The PLA fighters had excellent radar, powerful enough to fry a rabbit crossing the runway; that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that using radar exclusively was new to most of the pilots — certainly, using it in the middle of a storm, with visibility diminished nearly to zero, was new to them. The fact that such combat would be a first for most of the Americans, too, was of no consolation, because everyone knew the Americans trained extensively in flight simulators. And while “virtual” experience was not the equivalent of the real thing, it was better than nothing. And nothing was what the Chinese pilots were building upon.
Damn this storm.
No wonder the men were worried, even though they outnumbered the American fighters currently in the air. And even though there would be no American reinforcements in the immediate future, thanks to the ambush Mr. Blossom had arranged. From all reports, the carrier had taken damage. How bad was not yet known, but bad enough. There would be no help there. For the American pilots, even returning to their ship might be out of the question.
So from the Chinese perspective, there was good news as well as bad. Not to mention the special surprise Tai suspected would be out to help the Chinese.
Personally, Tai Ling was not worried at all. This was one battle — fought blind or not — that the Americans would never forget.
No, correct that.
This was a battle the Americans would never survive.
“Say again?” Hot Rock heard the disbelief and tension in his own voice. The same question was echoed over the air by other BARCAP pilots.
“I say again,” came the brisk response from the E-2 Hawkeye. “Fifty Flankers inbound your location, bearing 000, ETA ten minutes.”
“Fifty Flankers,” Hot Rock murmured, feeling sweat spring out along the spine of his flight suit. That was damn near a three-to-one ratio against the Vipers.
“Vipers,” the E-2 said crisply, “be aware Homeplate took a hit and is red deck. Repeat, Homeplate has a red deck. There will be no backup. You are weapons free. Fire at will.”
Hot Rock felt the sweat begin to trickle. Jefferson damaged, the fighters weapons free… it could only mean that the Chinese had struck the carrier, and effectively. How? By submarine? It seemed incredible.
On a more immediate note, it meant that the odds facing the BARCAP pilots were not only three to one, but unlikely to improve. No help would be rushing in….
“Better hope we don’t use our go-juice too quick, youngster,” Two Tone said. “There’s only one Texaco in the sky — and lots of planes bound to get thirsty.”
“Here we go, Hot Rock,” came over his headset from his new lead, Neanderthal. “Try to stay with me.”
Neanderthal’s Tomcat banked hard right. Hot Rock followed.
Until now they had been flying, as much as possible, in the direction of the wind. Going that way, the air was almost smooth. But come around, and life turned into a hell of buffeting and vicious vertical wind shears. Not to mention lack of visibility. The entire world was the striped, irregular gray of oily rags. And this was the outskirts of the storm.
Best to ignore the view entirely. Stare out there for more than a few seconds, denying the brain reliable visual reference points, and in no time you’d start to think you were on the verge of a stall, or had entered a power dive, or even that you were going backward. There was no escaping it — no one, however hot on the stick, could fly in by the seat of his pants in zero visibility.
Instead, you watched your instruments. The blips on radar, those were real. Readings from altimeter, variometer, airspeed indicator, attitude indicator — those were real. When a pilot flew instruments, he became as dependent on artificial sensors as was any RIO.
“Picking up the bogeys now,” Two Tone said. “Yep. I’d call that a shitload of Flankers.”
“Phoenixes,” came over the radio.
“Phoenix ready,” Two Tone said. “Got us a nice juicy Flanker all picked out, Rocker.”
“Roger,” Hot Rock said, switching the weapons selector switch to the appropriate setting.
A moment later, the order came: “Fire when ready.”
As with the helicopter, Hot Rock didn’t allow himself to think: He toggled the switch and made the Fox call. The upward bounce of the Tomcat when the missile’s weight dropped away was barely noticeable in the general tumult.
He watched the missile’s progress on radar, knowing that the pilot of the targeted Chinese plane was doing the same thing. For all the Phoenix’s weaknesses, Hot Rock was glad the PLA didn’t have anything like the big radar-guided killer.
“Miss,” Two Tone said. “That’s a miss.” Meanwhile, over the headphones came whoops from a handful of more fortunate Vipers. Sounded like three or four had successfully taken out a Flanker.
Three or four… out of fifty.
The Vipers hurtled northwest into the claws of the wind, intending to engage the Chinese as far as possible from Jefferson. Meanwhile the Flankers, with the wind quartering on their tails, intended to do just the opposite. Hot Rock and Two Tone began assigning missile tags to incoming blips.
“Hang tough, amigo,” Two Tone said. “Don’t leave your lead for anything this time.”
“What do you mean, ‘this time’?”
“Just thinking of that helo you shot down. Some people might have questioned that if I hadn’t backed your story, you know? So this time stick with your lead, stay in position. Don’t do anything fancy on your own. That’s what I’m suggesting.”
“But I — you — ”
“Heads up, Rock. Here come the bad guys.”
Beaman struggled into his OBA, or oxygen breathing apparatus, and mustered with the rest of his damage control party. Hosemen, investigators, and on-scene leader — they fell into their assigned positions automatically.
“Beaman,” the team leader said. “Get going. Cut around the forward end of it — see how big it is.”
Beaman nodded. As the primary investigator, his first task was to figure out where the edges of the fire were so that Damage Control Central, or DCC, could order smoke and fire boundaries set. First they would try to contain the fire, keep it from spreading, contain the smoke in the damaged area with heavy curtains hung from the hatches. Then while essential systems were being rerouted through the multiple system redundancies that existed on every Navy ship, the fire party would start nibbling at the edges, forcing flames and heat back into a smaller and smaller area until they could finally extinguish it.
At least, that was the plan. Reality always threw some monkey wrenches into the mix.
“You, Jones — get down to the first deck, see if the overhead’s starting to buckle. We stop it from moving down first, people. You know why.”
Beaman nodded. He did indeed. Starting three decks below the hangar bay, the aircraft carrier was honeycombed with ammunition lockers. Sure, they were equipped with sprinklers, watertight doors, Halon systems, everything the carrier could bring to bear in the way of fire control. But three decks wasn’t all that far away, not if this was a class D fire, a metal-burning conflagration. Given a little time, the fire could eat through steel deck plates like they were hot tortillas.
“It might have missed the hangar queen,” Beaman said. “They were moving her forward last time I saw.” The hangar queen, an aircraft that was virtually impossible to ever get flying again but served as a valuable source of parts, had been spotted directly ahead of them.