War of the Sun (10 page)

One second to go. It was too late to turn away. The Marut had to fly right through this explosion, the force shattering his windscreen and popping most of the rivets that held on his right wing’s leading edge flaps.

Zero …

At last they saw the goal: the giant antenna farm covering the snow-covered dome of Mount Nanzenji.

The place was a major target. The two rows of twenty antennas, each 300-feet high, first boosted and then sent off the signals that carried thousands of low-level radio orders from the high command to the lower echelon commands in all the countries now occupied by the Cult. Where the satellite stations inside in Kimono Valley served as a communication link between the high-profile commanders (and therefore carried the big orders to the big brains), the antennas atop Nanzenji provided the radio network for the heart, mouth, feet, and stomach of the Cult’s legions.

To cut these down would be to slice the vocal cords of this great octopus whose tentacles were slowly strangling Asia and reaching out to the rest of the world.

Dropping down to 100 feet, almost to the height of the concrete bases of the antennas, the two jets entered between the. rows of these steel towers and began dropping bombs.

The AS.37 Matras and AGM-78 ARM modified antiradar missiles went first. Then the AGM Walleye ASM and the AGM-88A Harms shot out from under the pair of oddballs as they twisted through this maze at close to the speed of sound. The bombs expertly blasted away at the bases that supported the great steel towers. These blasts caused the antennas to shudder and sway, and some began to twist and collapse under their own weight. The pilots were sowing so much destruction, the screech of the bending and stretching steel support beams could be heard even inside their cockpits.

At least thirty of the fifty towers were hit, but the pilots quickly realized that what they had done was not enough to bring down all these great steel superstructures. But suddenly, there was a tremendous explosion, followed by another and another and another. The four quick explosions caused the jet fighters to lurch forward and be tossed around, almost out of control. Looking back, the pilots discovered that what they had failed to do was being done by the enemy themselves.

Trying to stay locked on to the two jinking jets, a quartet of SAMs had bored through the standing towers that the jets couldn’t topple, and the warheads began to explode as they struck the support beams in their paths. Each explosion toppled a tower into the path of another SAM, and it too exploded, furthering a domino effect.

As the two planes screamed to a higher altitude, the pilots looked behind them and saw what was left of the great antenna farm—a twisted and contorted pile of steel girders, occasionally rocked by secondary explosions, and now melting from the several fires.

And they had done it with not a second to spare.

Their victory, however, was quickly forgotten as the two pilots realized how heavily damaged their airplanes were. The Yugo was smoking and trailing oil from several large holes in its fuselage and wings. The Marut was in even worse shape: its left wing and tail-plane was mangled, and worse, it was losing fuel.

Without a word between them, the pilots turned their severely wounded planes around and began the attempt to make it back to the
Fitz.

T
HE COMMANDER OF THE
Sakachita military base was worried.

His communication officer had just handed him a strange report. An SOS of sorts had been received by the Cult naval base twenty miles up the coast. Apparently sent from a fishing boat somewhere off the coast, the emergency call was garbled at best. In fact, no message ever came through from the civilian boat, and that was the problem. Civilian fishermen were under strict orders not to use military band radio unless they were reporting unusual activity, such as a spy plane or ship. Failure to adhere to this rule resulted in death by firing squad. Why then would a fisherman make an attempt to contact the military authorities, and then not follow through?

The commander checked his watch. It was 0615, just the beginning of his long day as the highest-ranking officer of the sprawling Sakachita installation. This was an unusual place: not only did it serve as an air station for a squadron of Cult interceptors, it was also the site for the central air defense radio network which linked all of the Cult air bases around the Home Islands. Responsibility for such a major Cult installation had been given to him by Hashi Pushi himself.

He looked out from his control tower window over the three rows of super-modified Dassault Etendard IV-Ms, the state-of-the-art aircraft of the Cult air defense forces. Usually when he gazed at these fabulous airplanes, he experienced a tinge of pride. But now a gut feeling told him that something was wrong. Suddenly the airplanes looked like sitting ducks.

He picked up his telephone and screamed a short order into it. Within 30 seconds he could see six pilots running to their Etendards, scrambled by him under the guise of a typical drill. He took a stopwatch from his pocket and started it ticking. He would be pleased if all six jets were in the air in less than four-point-five minutes.

The Viggens attacked two minutes later.

They had come in so low that the commander himself was the first to spot them. His air traffic officers were too busy getting the first three interceptors into the air to see the pair of blue dots streaking in from the eastern horizon.

But the commander saw them. They were flying faster and lower than he thought aerodynamically possible. Indeed, they were so low, their jet exhausts were actually leaving a trail of steam on the surface of the ocean as they roared in over it.

They looked
so
unusual, the commander had to take a few seconds just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. When the two airplanes finally made landfall, he knew it wasn’t an illusion.

Who could they be?
he wondered, just an instant before he let out a scream.

But his cry of alarm came about two seconds too late.

The first Mk 500-pound GP bomb off of Viggen One slammed into the Sakachita control tower, obliterating it and everyone inside, including the base commander.

Viggen Two came in right behind, pouncing on the three rows of parked Etendards, blasting away with its four 20mm cannons. The high-explosive cannon rounds shredded the planes, rapidly tearing apart their fuselages, engines, and cockpits, and igniting their fuel tanks.

Meanwhile, Viggen One swung back around and took out the taxiing and runway strips with a matched set of Durandel antirunway bombs. Each bomb exploded on impact, tearing up large craters and wildly spewing the runway with concrete and flaming debris. The converted Swedish fighter then turned and made a second pass to do the same thing all over again. Three enemy airplanes had taken off just as he and his partner had roared in; he wanted to make sure that it would be a long time before any plane left this airfield again.

By that time, the pilot of Viggen Two had banked hard left, and was making his turn to come back and tear up more Etendards. Suddenly his airplane began shuddering. He looked over his shoulder and saw two of the scrambled Etendards bearing down on him from his six o’clock, their nose cannons ablaze. With his bomb racks still overloaded, the Viggen pilot quickly lit his afterburner and banked hard right. The Etendards followed the maneuver and were soon back on the Swedish fighter’s tail. The Viggen pilot then screeched hard left, bringing him back out over the sea. The Etendards mimicked this maneuver too, all the while closing in for the kill on the slower, overloaded airplane.

The Viggen suddenly pulled back and went straight up, its overworked engine straining for altitude. The Cult fighter pilots couldn’t believe their good fortune. Their airplanes could climb much faster than an ordinary Viggen, never mind one so loaded down with bombs. Though the Cult pilots had no idea who the attacking pilot was, they were sure he was about to pay with his life for daring to attack their Homeland.

And that’s where they were wrong.

For when the Viggen suddenly turned over at about 4000 feet, the Cult pilots found themselves looking up at a pair of A-7 Strikefighters coming out of the clouds and right down at them.

The Etendard pilots tried to break off and get away from the ferocious Strikefighters, but it was much too late for that. Each A-7 unleashed a wicked barrage of 20mm cannon shells. Each fusillade quickly found its mark. Within seconds, the pair of Etendards were falling into the sea, almost side-by-side, aflame and in pieces.

Meanwhile the pilot of Viggen Two was weaving his way through scattered anti-aircraft fire, intent on bombing his main target, the massive radio communication network complex located on the edge of the huge airfield.

Orbiting overhead, however, the pilot of the third and last of the Cult Etendards saw the Swedish fighter begin its bombing run and quickly dived toward it.

As soon as the slower Viggen crossed his sight lines, the Cult pilot opened up with a long burst from his dual 20mm cannons. The shells danced along the thin outer edges of the Viggen’s wings, causing the pilot to quickly break off his bombing run and roll hard off to the east. The speedier Etendard shot up past him but then twisted around, staying right on the tail of the slower Swedish airplane.

Undeterred, the pilot of Viggen Two snapped hard left and began a bombing run on the communications complex from the opposite direction. He knew he had to unload his ordnance if he was going to try to get out from under this pesky Cult fighter, yet he had at least to try to hit the main target.

The Etendard, now right on the Viggen’s tail, opened up with his 20mm cannon again, this time chopping off good-sized chunks of fuselage, but the Viggen was able to jink and jag just enough to dodge most of the deadly fire. Then, for the next two and a half seconds, the Viggen stayed straight and true, aiming right at the communications complex. The Etendard pilot faithfully hung on the Viggen tail and increased his speed, trying to line up his sights for yet another burst that he hoped would finally put this infernal flying machine down once and for all.

Just as he was about to release a burst, the Etendard pilot saw the Viggen drop everything he had, the Beluga Cluster Dispensers, the Mk82 Snakeye retared bombs, and the Mk 500-lb GP bombs, right into the radio complex. With the sudden loss of all that ordnance, the Viggen virtually disappeared from in front of the Etendard, and the enemy pilot found himself heading straight into the resulting massive explosion. At that instant, his radar warning buzzed loudly, alerting him to the fact that a heat-seeking AIM-9 Sidewinder, fired from a tracking Strikefighter, was just about to fly up his exhaust. Caught between a rock and a hard place, the Cult pilot streaked into the rising ball of flame from the destroyed radio complex just as the Sidewinder slammed into his tail.

He never knew which one killed him.

The Strikefighters formed up and turned back toward the enemy flight line, strafing what was left of still-intact enemy airplanes. By the time they were done, all that was left of the Cult squadron were shattered, twisted, and smoking hulks of blackened scrap metal.

The A-7s immediately exited the target area, catching up with the Viggens that had streaked off seconds before. The mission had been a huge success, but it was apparent that both Viggens were hurting badly. Each had vital electronic functions knocked out, Viggen One’s landing gear had fallen open and couldn’t be cranked up, and Viggen Two was handling poorly due to damage to its left wing.

The pair of Strikefighters quickly rallied around the battered Swedish fighters, and as one the four planes turned east, starting the treacherous flight back to the
Fitzgerald.

In all, the air strike had taken less than ninety seconds.

Activity aboard the USS
Fitzgerald
was approaching sheer pandemonium.

The two Tornados had already “landed hard”—logbook terminology for “crashed.” Both had their landing gear and control surfaces chewed up; both ended up sliding in on their underbellies and catching the last arrestor wire after skidding almost halfway down the deck.

Viggen Two had returned about ten minutes later. Its right-side ailerons were completely shot away, and the pilot reported he was getting a negative light on his airbrake assembly. Its pilot somehow floated the beat-up Swedish fighter in, losing part of his wing but snapping his brakes into working condition with the first bounce on the carrier deck. He too connected with the fourth and last arrestor wire.

Viggen One bounced in for a fairly normal landing, its right-side gear bending but holding as the pilot caught the three wire. The Strikefighters held off on recovery, making way for the shot-up oddballs, the Yugo and the Marut.

Neither could slow down enough for a normal approach, so they were forced to lower the airspeed gradually by circling the carrier with the gear down, slowing their jet engines until they were barely airborne. Still, both came in hard and nearly out of control—their tailplanes were totally useless or so full of holes that they made no difference whatsoever as they hit the deck. The Marut hit the one wire so hard coming in, it snapped it. The Yugo sliced off three feet of its right wing by smashing into the island itself. Both pilots escaped with just cuts and bruises.

The flight deck was now awash in hot, slick oil, firefighting foam, and smoky jet fuel. Only by the professionalism of the crew and the superb skill of the pilots was order somehow maintained in the face of the chaos.

Damage control reports continued to be sent to the bridge. “The Ball,” a series of vertical lights used to alert incoming pilots as to whether they are too low or high on an approach, had been hit by part of Viggen Two’s left wing when it snapped off a plane as it slammed onto the deck. It could not be repaired. Elevator Number Two was jammed midway down its shaft from hot oil that had leaked down and shorted out its electrical power. It was now covered in Purple-K flame retardant foam and likely unrepairable.

There were at least six fires barely under control topside, and two more in the hangar deck that had just started in the heavily-damaged planes that had been brought below. The regular firefighting crews were stretched to the far edges of their abilities; now everyone on board who could be spared was battling the fires.