Depressing the release stud, Wyatt closed his eyes for an instant, to avoid the exhaust glare as the missile dropped from its semi-recess in the fuselage, ignited, and shot away.
Kicked in a little left rudder.
Selected the second Sidewinder.
Heard an immediate lock-on tone, and fired.
Checked back to the right.
Eased in some rudder and aileron.
Closing so fast, the seconds screamed by.
His missile was streaming vapour toward the target, which he could clearly identify as a MiG now.
The MiG pilot knew he was in jeopardy. Even in his firing sequence, he hauled the nose up to dodge the Sidewinder.
Wyatt selected his third missile.
The MiG pilot evaded the Sidewinder, but his two missiles launched on a crazy angle and headed for nowhere.
“LOCK-ON.”
Wyatt fired number three.
Number two impacted the MiG on his far left.
A bright yellow-orange blossom burst into bloom, spewing segments of shrapnel out of its centre.
One mile away.
Wyatt hauled back on the throttles, kicked in left rudder and aileron, and slid across the sky to avoid the head-on rush of his first MiG. With its ton-and-a-half of bombs still on the pylons, the Phantom felt heavy. He hoped the bombs stayed with him. The G-meter numbers ascended toward eight.
The Sidewinder slammed into the MiG’s air intake, detonated, and the MiG lost its entire right side and wing. What was left went immediately into a spiralling, tumbling descent.
“Dodged my missile attack,” Jordan yelled on the air. “Six’s going to original heading. Wizard, help me out.”
Vrdla gave him some headings.
“Got two of the bastards,” Hackley said with a great deal of jubilation and adrenaline in his voice.
“I count four down,” Vrdla said.
“Roger, four down,” Wyatt said.
His vision had dimmed with the high-G turn, but was coming back.
He rolled out to the right, checked his position against the programmed coordinates for Marada Air Base on his HUD, and settled into a heading of 095. They had drifted northward during the engagement.
The fuel state wasn’t impressive.
His altitude of nine thousand feet AGL was sufficient. He wouldn’t waste fuel trying for more.
The speed had dropped to 660 knots. That would do, also.
Hackley moved in next to him.
“Very nice,” Formsby said from the Hercules. “I wish I were with you.”
“Let us not forget,” Vrdla said, “that you’ve got another bogie out there. Plus, the aircraft on the base are starting to move.”
Seventeen
Ramad could not believe his poor luck.
It had to be luck that allowed that perfect pigeon in his sights to go unharmed.
He eased back the stick, turning and bleeding off speed. Perhaps he had been going too fast.
As he turned back to the south, he became aware that the excited chatter of pilots on the tactical channel had ceased.
He searched his radar screen.
They were gone.
His four MiGs were gone.
All that remained was the low, fast blip of the airplane he had targeted — he had seen that it was indeed an F-4 — headed for the base.
And it was followed by an additional two blips some twenty kilometres behind.
He was alone against them.
“Vulture! Vulture!” cried an anguished controller.
“Marada this is Vulture. Order the bombers to take off immediately. Ba Flight is to follow them.”
Ghazi’s voice came on the air. “Vulture, you have made a most regrettable mistake.”
He did not need an army man to tell him that.
Ghazi continued, “I have ordered the defensive batteries to full alert. We will be able to stop the intruders.”
The way the pilot of that first F-4 flew, Ramad was not certain, but he was also running short of alternatives.
“More important,” Ghazi said, “is the chemical factory. They do not have an equal number of surface-to-air missiles. You must stop the attackers.”
Without realizing he was accepting an order from an army man, Ramad lifted his left wing and went into a tight turn to the right. Seconds later, his radar picked up the two fighters moving almost directly east toward the chemical factory. He estimated that they were making nearly nine hundred knots at three thousand meters of altitude, and they were but seventy kilometres from their target.
He was thirty-five kilometres southeast of their flight path.
Ramming the throttles into afterburner, he selected his last AA-7 missile. That would do for the first target, but he would have to get closer for the second.
And the timing was going to be critical.
Ahmed al-Qati rested against the bulkhead in the flight compartment, standing behind the pilot and next to the flight engineer. His helmet was clipped to his web belt, and he wore a headset.
The pilot had just reported to his superiors, the airlift command in Tripoli, that their MiG-23 air cover had just turned back, along with the tankers.
That seemed to be creating some consternation in the military headquarters in Tripoli.
Al-Qati had listened to the clipped, low-descriptive dialogue on the primary tactical channel since the attack had begun. It was confusing, but he had deduced that four MiGs had been shot down, that their air cover was racing to the rescue, and that the bombers were only now taking off.
And Tripoli was just now waking up to the crisis.
He tried not to think that Sophia had been successful. He longed to talk to her. If he used the airplane’s radio, he could reach her through his headquarters in El Bardi, but that would endanger her as well as himself. He would point no one in her direction.
“What am I to do?” the pilot asked for perhaps the third time. “We will be crossing the Sudan border in minutes.”
After a moment’s dead air, the controller from Tripoli radioed, “You are to continue your mission.”
Sophia had been successful, but not successful enough. The idiots were still going to go through with the farce.
But not all of them were idiots.
Al-Qati unsnapped his holster, slipped the automatic from its sheath, and laid the barrel almost gently on the pilot’s shoulder.
Startled, the man whipped his head around, saw the muzzle of the gun, and looked up at al-Qati, his mouth agape, and his eyes twice as large as they should be.
He said to the co-pilot, “Switch the radio to the secondary channel.”
The man hesitated until al-Qati rubbed the pilot’s throat with the automatic.
He glanced at the engineer, but that man had backed up as far as he could in his seat.
Reaching up to depress the transmit button on his cantilevered microphone, al-Qati said, “Moonglow.”
“Sundown,” came back to him.
“I am going.”
“And I will follow,” Shummari said.
Over the roar of the engines, al-Qati said, “No one will touch the radios. Co-pilot, return to the primary channel so that we may listen to Marada.”
The man reluctantly changed the switch position.
“Pilot, drop out of the formation, then turn west. I want a heading of two-eight-zero degrees.”
Al-Qati had a pretty fair picture of where he was geographically. If the raiders returned to the south, he might be in a position to intercept them.
He was even prepared to ram their airplanes, which would likely be unarmed by the time of their return leg, with this C-130. Al-Qati might not relish the chemical bombing of civilians, but he was a patriot, and he would not let this incursion into his national territory go unchallenged.
It took a nudge of the pistol against the pilot’s ear to urge him into compliance. He eased the yoke forward, and the transport fell away from its place in the formation, then rolled into a right turn.