselves by a quarter of a mile. The flight leader passed over the armed tugs, routinely ignoring the feeble gunfire coming from the boats’ machine guns, and bore down on the river barges.
“Stingers!” the troop commanders on all the vessels began yelling at their air-defense teams. But a Stinger cannot be fired immediately. Time is needed to prepare the shoulder-held antiaircraft missile for launch. And time was running out quickly for the barge troops.
The first Viggen swooped in on the lead river barge no more than fifteen feet above the water. Its pilot flipped a switch and one Greendog bomb fell from its bomb rack. The high-explosive-packed cannister hit the lip of the barge perfectly, igniting the plastic explosive. This in turn set off the 200 pounds of HE inside the bomb instantaneously.
The Viggen pilot had never seen a green explosion before, but now, as he pulled his jet up and turned to look back on his target, he saw a spectacular ball of emerald flame enveloping the river barge. When the smoke and fire cleared, even the Viggen pilot was startled to see that nothing — absolutely nothing—was left of the barge.
By this time, the second Viggen was screaming in on another, even larger river barge. Below, the helpless soldiers could only cower as the Greendog bomb landed in their midst and exploded. The terrifying green fire instantly splashed all over the men, igniting them like human matchsticks. At the same time, the bomb blew out a huge hole in the bottom of the barge. The water immediately rushed in, for a moment extinguishing the burning soldiers, but also sucking them down to their deaths. The barge went under in two seconds. As with the first barge, no one survived.
Chapter 39
By the time the Tornados reached the barges, the area looked like a scene out of Hell.
The Viggens had done their work — gruesomely and efficiently. The Tornado pilots were shocked to see the Canal water had turned red and the shoreline was covered with smoldering pieces of bodies. Three of the barges looked to be unhit, yet they were doing circles in the Canal, as if their skippers had gone mad. Many of the soldiers had jumped overboard in fear. Those who didn’t drown instantly were forced to swim through the bloody, torso-filled water. By the time they reached the shore, the stink of burning flesh had overwhelmed most of them and they dropped, frozen in shock. Only a few hardened souls made it up and away from the shoreline, only to run crazy into the scorching desert.
The Tornados continued on, noting that the Viggens, their heavy bomb loads expended, were now cruising at 15,000 feet providing aircover.
Five miles down the canal was the next group of Lucifer’s ships — four large guided-missile frigates protecting two cruisers. These six ships were the main targets for the Tornados.
The enemy vessels were by this time well aware that the fleet was under air attack, so their gun crews were at their stations when the first two Tornados appeared over the northern horizon. The two British jets, moving slowly as if at attack speed, bore down on the six ships. The frigates at this point had maneuvered so they formed a diamond-shaped pattern around the cruisers. However, all six of the ships’ radars were concentrating on the two Tornados approaching from the north.
In the heat of the impending action, their radar operators didn’t see the four other Tornados approaching from the west.
The sound characteristic of a jet engine is a strange and unpredictable thing. Wind direction, temperature, speed, location, and many other factors determine not only how loud the engine is, but also whether a person can hear it approaching or not. Sometimes, soldiers in trenches can hear the sound of enemy aircraft approaching from miles away.
Other times, they simply look up and an enemy jet is right on top of them …
The captain of one of the protecting rear frigates looked up from his bridge console to see a Tornado was right on top of him. He had no time to shout out a warning or alert his gun crews — they, like everyone else on the six ships, were awaiting an attack by the two Tornados slowly approaching from the north.
But this Tornado was so close, he could see the pilot’s face as it streaked by. It was all happening so quickly. In a second, the Tornado had already dropped two bombs on one of the cruisers, broad-siding it with a tremendous one-two punch of explosions. The frigate captain, an ex-Argentine-navy man, felt his jaw drop in surprise as he watched the British jet pull up and away. “How?” he asked himself.
He didn’t see the second Tornado until it was too late …
The bomb crashed right into the frigate’s bridge, exploding on impact. The captain was blasted into a thousand pieces, as was everyone on the bridge. The explosion carried on down to the frigate’s guided-missile storage room, ignited two missiles, which in turn blew up. A third missile actually launched itself and traveled a crazy flight path before impacting on the shoreline. The blazing ship turned over immediately, a huge hole on its deck belching dirty, black smoke.
By this time, the two Tornados coming in from the north had banked westward to avoid any opposing fire, then twisted back so as to attack the ships on an easterly course. With one frigate destroyed and a cruiser heavily damaged, the smoke surrounding the ships was thick and obscuring.