Three Foxbats had been destroyed by the three Falcons, but the NATO air force’s problem, here as elsewhere, was starkly evidenced by the encounter. The American Falcons had killed the three Russian MiGs, but with the Soviet-Warsaw Pact’s 3,000-plus fighters against NATO’s 2,070, not counting the Soviet fighters in Russia, the deadly equation was still there.
Since the first sortie at dawn, Delcorte had lost sixteen pounds, but now once more he, like the other three Americans, felt exhilarated by the kill as they now headed down to bomb and strafe the long supply columns stretching out across East Germany, the enemy’s breakout all along NATO’s front from Austria to the Baltic continuing unabated. Delcorte’s right wing-man fired a Sparrow from twenty miles at a Soviet swing wing. He ‘d mistaken a Flogger MiG-23, equipped with a “High Lark” fifty-mile range nose radar, for a Flogger D.
“Save the heavy stuff,” Delcorte cut in. “Only when we need it.” He was reminding the pilot, but not saying it on open channel, of what they’d been told in the ready room that morning — that NATO’s supply of all AA and AS missiles was dwindling until the convoys got through.
The MiG-23, at the end of the Sparrow’s maximum range, dropped a pod of flares, or “highballs,” as the Americans called them, the MiG rolling away at relatively low speed, reducing the temperature of its exhaust. While the MiG pilot hoped to obmanut’—to “sucker”—the American missile to one of the flares if it was a heat seeker, he momentarily disengaged his radar as an added precaution, just in case the missile wasn’t a heat seeker. It saved him, die Sparrow made to home in on radar signals, not infrared.
“I’m gonna get me a Phoenix,” complained the wingman in disappointment. “No evading that baby.”
Delcorte said nothing other than to tell the others to follow, peeling off to attack a goods train winding through the foothills of the eastern Harz Mountains. “Note for debriefing,” Delcorte told the others. It was the first train they’d seen moving in broad daylight so close to what had been the border between the two Germanys. Running trains in the daytime was dangerous in any war, even though, contrary to public belief, a rail link was extremely hard to put out of action for long, even with state-of-the-art jets. A daylight run might mean, however, that supplies at the front were running dangerously low. If this could be confirmed by Allied intelligence pilots in other sectors, it could be important for NATO to launch counterattacks with fewer NATO troops now rather than waiting later for a buildup. “Who’s got the Brownie?” asked Delcorte.
“I have,” answered his left wingman.
Delcorte knew he should have known who was on camera, but after three sorties today, five the day before, twelve — no, thirteen — planes down, the detail of who was designated “re-con” duty had escaped him. “Get a shot of that?”
“No problem.”
For a moment as they went below ten thousand for the attack run, Delcorte saw the humps of mountains where there was no evidence of fighting, even though he knew that on the other side of the range there was the beleaguered British Army of the Rhine, Dutch troops trapped with them. Farther down, more NATO divisions, primarily Americans and West Germans, were trying to hold ground on the central and southern front, so that to anyone west of the Harz, the whole planet must seem afire with war. Only here, high above, could one appreciate the fact that there were areas that the war had not yet touched.
On the first run in, the train, mostly boxcars, rounded fuel wagons interspersed with quads of antiaircraft guns, was going into a long, slow turn over a canal. “Bingo!” called one of the other pilots, signaling his fuel warning light was on and that he was breaking formation, heading back to base.
Delcorte centered his two five-hundred-pounders, released them, felt the plane buffeted by wind sheer as he climbed, the bombs bursting either side of the line but close enough that their craters tore out rail lengths. The train wobbled for a second.
“Beautiful, Colonel!” came another pilot’s congratulation as he, too, headed back to base.
The train now looked like a chopped-up worm, the rear section thrown helter-skelter off the rails, only the front cars, about thirty, still upright but off track, one, its side split, spilling a load of sulfur, the yellow in stark contrast to the green fields by the track. But Delcorte knew that derailing the train would delay it only a matter of hours, and so he and the remaining F-16s came in again, Delcorte leading.
He never saw the missile — only felt a thump somewhere on the fuselage and the F-16 shaking violently. He pulled the stick back and gave her full power. He was climbing, but barely, and it felt like a heart-testing machine that, no matter what he did, would not allow him to go faster, sweat pouring from him, instruments jiggling, fuel warning light on, a pins-and-needles sensation in his right leg. He was at three thousand. Quickly he tightened his harness, pulled his legs hard together, reached up overhead, gripped the two ejector rings, and pulled them down over his front.
With the sound of a pistol shot, the cockpit was gone — the ejection the most violent shock he’d ever felt — and all he could think about was whether the pins and needles in his right leg meant he was shot up, the walls of blue sky, spinning cloud, and green fields, the brown of a farmhouse coming up at him. For a second he was convinced the chute hadn’t opened, but then, quite suddenly, he seemed still in the air, the drag weight growing heavier under his arms, and he had the sensation of actually moving upward though he was still drifting down, a good seven miles from the train — now a thin, black line in the Harz’s purple foothills.
When he landed there was still not much feeling in his leg, but he could see he wasn’t shot. He made no attempt to hide the parachute as it was inconceivable to him that though he was in the countryside, anyone would have failed to see him land. But when he spotted the truck, green-uniformed troops standing in the back against the wooden slat side, he began pulling the parachute in, feeling, oddly enough, that he’d be in trouble if he didn’t. Littering. He knelt down by the camouflage-patterned chute, took out his standard-issue.45, placed it on the chute, felt for the emergency ration pack, slipped the packet in his flying suit, and stood up, hands held high, walking well away from the sidearm so there’s be no possible misunderstanding.
The truck stopped ten feet from him, and a stout GDR “Home Force” officer came out, pistol drawn, looking grumpily at him and walking over with the exaggerated stride of a minor official, peering at the chute and the.45 but touching neither, as if there might be some booby trap. Then he started shouting at Delcorte, pointing in the distance to what presumably was the train wreck.