Stephen Coonts: The Disciple

She wondered how many cruise missiles she and her fellow Hornet pilots had failed to intercept. Well, in life there is always an accounting. She hadn’t seen a nuclear explosion light up the night to the south, so if any got through, they had conventional warheads.

Her next thought was more practical. Were there any more missiles crossing the Gulf?

Just to be on the safe side, Chicago ran her radar scope out to max range and began a slow 360-degree turn.

She was pointed toward Iran when she saw them, two blips heading south. Low. Making about five hundred knots.

She didn’t even pause to think about her fuel; she advanced the throttles, lowered the nose and turned to intercept. Using her thumb on the stick, she selected gun.

Dear God, don’t let these two be nukes .

Now the Hawkeye controller called these targets out to her. “Tally,” she replied.

O’Hare came in on the nearest one in a classic high-side bounce. She wanted to get behind it, so she could see the glow of its exhaust pipe. Without that she would have to fire on radar, would probably use more ammo, and she needed to stretch her supply to ensure she got them both.

As she approached, she realized she could see the missile through the HUD, cruising at about three thousand feet, a dark little cigar shape against a darker ocean. The sky was just light enough. It was a while before dawn, but with the sliver of moon in the east and the brightening sky, she could see it.

She didn’t bother to slacken her speed-just closed, put the gunsight pipper on it, waited until the last possible moment, then waited another second and squeezed off a tiny burst. As she went over the missile she saw it begin to tumble. Must have hit the autopilot.

The next enemy missile was already well ahead and above her at five thousand, so she had to use the afterburner to catch it.

As she closed she was aware of the fuel pouring into her exhausts to give her extra power. Well, she had a little extra; she could make Qatar.

Somehow she missed with her first burst. Fired too soon, she thought and kept closing. This time she waited until she was way too close before she pulled the trigger. The missile exploded, and she yanked on the stick to go through the top of the fireball. Whump, and she was through.

Checked the engine instruments and came out of burner. Everything seemed okay. She pulled the nose into a max range climb and told the Hawkeye dude she had splashed these two.

“War Ace Three Oh Seven, roger that.” His voice sounded tight. “We think we have a nuke headed toward Al Udeid. We want you to go to max conserve and intercept it.”

Uh-oh. The low fuel light was already illuminated.

“How far out is it?” she asked.

“It’s still over land, and we don’t yet have it on the display. Wait.”

She had only a few minutes to stooge around if she planned on bringing back the navy’s jet. She told the controller that and got no answer. She throttled back anyway and turned slowly right, inscribing a circle in the sky.

A minute passed, then another.

“Hey, man, War Ace Three Oh Seven. I am about outta gas. Don’t you have anybody else?”

“War Ace, the tactical commander requests that you intercept.”

As she honked the plane around, she said, “I go in the drink, buddy, and you’re going to be buying me beer until you retire.”

So she flew northward, away from Qatar, at max conserve. After a couple of minutes, she decided to just wait until the nuke came to her. She pushed the stick over, and the autopilot held it there. She began circling again. At least after I drop it , she thought, I won’t have so far to swim.

“War Ace Three Oh Seven, Black Eagle. Bogey will be along in ten minutes if you hold your position.”

It was only then that she realized most of the other planes she had launched with were no longer on the frequency. The silence was broken only occasionally by pilots telling Black Eagle that they were switching to Al Udeid Approach.

Each of the minutes seemed to take an hour to pass. Desperately thirsty, Chicago took a baby bottle full of water, now warm, from her survival vest and chugged it. When it was all gone, she recapped the bottle and replaced it in the vest.

The fuel gauge told the story. She wasn’t going to make dry land. No way, José!

Chicago wondered how many cannon shells remained. Not many, that’s for sure. Maybe one good squirt. She was going to have to be right behind this guy, sticking her nose up his tailpipe, when she pulled the trigger. Every shell had to count.

What if it goes nuclear when I shoot it?

Well, she would be dead before she realized the warhead had detonated, even if she gunned it from half a mile away. She took a ragged breath and exhaled explosively. Took off her oxygen mask and swabbed her face, then replaced it.

What if a bullet punctures the warhead and it squirts out a cloud of radioactive plutonium, and I fly through it?

Hell, it won’t explode. I won’t get slimed. The missile will go into the water, and a few minutes later, so will I. I’m probably going to drown.

“War Ace Three Oh Seven, Black Eagle. Say your fuel state.”

She told him.

In a few seconds the controller said, “Qatar is launching a rescue chopper your way. After engagement, look for him and try to rendezvous.”

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Roger,” she managed.

General Martin Lincoln called the president. As he was waiting for the call to go through, someone turned on the television mounted high in the corner of the Ops Room. Lincoln caught the picture out of the corner of his eye. The face he saw was the president’s, talking to an interviewer! Christ, he was on CNN. He watched, mesmerized, with the phone against his ear. CNN was broadcasting from Baghdad! The president was in Baghdad!

Now someone off-camera spoke to the president, and he took off his mike. The camera followed him as he walked to a table to the camera’s left and picked up a telephone. The president’s voice sounded in Lincoln’s ear. “Yes, General.”

“Mr. President,” the general began. “The Iranians launched two ICBMs, which probably have nuclear warheads. They are apparently on their way to Israel. We’re tracking them.”

“All right,” was the president’s response. Looking at his back on television, Lincoln could see that he had taken the punch well. His posture didn’t change. The man had ice water in his veins.

“Another nuke is on its way to Qatar aboard a cruise missile. We’ve shot three down. Those six seem to be all they launched. About a hundred and seventy cruise missiles total. We think we have taken out all the launch sites. There haven’t been any more launches in the last five minutes. Our two carriers in the Gulf of Oman have been hit by conventional antiship missiles-they are fighting fires.”

The president didn’t ask a single question. “Thank you, General,” he said, and the connection broke.

Lincoln slowly replaced the telephone on its cradle as he watched the president walk back to his stool beside the interviewer and someone pin his mike back on.

Unable to look away, Lincoln listened as the president talked about the future of Iraq and Iran. These countries had to join the international community, he said, and build their nations as members of the world family. They owed that to all their citizens.

Another general was mesmerized by the CNN broadcast and the sight of the president of the United States talking to a CNN reporter in Baghdad as a handful of cruise missiles assaulted the town. As General Aqazadeh, the Iranian chief of staff, watched from the Ops Room of the Defense Ministry, a room untouched by the recent assault by Zionist terrorists with a howitzer, an aide told him that two of the six missiles that had reached Baghdad had been shot down by American forces, one had hit a runway at Baghdad International, and the other three had crashed into the city’s suburbs.