to his ESM screen, where the computer had taken enough cuts on the transmission to locate the original transmission to a point. He overlaid 101’s position and grunted.
“101, this is 703, I have you in the link. Can you turn east to my mark in the link and investigate a transmission on search and rescue, over? We’ve got a plane missing.”
“Roger, 703, I see your mark. I’ll be there in two. Stand by.”
Soleck switched freqs to Alpha Whiskey. “AW, this is 703, over.”
“Go ahead.”
“AW, I’ve conferred with Strike Lead in 203 and we’re taking the stack east toward India with hopes of making Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. Hope you’ll get us permission to land there or another field in the area.”
“703, this is Captain Lash. Make it so, 703.” Lash was decisive, which helped. It was going to be close. Worse than close, if Soleck’s fears for his squadron commander were proven correct.
“Roger. Out.”
“203’s six minutes to empty, two minutes out from us.” Guppy was trying to do three things at once and having some success.
“Get the drogue out, deploy the FLIR camera. We’ll watch them come in, save time and gas.”
“Roger.” The sound of the fuel line deploying was audible even through his helmet.
“203, you’re first at the basket. Drogue should be out and deployed.”
“Copy. I see it. On the way.”
“Roger.”
Strike common was blinking. Soleck dialed it up. “Go ahead?”
“703, this is 101. I have eyeballs on a man in the water, no response on the radio, over.”
“One of ours?” Soleck knew it was. It had to be somebody from Stevens’s plane; there was no use pretending otherwise. Even strict emissions-control procedures wouldn’t have kept Stevens from hearing what was going on on virtually every frequency.
“I’m turning again. Yeah. He’s not waving. Not moving much—shit!”
The last was in a different tone of voice. Soleck listened for a moment and called, “101? This is 703, please respond, over.”
Silence. Not static, but silence. Soleck switched to cockpit-only. “Sorry, Gup. Recalculate your fuel assuming no give from Commander Stevens. Get Air Ops to do it, too. Tell me how it comes out.”
He already had a figure in his head, and it wasn’t good. He looked down, flipped his screen image to FLIR and rotated the FLIR pod to look back and down at the refueling drogue. Almost immediately, he saw Donitz’s plane climbing toward them.
“203, I see you.”
“I’m coming in, 703.”
Donitz’s approach was smooth and even. His probe was out and he rode a spot of turbulence that threw his nose off-center and then put the probe in the drogue with a little flip that was so fast it was hard to follow in the glowing green image on the FLIR.
“How much are we giving 203?” Soleck asked.
Guppy looked up from pencil and paper calculations. “Uh, well. Three thousand pounds?”
“Donuts, will three thousand pounds get you into Trincomalee?”
“Not with any margin.”
“We’ll talk about margin in a minute. Wait one. Break, break. 207, you’re next for Texaco on 706.”
“Roger, 703.”
“706, give 207 three thousand pounds.”
“Roger, copy.”
Not for the last time, Soleck wished for a break, for the control of an E-2, for the steadying voices from the tower and the air boss. He had no idea whether three thousand pounds would get an F-18 across 575 miles of ocean. He wanted to know what was happening in the north, and he took his screen off FLIR and back to the datalink. He had to cycle past the ESM screen and he saw that the display was now littered with cuts from radars, lines of bright green radiating from two points just north and west of the datum he had assigned to the man in the water, and an obvious radar cut from one of the Tomcats.
“101, this is 703, please respond, over.”
“703! We are under fire, repeat, under fire; unknown vessel fired two SAMs.”
Soleck stared at the screen, his mind numb. Then he focused and was able to say, “Roger, 101, copy your under fire from unknown vessel.” His voice was shaky. “Can you provide any ID?”
“Mac says it’s some kinda Russian destroyer.”
“101, is that a Kashin-class destroyer?” Soleck forced himself to focus. He was watching his ESM screen, trying to fly the plane and dial up the AW frequency while maintaining a perfectly steady platform for Donitz’s tanking. He still had time to think that Tomcat jocks never bothered to watch their recce slides and learn ship types, and this was going to prove the pudding. But he had cuts from a modified Godavari-class frigate and a modified Kashin up there where 101 was, about nine miles apart and both close enough to the datum to fire SAMs at the northernmost Tomcat. He fed the ships’ locations from his ESM into the datalink, knowing that without an E-2 aloft to transfer the data and without the bandwidth provided by the antenna array on the carrier, it was unlikely that the information would ever appear on the bridge of the Fort Klock.
“Jeez, 703!”
Soleck took a deep breath. “101, please ID your attacker. You can see him. I can’t.” He left strike common up, called Alpha Whiskey. “AW, this is 703, do you copy 101?”
“Roger. 101 is on strike common.”
I know that! “AW, this is 703. 101 is under fire from unknown enemy vessel. 703 has two possible unid Indian vessels in vicinity and placed them in the link. Do you have the link?”
“Negative link. Repeat that, 703?”
Guppy was waving for his attention. “203 has three thousand pounds and a little.”
“Cut him loose, call the next one in.”
“Who?”
“You decide, you did the math.” No time to baby Gup now. He was swimming so far, and Soleck was gaining confidence in him. He leaned back. “Take the plane, Gup.”
“I got her.”
Soleck took his hands off the controls and flexed them, realizing he had been flying like a nugget with a clench. He looked at ESM, saw a targeting radar come up on the Kashin-class destroyer.
“101, prepare for another missile. Get out of there!”
“Roger, evading. Going to burner. Chaff
