Watson manually slewed the IRSTS along the bearing given by the AWACS controller and finally found the Chinese fighter, a tiny green dot on his screen. He hit the “Lock” button, and a big square superimposed itself on the dot; a second later as the IRSTS refined its aiming and stabilized its gyro platform, the square compressed to slightly larger than the dot, and a stream of tracking figures appeared on the screen. Watson slaved one AIM-9R Sidewinder missile to the IRSTS boresight, and Penrose heard a low, menacing growl as the missile’s seeker head locked on. “Got the Chink on IR, Razor,” Watson said. “Select a Sidewinder and nail this bugger.”
“Bullet Seven, second bandit climbing through your altitude, two o’clock, twelve miles…”
“Bullet Six, fox two…” Penrose shot one Sidewinder, decided against selecting his last one — Cowboy might need the extra missile.
The tiny missile raced ahead, obliterating the IR sensor in the sudden glare, but the missile tracked straight and true this time and they were rewarded by a huge ball of fire far ahead of them.
“Bullet Six, splash two.”
“Good shooting, Razor,” Penrose heard Bowman reply in between deep grunts — Bowman was performing his anti-G force grunts called M-maneuvers. He was obviously right in the middle of a hard-turning battle, but the cocky sonofa- bitch still found time to chatter on the radios. “Bullet Seven, fox one… die, sucker, die!”
“Bullet Seven, warning, second bandit four o’clock, high, eight miles, descending behind you…”
“Cowboy, dammit, get out of there!” Penrose shouted. “Cowboy, extend, extend!”
“Bullet Seven, starboard turn to evade… Bullet Seven, extend… Bullet Seven heading zero-nine-zero, thirty degrees starboard to extend… Bullet Seven, check altitude… Bullet Seven, if you are in a spin, release your controls… Bullet Seven, if you are in a spin, release your controls and lower your landing gear… Bullet Seven, Bullet Seven, altitude warning… Bullet Seven only, Bullet Seven only, eject, eject, eject…” No use.
Penrose never got another transmission from Bowman.
“Basket, this is Six, vector to Bullet Seven’s last position.”
Penrose could hear the panic, the gut-wrenching anxiety, in the controller’s voice. “Er… Bullet Six, lone bandit at your nine o’clock, forty miles, he’s northwest-bound at six hundred knots, altitude ten thousand and descending. Appears to be withdrawing. No other bandits detected. Say your bingo.”
“I said, I want a vector to Seven’s last known position, dammit…”
“No ELT, no transmissions… Six, say your
Penrose finally curbed his anger long enough to check his fuel — he was well past bingo, and with a damaged carrier and his tankers more than a hundred miles away, he was in emergency fuel conditions now. “Basket, Six requests you vector a KA-6 over here, because I’m not
“Bullet Six… Six, all group vessels involved at this time.” The controller sounded as if he were trying to think of some detached, official-sounding terminology to tell Penrose that no one was likely to come and search for wreckage or survivors. Penrose suddenly remembered the
The battle was over. The Chinese lost four plus damaged a carrier, the Americans lost two. Penrose felt as if he had been beaten up by an entire street gang.
Who won this one?
Who the
The National Military Command Center, located three stories beneath the inner ring of the Pentagon, was a large, sophisticated command post where members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, their senior staff officers, and members of the National Command Authority and National Security Council could monitor crisis developments anywhere in the world, receive real-time satellite imagery, and speak directly with anyone from foreign leaders to theater commanders to individual crew members via secure, high-tech worldwide communications gear. The place was much like the Strategic Air Command’s underground command center, with ultratight electronic and physical security, several huge wall-size, full- color monitors, banks of telephones, a secure code room, and a huge support staff — except this was where national military strategy and command decisions were made and disseminated, not received and executed. A gallery above the main floor allowed high-ranking visitors to view the proceedings; a few persons were up there now.
