Maxwell waited, tensed as always. A second elapsed… waiting…. another second…
KaaaWhoooom! The catapult fired.
The Hornet hurtled down the track, accelerating from zero to a hundred-forty miles per hour. Maxwell was rammed back in his seat. He felt his eyeballs flatten in their sockets, felt his guts pressing against his spine. Ahead he could see the edge of the deck, then blue empty sea.
The force of the catapult abruptly stopped. The Hornet’s nose lifted. He was flying.
“Ninety-nine Gippers on station,” Maxwell said in his mike. “Gipper” was the collective call sign for the Reagan air wing strike force.
“Roger, Gipper, your Orange playmates are on station and ready.”
Maxwell recognized the voice of Lieutenant Commander Butch Kissick, who would referee the exercise from aboard his orbiting E-3C AWACS.
One by one his strike force jets had launched, then headed for the rendezvous point to join up on the Air Force KC-10 tanker. Two of his jets had gone “down” on deck for maintenance problems, and the two ready spares were launched in their place.
The big three-engine tanker, a military derivative of the Douglas DC-10 airliner, looked like a giant swan with the swarm of sharp-nosed fighters appended like baby chicks behind it. When the last jet had completed its aerial refueling, Maxwell took one last look around, then commenced a gentle bank away from the tanker’s orbit. He keyed his mike, transmitting the signal that would commence the exercise: “99 Gippers, COMEX, COMEX.”
The game was on.
On Tracey Barnett’s radar screen aboard the AWACS, the strike package looked like a solid cluster of blips. They were aimed on a tangential course toward the Orange home base.
Her boss, Butch Kissick, had assigned her the task of controlling the Blue Force raiders from the Reagan, as she had requested. It gave her a chance to compete with her counterpart, First Lieutenant Wade Harper. Harper was a freckle-faced computer nerd and, in her opinion, a world-class dork. Already she and Harper had made a wager — dinner and unlimited booze — at the club tonight.
Glancing across the control cabin, she could see Harper hunched over his console, talking to the defending Orange Force. On her own scope, she was picking up the Orange fighters, three groups of them, taking up their CAP stations.
“Gipper One,” she radioed to the Blue leader, “you have three groups heavy, capping north, middle, and south of Al-Kharj.”
“Gipper One copies,” came the voice of Brick Maxwell.
Seconds later, Tracey saw the cluster of Blue fighters accelerating to nearly supersonic speed. They were still on a course that would take them nose-to-nose with the enemy jets. Only a hundred fifty miles separated the two forces.
Tracey began to worry. These Navy jockeys had better have something better in mind than to bore into a head on fight with the F-15s. They would get hosed like pigeons on a skeet range. Already she could see that nerdly little dork, Harper, gloating over his margaritas back at the bar.
A hundred miles. No way the Orange groups would miss painting that big cluster of ingressing jets. Any second now they would be making their move.
And they were. They were leaving their stations, taking up intercept courses. “North and South groups committing,” she warned the Blue leader. “Range one hundred, closing.”
Still, the Blue force continued inbound. The two forces were closing at a relative speed of nearly two thousand miles per hour.
Come on, Blue, Tracey implored. Do something clever or you guys are dog meat. The Blue strike leader was a guy called Brick. She knew nothing about him except that he had been the second section lead during the MiG shoot last week. He was the only one out there who seemed to understand the rules of engagement. He didn’t shoot from the hip.
But what was the guy doing? Actually, she thought, this would be a great time to shoot from the hip.
“Range eighty.”
No response. Still merging.
“Range sixty.”
Then, from the Blue leader: “99 Gippers, stand by…. Action now!”
Tracey had no idea what the command meant. Action now? What action? But something was definitely happening. The tight cluster of Blue jets had become a milky, indistinct blob on her scope. It probably meant that they were dispensing chaff — a cloud of radar-deflecting metal foil. She was picking up the warbling electronic sound of radar jamming, which she knew had to come from the pair of EA-6 Prowlers off the Reagan, out there to provide electronic warfare support for the Blue strike force.
Chaff, jamming — something was going on. What?
The Blue cluster was no longer a cluster. They were splitting, one group to the left, the other right, diverging at a right angle. And something else…Tracey squinted at the scope… something else going on… concealed in the cloud of chaff and the murkiness of the radar jamming.
Tracey stole a glance over at Harper. He, too, was staring at his scope, wondering what the hell was going on. A smile crept over Tracey’s face. She didn’t know what the hell was going on either, but she liked it. This was going to be interesting.
Maxwell waited, counting the seconds. This was the crucial part of the plan. Would the split-up of the Stinger package show on the Orange radar screens? Everything depended now on the effectiveness of the chaff cloud and the radar jamming from the Prowlers. DeLancey’s Stinger group would now be in their supersonic vertical dive for the deck.
Ten seconds.
Twenty. Maxwell waited, counting.
The fighter section should be leveling off in a few more seconds, ripping along down in the weeds. And, if everything was working right, hidden from the Orange radar.
Thirty seconds. Time for the next surprise.
“Buick and Rambler sections, execute…. Now!”
Maxwell rolled his Hornet into a hard ninety-degree turn back to the right. His half of the strike force — “Buick” section — turned with him. The right half — “Rambler” section — led by Craze Manson, wheeled into a ninety-degree turn to the left. Behind each section streamed more clouds of chaff.
The strike package was split into two parallel clusters, headed directly for Al-Kharj. The defending fighters would have to split their own forces to intercept the two Blue groups.
Or at least that was the plan.
Come on, guys, Maxwell said to himself. Take the bait.
They were taking it.
“Complex tactics,” called Harper, the Orange controller in the AWACS. He was trying hard to keep his voice calm. Harper had enough adrenaline in his system to jumpstart a locomotive. “Blue groups diverging now, azimuth split north and south.”
“How many groups?” called the Orange fighter lead, an Air Force major. “Two or three? How many, Sea Lord?”
Sweat was trickling down Harper’s neck. It was hard to make sense of that mess with all the goddamn chaff and jamming. He squinted into his scope. “Two groups. South group beaming south, north group beaming north.”
That was good enough for the Orange lead. He was seeing exactly the same thing on his own radar — two groups separating, obviously setting up to attack on different azimuths. Not very imaginative, really. But what did you expect from people who lived on boats?
“Roger that,” replied the Orange lead. “Orange fighters are committing. Exxon flight will take the northern bandits. Mobil flight, target the south.”