Final Storm (27 page)

Following the Tomcats into battle were the smaller F/A-18 Hornets. The Hornets were newer, and designed to do both dog-fighting and ground attack, hence its dual F/A designation. Slightly slower than the speedy Tomcats, the Hornets topped out just under Mach 2, but they carried an impressive payload of Sidewinders and Sparrow radar-guided missiles, as well as a powerful cannon in the nose.

Jones watched the Navy fliers flash past, and his relief that the Navy had joined the fight was quickly replaced by a pang of remorse.

More young lives going into the meat grinder
…

He was already stung by the losses in his own formation of aircraft returning to Rota. A count-off immediately after they withdrew from the air battle over Verdun had told him the bad news: Three F-16s, four F-15s, and six Tornados were among the missing.

True, they had shot down far more of the enemy’s planes in the twisting, turning dogfight—but they couldn’t sustain that rate forever, especially since the Soviets had more planes to sacrifice and very little hesitation to do just that.

In the F-16 directly off Jones’s wing, Hunter stared grimly at the spiked peaks of the Pyrenees directly ahead. The sun was beginning to set and the skies were taking on a frighteningly red hue.

Suddenly, it seemed as if there was red everywhere—even deep within the recesses of his psyche. He felt an anger building inside him. Sure, he had flamed six Soviet fighters in less than twenty minutes during the battle. But like Jones, he knew that, even with the Navy’s infusion of power and the bravery and technical superiority of the NATO air forces, the lopsided kill ratios would soon start to erode. Eventually, the Soviets’ numerical superiority would start to work in their favor.

Hunter felt a cold chill run him through at the thought of it. A burning red fear had descended upon him. Not a fear of dying. He was way beyond that point. No, this was a
fear of defeat.
What would happen if NATO lost? What would become of the world if the allies failed to turn back the Red tide? Would freedom exist in a world where the Soviets dominated Europe and hobbled America’s ability to defend herself? And how long would it be before America herself was consumed?

Hunter stared out of the increasingly red skies. He couldn’t bear to watch the image forming in his mind’s eye—a shattering American continent, pieces drifting away and burning with an eerie crimson glow, smoke billowing from the huge cracks in the earth’s surface … Millions of innocent people immersed in the fear and pain of freedom lost …

The vision got worse. A nightmare shimmered into focus in the red skies to the west. The clouds and sunlight and smoke from the war seemed to be forming into the proud colors of the US flag. But the flag was on fire, flaming out of control …

“
No
!” Hunter shouted aloud, slamming his fist into the padded cockpit armrest and shaking the maddening vision from his mind. “
I will not let this happen
…”

Just then, a powerful force washed over him like a tidal wave. It was
the feeling.
The sixth sense was now coming into him stronger than he had ever experienced it before. Suddenly gone was his terrible vision of the dark specter of defeat. The red skies dissolved to reveal a shining new, blue sky image—a huge red, white, and blue banner rippling like the surface of a wave. It was a shimmering vision of Old Glory, the stars and stripes itself. Hunter knew an omen when he saw one: this was a sign of his own modest destiny.

The feeling
had shown him the path—now he was ready to undertake the journey himself.

Refueling from the tankers, Jones had noticed Hunter’s odd behavior.

The young pilot had had almost no communication with the tanker crew, just the minimum needed for the refueling process. And even then his voice sounded strange, lower in tone, almost
disembodied.
Before Jones could radio a message, the young F-16 pilot was off for Rota on full afterburner.

The general had learned to respect Hunter’s periods of introspection, but this time he was worried. The young ace had taken a lot of chances in the day’s first sortie, and Jones questioned his own wisdom in revealing so much of the desperate strategy to him. He suddenly felt as if he had unfairly burdened Hunter by telling him the grim prospects for the success of the final push.

Maybe I should talk to him
, Jones thought.

“No,” Jones immediately answered himself. “I’ve got a couple thousand other planes and pilots to worry about, and all of them probably need guidance more than Hunter does.”

Back on the ground at the jammed Rota airbase, most of the pilots returning from the first sortie had landed, briefly checked their aircraft for damages, and headed off to the debriefing meetings that had been set up in the main mess hall. To save time between sorties, Jones had made arrangements so that his pilots could eat while they spoke with the intelligence officers who interviewed each flier about the enemy’s aircraft, tactics, and numbers.

Hunter, by contrast, had landed the all-white F-16 on the auxiliary runway near the refueling hardstand. Displaying some rare rank-pulling, he “convinced” the flight crew to gas up the small fighter with a full load of JP-8, despite the standard operating procedure that dictated allowing the plane’s hot engine to cool before pumping the volatile jet fuel aboard.

Hunter, still in his flight suit, was clutching a scrap of paper as he ran to the base’s main service hangar. There he found Blue, the chief flight mechanic, elbows deep inside the radome chamber of an Italian F-104S Starfighter, cursing and muttering to himself as he extracted a faulty cable connector.

“Blue, I have to talk to you,” the young pilot said.

Something in his voice, in the urgency of his tone, caused Blue to stop abruptly and stare at the young pilot. It was as if Hunter’s voice was coming from deep within a well.

“I need you to rig up four of these,” he continued, passing the scrap of paper to the busy mechanic. On it were sketched some wiring diagrams and a set of rudimentary brackets shaped like a rounded letter ‘M’.

“What is this?” Blue asked, himself weary from two straight days of work without sleep. “I haven’t got time for any science fair projects …”

Hunter didn’t seem to hear the man’s protestations as he handed him the scrap of paper.

“It’s a modification for my F-16,” he said. “For the Sidewinders. I need to carry more and these will do the trick. Not perfect, but I don’t have time for anything fancy. I need four of them by the time I get back from the next run.”

“
Four
of them?” Blue said, as he looked at the ragged drawing. He had to admit he was somewhat intrigued by the simple, yet efficient design of the system. “You can’t just Rube Goldberg this thing onto wing or the fuselage, Captain. The plane wasn’t built for it. It hasn’t been tested—you don’t know whether it’ll work or not.”

Hunter responded woodenly, his eyes already fixed on a point beyond the hangar wall. His voice was low, but steady. “It will work. I’ll wire it together myself. I just want you to gin it up so I can do it as soon as I land again.”

Blue stared hard at the pilot, the man whose life he had saved the day before. For the first time he noticed how tightly drawn Hunter’s face looked in the grimy hangar interior. Then he looked back at the crude little sketch, as if he were being pulled into the project by an irresistible force.

He stared muttering again.

“Well, I guess the bracket’s easy enough,” he said. “We’ve got the stock right here. And these jumper wires seem …” Blue stopped in mid-sentence and looked at Hunter again. “Jesus, Captain, how bad is it up there?”

For the first time, Hunter looked away, unable to answer.

“Okay, Captain,” Blue said with another glance at the paper, “I’ll do it. But to make four of them, I’ll need some help and I might be hard pressed to find a warm body to spare.”

But Hunter didn’t hear him. He was already running back out through the hangar door, eyes fixed on the flightline where his white F-16 had just finished receiving a new load of fuel and ammo, and had transformed once again into a fully capable supersonic killing machine.

One of the ground crew had already loaded the preflight tape containing the computer boot-ups, so the sleek fighter was ready to go as soon as Hunter strapped in.

He was airborne in less than two minutes. His total ground time was less than half an hour.

B
ACK AT THE FRONT
, the intense air battle continued, as more and more Soviet fighters were vectored into the area over eastern France to meet the increasing number of NATO airplanes.

Oddly enough, the massive, on-going dogfight had spurred the Soviet High Command to issue a panicky suicidal order: Its troops must punch through to Paris
now
, despite the heavy casualties being inflicted on them by the outnumbered NATO defenders.

It was a strange, almost laughable dictate, the first real indication that even though it still held the upper hand, the Soviet High Command, so unprepared as it was for the war, was now becoming a bit desperate. Just twelve hours before, the rapid Soviet advance had ground to a halt in many places, stalled partly because of overextended-supply lines and partly because of the increasing reluctance of Moscow’s East European “allies” to serve as cannon fodder for the Soviet armored units.

And wherever the
blitzkrieg
had sputtered, the dividing line between the armies of freedom and those of domination had become a trench-and-sandbag border, in some places quickly stretching hundreds of miles long.

Fighting side by side as their grandfathers had fought head-to-head, German, US, British, and French troops battled the Soviets in these instantly muddy trenches, struggling against overwhelming odds to maintain a foothold on the European continent—a foothold that once lost, would not be easily regained.

Everywhere along the battle lines, exhausted NATO soldiers collapsed in the cold, winter mud, only to be roused when their comrades tripped over them in their own weariness. Leaning heavily on the quickly tattered sandbag walls, they sometimes fired at enemies they couldn’t see; ghosts of World War I, rising up to do battle again. Real enough were the dreaded, hourly artillery barrages, the daily armored assaults, and the ever-present stench of death. On and on it went and those knowledgeable in history were more than convinced that they were witnessing the most ferocious fighting that France had seen in two thousand years of combat.

All the while, the air battle raged above.

The Soviet field marshal in charge of the attacking Red Army was relaying hourly messages back to Moscow, explaining the ferocity of the NATO air offensive, demanding more SAM batteries, more planes out of reserve, and more supplies if he was to have a chance of breaking through to Paris.

The NATO commanders were concerned as well. For them the air war was providing a distraction, but not a decisive victory. The NATO ground forces were beginning to get the rapidly spreading whiff of despair; the sense that they would eventually run out of French real estate; and that their backs could be against the sea soon.

In many places, troops on both sides were critically short of ammunition. In these places, many of the troops lay crouched in their fortified foxholes or the trenches, watching the ever expanding aerial combat overhead. From their mudholes carved in the war-torn French countryside, the air war seemed very distant and oddly thrilling—a non-stop movie reel of spectacular dogfighting by every type of jet fighter imaginable.

It was only when one of the wounded aircraft plunged down to the ground among them did the watching infantrymen realize that the battle in the sky was every bit as deadly and ferocious as their battle on the ground.

During one whole day and a dazzling night, they had witnessed the endless rolling airborne brawl that sent contrails of planes and missiles criss-crossing through the skies above them. And more than a few of them, officers mostly, had noticed that one airplane in particular seemed to be everywhere at once—diving, twisting, climbing, shooting all the way.

It was a USAF F-16, painted all white …

This airplane always seemed to be in the sky directly above them, as if the pilot never left the scene of battle. As if he had an endless supply of fuel, ammo, and endurance. As if he were fighting the entire battle on his own.

The pilot—who became known as The Ghost—either led a charmed life, the muddy grunts reasoned, or he must be one crazy son-of-a-bitch.

T
IME HAD LOST ANY
meaning for Hunter since his vision the day before.

He flew and fought and flew again, a non-stop pattern from Rota’s airstrip to the killing skies above France. Eighteen sorties so far, with no end in sight.

His jury-rigged Sidewinder modification was working perfectly. Now the strange white F-16 could carry up to twelve of the deadly air-to-airs in clusters on his wings. Many Soviet pilots had watched him fire four, then swooped in with the false confidence born of a mistaken belief that he had shot the entire wad.

Many had plunged to the ground in flames after discovering the truth.

Now as Hunter entered the battle for the nineteenth time, he saw the skies above France had become an even larger, swirling mass of NATO and Warsaw Pact planes. The relatively orderly matched waves of comparable forces had long ago been scrambled into a hopeless melee as the old and new came together in fiery duels which now spilled out in a 500-square-mile area.

Flashing into the periphery of the continuous dogfight, Hunter first saw a Greek F-5 take a Soviet missile head on and explode in an ugly cloud. Above, an older MiG-21 was flamed by cannon fire from a French Navy Mirage. To his left, a US National Guard Delta Dart was engaging a Polish Su-17 Fitter, and getting the worst of it, but a second Dart was heading for the rescue.

Hunter even saw one of the pluckier Turks try to turn his ancient F-10G Super Sabre inside a supersonic Su-27 Flanker. Although far superior in firepower and maneuverability, the Soviet interceptor was out of missiles and kept overshooting the slower Sabre. But the Turk’s luck ran out when the Flanker climbed sharply and rolled at high altitude to dive on the older NATO plane.