Introduction:
I am extremely pleased to be allowed to present some original fiction written by my good friend Larry Bond, the successful bestselling author of "Red Phoenix" and "Vortex", and coauthor of Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising". Larry is probably better known to us in gaming circles as the designer of "Harpoon". While fiction is not what this newsletter is usually about, I have made an exception in this case with "Argus Flight".
This is an excerpt from the original text of the novel "Vortex" which unfortunately was edited out by the publishers before the book went to print. Argus flight is Larry's imaginative and fairly realistic write up of a three-way battle among U.S. Navy FA-18s, South African Mirage F Is, and Cuban flown MiG-29s which occurs during the climactic struggle between a Cuban-led invading army and scattered elements of the South African defense force. This is the first time this chapter has seen print. Enjoy it! J.D.W.
Argus Flight, over Naboomspruit, on National Route 1
Lieutenant Jack "Ice" Isaacs, USN, liked recce missions. His F/A- 18 Hornet was fast-not the fastest thing in the sky maybe, but powerful and nimble, and best of all, armed to the teeth. Even with a reconnaissance pallet loaded, his jet still carried Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles and a cannon, and he was itching for a chance to use them. Ice looked a little like his Hornet. Lean and angled, he had a quick manner on the ground, always darting, always moving quickly.
Isaacs glanced over his right shoulder. His partner, Lieutenant "Spike" Faber, was still in position, above and slightly behind his aircraft. He was close enough to see Spike's helmeted head in the cockpit, but his deceptively round, soft features were hidden. A lot of people underestimated Spike. His real name was Malcolm, but he'd earned his call sign the hard way.
Spike's Hornet was fully armed - bristling with Sparrow radar-homing missiles as well as Sidewinders. Isaacs and Faber lived together, worked together, flew together, and drank together. He had confidence in his wingman.
On the surface, their mission sounded simple - a single low-level photo pass over the two sides fighting outside the South African town of Naboomspruit.
Washington badly needed information on the fighting up north. If the Cubans reached the Pretoria-Johannesburg area first, the U.S.-British job in South Africa got that much tougher. Although the aircraft on Eisenhower hadn't yet taken sides in the struggle, they might be forced to, to keep South Africa's economic heartland out of Cuban hands.
That would look great, Isaacs mused. "Americans and British pilots assist South Africans in defense of capital after fighting Afrikaner units in Cape Town." Well, nobody ever said wars had to make sense.
"I've got two fighter radars bearing northeast." Spike's voice filled his earphones. He glanced down into the cockpit. His own radar warning scope also showed the strobes. No distance estimate, though. RWR gear only showed direction.
Isaacs acknowledged his wingman's transmission with two clicks of his mike switch and scanned the sky ahead and to the right. Nothing was visible, but hostile fighters could grow from specks to adversaries in seconds. Worse than that, if they had radar-guided missiles, they might already be a threat.
They were only a few minutes out from his photo run. With luck, they'd be in and gone before those fighters spotted them.
The two Hornets were doing their best to hide. Hugging the uneven landscape, they flew down valleys or stayed close to hillsides. Their gray-painted aircraft had been hastily recamouflaged with patches of sand and dark brown designed to help them blend into the ground. Both pilots were also flying with their radars off. They'd even steered clear of the few settlements they saw along their route.
Issacs checked his RWR gear again. The radar bearing stayed steady. That meant the enemy aircraft were either a long way off... or they were headed straight for them.
They were approaching the final waypoint. Isaacs checked over the recce gear. Everything was functioning within specs. Good. He sure as hell didn't want to have to do this again.
He banked, turning onto his final course. Headings flickered across the top of his HUD - his Heads-Up Display. There. He pushed the throttle all the way forward. The F/A- 18 leapt ahead, pressing him back into his seat. Isaacs had to work to keep the Hornet's nose down as it quickly accelerated to just over the speed of sound.
He didn't look over to see if Spike was following his maneuvers. He was confident of his wingman's ability. Besides, he needed to carefully divide his time between watching his instruments and scanning the rugged terrain flickering by outside - with ten percent left over to look after the affairs of Mrs. Isaac's son, Jack.
Everything happens fast when you're flying at more than eight hundred miles an hour.
New radar strobes appeared on the scope - from ahead and off to the sides. Ground defenses. Shit.
Glowing tracers arced up from a nearby hill, flashing past right over his canopy. Jesus. Another alarm on his instrument panel indicated a missile guidance radar had locked onto his aircraft.
Issacs stabbed buttons on his flight controls, activating both his Hornet's internal jammers and its decoy dispensers. Bundles of aluminum fibers and white-hot flares spilled out in a growing, glowing trail behind his aircraft.
He kept most of his attention centered on the flight instruments and his HUD. It showed the exact path he had to follow to accomplish his mission. It even showed the altitude at which he had to fly. And any deviation from that path would mean a failed mission.
If he blew it, he or one of his shipmates would just have to come back and do it again. Besides, he didn't like the thought of explaining a screwed-up flight to his squadron commander.
Well, no point in being quiet any longer. Issacs punched another button on his stick - turning on his fighter's nose-mounted radar. It might provide some useful information, although right now the nav panel was his sole source of inspiration.
Spike had evidently turned his radar on, too. "Ice, I've got two bandits at nine o'clock, forty miles out. Closure is twelve hundred knots and increasing. They've got us, sport."
Isaacs carefully turned to an indicated heading and rapidly climbed another three thousand feet. Throttling back slightly, he keyed his transmit switch. "Starting the run."
"Roger. I'll keep 'em busy. Engaging." In his peripheral vision, Isaacs saw Spike's Hornet flash over and across his line of flight.
He risked a quick glance at the ground below. Houses and streets in regular, rectangularpatterns. He was almost directly over Naboomspruit. Clustered around the highway, it looked like any of hundreds of small communities he'd flown over. This one, though, had some unfriendly citizens. Black and red flak bursts popped into the air ahead, and he fought the urge to jink. Flinging his plane from side to side would mean blurred pictures - and blurred pictures meant a failed recce run.
The words "Fox one, fox one," came overhis earphones, and Issacs knew his partner had launched a Sparrow missile at the oncoming bandits. Glancing left, he saw a white line being drawn across the sky - a missile heading for some target he couldn't see and didn't have time to look for.
He banked again. "On final leg."
Spike answered with an elated, "Splash one!" And a few seconds later, "Merging. It's a Mirage."
A South African intercept, then. Issacs desperately wanted to help his partner. A one-on-one dogfight wasn't a smart way to go. A good rule in air combat was to keep the odds in your favor. But his job was the critical one. Spike would just have to keep the Afrikaner Mirage busy for another few moments.
Isaacs was starting to breathe, thinking that they might just get out of this in one piece, when his radar warning display lit up again. Two more strobes appeared, again from the northeast. They correlated with two more symbols on his radar screen - symbols his computer said were MiG-29 Fulcrums. Terrific. The Fulcrum's "Slot Back" radar was loaded into the computer's threat library, while the Mirage's Cyrano IV radar was not.
Cubans. He was over the Cuban lines now, so it figured. And the flak was even heavier. Gee, somehow he doubted that Castro's boys gave a damn just who they shot at.
The "Photo" prompt disappeared from his HUD and Isaacs clicked his mike on. "Clear! Let's bug out."
"I'm at your four o'clock, still engaged"
Ice pulled his fighter into a hard right turn, breathing in short pants to fight the g-forces. He quickly changed the HUD to air-to-air mode and selected his port Sidewinder missile.
His radar showed the distance to Spike and his adversary, although their violent maneuvers were reduced to random zigs and zags by the display. One blip had a friendly IFF so his computer automatically locked up the other one. The HUD obligingly projected a box in front of his eyes, telling him where to look for the enemy Mirage.
He glanced down at the radar screen, looking for the MiGs. Four blips now. Two pairs of incoming fighters, closing from opposite ends of the compass. Son of a bitch. He and Spike were getting caught in a squeeze play between two different enemies. Even worse, the two closest bandits were only forty miles out - closing at roughly nine hundred knots!
"Spike, we've got a total of four new inbounds, none of them friendly."
"Roger, Ice. Maneuvering."
Suddenly the empty box on Isaacs' HUD had an airplane in it, a South African Mirage nose down and banking hard right, away from him. Silently thanking the gods of the air, he lowered his nose and corrected right, trying to anticipate the other pilot's movements. They had to knock this bastard out of the air before they could turn tail and run home for the carrier. He was close enough to see the enemy plane clearly now, definitely a Mirage Fl. A pretty thing, but it didn't have the power of a Hornet or its advanced systems. That severely limited its options in a dogfight. Like now.
Issacs glanced at his wingman's plane. Spike was nose up, maneuvering in the vertical to one side of the Mirage. It was a move the enemy fighter could not hope to copy for long.
Christ, that South African pilot was in a world of hurt. Spike would finish his vertical roll in a second - sliding easily into firing position. And he was in firing position right now. All he had to do was close a little more. If the Mirage tried to extend away, using afterburner to gain speed and energy, its red-hot tailpipe would make an even more attractive target for his Sidewinder. . .
Two white streaks appeared over his canopy, moving right to left. Frantically searching, Issacs almost spun his plane into the ground looking for these new attackers. It looked like he'd acquired a bad case of target fixation, but his warning gear should still have alerted him that there were inbound missiles. What gave?
He checked ahead again. The Mirage pilot had hit his burner, betting on speed to get him out of the two-Hornet vise he was in. As the Fl 's tailpipe flared bright white, the "Shoot" prompt appeared on his HUD and Issacs heard a low growl in his headphones. Yes! He pulled the trigger once. "Fox two!"
His port Sidewinder flashed off its wing tip rail in pursuit of the fleeing Mirage. Issacs ignored it and craned his neck around, looking again for those other missile tracks.
Two white smoke trails went straight overhead, stretching from horizon to horizon. They showed no signs of curving toward his position - so they couldn't have been aimed at him. That's why the missiles hadn't triggered his warning gear. The Cubans had engaged the distant pair of fighters. Maybe they didn't know who was in the furball, and didn't want to risk shooting down some of their own.
Looking west, Issacs saw that one of the trails ended in a small cloud of black, gray, and brown smoke - one of the Cuban missiles had found its mark.
Spike finished his maneuver, pointing northeast now instead of attacking the fleeing Mirage. Almost immediately, he called, "Bogies to the northeast, eleven miles."
"Roger."
Spike's Hornet flew straight on for a moment more. "Fox one!" Another Sparrow missile fell away from the F/A-18's fuselage, igniting a fraction of a second-later.
Issacs pulled his own plane around in a tight turn, following his wingman. He glanced back over his shoulder, looking for his Sidewinder- but knowing that its smokeless motor and small size would make it almost invisible. His target, the Mirage, was still headed out, flying at low altitude. Odd. Why had the South African pilot started a slow roll to the right?
The F1 completed one full roll, and started another when its canopy suddenly popped off and the pilot's seat left the fighter in a cloud of smoke. Issacs grinned beneath his oxygen mask. His missile had already hit. Fragments must've knocked out the other plane's controls. By God, he had his first kill!
The radar warning gear signaled him with a beep-beep noise - enemy radar had locked onto him. Someone out there had finally decided that he was a good missile target. The signal ended just as quickly as it began, and he saw the two bogies to the northeast maneuvering to avoid Spike's attack. That broke the lock on their missiles. And Issacs saw his chance.
He had to survive and get the film in his cameras back to Eisenhower. Nothing else mattered. He clicked his mike. "Extending east!"
"Roger. I'm with you."
Quickly rolling inverted, Issacs pulled back hard on the stick as the ground rushed up at him. A split-S maneuver was a good way to trade altitude for speed and to change heading quickly - especially if all you cared about was getting away.
With the Hornet's nose pointed straight down, he rolled the plane again. The horizon spun around until his canopy pointed east. He tugged on the stick, pulling out of his dive five hundred feet over the brown South African veld at a speed of almost eight hundred knots.
He glanced right long enough to ensure that Spike was indeed with him, and then concentrated on the navigation instruments again. Behind him, the combatants continued their fight. Time to go home, Issacs thought. I'll let these bastards get back to their private war ...
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© Copyright 1992 by J.D. Webster
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