He saw the other Hornets’ bombs arriving. Kaploom. Kaploom. Kaploom. The geysers erupted in rapid succession. More brown puffs, more vanished buildings.
“Chevy Five off target,” Maxwell called.
“Chevy Six off.”
“Chevy Seven off.”
“Chevy Eight.”
Maxwell pulled up hard, rolling the Hornet into a right bank. All his jets were off target, weapons delivered. Grunting against the Gs, he peered down at the target area. Smoke was billowing from the ruined complex. The Latifiyah assembly plant had just been transformed to a complex of landfills.
It was the best possible result, Maxwell thought. They’d nailed the target and, best of all, they came through unscathed. All they had to do was rejoin and egress. It was time to get out of town.
On the tactical frequency, he heard DeLancey calling AWACS. “Sea Lord, Chevy one. Picture?” He wanted to know if they had intruders.
“Picture clear,” came the voice of Tracey Barnett. “No, wait! Pop up target — East Boston — five miles.”
Maxwell instinctively swung his head to peer over each shoulder, scanning the horizon. Pop up target! It had to be the MiGs. The bastards hadn’t bothered trying to deflect the bombing attack. Instead, they stayed low and waited until the Hornets were coming off the target.
When they were most vulnerable.
The tactical frequency filled with excited chatter.
“Chevy One, bandits two o’clock low!”
“Snap Vector, Chevy One, tactical, one-five-zero, ten miles.”
“Chevy Three, Hound dog at three o’clock, engaging.”
“One copies, three, cleared to strip.”
“Bandits, Bandits! Eight o’clock, three miles!”
Maxwell peered in each direction, trying to pick up the bandits. Where the hell were they? DeLancey’s flight was engaged. Had to be Fulcrums, Maxwell figured, probably up from the Al-Taqqadum air base, less than fifty miles away.
It was classic, Maxwell thought. Just when you started thinking your enemy was on the ropes, he surprised you with a shot to the groin.
The MiGs were all around them.
B.J.’s voice crackled over the radio. “Brick, Break right! Bandit, your right four o’clock low.”
Maxwell jammed the stick to the right and pulled. Straining against the sudden G load, he peered over his right shoulder. Where was —
He saw it. A Fulcrum, low and fast. It looked like a double-finned shark, coming after him.
But the guy was too eager, Maxwell noted. His convergence angle was too acute. Maxwell pulled hard into the attacker and kept turning. He could see that the MiG was going to overshoot, go wide behind him. He would set up the kill for B.J.
“Stay in your turn, Brick,” called B.J. “I’ll have a shot in ten seconds.”
Maxwell pulled harder. You’d better have a shot, he thought. They were both going to be toast in about fifteen seconds. The MiG jockey had buddies out there.
Maxwell was losing sight of the MiG as the Russian-built fighter overshot the turn and disappeared behind him. This was the hard part. His instincts told him to reverse the turn, pull up in a vertical, execute a pirouette and come back down on the MiG. But this wasn’t a one vee one. He had a wingman.
It was B.J.’s job to cover his tail. Stay in your turn. I’ll have a shot in ten seconds. Could she do it? He would soon find out.
Maxwell stayed in the turn.
Bandits high at nine o’clock. DeLancey had both MiGs in sight, but he didn’t call them out. If he called a break turn now, Undra would turn into them and then both would get away.
DeLancey started a turn to the left, keeping his nose down. The lead Fulcrum looked like he was blowing through. The guy was fast, probably trying to get the hell out of town before he got whacked. But the second Fulcrum was out of position, high and wide. He didn’t yet see the Hornets below him.
The second Fulcrum was a sitting duck.
DeLancey selected an AIM-120 radar-guided missile and turned his Hornet hard into the second MiG. As he pulled his nose around for a firing solution, he thought for a second about his own useless wingman. Undra was still back there somewhere. It occurred to DeLancey that Undra could be in trouble. What if the lead MiG didn’t just blow through and decided instead to take a shot at Undra?
DeLancey considered for a second. Perhaps he should delay his turn while he talked Undra back down to the formation. The two Hornets would again have mutual support.
But that would take precious seconds. Time was critical. If he waited for Undra to rejoin, he would lose the MiG.
His fifth kill.
Screw that, thought Killer DeLancey. Undra Cheever was on his own.
Speed is life.
It was the fighter pilot’s mantra, and it was flashing through the mind of Colonel Tariq Jabbar as he led his MiG-29s in a supersonic charge at the enemy Hornets.
He had almost been too late. He was still starting the second engine when the Bazrum staff car came skidding up to the revetment. Jabbar had shoved the number one throttle all the way to the stop and came blasting out of the revetment in a storm of sand and thunder.
Too late, the driver of the oncoming black Fiat saw the big fighter coming at him. He swerved, rocking up on two wheels, just as the MiG slammed into the car.
Jabbar felt a lurch. The left wing rose up, then came back down. Jabbar guessed that the main landing gear had run over the Fiat. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that the automobile was flattened as if it had gone through a crusher.
It occurred to him that he had probably done some damage to his aircraft. He wondered briefly whether the jet was still flyable. It didn’t matter, he decided. He would take off anyway.
Russian airplanes were tough. Tougher than Italian cars.
In pairs his fighters roared down the runway at Al-Taqqadum — just in time to nearly collide with the wave of incoming British Tornado jets. As the MiGs lifted from the runway, the Tornadoes sizzled across the field, spewing their loads of anti-personnel bombs.
The last pair of MiGs didn’t make it. Caught on their take off roll by the deadly shredder bombs, both MiGs burst into flame and fireballed off the end of the runway.
Now they were six.
They stayed low, gathering speed as they hurtled toward Latifiyah. Jabbar’s plan was simple: Keep up the speed and rip through the flight of enemy Hornets, picking off as many as they could. Attack from one side, blow through and exit on the other side. Speed is life.
Soon he saw them, dead ahead, just coming off their bombing targets at Latifiyah. Two Hornets, one low, the other pulling up. Beyond them, two more. And beyond them, still more. Jabbar had plenty of targets from which to choose.
Jabbar selected the high one in the lead section. He was obviously a wingman, but with his nose pointed up, he was blind to his leader, who was accelerating out ahead.
Convenient, thought Jabbar. He banked hard to the right, opening up a lag between him and the Hornet. Then he cranked back hard to the left and pulled up nearly vertical.
There! — an easy low-deflection shot at the Hornet’s tailpipes.
Jabbar waited, gaining a positive lock with the Archer missile’s heat-seeking warhead. He had a good tone, well within range, less than a thousand meters.
He squeezed the trigger.
Whoom! The Archer leaped off its rail. Behind the missile Jabbar could see the thin gray trail of smoke. He watched the Archer quickly overtake the climbing Hornet.
Undra Cheever looked wildly around him. He had to fight hard to suppress the panic that was swelling up in him.