Brass Monkey: A James Acton Thriller Book #2 (30 page)

Dexter jacked in his headset. “Put me on their frequency.”

The controller hit a few buttons, connecting him to the Saudi Air Defense Corps network.

“This is United States Carrier Strike Group Enterprise, to Saudi aircraft moving to intercept. We are on an emergency mission to recover a weapon of mass destruction on your soil. Request you stand down, I repeat, stand down.”

Dexter waited for a five count. Nothing.

“I say again. This is Carrier Strike Group Enterprise. We are on an emergency mission to recover a weapon of mass destruction on your soil. Your government has been contacted informing them of the situation”—Dexter looked at the Captain, who shrugged his shoulders, indicating no new information had come in on whether or not the State Department had successfully informed the Saudi’s yet or not—“you are requested to stand down and to allow us to complete our mission. Please acknowledge, over.”

Dexter watched as additional bogeys popped up on the scope. “How many is that?”

“Fourteen so far, sir,” said the controller.

Dexter turned to the Captain. “Permission to launch the reserves?”

The Captain nodded. “Granted.”

“Launch everything we’ve got,” said Dexter. “I want their scopes lit up like it’s the Fourth of July.”

As the Air Boss launched the remaining fighters, Dexter switched the comm to the inbound flight. “Tango X-Ray, this is the CAG, over.”

“Go ahead, CAG.”

“Get a weapons lock on all inbound hostiles, but do not fire, I repeat, do not engage unless fired upon.”

“Roger that, CAG, initiating weapons lock, will hold for orders, over.”

Dexter switched back to the Saudi frequency, hoping their Air Operations people were monitoring.

“Saudi Air Command, this is United States Carrier Strike Group Enterprise. We have over seventy aircraft at our command, six ships with over two-hundred cruise missiles. We will meet any force with overwhelming force. You will not survive. This mission will proceed. Turn around and contact your government for confirmation of our mission. This is your final warning.”

The Harrier was now in Saudi air space, heading directly for its target. Six of the first wave continued with him, the remainder had turned to intercept the Saudi aircraft. They were now only miles apart.

This is going to turn into a shit storm.

Dexter glanced back at his Captain whose squared jaw revealed little of his emotions, but the white knuckles gripping the arms of his seat showed he was as tense as Dexter.

The speakers squawked, then a heavily accented voice came over the PA. “US Carrier Strike Group Enterprise, this is Saudi Air Command. We welcome you to Saudi Airspace, and thank you for your assistance. We are ordering our welcoming party to return to base. Over and out.”

“Look, sir!” said the controller, pointing at his scope.

Dexter watched as the Saudi aircraft turned, rapidly returning to their base, and away from the wing of Hornets speeding toward them.

The speaker squawked again. “CAG, this is Tango X-Ray flight leader. The
welcoming party
is standing down, say again, the welcoming party is standing down!”

A roar of celebration followed by high-fives and clapping all around filled the bridge for a few moments.

Dexter smiled and patted the young controller on the back. “Let’s get the reserve back here. I want the decks cleared for when the primary flight returns.”

Hurdle number one cleared.

Over Mecca, Saudi Arabia

Major Keith Miller eased back on the throttle as he neared the coordinates he had been given. The massive temple he had only seen in pictures loomed on the horizon. His HUD beeped as it picked up the laser designator from below, indicating his landing zone. He did a slow circle around the area to scope it out and cursed. Thousands of people, if not tens of thousands, spread below him, an undulating carpet of human flesh. A small area, near a massive ramp that led either in or out of the temple, sat cleared.

“CAG, this is Light-House, LZ spotted, I’m going in, over.”

He shoved the nozzle selector lever, the four massive vectorable nozzles slowly redirected toward the ground, and began his vertical descent. As he neared the ground, the crowds became clearer, and they were not happy to see him. Fists raised in the air, they shouted and shoved against a cordon of what appeared to be Saudi security and a group of Bedouins. A group broke free and raced directly toward his left wing. He rolled slightly to the right, giving them a blast from the Rolls-Royce engines, sending them tumbling along the ground and back toward the mob.

His gear hit the ground and he cut the power then threw open his canopy. The roar from the crowd was almost as deafening as the engines. He surveyed his surroundings and saw a group of robed men running toward his bird from an alleyway. He reached for his sidearm when one waved. “Thunder Heart!”

“Light-House!” he replied, easing somewhat. One revealed his face and Miller breathed a sigh of relief, recognizing him as part of the special ops team recently ferried across the Atlantic. “Good to see you again Sergeant, for a minute there, I didn’t know what to think.”

“Sorry about the disguise, Major, thought we better look like the locals while waiting for you.”  He pointed to the alley, where several men carried the old, beat up missile. “We’ve got some cargo for you.”

Miller jumped out and opened a storage hold in the fuselage, pulling out a case. He flipped it open, revealing a docking collar for the missile. “The ordinance guys tell me this should fit that thing,” yelled Miller over the roaring crowd.

The men arrived with the weapon and went to work, attaching the collar then hoisting the weapon, attaching it under the wing as Miller supervised, wanting to make sure the job was done properly. He couldn’t risk the weapon tearing off at the speeds he planned on doing.

“Good to see you again.” Miller turned to the voice and saw Professor Acton, smiling.

“Hey, Professor, need a lift?”

Acton laughed. “Not with that thing on board,” he said, jerking his thumb at the missile, now nearly installed under his wing.

Gun fire erupted as the Saudi’s opened fire over the heads of the crowd, sending thousands running in the opposite direction, and thousands more surging toward the small landing zone. “This is messed up, doc. I hope you guys can get out of here.”

“Don’t worry about us, just get that damned thing out of here.”

Dawson trotted over. “Okay, Major, you’re all set, but we’ve got a problem.” Overhead six Hornets slowly circled the area, the roar of their engines mixing with that of the crowd.

“What?”

Dawson leaned in and yelled louder. “We can’t disarm it, and there’s about one hundred minutes on the clock.”

Miller nodded. “There’s not enough time.”

“What do you mean?” asked Acton.

Miller turned to the professor. “We need to get this thing to a safe zone for detonation. We’re clearing one now, but it’s almost ninety minutes from here.”

“You mean—?”

 “It means I’ve gotta get out of here now.” Miller shook the hands of Dawson and Acton. “It’s been a pleasure knowing you, gentlemen.” He climbed into the cockpit and fired up his Auxiliary Power Unit as Dawson helped strap him in. Dawson jumped clear and Miller ignited the engines. More gunfire erupted as the crowd surged toward the plane. As the canopy lowered automatically, Miller turned to the men standing at attention below, all of whom saluted. He returned the salute, and shoved forward on the throttle as the canopy sealed him in one last time.

Behind the Makkah Hilton Hotel, Mecca, Saudi Arabia

Acton and the Delta team sprinted toward the alley as the Harrier’s roaring VTOL engines bathed the entire area with massive heat. As it gained altitude, Acton watched as the nozzles redirecting the engines’ thrust downward slowly straightened out, redirecting their thrust toward the rear of the plane. Within seconds the plane was soaring over the temple, then banking to the south and out of sight, followed by the circling aircraft.

He gripped Dawson’s arm. “What did he mean, ‘it’s been a pleasure knowing us’?”

“Think about it, Doc. If that nuke goes off anywhere near here, there’s going to be a holy war like no other. He has to get it as far away from holy land as possible.”

“Right, and they’re clearing an area,” said Acton. “He just drops it, and leaves.”

“That was a docking collar we put on that thing,” explained Dawson. “There’s no way for him to drop the weapon—it’s strapped on there until someone manually removes it.”

“You mean—”

“It’s a one way trip.”

The horror of the situation finally dawned on Acton and he felt sick to his stomach as he realized the last thing he had said to Miller was a joke about having the weapon on his wing. “Oh my God.” As he tried to come to grips with this new revelation, helicopter rotors thundered overhead, their rhythmic slicing of the air pounding everything around them.

“Let’s go people!” yelled Dawson, grabbing a still stunned Acton by the shoulder. “Those people aren’t looking too happy!” Acton stumbled toward the chopper as it landed and was pulled in by a marine and shoved into the rear corner. Acton simply stared at the metal floor, unable to get the image of Miller from his mind, or the family he had chatted so lovingly about for hours during their flight across the Atlantic.

“What’s wrong?”

Acton looked up to see Reading taking a seat beside him.

“It’s a one way trip.”

Reading eyebrows narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“The bomb. It can’t be dropped the way they attached it.”

Acton watched as his friend’s face changed, the eyebrows elevating slightly and his jaw dropping, a touch of color leaving his cheeks, the realization of Acton’s words sinking in.

“Rest in peace, Major.”

Yemini Air Space

Major Miller eyed his HUD. Over a dozen hostiles now approached him and his escort of six F/A-18E Super Hornets. He heard the CAG over his comm screaming at the Yeminis to disengage, but it didn’t sound like it was going to work this time—no one had thought they would have to cross their territory, so no one had contacted their government.

His threat indicator lit up, an alarm sounding in the cockpit as his aircraft detected a weapons lock. He glanced at the display and saw the lead aircraft launch two missiles. With the aircraft approaching each other at a combined two thousand miles per hour, there were only seconds to respond.

“Get behind us!” yelled his wingman, Captain Scott Hanson.

Miller eased back on the throttle slightly, letting his escort take the lead.

“Knight-Hawk Two engaging!” yelled Hanson as he launched two AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles. His comm lit up with reports of the others launching and a stream of a dozen missiles raced for their targets, their contrails tracing their path of destruction. The Yemini fighters were within sight now, and he watched as they all scattered in an attempt to evade the state of the art heat seeking missiles. They didn’t stand a chance. Within seconds ten aircraft were erased from existence, their planes, and pilots, merely dark splotches of smoke and falling wreckage on the sky’s clear blue canvas, and the two primitive missiles they had managed to launch flew harmlessly past, unable to get a lock, their second generation design requiring a much bigger heat signature than the front of a Super Hornet provided. The remaining aircraft bugged out.

“We’ve got a SAM site going active!” yelled Hanson. Miller’s HUD lit up again. The SAM site was broadcasting in their path, not from behind.

“This is Light-House, unable to evade, I repeat, unable to evade, there’s not enough time!” Miller pushed forward on the throttle.
There’s no going back now.

The accompanying Hornets went full throttle, forming a flying wedge in front of him. One launched a Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile as his HUD flashed another warning. If the missile eliminated the SAM site then any launched missile would lose its ability to track, the Yemini defenses Vietnam-era at best.

“This is Knight-Hawk One, we have four SAM launches from our six, over.”

“CAG to Knight-Hawks, protect Light-House at all costs, repeat, protect Light-House at all costs!”

Miller watched Knight-Hawks Three and Four launch JASSMs at the SAM sites as in the distance the first site was destroyed. Miller glanced at his watch, the timer he had set showing seventeen minutes remaining before detonation. He glanced at his HUD.
Shit!

The Yemini fighters had regrouped behind them, and opened fire. Knight-Hawks Four, Five and Six peeled off to engage, but Miller knew it wouldn’t be enough. There were just too many, and in too tight quarters. He was minutes from the coast, and less than ten minutes from international waters, and safety. Knight-Hawk Three reversed course to engage while Knight-Hawk Two fell back to the right of Miller’s wing.

“Let’s get that thing out of here!” yelled Hanson.

“You don’t have to tell me twice!” With the plane already at max throttle, Miller could do nothing but wait. He looked at the HUD and saw the Yemini counterattack falter as three of their birds were splashed, along with their missiles falling to countermeasures. The scope was a fog of confusion as the sky filled with debris. His HUD screamed with a missile lock. Miller’s eyes dropped to look and his heart sank. One of the missiles had made it through and reacquired a lock. It was hopelessly ahead of the rest of his escort, and Hanson had no time to turn and engage.

“Do you see that?” he heard Hanson yell.

Miller pushed forward on the stick, sending the Harrier into a steep, rapid dive. “We’re still too close!”

“Understood.” Miller glanced over his shoulder and saw Hanson drop back behind him, the missile acquiring his plane as the target.

“Scott, no!”

“Tell my wife and kid I—”

The transmission ended in a burst of static as the missile made contact, Hanson’s Hornet exploding in a ball of red hot aviation fuel, the shockwave of exploding ordinance buffeting Miller as he rapidly left his friend of over ten years behind. He punched the console in front of him and blinked the tears from his eyes.