The missile missed by no more than a few feet from the aircraft.
However, the shock wave from the Sidewinder blowing by prevented the other pilot from reversing his turn as he had become accustomed.
Troy was very close and still in firing position as the other plane was momentarily locked in a turn and unable to execute a turn reversal.
Within a second, this situation would change, but that was then, and Troy was in the moment.
He thumbed the trigger of his M61 and watched the stream of twenty-millimeter rounds streak toward the other plane — and connect.
Troy saw a piece of the tail tear off and cartwheel upward.
Troy watched the puffs of dust and smoke as his rounds struck home and watched the hits march up the belly of the F-16, which was still locked in its leftward bank.
Everything turned into a blinding sheet of light as one of Troy's twenty-millimeter high-explosive rounds connected with the fuel tank of the other aircraft.
The whole engagement had lasted less than thirty seconds, the burst from the Vulcan cannon no more than two or three.
Troy looked around to get his bearings.
He saw the plume of black where once there had been another F-16. Beneath him, there was only jungle. There was no ocean to be seen. His rolling, running dogfight had taken him deep into the mountainous middle of Malaysia, far from Kuantan.
"Firehawk CAP here, scratch one bogie," he reported. "This is Firehawk Leader, CAP. We're over the target. Firehawk Three didn't make it. No chute."
Part of the strike package had continued to orbit the target area looking for signs of life in the wreckage of the aircraft that was shot down by the F-16 that Troy had killed.
As he passed over the newly paved, now newly cratered, Sandringham runway, Troy could see the wreckage of the Firehawk F-16 and the other Sandy F-16. The latter had the misfortune of being ready for takeoff just as the bombers arrived. It didn't stand a chance.
When it was determined that the Firehawk pilot had not survived, the eight surviving Firehawk aircraft formed up and headed back toward Kota Bharu.
The score was Firehawk two, Sandies one. As far as the bombing was concerned, Raymond Harris had wanted to deal a blow, and a blow had been dealt.
Chapter 31
Troy Loensch opened one eye and glanced at the red numerals staring back at him from the clock radio.
5:47.
His open eye traveled to the slit of window beneath the heavy curtain. The light was the weak, faint light of midwinter.
5:48.
Was that A. M. or P. M.?
With the faint light, it could be either.
He had arrived well after midnight. Had he slept for four or five hours — or sixteen or seventeen? He couldn't tell. Troy staggered to the bathroom, fumbled with the coffeemaker for a moment, gave up, and collapsed back onto the bed.
5:56.
He had arrived well after midnight, flying in on the Firehawk Gulfstream by way of Tokyo and Barking Sands in Hawaii.
It was supposed to be a moment of triumph for Troy, but either he had slept through his corporate commendation presentation or he would arrive at it hopelessly sleep deprived.
Had he still been in the U. S. Air Force, he would be receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross. As Raymond Harris had told him, Firehawk had scrambled around to come up with something appropriate to give him, something that was the corporate equivalent of a DFC.
I deserve it, he thought to himself as his mind began to awaken. Too bad I slept through me getting awarded it.
Troy had emerged as a hero in the war between Fire-hawk and Sandringham. Beginning with the F-16 he shot down on the first day, up through his blowing up, both of the former Australian Navy frigates that the Sandies used to patrol the South China Sea, he had been a key part of winning the war against Sandringham.
8:03.
It was still light outside, and considerably brighter.
Troy had dozed off again — this time under the covers — and he felt much better after another two hours of sleep.
He made coffee, shaved, showered, and opened his suitcase — which had made it barely eighteen inches inside the door before he abandoned it last night.
He located his least-wrinkled khakis and his Firehawk Windbreaker. The ceremony wasn't until 4:00. Hopefully, by that time, gravity would have softened the wrinkles in his Firehawk blazer.
Hoping that he hadn't missed his complimentary breakfast, he located his key card and headed for the elevator.
He barely noticed the man who passed him in the hall, but he did notice the big guy with the shaven head leaning on the wall near the elevator pretending to read his complimentary copy of USA Today.
"Mr. Loensch, could we have a word?"
Troy took a step back as the man reached inside his sport coat.
One of the perks of not flying commercial was that Troy was always accompanied by his personal Beretta 950, an easily concealed 4.7-inch automatic that was a useful tool when it was necessary to have a little bit of.25-caliber firepower. Once in Bangkok, it had saved his life. Here in Arlington, it was Troy's equalizer to whatever was inside the man's sport coat.
"I wouldn't if I were you, Mr. Loensch," came a voice from behind him.
He felt a muzzle pressed into his spine between his shoulder blades.
Troy took his own hand away from his waistband and put both where they were easily seen.
He felt a hand relieving him first of his 950, and next of his cell phone.
The mystery inside the shaven-headed man's sport coat turned out not to be a gun, but merely a wallet.
He tipped it open to reveal a Central Intelligence Agency ID that was either for real or a facsimile that was especially believable at a distance of a dozen feet. Troy noticed that as it was displayed, the man's thumb covered the line where his name would be.
"Mr. Loensch, could we have a word?" the man repeated, nodding toward Troy's room.
"Just one?" Troy replied in a vain attempt at humor. The CIA man didn't even crack a smile.
Back inside, they insisted that Troy have a seat in one of the two straight-backed armchairs. Both of the anonymous CIA men remained standing, and the one with the shaven head did all the talking.
"A lot of people found it pretty alarming to turn on their nightly news a couple of weeks ago to find that a PMC had — to quote Raymond Harris in that infamous CNN interview — `declared war' on another PMC and they were duking it out in a Third World country using some pretty sophisticated hardware."
"I suppose maybe a lot of people did," Troy said. "I was not really in a position to be concentrating on media reaction… but then, you probably know where I was and what I was doing."
"You were in the midst of a war… essentially a gang-style turf war… between two extranational private armies."
"I never thought of war having 'style," " Troy quipped. "In case you haven't noticed, PMCs are the way wars are fought now that nations no longer have a stomach for war, so they outsource it."
"And that's a good thing?"
"My opinion? It's just a 'thing,' neither good nor bad in itself." Troy shrugged. "It's just the way it is. But the United Nations and more than a hundred countries must have thought it was good, because it took all that to make PMCs a reality… allow them to act as international and independent outfits. Can I ask a question?"
"Okay."
"I'm taking a wild guess here that you boys didn't shove a gun in my back so that you could lecture me about what you think of PMCs, because if you had asked, I don't really care what you think. * * so tell me why you did shove that gun in my back."
"We need your help."
"That's a great way of asking." Troy almost laughed. "Shove a gun in a guy's back because you need his help?"