"Veering off, Duke-yeah!" The missile leveled out at the treetops behind the F19, then dipped and exploded in the woods. "The instruments say that was a SA-6. The search radar is one o'clock and very close."
"Okay," Ellington said. He activated a single Sidearm antiradar missile and fired it at the transmitter from a range of four miles. The Russians were slow to detect it. Ellington saw the detonation. Take that, Darth Vader!
"I think you're right on how they're getting us, Duke."
"Yeah." The Frisbee was designed to defeat overhead radars. Something looking up had a much better chance of detecting them. They could defeat that by flying very low, but then they couldn't see as well as they wanted to see. He turned for another look at the tanks. "How many you think, Don?"
"Lots, over a hundred."
"Tell 'em." Ellington turned back north while Major Eisly made his report. In minutes some German Phantom jets would visit the tank assembly point. That many tanks sitting still probably meant a fueling point, he thought. Either the fuel trucks were already there or they were en route. Fuel trucks were now his primary targets, a surprising change after weeks of going for supply dumps and moving columns... What's that?
"Trucks dead ahead!" The Duke watched the enhanced view on his Head-Up Display. A long line of... fuel trucks, traveling in a tight column, blacked out and moving fast. The curved metal tops made the identification easy. He turned the fighter again to circle two miles from the road. Eisly's infrared picture showed the glow of engines and exhaust piping, hotter than the cool night air. It was like a procession of ghosts down the tree-lined road.
"I count fifty or so, Duke, and they're heading for that tank park."
Five thousand gallons per truck, Ellington thought. Two hundred fifty thousand gallons of diesel fuel... enough to fill every tank in two Soviet divisions. Eisly called that one in also.
"Shade Three," the AWACS controller radioed back. "We have eight birds en route, ETA four minutes. Orbit and evaluate."
Ellington did not acknowledge. He put his aircraft right down on the treetops for several minutes, wondering how many trees had Russian soldiers standing nearby with their SA-7 hand-held missiles.
A long time since he'd flown over Vietnam, a long time since he'd first realized that random chance could reach up into the sky and end his life despite all his skill. His years of peacetime flying had allowed him to forget that-Ellington never thought an accident could kill him. But one man with an SA-7 could, and there was no way to know when he was flying over one... Stop thinking about that, Duke.
The Royal Air Force Tornados swept in from the east. The lead aircraft dropped his cluster bombs in front of the column. The rest swept over the road at a shallow angle, raining the bomblets on the convoy. Trucks exploded, sending burning fuel high into the air. Ellington saw the silhouettes of two fighter-bombers against the orange flames as they headed west for home. The fuel spread out on both sides of the road, and he watched the undamaged trucks stop and turn, desperately trying to escape the conflagration. Some were abandoned by their drivers. Others steered clear of the fire and tried to continue south. A few succeeded. Most bogged down, too heavily loaded to move on the soft earth.
"Tell 'em they got about half. Not bad at all."
A minute later, the Frisbee was ordered northeast again.
In Brussels the radar signals downlinked from the ground-search radar aircraft plotted the fuel convoy's path. A computer was now programmed to perform the function of the videotape recorder, and it traced the convoy's movements back to its point of origin. Eight more attack aircraft headed toward this patch of woods. The Frisbee got there first.
"I show SAM radars, Duke," Eisly said. "I'll call it one battery of SA-6 and another of SA-11. They must think this place is important."
"And a hundred little bastards with hand-held SAMs," Ellington added. "ETA on the strike?"
"Four minutes."
Two batteries of SAMs would be very bad news for the strike aircraft "Let's cut those odds down some."
