Delta Orange’s targets were selected as points fifty yards from the runway ends and fifty yards out into the jungle on either side. Again, they were using the air-to-air Phoenix IIs for those targets, hoping to cause a lot of havoc, if not a lot of damage.
The firing point was to be ten miles out, and as they flew down the airstrip, they would unleash several Wasp IIs to either side.
“One-oh.”
“Let ’em go, Nitro.”
Dimatta squinted his eyes against the expected glare of missile exhaust in order to protect his night vision.
He heard Munoz claim a MiG-27 kill to the north.
One after the other, the Phoenix missiles dropped from their pylons, ignited, and raced ahead of them.
The first two impacted in the jungle on each side of the strip a few seconds before the MakoShark reached the head of the runway.
Geysers of light, smoke, and debris burst upward through the jungle canopy.
“We got something or other on the right,” Williams said. “Launching Wasp IIs.”
Four successive Wasp IIs whistled away as Dimatta steadied the MakoShark five hundred feet above the runway. He added throttle to maintain his air speed.
Ben Olsen claimed a kill.
The third Phoenix impacted at the far end on the left, and the Fourth of July arrived early.
“Christ, Cancha! Cut hard!”
Dimatta shoved the throttles against the forward stops, toed rudder, and leaned the controller hard to the right. The MakoShark whipped into a hard right turn as a fireball rose out of the jungle to his left oblique. Exploding ordnance created individual blossoms within the expanding fireball.
“Ordnance. I hope to hell the ICBMs were there,” Williams said.
“And that we don’t set off the nukes.”
Which wasn’t likely to happen.
Dimatta jigged back out of the turn, heading north again.
“Where’s that aircraft we got in the lottery, Nitro?”
“Going active.”
Half a sweep.
“Right in front of us,” Williams said. “Break right!”
“I cannot believe this, Aleks.”
They were at twenty thousand feet headed south when the fires began to sprout all around the airstrip.
Maslov immediately armed his remaining ten Wasp IIs.
A monstrous explosion told him the ordnance depot had been hit.
“Go active, Boris.”
He shoved the controller forward and went into a steep dive toward the burning base.
The radar showed aircraft all around them, along with streaking missiles. Off-and-on flashes of radars were probably the emissions of the American MakoSharks. They were there, then they were not.
At the south end of the base, he saw one continuous blip moving in toward the runway at two thousand feel and four hundred knots.
A second radar suddenly appeared, moving directly at the incoming aircraft.
“Got you!” General Druzhinin’s voice yelped on the Tac One channel tuned to the base frequency.
He would be flying the MiG-25.
On the screen, two missiles shot out from the MiG.
The MakoShark stopped emitting shortly after making a hard right turn.
The missiles lost their radar homing and tracked into the jungle, their tracks disappearing from the screen.
And out of nowhere, a single missile appeared. Coming from the south, it was homing on the MiG.
Maslov mashed the transmit button. “Oleg! Turn right!”
The blip started the turn, but it was too late. Maslov looked up through the canopy in time to see the detonation as the missile caught the Mig-25 in one of its turbojets. In the light from the fire at the ordnance dump, he saw the MiG shatter into several large pieces spinning into the jungle.
He was inexplicably saddened by the loss, though he had never cared strongly for Druzhinin. Everything he had believed in had, twice, evaporated. He would never be a communist general, but he would make a strong accounting of himself before he died. Some of the MakoSharks would go with him.
“Aleks! Radar emitting!”
He looked down at the screen and saw the radar directly ahead of him. It would be the craft that had shot down Druzhinin, following through its attack path.
“Fire two, Boris!”
McKenna eased back the controller, pulling out of the dive.
“Thanks, somebody,” Abrams called.
“This’s Blue,” Munoz said. “Any time.”
“Red’s got another,” Haggar said.
Munoz had an active radar going. “The rest are scattering, Snake Eyes.”
“Good for—”
“Blue! Two coming at you,” Abrams said. “Got visual, your four o’clock.”
McKenna spun his head around and looked up. He saw the two exhaust trails.
Munoz killed the radar as McKenna whipped the right wing up and went into a hard left, 180-degree turn, attempting to get his exhaust away from the heat seekers. He chopped the power.
The MakoShark lost altitude clear to the jungle top coming around to the east.
“Got to be Green, jefe.”
“I think so.”
“Uh, you want to try for space, man? I just grabbed a banana.”
McKenna advanced the throttles and lifted the nose.
“Blue, Orange. I want him,” Dimatta said.
“Sounds fair, Cancha,” McKenna said. “Take him. Tiger, light up.”
“Roger,” Munoz said. “Rear view comin’ up, too.”
McKenna’s screen illuminated with a full-power radar sweep, giving the pilot of Delta Green something to home on. The smaller screen displayed a night vision view of what they were leaving behind, mostly jungle.
He couldn’t see the attacker, but he sensed the maverick MakoShark descending rapidly on his left.
“Cancha, we’re going on rockets,” McKenna said.
“Roger that. We’re painting you.”
He eased the rocket throttles forward, saw the thrust indicators come up on the HUD, then slammed the throttles forward.
Delta Blue leaped forward, a few seconds before two Wasp IIs appeared from the left, rolling in behind them.
“Left, then hard right, amigo.”
He eased into a left turn, building his speed to Mach 1.5, letting the missiles track him while he gained altitude to nine thousand feet. Then he cut power to the rockets and turbojets and banged into a violent right turn.
The missiles whooshed past the tail, losing their heat source, and exploded a half-mile away.
McKenna brought the turbojets back to one hundred percent and headed south, still gaining altitude.
“We want to use the last four on the pylons?” Williams asked Dimatta on the radio net.
“Damn betcha. We miss, well go to the forward bay rotator.”
“See him, Cancha?” McKenna asked.
“Not yet, but he’s bound to be on your tail. He’ll go active any minute.”
And he did.
McKenna saw the radar emission on the screen as Delta Green tried to line up new shots.
“He’s one-seven behind us, jefe.”
“Six miles!” Williams yelled. “Four away!”
It would take the missiles fifteen seconds to reach the target. McKenna started counting.
“Two coming your way, Snake Eyes.”
McKenna snapped the nose up and shoved the rocket throttles full forward.
The acceleration shoved him back in the seat.
The HUD was reading Mach 1.8 when one of Delta Orange’s Wasp IIs thudded into the right nacelle of Delta Green.