Stephen Coonts - The Disciple

One more sweep of the engines’ temperatures and pressures; then she put her head back into the headrest and used her left thumb to snap on the Hornet’s exterior lights.

One potato, two… and the catapult fired. The G pressed her straight aft as the plane roared forward, accelerating violently. Two heartbeats later her wheels ran off the deck into the night air and she was flying, the stick alive in her hand. Establish climb attitude, check instruments, gear up …

Soon the four Savage Horde Hornets were spread out in a loose night formation, every plane with its exterior lights on, heading for Oman, then into the Persian Gulf. Ten miles astern, four more Hornets from VFA-196’s sister squadron were following along. All eight planes carried a max load of AIM-9X Sidewinders.

Like all the pilots, Chicago was extremely busy changing radio channels, keeping track of the navigation problem and making sure her computer was receiving data-link updates from the E-2 Hawkeye, the eye in the sky.

Sure enough, within ten minutes or so, the first blips of airborne cruise missiles, heading from Iran to Qatar, appeared on the tactical screen.

Gonna be an interesting night , Chicago thought.

David Quereau was the pilot of one of the F-22 Raptors aloft over Iraq. He had been in the air for four hours, had refueled twice and was damn tired of flying circles in the sky on autopilot waiting for something-anything-to happen. Obviously, whatever it was hadn’t happened on his watch, and probably wouldn’t, which is about the way things go for a junior captain in the U.S. Air Force.

Good stuff always happens to the majors and colonels, which is why they get the medals and walk around like their balls weigh ten pounds each. On the other hand, as all the world knows, captains don’t have any balls, or if they do, they must keep that fact carefully hidden in the new American air force… and good stuff never happens for them. Just bad. Like a tour in Iraq, for God’s sake!

Last week, just another week in the life, and wham, bam, thank you ma’am, you guys are ferrying a dozen F-22s across the pond to Iraq. You get to go, Quereau, because you’re junior. A little time in Iraq will look good on your record.

What a ball-buster that was, twelve hours at a stretch in the cockpit, arrive yesterday, and now, sitting here droning circles in the sky. Big whoop.

The truth was, using the F-22 Raptor to support troops in Iraq and Afghan i stan was like using a Stradivarius as a doorbell chime. The plane was the über-fighter, the absolute best dogfighting airplane ever constructed, capable of supersonic cruise in basic engine, without afterburner, with vectored thrust that made it the most maneuverable airplane that had ever left the ground, able to make a sustained 5-G turn at sixty thousand feet, for Christ’s sake, higher than most fighters can even fly. Yet it was also an electronic marvel that could detect enemy airplanes at extraordinary distances while remaining stealthy, receive data-links from other fighters and share its information with them and, finally, shoot down enemy airplanes with its missiles at distances of up to one hundred miles. After the pilot ran out of missiles, it even had a gun. It was a bomber, too, capable of dropping GPS-guided bombs from forty to fifty thousand feet with pickle-barrel accuracy.

No bombs aboard tonight, though. Quereau was carrying six AIM-120D AMRAAMs (advanced medium-range antiaircraft missiles) internally. As usual, his 20 mm Vulcan cannon in the right wing root was fully loaded, 480 rounds, enough for five seconds of squirting.

A turkey shoot, his section leader said. Tonight they were going to a turkey shoot.

Well, so far, no turkeys. Only one very sore butt.

Then, without a word on the radio, the section leader straightened out and added power for the climb. The wait was over. These two Raptors were going to Tehran.

The second missile the ground crews at Tunnel Hotel pulled from the tunnel for their second salvo was different from the others. It was larger, and the only fins were in the back. “That’s one of those Ghadars,” Colby told his mates. “It’s an ICBM.”

“Could be the nuke. They told us these clowns might launch one out of this tunnel.”

Colby watched through the telescope as the launching crew slowly raised it into an erect position on its launcher. There it stood, pointing skyward like the finger of God, about two miles away.

Colby made his decision and announced it. “Gimme that fifty. I’m gonna take a poke at it. You guys get ready to boogie. Bill, tell CENTCOM.”

“Just a thought,” said Bill nervously, clearing his throat. “Say you actually get a bullet in it-it might go Hiroshima on us. Thought about that?”

Staff Sergeant Jack Colby thought about that now. About instant self-cremation. He glanced at the three faces of his mates. “You never thought you were going to live forever, did ya?”

They stared at him for a second, then swung into action. One of them passed Colby the.50 caliber sniper’s rifle they had brought along. Fortunately it had the starlight scope on it, so he should be able to see the missile through it.

As Bill talked to CENTCOM, Colby got the bipod positioned and found a solid rest, then aimed the rifle. Yes! He could see the missile-still a country mile away, but if he aimed at the top of it, the big half-inch slug should strike somewhere down on the missile body. Might even have enough energy left to penetrate the skin of the thing. On the other hand, the slug might just bounce off. If it did penetrate the skin, it wasn’t going to cause the missile to detonate right there in front of his eyes. Of course not! Wouldn’t do the missile any good, though. If only he could dope the wind…

Well, Colby’s best guess was that the wind was out of the southeast, maybe ten knots gusting to fifteen or sixteen occasionally.

He shoved a shell into the rifle, closed the bolt and snuggled in behind the butt. “Here goes nothing,” he muttered and began taking up slack in the trigger.

The recoil and report came as a surprise. Yeah. He looked through the scope to see if he could spot the bullet striking. Might make a little spark. Nope.

One of the guys, Buddy, was looking through the telescope. “Guys around the missile are looking around. You woke them up.”

Colby worked the bolt and inserted another round.

After the fifth shot, Buddy said, “I don’t know if you’re hitting that garbage can, but you got the ground crew all worked up. They’re running for cover.”

Colby stopped shooting. “Maybe they won’t launch it,” he suggested.

“Maybe they’ll come looking for us,” was the reply.

“Or maybe they won’t,” Colby mused. The men who had been tending the missiles had vanished into the tunnel, and they had not come out again. Just a few shots from the sniper rifle scattered them like quail. Why? Perhaps , he thought, they expect the Americans to counterattack against this site, and they don’t want to die.

Behind him Bill said, “What I want to know is where the hell are our guys?”

G. W. Hosein took a truck with him when he went looking for the place where the bunker’s communications cables came out of the ground. He saw no army in the streets, no police, no paramilitary militia. However, he did see vehicles piled with baggage and people, careening dangerously, presumably heading out of town. Only a few now, but G. W. suspected the exodus would soon become a flood.

One wonders precisely how many people were awake to personally watch or listen to Ahmadinejad’s exhortation on television and radio, but no doubt those who heard it spread the word. After twenty years of listening to the regime’s nuclear power arguments, the urban population well knew what its fate would be if Iran traded nuclear warheads with its enemies. The rumor that the political and religious elites had taken cover in the bunker would galvanize them into action. Those who could were leaving.