Vortex

Sierra One Zero’s pilot watched the tankers slide past his side window and disappear from sight. Then he pushed his throttles forward again, listening as the roar from Starlifter’s four engines grew louder. An indicator showed the plane picking up airspeed, accelerating from the 330 knots used for in-flight refueling toward its normal cruising speed of 550 knots.

The five jet transports carrying the 1/75th now flew in a tight arrowhead, with one Special Operations MC-141 out in front and four standard

Starlifters behind and to either side. The 2/75this C-141s, anotherMC-141, and more tankers were several miles behind the formation.

“The MC-141s, designed for long-range penetration missions deep in enemy territory, carried just about every piece of special electronic gear known to man-terrain-following radar for low-level flight, infrared TV, and jamming systems to boggle hostile radars if they were detected.

With luck, they’d be able to lead the less capable C-141s all the way in to

Pretoria.

The SAC tankers altered course and began pulling away fast, heading back for their own refueling stop at Ascension Island nearly sixteen hundred miles to the west.

He toggled his intercom switch.

“Bob?”

“Yes, Colonel?” Lt. Col. Robert O’Connell answered immediately from his position in the crowded troop compartment below and behind the cockpit. His regimental commander, Colonel Gener, was in Sierra One Three-flying in a separate aircraft to make sure that no single crash or mishap would leave the 1/75th leaderless.

“We’re gassed up and heading in. Estimate we’ll cross the coast in twenty minutes. “

The Air Force colonel could hear the tension in the Ranger battalion commander’s voice.

“Thanks, I’ll pass the word.”

The five C-141s continued east, flying high above an unbroken layer of cloud and beneath a sky full of bright, un winking stars.

ABOARD USS CARL VINSON, IN THE INDIAN OCEAN

Rear Adm. Andrew Douglas Stewart stood watching from the Vinson’s bridge as her four steam catapults threw plane after plane into the night air.

F-14 Tomcats, A-6 Intruders, F/A-18 Hornets, and EA-613 Prowlers screamed aloft, tailpipes glowing orange in the darkness. Others, engines idling, waited their turn to taxi onto the catapults. Navigation lights blinked in the sky, aircraft orbiting slowly around the task force while waiting for the whole strike to form up.

“Admiral?”

Stewart turned toward a waiting lieutenant.

“Yes.”

“Washington’s on the secure phone, sir.”

Stewart brushed past him into the darkened enclosed bridge. Enlisted men and officers alike bent over their work, with only the nearest ones acknowledging his presence with deferential nods. He moved immediately to the red secure phone and took the handset from his portly communications officer.

“Stewart here.”

There was no apparent delay, even though a computer scrambled his words, converted them into a radio signal, beamed them twenty-four thousand miles straight up to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit, and then down to the Pentagon. Then the process was repeated in reverse and Gen. Walter

Hickman’s gentle Oklahoma twang sounded in his ear. The chairman of the

Joint Chiefs was brief and to the point.

“Sierra Force has reached Point

Yankee. Execute Phase Two.”

Stewart was equally brief.

“Acknowledged. Out.” He replaced the red phone.

His imagination reached out toward Sierra Force-the C-141s carrying the

Rangers and their attached Army Aviation units. Point Yankee was a computer-designated spot over the barren Kalahari Desert where the Air Force transports would begin a planned steep descent out of the now-normal African-airspace traffic pattern of Soviet cargo planes and civilian airliners. At less than five hundred feet, well below the coverage of South Africa’s remaining ground radar stations, the C-141s would turn sharply southeast toward Pretoria and the Pelindaba Nuclear Research Complex.

The admiral picked up a plain black ship’s phone.

“CAG? This is Stewart.

Execute Pindown.” Through the receiver, he heard the Vinson’s air wing commander relaying his order to the strike leader already orbiting overhead.

They were committed.

NOVEMBER 29-ABOARD SIERRA ONE ZERO, NORTH OF RUSTENBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

Sierra One Zxro’s pilot kept his eyes moving in a regular pattern-shifting from his terrain-following radar display to the flight instruments to the low hills and flat grasslands flashing past the MC14 I’s cockpit and then back again. His hands were poised on the controls, ready to take instant evasive action should it prove necessary. Sweat trickled down his forehead despite the cockpit air-conditioning. Flying the large, four-engined transport barely three hundred feet off the ground required intense concentration. A second’s inattention could all too easily prove fatal for the more than one hundred men aboard.

“Point Zulu.” His copilot looked up from the computer generated map.