He couldn’t see anyone. Not the skipper, whom he was supposed to be following, and not the goddamn MiGs that were all over them like a cheap suit. Where were the MiGs everyone was jabbering about?
His overriding thought after pulling off the target was simple: Get out of Dodge. Get the nose up, get away from those motherless anti-aircraft gunners down there who might get lucky and whack you with an eighty-eight millimeter.
He had lost sight of his leader. Where was Killer?
“Chevy One,” Undra called, “Chevy Two is blind on you.”
“Your twelve o’clock low, engaged,” DeLancey answered. “Get your nose down.”
Engaged? Shit, that meant Killer was already in a furball with a MiG, trying to score another kill. Killer didn’t give a fat rat’s ass about his own wingman.
Undra pushed over, rolling up on his side to scan the terrain ahead. He picked up Killer’s Hornet low, in a left turn.
Then he glimpsed something over his left shoulder. What was that? He saw a glint of sunlight, a trail of gray smoke.
Suddenly he knew what he was seeing. Oh, shit, here comes a…
In the next instant, he sensed the flash of the missile’s warhead. Then the explosion. It was the last thing Undra Cheever felt.
“Fox Two!” called B.J.
About time, thought Maxwell, still in a hard left turn. The MiG was still behind him somewhere. The radio call from his wingman meant that she had just taken a Sidewinder shot.
Maxwell kept turning. Any second he ought to be hearing —
“Splash One!” B.J.’s voice had a throaty, triumphant ring.
Maxwell saw it over his right shoulder. The MiG-29 was falling like a shotgunned dove. B.J.’s Hornet was still locked onto his tail, prepared to launch another Sidewinder.
Seconds later, the MiG’s canopy separated. Maxwell saw a flash, and the tiny insect-like pilot’s ejection seat popped up and behind the stricken jet. The parachute canopy blossomed and floated toward the desert.
Maxwell couldn’t help thinking about the Iraqi pilot. He wondered how the guy would feel when he found out he had made history. He was the first jet fighter pilot to be shot down by a woman.
He and B.J were nearly abeam now, the same altitude. Maxwell realized the fight wasn’t over.
He saw two specks. MiGs. They were coming at them from three o’clock.
“Chevy Six, Break right, bandits three o’clock level!”
The fight was on again.
Maxwell barely had time to roll into the oncoming MiGs. Too late for a head-on shot. They merged.
Whoom! They passed nose-to-nose with over a thousand miles per hour closure speed. The lead MiG swept past so close Maxwell could see the pilot’s head in the cockpit.
He was wearing a red helmet.
Coming off the target at Latifiyah, Flash Gordon could see his wingman, Leroi Jones, a quarter mile abeam. Gordon and Jones were the second pair of Hornets in Killer DeLancey’s four-plane division.
Through all the garble on the tac frequency, he was getting the picture. Pop up targets! But how many?
He glanced at his situational display, then peered outside at the hazy desert sky. Killer and Undra were out there somewhere, already engaged. It was the job of the second section — Flash and Leroi — to cover them.
Then he heard Leroi’s voice on the tac radio. “Bandits eight o’clock converging. I don’t think they see us.”
He looked. He saw only empty sky. “No joy, visual, press!” I don’t see them but I have you in sight. You have the lead.
“Roger, Leroi has the lead. Hard left, Flash! Bandits low, nine o’clock. I’m pulling nose on to them.”
Damn! Flash still couldn’t see them. He followed Leroi’s left turn and pulled hard.
“Keep your turn in,” Leroi said. “We’re gonna have a shot.”
A shot at what? Flash still saw nothing but sand and sky.
There. Low and nearly invisible in their desert-colored paint schemes. He had a good visual ID. They were definitely Fulcrums moving fast on a nearly parallel track.
“Tally two, visual,” Flash said.
“I got the leader,” answered Leroi.
“Okay, Flash has the trailer.”
He was getting a lock with the APG-73 radar, which confirmed that the target was a MiG-29. At this speed the range was at the extreme end for a Sidewinder shot. An AIM-7 Sparrow would be a good choice, Flash thought. An AIM-120 AMRAAM active radar-guided missile would be even better.
Flash’s thumb selected AMRAAM on the side of the Hornet’s stick grip. He pushed the castle switch forward, commanding the radar to bore-sight search. Instantly it locked onto the MiG. Peering through the HUD, he confirmed that he had the trailer MiG boxed inside the in-range circle. At the top of the acquisition box in the display, he was getting a flashing cue: SHOOT.
Flash squeezed the trigger.
Whoom! The AMRAAM roared away from the Hornet, trailing fire and gray smoke.
“Chevy Seven, Fox Three,” he called, signaling an AMRAAM shot.
Three seconds later, he heard Leroi Jones. “Chevy Eight, Fox Three.” In his peripheral vision, Flash saw Leroi’s missile arcing through the sky toward the lead MiG.
Both MiGs abruptly broke to the right. Flash turned with his target, keeping his MiG locked up and in sight. He knew that the Fulcrum pilots were getting an urgent radar warning signal. By now they knew missiles were in the air.
From the trailer MiG spewed a trail of silver radar-defeating chaff.
Too late. The missile slammed into the Fulcrum just aft of the canopy. Still in its hard right evasive turn, the MiG broke apart. An instant later, the jet’s center fuel tank erupted in a billowing orange fireball.
“Splash One!” called Flash Gordon, watching the burning hulk of the MiG fall like a comet.
The lead MiG’s turn was nearly abrupt enough to elude Leroi’s missile. But as the missile overshot the tail of the fighter, the proximity fuse detonated the warhead. Pieces of the jet’s big vertical fins broke away, followed by sections from its destroyed tail surfaces.
The MiG went into a sickening skid, then began a roll to the left. Flash saw the canopy separate from the jet, The rocket-propelled ejection hurtled the pilot clear of the destroyed fighter.
“Splash One!” called Leroi Jones.
Over his shoulder, Flash kept the tiny figure of the MiG pilot in view as he fell toward the desert. After what seemed like minutes — it was actually less than five seconds — he saw a round beige-colored parachute canopy pop open like a parasol.
Flash raised his hand in a salute.
Things were going badly, Jabbar thought. At least four of his MiGs were down. They’d killed only one Hornet — the one he had taken on his first pass through the attacking force.
Now this. He was in a turning fight.
He couldn’t believe his own stupidity. Or arrogance. He had violated the tactical doctrine he tried to impress on his young pilots: Fly through the enemy. Shoot and exit.
You didn’t engage an F/A-18 in a classic dogfight. The big MiG-29 was a powerful, brutish fighter, but its greatest assets were its speed and its vertical capability. In an old-fashioned turning, gyrating dogfight, it was outclassed by the more agile F/A-18.
When he passed the lead Hornet, he knew he should have continued straight ahead. His great speed advantage would have taken him out of range before the Hornets could reverse and target him.