Hugging close to the ground, I zigzagged around several hills. By doing this I momentarily broke sensor lock, indicative by the irregular stopping and starting of the alarm. Coupled with ECM, this confused the missile long enough to lose lock, and it wandered off into the night.
"Where is he?" asked Phil. "Didja see who it was?"
"It was another Banshee, Phil," I replied. "I managed to get a visual ID as he got that off."
"Drek!" cursed Phil. "Another Banshee? Our Vogeljagers ain't going to be effective against its armor."
"Yeah," I muttered. "And with his Outlaw antitank missiles, he can snipe at us all day while staying out of range of our autocannon. Hang on!"
I made a sudden dive, directing the t-bird into a valley. The low hills clustered in this area provided a lot of dead zones that would hide us from the other t-bird's sensors. This would force him to come in searching after us.
"Keep your eyes peeled for him, Phil," I warned. "It's going to take all of my concentration to keep us from flying into the hillside."
"Gotcha, Jo-girl," complied Phil. I maneuvered the t-bird over the center of the valley and followed the winding course of the river burbling through it, heading approximately east to northeast.
I switched off the ECM and switched on the electronic deception module. ECM is only an electronic smokescreen, and anyone can figure there's someone present, somewhere in the digital haze. Electronic deception, or ED, was more insidious, manipulating signals through waveform interference. It wouldn't make us invisible, but it could fool the other Banshee to thinking we were heading north instead of south, or flying fast instead of slow.
Turning to clear a hillside spur, I suddenly found myself facing the enemy Banshee. Apparently he was as surprised to see me as I was of him, because he veered left to avoid crashing into us. The alarm blared briefly as I reflexively swerved the other way, but the snap shot he got off was wildly inaccurate and veered off-target. I turned and climbed further to the right to leap over the crest of the ridge line.
As we passed over the top, I pulled back hard on the throttle, cutting power once again. The other side dropped off steeply, and so did the t-bird. I adjusted the jets down and forward, effectively halting forward motion. Only the ground effect from the turbine fans kept us from crashing to the ground so dangerously close underneath. I flipped on the intercom. "Okay, Phil, get ready. Swing the turret forward and angle up."
Just as I spoke the other t-bird passed overhead as it crested the ridge. But instead of dropping down and hugging the terrain like we did, the enemy Banshee maintained its altitude and stayed high, to get a better field of view.
"Bad move, chummer. Sic 'im, Phil!" Immediately Phil opened up with the autocannon, raking a full stream of cannon shells along the other t-bird's underbelly. A small explosion popped from one side as a shell hit a critical system. Shuddering out of control and belching black smoke, the enemy t-bird careened headlong into a small hill. A ball of orange flame lit up the night sky, which on the Low-Light vision made the valley brighter than the noonday sun.
Adjusting the jets back, I started our own Banshee moving forward again. Shades of red crept into my green-tinted Low-Light vision, as the burning wreckage started igniting the woods around. I turned to get back on course, flying low and slow to make sure no one else was trailing us. After a few minutes of seeing nobody, I loosened up on the throttle, allowing the t-bird to pick up speed and rise over the hills.
I flipped on the virtual intercom. "Think we're in the clear now, Phil."
"Whew. That's a relief," said Phil. "That other Banshee almost had our number good."
"Yeah," I nodded. "I think he may have been waiting for us."
"How do ya figure?"
"You know how he surprised us after we made the turn? I figure he must have been using Mt. Rainier as a cover." I reasoned. "As we were coming in from the northwest side, he was hiding on the southwest. As we turned, he turned to keep the mountain between us, until he was behind us when we straightened out. Clever bastard."
"Sneaky," admitted Phil. "Ya know, something's been bothering me about this trip."
"What's that?" I asked.
"Well, I dunno," Phil hesitated. "You know that Gonzales, the guy you replaced, got waxed on our way to Seattle, right?"
"Yeah." I don't think I was going to like what he would say next.
"Well, we were just crossing through Tsimshian when Johnny got tagged before, almost the same as now," Phil said. "Gonzales and me dropped back to take care of the bandit, when we got bushwhacked by an anti-aircraft track. They hit us with a zapper missile, which fried Gonzales' brain. I've got backup controls up here, but they're manual, and the only reason I got away was dumb luck."
"You saying you were set up?" I asked suspiciously.
"I dunno. It seems weird this happening the same way twice." A long silence ensued before Phil changed the subject. "We better hurry up and catch up wit' Johnny. He must be a hundred or so kilos ahead of us."
"Roger that, Phil." I cut loose on the throttle, and the Banshee roared ahead into the early evening horizon.
I eased back on the throttle as the t-bird crested the last hill, the final obstacle between us and the rough banks of the Snake River. In the grainy green vision of the Banshee's night-vision sensors, however, it appeared like a wide black ribbon directly in front and below, an irregular liquid blacktop highway belonging to Mother Nature. The remote location of our rendezvous, sixty kilometers away from curious eyes of Richland in the Salish-Shidhe, was uneven and broken, so the only flat stretch available to land for several kilometers was the Snake River itself.
I brought my arms in and leaned slightly to the left in a gentle glide. In response to my virtual body movements, the t-bird's vehicle control rig eased back on the port jets and angled the starboard jets outward. This caused the t-bird to yaw leftwards, until our flight path angled about 20 to 30 degrees to the right of the river's course.
I spread the arms of my simsense body out and straightened my virtual legs below me. The t-bird responded by extending the rear canard flaps and lowering its landing gear. As the nose passed over the water, I cut all power to the maneuvering jets and redirected them into the vertical jets. A giant fan of steam and spray blossomed behind the t-bird like a peacock's plumage at the height of mating season. As speed drained from the bird, the wheels on the landing gear briefly caressed the water's surface, and the aircraft bounced upward, a 30-ton stone skipping across the river's surface.
This gave the t-bird momentum to cross the far side of the bank, barely. The front landing gear plunged into the burbling water, but before the underbelly could meet the river's embrace, the running wheel clawed the gravelly bed of the river. In seconds it emerged from the drink and rolled upon the gravelly beach. By the time the rear wheels touched down, the t-bird had cleared the waters, leaving nothing but spray to moisten the rear tires.
As the engines dwindled to a gentle purr, I redirected the exhaust back into the maneuvering jets, allowing the t-bird to roll off the beach and over the ridge into a nearby clearing. Waiting for me there was a fuel tanker and a Bulldog panel truck, property of our refuel and refit team. At the edge of the t-bird's Low-Light vision, I saw Johnny's t-bird lurking in the darkness, like a giant steel puma peering on a herd of deer in the opening.
As my Banshee entered the clearing, a person wearing Low-Light goggles jumped off the back of the fuel truck and ran towards my vehicle. He switched on a pair of torchlights and began guiding me into parking position. Once I had piloted the Banshee into satisfactory position, the ground guide raised his torches above him in an "X." He then brought one light down across his neck, in a slitting motion, before killing both lights.