Leo fired for five seconds until the mountain was real as a nightmare before him. He pulled up, hearing in his headphones a litany of destruction as the other elements in the flight placed their bursts in the target zone.
But then:
“Goddamn, Tango Leader, I have a goddamn missile lock-on.”
It was Tango Four, Leo could tell, his voice broken with fear.
“Go to ECM, Tango Four, dispense your chaff and evade, evade—”
Leo heard the explosion.
“Ah, fuck, he, fuck, he got me, goddamn, filling with, goddamn, smoke, ah, shit—”
“Flame out your bad engine, son,” Leo said, “and ride it down, Tango Four, you’re okay.”
Leo turned his head back as he climbed and turned, and saw his flight spread out behind him as the mountain shrank to a lump. Tango Four pulled from the parade of ships, pulling out, its left-side General Electric bleaching the day of color with white fire. It began to slide downward.
“Ride it down, Tango Four, you can pull an abort in a farmyard, plenty of parking places down there—” Leo argued, a sane voice in a crazy world.
“She’s going to blow,” said Tango Four, “and I’m ejecting.”
“Negative, Four, you haven’t the alti—”
But it was too late. Tango Four panicked and ejected at an altitude of four hundred feet. His chute was only half open when he hit the ground. The big plane hit just ahead of him, detonating in a huge smear of fire.
“All right, Tango Flight, let’s get it together,” Leo said to dead silence on the horn. “Goddammit, Delta Six, where’d that fucking SAM come from? Who the fuck are these guys?”
“Tango, we had no idea they had SAM capability. Shit, it looked like a Stinger.”
The Stinger was very bad news. Designated the FIM-92A, it could reach speeds of Mach 2.2 and used proportional navigation and passive infrared homing to engage high speed, extremely maneuverable targets from just about any angle, out to a range of 3.5 miles. It was also highly resistant to electrocountermeasure jamming. It was a bitch. Nobody wanted to go into Stinger country.
“Goddamn,” said a Tango flyer, “Goddamn, Leo, I got a bad hydraulic light on, I’m pulling out.”
“That’s a big negative,” said Leo, “we got some business to finish. Delta Six, you want us to hit it again?”
A new voice came on the net.
“Uh, Tango, Golonel Puller here, that’s an affirmative to the max, you got that? We’ve got some kids about to jump off against the position, and they need all the help they can get.”
“Leo, this goddamn hydraulic is—”
“Off the air, Tango Seven, do you copy. Off the goddamned air!”
Leo led the flight around in a twelve-mile left-hand circle for a second run. The mountain grew before him.
“All right, Tango Flight,” he ordered, “we’re going in in two elements, I’ll take the first element, the two and three ships. We’ll come in north to south, say at 2200, evasive action, electrocountermeasures. I’ll dump some flares if they send the Stingers up. Captain Tarnower, you take the second element, the six, seven, and eight ships, from east to west. Okay, on my mark divide. Let’s mark it, guys, and
Leo pulled from the formation, dipped to the earth, seeing in his rear mirror that three of his six remaining ships stayed with him, while Tarnower, in the Tango Five ship, banked right, taking two birds in behind him.
Who the fuck are these guys? Leo was thinking. Where the hell did they get Stingers?
“Let’s shake it, Tango Flight,” he ordered.
“Flight leader sounds solid,” said Puller to the FAC. They could see the dark ships splitting into two formations, rolling apart from each other and getting down to an assault altitude.
“Leo’s the best,” said the FAC. “Humps tourists for Continental. But damn, he likes that
Around them, the Delta commandos stood watching the show. The drifting tendril of smoke from Tango Four’s crash inscribed a crazy line against the bright blue sky.
Puller blinked. His head ached, all the noise from the jets. He looked at his watch—1442. He could see the National Guard trucks pulled off about halfway up the hill, where Aggressor Force had blown the road and had made out some activity through his binoculars as the officers got the men out and into some kind of attack formation.
“They’re going in again, sir,” said Skazy.
“Lookin’ good, lookin’ real good, Tango Flight,” the FAC said into his microphone.
The planes hit the mountain from two directions, one flight then the other. When they fired, Fuller could see the empty cannon shells cascade from their pods in a fur of smoke. The tracers plunged from under the fuselage like darts. Where they fell against the mountain they ripped it.
But something was wrong.
“They’re firing much longer,” said Fuller. “Goddammit, they’re firing much longer.”
The FAC said, “Uh, I think some of the guys are really pouring it on.”
“Bullshit,” said Puller, “they’re just hosepiping their ammo away so they don’t have to go back.”
He grabbed the mike away from the FAC.
“Tango Flight, Delta Six here, goddammit, you men, slow your fire down, you’re wasting rounds on nothing.”
“Tango Flight, this is Tango Leader, you guys conserve your ammo, you hear. Goddammit.”
“Leo, I’m dry,” a voice came.
“Six, you pumped most of your shit into Washington County, goddammit, I saw—”
“Missiles,” said Skazy on the ground. “They’ve fired more missiles.”
“Heatseekers,” said the FAC.
The missiles, leaking thin streaks of white gas, went like fast dogs for the planes, which themselves began to fantail and scud, breaking this way and that as the missiles hunted them. They broke from their formation like the petals of an immense rose unfolding over the white mountain. Most of the missiles failed to lock on, whirling off until they burned through their few seconds of fuel, at which point their contrails disappeared and they fell to earth. But—
“Missile lock-on, goddamn, missile lock-on!” came the scream over the radio. A missile hit an A-10 engine with a thud heard on the ground, and dissolved it in a burst of light; the plane wobbled; a second missile, seeking the larger heat signature of the burning power plant, plunged into it, and the plane fell from the sky dead.
“Goddamn, I’ve got no controls, nothing’s respon—”
The sentence ended in a cornfield.
“Leo, I’m down to zero lead,” came the call.
“Leo, my hydraulics are shot. They put some shit into my wings.”
“Leo, my controls are all mushy.”
“Tango Flight, you stay on station,” said Leo Pell.
“What’s your ammo?” Puller demanded over the radio.
“Sir, I’m all dry,” came the response.
“Delta Six, this is Tango Leader. I’ve got about seven seconds left. I’ll go in again. Tango Flight, form up on Captain Tarnower and head for home.”
“Leo,” said the FAC, “you can’t go in there alone.”
“Hey, I’ve got seven seconds of rock and roll left, you think I’m going to park this pig with it?”
“Jesus,” said the FAC to Puller. “If he’s got the only signature in the sky, their heatseekers will nail his butt sure. Those were Stingers, too, the best. Where the hell they get Stingers?”
Puller didn’t answer.
“What’s his name again?”
“Leo Pell.”
“Major Pell, this is Colonel Puller, do you copy?”
“I copy, Delta Six.”
“I am advised you have a low to zero survival probability.”
