In any case, one of the infidel airplanes was coming his way. Still keeping to the shadows, al Marri picked up the tube he had carried to the top of the apartment building and placed it on his shoulder, fitting his eye to the sight. He aimed the sight and tube at the noise he heard coming from the craft's engine. Then he flicked a switch and was rewarded with a low hum as the seeker head went active and coolant circulated to drop its temperature so it could make out the heat of the airplane's engine.
The engine stood out in fuzzy view in the sight's eyepiece. Al Marri squeezed the first trigger and was rewarded with a beep which told that the sight saw the target. Elevating the tube until the target was near the bottom of his field of view, he then squeezed the second trigger. The sealed back of the tube blew off as the missile went airborne, al Marri feeling a slight push from his front as the missile's exhaust pushed him backwards.
Though he was too busy to note it, the other missile, launched from a kilometer away, likewise took off within a couple of seconds of his own.
Tribune Miguel Lanza of the legion's air ala wasn't really a scout pilot, despite the Cricket he strapped himself into. Instead, he'd flown transports most of his adult life; "hauling the trash," as he liked to say, especially when the trash consisted of human beings who could hear him say it. Nobody minded; Lanza had been a fixture in the old Guardia Nacional, then in the Defense Corps, the Civic Force and now, finally, in the legion.
At nearly fifty, Lanza was a bit long in the tooth for the TurboFinches. Those birds went through gyrations that pulled the blood from the brain and made an old man faint. Even so, he had checked out on them. One never knew, after all, when a pilot would be needed. Likewise, he'd gotten himself qualified on the NA-21s and – 23s-which were similar to his normal bird-and the Crickets. The helicopters were still beyond him but he intended to fix that if he ever got a chance to get back to Balboa.
Lanza loved to fly. Moreover, he believed in leading from in front. For a pilot, leading from in front meant flying, even flying the dangerous missions. That was why, despite command responsibilities as the senior officer of the ala, he'd been standing by on alert when the word had come of the mortar attack. First to the Cricket despite his years, Lanza had told the younger pilot just behind him in the sprint to, "Fuck off, sonny. This one's mine. You can observe."
An amazing aircraft, the Cricket; one hundred feet of take-off run and the thing had gone up like an elevator, pulling Lanza's stomach down to his butt despite the low speed. Lanza's observer was already fiddling with the radio before the thing was off the ground, getting the latest intel update from the command post. There wasn't much intel; that was, after all, why the command post had ordered the Cricket launched in the first place. Aviation was mostly about reconnaissance and always had been.
The command post did have a presumed firing position for the mortar or mortars-no one knew for certain if there had been more than one-that had fired at the university. This Lanza set his heading towards. It led over a set of five modern and ugly looking apartment buildings.
Once airborne, Lanza pulled one of the two sets of night vision goggles the Cricket carried over his head and onto his eyes. The observer did the same. Lanza looked back and over his left shoulder, catching sight of the Turbo-Finch that followed at a discreet distance. Confident of support, Lanza turned his eyes back to the flight path. Then, with both pilot and observer looking forward, both sets of goggles suddenly flashed brightly and went blank.
"Shit!" Lanza shouted as he pushed the Cricket's nose down with one hand, tearing off the goggles with the other. "Shitshitshitshitshit!"
The missile wasn't what one could call "bright." As a matter of fact, where the FSC had poured money into "brilliant" munitions, the Volgans-and they had made the thing some years prior-concentrated instead on "competent" ones. Competent was another way of saying, "good enough for the purpose, especially if used in mass."
It saw the target, a glowing greenish blur, and sped towards it. The target attempted to duck by dropping and the missile duly corrected itself, following the target down. The missile's dim but "competent" mind went something like, "Oh, boy, I'm going to hit… Oh, boy, I'm going to hit… Oh, boy, I'm going to hit," as it got closer. Still, the target went erratic. "Oh, boy, I'm going to hit," changed to, "Oh, shit, I missed."
The missile promptly blew itself up, scattering numerous small rods of hot metal through the air, some of which connected with Lanza's Cricket.
Lanza felt the plane shudder, first from the blast and then, slightly and unevenly, from the metal rods scattered by the warhead. The observer felt rather more, and let it be known with a piercing scream, as one of the rods passed through the upper portion of the cockpit's Plexiglas rear canopy, through his seat, through his harness and into his back. He slumped forward.
The important thing is not to panic, Lanza reminded himself as he played with the controls to assure himself that his plane would still respond to command and fly. His heart was pounding, and it showed in his voice, as he called the CP and said, "This is Lanza… We've got SAMs! Shitpots of 'em. My Cricket is hit and my observer wounded… I think they got the Finch that was following me
… I'm heading back and I suggest that no more planes be launched for now, not until we can reduce the SAM threat."
Al Marri felt a great joy overflowing. True, and it was a shame, his own missile had failed to bring down its target. Yet he had seen the other crusader aircraft go up in a fiery ball of light. His partner in this enterprise had clearly scored against the enemy. Of course, the towering apartment building was still standing. Perhaps that would change. For now, al Marri decided to follow orders and leave. There would be other days. Besides, the enemy armored column that had left the university a few minutes prior was just now reaching the part of the town from which the mortar attack had come. The next few minutes would be interesting.
The mechanized century had taken some pretty fierce losses in the fight for the town. These hadn't been made good yet. Instead of having four tanks, five Ocelots, and fifty-eight men, the century had two, four and forty-six. Worse, maybe, the leadership was low. Both the century's key men, the signifer and centurion, had been killed, with command devolving onto a sergeant.
Not that Sergeant Paredes was a bad sergeant, not at all. The kid had actually been tapped for centurion track before the legion had even left Balboa. He was slated to be replaced by a newly graduated signifer, due in on the next transport. You really couldn't bitch; the whole legion was straining for leadership, what with the losses in the invasion and the scramble to form replacement units back home.
The problem was that the sergeant hadn't really been trained for the job he had. Smart? Check. Good attitude? Check. Aggressive? Check. Brave? Double check. Wise?
Kaboom!
Three of al Marri's comrades in Fadeel's organization were waiting for the armored column as it approached. There were only so many roads into the area, a small open spot surrounded by buildings. Along each of the major ones a very large explosive device had been improvised from an automobile or, in one case, van. These were primed to be set off remotely, by radio. The radio control devices and solenoids were, after all, cheap and readily available for purchase from any good hobby store in the TU or FS.
True to form, the arrogant invaders took the easiest, quickest and broadest route to the mortar site. One of the men standing by with a handheld remote control device watched as the lead vehicle in the column passed the van he had parked earlier. The first three vehicles were tanks, followed by the four that carried infantry. The bomber had thought that getting an expensive tank would be the greater prize but his team leader, who was also Fadeel's brother-in-law, had assured him that killing more men was better in the long run.