Tad was forced to divide his time between the HUD, the threat warning display, and the earth racing by below him. The track warning was still illuminated, the missile light still dark. Wojcik pressed the chaff release twice, although he was pretty sure it wouldn’t help. It didn’t. The French radars stayed locked on.
Now! Tad pulled back on the stick, hard. He was braced for the g-forces, but the crushing sensation grew and grew until the edges of his vision grayed out and his breathing was no more than a shallow pant. His HUD danced with squiggling lines and symbols. The g-meter showed seven point something.
A glowing box suddenly appeared on the glass in front of him. He eased off on the stick and guided the plane’s nose up until the box was inside a large circle — the vulnerability cone, a visual cue showing the area where his missiles were most effective. He was now going almost straight up, using the raw power of the Eagle’s big turbofans to maneuver vertically as well as horizontally. The Rafale’s largest radar cross section was from above or below, and his radar had finally found enough return at that angle to get a lock.
The instant the cueing box passed into the circle, Tad pressed the trigger, and was rewarded with a roar and a plume of smoke in front of him as a Sparrow missile raced skyward, almost straight up.
Even as the instruments confirmed a valid launch, Tad thumbed the weapons selector button on his stick. Lettering on the lower left corner of his HUD changed from “AIM-7” to “AIM-9” and without waiting for a tone, he fired a Sidewinder. His radar was still guiding the Sparrow as it accelerated to almost Mach 4. It wouldn’t be long now.
He climbed through the expanding trails of the two missiles, searching for the enemy fighters. The smoke billowed across his canopy, sometimes blocking the area in the sky enclosed by the HUD box. He concentrated on keeping it at the center of his windscreen, and risked a glance down at the radar. The two fighters were high, almost twelve thousand meters. Still, the Sparrow should be there in a few more seconds. Just a few more…
The box disappeared. Maneuvers, jamming, chaff, it didn’t matter how the French fighter had shaken off his radar lock, but without it the chance of a Sparrow hit went way down. Tad shifted to boresight mode, centering the radar antenna and pouring radiation into the space in front of the F-15’s nose. Nothing. The Rafales had vanished. He peered into the windscreen. Where were they? Had they split up? If they’d moved too far to one side…
The launch warning light on the threat display commanded his attention, and Tad craned his neck right. A white spear sped from his four o’clock straight for him. Shit!
Banking hard left, Tad abandoned the Sparrow. Split seconds counted now. Breathing in pants to fight the g-forces, he put the incoming enemy missile at his eleven o’clock, triggered more chaff, and sent the Eagle into a corkscrew maneuver designed to eat up the missile’s energy in a series of last-minute course corrections.
The world spun around Tad’s canopy, and the shifting g-forces pushed him around the cockpit. Out the corner of one eye, he saw two white lines drawn against the blue sky. One, his Sparrow from the size of the trail, went straight up until it faded from sight, but the other ended in a dirty-gray puff of smoke, with smaller trails extending downward from it.
In the midst of his jinking, Tad smiled grimly. The Sparrow had missed, but the Sidewinder he’d fired had locked onto the Rafale’s engines when it maneuvered to avoid the first weapon.
A shattering explosion rocked the Eagle, almost stunning him. Tad’s head rang, and a sharp pain behind his eyes made him afraid his neck had been broken. It sounded like someone was throwing rocks against the side of the plane. He’d been hit! Already violently maneuvering, the sudden shock threw his fighter out of controlled flight, tumbling toward the earth.
Fighting to keep control of the aircraft, he felt it fall out of the right bank onto its back and start to spin. Desperately Tad throttled back and tried to right the plane, unsure if his controls even functioned. The cockpit was a mass of red lights and flickering numbers. His vision blurred, and the jarring ride sent flashes of pain into his head.
Either by accident or as a result of his efforts, Tad found himself with the sky above and the ground beneath him. Quickly, lest the opportunity pass, he stomped hard on the right rudder pedal and pushed the stick forward, hoping he still had enough altitude to recover.
Wincing at the pain, he craned his neck up and back, searching for the surviving Rafale. The sky seemed clear, and his threat display was empty. Maybe the Frenchman had a more pressing engagement elsewhere. Or more likely the enemy pilot had seen the Polish F-15 spinning out of control and assumed his missile hit was a kill.
The horizon steadied, and Tad took a moment to find out where he was and where he was headed. He turned southeast, heading back for the airfield, now only twenty or so kilometers away. His Eagle’s response was unusual, though, with the bank almost turning into another spin. He had to apply positive pressure to hold the nose up and keep the plane from turning to port. He’d taken the blast on that side. Drag from damaged, fragment-torn skin was certainly pulling the aircraft in that direction.
With the F-15 in moderately controlled flight, he quickly scanned his cockpit instruments. The nav system was out, as were the stores panel and the artificial horizon. Port engine rpm were down by over fifty percent, and the turbofan also had an elevated tailpipe temperature. Some of the warhead fragments must have sliced into that engine. He was lucky they hadn’t connected with one of the fans. Time to shut it down, he thought, no questions asked.
As he pulled back on the port throttle with his left hand, he advanced the starboard engine power a little more. When he checked his fuel status, he saw that his port wing tank was empty. More holes.
That was bad. Even though each had been only a few minutes long, those two earlier afterburner blasts had already taken a big bite out of his fuel supply. Losing what was left in the port tank wasn’t going to help. The gauge showed twelve hundred pounds remaining. If he could set the jet down fast, that should be enough. But getting the Eagle down fast might be a big if.
Intending to request a straight-in approach, he called the Wroclaw tower.
The base ground controller answered instead, using the tower frequency. “Zebra One, divert to Lask. We are under artillery barrage.” The controller’s rapid words, almost slurred in his haste, also carried fear. “We’ve already lost the tower, Zebra, and now our SAM batteries are being hit. Wroclaw is closed!”
Tad felt panic rising inside, and controlled it only with effort. How had the enemy moved that close? A breakthrough? It didn’t matter — certainly not to him right now. Lask was 150 kilometers to the east. He couldn’t make it anywhere but the base. He was running out of both gas and airplane.
“Negative divert, Ground.” He checked his instruments one more time, making sure. “Insufficient fuel and aircraft damage. I don’t know how much longer I can stay in the air. Is the runway clear?” Tad didn’t mention the pain in his head. He wasn’t bleeding, and seemed to be able to fly. Besides, he thought darkly, he’d probably be killed trying to put the half-wrecked F-15 down anyway.
“Affirmative, Zebra. No damage yet. There’s no other traffic, and you are cleared for a straight-in approach. Good luck.”
Tad clicked his microphone switch twice, then concentrated on flying the aircraft. He retrimmed it, since it was taking even more pressure to keep the nose up and straight.
He scanned the countryside. Tad knew the Wroclaw region well, but he couldn’t see the airfield. A gray-brown haze hung over the whole area, and only long practice let him make a visual approach.