It could not happen to him!
The speed began to drop drastically, and he put the nose down to restore it.
Still, he was down to four hundred knots very quickly. Ignoring the automatic operation of the computer, he extended the wings from their swept-back configuration to increase his lift.
Altitude two thousand meters.
Looking frantically around, he tried to orient himself.
There was nothing. Not a road nor a hill nor a wadi for a landmark.
He checked the radar screen.
His target was now far ahead, but worse, another blip had appeared on the screen, coming at him very rapidly. It would be one of the escaping F-4s.
His glide was steep, but he could not take many evasive manoeuvres without losing lift and altitude.
Turning slightly to the right, moving toward the east, he attempted to widen the gap between himself and the approaching F-4.
Seconds later, he saw the aircraft as it neared him, slowing, and turning to match his direction.
His speed was down to 330 knots.
The F-4 descended, pulling in behind him.
He waited for the missile.
It should not have come to this, Merciful Allah. I only sought to do your bidding.
The F-4 suddenly accelerated and moved up along his left wing.
Ramad looked over at them.
There was a black face in the front seat and a white face in the rear.
The black man held up the middle finger of his right hand, then abruptly climbed away, increasing speed, performed a wing-over directly over Ramad’s cockpit, then was gone.
Ramad’s relief was so great that, for precious moments he did not realize how close to the ground he was.
When he saw the dunes ahead of him, without one flat spot available, he looked at the altimeter: 635 meters above ground level.
No more time.
He tucked his elbows in, grabbed the ejection handle between his legs, and jerked.
The ejection seat crunched his spine as it fired.
Nineteen
“I just didn’t have the heart to shoot the son of a bitch down,” Gettman said.
“Karl did give him the finger,” Zimmerman added, “so that probably got to his ego.”
“Did you see a chute?” Formsby asked.
“Yeah, he made it out,” Gettman said, “but if he walks sixty miles in any direction, he still ain’t going to find anything. That sucker better have a good radio and a hell of a lot of water with him.”
“Any asshole that can’t figure out he’s running out of gas deserves the walk,” Zimmerman said.
“What is your fuel state?” Formsby asked.
“Well,” Gettman said, “uh, come to think of it, we may be joining him shortly.”
“Conserve as well as you can,” Demion said.
“How are you guys doing?” Gettman asked.
“He blew the hell out of a bunch of flares,” Formsby said. “Lucas did us proud.”
He looked over to Littlefield, who gave him a big, wide grin and held up his flare launching control. Demion said, “We’re going to reduce speed now, so everyone else can catch up with us. I’ll hold it around two-two-zero knots.”
“Damn, Jim, you don’t have to do that,” Barr broke in. “I can catch you any day of the week. Wings or no wings.”
Maal waved Formsby close and spoke over the intercom, “Let her go now?”
“I believe she has done her job well, don’t you, Dennis? I firmly believe she diverted his attention from a thorough attack against us.”
“I hate to do this, Neil.”
“If we simply let her go, and they do not shoot her down farther north, she could reach the Mediterranean,” Formsby said. “But she might not hit hard enough to detonate the plastic explosive.”
Maal shoved his elevator stick forward and watched the readouts. At a rate-of-climb of negative five hundred-feet-per-minute, he centred the stick.
They did not have to wait long.
After a few minutes, all of the feedback readouts went blank.
Barr came up on the radio. “I saw her go in. I offered up a prayer.”
“Did the plastic detonate, Nelson?” Formsby asked.
“It must have, along with the fuel tanks. She’s an inferno.”
Maal climbed out of the seat he had occupied for so long and said, “Lucas, you have any of that rotten coffee left.”
“I don’t think so, Denny, but I’ll make more. How rotten do you want it?”
“Just as bad as you can get it.”
Most of the others settled to the deck to sit, and Formsby climbed the ladder back to the flight deck and took the engineer/navigator’s seat. He pulled on the headset but did not bother connecting the oxygen mask. They were flying at three thousand feet now.
It was pretty much quiet on the intercom and the tactical channel.
He supposed most of them were thinking about Wyatt.
Until Vrdla spoke up. “We may have a minor problem, Jim.”
“What’s that?” Demion asked.
“I just picked up two targets to our east. Range two-one-five and closing. They’re slow moving. I give ’em three-five-oh knots.”
“That’s an unexpected development,” Demion said. “I thought we’d planned it out for every contingency.”
“It has to be two of those troop transports that took off earlier,” Formsby said. “They will not be armed.”
“That’s right,” Kriswell said. “What the hell can they do?”
Martin Church had gone down the hallway to the men’s room. When he got back, he found that Embry had contacted the NSA and asked for an infrared image again.
He sat down at the table and stared at the blue-green-orange-red splotches on the monitor.
“Where are we now, George?”
Embry pressed a finger against the screen. “See that bright red spot. The tanker went in.”
“Jesus!”
“It wasn’t manned, Marty.”
“Goddamn it! George, will you quit springing this shit on me? Are any of them manned?”
“The rest of them. Everyone’s still airborne. The last hostile plane in the region went down. I don’t know whether it was shot down or not, but it didn’t burn.”
“So all these hot spots are our planes?”
“Except these two down here to the east. I’ve been watching them.”
“That’s wonderful. Can you watch them into oblivion?”
“Doubt it, Marty.”
The telephone rang, startling him. His concentration on the screen had been so intense for so long — it didn’t seem like only an hour and forty minutes — that he had blanked out the rest of the world.
Embry scooted back in his castered chair and grabbed the phone from the desk.
“Yeah, put her through.”
He handed the phone to Church.
“You get to talk to her, Marty.”
“Who is it?”
“Kramer.”
Church took the phone and pressed it to his ear.
“Yes.”
“Tell me what’s happening,” she said. The anxiety in her voice was palpable.
“There’s really not much to report just yet,” he said. Just the destruction of an air base, a chemical factory, a bomber squadron, and an interceptor squadron. Of course, none of that would ever be reported outside of Agency channels.
“You’ve got to be watching it,” she said. “You have all your secret devices.”
“Indirectly,” he admitted.
“Tell me, goddamn it!”
“Everyone with whom we are concerned is still airborne,” he said, “but that’s all I can say right now.”
“Thank you,” Kramer said and hung up.
Church looked at the screen, at the relative positions of the hot spots. Two of them were lagging far behind, but he didn’t know who was flying them, and he certainly wouldn’t pass speculation on to her.