Brown, Dale - Battle Born by Brown Dale

Author:Brown, Dale [Brown, Dale]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780006512011
Publisher: Harpercollins Pub Ltd
Published: 2001-02-27T05:00:00+00:00

"Pioneer Seventeen, roger," the pilot of the KC-

135R tanker replied happily. "Thanks for the pick. We liked flying in the dirt with you guys. Go kick some butt. We're outta here."

"Thanks, Pioneer," Rinc radioed. "Break. Aces lead, you're clear down the chute. We'll keep your tail clear. You better drop some shacks, or don't bother comin' home. We're right behind you." On interphone, he said, "Okay, hogs: we keep our wingman's tail clear, we drop all zero-zeros, and we don't screw up. Keep it tight and lean forward. No mistakes."

Patrick had seen it all happen right before him-he thought he was going to die. He didn't know-didn't want to know-how close they came to that F-15 Eagle fighter. It was close enough to see the pilot's unit patches on his sleeve, see the collar of his flight suit turned up, see the kink in his oxygen hose as he looked out his big canopy and saw the big B-l barreling down on him. Hell, it had to be close enough to hear that F-15 driver's asshole slam shut as he saw his windscreen fill up with 400,000 pounds of Bone cracking the speed of heat. Patrick knew it, because he thought he'd heard his own asshole do the same thing!

He would find out exactly how close later from the AWACS guys and the Nellis range controllers, since they had all the planes and the entire fifty thousand square miles of bombing ranges fully instrumented and could re-create every moment of a battle in exquisite computerized detail. When someone is that close to death or disaster, you can feel it coming at you-you don't need windows or radar or anything. In his eighteen-year career, Patrick had felt that feeling many, many, many times. They certainly busted the ROE bigtime, and they probably came within seconds of creating one of the most spectacular midair collisions in the history of aviation. The tiniest of deviations-just a few seconds off, a few miles off, one extra turn, crossing east around a peak instead of west, a half-degree steeper dive or I percent more airspeed-could have had disastrous results.

"Center up, steering is good," John Long announced. His voice boomed over the quiet interphone channel like a gunshot in a tunnel. "Forty seconds to

ACAL, sixty seconds to my fix."

"You see any brown streaks coming out that fighter's cockpit, sir?" Rinc asked Patrick, his voice light.

"SA-3 at two o'clock," the crew's defensive systems officer, Captain Oliver "Ollie" Warren, announced, checking his electronic warfare threat profile display. "Coming from the target area. I'm picking up high PRF and intermittent uplink signals, but not aimed at us-he must be trying to lock onto our wingman."

"Give 'em a shout, Ollie," Rinc said. "See if we can't divert their attention away from our wingman." Patrick shrugged-pretty good idea, although it would be giving away their position. Warren manually activated the L-band uplink jammer. At this range, the jammer would be only marginally effective, and it would immediately tell the enemy the range and bearing to the new threat.

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