Kevin Miller - Declared Hostile

Devil Davies was taking a gamble, hedging that SOUTHCOM would approve this covert, no-notice action to make Tobago an impromptu lily pad for Coral Sea strike aircraft. He ordered the aircraft to launch for the two-hour run to the airport at Crown Point on the island’s southern tip. From there, the helos would be gassed and available for tasking. The aviators and SEALs were ready for anything, and SEAL Lieutenant Rich Keller was overall mission commander. LT Sean Sullivan, as the senior aviator and pilot of Flintlock 612, called the shots for the helos.

Staying well out to sea, the aircraft avoided Barbados to their west and did their best to stay away from any surface craft. Twenty minutes ago they had come upon a sailboat, which appeared out of nowhere in the darkness, requiring evasive action to avoid the mast. In the vicinity of Tobago they dodged the surface craft they encountered, but once they made the left-hand turn to the southeast, small craft were everywhere, even at night. Now, with five minutes to landing, the aircraft had to ignore them.

Sullivan led the helos to a position south of the runway at Arthur Napoleon Airport. Through his goggles he saw the fuel farm, the bright lights of the terminal behind it. A small turboprop commuter was the only aircraft of significance on the ramp, and there were a handful of general aviation aircraft parked on the far side of the runway. The fuel farm was on the south side, and once he led the Seahawks abeam it, he would initiate an easy buttonhook to the left and slow to a run-on landing on the narrow access road. The gunners and SEALs were locked and loaded, and the pilots did not radio the tower to ask for permission.

Sullivan keyed the ICS and turned toward his co-pilot, LTJG Pete Sanders. “Sandy, ready to turn in?”

“A-firm,” he replied.

“Okay, here we go…. Holding about 30-degree angle of bank. Rising terrain. Surf line.”

“Visual. Palm trees at our nine o’clock, coming to ten. A bunch of them, about 75 feet tall.”

“Okay, visual. See any airborne traffic?”

“Negative.”

The graceful Sierras rolled out on the road and flared their noses high to bleed airspeed as the pilots placed them as close to the fuel farm as they could. One of the gunners reported seeing airport ground crew on the ramp, but the crew didn’t seem excited. No rotating lights of police. No headlights of any kind heading their way. No one seemed to know they were there.

Once the wheels touched, the SEALs jumped out to take perimeter positions. Sullivan keyed the AWACS orbiting in the vicinity.

“ Flintlock six-one-two reports beach blanket ,” he said, transmitting the briefed code word for Safe on deck, Crown Point . Within minutes, the message was reported to Davies in flag plot.

The aircraft idled, rotor blades whipping through the moist air. While the SEALs secured their perimeter, the pilots stretched their legs in their cockpit seats to relieve the tension of the last two hours. Sullivan checked his watch. Skipper Wilson’s strike was to be on target in five minutes. According to his nav display, the target was over 100 miles away on a direct line over Trinidad. After they got gas, they would have at least 200 miles ahead of them to avoid Trinidad and go feet dry on the planned ingress route of the strike aircraft. If any of the jets went down, Sullivan’s helicopters were at least two hours away from helping them. The aircrew were exhausted, but they all had the same thought.

First fuel, but before that… a candy bar.

As Hernandez stepped into the bunker, the watch captain approached him with a troubled look. Outside, he heard the sound of two of his F-16s in burner as they, one after the other, thundered down the runway for takeoff.

“Mí general, we have large formations of aircraft to the east, about 100 miles. They’re coming at us.”

“One hundred miles! You’ve had no earlier detection than that?”

“Mí general, they’ve come out of a line of storms! We cannot see through thunderstorms. They flew right through them! ”

Hernandez was amazed. Flying through such a line was suicidal for an individual fighter, and the Americans had done it in formation? They can ignore the forces of nature?

“How many planes?” he asked.

“It looks like three or four formations, mí general. We do not know yet how many planes are in each formation. One is in front.”

“That is their fighter sweep, dammit! Where are you sending our boys?”

“To intercept that formation, mí general!”

Hernandez fought to remain in control. The watch captain had never seen such a formation, and inside 100 miles, he had only minutes to scramble his fighters. In their “training,” they had intercepted just one contact: a low/slow flyer, in clear air, daylight hours. Not three dozen fighters — a formation the size of the entire AMV fighter force! A formation coming at them with multi-mode sensors and long-range missiles and flown by the Americans , the finest in the world! Sending his Vipers into that buzz saw was suicidal.

“No, you idiot, that formation is ready for them! Send them south — to draw the Americans away from here. Maybe we can come in from their flank.”

“Sí, mí general!”

In the darkened control room, Hernandez watched the scope as the cursor rotated to illuminate the heavy radar return from the east. He paid special attention to the blips emerging from the storms. The controller at the console was talking to his fighters on the radio, and the communication was piped in through an overhead speaker. Hernandez heard his nervous pilots acknowledge the instructions as they maneuvered to intercept. Employing their heat-seeking missiles required them to see the target at close range.

They didn’t have a chance. Hernandez couldn’t bear it.

“Turn them south! Now!” he fumed.

“Sí, mí general! We have radioed the instructions!”

Hernandez heard the excited pilots transmit that they had contact on the Americans and were turning to engage them over the Columbus Channel, fifty miles east. He saw the blips turn left into the maw of the American missile envelopes.

“ South! Now , I say!”

After lifting his MASTER ARM switch to ARM, Wilson transmitted to the Slash divisions. “Tapes on, Armstrong. ”

Up ahead, the Blockers , a tactical formation of transonic Super Hornets, saw the two bogeys turn left and south at thirty miles. It appeared to be a strategy to pull them away from San Ramón. Chasing down the bogeys — declared by Nightlight as bandits — would cause the American formations to bunch up in the vicinity of the airfield with an increased chance of a blue-on-blue engagement. A disappointed Blocker lead had to skip this opportunity for an air-to-air kill.

The job of the Blockers was to shoot down anything in front of the strikers, which would allow them to offset left and roll in on the runways to the right. This gave the strikers the shortest and most direct line back to the relative safety of “feet wet,” despite the proximity of Río Salta. Pulling off target with a bag of knots, the strikers would quickly skirt the heavily defended port

Then, the bandits turned back into them, and the four Rhinos, in eager anticipation, sorted and locked them inside launch range. Three of the four aircraft fired radar-guided AMRAAMs, and, from miles behind, Wilson watched tiny points of light separate from the Blocker aircraft and rise on their profile toward the Venezuelan jets. They now knew the Venezuelans were ready and fighting back. And over San Ramón, they saw AAA mixed in with the lightning.