“I’m taking fire!” she yelled over the radio, not caring that every airplane monitoring the civilian Guard frequency had heard her panicked shout.
At Naval Air Station Point Mugu, Colt waited in a room on the hangar’s second deck that Jug and his sailors had converted into a makeshift ready room. Jug had told his engineers in China Lake to rush the analysis, and Colt still hoped to have the results in time to provide Jug with jamming protection during his flight. But he hated waiting, and he passed the time by dialing in the civilian Guard frequency on a portable radio to listen in as Punky made her way across the water to Santa Cruz Island.
“Raptor Two Four, my mission takes precedence over your search and rescue.”
Colt had to hand it to her. She was flying in the pitch black off the coast of Southern California, searching for the woman who had killed her partner, and still she refused to back down. Punky had balls, he decided. Bigger balls than most of the men he’d flown with.
He listened to the rest of the conversation with growing unease, recognizing the new voice on the radio as that of a more seasoned pilot not easily cowed by her assertiveness. But it sounded like she was slowly convincing them to at least meet her at the airstrip for a face-to-face. At least until the conversation took a chilling turn.
“I’m taking fire!”
Colt’s heart leaped into his throat, recalling his own experiences in combat when the Hornet he had been piloting became the target for surface-to-air gunners. The enemy’s Air Defense Artillery had largely been inaccurate, but it hadn’t stopped him from believing he was in grave danger, danger he knew Punky was in at that very moment.
“I can’t just sit here,” he said to himself.
Spinning away from the radio, he raced from the ready room and down the hall to the stairwell at the end. Taking the steps two at a time, he raced for the ground floor and into another hall leading to the converted paraloft. In that moment, he was thankful he’d had the presence of mind to remove his own flight gear from the back of the Carbon Cub and stow it in the hangar.
Unzipping the parachute bag, Colt removed his flight equipment and quickly went about suiting up for flight. He didn’t rush, but neither did he take his time, knowing that whatever engagement Punky had found herself in would likely be over before he managed to get airborne. Regardless, he wasn’t about to sit on his hands in the safety of the ready room while listening to the radio as the woman who had saved his life was shot down over an island only twenty-five miles away.
After donning his gear, Colt left the paraloft in a rush and raced through the hangar to the darkened silhouette of a single F-35C Joint Strike Fighter at rest on the ramp. Jug wasn’t likely to forgive him anytime soon for stealing his squadron’s jet, but he’d get over it.
Hang on, Punky. I’m coming.
39
Chen stared in horror as Wu Tian swept the camouflage netting away and stood in the darkness, swinging the Heckler & Koch MP7 up to aim at the small plane flying directly at them. He flicked the selector to fire and let loose a short burst, adjusted his aim, then fired another.
“You idiot!” she shouted.
Wu Tian spun back to her with a menacing scowl on his face. “The helicopter might be coincidence, but an airplane flying directly for us?”
She looked away from him to the airplane as it banked north, trying to escape the barrage of gunfire. It was unlikely he hit the plane, but there was no question the pilot now knew somebody on the ground was armed and didn’t care for an airplane flying over them. The plane’s engine sounded strong, but it appeared to be descending for the butte north of Smuggler’s Cove.
“You need to handle this,” she hissed.
He looked down at the weapons kit at her feet and nodded to it. “Give me your spare magazines.”
She hesitated, but in the end decided that her focus should be on using the weapon Mantis had entrusted to her. If she needed to use the silenced MP7, things had gone terribly wrong. She leaned over and picked up three twenty-round magazines and handed them to the naval commando.
“Do not let the pilot escape,” she said, then looked down as a notification appeared on her tablet. “And see that I am not disturbed. The target aircraft is within range.”
He looked as if he wanted to say something in response, but he wisely kept his mouth shut. Stuffing the spare magazines into his pants’ cargo pockets, he glanced over to the still descending plane, then began climbing the slope for the trail at the top of the ridge. Chen watched him disappear into the darkness, then surveyed the expansive Pacific Ocean, where she would meet her destiny.
With a deep breath, Chen slipped the VR goggles down over her eyes and stepped back into a digital world.
“Holy shit!” Punky shouted. She felt the impact through her seat frame and glanced over her shoulder at the four new holes that had appeared in the plane’s fuselage just behind her.
“Say again, Three November Alpha?”
Punky gripped the stick and squeezed. “I’m taking fire!”
“From where?”
She had the throttle pushed forward to the stop and was straining the motor to its limits, but if she had any chance of surviving, she needed to get away from the muzzle flashes on the ridge. Scanning the ground ahead of her, Punky looked for a flat piece of land where she could put the plane down if one of the bullets had managed to find a critical component.
Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!
The sickening sound turned her stomach, and she slapped the stick over to her left leg to counter the almost immediate roll to the right.
“What the…”
Punky dropped her hand from the throttle to the stick as the airplane fought her, and she struggled to keep her wings level. The Carbon Cub tottered on its axis, wobbling like a drunk sailor as it yawed into the damaged wing. She added left rudder to keep the nose tracking straight and hazarded a glance through the side window.
“Oh, shit.”
Through the green-tinted night vision, Punky saw a ragged strip of fabric fluttering on the outermost portion of her wing.
“Three November Alpha?” The helicopter pilot’s concern was evident in his voice.
“I think he got me,” she replied through gritted teeth. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she fought to regain the composure she expected of herself in stressful situations. But regardless of her previous experiences, nothing could have prepared her for the multitude of emotions that descended on her as she limped away in an experimental airplane from an invisible gunman below.
“Say your intentions,” the helicopter pilot said.
She had her hands full and fell back on her flight training, returning to the most basic of all aviation axioms: aviate, navigate, communicate. Before she could do anything else, she just needed to fly the damn plane.
“Three November Alpha?”
“I’m missing about two… maybe three feet of fabric from the top of my right wing. Aileron looks to be in good shape,” she said, talking through the damage in a calm, almost detached manner.
“How’s it flying?”
“Like a truck.” After the impact’s initial shock had worn off, Punky returned the Carbon Cub to a mostly stable attitude, but the damage she had sustained was making it difficult to keep her wings level. “It’s pulling hard right.”
“Copy. Can you make it to the airfield?”