Vortex

The SAM battery’s assistant commander shook off sleep and leaned over his shoulder.

“What’s their speed and altitude?”

“Medium altitude, sir.” There was no direct readout of speed on the scope, but the blip’s movement was clear.

“It’s moving fast!”

“Right. No time to be subtle. Turn on your tracking radar and warm up the missiles.”

While Jimenez acknowledged the order, the lieutenant alerted his battery commander and the other SAM vehicles.

“Watch your sectors. This may be a feint to distract us from the real attack.”

Outside, he heard warnings being shouted throughout the camp.

“Air alert!”

He remembered the flyby earlier. Although they’d done their best, both

South African reconnaissance planes had escaped unharmed. This attack was almost certainly the result. Jimenez nodded to himself, watching his radar screen with hawklike intensity. The going had been far too easy.

He leaned forward as the pattern on his radar scope changed.

“Separation,

Conrade Lieutenant! Two aircraft turning away.” But two blips were still closing.

“Speed is up over one thousand KPH. Altitude now four thousand meters.

“

“Probably going for another reconnaissance pass at maximum speed. This may not be an attack after all,” the lieutenant speculated.

Jimenez shrugged. Reconnaissance run or an actual attack, it didn’t really make much difference. They’d still shoot the bastards out of the sky.

Numbers flashed on a display next to his scope.

“The computer says firing range is eight and a half kilometers.”

“Shoot when they’re in range.”

JERICHO LEAD

Heersfeld was juggling several balls at once. Airspeed and altitude had to be maintained within precise, narrow limits, course had to be held exactly, and meanwhile here he was hanging out at medium altitude where every Cuban all the way back to Havana could see him.

He could almost feel the SAM radar beams sweeping over his Mirage.

Normally, attack runs on a target were made at altitudes of just one or two hundred meters. Pilots used terrain masking and violent maneuvers to evade or confuse enemy antiaircraft defenses. This straight-and-level stuff gave him the willies.

Well, his wingman escort was supposed to watch for incoming threats.

Heersfeld hoped the fighter jock had his eyes open wide. He pulled his eyes back inside the cockpit and activated the special weapons console. The indicators were all green. Great. He kept one eye on the flight instruments and punched in a five-digit security code on the keypad.

He was rewarded with a new set of lights, whose significance was both exciting and frightening. The weapon was armed.

Passing twenty kilometers. He was high and a little fast, so he throttled back slightly. With only a thousand meters to go, he hit the transmit switch on his radio, “Springbok, this is Jericho Uad. At alpha point.”

Glancing right, he saw his escort flash his formation lights and break hard right. As the fighter turned, Heersfeld saw the glow of its afterburner. The other pilot was trying to get as far away as he possibly could. A wise man, he thought.

The Mirage shuddered slightly as it punched through a whirl of disturbed air. He checked his instruments again.

His speed was good and he was still on course. In a useless gesture,

Heersfeld tightened his straps and settled himself in the seat. Reaching over to the weapons panel, he selected CENTERLINE and watched the gauges.

Now!

In a carefully practiced motion, he pulled back on the stick, pulling his plane up into a loop. The Mirage’s nose snapped up toward the zenith.

Needles spun round on the aircraft’s altimeter as it thundered high into the dark night sky.

At seventy-seven hundred meters, eleven hundred kilometers per hour indicated airspeed, on a course of two seven five degrees magnetic and at a forty-five-degree angle, Heersfeld stabbed the release button on his control stick. He felt a solid thump under the aircraft as the bomb separated cleanly he hoped.

The mission was out of his hands now, and it was high time he looked after Jon Heersfeld’s immediate future. He pushed the throttle all the way forward and yanked back on the stick, even harder than before. The

Mirage roared upward and over, finishing the loop-inscribing a vertical semicircle through the air.

At ten thousand meters, the plane’s nose passed the horizon and kept going. He was upside down now, hanging from his straps staring “up” at the earth below.

Heersfeld quickly rolled from inverted to wings-level in a steep dive and watched his airspeed indicator climb higher. He was already moving at over Mach one, and he intended to wring every possible ounce of speed out of his old mount.

Behind him, the bomb traveled through its own arc.

THIRD BRIGADE TACTICAL GROUP

Sergeant Jimenez counted down as the lone South African aircraft approached.

“Fourteen kilometers. Twelve kilo meters. Ten kilometers. Ten kilometers!” He sat up straighter, staring at the screen.

“It’s turning away! Range is now twelve kilometers. Comrade

Lieutenant, the other aircraft is turning away, too! “