Now. Maxwell rolled the Hornet inverted and jammed the throttles forward to full thrust. He pulled hard on the stick, yanking the nose of the Hornet toward the earth below.
He saw tracers arcing past his wing. The surprise move had gained him a split-second’s advantage. But no more. DeLancey was dangerously close behind him.
Maxwell was betting everything on DeLancey’s ego. DeLancey had been so sure of a kill, he might make a mistake. He would follow him down.
And he did.
Maxwell abruptly reversed his own turn and hauled the nose of his jet back up. Up toward a vertical line.
DeLancey’s nose was already deep below the horizon, and he was too fast. He was committed. By the time he reversed, pointing his Hornet upward again, it was too late. He had veered outside Maxwell’s tight climbing turn.
Maxwell had a precious altitude advantage. Keeping the nose of his Hornet pointed high, he reversed direction again. Beneath his nose he saw DeLancey going into a high-G roll, trying to initiate another scissors duel.
Maxwell didn’t join the scissors. He kept his jet perched on its tail as he executed a rudder pirouette, changing directions, pulling his nose back below the horizon.
DeLancey’s F/A-18 was directly in front of him.
Maxwell rolled upright and eased the nose of his fighter back up, fanning his speed brake to keep from overshooting. He was pointed at DeLancey’s jet, so close he could read the numbers on the tail. He pulled the throttles back to keep from overrunning.
DeLancey’s jet was inverted, at the apogee of its scissors roll. The sleek gray shape of the Hornet filled Maxwell’s windscreen.
Maxwell’s radar gun director was locked on. He tracked DeLancey’s jet with the gunsight pipper in his HUD. The range indicated only 500 feet.
Peering through the gunsight, he flew the pipper onto the forward half of DeLancey’s jet.
He had a clear view of DeLancey’s helmet in the cockpit. He slid the pipper directly over the helmet. His finger wrapped around the trigger.
He hesitated.
You can’t do this. For an instant he argued with himself. You can’t kill a friendly.
Then he remembered: The tape in the pocket of his flight suit. DeLancey had killed Spam Parker.
DeLancey was trying to kill him.
Maxwell squeezed the trigger. And held it.
Brrrrrraaaaaaaaaaap! The airframe of the fighter vibrated as the Vulcan spewed out bullets at 6,000-rounds-per-minute.
He was shocked by the ferocity of the cannon. The cockpit where DeLancey’s helmet had been exploded in a blur of fragments.
Brrrrrraaaaaaaaaaap! The stream of bullets worked aft, opening the fuselage like it was a tin can. The F/A-18 in his gunsight disintegrated. The fuselage fuel tank ignited. DeLancey’s Hornet erupted in a pulsing orange blob of fire.
A cloud of debris appeared in front of his nose. Instinctively, Maxwell ducked.
Whap! Thunk!
He emerged from the cloud into clear sky. No more debris. No more hostile fighters. No one trying to kill him, at least for the moment.
But his troubles weren’t over. He glanced at his fuel quantity display. He was down to less than one thousand pounds of fuel.
He wouldn’t make it out of Iraq.
He heard something else. “Engine Left, Engine Left,” said Bitchin’ Betty, the robotic aural warning.
His left engine was no longer running.
Butch Kissick ran his hand through his close-cropped hair. “Would someone tell me what the fuck is going on?”
“I had two targets,” Tracey Barnett said. “Chevy Five and someone else.”
“Whaddya mean someone else? Someone who else?”
“I don’t know. Maybe another Hornet. Chevy One went EMCON, no squawk, no reply. It could have been him. But now he’s gone.”
“You mean —”
“Like he was morted, Butch. It looked like they were in a furball. Then something happened. Someone — or something — took him out.”
Kissick stared at her. “You mean Chevy Five? No. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I know. But I didn’t see anything —”
“Sea Lord,” came a voice over the tac frequency. “This is Chevy Five.”
Kissick and Tracey looked at each other. Kissick grabbed his microphone. “Sea Lord copies, Chevy Five. What’s going on out there?”
“I’m low state. I’ll flame out in five minutes. I need the tanker.”
“Texaco tanker is on East Chicago station. Can you make it that far?”
“Negative. My left engine is shut down. I don’t have the fuel to make it out of country.”
Kissick lowered the microphone and stared at the console. Jesus, this entire strike was turning into a world class cluster fuck. One Hornet confirmed lost, another probably down under very strange circumstances. Now Chevy Five was about to punch out over a country full of extremely pissed-off Iraqis.
He needed a miracle.
“Hang in there, cowboy,” Kissick said. “I’m working on it.”
“Texaco Tanker, this is Sea Lord. Got a hot vector for you. You ready?”
The voice of the KC-10 tanker pilot crackled back over Butch Kissick’s headset: “Say the bearing and distance, Sea Lord.”
“He’s heading south, Boston one-four-five degrees, two-two-five miles.”
“Sorry, Sea Lord. Unable.”
Kissick blinked as if he’d been slapped. “Guess I didn’t copy right, Texaco. Sounded like you said ‘unable.’”
“Affirm, Sea Lord. Rules of engagement. We can’t go in country.”
Kissick couldn’t believe this shit. He knew that big lumbering tankers like the KC-10 — a militarized version of the DC-10 commercial jetliner — were considered too vulnerable to send into combat areas. Instead, they orbited at the periphery of hostile territory, like airborne gas stations.
But damn it, this was war. You did what you had to do. You took risks.
“What are you talking about, rules of engagement? We got an egressing shooter about to flame out in Indian country.”
“Rules are rules, Sea Lord. Wish I could help.”
Kissick’s eyeballs bulged to the size of golf balls. Rules are rules? Kissick wanted to wrap his hands around the tanker pilot’s windpipe. He knew the guy from back in Riyadh. He was an Air Force captain named Dexter who could quote chapter and verse from the operations manuals. Dexter was going to make a great airline pilot someday.
“Listen, jerk face, I don’t give a flying fuck about your rules. This is Hammer, your Airborne Command Element, and I’m in charge here, understand? I’m giving you a direct order. Steer three-five-zero degrees and descend to 22,000 feet.” Kissick’s voice was rising in a crescendo of wrath. “Now! Do you copy?”
Kissick knew that he had overplayed his hand. He glanced over at Tracey Barnett. Her lips were moving in a silent supplication.
For several seconds the frequency was quiet.
They heard the tanker pilot’s voice: “Texaco copies. We’re steering three-five-zero and descending. We’ll try to pick up your shooter.”
Kissick sighed and put down his microphone. Before this day was over, he knew he’d be on the carpet in the general’s office. Dexter was right about rules being rules. But what the hell. He’d had a good career. Maybe it was time to go fishing.
Forty miles.
They were closing rapidly, but not rapidly enough. Still a hundred twenty miles inside Iraq.
As much as he hated doing so, Maxwell forced himself to glance again at the fuel quantity indicator. Three hundred pounds. It was no longer a precise number. At such a low quantity the Hornet’s fuel quantity indication system could have a plus-minus error of several hundred pounds.