“Missile launch,” Duncan called out as his radar-warning receiver blared to life. “Check your trackbreakers; clear to maneuver, pick it up …”
“Tally on the missile,” John “Cock” Corcoran, the pilot aboard Dragon Five-Eight shouted. “On me at my twelve. Going vertical … “
Corcoran pumped out chaff to decoy the missile, activated his F-16’s trackbreakers to jam the steering signals from DreamStar to the missile, and zoomed upward to force the missile to lose some of its energy. The AA-13 locked onto the chaff and almost flew right into the cloud, but finally reacquired its true target and veered upward toward the F-16 when the chaff cloud dissipated. By then the fast-burning solid-fuel propellant had burned out, and the missile was coasting toward its target, losing speed every second. The F-16 pumped out more chaff, rolled inverted and dived straight down. The AA-13 promptly locked onto the chaff once again, flew through the chaff cloud, and exploded.
It had taken the F-16 pilot only a few seconds to defeat the missile, but in that short span of time the distance between DreamStar and the F-16 had decreased from ten miles to two. Maraklov knew that the F-16 could maneuver fast enough to evade the Soviet missile, but that same violent maneuvering consumed every ounce of the pilot’s concentration and took a massive physical toll — in extremely hard maneuvering in an F-16 pilots often blacked out for seconds at a time. Maraklov was hoping that the harder the F-16 pilot worked at defeating the missile — he would fall all the easier under a follow-on attack.
And it was working. The F-16 was in a headlong dive after coming over the top in a tight hairpin turn, pulling at least three negative G’s. Unlike positive G’s, which forced blood out of the head and produced tunnel vision or blackouts, negative G’s drew blood toward the brain, creating redouts, which were much more serious. It took, he knew, at least six or seven positive G’s to incapacitate a pilot, but only two or three negative G’s. This guy had allowed himself to go right out on the edge.
“Dragon Five-Eight, bogey at your one o’clock low, two miles,” the controller called.
Duncan heard the warning and scanned the sky for the attacker. He spotted both his wingman and the XF-34. The forward-swept-wing jet was making an unbelievable gun pass — instead of raising its nose to intercept Corcoran, the plane was climbing like … like a helicopter, flying horizontally but moving vertically. As Corcoran got closer the XF-34 raised its nose and slowed its ascent, seemed to hang in mid-air, slowly raising its nose at the oncoming F-16, tracking it perfectly.
“Bandit, twelve o’clock, Cock, get out of there,” Duncan shouted. Too late. Corcoran barely had time to recover from the disorientation and fuzzy vision caused by the negative G-forces in the wild dive when he saw the XF-34 DreamStar angling up for him dead ahead. He tried to roll away but DreamStar kept on coming. Now in high-maneuverability mode, with its canards angled downward, DreamStar’s gun port easily tracked the F-16 through each turn and jink — the cannon muzzle never strayed from the F-16 even during the most violent maneuvers. At one mile Maraklov opened fire, spraying the F-16 with fifty rounds of twenty-millimeter shells before dodging clear. The shells ripped across the F-16 from canopy to tail, killing the pilot in a fireball of exploding fuel.
“Five-Eight’s been hit,” Duncan called out. “No ‘chute.”
The full significance of Barrier Command’s warning was obvious now. The forward-swept wing aircraft, the XF-34, appeared to hover, virtually suspended in mid-air as it cut down Corcoran. No aircraft except a subsonic Harrier Jump-jet or a helicopter could do that.
But now it was the prey, not the hunter. It had slowed itself down to practically nothing, which made it, he thought, an almost laughingly easy target. Duncan selected an AIM-132 missile, lined up on the XF-34 and waited until the missile had locked—
In the blink of an eye the XF-34 had flat-turned, faced Duncan and began firing its cannon. Astonished, Duncan rolled hard left and dived, trying to put as much distance between his F-16 and those cannon shells as he could. He dived five thousand feet, ejected one chaff and one flare bundle to decoy any missile the Russian might have fired, then pulled hard on the stick and zoomed skyward.
The XF-34 was waiting for him. As Duncan brought his F-16’s nose up to reacquire his target he saw that the Russian had positioned himself to take a shot as he flew above the horizon. Duncan hit the afterburner and snapped his Falcon into tight aileron rolls to spoil the Russian’s aim …
“Extend, Dunk,” he heard a voice call out. It was Lee Berry in Dragon Five-Nine. “Break right and extend …”
Duncan could hear cannon shells buzzing, pinging around him. A warning horn sounded but he didn’t stop to check the malfunction. He halted his wild last-ditch roll, banked hard right, rolled upright and scanned the sky for his attacker as he waited for his airspeed to build.
The XF-34 was nowhere to be seen.
Duncan forced his attention back inside the cockpit to check his instruments and the warning panel. The OIL PRESS light was lit — he had taken a hit in the engine. No smoke in the cockpit or fire lights, so he still had time to head back to Georgetown, but in a single engine aircraft an oil pressure problem was a land-as-soon-as-possible inflight emergency. “Barrier, this is Five-Seven. I’ve got an oil pressure light,” Duncan reported on the command channel as he headed north. “I need a vector to Georgetown.”
“Copy, Five-Seven. Heading zero-three-five, vectors to Georgetown Airport, one-one-five nautical miles. Climb as required. Emergency channel Bravo. Search and rescue has been notified.”
Duncan angrily clicked his mike in response. They were already preparing to fish him out of the Caribbean. Thanks a bunch.
He keyed his mike. “Gold Flight, check in.” No answer. “Berry, where are you?” Still no reply.
“Barrier, where’s Five-Nine?”
“No contact with him, Five-Seven,” the controller replied. “No IFF, no primary target.”
Oh, God, Duncan thought. That guy got Berry, too. He closed his eyes, trying to force the image of his two squadron buddies out of his mind. It was no use. Two hours ago they were together making plans for a luau on the beaches near the casinos — now he’d have to make plans for a funeral.
That last guy was good, Maraklov thought as he pulled his power back from full afterburner to military power. Very good. The F-16 pilot had maneuvered so fast that he never got a clean shot off at him, but he had apparently taken some damage because he wasn’t pressing the fight. Maraklov had taken his shot, then immediately turned south at full power and headed back toward Nicaragua to join up with the stricken Il-76 transport and Escort Four.
Dream Star … his plane … was still safe, still with one AA-13 missile and two hundred rounds of ammunition. Fuel was the problem now — almost none left for another dogfight with any more F-16s. He’d have perhaps fifteen minutes of fuel remaining once he returned to Sebaco.
“Escort Four, this is Maraklov,” he called on their assigned frequency. “Approaching your formation at fifteen thousand feet, twenty miles behind you. Area is clear.” There had been three F-16s in the attack formation, but his spherical scan showed clear. The third F-16 must have returned with his leader.
The pilot in Escort Four acknowledged. The Ilyushin transport and the MiG-29 had managed to climb back to a safer altitude, but the transport looked worse every second. “Clear to approach. Flight Kepten Kameneve reports that the Ilyushin is very unstable and landing may be impossible. He is briefing the crew on ditching procedures at this time.”