War of the Sun (11 page)

When the first A-7 finally came in, it skidded on the foam and oil, crashing through the netlike safety barrier strung beyond the four wire, stopping just inches from going over the side. With the pilot trapped inside the cockpit, the airplane teetered precariously on the lip of the carrier.

Without prompting, the USS
Cohen
was immediately alongside, several of its bravest crew members crawling out on its main loading crane and rescuing the dazed, grateful pilot. Then they attached a steel cable around the nose landing gear of the airplane, and thus stabilized, the deck crew on the
Fitz
was able to winch the Strikefighter back onto the deck.

It was now 0755.

Yaz was in the bridge, impatiently awaiting the arrival of the Fiat G.91 and the A-4E Skyhawk. In many ways it was those two airplanes that had faced the most difficult mission of them all.

Their assignment was to go directly to the center of the port city of Yokohama and destroy the main telephone switching station, a place which routed every phone call made on the main Japanese island of Honshu. In one sense, the switching station was a “soft target”: it could be taken out with one or two direct hits.

But in reality, it was the hardest target any of them took on.

Besides being defended by the heaviest concentration of antiaircraft defenses than all the other targets combined, it was also situated between a civilian hospital and a prisoner-of-war camp. This particular strike called for absolute precision under the most difficult of circumstances. Jones knew it when he designated the mission; the pilots who were to fly this mission knew it when they accepted.

But the risks involved had remained unspoken.

Yaz and his entire bridge crew scanned the horizon. The two Yokohama planes were long overdue, way,
way
past their bingo points. Everyone was just about to give up hope when they noticed a single tiny speck in the distance, heading toward the carrier.

Radar confirmed the sighting, Yaz, relieved that at least one of the planes was returning, was remorseful of the loss of the other. Then the “speck” got bigger. Finally it was close enough for everyone to make out clearly what was coming on home.

The crew was simply astounded.

There was only six feet left of the right wing of the Fiat. The Skyhawk, precisely matching airspeed, altitude and attitude, was flying alongside and slightly ahead of his partner, his left wing almost touching the stump that remained of the Fiat’s right wing, thereby providing what aerodynamic experts would call “false lift.” (The airflow created by the Skyhawk’s wing allowed the Fiat’s busted wing to pass through much diminished air resistance, thereby not requiring it a lot of wing area to stay airborne.)

Yaz could only speculate the daring that the two pilots must have displayed in the attempt and the success of achieving this tenuous position. He knew quite well that when a jet loses a wing, it’s no longer a flying machine, it’s a rocket spinning wildly out of control. He also knew that they had only one chance of making it back onto the carrier.

Together the two planes flew, straight and true and right for the landing deck. Radio chatter confirmed the situation, and the bridge requested that the Skyhawk bring the Fiat in to the point of landing, and then break away, letting the Fiat try to come in by itself. It was the safest and most logical way to handle this most unsafe and illogical situation.

But then the Skyhawk pilot feigned radio breakdown. Everyone on the bridge knew it was an old trick that pilots often used to get what they wanted. It was dangerous, but no one dared call this brave pilot on it. Instead, they held their breaths …

The planes remaining on deck—the A-7s and the Yugo—were hurriedly pushed, by hand, by every available sailor and pilot that could be mustered, to the remaining working elevators, and deposited in a heap in the hangar deck. Seawater mixed with detergent solvent was pumped up through the firehoses and sprayed across the landing deck in an attempt to rid it of the hundreds of gallons of JP-8 jet fuel, hydraulic oil, and grease that had spilled or poured from the injured birds that had landed earlier. Last, a fresh layer of foam was spread out across the deck to prevent any fires from breaking out, and a double layer of steel netting was loosely stretched across the far end of the landing area.

All this was accomplished in a matter of two minutes, and everyone was standing by just as the two stricken airplanes made their last approach, demonstrating the tightest of precision flying possible.

Slowly, they both eased in, just above stall speed. The two pilots were bringing them on down so incredibly smoothly, that it looked like they
were
literally attached to each other.

With what was left of their landing gear they both touched down at once. Both planes’ tail hooks snared the two wire at the same time, and instead of the pilots pushing to full power, they both immediately killed their engines. The two planes smashed into the safety barrier, stopped dead in their tracks with a screech of smoke and sparks, and then fell in against each other.

Within seconds, the firecrews had the pilots out and both planes covered in even more foam. From the bridge, Yaz saw the pilot of the Fiat and the pilot of the Skyhawk look up toward him.

They gave Yaz the “Thumbs Up.” Mission accomplished.

Yaz returned the gesture with a salute for a job well done.

Then he checked the time. It was 0800. The only ones left out there were the two Alphas. And Hunter.

B
OTH FRENCH ALPHA JET E
trainers were struggling under the weight of the six bombs under their wings.

Their mission had been a long and arduous one so far. They’d been loitering just outside the estimated radar range of the Cult coastal defense units, flying at wavetop level for nearly ninety minutes. Down in the luggish air near the surface of the ocean, their jet engines were forced to work harder, churning up the heavy air and turning it into jet power. As a result, they were both burning up fuel at a dangerous rate.

Yet it was part of the plan that their journey was the longest of all the TF Squadron. The Alphas couldn’t hit their targets until 0815—when they could be reasonably sure that the other strike craft had completed their missions.

It was now 0810.

Flying just 500 feet above the Alphas, Hawk Hunter did one last check of his flights systems. Everything looked okay. He waited while another five minutes slowly ticked off the clock. Finally it was 0815.

“Showtime,”
Hunter thought.

He wagged his wings, the prearranged signal for the Alphas to follow his lead. As three, they climbed to 750 feet and broke in over the coastline. They had exactly three minutes to get to their target: the military stronghold of Tokyo itself.

Several klicks in, Hunter raced forward of the Alphas. He quickly judged the wind currents over the city, which they were approaching from the south.

“Winds are steady at about twenty knots,” he radioed back to the Alphas, all need of radio silence now gone. “Looks like it’s from the southwest.”

The Alpha pilots quickly adjusted their approach to come in with the wind. Then they dropped back down low and went their separate ways.

Within a half minute, Alpha One had a visual make on its target: one hundred and fifty fuel storage tanks that prestrike intelligence said contained more than ten million gallons of gasoline, diesel fuel, oil, and kerosene. In other words, enough petroleum products to keep the industrial base of the Asian Mercenary Cult running for six months.

The Alpha came in over the fuel depot on a slow, lazy loop, a scattering of puny AA fire the only resistance rising up from the woefully defended target. He passed over the first two rows of tanks, waiting until he was over the third array to begin dropping the cluster bombs. They came off his racks quickly. In just ten seconds, he had dumped all six of his CBUs in a straight line across the middle of the 300-acre fuel storage site.

The resulting explosions ruptured eight tanks at dead center, their skins perforated by the thousands of small bomblets. Suddenly fuel was cascading out of the tanks, overflowing their safety moats and creating one torrent of volatile liquid so voluminous, it actually snuffed the few small fires started by the explosions. Within seconds, this river, consisting of thousands of gallons of a mixture of gasoline, fuel oil, diesel fuel, and kerosene, was raging through the complex, washing over every loading pipe and valve, and all pumping equipment, and in turn, puncturing other tanks.

Completely empty of ordnance, and, ironically, low on fuel himself, the pilot of Alpha One swept over the target one last time. The tidal wave of fuel he caused had already broken out of the tank farm’s perimeter and was now flooding into the main sewer system whose branches reached throughout the entire city of Tokyo.

The pilot took a deep gulp of oxygen in celebration—dumping what were normally antipersonnel weapons in the middle of the storage tank facility had proved to be a good gamble—so far. He put his stubby little plane on a course due east and booted it, hoping the
Fitz
was where it should be.

His job was done.

At about the same time, Alpha Two was approaching its target: the natural gas refinery five and a half miles to the west of the fuel storage farm.

Dodging light AA fire, the pilot was able to bring the trainer right in and drop his payload of BLU-27 napalm bombs directly on the largest storage tank.

Within a millisecond, there was a white-hot flash of ignition that made the entire facility burst into one tremendous fireball.

Suddenly, it was like the sun had crashed into the earth.

The pilot of Alpha Two was astonished by the size of the explosion he’d just created—fueled by the oxygen and natural gas that it sucked into itself, the fireball rose higher and higher into the sky, almost too fast for him to get out of its way. He had to act quickly. He immediately went into a steep vertical climb, barely keeping ahead of the blossoming explosion.

At 15,000 feet, the tip of the fireball briefly engulfed the tiny jet, scorching the entire plane from tail to nose, and burning off nearly every square inch of paint.

With all the skill he could muster, the pilot of Alpha Two finally was able to exit this holocaust, only to find that almost every electrical connection inside his cockpit had shorted out. None of his panel indicators were working, his radio was blown, and every needle on every gauge had dropped to zero.

Kicking in his thankfully-spared emergency systems, he turned east and began the long limp home.

Beside destroying the natural gas facility, the huge conflagration also served to ignite the millions of gallons of fuel coursing through the city’s sewer system. Suddenly there were geysers of flame spewing up out of maintenance ducts, drainage pipes, and manhole covers.

The sudden injection of heat served to whip up the early morning breeze. The flames began feeding on themselves and on the heavily polluted air above the city. These were all the conditions needed to create a classic and frightening fire storm. Within minutes, more than a third of the buildings in the center of the city had burst into flames.

And descending directly into this manmade Hell was Hunter’s jumpjet.

Hunter had to do two things and do them fast.

The first was to locate “The Castle of Three Turrets,” occupied by the infamous Hashi Pushi.

To this end, he flew directly to the center of burning Tokyo, to the Chiydoda-Ku, the part of the city that had once housed the Imperial Palace. Once again, Jones’s prestrike intelligence had been right. In the middle of the forested park rose the three turrets of the fortress that contained his quarry.

Surrounded by a wide moat fed from an underground aqueduct, the place looked impregnable. But Hunter would have to worry about getting inside later. For now he had to accomplish his second task: finding a safe place to put down in the Harrier.

Almost half the city below him was in flames, and the updraft of the heat currents was making it increasingly difficult to control the jumpjet. But time was of the essence, for the longer it took him, the harder it would be to land. Suddenly he saw the perfect spot—a patch of icy white in the middle of the towering flames about a klick from the palace. He checked his moving map display. The potential landing spot turned out to be smack-dab in the middle of the former Asashi City Zoo.

Hunter guided the Harrier directly over the patch of cool white blue—it was the climate-controlled area that housed the polar bears—and brought the airplane right on top of the manmade iceberg that sat in the middle of the swim tank. It would be perfect protection from the fire that was spreading throughout the entire area.

He quickly smeared fire-retardant grease over his exposed hands and face. Then, looping a double bandolier of ammo over his shoulder, he slapped a clip of 5.56mm tracer rounds into his laser-sighted M-16, popped open the canopy, and climbed out.

Trouble hit as soon as his feet hit the ice. Hunter turned and found himself face to face with an enormous polar bear. He froze absolutely still.

Hunter had no time to waste. He didn’t want to shoot the beast, so he did the next best thing. He pointed his rifle in the air and fired off three rounds. The bear beat a hasty retreat.

Hunter quickly waded through the surrounding water, climbed the wrought-iron fence, and got out of the tank. Before him was yet another scene from a nightmare. The fire had already destroyed half the sprawling zoo, and now the surviving animals were running loose. Hunter found himself dodging lions, antelope, and sabre-tooth boars. Many of the animals were tearing each other apart, panicked into madness by the approaching wall of flame. Others were wildly smashing into walls, buildings, and even plate glass windows, more often than not killing themselves in the process.

Hunter grimly made his way through the carnage and headed toward the center of the city.

The heat was unbearable. The temperature of the air had long since passed 150 degrees, and now every building he saw that was made of wood was beginning to combust into flames. Some people were literally exploding, too. He saw several groups of terrified soldiers apparently bivouacked on the zoo grounds, running from the flames only to have their uniforms ignite, and in some cases, even their skin. It made for a horrible sight, but as the city had long ago been emptied of civilians, Hunter knew all casualties from the firestorm would be suffered exclusively by the Cult military.