The missile flashed out of the near darkness, a point of light on the unreeling white line of a contrail. First introduced in 1985, Skipper II had been created by the Naval Weapons Center from off-the-shelf components, the solid-fuel motor of the outdated Shrike missile mated to the warhead of a Mark 83 one-thousand-pound bomb. Its seeker head kept the spot of infrared laser light centered in its field of view, adjusting the rocket's fins as the target moved.
At a range of less than six miles, it had a targeting accuracy measured in inches.
Colonel Kriangsak propped himself up in the commander's hatch, his eyes fixed on the line of tanks ahead. With less than three miles to go before they reached the government building complex, he'd expected more resistance from the loyalists, some show of force at least.
There was a thump, as though the tank he was riding in had hit a pothole, and the predawn semidarkness turned a dazzling white. There was no sound that he was aware of, but there was a gut-wrenching sensation of falling… then blackness.
"My God, will you look at that!" Even at better than three hundred yards, the blast had rocked the service station where Loomis and the Thais were hiding. Windows shattered, and night turned to day as an orange fireball crawled into the sky on a column of flame-shot smoke.
Loomis used the laser target scope to survey the damage. The lead tank was gone… gone, along with part of the highway. He couldn't see anything left of the vehicle save for scraps which might have been anything. The second tank in line had dipped nose-first into the crater scooped out of the pavement by the blast and tumbled onto its back. Smoke and flame poured from the wreckage. Tanks three and four lay upended thirty yards from the pit, like discarded toys.
Beyond that, his vision was obscured by the smoke, but he could see at least one truck burning, and make out the shapes of men staggering about on the road or lying motionless on the ground.
"Okay, Lieutenant," he said to the That officer at his side. "Looks like we stopped 'em. Now it's up to you."
The lieutenant was already giving orders to his men over the radio.
Kriangsak opened his eyes. He was lying on his back, his ears ringing painfully, his body bruised and sore. Experimenting gently, he found that he could move, could sit up painfully and look around. Nothing was broken.
He'd been riding in the fourth Stingray in line. At first, he was so disoriented he couldn't find the vehicle. Then he saw it, twenty meters away and lying on its side. He decided he must have been flung clear by the explosion. Several still, broken bodies in army uniforms lay on the street.
Blind chance had saved Kriangsak's life. The Stingray's turret had protected him from the worst of the blast, but he'd been thrown clear from the hatch instead of smashed against the interior hull.
Two of the tanks were still intact, but they were motionless, their crews killed or knocked unconscious by the shock wave. Everywhere, soldiers stood or sat or stumbled through the smoky darkness as though drunk. Most wore masks of blood from nosebleeds. Some writhed in agony on the ground and appeared to be screaming, though there was no sound. Only gradually did Kriangsak realize that he was deaf.
He looked up. The weapon which had shattered the column had to have been an air-launched weapon, but there was no sign of aircraft, no hint of where the bolt had come from. Striking a target with such accuracy from so far away that the attacker could not be seen… the RTAF didn't have that kind of technology, but Kriangsak knew who did. He had an uncomfortable feeling that the Americans were back in the game.
Shaking his head to clear it, he started moving back toward the line of trucks. Through the high-pitched shrilling in his ears, he could make out the far-off, muffled roar of fires, the screams of wounded men. His hearing was returning.
Several trucks were burning. Others had swerved off the highway and smashed into trees or gone nose-down in a ditch. The trucks toward the end of the column, however, were untouched, though none of the vehicles were moving.
Kriangsak had seen the crater in the road ahead. The convoy would not get any further in that direction.
And the That loyalists would be closing in at any moment to mop up.
Kriangsak knew he had to choose a new target and choose it quickly. Turning, he surveyed the city skyline across the canal toward the southwest. The pyramid-shaped, ultramodern architecture of one of Bangkok's more modern and luxurious hotels rose beyond the trees of Siam Square, half a mile away.
Perfect.
He reached out and grabbed the sleeve of a soldier nearby, turning him around and getting him moving toward the klong. He found another… and another. Within five minutes, Kriangsak had rounded up a small army of fifty armed men and had set them moving across the Wit Thaya Road bridge which spanned Klong Sen Seb. Scattered gunshots and shouted demands for surrender sounded behind them as army troops closed in on the dazed and stumbling survivors of the column. His fifty men had managed to get clear in the smoky confusion and dim light, though, before the loyalist net closed around them.
The Americans had done this. So be it. If the Americans had seen fit to intervene in the coup, then it would be the Americans who would have to accept the consequences.
Colonel Kriangsak knew he might still be able to bargain from a position of strength.
CHAPTER 23
Tombstone dropped into his ejection seat and accepted his helmet from Chief Smith. The plane captain grinned at him as he went through the motions of strapping on his airplane, and gave him a jaunty thumbs up. "How about bagging another six kills, Commander? For us."
"I'll see what I can do, Chief," Tombstone said, laughing. He settled the helmet over his head and adjusted the lip mike. "I'll see what I can do."
He finished pulling the arming pins for the ejection seat and checking the other necessary preflight details ― leg restraints, oxygen and G-suit hoses connected and locked, radio cord snapped into his helmet.
Smith gave his helmet a friendly pat. "Luck! Canopy coming down."
Tombstone could hear Dixie's harsh breathing over the Tomcat's ICS as the RIO went through his own checklist. "Firing up," Tombstone said, and he switched on the powerful Pratt & Whitney turbofans.
"All set back here, Tombstone," Dixie told him.
Outside, the plane captain gave the Tomcat a final quick visual inspection, then signaled his approval. A small army of green shirts began breaking down the aircraft, removing the chocks and chains which had kept it pinned in place on the starboard side of the carrier, just forward of the island. A man in yellow jersey and cranial backed ahead of the F-14, signaling with his hands. Tombstone released the brakes and set the aircraft trundling slowly forward after him.
The launch for the alpha strike code-named Operation Bright Lightning was well under way. Jefferson had been hurling aircraft into the sky for the past hour, beginning with the VA-84's A-6 Intruders and VFA-176's Hornets for close support missions over Bangkok.
But the real show today would be in the far north of Thailand, over the airfield at U Feng.
"Eagle Leader, this is Homeplate," a voice crackled in his helmet phones.