power, consuming fuel at a prodigious rate, and placing a limit upon
these desperate manoeuvres.
Neatly and gracefully as a ballet dancer, the Russian followed him out
of the turn and locked into his next manoeuvre. David saw him coming up
into an attack position in his rear-view mirror and he rolled out again
and went up and right, blacking out with the rate of turn.
Roll and turn, turn for life, David had judged the Russian fairly. He
was a deadly opponent, quick and hard, anticipating each of David's
turns and twists, riding always within an ace of strike. Turn, and turn
again, in great winging parabolas, climbing always, turning always,
vapour trails spinning out from their wing-tips in silky arabesque
patterns against the hard blue of the sky.
David's arms and shoulders ached as he fought the control dampers and
the weight of gravity, sickened by the drainage of blood and the
adrenalin in his system.
His cold battle rage turned gradually to icy despair as each of his
efforts to dislodge the Russian were met and countered, and always the
gaping shark's maw of the MIG hung and twisted a point off his shoulder
or belly.
All David's expertise, all the brilliance of his natural flying gifts
were slowly being discounted by the store of combat experience upon
which his enemy could draw.
At one stage, when for an instant they flew wing-tip to wing-tip, David
glanced across the gap and saw the man's face. just the eyes and
forehead above the oxygen mask; the skin Was pale as bone and the eyes
were deeply socketed like those of a skull, and then David was turning
again, turning and screaming and straining against gravity, screaming
also against the first enfolding coils of fear.
He rolled half out of the turn and then without conscious thought,
reversed the roll. The Mirage shuddered with protest-and his speed
bled off. The Russian saw it and came down on him from high on his
starboard quarter . As David pushed the stick fully forward and left he
kicked on full left rudder, ducking under the blast of cannon fire, and
the Mirage went down in a spiralling dive. The blood which gravity had
sucked from his head was now flung upwards through his body, filling his
head and his vision with bright redness, the red-out of inverted
gravitational force. A vein in his nose popped under the pressure and
suddenly his oxygen mask was filled with a flood of warm choking blood.
The Russian was after him, following him into the dive, lining him up
for his second burst.
David screamed with the metallic salty taste of blood in his mouth and
hauled back on the stick with all his strength, the nose came up and
over, climbing out of the dive, and again the blood drained from his
head going from red-out to black-out in the fraction of a second and be
saw the Russian following him up, drawn up by the ploy. At the top
David kicked it out in a breakaway roll. It caught the Russian, he was
one-hundredth of a second slow in countering and he swung giddily
through David's gunsight, an almost impossible deflection shot that
sluiced cannon fire wildly across the sky, spraying it like water from a
garden hose. The MIG was in David's sights for perhaps one-tenth of a
second, but in that time David saw a flash of light, a bright wink of it
below the pilot's canopy, and then David rolled and turned out, coming
around hard and finding the Russian still hanging in the circuit, but
losing air space, swaying out with a feather of white vapour streaming
back from below his cockpit canopy.
I've hit him, David exulted, and his fear was gone, become anger again,
a fierce triumphant anger. He took the Mirage up in another soaring
yo-yo and this time the MIG could not hold station on him and David
flickrolled off the top and came out with the Russian centred in his
gunsight.
He fired a one-second burst and saw the incendiary shells lace in and
burst in quick little stabbing stars in the silver fuselage of the MIG.
The Russian came out of his turn, in a gentle dive, flying straight, no
longer taking evasive action, probably dead at his controls, and David
sat on his tail, and settled the pipper of his gunsight.
He fired another one-second burst and the MIG began to break up. Small
unidentifiable pieces of wreckage flew back at David, but the Russian
stayed with his machine.
Again David hit him with a two-second burst, and now the MIG's nose sank
until she was in a vertical dive still under full power and she went
down like a silver javelin. David could not follow her without tearing
off his own wings. He pulled out and watched the Russian fly into the
earth at a speed that must have exceeded mach 2_ He burst like a bomb in
a tall tower of dust and smoke that stood for long seconds on the brown
plains of Syria.
David shut down his afterburners and looked to his fuel gauges. They
were all showing only a narrow strip above the empty notch, and David
realized that the last screaming dive after the MIG had taken him
down'to an altitude of five thousand, he was over enemy territory and
too low, much too low.
Expending precious fuel he came around on a westerly heading and went to
interception speed, climbing swiftly out of range of flak and searching
the heavens about him for sign of either Joe or the other MIGs, although
he guessed that the Syrians were either with Allah in the garden of the
Houris, or back home with mother by this time. Bright Lance Two, this
is leader. Do you read me? 'Leader, this is Two, Joe's voice answered
him immediately. have you visual. In the name of God, get out of
there! What is my position? We are fifty miles within Syrian
territory, our course for base is 2 5 O How did you go? I took out one
of mine. The other one ran for it, after that I was too busy keeping an
eye on you David blinked his eyes and was surprised to find that sweat
was pouring down his forehead from under his helmet and his mask was
stick and sticky with blood from his nose-bleed. His arms and shoulders
still ached, and he felt drLmken and light-headed from the effects of
gravity and combat and his hands on the control column were shaky and
weak.
I got two he said, two of the swines, one for Debra, and one for Hannah.
Shut up, Davey, Joe's voice was stiff with tension. Concentrate on
getting out of here. You are within range of both flak and ground
missiles. Light your tail - and let's go.
Negative, David answered him. I'm low on fuel.
Where are you?
Six o'clock high at 25, 000. 'As he answered, Joe sat up in his seat,
leaning forward against his shoulder straps to watch the tiny wedge
shape of David's machine far below. it was climbing slowly up to meet
him, slowly too slowly, and low, too low. David was vulnerable and Joe
was afraid for him, frowning heavily into his face mask and searching
restlessly, sweeping heaven and earth for the first hint of danger. Two
minutes would see them clear, but they would be two long, slow minutes.
He almost missed the first missile. The ground crew must have allowed
David to overfly their launch pad before they put it up in pursuit, for
Joe picked up its vapour trail as it streaked in from behind David,
closing rapidly with him.
Missile, break left, Joe yelled into his mask. Go! Go!
Go! and he saw David begin his turn instantly, steeply, side-stepping