Pirate (32 page)

“JOHNNIE BLACK, YOU GOT A BOGEY APPROACHING, TWENTY-
five miles out.” Alex Hawke couldn’t believe his ears. He thought he’d had enough airborne excitement in the last few days to last a lifetime. The “incident,” as it was now referred to, aboard the USS
Lincoln,
was one of those memories that was not going to fade rapidly. For two days, the mere act of waking up in the
Lincoln
sickbay had come as something of a surprise.

What’s this? Still here, old fellow?

Yes. Bruised (his neck and right shoulder were a lovely shade of violet from slamming into the canopy when his seat broke loose) and battered, but still here. With a brand-new airplane from Aviano in Italy. And now, Archangel, the American AWACS plane directing Operation Deny Flight, the still-dewy no-fly zone over northern Oman, was warning him that a bogey, a French Mirage F1, was fast approaching him.

He craned his head around inside the bubble-shaped canopy of the F-16 Fighting Falcon and radioed his wingman. “Jim Beam, Jim Beam, this is Johnnie Black.” The American pilot, whose name was Lieutenant Jim Hedges, was floating just off his starboard wingtip. “You got this guy?”

“Uh, roger that, Johnnie Black. I have him at heading two-sevenoh, maintaining twenty-five thousand feet at four hundred knots. We’re doing low to high, is that right, sir?”

“Affirm. We are doing low to high, Jim Beam,” Hawke said.

Low to high meant he wanted his wingman to go low and look for more bad guys while he alone climbed upstairs to confront the single known enemy. He had his reasons for this but he had been ordered not to share them with his American wingman. He was sure Hedges thought this whole mission was a crock, but there was nothing he could do about that right now.

He had taken off that morning at 0600 hours from Aviano Air Base in Italy, en route to Saudi Arabia for a fuel stop and a briefing. Ultimately, he was headed to Oman. He’d been ordered to test the new no-fly zone firsthand and report what he found to Kelly. And, meet up with Harry Brock at a small coastal village called Ras al Hadd and discuss the number-two reason he was going to Oman. First job, get the sultan and his family out of French hands.

There was a complete mission briefing in his flight bag. Aerial acrobatics and hostage rescue, his two favorite things in all the world.

The rescue sounded simple enough on paper; Hawke and Brock were supposed to determine if it was feasible to snatch the sultan and his family. If it was, do it posthaste. They were believed to be held captive in a seaside fortress on a small island called Masara, just a mile off the coast of Oman. The CIA had boots on the ground in Oman now. Their last humint assessment had indicated the beleaguered sultan had also been moved to the island.

Hawke’s F-16 was the number-two jet in a four-plane formation destined for an American air base high in the western mountains of Saudi Arabia called Taif. Taif Air Base, situated at forty-eight hundred feet, was conveniently located about a two-hour drive from Jeddah. It was the home of the United States Military Training Mission to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. You don’t hear much about them. This is a group that liked to stay out of the news.

USMTM in Saudi was a highly classified joint training mission under the command of Headquarters, United States Central Command (USCENTCOM) at MacDill AFB, Florida. Hawke, who frequently worked very closely with the Departments of Defense and State, and was privy to not a few secrets himself, knew that the tiny Taif Air Base was where the CIA and the American Department of Defense were coordinating and preparing for any eventuality arising from a possible French invasion of Oman. American personnel at Taif Air Base also flew support missions with the F-15s the Saudi RSAF had bought from the United States. The Royal Saudi Air Force squadrons flew out of the air base at Riyadh.

At Taif, in a sweltering Quonset hut, Hawke was briefed on Operation Deny Flight, the no-fly zone now being established over Oman. Two of the fighters who’d accompanied him from Aviano were staying on the ground in Saudi Arabia. They had other plans. He’d be flying a two-plane with Hedges for the balance of the short flight from Saudi Arabia to its neighboring state, Oman. During the briefing, his aircraft was refueled.

Hawke was flying a loaner, an F-16 Fighting Falcon, reluctantly relinquished to his care by the grouchy four-star commanding the Sixteenth Air Force, and the Thirty-first Fighter Wing headquartered at Aviano, Italy. Hawke was quick to forgive the general his grudging generosity. The general had a lot on his mind lately.

The Sixteenth Air Force’s area of interest includes NATO’s southern lines of communications, waterway chokepoints to half the world’s shipping, the crossroads of Islam and Christianity, and some of the world’s major oil-producing countries. This vast piece of real estate was home to dramatically increased levels of political, ethnic, religious, and economic tension and the Sixteenth Air Force had been very busy lately. One particular chokepoint had everyone in the command center at Aviano’s attention right now: the Strait of Hormuz at the northern tip of Oman.

Talk about a strategic stranglehold. Most of the world’s petroleum was shipped through the narrow stretch of water separating Oman and its glowering neighbor Iran. Hence, the no-fly zone to keep out anybody who had no official business there.

Hawke could understand why the four-star had been a little grouchy when he learned one of his airplanes was being loaned out. Especially when he’d been told the name of the recipient of his largesse. Commander Alexander Hawke, the British aviator involved in the “incident” with the brand-new F-35 aboard the
Lincoln.
Knowing the military as he did, Hawke understood precisely what was going on. He knew that, although it had been determined conclusively that the mishap was due strictly to catapult malfunction and not plane or pilot error, a certain stigma had attached itself to his name and it would follow him around until all the navy flyboys ceased to be interested in him any longer.

He also knew that, unfortunately, there would be questions about the F-35 for a while. Ill-founded questions, Hawke knew, and he had assured the American aeronautical engineers who had grilled him mercilessly on the ground at Aviano that the plane had performed flawlessly. According to his instruments, everything had been perfect when he had throttled up for launch. As he told them, he couldn’t reasonably expect the aircraft’s computers to pick up the problems with the bloody catapult.

Would he fly an F-35 again if he got a chance, they asked, as Hawke headed for the door. In a heartbeat, he’d said.

“Okay, Johnnie Black, bogey is at twenty miles and lining up beak-to-beak,” the AWACS officer flying high above him said.

“What flag?”

“Armée d’Air.
French Air Force. Check your offset, sir.”

Well, Hawke thought, there you have it. The bloody French had gone completely round the bend. Challenging the American no-fly zone was all the proof anyone needed that Bonaparte was wholly insane. Find out if they’ll shoot, Brick had said to Hawke. He was about to do just that.

“Roger, Archangel,” Hawke said, “Executing offset. Vertical offset minimum of five thousand, roger?”

“Affirmative. That’s a good number, sir. No more than that.”

“Maintain vertical offset at five thousand,” Hawke said, “Johnnie Black.”

For some reason, the Americans were giving whisky call signs to all Operation Deny Flight aircraft. He supposed the British whisky appellation he’d been given, “Johnnie Black,” was some kind of USAF humor. Hawke drank only rum, but Johnnie Walker Black was damn good whisky and if he had to have—Uh oh.

“Uh, Johnnie Black, climb and maintain three-five-oh, over.”

“Johnnie Black climb and maintain three-five-oh.”

Hawke had been so busy with radar, weapons systems, radio, and the vivid memory of his recently aborted career as a test pilot, he’d barely registered the AWACS warning. He got busy fast.

“Roger that,” Hawke said, scanning his canopy for shapes that might suddenly get much larger as he and the bogey converged. He knew he would see the guy going from not really moving in the canopy, to suddenly starting to shift. The F-16 was equipped with the most sophisticated weapons systems, avionics, navigation, and electronic countermeasures that money could buy. But any good fighter jock got a whole lot of information about a bogey’s speed and heading by carefully observing how the tiny target plane grew and shrank and moved against his canopy.

If the bogey got bigger and bigger without changing relative position, it meant you were about to experience the once-in-a-lifetime thrill of a midair collision.

But, if the other guy got bigger, and drifted from one area of the canopy to another, like this guy was doing, it meant he was in a turn. The secret to staying alive up here was the ability to instantly grasp the “picture” of the two combatants’ relative positions and react accordingly. Without thinking. Right now, the bogey was moving fast in the canopy, meaning the two jets were starting to pass each other.

“Turn right, Johnnie Black,” Hawke heard in his headset. He was already doing that. With his left hand, he hit the afterburner. Hawke was pulling nine g’s in the turn. Blood was trying to leave his head in a hurry and go to his feet, but he strained his muscles against the pressure suit so the red-out didn’t happen. The two jets were turning away from each other, each making a circle in the sky. It was a two-circle fight now. Each pilot was hoping to outrun the enemy plane and end up behind him. On his six, they called it. Sometimes referred to as “Position A.”

“Good work, Johnnie Black,” Archangel said suddenly. “Get your nose lower.”

“Roger.” Hawke eased his nose down. Making any turn going downhill added power, since gravity added to the plane’s energy. Hawke now turned toward the enemy plane, trying to make this a “one-circle” fight. He wanted to get inside the bogey’s turn circle so he could get off a quick shot from behind. He knew he was taking a chance. If you overshoot, the hunter ends up prey, out in front of the bogey. If you slow too quickly, you have only a fleeting shot and then you wind up on the defensive.

The two opposing aircraft were sliding, slipping, and zooming through the air. There are only two kinds of aircraft in the sky. Killers and targets. Johnnie Black and the French Mirage testing the American no-fly zone were in the deadly process of sorting out who was who.

“Uh, Johnnie Black,” Archangel said, “what exactly are your intentions, sir?”

“Roll out, get the burner cooking, go for turn circle energy,” Hawke replied.

“What speed?”

“Four hundred knots.”

“Okay, roger. Don’t get beyond five hundred knots, sir. We’re not trying to pick a fight here, sir. We, uh, we—we’re still setting up shop here.”

Hawke grinned.
Not trying to pick a fight
? Why the hell else would they be there? Hawke fired up his air-to-air radar and pinged the opposing fighter. As soon as the ping hit him, the Mirage went into violent defensive maneuvers and Hawke dove down after him. They were now both in a circling spin toward the ground. Each pilot was hoping to take advantage of a split-second mistake by the other guy. He was at twenty thousand feet and the whole of the Gulf of Oman lay below him. He caught his first glimpse of the Strait of Hormuz.

From this altitude, it wasn’t hard to grasp the strategic importance.

He had the bogey locked up, and a warning signal sounded in the cockpit as he armed his AMRAAM radar missiles. The new Aim-120s under his wings were the latest thing. Air-launched aerial intercept missiles employing active radar target tracking. They were capable of speeds of Mach 4 and provided capability against single and multiple targets in all environments. The bogey beneath him, now spinning earthward like a pinwheel, was already dead. He just didn’t know it yet.

“Johnnie Black, veer off! Veer off!” Archangel shouted in his phones.

“Repeat?” Hawke said, his voice incredulous, his right hand poised in midair. “I have this bogey locked up! You want me to disengage?”

“Affirmative, affirmative. Disengage! Do not shoot! Veer off now, sir.”

“What the bloody hell is going on? Somebody want to tell me?” he said, letting anger and frustration creep into his voice.

“This is not a shooting war, Johnnie Black.”

“It isn’t? Then there’s some serious lack of—what the hell kind of war are you boys fighting?”

“Right now it’s strictly a pushing and shoving war, sir.”

“Pushing and shoving.”

“That’s affirmative. Until further orders.”

“Roger, Archangel,” Hawke said, simultaneously calming himself down and peeling away. “Seems to have been a serious lack of communication somewhere along the line, Archangel.”

“Roger that, Johnnie Black. We apologize, sir. We, uh—were not informed you were coming. We, uh, oh shit!”

There was a muffled boom below and Hawke flipped his plane left and saw what had caused it. The French Mirage F1 jet had augured into the side of a mountain. Licks of orange fire and thick black smoke were curling up from the crash site. The pilot’s evasive maneuver was sound but he’d gone too deep. Or rather, Hawke thought, he’d been pushed and shoved too deep. Another pilot who’d run out of luck and experience at precisely the same moment.

“Looks like the other guy blinked,” Hawke said. “Too bad.”