Maxwell had to grin as he remembered how he had worried about his wingman. A nugget — a female nugget — on her first combat sortie. From this day on, B.J. Johnson would be considered the equal of any pilot in the squadron.
Maxwell was still more than twenty miles northwest of Latifiyah. He could see columns of black smoke billowing skyward from the ruined complex. One of the buildings was still blazing fiercely. Probably one of the propellant storage facilities, Maxwell guessed.
He gave the complex a wide berth.
In his situational display, he saw that all the Reagan group strikers were southward bound. No targets on his radar, no data-linked targets from the AWACS.
It meant that he was the last Hornet out of the target area.
But then he looked again. Wait a second. There was something else. Another blip was showing up on the display. He wasn’t alone.
DeLancey made one last sweep along the northern arc of the target area. If any MiGs were still alive and flying out here, he wanted them.
He’d already had a sweet day. The big number five! A number six would be even sweeter.
Too bad about Undra, he reflected. It was his own fault. If the dumb shit had stayed in position, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten whacked by the MiG.
With his radar DeLancey was sorting out the Hornets as they egressed the target area. His own second section, Craze and Hozer, had been the first out of the target area. They were almost to the tanker at the southern Iraq border. Not far behind were Flash and Leroi, who had each collected a MiG before making their egress.
By listening to the tactical frequency, DeLancey knew that Maxwell and his female wingman had also somehow gotten MiGs. Now she was on her way south, on her own.
Maxwell was the last one in the target area.
DeLancey had the symbol of Maxwell’s Hornet in his situational display. He was almost straight ahead, ten miles. He was slow, probably to conserve fuel.
DeLancey switched off his radar transponder — the device that identified him on the AWACS radar screen. He steered the nose of his Hornet toward the symbol for Maxwell’s fighter. He had a thirty-knot speed advantage.
Peering through his HUD, DeLancey picked up the grayish profile of Maxwell’s Hornet.
“Chevy One, this is Sea Lord,” came the voice of the woman AWACS controller. “Do you read Sea Lord?”
DeLancey did not answer.
“Chevy One, we’re not getting a transponder squawk. If you read, squawk Mode two.”
DeLancey ignored the call. He left his transponder switched off.
He saw Maxwell’s Hornet make a thirty-degree turn to the right. Maxwell knew he was back there, and he was getting a visual ID.
“Chevy One, is that you at my five o’clock?” he heard Maxwell call.
DeLancey kept his silence. On his stores display, he selected SIDEWINDER. He heard the low growl of the seeker unit as it acquired its target.
Maxwell was getting an uneasy feeling.
The guy behind him was definitely a Hornet. But why wasn’t he talking or squawking a code? Perhaps he had combat damage and had lost his radios. If so, he would need help getting home.
Maxwell slowed his jet down and started a right turn. The radioless Hornet could join up, and Maxwell would escort him back to the ship on his wing.
But the Hornet wasn’t making any attempt to join up. Instead he was bore-sighting Maxwell with the nose of his fighter.
As if he were tracking him.
A warning signal went off in Maxwell’s brain. He looked again at the Hornet behind him. The range was close for a missile shot, but within limits. With his left hand he reached over and touched the hard rectangular lump of the audio cassette in his breast pocket.
Like the last pieces of a puzzle, it was coming together. The pilot in the Hornet behind him was the same one who killed Spam Parker by talking her into the ramp. The same one who claimed a MiG in Desert Storm that someone else shot down.
He knows that you know.
Maxwell slammed his jet into a hard turn.
A second later he saw it. A flash on the Hornet’s right wingtip. The missile was off the rail. Behind it trailed a telltale wisp of gray smoke. It looked like a stubby pencil, flying a pursuit curve toward him.
Turning hard inside the curving path of the missile, Maxwell hit the flare dispenser. Flares were decoys. They were supposed to fool the Sidewinder missile’s heat-seeking head.
The missile wasn’t fooled. It was boring straight toward Maxwell’s jet.
Maxwell felt sweat pouring down from his helmet into his eyes. His only hope was to outturn the missile at the last second.
He forced himself to wait. It was his only chance. Wait. Wait until the missile was almost —
Now. He hauled back hard on the stick and shoved the throttles into full afterburner, using the extra thrust of the afterburners to tighten the Hornet’s turn.
He winced as the Sidewinder passed behind the Hornet’s tail.
There was no explosion.
The hard turn in afterburner had been too much for its finned control system. The missile hadn’t come close enough to Maxwell’s Hornet to detonate the proximity fuse.
DeLancey’s Hornet was in a steep bank, going for Maxwell’s tail. With his speed advantage, DeLancey was almost in gun range.
Maxwell knew he had to keep DeLancey outside his turn radius. Keep him from drawing a lead with his 20 mm. Vulcan Gatling cannon.
He knew the odds were against him. Killer DeLancey was the toughest air-to-air opponent in the fleet. And the most successful.
He saw DeLancey’s jet slide to the outside of the sharp turn and pitch up into a high yo-yo. He was conserving his airspeed, trying to set up for a shot with the cannon.
Maxwell reversed his turn. He rolled back into DeLancey’s jet.
The distance between them had narrowed. Because of DeLancey’s greater speed, and because Maxwell’s turn had been tighter, the two Hornets were nearly parallel.
They turned into each other, passing nearly nose-to-nose.
As Maxwell turned hard again back toward DeLancey, he heard the robotic voice of Bitchin’ Betty, the F/A-18’s aural warning system: “Bingo. Bingo.”
He was almost out of fuel.
But he couldn’t exit the fight. The two jets were in a classic scissors duel. Neither could quit without exposing his tail to a shot from the other. It was a fight to the finish.
By the third reversal, neither had gained any advantage. Each pilot was flying his Hornet to its maximum. Maxwell knew that DeLancey would stay in the fight until they ran out of fuel. Or until one of them was dead.
Another reversal, another head-on pass.
Maxwell realized it couldn’t last much longer. DeLancey would know that he was low on fuel. All he had to do was wait for Maxwell to flame out.
Okay, Maxwell said to himself. Let it happen.
He pulled both throttles back. As if the engines had flamed out, the Hornet lost airspeed rapidly.
Maxwell rolled out of his steep turn and rocked his wings. It was a signal of surrender. DeLancey could either fire on him now or wait and strafe him in his parachute.
He saw DeLancey’s Hornet roll in for the kill.
The Hornet was closing rapidly. He hoped DeLancey was eager. So eager he would wait for an extremely close range before he opened up with the 20 mm. The Hornet carried only 400 rounds of ammunition. At the Vulcan cannon’s high rate of fire, the ammo would be gone in a few seconds.
He saw the shape of the Hornet swell behind him. A thousand yards back, closing.
Eight hundred yards. Any second the Vulcan would fire —