longer.blue

The MiG Killer Eastern Mediterranean, off Syria. VFA-87 Golden Warriors. F/A-18E. The only man in that war who came home with both. The picture was already dirty before War Party pushed. E-2D had been painting tracks all morning out of the coastal belt: low, slow, disappearing into clutter, then one fast contact that climbed out of a field the brief had called cold. CAG’s order was narrow. Protect the strike. Do not chase glory inland. Do not shoot a friendly. If it is hostile, and if the rules are met, kill it and come back to the package. Miller took the lead Super Hornet. F/A-18E. Two AIM-120D on the shoulders, two more on the fuselage stations, AIM-9X on the wingtips, a targeting pod, a jammer. His wingman, War Party Two, carried the same. They were the air-to-air section riding the front of a strike that still had bombs to put on a coastal site. The rest of the War Party was behind them, fat with air-to-ground. He had briefed it the way he briefed everything. “If the E-2 says bandit, we do not dive into the merge for a story. We sort. We declare. We shoot what the rules allow. Then we get the strike home.” Nobody argued. They had stopped arguing with Fox about the picture a cruise ago. They were at angels twenty-eight, Mach point eight five, nose on the coast, when the Hawkeye’s voice cut the strike frequency. “War Party, Picture. Single group, Bullseye two-seven-zero, forty-two, twenty-seven thousand, hot. Possible second group low, Bullseye two-six-five, thirty-one, three thousand, slow.” Miller’s radar woke up a second later. One contact, high, fast, coming out of the interior. The low one was a smear in the clutter, barely a track. “War Party One, contact, nose, twenty-six thousand, twelve o’clock, thirty-six.” “War Party Two, same.” The E-2 again, tighter. “War Party, Bandit, Bullseye two-seven-zero, thirty-one, twenty-six thousand. Declare hostile. Type Fishbed. Second contact assessed rotary, low, three thousand, heading southeast toward the package.” Fishbed. MiG-21. Miller felt the old arithmetic settle. Altitude. Timing. Range. Aspect. Fuel. Not a movie. A problem with a clock on it. “War Party, sorted. One takes the high bandit. Two, sanitize low and stay tied. Commit.” “Two.” He selected the AIM-120D. The missile’s own brain was already drinking the radar track: range, closure, altitude differential. The D was not the old Sparrow. He did not have to ride a continuous illumination all the way to impact. He did have to be right. A bad declare over Syria was a career, and worse. “Strike, War Party One. Bandit declared hostile, Fishbed, committing. Request.” The controller did not dress it up. “War Party One, you are cleared. Bandit. Bandit.” At eighteen miles the MiG was a clean symbol, hot, slightly high, not running. Syrian Fishbeds did not usually come out to meet a Super Hornet section unless someone had told them the Americans were fat with bombs and looking the other way. Miller did not care why. He cared about the shot. “War Party One, naked.” No spike. The MiG’s radar was either off, old, or already too late. Fifteen miles. He uncaged, checked the shoot cue, checked Two still tied on his wing, checked the low track still crawling toward the strike’s inbound lane. “War Party One, Fox Three. Bandit, twelve o’clock, fourteen miles, twenty-six thousand.” The AMRAAM came off the rail with a thump he felt through the seat. White trail, then nothing. The missile pitched up into its loft, datalink alive, eating the updates his radar kept feeding it. “War Party Two, tally the smoke.” “Two, tally.” Time of flight was an ugly little number. He did not crank off so hard that he lost the track. He offset thirty degrees, kept the MiG on the edge of the scope, and listened to his own breathing in the mask. The same sound as the night traps. Different problem. Same discipline. The E-2, flat: “War Party, bandit still hot. No change.” At eight miles the missile went active. The tone shifted in his headset. He no longer owned the intercept. The D did. “War Party One, pitbull.” The MiG finally seemed to understand. The symbol twitched, nose down, a late break toward the deck. Too late, and downhill was the wrong answer against a missile that had already been given the geometry. Miller never got the cinematic merge. He got a bloom on the radar, then a voice from Two, who had the better angle on the smoke. “War Party Two, splash. Splash the high bandit. Black smoke, pieces, in a dive.” Miller looked out along the nose. Against the pale Syrian haze he caught it for three seconds: a tan-and-brown Fishbed, one wing trailing fire, the AMRAAM’s hit just aft of the wing root, the jet already unthreading into a nosedive. No chute that he could see. He did not look for one longer than the rules required. “War Party One, splash one. Fishbed. Confirm.” “Strike, copy splash one.” He said it once. He did not decorate it. The low contact was still there. While the MiG died, the slow group had kept coming, three thousand feet, southeast, straight at the lane the strikers would use in four minutes. The E-2 had called it rotary. Miller’s pod, slaved down, finally gave him the shape: tandem cockpit, stub wings, the ugly competent silhouette of an Mi-24, moving like it had a job and did not expect fighters overhead. Hind. Gunship. Not a mistake. Not a civilian helicopter on a road. It was armed, it was in the strike corridor, and the controller had already folded it into the same declare. “War Party, second bandit, Bullseye two-six-one, eighteen, three thousand, hostile rotary. Hind. You are cleared.” “War Party One, contact low. Two, stay high, sanitize. I’m going down.” “Two.” He rolled, throttles back, nose over, letting the Super Hornet trade altitude for a clean look without blowing through the floor. Twelve thousand. Eight. The Hind grew in the pod: desert camo, rocket pods on the stubs, a door gunner’s station he could not yet resolve and did not need to. It was turning toward a wadi the JTAC had already named as the terminal area. “War Party One, good track, rotary, three thousand, ten miles, hot.” An AMRAAM against a helicopter is a mean little problem. Slow target. Clutter. A missile that would rather kill a jet. He waited until the symbology was stable, until the shoot cue was honest, until he was close enough that the D would not have to guess through the dirt. Six miles. Still above the Hind. Still sorted. Still no friendly within the lane. “War Party One, Fox Three. Low bandit, Hind, six miles, three thousand.” The second AIM-120D left the rail. No loft this time worth speaking of. It dropped its nose and ran downhill, a white thread against brown country, datalink updates hammering in from the Hornet’s radar as Miller held the track and refused to get cute. “War Party One, pitbull, low.” The Hind tried to dump into the wadi. Too big. Too late. The missile hit it just forward of the tail boom. The gunship came apart in a dirty orange blow, rotors shearing off into the dust, the fuselage rolling once and then not moving. Two’s voice, quieter than the first call. “War Party Two, splash. Splash the Hind. It’s on the deck. Burning.” Miller pulled the nose up, checked fuel, checked Two, checked the strike still fat and stupid and alive behind him. “War Party One, splash two. Mi-24. Confirm no chute. Off the lane.” “Strike, copy splash two. War Party, flow back to the package. Nice work.” He did not answer the compliment. He answered the geometry. “War Party, flow one-eight-zero, angels twenty, speed as fragged. Two, you have the lead for the rejoin. I’m visual.” “Two has the lead.” They rejoined over the water with the bombs still on the strikers and the coast already going grey behind them. No one in the section had fired a gun. No one had gone to the merge. Two missiles. Two machines. One Fishbed that had climbed into a bad decision, one Hind that had believed the corridor belonged to it. In the ready room that night, aboard the carrier, Miller took the debrief the way he took every debrief. One thing he could have done better: he had stayed on the high bandit a second longer than the low picture deserved, and Two had been the one to keep the Hind from becoming a surprise. He said that out loud. He did not say much else. After the debrief the tapes showed the Hind lining up on a civilian village and the Fishbed flying top cover to keep anyone off it. Commander, Carrier Strike Group called Miller in with CAG and the ship’s captain, commended him for killing the deterrent first and the gunship before it released, and nominated him for the Distinguished Flying Cross. Fox asked that War Party Two go on the paperwork, then went back to the ready room, wrote one line on the board Hind was on the village. Fishbed was the deterrent. Shoot in that order. And found the one thing in the hop he could have done better.