LITMIR.BIZ

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He began to log each one for the future. Someday, he thought, all of this will be done by a computer. Christine, however, couldn’t handle the math of multiple radar cuts.

      Alan found that he didn’t like what he saw. His divided self tossed the information back and forth, TACCO to 10 to TACCO, and what they agreed on was that there was an unusual amount of Iranian radar activity. It indicated what they both saw as a very high degree of preparedness. Alan hadn’t expected to surprise the Iranians; the Persian Gulf is too small for that. But he had watched the IADS from routine flights, and he knew what it looked like on an ordinary night—a lot of bored operators flicking on and off, some sites never coming online in a whole seven-hour hop. This looked more like a carnival; everybody was up. Everybody but the SAM sites; they were asleep, while the EW net seemed to have insomnia.

      He looked at his watch. The strike was due to go feet-dry (over the coast) in two minutes.

      Somewhere out there was his father, doing the glory thing. He knew his father well enough for that. He knew the slightly husky tone when he spoke that word, glory, the refusal to elaborate. Glory had magnetism for Alan now, too, although when he had been a teenager he had thought it was bullshit, something old men invented to get young ones to die for them. Now he lived with men who believed that glory was the goal of life: men of a certain kind—real men, they would have said—went where it drew them. He was not yet sure what kind of man he was, but he knew he felt that pull.

      But you could think about glory and continue to massage data for only so long. Then something in the data fell together and you forgot about the glory. Now, a disquieting pattern showed: even in EMCON, one of the E-2C Hawk-eyes was running the datalink, and a series of neat diamonds, denoting friendly aircraft and ships, lay over the screen like coarse mesh. What was now clear was that the activity of the IADS matched the diamonds. It did not take the Intel half of his head to tell the TACCO that the Iranians had this raid pegged.

      That’s what the Nav gets paid for, he thought. Better equipment and better training ought to do the job. No sweat. Right?

      POI Sheldon Bonner sat in the head and felt his entire gut shiver, as if there were ice there instead of the fire that seemed to explode under him. It had been getting worse for days, diarrhea like something you picked up in some godawful liberty port where you couldn’t drink the water or eat the fruit. Sick bay had given him pills. Christ, what a joke.

      “Jeez, Boner,” a voice said from the next stall. “What’d you do, swallow some of the ordnance? Christ, if I smelled like that I’d kill myself.”

      “Fuck off. I’m sick.”

      “I’d tell you to blow it out your ass, Boner, but that seems to be your specialty. Whoo-hoo! Jesus Christ, ask for a transfer, will you?”

      His hands were still shaking. He had seen the pilot look at him and he had forced himself to go on setting the IFF code, when what he wanted to do was drop the gun and run. The guy had looked right at him. Fucking skipper of the squadron, helmet all fluorescent orange tape, one of the joy-boys, guts and glory, all that shit. Fuck him. Let him see what it was like when he got to Iran.

      He felt his bowels let go again. It would be like this for another week.

      It’s worth it, he told himself. He tried to see the boat he would buy. He had a mental picture he called up at night before he went to sleep, him and his boy on the new boat. Fishing on the St John’s. Beer in the cooler. Then he’d tell the boy about the scheme and the money and how they were going to be partners. Together. Just the two of them. It would be wonderful. It would.

      His insides heaved and squirted and he groaned aloud.

      2315 Zulu. The Iranian Coast.

      Franci worked with the intensity of a man at last able to do what he understood—tracking contacts, passing data, answering the telephone—using technology. He was one of the very few who understood how the electronic fortress works, and he had created his own informal phone link with others like him. For the duration of the raid, he was alive.

      Now, he knew that a rain of anti-radiation missiles had begun. To turn a radar on was to invite death; he did not. Yet, through the eyes of a radar on a hill thirty miles behind him, he was able to watch the Americans come on.

      The trailer door opened; a surprisingly courteous voice said, “Who is in charge, please?” It was a Revolutionary Guard full colonel. Everybody but Franci’s officer pointed at Franci.

      “I am in charge,” the officer said.

      “Show me the situation.”

      The officer turned smoothly to Franci. “Show the colonel the situation.”

      Franci didn’t care who got the credit or what the pecking order was; he was caught up in the pleasure of doing the job. “They are coming in two strikes from the carriers, about forty miles apart. Northern strike will pass directly over us—unless we’re the target, Allah forbid. Seven minutes to arrival.”

      The colonel handed him a cellular telephone. “Pass course and speed data to my shooter. No radar illumination until you are so ordered.”

      Franci was enthusiastic about not illuminating the radar: why make themselves a target?

      The colonel left the trailer; Franci’s officer teetered on his toes and watched the clock; Franci passed data and plotted vectors. Six minutes. Five minutes. Four. Three.

      The Revolutionary Guard detachment fired their mysterious missile at six miles. Radar recorded one plane falling below the formation—an evident hit. Franci reported it on the cellphone.

      “Illuminate your radar. Fire all missiles, whether targeted or not. This is a direct order from the colonel.” It was like an order to commit suicide.

      His fire-control radar stayed on for less than ten seconds before a HARM missile, launched minutes before, identified it as a first-priority target and zeroed in.

      Franci felt the earth heave, and God reached for him.

      2322 Zulu. The Gulf.

      A new signal had just lanced out from the mainland. Alan hooked it and read its stats. Weird—not anything he remembered. He leafed through his notes and didn’t find it. Then, too quickly, it disappeared and he was left to log it. Somewhere in the parameters of a Chinese early warning radar, he thought. It had been on only eight seconds. Maybe somebody had shot it with a HARM. Maybe its operator had panicked at what he saw and shut down.

      It had gone on within seconds of the feet-dry time and within four miles of the northern target group’s route. It must have seen the whole northern strike package. Alan dialed up Strike Common, the radio frequency on which most chatter would occur when EMCON was dropped.

      “Touchdown,” a voice in his helmet said. EMCON was over.

      “Packers!” another voice cried, and the plane seemed to drop out from under him.

      Packers were unfriendly aircraft that had leaked through the forward screen. To four men riding a big, fat grape, the word meant danger. Alan had a brief recall of an argument in CVIC about whether the tankers would be too close to the coast. We are, we are.

      Rafe had the plane in a dive for the surface.

      Alan punched up his datalink display. Christine gave a faint whine.

      The display died.

      “Shit, Senior! We lost the back end,” Alan groaned. Without conscious thought, he reached up, toggled the system switch off, counted ten, and toggled it on again.

      Christine continued to dive.

      As Alan tried to urge a glimmer from Christine’s brain, he checked and rechecked the chaff and flare counters above his head.

      “Dumped the load,” he said into the mike. His anxiety showed in his voice. When

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