A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [59]
Grubb, the field commander, and squad leaders Ropo and Marsh, Novinski on electronics, and the pilots, Cherokee and IV, were networked through their helmets to Dogbreath and Quinn.
More intelligence photos. More weather information.
Now a weapons and ammunition check. The twenty Marines were going in with serious firepower.
Duncan snarled time and again, he had pressed the President so hard to make an instant strike, he might have bought a pig in a poke. Would it not have been better to have practiced a virtual raid for a week? They’d find out.
A mere sixteen and a half hours had elapsed since the terrorist attack. The C–5 flew quite close to where the Lear jet’s scattered bits and pieces floated on the waves below.
The plane veered off course, following international waters so as not to fly in an air space where permission would be required.
They did aerobic exercises in the C–5, hard, hard, hard, hard. Major Hugo Grubb was a monster for conditioning. He could make a man’s hand fall off with finger exercises.
Chow included beer! Three per Marine. It would slow down the heart thump, drown out the jumping nerve ends.
One more time they went through a step-by-step account of the coming strike.
Two films were set up, one straight and one porno. By dawn light everyone was in their canvas bunk, dead out, snoring so loud their sound nearly drowned out the jet engines.
NATO AIR BASE
TIKKAH, TURKEY
RAM-A arrived ahead of schedule and was whisked to an isolated hangar, where they were sealed in.
The men stretched, yawned, belched, scratched, and passed air, cracking their bones into alignment. Quickly awake, they unloaded their gear from the C–5 and laid their packs and weapons against a wall.
A hushed moment among the gathering as the SCARAB was rolled down the C–5 ramp. Lord, it looked so small and fragile, an infant being born from the gigantic cargo ship.
The wings had been turned on a pivot for travel, running from tail to cockpit. They were rotated into normal flying mode and clicked in.
Cherokee entered the plane and hit the thumb switch to raise the nacelles housing the engines and propellers. He set them at 75 degrees so the blades would be well clear of the deck. The long and powerful blades had an upside and a downside. Downside, all takeoffs and landings had to be made in helicopter mode. Downside, when firing missiles from underwing racks, they also had to be in helicopter mode. Upside, the plane was hushlike quiet in flight and unlikely to be heard by the enemy.
Showers!
Slabs of beef for breakfast with pasta and gallons of orange juice and high-voltage chocolates.
Captain Novinski and his backup man, Master Tech Sergeant Roosevelt Jarvis, entered. They set up a minidisplay and command console, directly behind the pilots, activated and checked out systems and the display panels.
“SMAC?”
“Pretty as a picture.”
“SMAC locked in.”
“Matching area correlation?”
“A-Okay.”
“NOE?” Jarvis checked the digital tracking map system.
Novinski and Jarvis were joined by the chief American navigator at the Tikkah Air Base. The three of them programmed in a flight plan. They activated the terrain-following multifunction radar that would take pulsations from the ground and compare them to their database and display their position to within a hundred feet.
The chief navigator pointed out choppy air corridors, hidden peaks, radar stations, and myriad dangers.
In the radio shack, the pilots received their radio frequencies as well as Russian and Iranian frequencies.
“Fellah?”
“Yo,” Corporal Anwar Fellah answered, taking a headphone set that would include him in the command network.
“When you get the red light, it will indicate that we are being contacted by a tower or, God forbid, a fighter plane patrol. If they are speaking in Farsi,” Quinn said, “I’ll signal you to talk to them. Positive of the drill?”
“Gotcha.”
“Volkovitch, the same goes for you in Russian.”
“Aye, aye.”
Bomb carts rolled in sleek baby missiles. The “Duncan” missiles were short, light, but could penetrate