Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (46 page)

           
“Jeez, they got some pretty fancy
firepower out here,” Blanchard said. “A destroyer-class boat this far south.”
She turned to the forward part of the aircraft. “Comm, code and send
immediately to Andersen and Offutt on separate channels the position of that
last contact. It’s the biggest gun the Chinese have this far south—I want to
make sure everybody knows about it.” To the radar operator, she asked, “What’s
our range to that EF4?”

           
“Range, four-seven nautical miles,”
the operator reported.

           
“That’s close enough,” Blanchard
said to Fruntz. Fruntz was already leafing through pages of computerized text
on the EF4 class of Chinese destroyers. “What’s the scouting report on those
things?”

           
“Antiship and antisubmarine missile
destroyers,” Fruntz read. “About ten in the Chinese inventory, possibly with
five more in ready reserve and five more overseas. Helicopter pad, big-time
antiship launchers . . . holy shit, listen to this gun fit: four 130-millimeter
dual purpose, eight 57-millimeter or 37-millimeter antiaircraft guns, and four
25-millimeter antiaircraft guns. Rice Screen three-D long-range air-defense
radar system—they call it a ‘mini-Aegis’ system—X- band ERF-1 or X-band Rice
Lamp fire-control radar for the guns. Some fitted with Phalanx self-defense
guns, Ku-band radar.”

           
“Anything about antiair missiles?”

           
“Yes . . . helicopter pad removed
from some vessels and replaced with various stem-mounted missile systems,”
Fruntz replied. “Some fitted possibly with HQ-61 missiles, one twin mount, Fog
Lamp H- or I-band fire control, max range of missile, six nautical miles—pretty
small missile. Others possibly with French naval Crotale, max range eight
nautical miles, X-band fire control. Some with HQ-91 French Masurca dual-rail
mount. . . shit, max range thirty nautical miles, S-band pulse-Doppler
tracker.”

           
“As far as we’re concerned, we’ll
assume the worst case,”

           
Blanchard said. “Forty miles out
from that EF4 is perfect for now.” She paused for a moment, then added, “But
that Rice Screen radar has me worried. That’s a no-shit early warning and
fighter intercept radar system. Why have a boat with that kind of radar on
board way out here unless—” “Flashlight, Flashlight, Flashlight, this is
Basket,” the radio report interrupted. Basket was the call sign of the E-3C
Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System radar plane that had accompanied the
RC-135 on this mission. The AWACS plane could scan for hundreds of miles in all
directions, locating aircraft at all altitudes and vector friendly fighters in
to intercept. Emergency reports from an AWACS controller were always prefaced
by calling out a sortie’s call sign three times—the RC-135 was under attack.
“Bandits at your
twelve o’clock
,
Blue plus five-five, flight level zero- niner-zero, speed five hundred.”

           
Range calls were always given in
color codes in case the enemy fighters somehow were able to eavesdrop on the
encrypted radio messages between aircraft; Blue meant fifty miles, Yellow meant
twenty miles, Red meant zero miles, and Green meant subtract twenty miles. When
a dogfight started, the controller would drop the color codes and issue
warnings as fast as he could. All radar targets were being called “bandits,” or
hostile targets, in this area with Chinese troops nearby—of course, anytime a
target began flying over five hundred knots, it was automatically considered an
enemy fighter until proven otherwise.

           
“Showing four targets now, Blue plus
forty, speed passing five-zero-zero. Bullet flight, take spacing and stand by.”
The AWACS plane not only issued warnings to Flashlight, the RC-135X plane, but
also to Shamu Three-One, the KC-10 aerial refueling tanker that was supporting
both the Navy and Air Force planes on this mission; two KA-6 Navy tankers to
use as tactical spare refueling aircraft; and four Navy F-14A Tomcat fighters
of VF-2 Bullets from the USS
Ranger,
which was steaming about one hundred miles east of Talaud Island just outside
Indonesian waters. The Tomcats were armed with four medium-range Sparrow
radar-guided missiles and four shorter-range Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles;
since they were along only as escorts and, according to the Rules of
Engagement, not authorized to attack from long range, none of the escorts
carried the long-range AIM- 54 Phoenix missile.

           
Two of the F-14s, Bullet Four and
Five, were with the RC-135 acting as primary escorts, and the other two, Bullet
Two and Three, were shuttling to the KC-10 tanker for refueling. Four more F-14
fighters were ready aboard
Ranger,
loaded with long-range
Phoenix
missiles as well as Sparrows and Sidewinders, to assist the Air Force
recon planes and defend the battle group in case of trouble . . .

           
. . . And it sounded like there was
going to be trouble. With unknown aircraft heading their way, this was no place
to be for one of the U.S. Air Force’s most sophisticated spy planes. The data
was important, but not important enough to risk the manpower or the hardware.
“Time to leave, Grasshopper. We’re calling it a night,” Blanchard said. Being
flippant about a possible fighter attack usually wasn’t her style, but she had
found after pushing a crew for so long that the initial wave of excitement that
hit a crewman who suddenly found himself or herself under attack sometimes
caused costly mistakes; if you could relax a person during that initial
fear-heavy period, he performed better.

           
“Pilot, this is Recce One, execute
egress now,” Blanchard continued. “Crew, this is Recce One, terminate all
emissions, secure your stations and queue your data for transmission. Report by
station when complete.” She watched her status board light up with coded
intelligence-data packets waiting for transmission; Blanchard and Fruntz could
pick out the most important ones for immediate transmission, or send them in
all in one quick burst, or send them one by one in ordered, error-checked
bundles. They preferred the last method until the bandits got closer and posed
a more serious threat. Then Blanchard and Fruntz would use the faster 57,000-kilobit-per
second routines, shoveling the data out as fast as the RC-135’s computers could
handle it.

           
“Flashlight, turn left heading
one-four-zero,” the AWACS controller called out. “
Manado
airfield will be at your
twelve o’clock
position, two-five-zero miles.” Manado, a
good-sized city on the Minahasa Peninsula of northern Indonesia, was the first
emergency landing site; on a southeast heading, they were also flying away from
the Philippines and toward their tanker and the USS
Ranger,
which was stationed in the northern Molucca Sea about five
hundred miles farther east.

           
“Flashlight copies,” Blanchard’s
pilot replied. He unconsciously pushed the throttles up to near military power,
trying to claw every bit of distance between himself and the unknowns.

           
It took only a few moments for
Blanchard and Fruntz to finish their primary job—safely transmit the reams of
radar and sensor data collected on this short trip. They began yet another
error-checking routine after all the data was transmitted, where the receiving
station on Guam would compute check sums from each line of data from their
transmission, then compare the sums with Blanchard’s information. If it
matched, Blanchard would erase the verified data and repeat the process with
another data file. The verification process was the most
time-consuming—satellite transmissions even at the best of times were
relatively slow and prone to interruptions—but it was the safest way of
ensuring that the information had been transmitted and received without errors
before they would risk erasing it... and the information would all be erased
before the enemy fighters got within striking distance.

Aboard the Navy F-14A Tomcat
fighter Bullet Four

           
This shit was happening too fast,
Lieutenant Greg “Hitman” Povik thought.

           
Night carrier operations were the
absolute worst. Flying combat sorties was bad enough, but a night cat shot was
sheer terror. Strapped into a sixty-thousand-pound machine, blasted out into
the darkness from zero to one hundred and fifty knots in two seconds. Hard
enough to flatten eyeballs. Hard enough that the brain thinks you’re in a steep
nose-high climb, so your tendency is to push the nose down to the water—that
will kill you in one second if you succumb to the feeling. You have no outside
reference, no sign of up or down or sideways, no natural cues. The ultimate in
sensory deprivation, even though you’re surrounded by instruments.

           
So you keep full afterburner and
back pressure on the stick until after the shot, after you’ve cleared the deck
and established a positive rate of climb. Believe the instruments, because your
brain will kill you if you let it. Positive rate of climb, positive altitude
increase—gear up. Passing one- eighty, flaps and slats up. Passing two-fifty,
wings moving back, turn out and listen up for your wingman.

           
Everything is still dark, so you
stay on the instruments. You hear radio calls coming from everywhere, from
planes hundreds of miles away and from planes just a few miles away. Slowly,
the real poop starts to-filter in: wingman’s up, wingman’s got you locked on
his radar so he can catch up without the carrier’s radar or the E-2 Hawkeye’s
radar operators vectoring in. Vector to the tanker—an F-14 sucks a lot of gas
for takeoff, and the good guys are three hundred miles and a quarter-tank of
gas away still. Check the cockpit, get a check from your RIO—Radar Intercept
Officer, Lieutenant JG Bob “Bear” Blevin—check oxygen and pressurization, check
weapons, check everything.

           
Soon the sounds of the hostile area
filtered in. An Air Force reconnaissance plane is less than a hundred miles
from the
Philippines
, within pissing distance of Chinese
warships. Intelligence says Chinese patrol planes, with fighter escorts, might
be up. They say the Chinese ships might have antiair missiles and guns and
might just shoot first and ask questions later. Great. With nothing but black
surrounding you, you feel more alone than you’ve ever felt before—there’s
nothing but miles of ocean between you and dry land or deck.

           
Things happen too quickly, even
though the Air Force plane is hundreds of miles away. Blevin makes radio
contact with the KA-6 tanker, and they maneuver to intercept. The small KA-6
will transfer only a few thousand pounds of fuel, but it’s better to fly
overwater with full tanks as much as possible in case of trouble.

           
Night aerial refueling ranks right
up there with night catapult shots in the anxiety department. Povik has to
drive up behind the KA-6 tanker, find a tiny four-foot-diameter lighted basket,
and stick a three-inch nozzle inside it by maneuvering his forty-five-ton air
machine around it. Meanwhile, the KA-6 is turning in a racetrack pattern so it
won’t fly too far from the carrier, which makes the hookup even more difficult.
With gentle coaching from Blevin, Povik made the hookup on the second try, and
he managed to stay hooked up and made the transfer all at once. He maintained
visual contact on the tanker while his wingman made contact and got his gas,
and then they got a vector from their E-2C Hawkeye radar plane controller to
the west.

           
No sooner had they finished
refueling, and they were transferred to the Air Force E-3 AWACS radar plane’s
controller, who was providing air coverage for all the planes operating near
the
Philippines
. The Navy guys had trained a few times with
Air Force controllers, but they still used different terminology and never
seemed to shut up—they seemed determined to read off every number on their
radar screens and let the fighter crews work their own navigation solutions.
But after filtering out the chatter—obviously those AWACS guys were nervous
too—Povik and his wingman in Bullet Five were vectored in to visual range of an
Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance plane. It looked like a KC-135 tanker, but
without the refueling boom and with lots of odd bumps and antennas all over it.

           
All that, from cat shot to now, took
less than an hour. Now they had unidentified aircraft bearing down on them.
Povik didn’t even have time to get himself comfortably situated, get his
heads-up display set up just right, and tighten his straps—the fight was
starting right
now.

           
“Bullet flight, take spacing and
check your lights,” Povik radioed to his wingman. He turned to check that his
wingman was configured properly—no missing missiles, lights off, nothing
funny-looking out there—before he disappeared into the darkness. Now they were
relying on the Air Force AWACS controller to keep them separated, yet working
as a team as they prosecuted these bandits.