“Zulu One, this is Apollo flight.” Bertinetti called MacDonald. “Are you in contact with friendlies?”
“Affirmative, Apollo, I’ve got them covered with my pod.”
“Copy that, Zulu. Slewing my targeting pod up now. Looks pretty quiet, but we can take nothing for granted.”
The pair of F-16s screamed across the wide blue arc of the Ukrainian sky, describing a wide orbit as they maintained cover over the Americans working with the weapon-locating battery on the ground. If any Ukrainian separatists decided to mess with the American trainers below, they would have one of America’s most potent strike fighters to deal with.
“Apollo, Apollo. This is Giant Killer, are you receiving me?” Bertinetti’s radio crackled in his ear.
Unusual for Ground Control to call without a reason, he thought.
“Affirmative, Giant Killer. I’m reading you five by five.”
“Apollo. Bogey one o’clock, inside five miles. Single contact descending to one four thousand.”
“Copy. Apollo is no joy—I cannot see target—standby.”
Bertinetti put his aircraft into a steep turn to starboard, simultaneously putting his radar and weapons into dogfight mode with a deft flick of his left thumb on the throttle. He vigorously scanned the sky through the bubble canopy and suddenly picked up the contact visually: an Ilyushin Il-76, a multi-purpose, four-engine, strategic airlifter, the Russian air force insignia clear to see. And it was heading west, for central Ukraine.
“Giant Killer, this is Apollo Two. Tally one. Russian Ilyushin Seventy-six, heading west. Do you want me to intercept?”
“Apollo Two, affirmative.”
Bertinetti slowed down and circled the Russian plane. He rocked his wings from side to side and as he came up alongside, he could see the pilot in the cockpit of the large Russian aircraft looking back at him. With a subtle pressure against his sidestick, Bertinetti flashed him the weapon-coated underside of the Falcon, while transmitting on the VHF Guard international frequency for the Russian to turn around and head back into Russian airspace.
Meanwhile, as per SOPs—standard operating procedures—MacDonald was providing cover for Bertinetti from above and behind.
Suddenly and unexpectedly the Russian dived.
Perplexed as to what the Russian was doing, Bertinetti followed it down. Next moment he heard an exclamation over the radio from MacDonald.
“Holy shit, Lead. We’ve been bounced. Four bandits at six o’clock.”
From the corner of his eye Bertinetti saw a flash as a missile streaked toward them across the sky, doubtless a passive infrared K-74M2—brutally maneuverable due to its advanced-thrust vectoring, which made it almost impossible to escape from and the primary close-range missile of a Russian Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA stealth fighter.
Stealth fighter! Christ! That’s why my systems didn’t see the son of a bitch!
Bertinetti’s brain was scrambling to absorb all this new and unexpected information. Even as he accepted what must have happened there was a blinding flash and MacDonald’s F-16 vanished into a million pieces at the center of a fireball.
The Ilyushin Il-76 was the decoy and the Americans had been ambushed.
Bertinetti’s survival instinct kicked in. All the hours of flying drills and exercises and avoiding rock falls and breakages ensuring that he acted rather than froze. Survive!
He first rolled his aircraft upside down and then pulled it into a steep dive, buying himself that survival time. As he did so, the blood drained from his brain under the G-force and he felt the suit inflate and tighten around his thighs. No missile alarms. That maneuver had thrown them off balance, as he hoped it might.
Now they would be confident. Only him left. They would assume they could take him down easily.
Out of the dive and now he climbed, pushing the throttle through the afterburner gate and feeling the kick in his back as it lit behind him. As he did so, he saw four distinct dots on the horizon, despite his vision greying out from the G-force.
Four of you bastards. No wonder you are so confident. But I’ll take one of you with me. Leroy was my friend.
He turned to face them, and sure enough, there they were: two pairs of Russia’s very latest “super weapons,” as the aviation press had dubbed them when they had made their first international appearance at Britain’s Farnborough Air Show. But this was no air show, this was for real.
As the F-16 streaked across the sky, Bertinetti’s brain seemed to slow down, initial brain-freezing panic over, as he started to analyze the data his aircraft’s computers and his eyes were feeding him. It was the same as on his beloved Honda Firebird motorcycle; the faster he drove, the slower the world seemed to move around him.
He sensed the Sukhoi T-50s were inside his missile range and by moving his head and looking at each target in turn, he could slew the reticle, the fine sighting lines on his joint helmet-mounted cueing system. As he put the reticle onto the first Sukhoi the “lock on” tone sounded in his helmet until, when it reached a crescendo, he released an AIM-9X Sidewinder infrared missile with a solid, steady trigger pull. “See how you like that, you fuckers,” he muttered.
There was a fractional pause, a white streak across the sky and another fireball where, a split second earlier, there had been a Russian fighter.
One-all, thought Bertinetti as he put the reticle on his next target. That’s leveled things a bit.
“Lock, Lock.” The radar warning receiver sounded in his ear. He instinctively pulled the throttle out of afterburner and then rolled his left hand onto the chaff-and-flare button on the cockpit wall by his left knee, in a desperate attempt to decoy the incoming missiles from the Russians.
Too late. Next moment his aircraft was being blasted violently to the right and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a chunk of his left wing disintegrate.
Without realizing he had done so, his right hand was already grabbing and then pulling up on the ejection-seat firing handle, set in between his legs and next to his crotch. Then his head was violently compressed into his spine as his ejector seat fired, followed by a sudden blast of ice-cold air, as he was hurtled up and out of the aircraft. His first instinct was one of blessed relief at being clear of his aircraft, followed a couple of seconds later by the sickening sensation that he was beginning to fall.
“Deploy, you bastard. Deploy!” he started screaming to himself, as he began to accelerate toward the earth, still strapped helplessly into his seat. And then he was jerked upward. He heard a sharp crack above his head and the seat fell away below him. Looking up, he saw the wide silk of his parachute canopy. Now instead of noise and wind, there was instant peace.
He was alone in the sky. The Russian planes had vanished and, below him, he could see his plane tumbling, left wing missing, before it smashed into the open cornfields of Ukraine below. There was a split second, perhaps he imagined it, perhaps not, when he thought he saw the F-16 shatter on the ground, like a plastic toy dropped onto a stone floor. Then the fuel tanks ruptured and it disappeared in a massive red-and-yellow fireball.
Then came the exhilaration of survival and the joy of the descent before the ground rushed up to meet him. He landed with a thud, which knocked all the breath out of him. He must have blacked out for a moment, because the next thing he saw was the blue of the sky and, in the periphery of his vision, people running toward him from a small village nearby.
Bertinetti lay still for a moment to collect his thoughts. Then he undid his harness and rolled to his feet. He could stand and he could walk. He rolled his shoulders and everything seemed to work. That was good, because that meant he could get straight back into an F-16.