Immediately the weapon-seeker symbology appeared on his head-up display in front of him, the signal for him to line up his aircraft with the target… He counted the seconds down from twenty, as he had done so often on the firing ranges on Exercise Red Flag, back home in the Nevada desert. At fifteen seconds his head-up display indicated target-lock on. The sensor on the Maverick missile had detected the laser beam as it bounced off the “painted” target being marked by the laser operator on the ground.
“Hold it steady, boy. Hold it steady,” Bertinetti urged the unknown operator.
The laser beam remained rock steady.
Bertinetti felt, once again, the respect an airman feels for the man on the ground, close up and personal with the enemy. Bertinetti had encountered much worse target designation on a peacetime range with no one shooting back.
As he closed in, he concentrated on holding the aircraft steady. Get this wrong and he would not only blow himself and the Iskanders to eternity, he would go down as the man who sparked the nuclear exchange that ended civilization. That was if there was anybody left alive to remember it.
“Now!” he told himself, as he pressed the weapon-release button on the top of his stick with his right thumb. The missile fired forward off its launch rail and, as it blasted into the blackness in front of him, he was momentarily blinded by the flaming propellant. He felt the wing rise a fraction as the weight was removed and he automatically moved to correct the aircraft trim.
Below him, the missile accelerated toward its target.
HIGH ABOVE THEM, Morland was conscious of the scream of a fast jet engine.
“Won’t be long now!” shouted Webb. “Stand by for impact…”
Morland looked up and, in the sky above the muzzle flashes, the first faint streaks of dawn light illuminated a dark, cigar shape, which descended rapidly toward the watchtower where the Korda continued to pump out a steady stream of tracer. It flew inexorably, a creature with a computer brain of its own.
Morland and Webb dropped into the bottom of the sunken lane and were conscious only of a blinding flash lighting the horizon above them, followed a split second later by an ear-splitting roar as the Maverick missile, fitted with laser seeker and 298-pound penetrative-blast, fragmentation warhead, hit the watchtower and eradicated it with the precision of a sniper’s bullet. From his position three hundred meters away, Morland was surprised by how little blast there was; all the energy appeared to have gone downward. He scrambled up the edge of the sunken lane and peered at the perimeter through the base of the hedge. The crack and thump of incoming machine-gun fire had disappeared and when the smoke cleared, there was no longer any watchtower.
“Neatly done,” said Webb. “Bull’s-eye… and all without setting off the nukes.”
“Shit, that I hadn’t thought of…” muttered a suddenly very relieved Morland, as a figure in a para smock, face smeared in cam cream and framed by a British airborne ballistic helmet, unexpectedly appeared beside him.
Morland realized he must have been temporarily deafened by the noise of gunfire and explosions as he had not heard the man approach. He looked over his shoulder and saw two similarly equipped soldiers on either flank, covering the lead man. One was carrying an SA-80 assault rifle and the second a Minimi, 5.56 millimeter, light machine gun.
The lead man knelt beside him. “Sergeant Atkins, Recce Platoon, 3 Para. We’re the advance party. Main body of the company is approaching the LZ right now,” he said in a strong Brummie accent.
Morland looked up at him. “Captain Tom Morland, Recce Platoon commander, 1 Mercian. What kept you?” he said with a grin, as a massive sense of relief swept over him. Somehow, with 3 Para here, he knew it was going to be alright.
