The Twisted Cross (41 page)

When a third B-52 took a well-directed burst from a radar-guided AA gun, Hunter, Ben and JT had seen enough.

Actually assigned to escort Hunter's F-16XL, Ben and JT had agreed before taking off that they would not be shy in jumping into any situation where they felt the UA needed help. Hunter wholeheartedly endorsed the plan, although, technically, it was against orders.

So now they judged that the B-52s needed help. Leaving Hunter behind, both Strikefighters went into identical near-vertical dives. They passed through the B-52 formation, pulled up in front of it and within seconds were firing their nose cannons at a pair of AA guns situated on top of a seaside condo tower.

The two targets blew up just seconds before they overflew them. Climbing slightly to avoid colliding with the results of the explosions, they were immediately firing on another large AA site atop an office tower. A pair of close-in bursts later, the AA gun was a pile of burning metal.

The pair attacked three more targets and scored three more hits. That's when their radios suddenly crackled to life.

"Toomey! Ben! What on earth are you doing?" It was Jones's voice and, Hunter, eavesdropping on the conversation, could tell it sounded very angry.

The general was leading the B-52 strike, an extraordinary feat for the virtual leader of the democratic people of America. But Jones was never one to shy away from

action.

Trouble was, neither were Ben and JT.

"Supressing AA fire, sir," JT answered as calmly as possible.

"Well, get the hell out of there, now!" Jones retorted. "And stick to your mission!"

Hunter knew the general was right. But he also knew that neither of his close friends were ashamed or sorry for what they had done. Still, they both rather sheepishly climbed back up to 30,000 feet and slipped back into the role of escorting the F-16XL.

A minute later, the B-52s started dropping their • bombs.

It was over in 45 seconds. More than 350 tons of high explosives rained down on the city's all-important dockside section, erasing a two-square mile area.

The effects were devastating. The price was two more B-52s and a F-105X.

Shane and his men could not -only see the massive B-52 raid -they could actually feel it.

This was even through the earthquaking blasts from the Canal Nazis' big mobile guns. Still, even a B-52 strike couldn't help Shane's men at this point. Most of the F-4s and F-20s had departed by this time. Low on fuel and munitions, they had to head for the Big Banana base to replenish their stores and fill their tanks.

This meant the Football City Rangers would be without dedicated air support for 25 long minutes. Some of Fitz's F-105s were able to cover Shane for five minutes, but they too soon had to depart. Minutes later two Canadian CA-l0s were diverted from an attack along the Canal to suppress a particularly large mobile gun plastering the Rangers' positions from the south. They disabled the big gun, but one of the Thunderbolts was hit in the process, forcing its pilot to crash land at the airport, and

join the already encircled Football City Special Forces troops.

"Where the hell are those troop transports!" JT yelled out in frustration as he and Ben continued to circle the battle area. "Those guys down there are getting screwed!"

Not only did Shane's men need relief, the whole purpose of flying the UA troops into the Panama City airport was to have them break out and move as quickly as possible to capture the main Pacific side Canal locks.

But the way things were going, there wouldn't be much of an airport left by the time the transports arrived.

And things were quickly going from bad to worse.

Suddenly a half dozen Nazi F-4s showed up and started strafing the Rangers who were huddled in positions around the airport's terminal.

Suddenly Hunter's radio came alive. "Anyone up there?" he heard Shane's voice ask.

"Hang on, Shane," Hunter called back, quickly checking his radar scope and seeing that some of the F-20s were returning. "Your friends are just seven minutes away."

"We ain't got seven minutes, Hawk!" came the reply. "These F-4s are killing us. They must be being directed from somewhere."

Hunter knew that was something he could help with. He switched on his APG-56

radar and set it to ID Threat mode. This device would immediately identify any large source of radar emissions in the area.

"I'm getting a very hot reading right at the southern edge of the base,"

Hunter called back to Shane. "Could be their early warning radar hut doubling as a target spotter."

There was a long burst of crackle and static, then Shane came back on the line.

"There is a snowball hut way over there, Hawk," the man screamed over the noise of the continuous mortar and shell blasts. "But we ain't got anything long enough

to grease it."

Hunter's first temptation was to quickly dive down to the deck and take out the radar station. But, just like Ben and JTs action minutes before, doing so would border on disobeying a direct order.

Anyway, that's what the SRAM was for ...

Shane saw it coming.

It looked like a runaway car on a roller coaster, heading straight down until it was about 20 feet from the ground. Then it suddenly pulled and rocketed right over their heads.

"Jesus!" Shane himself yelled out as the missile went by at near supersonic speed.

With uncanny accuracy the SRAM did a slight left turn and smashed right into the white dome roof of the radar tracking building. A geyser of smoke and flame suddenly erupted from the building, followed by two secondary explosions.

Their electronic eyes and ears thus smashed, the Twisted Cross F-4s departed the area a few minutes later.

Hunter and the two Strikefighters had just completed their 45th circuit 30,000

feet above Panama City when his ears started buzzing.

It was the deactivators warning sound, piped right into his helmet's intercom system. He punched a sequence of numbers into his flight control computer, seeking to get a confirmation on the message he was receiving from the pod. A few moments later everything came back "green" from his computer. That was all he needed. Somewhere deep in the Cross's bomb-proof basement HQ, someone flipped the MASS switch and started activating the underwater nukes. In doing so, that someone was sentencing the Canal and a large chunk of the entire Panamanian isthmus to death by atomic obliteration.

It was up to Hunter to make sure the sentence wasn't carried out.

"Go Hawk!" JT called over to him as he heard Hunter recite the prearranged numerical codes over his radio. For everyone in the know from Wa and JT, to Jones returning from the B-52 raid, the sequence 7-43-61-11-72 meant that Hunter was about to start his mission.

"Good luck, Hawk," Ben wished him. "Last one back buys the beer . . ."

Major Frost was the first one to see him.

The Free Canadian pilot was behind the controls of a CA-10 Thunderbolt and leading an attack on a combined SAM-radar station just six miles in from Panama City. His two wingmen, also flying CA-l0s and using Maverick missiles directed by PAVE PENNY laser seeker pods, had just delivered two direct hits on the enemy radar station when Frost's short-range radar system started beeping.

"Jesus, here he comes!" Frost cried out to his partners, recognizing the F-16XEs unmistakable radar signature.

Immediately, Frost pulled out of his planned strafing run and put the CA-10

into power climb, his two wingmen perfectly mimicking the maneuver.

"Still got a hot SAM down there, sir," one of his guys reported.

"I know," Frost answered. "But it's more important that we clear the area for Hawk."

All three of the squat, powerful attack jets leveled off at 5000 feet and turned west.

"There he is!" one of the wingmen called out.

Sure enough, Frost could see the distinctive red-white-and-blue Cranked Arrow design going full throttle around a bend in the waterway.

"God, he must be doing Mach and a half!" one of the CA-10 pilots cried out. "I thought that was impossible at that altitude!"

"It is . . ." Frost told him. "But he's doing it anyway."

All three pilots watched in amazement at the F-16XL streaked underneath them doing at least 1000 mph, just barely above the surface of the water, all the while being shot at by enemy small arms fire from both sides of the waterway.

The Free Canadians knew at that speed and altitude, if a single bullet hit the airplane anywhere crucial, the F-16XL would hit the water and disintegrate in less than I/100th of a second.

Frost punched into Hunter's radio frequency just as the pilot was counting down to his first underwater "target."

"I'm at ten . . ." he heard Hunter say, knowing that Jones, Ben, JT and many others were listening in. "Nine . . . eight . . . I'm starting frequency sequencer ... six . . . five . . . main pod power on ... three . . . two . . .

one ... Zap!"

Frost could hear a buzzer going off in Hunter's cockpit. Then he heard the F-16 pilot yell: "Got 'em! One down, fifty-two to go!"

Then he was gone - in a flash, twisting away from them and around another bend in the Canal.

"Incredible . . ." was all Frost could say.

The next UA forces to see Hunter was a small Texan demolition team charged with blowing up a railroad bridge ten miles into the Canal. The span, which crossed the Canal at several locations, was the Canal Nazis main line of communications with the Atlantic side reaches of the waterway, and thus was covered with SAM sites. Already several Twisted Cross troop trains had been spotted crossing the bridge and heading for the Atlantic side. A United American air strike, carried out by two A-4 Skyhawks, was successful in disabling one locomotive. But

intense ground fire made it impossible for the A-4s to take down the bridge itself.

So the Texans had been dropped in by helicopter twenty minutes before. Working quickly but under intense enemy fire, the sappers attached no less than 500

pounds of explosives to the main support beams of the RR bridge. Already two of their three helicopters that were covering them had been shot down by shoulder-launched SAMs, and a tight ring of Nazi troops was slowly closing in on the 20-man demo squad.

That's when their team leader heard a screeching sound coming from the west.

His men even stopped working for a moment to look in that direction, fearing the worst. Instead, they saw the one and only F-16XL, traveling at close to 1200 mph no more than 25 feet above the water.

"It's Hunter!" the team leader yelled.

No sooner were the words out of his mouth when the delta-shaped high-tech fighter streaked by and under the span his troops were preparing to blow up.

The jet left such a whirlwind in its path, it. nearly knocked two of the sappers off the under pilings of the bridge.

As it would happen, the main concentration of fire being directed against the Texans was coming from three recoilless rifle sites located at a point a half mile down the waterway from the bridge. Somehow -and the Texans never really found out just how -Hunter knew this. As soon as he darted under the bridge, his airplane's nose exploded in a cough of fire and smoke. A quick but lethal burst of the F-16XEs six simultaneous-firing cannons completely destroyed the enemy's recoilless rifle nest in three seconds.

Then, as quick as that, the famous airplane was gone, and so was much of the enemy fire.

The Texans successfully blew the bridge five minutes later.

As Major Dantini of the Central American Tactical Service would later tell it, he was up to his neck in smelly water when he first heard the F-16XL coming.

He had just returned that morning from his trip to Washington to meet General Jones. It was during this meeting that Jones had revealed the whole "sneak attack" scenario for Dantini, the only such briefing given to an officer outside of the United American Army Command Staff.

At the time Jones had told him that Dantini and the CATS deserved an explanation of the United Americans' motives, especially in light of the fact that Washington had been using Radio CATS to broadcast its bogus news stories.

It had taken awhile, but Dantini finally came around to an understanding of Jones's reasoning for the deception. From that point on he worked with the UA planners, detailing for them everything he knew about the Canal and the Nazi's defenses around it.

His only request had been that, seeing as the CATS would play a very major role during the first hours of the attack, he be allowed to be back with his unit before the fighting broke out. He was, courtesy of a balls-out chopper ride from Texas to a refueling/spyship off Mexico on to his island base off Panama.

He went in with the second wave of his choppers. Their assignment was to blow up a pump station 14 miles from Panama City. The target was high priority because it was one of several pumphouses that regulated the height of the water flow in the Canal. Should the Nazis get really desperate they could, with the turn of a few wheels, let millions of gallons of water flood into the Canal, thereby swamping and probably destroying a good part of both main lock systems.

The particular station Dantini and two of his Chinooks were gunning for was built underground, deep in the woods, about a quarter mile from the bank of the waterway. Its location underground had been strictly an engineering decision by the original builders of the Canal. However, it made the critical target just about impervious to air attack.

So the CATS had taken on the job. Landing two Chinooks about a half mile downstream, Dantini and 15 of his men slogged through a drainage stream that ran parallel to the main waterway, hauling five big rocket-propelled grenade launchers. All they had to do was destroy the small gas turbine that was located on the exposed roof of the pumphouse, and thereby deprive it of the electricity it needed to operate.

It was a job that was a little out of their league -they being primarily chopper troops, but Dantini was sure his guys could handle it.

However, four Nazi fast attack boats showed up to prove them wrong.