Kevin Miller - Declared Hostile

“ Condor , unable on both aircraft. We’re staying with the trailer heading southwest.”

“ Condor copies.”

Although it was risky to leave the lead bomber alone as it transited north of Puerto Rico, Olive wanted to keep Dusty with her as they escorted the trailing aircraft. She took out her camera and snapped photos of the big Russian as she struggled, even at military power, to stay on its wing. Soon that was not enough, and she had to enter min-range afterburner to stay with it.

“He’s speeding up,” she called to Dusty. About a mile behind, he could observe the yellow glow from the bomber’s four giant engine exhausts.

“Yeah, looks like he’s in blower,” Dusty replied as all three aircraft became supersonic.

Now inside 200 miles from the ship, the bomber began to descend and headed toward a large cloud buildup on their nose. With the increased drag of the drop tanks, racks, and pods she was carrying, Olive had difficulty staying in full burner. She bunted the nose to gain a few knots as the ambient noise of increased airflow built outside her canopy.

“ Condor , three-zero-zero. He’s descending and accelerating,” she transmitted to the E-2. Her running commentary was also monitored by the ship.

The bomber was leading them into a towering column of cloud as it passed 30,000 feet in a shallow descent. Olive was now locked on its right wingtip in full burner, with no excess power if it pulled away. The wall of white loomed closer, and Olive had to decide to stay with it or turn away. In an instant she decided to stay with the Blackjack . Its co-pilot continued to stare back at her.

“Can you still see the lead?” she asked Dusty.

“Just a dot now, still heading east. I’m locked on you a mile aft.”

“Roger.”

With airspeed building to 1.1 times the speed of sound, the bomber entered the cloud with Olive in welded wing. Both aircraft then began to shake in the turbulence, and Olive fought hard to keep sight. They broke free and then plunged into more clouds, the bomber extinguishing the navigation lights as they did so. Olive’s initial thought was that the jet was experiencing an electrical failure, but she soon realized they had secured the lights on purpose.

Olive slid behind, and despite pushing the throttles to the stops, she could not slow the rate of drift. The bomber’s wingtip was fading from view, and she couldn’t stay with it. Before losing sight, she turned away to the right and transitioned to an instrument scan.

“Lost sight. Coming right,” she informed Dusty.

“Roger, radar contact.”

Olive broke clear and paralleled the bomber’s last heading. It soon broke free of the clouds about a half mile ahead, still descending, the yellow glow from the burner cans clearly visible. Impressive, Olive thought as the bomber accelerated away from her, wings swept all the way back.

She heard the E-2 coordinate with an incoming section of fighters launched from the ship. At this lower altitude, her Hornet devouring fuel in afterburner, she needed them here soon. The good news was they were closing the ship fast. Good news for her, but bad news for the ship and the threat the Blackjack represented.

Inside 100 miles from Coral Sea, the bomber slowed as it passed 20,000 feet in its steady descent. Olive again joined up on its right side and again saw the co-pilot observing her. She then moved forward in the straps as her Hornet shuddered from the invisible transition from supersonic to transonic airspeed. As Olive reported these changes to Condor, her eyes widened in shock. With no warning, the large bomb-bay doors opened, and the bomber turned into her in an effort to shield whatever it was carrying inside. Alarmed, Olive keyed the mike.

“ Condor, Firebird . The bogey just opened its bomb-bay doors!”

This news focused everyone on the frequency, and, in Coral Sea’s Combat Decision Center, the Tactical Action Officer barked, “Sound General Quarters!”

Within seconds, the 1MC sounded the GQ alarm throughout the ship, and 5,000 sailors reacted with a combination of confusion and apprehension as they scrambled to their stations.

BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG…

“General Quarters! General Quarters! All hands man your battle stations! Up and forward on the starboard side, down and aft on the port side! Set material condition Zebra throughout the ship!”

BONG, BONG, BONG, BONG…

In his ready room chair, Commander Jim Wilson noted this was no drill and felt the eyes of his subordinates on him. He didn’t know what was going on but knew Olive and Dusty were out there.

“ What the hell? ”

Olive overbanked down to get away from and to get under the Blackjack. She also wanted to see what was in the open bomb bay. The bomber kept the turn in, and when Olive slid underneath, the big jet reversed left, almost like a fighter, so she couldn’t get a look inside. The sudden and provocative moves signaled hostility, and Olive, having had enough bobbing and weaving with the 500,000-pound monster, fell back behind the Blackjack.

Now at seventy miles, the bomber turned back to Coral Sea and headed right at it. Olive wondered what type of targeting information it was receiving. Stabilized, she eased underneath and crept up its left side while Dusty provided “cover.” The bomb bay doors were now closed as they approached the ship at nine miles per minute.

At 55 miles from Mother , the bomber rolled hard left and pulled, steadying on an easterly heading that would take them south of Puerto Rico. Olive reported the development just as a section of Blue Lancer FA-18Fs showed up to relieve the two thirsty Firebird jets. Olive set a course for the tanker as Dusty joined on her right wing. The Blackjack transited without incident along the southern coast of Puerto Rico, staying twenty miles off the coast, before it veered right and headed south to Venezuela, some 400 miles away.

The Blackjack landed in Caracas an hour later. It was soon joined by the other bomber that had transited down the Lesser Antilles chain.

As the ship secured from General Quarters, the confrontation was reported within minutes up the chain of command in Key West, Miami, Norfolk and Washington. While the world’s media attention was on the diplomatic crisis in Caracas, SOUTHCOM was trying to make sense of the Cuban and especially the Russian military behavior. Flying a Bear down the American seaboard at high altitude, with a wingtip just outside the 12-mile territorial limit, was a routine Russian tactic. However, a formation of modern and capable ship-killing Backfires just did not “pop up” out of the mid-Atlantic ocean from low altitude, considering the fact they required extensive in-flight refueling coordination. Neither was it normal for nuclear-capable Blackjacks to make aggressive movements and open bomb-bay doors minutes from an American carrier. Air Force fighters and early-warning assets were sent to Iceland, and military professionals everywhere concluded the diplomatic “crisis” in Venezuela was a manufactured sideshow.

While the National Security Council at the White House directed military movements and assessed courses of action, USS Coral Sea was at the end of the whip. And, at the very tip, the business end, were the Firebirds of VFA-16 led by Commander Jim Wilson.

Wilson watched the PLAT in the ready room as Olive and Dusty recovered from their eventful intercept. Around him, the other Firebird pilots were busy: preparing to stand alerts in the cockpits, waiting, dressed and ready, for their call, studying charts of Venezuela and Cuba. The word was out — things were heating up all right — and Wilson knew CAG would be calling the COs together soon to fill them in on the course of action Washington was devising for them.