Yan saw it first. “Two o’clock low, Colonel. About ten kilometers.”
Zhang swiveled his head. He had to squint, blink several times, refocus his eyes. Then he saw it too, ahead and to the right. A thousand meters beneath them, flying straight and level. A diamond-shaped object, shimmering like a wraith.
“How do I arm the weapons systems?”
“It depends,” she answered. “What do you want to arm?”
“Everything. Heat seekers, the cannon, flare dispenser.”
It occurred to him again how maddening this arrangement was — using the systems officer in the back to handle armament selection. Especially an untrained systems officer like Mai-ling.
“I handle the flares from my console back here. You can select the air-to-air missile stations and the cannon on your number three display, the one on the right. I have my own armament display back here.”
But this time, without the pressure of an armored personnel carrier bearing down on him, the display was making more sense. Yes, there it was. An icon in the shape of a gun. Not much doubt about that one.
He touched it. The icon blinked twice, then changed color.
Two other icons were in the shape of missiles. One, he guessed, would be a heat-seeker, probably an AA-11 Archer. The other appeared to be radar-guided. Probably an AA-10. He selected the heater.
Mai-ling explained how to uncage the Archer missile’s heat-seeking head and cause it to track a target. She was just getting into the radar-guided launch sequence when she abruptly stopped. “Oh, shit.”
“Oh shit what?”
“Are you wearing your goggles?”
“Yes.” He didn’t tell her he had been wearing them since shortly take off.
“We have company. High, angling in from the left toward our tail.”
Maxwell peered through the goggles, looking for the incoming fighter. “I don’t have him. Where is he?”
“Coming toward us, curving in from the left.”
He rolled the Black Star into a hard left turn.
“It’s the Dong-jin, Brick.” Mai-ling’s voice had gained an octave.
“The what?”
“The other Black Star. It’s Colonel Zhang, and he sees us.”
He was still having trouble with the goggles. Damn these things. It was like peering through binoculars. When he moved his head, he would lose focus in one or the other eye.
Ninety degrees into the turn, he saw it. In the purplish glow of the UV goggles, it looked like a kite. A glistening, diamond-shaped kite. The kite was in a classic pursuit curve, arcing toward their tail.
Setting up for a—what?
Mai-ling’s excited call told him. “Missile in the air!”
Maxwell saw it track and pull lead. It had to be a heat seeker. Their Black Star was invisible to radar.
He broke left, into the missile. “Flares. Dispense flares now!”
This was nuts, depending on someone in the back seat to actuate the infra-red decoys that would save their lives.
“They’re out. Flares are dispensing.” Her words spewed over the intercom like a fast-track audio tape.
Maxwell didn’t know how tightly he could turn the Black Star. How many Gs would the jet take before it stalled? Did the flight control computer limit the G pull to prevent a stall?
He pulled harder, tightening the turn into the oncoming missile. At seven Gs he felt the jet shudder, and eased off on the stick. Okay, now you know. The flight control computer didn’t care whether he stalled or not. But he couldn’t turn tightly enough to defeat an Archer missile.
He wondered vaguely what sort of seeker head the missile had. How could it be tracking a stealth jet that emitted almost no IR signature? He remembered taking a Sidewinder shot at the Black Star that came after the Chameleon decoy. The Sidewinder lost its lock because it couldn’t find enough IR signal.
A second later, he had an answer. “The missile’s lost tracking,” said Mai-ling. “It’s going ballistic.”
Their missiles don’t track stealth jets any better than ours.
Maxwell saw that his break turn had also spoiled the Black Star’s pursuit curve. The ChiCom pilot was going wide to the right, in a flight path overshoot. Now they were even.
Good. He pulled the nose up, further aggravating his opponent’s overshoot. Fight’s on, Colonel.
CHAPTER 23 — THE MOST PRIMITIVE WEAPON
Zhang was getting an uneasy feeling. Instead of a quick kill, a missile shot backed up by a guns pass, he was now neutral in a one-versus-one turning fight.
As if the pilot of the other Dong-jin had been expecting him. Waiting for him.
“He’s reversing, Colonel. He’s in a right—”
“Shut up,” snapped Zhang. “I see him.”
It had to be a gwai-lo—a Caucasian foreigner. An American gwai-lo, probably. Wearing my UV goggles. The gwai-lo’s use of vertical tactics was eerily reminiscent of the F/A-18 pilot who had tricked him into shooting the decoy drone. The one who nearly killed him.
He saw the enemy Dong-jin’s nose come up, reversing the turn hard to the right.
He kept his own left turn in, and pulled harder, underneath the opposing Dong-jin. Toward the gwai-lo’s six o’clock. As the enemy crossed over the top, Zhang rolled wings level and pulled up, trying to gain angular advantage behind him. He continued to roll, racking the Dong-jin into a hard right turn.
The enemy countered, going up and making a hard left turn back into him.
Gwai-lo bastard. They were now in a flat scissors, a level turning fight, crossing nose-to-nose, then reversing to cross again, each trying work himself inside the other’s turn. From such an engagement, there was no escape. If either combatant tried to turn and run, the other would have an easy shot.
Zhang cursed himself for losing his initial advantage. The enemy pilot had surprised him with his initial break turn. He hadn’t counted on their having the UV goggles.
Firing the Archer missile had been a mistake. It would only have scored a kill if the American — he was now sure that it was an American — had continued on his course. The Archer’s heat seeker head was unable to track the faint IR signal of the Dong-jin in a maximum-performance turn.He should have used the cannon. Zhang’s favorite killing tool was the cannon. It was the most primitive, most visceral of aerial weapons. And the surest. The nose-mounted thirty millimeter gun in the Dong-jin gave no warning, required no special technology. Deadly and efficient. All he had to do was position himself behind the enemy fighter.
Which was proving to be more of a problem than he anticipated.
Another reversal. Zhang still held a slight angular advantage, but the enemy was gaining an advantage in altitude. Impossible! The gwai-lo was out flying him.
Again the enemy Dong-jin passed over his nose. Zhang rolled with him, nudging the nose upward, trying to get the gwai-lo centered in his HUD.
For an instant, barely a heartbeat, he had a shot. He squeezed the trigger, felt the gut-pleasing, staccato machine gun chatter resonate through the airframe of the Dong-jin. He saw the tracers arc through the void between him and the enemy jet.
And miss. The tracers were falling behind and beneath the enemy.