Rosen took that to mean she ought to grab onto to something and hold tight.
CHAPTER 52
The contact was low, below a thousand feet. Another plane was approaching from the north and there was a helo or something else incredibly slow in front.
Nobody answered IDs. Hack guessed that the helo was a Coalition Spec Ops craft; they’d been briefed during preflight to watch for operations here. The two contacts going in its direction must be Iraqis trying to nail it.
Hack lost the lead aircraft momentarily. The second one, gaining, had been tentatively ID’d as a MiG by the AWACS.
The first plane popped back up on the screen, closing on the helicopter. Hack was still fifteen miles away, too far to launch the Sidewinders. He tickled the IDs again.
Nada.
RWR was clear. The enemy planes didn’t realize he was here.
Ten miles. If he’d had any more Sparrows left, the bastards would be dead.
Sidewinders would nail them, soon as he closed. AIM-9s were ready and waiting.
The lead plane was going to nail the helo any second. He was already in range.
Hack corrected as the planes began dancing wildly; he had to keep his target within a 45-degree aiming cone to ensure the kill.
Eight miles. Seven.
Nada.
Lead bandit’s going to nail the helo.
The second plane, the one ID’d as a MiG, had the stops out.
He couldn’t get them both in one swoop. Stay on the leader.
Five miles.
The first plane jinked suddenly, pushing out of the optimum firing cone. Hack moved his stick to follow, waited for the growl from the Sidewinder telling him he had a hot target. His radar coughed up an unidentified contact dead west, flying north very low. He started to run through his queries one more time, still waiting for the Sidewinder to lock.
As it did, the IFF in the lead bandit beamed back a signal to Hack’s Eagle.
The plane closing on the helicopter was an A-10.
Oh my God, Hack thought, jerking his finger away from the trigger. I almost nailed a good guy.
CHAPTER 53
The ancient ALQ-119 ECM pod on Doberman’s right wing cranked away, filling the airwaves with a cacophonous symphony of electronic confusion. Designed to drive the Iraqi MiG’s radar and every dog within a hundred miles nuts, the Westinghouse unit was a first-generation noise and deception jammer that had joined the service before Doberman had.
But either it was working or the Iraqi pilot was doing a very convincing impression of being blind, for the Fishbed streaked down nearly in front of him, seemingly unaware that Doberman was now right on his tail. Doberman didn’t even have to move his stick as the low growl sounded from the Sidewinder AIM-9L indicated it had acquired its target.
Something about the way the shape fluctuated in his windshield made Doberman hesitate; in the next second the MiG flashed downward and to the right. He lost his firing position; had to pull the Hog tight over his shoulder to get the front of the plane back onto its target. He saw the helo out of the corner of his eye but couldn’t find the MiG, sensed it had turned around him, trying for a shooting angle.
He was the quarry again.
Doberman worked the Hog tighter, climbing slightly, then pushing the nose back down, bucking the plane in mid-air and swirling around. He heard another growl but worried the Sidewinder had locked on the helicopter. It took only a millisecond to realize it hadn’t; by then he’d lost the shot again, the MiG cranking and wanking in a series of high-g turns that Doberman couldn’t keep up with. He pulled his wings level, eyes blurry. He tried focusing on the compass heading, unsure where the hell he’d spun himself around to, when a sudden shudder passed over the Hog. The MiG had cleared his right wing at less than ten feet.
It was going south. With nothing between it and the Fort Apache helicopter.
“Damn me,” he yelled.
This time he yanked the stick so hard the only thing that kept it tied into its boot was the massive smack of gravity that punched the plane in the face. There was a theory that the Hog couldn’t withstand anything higher than 3 gs, but no Hog driver had ever subscribed to that notion, and if Doberman had been able to talk, he would have sworn twenty gs grabbed him and his airplane as it changed direction.
Amazingly, the wings stayed on the aircraft. So did the engines, which had every right to flame out but kept spinning just the same. Doberman found the tail of the MiG disappearing into a mist of sand a quarter mile ahead. He’d almost pushed the button to fire the AIM-9s when he realized he wasn’t locked. He jiggled the Hog to the right, hoping somehow that realigning his nose would give him a better target. It didn’t; he saw something below him on the desert floor, a small lump— the helo had stopped.
He caught a glimpse of it, saw that it was intact, whirlies whirling. He got his eyes back to where they belonged, couldn’t find the MiG, realized he’d flown to barely twenty feet. If he didn’t start climbing soon he was going to become part of the landscape.
Doberman pulled back on the stick, easing upwards. He got to eight hundred feet when he realized where the MiG was.
He yanked the Hog’s left wing over just in time to avoid the rush of a close-quarter cannon over his canopy, but didn’t have enough altitude to chance more than a shallow roll before recovering. A fresh stream of cannon exploded in front of his canopy and he felt something nudge his wing, an angel tapping him to see if he was ready for heaven.
The MiG had hung with him somehow and was right on his back. The stream of its tracers jerked toward his canopy.
Then the front of his cockpit filled with a dark green shadow. Thunder and lightning roiled around him and the air reverberated with exploding brimstone.
“Hog Rule Number One!” shouted a familiar voice in his earphones. “Never leave home without your wingman!”
Captain Thomas “A-Bomb” O’Rourke had arrived.
CHAPTER 54
A-Bomb’s front-quarter attack was mostly flash— heads-on was a notoriously difficult way to shoot down an enemy, even when you could see what you were doing— but it had the desired effect. The MiG broke off, banking hard to A-Bomb’s left as they passed.
“I got him low,” A-Bomb told Doberman as he began pulling the Hog around so the MiG couldn’t get him from behind. “He’s west of us, west. Shit, I’ve lost him.”
A-Bomb had a real hunger for some Good & Plenty, but the little pellets of licorice had a nasty habit of sliding down your mouth in the middle of a high g turn. He decided to settle for a Tootsie Roll instead. He reached for his suit when instinct told him his six was hot. He shoved his Hog down and to the left, ducking a nasty round of cannon fire from the MiG’s GSh-23.
Okay, so the Iraqi pilot’s pretty good, A-Bomb thought as the Fishbed tried to hang with him on the turn. The MiG had to slow down to make the maneuver. A-Bomb tried taking advantage of his tighter radius by breaking away to the south and getting away clean. But the MiG pilot somehow managed to stay with him, crossing back as they yo-yoed through the night sky. A fresh round of shells sliced just over the Hog’s fuselage.
A-Bomb cranked hard again back to the right. If he could let the MiG go ahead he’d fire the Sidewinders up its tailpipe. But the Iraqi pilot had finally realized the Hog could turn inside him; he stayed back, letting A-Bomb cut his tight zigs and then using his bigger engine to catch up.