F-14 Tomcats, A-6 Intruders, F/A-18 Hornets, and EA-613 Prowlers screamed aloft, tailpipes glowing orange in the darkness. Others, engines idling, waited their turn to taxi onto the catapults. Navigation lights blinked in the sky, aircraft orbiting slowly around the task force while waiting for the whole strike to form up.
“Admiral?”
Stewart turned toward a waiting lieutenant.
“Yes.”
“Washington’s on the secure phone, sir.”
Stewart brushed past him into the darkened enclosed bridge. Enlisted men and officers alike bent over their work, with only the nearest ones acknowledging his presence with deferential nods. He moved immediately to the red secure phone and took the handset from his portly communications officer.
“Stewart here.”
There was no apparent delay, even though a computer scrambled his words, converted them into a radio signal, beamed them twenty-four thousand miles straight up to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, and then down to the Pentagon. Then the process was repeated in reverse and Gen. Walter
Hickman’s gentle Oklahoma twang sounded in his ear. The chairman of the
Joint Chiefs was brief and to the point.
“Sierra Force has reached Point
Yankee. Execute Phase Two.”
Stewart was equally brief.
“Acknowledged. Out.” He replaced the red phone.
His imagination reached out toward Sierra Force-the C-141s carrying the
Rangers and their attached Army Aviation units. Point Yankee was a computer-designated spot over the barren Kalahari Desert where the Air Force transports would begin a planned steep descent out of the now-normal African-airspace traffic pattern of Soviet cargo planes and civilian airliners. At less than five hundred feet, well below the coverage of South Africa’s remaining ground radar stations, the C-141s would turn sharply southeast toward Pretoria and the Pelindaba Nuclear Research Complex.
The admiral picked up a plain black ship’s phone.
“CAG? This is Stewart.
Execute Pindown.” Through the receiver, he heard the Vinson’s air wing commander relaying his order to the strike leader already orbiting overhead.
They were committed.
NOVEMBER 29-ABOARD SIERRA ONE ZERO, NORTH OF RUSTENBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
Sierra One Zxro’s pilot kept his eyes moving in a regular pattern-shifting from his terrain-following radar display to the flight instruments to the low hills and flat grasslands flashing past the MC14 I’s cockpit and then back again. His hands were poised on the controls, ready to take instant evasive action should it prove necessary. Sweat trickled down his forehead despite the cockpit air-conditioning. Flying the large, four-engined transport barely three hundred feet off the ground required intense concentration. A second’s inattention could all too easily prove fatal for the more than one hundred men aboard.
“Point Zulu.” His copilot looked up from the computer generated map.
“Roger.” The colonel reduced his throttle settings, hoping the four planes following close behind were paying careful heed to their spacing.
“Inform out passengers.”
Sierra One Zero’s copilot pushed a well-worn button.
A red light came on over the Starlifter’s large rear door.
Lt. Col. Robert O’Connell was already rising from his seat
as the plane’s jumpmaster bellowed, “Six minutes! Outboard personnel hook up!”
Rangers seated along the C-141’s fuselage clambered to their feet.
“Inboard personnel stand up!”
The troops seated in two rows facing outward scrambled upright.
“Hook up!”
The Rangers hooked their parachute harnesses on to the static lines running the length of the MC-141’s troop compartment. A very pate Prof.
Esher Levi imitated them.
Outside the compartment, the droning roar of the Starlifter’s engines began fading as the big plane slowed to jump speed.
HEADQUARTERS, NORTHERN AIR DEFENSE SECTOR, DEVON, EAST OF
JOHANNESBURG
The South African Air Force flight sergeant yawned once, and then again, wishing he could slip outside for a quick cup of coffee and a smoke. Night radar-watch duty was invariably boring. Lately, neither the Cubans nor his own air force had shown much willingness to risk precious aircraft in combat operations after dark. Both sides had already lost too many planes in raids against strategic and tactical targets.
He leaned forward to study the glowing screen again, his face green in the light emanating from the radar repeater. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Just blips at the far edge of his coverage showing a steady stream of Soviet air transports and cargo planes ferrying men and materiel into Zimbabwe and Mozambique. A smaller number of blips closer in represented South African transports moving units out of Namibia.
The sergeant shrugged, deciding that he was lucky to be able to see that much. South Africa’s radar net, already inadequate before the war, was in even worse shape now. Mafikeng, the site of one of its three permanent stations, had already been overrun by the Cubans. And Ellisras, the northernmost station, was expected to fall any day now.
A large blip appeared suddenly on his screen-close to the center, near
Pretoria-and then vanished as quickly as it had appeared. What the devil?
Was that a scheduled flight he’d forgotten about, or was his equipment acting up? The sergeant fumbled through his logbook while keeping one eye on the glowing radar screen.
More blips appeared-coming from the southeast this time and moving fast. He stared hard, trying frantically to get an accurate count. Five. Ten. More than twenty planes racing in from out of nowhere! He spun round in his chair, his eyes wide in alarm.
“Lieutenant!”
PROWLER LEAD, SOUTHEAST OF JOHANNESBURG
Ten miles behind the A-6 and F/A-18 attack squadrons, the EA-613 Prowler electronic warfare aircraft bounced and shook as it ploughed through choppy air. Rolling ridges and valleys emerged out of the darkness ahead and then blurred past and aft. Flying low at five hundred knots left little time for sightseeing.
One of the two officers seated side by side behind the pilot and navigator listened to a series of tones sounding in his earphones and watched as a signal intensity indicator climbed higher. He spoke into the intercom.
“SA
radar’s got us, Curt. “
“Right.” The pilot broke radio silence on the strike frequency.
“Tiger flights, this is Prowler Lead. They know we’re here. We’re lighting off.”
He clicked back to the intercom.
“Okay, guys, let’s do it. Radiate and blind those bastards.”
The two backseaters flipped a series of switches, activating the Prow)er’s
ALQ-99 jamming system. Current started flowing from windmill turbo generators on the three jamming pods slung beneath the EA-613’s fuselage. In seconds, the Prowler was punching kilowatts of power into the same frequencies used by South Africa’s air-search radars.
NORTHERN AIR DEFENSE HQ
“Shit! ” The blips on the flight sergeant’s radarscope vanished in a coruscating swirl of bright green blotches and a solid strobe line. He switched frequencies frantically and ineffectively. The jamming followed him across the wavelengthseffortlessly matching every shift.
After several failed tries, he stopped frequency-hopping and tried turning down the radar’s gain instead. It worked after a fashion. By trading range for visibility, he was able to break through the jamming . and see nothing.
The flight sergeant swore again. The bogies were outside his radar’s reduced range. He knew there were enemy aircraft over South Africa, but he couldn’t tell how many, where they were, or most important of all, where they were headed.
The Air Force lieutenant watching over his shoulder turned pale and grabbed a red phone by the radar console.