Tom Clancy - Command Authority

Cole’s quite reasonable question, whether or not the Ukrainians had cleared his flight to enter their airspace, was not immediately answered.

He knew he’d need that clearance quickly. To stress the urgency of the situation, he told the controller who’d sent him on this mission, “Be advised, ETA twenty-one minutes.”

The terse reply came back. “Understood. We are tracking.”

“Uh. Also… we might want to think about letting the Russians know what we’re doing. They’ve got their own air defenses over their fleet parked right there in Sevastopol. How copy?”

“Good copy, and we’re working on that. General Nathansan will speak with you directly in a moment with more information.”

Cole was already surprised by this strange event, but hearing that the commanding officer of the 52nd Operations Group, the fighter component of the 52nd Fighter Wing, would be directly entering his headset to tell him about his flight’s mission made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

Something was up, it was big, and Grungy hoped like hell he’d get the clearance to fly over Sevastopol before he was shot down by the Russians. He also hoped someone was expediting a tanker to the area to get involved in all this, because he and his flight would need fuel if they were going to fly up to Sevastopol and do anything more than fly right back home.

Warrior flight was well over the Black Sea before they had more context for their mission. As promised, General Nathansan himself came on a radio channel to speak directly to Captain Cole. He talked in a rapid and frank manner, informing the captain about the situation on the ground in Sevastopol, passing along the GPS coordinates for the Lighthouse, and ordering Cole to overfly the area for as long as he had fuel to do so and get back to Turkish airspace, where a KC-135 Stratotanker would gas them up for the return the rest of the way back to base at Incirlik.

Cole computed his fuel quickly while Nathansan talked. The four aircraft in his flight would have enough gas for no more than four passes each over the city. From the way the general explained the situation, all parties involved were hoping four aircraft making a few fly-bys would somehow buy the Americans under attack on the ground the hour to hour and a half necessary to wait for air extraction by Marine V-22s.

Nathansan told Grungy they had the overflight cleared with the Ukrainians, and they were working with the Russians. Cole knew Russia had air defenses all over Sevastopol to protect the port, and immediately decided he’d have his flight approach from an easterly direction, the opposite direction of the port of Sevastopol, so that he would not fly directly over any Russian ships in port.

Before Grungy opened his channel to explain the situation to the rest of his flight, he brainstormed the problem for a moment, trying to think of ways to maximize the impact of their attempt at “shock and awe.” He came up with a quick plan, and then relayed instructions to the three other pilots.

“Warrior Oh One to Warrior flight. Here’s the sitrep. We’re going to put on an air show over the Black Sea fleet.”

He explained that an American installation—even though their transmissions were encrypted, Nathansan had not uttered “CIA”—was under attack by unknown forces, and there was concern rioters would attempt to penetrate the walls. He told his fellow pilots that U.S. personnel had already been killed and wounded, and they would need to fly low and hot enough to make a serious impact on events on the ground.

His wingman, Captain James “Scrabble” Le Blanc, asked, “Are we going to be cleared hot for the Vulcan?”

Although these aircraft did not have air-to-ground munitions on their wings, an M61 “Vulcan” twenty-millimeter Gatling gun protruded from each fuselage. The guns were loaded with explosive shells, and could fire more than six hundred rounds per minute.

But Grungy threw water on the prospects for any gun runs today. “Negative. There are going to be too many noncombatants in too small an area for the Vulcans.”

Pablo, Warrior Three, next asked, “So we’re supposed to just fly around and look scary?”

Grungy replied, “We aren’t going to look scary. We’re going to be scary.” And then he explained the rest of his rushed plan to his pilots.

The helicopter crash in the open park in front of the Lighthouse seemed to have dispersed the crowd near the front gate to some degree. Chavez, Midas, and Bixby stood just inside the lobby doors and looked across the parking circle, down the drive, and through the metal bars. For the first time in the past half-hour, the large group of young men that had been standing there throwing bottles and bricks and incendiary devices onto the property was gone.

Word had filtered down to those trapped in the Lighthouse that a pair of V-22 Ospreys were en route, and in order for the big tiltrotor airplane-helo hybrids to be able to land within the walls of the Lighthouse, the men inside knew they would have to move everything out of the front of the property. This would create a landing pad about forty yards square, giving one Osprey just enough room to put down.

Midas used the thinning of the crowd to get several men outside so they could move the vehicles and police the area of debris that could be blown around in the prop blast. Clark, Ding, and Dom volunteered, as they were not manning weapons on the higher floors of the Lighthouse, and they, along with Keith Bixby, one of Bixby’s men, and Midas himself, each took a set of keys and ran out to the vehicles.

The two Highlanders and one of the Land Rovers were moved quickly and without incident to a gravel area on the side of the building. The second Land Rover would not start, but Caruso used a fire extinguisher to put out a fire on the grass nearby, then he put the truck in gear and, with the help of the CIA men, pushed the fully loaded vehicle to the wall of the Lighthouse and out of the way.

Both of the Delta Force Yukons had been badly damaged by gunfire, and their wheels were all flattened, so the decision had been made to use one of the Highlanders to push the trucks out of the way. Dom got behind the wheel while Chavez directed him into position.

While the men were out on the parking circle and on the drive, Rex, the American sharpshooter on the roof, lay prone and facing the east. He scanned intently for any snipers, while his spotter, the Delta man called Mutt, did the same through his binos. Mutt saw movement on the roof of a four-story building on Suvorov Street, a few blocks away, and directed the contractor with the AR-15 to the location.

Rex identified two men through his scope crawling along the roof of the building. Each man carried an AK-47 rifle. The two men stopped and aimed at the Americans on the driveway of the Lighthouse, so Rex took a shallow breath, then he blew it out halfway. He brought his finger to the trigger of his AR-15 and shot the man on the right. His semiautomatic sniper rifle might not have been terribly powerful, but it was capable of quick follow on shots. He fired again a second later, hitting the man on the left.

Both gunmen on the roof in the distance rolled around in agony for a moment before disappearing from view. Rex did not know if he’d killed either one, but he was reasonably certain they were now out of the fight.

Dominic Caruso had successfully pushed the first Yukon out of the open area in front of the portico with the Highlander, and now he was driving around to line up with the rear bumper of the last remaining vehicle. Midas, Bixby, and four other men worked to put out small fires from the Molotovs and to clear some pieces of debris off the parking lot in advance of the arrival of the Ospreys. They grabbed rocks, bricks, and pieces of metal and broken glass and threw everything to the walls so that the rubble could not be blown around by the huge twin rotors of the V-22 when it landed.