USS Ronald Reagan
Quebec Station, Persian Gulf
0850, Thursday, 18 March
“Goddamn it, Jack,” said Boyce, “you don’t have any choice. You can’t send fighters into a merge with their weapons status tight.”
Boyce had known Rear Admiral Jack Hightree for nearly twenty years. In the tense atmosphere of the red-lighted CIC—Combat Information Center—he could dispense with formality.
Hightree was shaking his head. “I don’t like the looks of it. If your guy Maxwell gets trigger happy, this is going to turn into a shooting war with Iran.”
“We can’t risk letting one of those rag head Tomcats take out our strike package. That’s why we put the BARCAP up there.”
Boyce knew he was pushing the limit. Hightree was a cautious battle group commander who had acquired two stars by following a non-confrontational career path. He wanted to add a third star the same way.
Still, Boyce liked Hightree. Despite his inherent stodginess, he was an honest, no bullshit leader who stood up for his people. He just needed a little pushing.
Hightree was frowning at the merging blips on the tactical display. “If Maxwell blows this, somebody’s going to be explaining what happened on CNN tonight.”
Boyce shrugged. “What’s to explain? If the gomers show hostile intent, Maxwell whacks them. Very simple.”
“Not simple at all. This is supposed to be a limited police action against a terrorist group, not a military engagement with a sovereign country like Iran. If all the other Islamic countries believe that we’re beating up on one of their brothers, we’re up to our necks in trouble.”
Boyce stuffed his cigar back in his mouth and shut up. He was glad he didn’t have to concern himself with the politics of war. He could think like a fighter pilot, and right now he was thinking that someone better be taking out those Iranian Tomcats.
A yeoman came to Hightree and handed him a headset with a boom mike. Boyce watched Hightree’s eyebrows raise as he listened to the voice on the headset. Hightree continued listening for half a minute. He nodded his head and interjected several Yes, sirs.
The admiral removed the headset and stared at it. “I’ll be damned,” he said.
“Who was that, Admiral?”
“The boss.”
“Fifth Fleet?” asked Boyce. The commander of the Fifth Fleet was a three-star headquartered in Bahrain.
“The big boss. The President.”
Boyce removed his cigar. Never before had he heard of the Commander-in-Chief making a direct call to a battle group commander during a strike operation.
“No shit? What did he want?”
“He wanted to know if we were getting into a war with Iran.” Hightree gave Boyce a hard look. “Well, Red? Are we?”
< >
Western Iran, 25,000 feet
Red and tight.
Maxwell saw where this was going. Don’t shoot. At least, not yet. Admiral Hightree—Bravo Golf—wanted to play it down to the wire. He was still hoping he could bluff the Iranians into bugging out and going home.
But these guys weren’t bugging out. The two blips on Maxwell’s radar were boring straight toward him like torpedoes on a terminal run. They were in a close two-ship fighting wing formation—the classic old East Bloc tactical formation—instead of the American-style combat spread. It signaled they were heavily dependent on their GCI—ground-controlled intercept radar—instead of using mutual support between the fighters.
Obsolete tactics in obsolete airplanes.
He could feel the old familiar surge of adrenaline as he drew nearer to the merge. For an instant he thought about the three kill symbols painted beneath his name on the fuselage. Three MiG-29 Fulcrums—one in Iraq, two more in Yemen. A fourth symbol was missing, that of a Chinese Black Star stealth jet, gunned down on a secret mission over the Taiwan Strait. Not until the operation was declassified would he get credit for that kill.
One more kill would make him an ace, off the record. Eventually his name would be added to the elite list of fighter pilots with five kills.
He tried to erase the thought from his mind. Maxwell had no remorse about killing an adversary in combat, but the death of an anonymous enemy gave him no pleasure. The objective of battle was victory, not extermination.
The Iranian Tomcats were closing fast.
He was running out of options. His first priority was to protect the strike package. But Bravo Golf wanted to avoid a shoot-out with the Iranians, if possible. That’s why his weapons status was still—
“Gipper One-one, Sea Lord. Bravo Golf has changed your weapons status. You’re red and free. Cleared to engage, cleared to fire.”
< >
Attention, all ships and aircraft. A U.S. military operation is underway in the northern Persian Gulf Area. Any aircraft that enters this airspace without clearance may be intercepted and fired upon.
In the cockpit of his F-14A, Colonel Shirazi heard the warning again on the guard frequency. He was tired of hearing it, but it was coming over every channel he selected.
He ignored it and continued on a southwesterly heading, toward the northern Gulf.
“Jaguar Lead,” said the GCI controller, “you have multiple targets, low, two hundred kilometers, bearing 230 degrees.”
“Roger the low targets,” said Shirazi. He knew those were the strike aircraft. They were of secondary concern for the moment. They wouldn’t be out here without a fighter escort, and he had to deal with them first. He radioed his controller. “Where are the fighters high?”
He already knew the answer. His RIO, Captain Zahdeh, had a radar lock. The trouble was, he didn’t trust the Tomcat’s quirky AWG-9 radar. The American-made radar was two decades old and subject to a host of anomalies.
Same with the AIM-54A Phoenix missiles. The big Hughes-produced long-range air-to-air missile had been designed specifically for the Tomcat to use against incoming aircraft. During the war with Iraq, the Phoenix had accounted for twenty-five enemy MiGs. In the years since, the complicated missile became too difficult to maintain without technical assistance. Shirazi had ordered the Phoenix removed from all the fighters in his squadron.
His Tomcat still carried a load of elderly AIM-9 Sidewinders and AIM-7 Sparrows, though the radar-guided Sparrows were only as reliable as the Tomcat’s own AWG-9 fire control radar.
“Jaguar lead, you have four hostile targets, bearing 220, range eighty kilometers.”
“Jaguar lead concurs.” Zahdeh was picking up the same targets. What were they? If they came from the American carrier in the Gulf, they were probably Hornets.
Or F-14s.
It was bizarre, thought Shirazi. He had fought other Tomcats in hundreds of mock dogfights over Iran. He knew what the fighter could do in the hands of a capable crew. He had never expected to fight another Tomcat in real combat. The American Tomcats would have newer, more powerful engines, more effective radars.
“What are the targets?” he asked Zahdeh. “What type fighter?”
“Unknown, Colonel,” said Zahdeh.
Shirazi pondered this for a moment. There was another possibility. The Americans might be flying their new Super Hornet fighters. That was even worse.
< >
Forty miles to the merge.
Maxwell knew that if he stayed with the pre-briefed intercept plan, they’d be in a furball with the Iranian Toms in a little over two minutes.
He keyed his mike. “A new game plan, Gippers. Three and Four, on my command, dump chaff and drag west. Gippers One and Two will post-hole away for the bracket. Stay radar passive to escort.”
He knew Boyce and the Battle Group Commander were listening back in CIC, watching the link display, wondering what the hell he was doing.
He still had the spike from the Iranian Tomcat’s AWG-9 radar. The idea was to break the Iranian radar’s lock by using chaff—confetti-like foil that presented a brilliant, but bogus, radar target. At the same time he’d make an aggressive vertical maneuver, diving vertically in a tight spiral—a post-hole—beneath the Iranians’ radar coverage.
Meanwhile Kissick’s Tomcats would present a fat target for the Iranian Toms, dragging them northwest away from Zulu—the target area where Gritti’s Marines were landing. Maxwell’s flight would convert the Iranians—swing into a firing position behind them.
He waited, watching the distance close. “Range thirty, Gippers. Action . . . now!”
He rolled to the right and hauled the nose down, dispensing chaff as he aimed the jet toward the earth. He slid the throttles into afterburner, pointing the nose straight down. The mottled brown landscape of Iran filled his windscreen. A mile to his right, he caught the silhouette of B.J. Johnson’s Hornet in a parallel dive, twin afterburners blazing like torches.
Maxwell was counting on the Iranian pilots as well as the GCI controller being confused. He was also counting on the AWG-9 radar’s notorious habit of locking onto chaff instead of the real target.
The Hornets punched through Mach one, aiming toward the earth like descending comets.
It was an old tactic. Going perpendicular to the threat radars—beaming, it was called—minimized the amount of Doppler shift a radar could see, denying it a lock. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.
Maxwell glanced inside the cockpit at his RWR. It worked. No spike. The Iranian radars had lost them.
The pocked earth of Iran was filling Maxwell’s windshield. He was hurtling toward the ground faster than a rifle bullet.
Twelve thousand feet.
Ten thousand.
Eight thousand. Pull.
He nudged the stick back and brought the throttles out of the afterburner detent. He felt the G-suit tighten around his legs and abdomen, squeezing him like a hydraulic vice. Grunting against the force of seven Gs, he pulled the Hornet’s nose toward the horizon.
He leveled at five hundred feet above the surface, still supersonic. The landscape of Iran was skimming beneath him in a brownish blur. A half-mile to the right, B.J. Johnson’s Hornet was leveling a few hundred feet above him.
“Gipper One’s naked.”
“Two’s naked.”
No radar spikes. The Iranian fighters had lost them, at least for the moment.
But Maxwell had them. Two red V-shaped chevrons were moving like glow worms across his display, data linked from the E-2C Hawkeye. Thank you, Dolly.
His display also showed the symbols for each friendly fighter in the engagement. Kissick’s F-14s—the bait—were fifteen miles ahead of the two Iranian Tomcats, heading two-seven-zero.
He watched the geometry developing in his display. Go for it guys. Take the bait.
Seconds passed. Then Kissick called, “Gipper Three, spiked at six—an AWG-9.”
Maxwell studied his display for another moment. He could see the Iranians in hot pursuit now, committed to engaging Kissick’s F-14s. Closing at a rate of over two thousand miles per hour.
They were going for it. Taking the bait.
< >
The Iranian controller’s voice was high-pitched and panicky.
“Jaguar Lead, you have four—no, six targets—one o’clock, ten o’clock. No, no, two targets now at three o’clock! Another at two. . .”
Colonel Shirazi wanted to strangle the hysterical controller. The idiot on the ground was screaming out targets everywhere. What was he seeing? Were the four American fighters he had called initially now only two? If so, two had vanished. Or they were multiplying like rabbits.
It had to be chaff. The screaming GCI controller was too stupid to distinguish chaff from buzzard shit. His own onboard AWG-9 radar was nearly as worthless. It hadn’t been upgraded since the air force’s last skilled technician fled Iran twenty years ago. The radar had great difficulty with chaff even when it was working well.
Shirazi slammed his fist against the canopy rail. “Zadeh,” he yelled at his RIO. “Where are the two lead contacts? Where did they go?”
Zahdeh didn’t know.
“Jaguar Two,” Shirazi called to his wingman, Lieutenant Bassiri. “How many targets do you have locked?”
“None,” said Bassiri. “Our radar, it is. . . malfunctioning. No lock, Colonel.”
Shirazi had to shake his head. He should have followed the Shah’s example and left Iran to the Ayatollah and the crazy mullahs. He could be playing golf in Palm Springs instead of offering himself as a blind target for American fighter pilots.
“Zahdeh, do you have the lead contacts?”
“I think so. Or maybe chaff. It is difficult to tell.”
Of course it was, thought Shirazi. The trouble with the ancient AWG-9 was that it loved chaff. Loved it more than a real target, which, in a way, made it predictable.
“Colonel, I have them! Two contacts, fleeing west.
“Sort them out,” said Shirazi as he shoved the throttles forward. With his left thumb he selected AIM-7 Sparrow on his weapons selector. “We’re going to kill them.”
< >
USS Ronald Reagan
“What’s Maxwell doing?” asked Hightree. “Is he playing games with them?”
“Looks like he’s bracketing to the south,” said Boyce, watching the carrier’s master datalink tactical display. “His two Hornets are going for an unobserved intercept from below. He’s broken their radar lock, and they’re blind on him.”
Hightree frowned at the screen. “That’s no good. The Iranians are too close to our F 14s. Tell Maxwell to stop screwing around and take them out.”
Boyce looked at Hightree in surprise. This was a switch. A few minutes ago the cautious admiral was worried about starting a war with Iran. Now he was worried about losing his own fighters.
Boyce said in a low voice, “Give it a second, Jack.” He had to be careful not to tread on Hightree’s authority. “Let’s see if Brick can pull this off.”
“I don’t intend to lose our F-14s because we waited too long to splash a couple of Iranians,” said Hightree. “Tell him to shoot.”
Boyce nodded. He knew Hightree. He was out on a limb, and he wasn’t interested in going any further. “Yes, sir. It’s your call.”
Boyce keyed his boom mike. “Sea Lord, Battleaxe on purple.”
“Go Battleaxe.”
“Bravo Golf clears Gipper to kill the bandits. Repeat, cleared to kill the bandits.”
While he waited for acknowledgement, an image came to Boyce’s mind. The symbols on the side of Maxwell’s Super Hornet. Three official kills. One still classified. Someday soon the wraps would be off and he’d get credit for it.
Maxwell was going to be an ace. If he followed orders.