Both the airspace and the airwaves were in a state of mass confusion.
"Falcon Two… incoming," Jenna shouted. "I've been pinged. See it coming… taking evasive—" The next three seconds were the longest of her life.
She jinked and rolled as she watched the white-hot doughnut of a SAM coming at her head-on.
"Aaarrgh!"
She felt the Gs as they stacked up and pressed on her brain, but still the thing came, pursuing her like a shadow.
Her whole field of vision was filled by the thing. Was this really the way her life would end?
Then came the impact as the heat seeker brought the SAM into contact with the tail of her F-16.
There was a thundering crash of metal onto metal and a jolt that was like being hit by a freight train.
But no explosion.
The aircraft shivered and shook, but it did not come apart in a cloud of burning debris.
"Falcon Two, are you there?" Hal said nervously. "Talk to me… are you there?"
"Falcon Two here… I've been hit… it was a dud… didn't explode. I've been hit… hard to control."
Troy let out a breath. At least she was alive.
"Falcon Two, can you eject?" Troy asked.
"Trying to get control," Jenna said. "Don't want to punch out… not here… get closer to home."
The streaks of purple dawn were starting to form along the horizon, and Troy could make out the silhouettes of the other two aircraft in his flight. Hal was about a quarter mile away at his altitude, but Jenna was a couple thousand feet below.
"This is Falcon Three," he said. "I'm going to descend to get a better look at the damage to Falcon Two."
"Roger that," Hal said in a tone of voice suggesting he wished he'd thought of that first.
"Falcon Two, that SAM must have hit you damned hard, your rudder is bent and there's a piece missing."
"No wonder it's so hard to fly this thing," Jenna replied.
"Do you think you can make it back to Atbara?" "I'm losing altitude and can't turn," Jenna replied. "Other than that… no problem."
"We're with you, Falcon Two," Troy said.
"Mighty neighborly of y'all," Jenna replied.
"Falcon One, I have bogies," Hal said nervously.
"I see 'em on the scope," Troy said. "Probably stragglers from the strike pack."
"Negative Falcon Three, they're headed south, straight at us."
"Falcon One… I've been pinged," Hal said. Indeed, the incoming fighters had locked on to him first because he was flying at the highest altitude. "I'll ping… him back…"
Hal stood the F-16 on its tail, climbing to get above the incoming bogies, and then he looped as they approached. The added altitude gave him the advantage as they maneuvered to pursue him.
"Fox Two…"
While the other planes clawed for altitude, his loop brought Hal into firing position. He had a good shot, and he took it.
The first Eritrean pilot was so busy trying to get at Hal that he didn't realize until too late that he was about to get got.
The AIM-9 Sidewinder connected, and one of Eritrea's last remaining MiG-29s was gone.
The second MiG-29 broke and ran.
Hal, who had been in a diving attack, began his pullout.
Had the second MiG pilot been more professional, he would have rolled in behind Hal as the F-16 plummeted and picked him off.
As it was, he was so freaked out at watching his pal get popped that he decided to get out of the area.
However, as he ran east, he spotted two Americans below. The first rays of the morning sun striking the rudder on one of the F-16s illuminated what appeared to be serious damage.
How do you say sitting duck in Tigrinya?
Realizing that he had the altitude advantage that the American had in the previous encounter, he rolled out and dove.
"Falcon Three, bogie on your six," Hal shouted as he banked hard to intervene in the fast-closing battle about two miles away.
"Roger that," Troy said, instinctively turning to screen Jenna's damaged aircraft as the enemy's missile lock-on pinged in his headset.
Troy looked back. There was a bright yellow flash as the Vympel R-60 "Aphid" air-to-air missile erupted from the MiG's wing.
Making sure that it was tracking him, not Jenna, Troy banked as hard as he could, hoping to outturn the missile.
It came so close that the lemon-yellow flame from its solid-fuel engine illuminated his cockpit — just before the explosion illuminated his entire field of vision.
The concussion knocked Troy's helmet against the inside of the canopy, cracking it. The F-16, which was in a roll when the proximity fuse detonated, began to spin.
There was good news and bad news.
The good news was that the Aphid hadn't hit Troy. The bad news was that the explosion was close enough to cause severe damage to his aircraft.
"Falcon Three… g-g-g-going… d-d-d-down," he reported as he fought to control the shaking, shuddering, corkscrewing aircraft.
"Punch out, Falcon Three," Hal shouted, as Troy tried to control the spin long enough to do this.
Seeing the spinning desert rushing up at him, he decided that it was now or never.
In a blinding flash, he left the F-16, and for what seemed like an eternity he hurtled through the air, spinning like a Frisbee. Somewhere within that eternity, he might have blacked out, because the next thing he remembered was when the canopy of his parachute jerked him back to his senses.
In the distance, he saw an F-16 tumbling lifelessly toward the ground. He watched it hit and disintegrate, the pieces bouncing across the desert at impact speed, swathed in dust and smoke.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something else. It was another F-16, twisting, gyrating, and falling. Who? Hal?
Suddenly a third F-16 flashed past, and in the cockpit he caught a glimpse of the checkerboard pattern of Hal's helmet.
"Jenna!"
Troy realized as the second F-16 impacted the desert that one of these falling airplanes was Jenna's.
Hal came by again, so close that the shock wave caused Troy's parachute to bounce about twenty feet.
Below, the ground was rushing upward.
The last thought Troy had before the impact knocked him unconscious was that he had better prepare for a hard landing.
Chapter 14
Troy Loensch was unsure whether he was dead or alive, but he settled on something that was somewhere in between. His first sensation was one of being enveloped in a cocoon of excruciating pain. Everything hurt — his shoulder, his knees, his head. He gritted his teeth and felt the grind of a mouth full of sand.
He opened his eyes and saw only the gravelly ground.
He tried to move and discovered that his limbs were wildly contorted, as though he had been wadded up and tossed in a sandbox — which was more or less what had happened.
Troy had started to hope that nothing was broken, then settled on hoping that nothing was broken off
He tried to summon enough saliva to spit the crud from his mouth, choked, and started to cough.
When his mouth was reasonably clear, he attempted to untangle himself and roll into a sitting position. As he did, he saw a person standing over him. "You look like shit, Loensch."
It was Jenna Munrough.
"Are you all right?" Troy gasped.
"Better than y'all by the looks of things," she replied.
She didn't look it. Her flight suit was filthy beyond any recognition of its true color — and so was her hair. Her face was so dirty that the only thing recognizable about her was her voice.
Amazingly, Troy discovered that he could stand — and take steps. It hurt like hell, but he could do it.