He turned and shouted over his shoulder, “He’s above us!”
Even though he knew Charlie couldn’t hear him, Dave felt himself floating off the metal floorboards as they dropped closer to the invisible water. He bent his knees and prepared for a jarring collision when the pilot stopped their descent, but he kept his eyes focused on the shadowed outline of the attack helicopter above them and willed it to reengage.
They leveled off, and Dave slammed back to the ground. But he had been ready that time, and he immediately angled the minigun upward and aimed to the side of the tail. If Charlie banked left, he might have another shot — albeit fleeting with little chance of success. But at the rate things were going, even a little chance was better than no chance.
Suddenly, the sky above them erupted in bright orange flame as the helicopter exploded in a flash. A split second later, Dave heard the high-pitched scream of a missile streaking through the sky and the thunderous detonation of it impacting with the Chinese attack chopper.
“What the…”
Charlie must have seen the flash too because he resumed his erratic flying. Unprepared, Dave whipped left and right, straining the carabiner he had used to clip into the safety tether.
“He’s gone,” he shouted. “Threat neutralized!”
But Charlie couldn’t hear him, and the aging Russian chopper continued zigging and zagging through the night, whipping the SEAL and its other passengers around the cabin to avoid being taken down by the unseen threat. Dave slammed to the ground but quickly pushed himself up as if popping up on a surfboard, looking forward to the cockpit that seemed impossibly far away. He reached down to unclip from the safety tether just as the helicopter dropped out from beneath him.
Dave flew up toward the ceiling, then slammed back down, cracking his head into the metal floor. Stars ringed his vision, and he thought he heard what sounded like a fighter jet roaring overhead before he blacked out.
42
Colt watched the AIM-9X Sidewinder missile guide into the Chinese helicopter and detonate just above its stubby wings on the starboard side. He had a split second of panic when he thought the helicopter might keep flying, but then it exploded in a brilliant flash that cast an ominous shadow onto the friendly Mi-17 Hip racing east.
“Splash one, pop-up group,” Colt exclaimed with breathless relief.
“Two zero one, Tiger, green east.”
Colt pulled back on the stick while dipping his right wing to watch the friendly helicopter again disappear into the pitch-black night. As the flaming wreckage of the Chinese Z-10 fell into the water, Colt kept his nose pointed skyward to gain as much altitude as possible.
Speed is life. Altitude is life insurance.
“FUEL LOW… FUEL LOW…”
He reached down and selected the waypoint he had created for Scarborough Shoal, knowing that if he had any chance of being rescued, he would need to eject in the vicinity of where the Hip and the two Ospreys were converging. He had long ago given up hope that he might make it all the way to Clark Air Base and was already mentally preparing himself for the ejection.
“Tiger, any luck with a Texaco?”
The response was quicker than he’d hoped and most definitely not what he wanted. “Negative. Two zero four is on a bingo profile to Clark Air Base at this time.”
Passing through ten thousand feet, he pointed his nose at the distant shoal, then reached down and unclipped the kneeboard he had strapped to his right thigh. He tucked it into his helmet bag, then shoved the bag as far back on his right side as possible. Most pilots who ejected didn’t have the luxury of preparing themselves for it, but with nothing left to do, Colt spent his last few hundred pounds of gas trying to get as close to the shoal as possible.
“Status of Pedro?”
The baritone voice of a Marine pilot answered. “Two zero one, Pedro One is twenty minutes from the shoal.”
All that mattered was that he survived long enough for the tilt rotor to home in on his beacon and pluck him from the water. If he was lucky, he might even be able to make it close enough to the shoal that he could wade ashore and walk onto the Osprey. Even Navy pilots didn’t like the idea of getting wet.
“Good to hear your voice, Pedro,” Colt said. “Right now, I’m—”
“ENGINE RIGHT… ENGINE RIGHT…”
Shit.
Colt felt a sudden loss of thrust as the fuel-starved right engine spooled down from military thrust. With his throttles all the way up, he knew he’d burn through his fuel quicker, but he needed speed and altitude, and full power was the quickest way of getting it.
Of course, now that he had lost his first engine, he second-guessed his decision not to use a more fuel-conserving power setting.
“Pedro One, I just lost my right engine,” Colt said, trying to sound as calm as possible.
“Pedro,” the Marine pilot responded.
Though a safe ejection was possible at altitudes from the surface to fifty thousand feet, Colt had targeted somewhere in the upper teens to pull the handle. He couldn’t remember the exact envelope for optimum ejection, other than that he wanted to have his wings level and be as slow as possible to reduce the risk of injury from the wind blast. Passing through fifteen thousand feet, he lowered the nose and used the remaining fuel in his feed tanks to propel him faster toward Scarborough Shoal.
“ENGINE LEFT… ENGINE LEFT…”
“There goes the left engine,” Colt said. He knew that once the engine spooled down below sixty percent, his second generator would drop offline and plunge him into darkness. His standby instruments would continue working and the flight controls would revert to mechanical linkage, but his ability to navigate would be lost.
“Pedro.”
With one more glance at the moving map display between his legs, Colt noted the distance and estimated his time remaining to the waypoint he had designated for Scarborough Shoal.
Fifteen miles. Less than three minutes.
The time would change once he lost thrust and began slowing and gliding toward the tiny speck of land in the middle of the ocean, but it gave him something to shoot for. If he kept his nose pointed in the same direction, allowed his jet to slow to less than two hundred knots, and glided back down to ten thousand feet, he could pull the yellow-and-black-striped handle in three minutes and feel confident he would come down somewhere near the shoal.
Suddenly, his cockpit was plunged into darkness. Each of the displays that had given him crucial information during the flight went blank, and he fought to quell the rising panic. He reached down to the battery switch and moved it from NORM to ORIDE, then felt along the outside of his left thigh for the green rubber ring to activate his emergency oxygen.
Two minutes.
Colt didn’t count down the seconds, but he was keenly aware of his metronomic heartbeat that kept him focused. He dropped his eyes to the standby instruments and watched the airspeed needle drop below three hundred knots. When it reached two hundred and fifty knots, he lowered the nose and began a gentle descent.
One minute.
The large hundreds hand on his standby altimeter spun quickly downward as his seventy-million-dollar fourth-generation fighter became a lawn dart.
Fourteen thousand feet… thirteen thousand feet…
Despite his best efforts to remain calm, his heart rate increased the closer he got to ejection.
Twelve thousand feet… eleven thousand feet…