Sing smiled. "You had better leave," The President insisted, "you do not have the control yet to sleep with me. I might harm you. Oh, and you'd better give that gun to Henry. Our ordinance boys would probably like to study the damned thing."
Sing smiled. "If you insist," she answered. She departed, and The President got some sleep. When he came out Air Force One was on the ground. There was a flurry of diplomatic activity, then The President withdrew to The Imperial Palace, supposedly for a couple of days of private conciltations. In reality he was concealed in a van and driven to another nearby airfield where he emerged in full flight gear.
Five F20s sat on the runway. Four other men in flight gear approached.
"Gentlemen!" an officer with The President announced, "this is your flight commander Echo 1. You will conduct your flight as usual. Patrol The Japanese Sea then land in South Korea. Do NOT refer to Echo 1 by any title but its call sign. No one must know he is with you."
"Sir," one of the pilots remarked, "shouldn't there be more than four of us?"
"That would NOT be a standard patrol!" The President answered. "A change in routine might draw attention. Just a flight of five planes patrolling The Japanese Sea landing in South Korea, refuelling, spending the night and making a return patrol the next day. The same procedure as always." The pilot nodded. "Yes sir."
"Let's warm 'em up, gentlemen!" The President insisted. They boarded their planes, did the pre flight check. The President noticed some of his launch equipment wasn't reading green. It took the technicians a couple of minutes to find the difficulty. Something had caught on an arming wire and broke it. This was replaced and The President's ship was ready for operations. "Somebody's gonna get it for THAT one!" the mechanic muttered as the President's plane rose skyward. "If we'd sent him up with faulty ordinance and he'd got into a fight..."
The officer with him shook his head. "The last thing in the world we want is for him to get in a fight! He flies pretty good, but G maneuvers are agonizing for him. He's not one of these young hot shots. I just want them to get there and get back with no problems."
The mechanic nodded. Unfortunately the enemy was not going to cooperate. His frustration was forcing him to take bolder and bolder action trying to make the forces gathering against him to make their move before they were ready.
The patrol was almost to South Korea when Echo 5 reported, "I've got bogies, five, ten, no, now FIFTEEN coming fast. It looks like they're trying to cut us off, envelope us. Orders Echo 1!"
"We can't let all fifteen of them get us at once," The President ordered. "Normally you'd go after the lead formation, but if you do that, the other ten are going to come in on you from the flanks. No, we're going to swing for the port formation, head for North Korea. We'll chew them up, then when their buddies have come after us we'll swing back around and blast through them, then run for home. Hopefully they'll be too battered and confused to follow! Or some of our guys will have been scrambled to give us a hand. Echo 4, call operations. Make that suggestion. On my mark, gentlemen! Make your turn and go to burners. Three, two, one, zero!"
All five planes swung around hard, drastically changing their course, and putting on speed. The planes approaching them didn't realize what they had done for several precious seconds. Those seconds of confusion would cost them dearly!
Page 31