The Sukhoi Su-17—built in 1966 and long since discarded by the Russians.
The MiG-25 Foxbat—superseded in the 1980s by more modern variants, but which could still hold its own against all but the best American planes.
The French-made Mirage V/50—one of France's biggest military exports, which they sell to anyone: Libya, Zaire, Iraq.
There were even a few feisty Czech L-59 Albatrosses, a favourite among African nations.
Performance-wise, all these fighters lost ground to more modern planes like the F-22 Raptor and the F-15E. But when they came equipped with top-of-the-line air-to-air missiles—Sidewinders, Phoenixes, Russian R-60Ts and R-27s, missiles that were easily obtainable at the arms bazaars of Romania and the Ukraine—this older force of fighters could match it with the best of them. Fighters may be expensive and hard to get, but good-quality
missiles can be bought by the dozen.
And if nothing else, Schofield thought, these guys have the advantage of sheer numbers.
The best-equipped F-22 in the world could not hold off a force of this size forever. Ultimately, sheer force of numbers would overwhelm even the best technology.
'What do you think, Rufus?'
'This baby wasn't built to fight, Captain,' Rufus said. 'She was built for speed. So that's what we're gonna do with her—we're gonna fly her low and fast and we're gonna do what no pilot has ever done before: we're gonna outrun any missiles those bastards throw at us.'
'Missiles chasing us,' Schofield said. 'Nice.'
Rufus said, 'For what it's worth, Captain, we've got exactly one piddly little single-barrel gun pointing out from our nose. I think it's there for decoration.'
Just then, a new voice came over their headsets: 'American X-15s, this is Captain Harold Marshall of the USS Nimitz. We have you on our scopes. The Jolly Rogers are en route. They will intercept you as you reach the enemy force. Five Prowlers have been sent ahead at hundred-mile intervals to provide electronic jamming for you. It's going to get hot in there, gentlemen, but hopefully we can punch a hole big enough for you guys to shoot through.'' There was a pause. 'Oh, and Captain Schofield, I've been informed of the situation. Good luck. We're all right behind you.'
'Thank you, Captain,' Schofield said softly. 'Okay, Rufus. Let's rock.'
Speed.
Pure, unadulterated speed. 7,000 km/h is about 2,000 metres per second. Seven times supersonic is super super fast.
The two X-15s ripped through the sky toward the swarm of enemy aircraft.
As they came within twenty miles of the African planes, a phalanx
of missiles issued out from the armada—forty tail-like smoketrails streaming toward them.
But no sooner had the first missile been loosed, than its firer—a Russian MiG-25 Foxbat—erupted in a burst of orange flames.
Six other African planes exploded, hit by AIM-120 AMR A AM air-to-air missiles, while twenty of the missiles loosed by the African armada exploded harmlessly in mid-air, hitting chaff-deploying dummy missiles that had been fired from—
—an incoming force of American F-14 fighters bearing ominous skull-and-crossbones symbols on their tailfins.
The famous 'Jolly Rogers' from the Nimitz. About a dozen F-14 Tomcats, flanked by nimble F/A-18 Hornets.
And suddenly a gigantic aerial battle, unheard of in modern warfare, was underway.
The two X-15s banked and swerved as they shot through the ranks of the African armada, avoiding mid-air explosions, dive-bombing fighters, waves of tracer bullets and superfast missile
smoketrails.
All manner of fighter planes whipped through the twilight sky— MiGs, Mirages, Tomcats and Hornets, rolling, diving, engaging,
exploding.
At one point, Schofield's X-15 swooped upside-down to avoid one African fighter, only to come on a head-on collision course with another African bogey—a Mirage—but just as the two planes were about to slam nose-to-nose into each other, the African plane exploded—hit from underneath by a brilliant AMRAAM shot— and Schofield's X-15 just blasted right through its flaming remains, sheets of burning metal scraping against the X-15's flanks, the severed hand of the enemy plane's dead pilot smearing a streak of blood across the X-15's canopy right next to Rufus's eyes.
And yet the African missiles never hit the NASA rocket planes.
They would get close, and then the missiles would just swerve wildly around the X-15s as if the two NASA planes were protected by some kind of invisible bubble.
In actual fact, they were.
Care of the five US Navy EA-6B Prowlers—with their directional AN/ALQ-99F electronic jamming pods—that were flying parallel to the X-15s, ten miles away.
Nuggetty and tough, the Prowlers knew that they could never keep up with the superfast X-15s, so they had cleverly placed themselves parallel to Schofield's flight path but spaced out, each Prowler protecting the rocket planes with its jamming signal before passing the X-15s onto the next Prowler, like relay runners passing a baton.
'American X-15s, this is Prowler Leader,' a voice said in Schofield's headset. ' We can cover you up to the Canal, but we just ain't fast enough to keep up. You'll be on your own from there.'
'You've done more than enough already,' Schofield said.
'Christ! Look out!' Rufus yelled.
For right then, in the face of the Prowlers' long-range electronic protection, the African planes embarked on a new strategy.
They started doing kamikaze dives at the X-15s.
Suicide runs.
\
Electronic countermeasures may be able to disrupt the homing systems of a missile, but no matter how good they are, they cannot stop a man wilfully flying his plane into another.
A half-dozen fighter jets rained down on the two X-15s, screaming through the sky, loosing withering waves of tracer bullets as they did so.
The two X-15s split up.
Rufus rolled his plane right and down, while the other X-15 banked left, avoiding its dive-bomber by a bare foot, but not before a lone tracer bullet from one of the kamikazes entered its canopy from the side and exited out the other side: a flight path that also entailed a short trip through the head of Knight's pilot.
Blood and brains splattered the interior of the X-15.
The plane peeled away into the sky, out of control, heading eastward, away from the battle.
Knight scrambled into the front seat—where he quickly unbuckled the dead pilot and hurled his body into the back. Then Knight himself took the controls, trying desperately to bring the plane up before she ploughed into the Mediterranean Sea.
The sea rushed up before him—faster, faster, faster . . .
Boom.
For their part, Schofield and Rufus had swung their plane low over the sea—so low in fact that they were now rushing barely twenty feet above the waves, kicking up a continuous whitewater geyser
behind them at the same time as criss-crossing missiles blasted into the water all around them.
'I see the Canal!' Rufus yelled above the din.
It lay about twenty miles ahead of them, the mouth of the Suez Canal—a modern-day marvel of engineering; two colossal concrete pillars flanking the entry to the mighty sealane that gave access to the Red Sea.
And above it, more planes from the African armada.
'Rufus! Bank left!' Schofield yelled, peering up through their canopy.
Rufus did so—rolling them on their side just as two Czech L-59s went screaming past them on either side and buried themselves in the sea.
And then all of a sudden they hit the confines of the Canal—
—and lost the electronic protection of the Prowlers.