sloppiness in their flying, a looseness of control. They flew with that
lack of polish and confidence of the pupil.
They were soft targets, easy pickings.
However, it did not need the three red rings about the leader's fuselage
to identify him as a Russian instructor.
Some leery old veteran with hawk's blood in his veins, tough and canny,
and dangerous as an angry black mamba.
Engage two port targets, David ordered Joe, reserving the MIG leader and
the starboard echelon for his attack.
In David's headphones the missiles were growling their anxiety, they had
sniffed out the massed jet blasts below them and already they were
tracking, howling their eagerness to kill.
David switched to command net. Hello, Desert Flower, this is Bright
Lance on target and requesting strike. Almost instantly the voice came
back, David, this is the Brig- he was speaking, rapidly, urgently,
discontinue attack pattern. I repeat, disengage target.
They are no longer hostile. Break off attack Shocked by the command,
David glanced down the deep valley of cloud and saw the long brown
valley of the Jordan falling away behind them. They had crossed over a
line on the earth and immediately their roles had changed from defender
to aggressor. But they were closing the target rapidly. It was a fair
bounce, they were still unaware.
We are going to hit them, David made the decision through the cold
bright thing that burned within him and he closed command net and spoke
to Joe. Two, this is leader attacking. Negative! I say again
negative! Joe called urgently. Target is no longer hostile? Remember,
Hannah! David shouted into his mask. Conform to me! and he curled his
finger about the trigger and touched left rudder, yawing fractionally to
bring the nearest 1VUG into the field of his sights. It seemed to
balloon in size as he shrieked towards it.
There was a heart-beat of silence from Joe, and then his voice strangled
and rough. Two conforming. Kill them, Joe, David yelled and pressed
against the spring-loaded tension of the trigger. There was a soft
double hiss, hardly discernible above the jet din, and from under each
wing-tip the missiles unleashed, they skidded and twisted as they
aligned themselves on the targets, leaving darkly etched trails of
vapour across David's front, and at that moment the MIGs became aware.
At a shouted warning from their leader, the enULC formation burst into
its five separate parts, splintering silvery swift like a shoal of
sardines before the driving charge of the barracuda.
The rearmost Syrian was slow, he had only just begun to turn away when
one of the sidewinders flicked its tail, followed his turn and united
with him in an embrace of death.
The shock wave of the explosion jarred David's machine, but the sound of
it was muted as the MIG was enveloped in the greenish-tinted cloud of
the strike and it shattered into fragments. A wing snapped off and went
whirling high and the brief blooming flower of smoke blew swiftly past
David's head.
The second missile had chosen the machine with the red ring, the
formation leader, but the Russian reacted so swiftly and pulled his turn
