*
“Stand clear of exhausts, intakes and propellers!” the deck boss chanted over the topside loudspeakers. “Stand by to start engines!”
Turbines whined to life and rotors began to spin, their blade tips barely clearing amid the tightly packed helicopters. A microlight was inset into each blade tip, invisible to the naked eye but readily apparent in the NiteBrite visors worn by the aviators and deck crew. Each helicopter became crowned by a shimmering halo of luminescence that marked the deadly arc of the blade sweep.
The major drawback to the compound helicopter conversion was weight. The wings and additional onboard systems, while greatly increasing the aircraft’s over-all payload capacity, cut into the weight the helicopter could lift in a “hover-up” vertical liftoff. Tonight, each SPEED Cobra would be carrying a maxed payload of fuel drop tanks, missiles and cannon ammunition.
So burdened, each machine must conduct a rolling launch, like a conventional aircraft, using the combined lift of both rotors and wings to reach the sky.
What had been old was new again. To utilize this latest addition to the naval aviation arsenal, they must hark back to the early days of dive bombers and leather flying helmets.
Pink had done rolling launches before – on the training LPDs, in the simulator, and even a couple of times off the Shenandoah’s narrow patchwork flight deck. Still, he swallowed and wished he had a canteen within reach.
“This is Delta Strike Lead to the Lady.” There was a choppy, digital edge to Arkady’s voice. They were using a frequency-jittering difficult-to-intercept radio,
with an unusual formality to his words. “All strikes standing by to launch.”
“This is the Lady,” a cool purring alto answered from out in the night. “You may launch the strikes.”
Talk about running names, the commando carrier’s captain was another of those rare individuals who had the personality to win a respectful one. She had a reputation that bordered on the legendary and his squadron leader insisted that every word of it was true and justified. Pink knew Arkady had put in a couple of cruises aboard Captain Garrett’s guided missile destroyer; there was even a certain degree of intriguing scuttlebutt that she and Arkady had once violated a few naval regulations together. Pink couldn’t say. Arkady was his friend and wing mate – but there were some questions you just didn’t ask, no matter how well you might know a guy.
Forward and to port, Arkady must have thrown his ready salute to the launch boss standing at the edge of the deck. Pink could feel the buffeting of rotor and propwash as his flight leader throttled up to flight power.
The launch boss, the “deck monkey”, went through his traditional exaggerated disco step launch gesture, ending on one knee with his fist thrust forward.
Pink’s aircraft shuddered under the air blast as Vince pulled pitch. Arkady’s Cobra started its forward roll down the limited length of the flight deck, gaining speed with an unnerving slowness. First, its landing gear broke contact; then, it cleared the end of the flight deck and the forecastle. Moments later, as it lost ground effect going over the bow, the Cobra dropped like a rock.
Pink almost strangled on his own heart. Then, the flickering halo of Delta Lead’s rotor lights bobbed back into view, climbing free into the black sky.
Pink would have a few, a very few, extra feet to launch with. He swallowed his own heart back into place and ramped up to flight power, throwing his own salute to the waiting deck monkey.
*
Four SPEED Cobra attack teams went airborne, each helicopter carrying a pair of AGM-88 Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missiles on its wingtip mounts. The “radiation” referred to in the missile’s nomenclature was not of the atomic variety, but the electronic. The AGM-88 was a radar killer, designed to blind air-search and anti-aircraft radars by honing in on and destroying their transmitter antenna. But the AGM-88 was not only a lethal but a versatile predator. It could be programmed to sniff out and kill other energy emitters, such as the broadcasting tower of a radio station.
Two Cobra flights doubled back toward Java, targeting the radicalist propaganda transmitters in the cities of Bandung and Semarang. The third cut down through the Sunda Strait to hit the stations on Sumatra’s underbelly at Padang.
Flying northwest, paralleling the northern Sumatran coast, the fourth flight flew through the darkness toward the most distant objective, the transmitter at Pakanbaru.
The SPEED Cobra’s communications system recognized and acquired a long range satlink carrier wave and a voice sounded in Arkady’s helmet phones.
“Star Child to Delta Strike Lead. Be advised Alpha Strike has engaged initial
target. Target is down. Alpha is clear and returning to base. Star Child out.”
Arkady squirted an acknowledgement back over the satellite link with a blip of the coder button on the HOTAS grip. “That’s one, Pink,” Arkady murmured into the talk-between-pilots channel.
“Hey Vince, you mind if I ask a question about this run?” Despite the close proximity of the two aircraft, Pinkerton’s voice was faint. “Difficult-to-intercept” radio didn’t mean “impossible” so they had their transmitter power backed down to minimums.
“Course not, Pink.” Arkady’s eyes flicked continuously from the navigation display to the sea’s surface a meager fifty feet below his Cobra’s belly. “Shoot?”
“There’s something about the mission profile that I don’t get,” his wingman replied. “How come we’re engaging the targets sequentially? If we’d staggered our launches, we could have hit these guys as a time-on-target
attack, putting all of our aircraft and missiles in at the same time.”
“Now why would we want to do that?” Arkady inquired mildly, breaking off his established eye movement pattern to twist and flex his neck. The weight of a night vision visor always gave him aching vertebrae.
“Uh, how about survivability? If we hit all of the targets simultaneously, we’ll have surprise on our side and we could didibop the hell out of here before
anyone could do anything about us. As is, we’re the last in line to launch. If the bad guys figure out that somebody’s picking off their radio stations one after another, they might react to it.
And if they do, they’re going to react all over us.”
“Can’t argue with that logic,” Arkady agreed.
“I don’t want you to argue with it,” Pink replied plaintively. “I just want to know how come?”
“It’s like this, buddy. Strike Alpha is ‘Wha’ hoppen?’ Strike Bravo will be, ‘I think somebody’s shooting at us!’ Strike Charley will be, ‘Hey, somebody is shooting at us!’ And Strike Delta, that’s us keen guys, will be …”
“Let’s kill the bastards!” Pinkerton finished, sounding unpleased with the concept.
“Essentially, Pink. Even as we speak, there’s a perilously cute little blonde on the ground in Jakarta doing all sorts of
spy stuff to spot who’s getting mad at us. It could answer a lot of questions about what’s going on out here.”
“I’m so happy. Tell me something, Vince. Are we going to be doing a lot of this
kind of shit flying off of that hermaphrodite freighter?”
Arkady chuckled. “Pink, you’re working for the Lady now. You’re going to be doing things you won’t even believe you’re doing, even while you’re doing them.”
USS Shenandoah,
North of the Sunda Strait
0050 Hours; Zone Time, October 26, 2008
The tea in Amanda’s mug was bitter, the mark of one nervous cup too many, and her eyes burned from too many hours of staring at Large Screen displays.
She stood in a corner of Air One, the smallest and yet one of the most critical of the operations centers within the Shenandoah’s command-and-control block. Here rested the brain of the air group and the heart of all flight operations. Half a dozen workstations were spaced around the bulkheads of the dim little compartment, while a computer chart table in its center took up the bulk of the remaining space.
This was Vince Arkady’s corner of the ship and he was already imprinting on it. Color copier downloads of classic naval warplanes had been taped into odd corners of the bulkheads and a poster from the Tokyo Air Show graced the inside of the door. Amanda couldn’t help but note the sentiment added with a marker pen to the lower corner.
