Stephen Coonts - Combat

“We need to come up with a best guess at what we encountered last night,” Brad Elliott said. “Wendy? Start us off.”

“Weird,” Wendy said. “He had a big, powerful multimode X-band surface-search radar, which meant it was a big plane, maybe bomber-class, like a Bear, Badger, Backfire, Nimrod, or Buccaneer attack plane. But it also had an S-band air-search radar, like a Soviet Peel Cone system or like an AWACS. He was fast, faster than six hundred knots, which definitely eliminates the Bear and AWACS and probably eliminates a Badger, Nimrod, or Buccaneer attack plane. That leaves a Backfire bomber.”

“Or a Blackjack bomber,” Patrick offered, “or some other class of aircraft we haven’t seen yet.” The Backfire and Blackjack bombers were Russia’s most advanced warplanes. Both were large intercontinental supersonic bombers, still in production. The Backfire bomber, similar to the American B-1 bomber, was known to have been exported to Iran as a naval attack plane, carrying long-range supersonic cruise missiles. Little was known about the Blackjack bomber except it was larger, faster, more high-tech, and carried many more weapons than any other aircraft in the Communist world — and probably in the entire world.

“But with air-to-air missiles?” John Ormack remarked. “Could we have missed other planes with him, maybe a fighter escort?”

“Possible,” Wendy said. “But normally we’d spot fighter intercept radars at much longer distances, as far as a hundred miles. We didn’t see him until he was right on top of us — less than forty miles away. In fact, we probably wouldn’t have detected him at all except he turned on his own radar first and we detected it. He was well within our own air-search radar range, but we never saw him.”

“A stealth bomber ?” Patrick surmised. “A stealthy Backfire or Blackjack bomber?”

“There’s nothing stealthy about a Backfire,” Wendy said, “but a Blackjack bomber — interesting notion. Armed with air-to-air missiles?”

“It’s the equivalent of a Megafortress flying battleship, except built on a supersonic airframe,” Patrick said. “Three years after we first flew the EB-52 Megafortress, someone — probably the Russians — builds their own copy and sells it to the Iranians. Remember we thought we heard a Russian voice on the radio before we heard the Iranian pilot respond in English? The Russians built a Megafortress flying battleship and sold it to the Iranians .”

“Hol-ee shit,” Brad Elliott murmured. “It would sure keep the Russians in the Iranians’ good graces to sell them a hot jet like a Megafortress. That would be worth a billion dollars in hard currency, something I’m sure the Russians need badly. It would be the ultimate weapon in the Middle East.”

“We know how capable our system is — we know we can sneak up on any ship in the U.S. Navy and launch missiles and drop bombs before they know we’re there,” John Ormack said. “If the Iranians have a similar capability …”

“The entire fleet in the Persian Gulf could be in danger,” Brad Elliott said ominously. “With Iraq all but neutralized and the Coalition forces going home, this could be Iran’s best chance to take over the Persian Gulf. I want an abbreviated after-action and intelligence summary ready to transmit in thirty minutes, and then I want a detailed report prepared and ready to send out to Washington on the next liaison flight. Let’s get busy.”

The crew had the report done in twenty minutes, and they were hard at work on the after-action report when a communications officer brought in a message from the command post. Brad read it, his face darkened, and he crumpled it up into a ball and stormed out of the room, muttering curses.

John picked up the message form and read it. “We’ve been ordered to stand down,” he said. “Apparently the Iranians filed a protest with the State Department, claiming an American warplane tried to violate Iranian airspace and attack a patrol. Almost every Gulf country is demanding an explanation, and the President doesn’t have one …”

“Because he didn’t know what we were doing,” Patrick said. “The President must be ready to bust a gut.”

“We’ve been ordered to bring the Megafortresses back to Groom Lake immediately.” He gulped, then read, “And Brad’s been relieved of duty.” Patrick shook his head and made an exasperated sigh, then closed his classified notebook, collected his papers, and secured them in a catalog case to turn back in to the command post. “Where are you going, Patrick?”

“Out. Away from here. I’m on a beautiful tropical island — I want to enjoy a little of it before I get tossed into prison.”

“Brad wanted us to stay in the hangar …”

“Brad’s no longer in charge,” Patrick said. He looked at John Ormack with a mixture of anger and weariness. “Are you going to order me to stay, John?” Ormack said nothing, so Patrick stormed out of the room without another word.

After turning in his classified materials, Patrick went to his locker in the hangar, stripped off his smelly survival gear and flying boots, found a beach mat and a bottle of water, took a portable walkie-talkie and his ID card, grabbed a ride from the shuttle bus to one of the beautiful white-sand beaches just a few yards from the Visiting Officers’ Quarters, found an inviting coconut tree, stripped off his flight suit and undergarments to the waist, and stretched out on the sand. He heard the walkie-talkie squawk once — someone asking him to return to answer a few more questions — so Patrick finally turned the radio off. But he immediately felt bad for doing that, so he set his “internal alarm clock” for one hour and closed his eyes.

He was exhausted, bone-tired, but the weariness would not leave his body — in fact, he was energized, ready to go again. There was so much excitement and potential in their group — and it seemed it was wasted because Brad Elliott couldn’t control himself. He was too eager simply to charge off and do whatever he felt was right or necessary. Patrick didn’t always disagree with him, but he wished he could channel his energy, drive, determination, and patriotism in a more productive direction.

It seemed as if only a few minutes passed, but when Patrick awoke a quick glance at his watch told him fifty minutes had gone by. The sun was high in the sky, seemingly overhead — they were close enough to the equator for that to happen — but there was enough of a breeze blowing in off the Indian Ocean to keep him cool and comfortable. There were a few sailors or airmen on the beach a few dozen yards away to the east, throwing a Frisbee or relaxing under an umbrella.

“Helluva way to fight a war, isn’t it?”

Patrick looked behind him and saw Wendy Tork sitting cross-legged beside him. She had a contented, pleased, relaxed look on her face. Patrick felt that same thrill of excitement and anticipation he had felt on the Megafortress. “I’ll say,” Patrick commented. “How long have you been sitting there?”

“A few minutes.” Wendy was wearing nothing but her athletic bra and a pair of dark blue cotton panties; her flying boots and flight suit were in a pile beside her. Patrick gulped in surprise when he saw her so scantily clad, which made her smile. She motioned toward the Visiting Officers’ Quarters down the beach. “Brad decided to let us get rooms in the Qs rather than sleep in the hangar.”

Patrick snorted. “How magnanimous of him.”

“What were you going to do — sleep on the beach?”

“Damn right I was,” Patrick said. He shook his head disgustedly. “We were cooped up in that plane for over seventeen hours.”

“And it was all unauthorized,” Wendy said bitterly. “I can’t believe he’d do that — and then have the nerve to chew you out for what you did.”