Shadow Flight

"Yeah," Evans shouted, "the gauge has to be faulty."

"You doing okay back there?"

"I'd be doing a lot better," Evans yelled, "if we were landing in Key West right now."

Matthews looked at the vibrating airspeed indicator. The large pointer, mounted through an oil-soaked, yellowed card, bounced from 190 to 260 kilometers per hour. "Paul," Matthews said, turning around again to Evans. "I can't tell what we're doing speed-wise."

Evans leaned forward, then shouted. "Feels like one-fifty to one-sixty."

"Yeah," Matthews replied. "From the sound of this engine, you'd think we were makin' three hundred knots."

"I'm counting the minutes," Evans said, looking back at the shrinking island. "How long do you figure before we hit the Keys?"

"I don't know," Matthews answered, cross-checking their altitude. He eased back on the stick to level the Yak-18. "I can't really visualize the distance. I'd say an hour and a half."

"Who cares!" Evans shouted. "We're on our way!"

"Damned right we are!" Matthews responded, watching the erratic wet compass. There was a hole in the instrument panel where the gyrocompass should have been. "This wet compass is all over the place."

"There isn't anything back here," Evans said, searching the instrument panel. "Line up on that constellation at your two o'clock-the one with the bright star in the lower left corner."

"Yeah, just above the horizon," Matthews replied, staring at Capella in the constellation Auriga. "Help me keep it in the same position."

Evans leaned forward in his seat. "I'll handle the nav and you can watch the alti—"

Both pilots were caught off guard when the Yak-18's rumbling Ivchenko radial engine surged, coughed, backfired repeatedly, then surged again.

THE P-3 BLUE SENTINEL

The United States Customs Service Lockheed P-3B Orion, November 91 Lima Charlie, cruised in a seventy-mile racetrack pattern twenty-five nautical miles west of Andros Island.

Two of the reconnaissance aircraft's four turboprop engines had been shut down to increase the loitering time. The gleaming white Orion, with two engines caged, easily maintained an altitude of 20,000 feet. The airborne early warning and control aircraft had been upgraded recently with new APS-138 radar, along with an AYK-14 computer.

Blue Sentinel number one, based at the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, was flying the second of two eight-hour surveillance missions. The crew, four and a half hours into the shift, were vigilant in their quest to detect drug smugglers amid the Caribbean air traffic. Because Hurricane Bennett had forced the Customs Service to cancel the previous evening's mission, the P-3 crew knew that the smugglers had also been grounded, so they expected the volume of airborne traffic to be greater than usual.

Pete Vecchio, former navy lieutenant and E-2C Hawkeye combat information control officer, sat in front of his radar screen, tweaking the display board continuously in an attempt to filter out false returns from actual air traffic.

Vecchio looked at his friend, Willie Overholser, out of the corner of his eye. The former Coast Guard lieutenant was the P-3's air control officer. Overholser was diligently filling out a stack of official forms required after an intercept. The Orion crew had been instrumental in vectoring a Coast Guard HU-25 jet to a successful bust one hour earlier.

"Willie," Vecchio began, then paused. "I've got something strange here."

Overholser, surprised, glanced at Vecchio with a questioning look. "What?"

"Look at this," Vecchio said, adjusting the brightness of his screen. "Something's fishy here."

Overholser stared at the screen, then punched a computer button to place an overlay of Cuba on the images. The symbology showed coastal boundaries along with cities and all Cuban airports.

"Goddamn, Pete," Overholser commented, placing his headset on. "Those are MiGs coming offshore, see 'em?"

"Yes," Vecchio responded, adjusting the radar image. "Look here… just north of the Mariel Naval Air Station. That, Willie, is a flight of two MiGs, no question. Nothing else would accelerate that fast and be in formation."

Overholser was completely absorbed by the fast-moving images on the radarscope. "Pete, see if you can pick up any radio transmissions-scan UHF, VHF, and FM."

"Right," Vecchio replied, resetting the switches on his communications console. "Uh, oh…, Willie, take a look-see at this." Vecchio pointed at the APS-138's screen, then listened for radio calls from the MiGs.

"Jesus," Overholser muttered, enthralled by the Cuban Air Defense Force scramble. "There's two more MiGs-they came out of San Julian. They're already moving supersonic-has to be MiG-25s."

"Willie, this must be their target. See… right here," Vecchio said, pointing at the slow-moving symbol on his radar screen. "He has to be right down on the water. The returns are intermittent, but both MiG flights are headed for that spot."

"Anything on the radio?" Overholser asked, jotting down the time.