The SA-8 Gecko was a modern battlefield missile on a mobile launcher. It was a dangerous opponent, equipped with an optical backup in case its radar was jammed. Hooter’s voice rose in pitch. “Ivan’s hit!”
Tony clicked twice in acknowledgment. He was too busy to talk. Five seconds to go. Flak bursts and tracers were starting to appear and were closer than usual. By this time in the war, the gun crews were getting experienced.
And they were well placed. Someone had guessed how an attack would be made. The SAM launcher was well sited to engage aircraft as they entered, and the guns covered the part of the attack run where they would have to fly straight and level.
There. The pipper had crawled down a line until it crossed the target. RELEASE appeared in the lower left corner and Tony pressed a button on the stick. At the same time he pushed the throttle all the way forward. The increased thrust pushed him into the seat just as he felt the two bombs leave the aircraft.
Two BLU-109 bombs arced toward the target. Designed to penetrate reinforced concrete, they had thick, hard cases. If either one hit the twenty-foot-wide door, it would go right through and explode inside.
He pulled up and to the right, hard, and watched the indicator run up from one g to seven times the force of gravity. He was grunting, tensing his muscles to fight the pull when a white smoke trail passed over and in front of his plane.
The bastard almost had him. His first thought was the launcher that Hooter had called earlier, but this came from a different direction. Probably another unit from the same battery. They had launched optically to avoid warning their target. Waiting until the American aircraft finished their run, they fired the SAM as he was turning and climbing, either too busy maneuvering to see the launch or too close to the edge of his envelope to do much about it.
It was blind luck it had missed him. Hooter was still pulling out of his run, so he couldn’t have seen it either. Tony made a decision and instead of leveling out and then diving back down, he kept climbing. “Hooter, SAM launcher on the right. I’m taking it.”
He heard the two clicks as he thumbed his stick and the CANNON prompt appeared on the HUD. Tony craned his neck overhead and followed the thinning smoke trail back. There. The wheeled launcher was parked on a level spot, “above” and to the right.
He pulled hard and rolled right, swinging the sky and ground over to their customary positions. It was a steep shot, but he fired and saw hits. SAM launchers were never armored, and hitting the delicate electronics might keep it out of action for a little while, even if the vehicle wasn’t destroyed.
He pulled out, higher than he would have liked, and turned to the exit heading. Looking left and back he could see smoke rising from the shelters. As he craned his neck back farther to see Hooter, black puffs appeared around Tony’s aircraft. The fighter shook, as if it had hit a bump, and suddenly rolled hard left. The right side of the cockpit starred in three places, and the air outside took on a whistling sound.
“I’m hit! Tuba, take over.” Tuba was the alternate package commander, and he acknowledged Tony’s call.
Tony automatically corrected and brought the wings level, but he paused a moment, afraid to look at the instruments. His limbs felt frozen. He knew he had been hit, but how bad?
He gently tried the controls, first the ailerons, then the rudder. Both responded normally. Pushing his nose down, he headed south, which was the exit route anyway. Rule number one for a wounded bird was to get out of Indian Country.
At six hundred knots he was quickly away from the airfield. The air defenses were concentrating on the aircraft now attacking, so Tony’s only problem was getting his damaged Falcon home. A quick scan of the instrument panel showed him one obvious concern. Oil pressure was falling.
Throttling back to cruise power, he called his wingman. “Hooter, I’m hit, losing oil pressure. Look over my right side.”
“Rog, Saint.” Hooter’s plane pulled up quickly until he was flying abreast of Tony’s fighter, fifty feet apart and two hundred feet off the ground.
“You’ve got a couple of good-sized holes in the fuselage,” Hooter reported. “Come up a bit so I can check your belly.”
Tony climbed fifty feet, and Hooter slid underneath and looked him over. “Yep, big black streak coming back from a hole. Something big hit you, maybe a five seven.”
“Rog, Hooter, probably the oil pump.”
Without oil pressure the engine would not get enough lubrication; the bearings would heat up and soon freeze. It wouldn’t happen immediately, but the chance of making a safe landing at base was almost nil.
They could hear the rest of the raid making its attacks and breaking off as well. Tuba, the alternate commander, had led them out along the planned route, while Tony had taken another, so that if enemy fighters showed up, they would be drawn to the larger group and ignore Tony and Hooter.
Normally they would call for combat rescue, but they were still too far north. He would have to fly south another fifteen minutes before he would be in range for a pickup.
All Tony could do was nurse his crippled bird as far south as possible. His fighter was a valuable machine, and if he could make it to an airfield, it could fight again. Also, any landing, on a road or even a cowpath, was better than a wheels-up into a rice paddy or bailing out.
And the longer he stayed in the plane, the closer to friendlies he was. Every minute in the air was worth a day of walking on the ground. In open country, that is. Most of Korea was mountains and valleys, and the time to work through the country below him would be measured in weeks, not days.
Survival classes notwithstanding, Tony was determined to stay with the bird until the last possible second. He started a gentle climb, not wanting to throttle up but still milking every bit of altitude he could without losing speed.
Consulting his map, he saw the closest airfield that could take him was Taejon. Of course he had to bypass Seoul and the front, but one thing at a time.
He climbed above the valley walls and turned to the south. In a few minutes he would be across the old DMZ.
According to the engine temperature, a few minutes might be all he had. He compared it with the earlier temperature and computed the rate of increase in his head. No way he would make it to base. Underneath the aircraft the terrain rose and fell like a stormy sea. Nowhere to even try a wheels-up. “Hooter, I’m losing the engine.”
His wingman’s voice was both encouraging and desperate. “Hang in there, Saint. Don’t leave until the engine falls off.”
“I won’t, buddy, but I’m setting up for an ejection, while I have the chance.” Tony heard two clicks in response.
He looked over at Hooter’s aircraft. He was flying abreast and slightly above him, doing his best to look for threats and monitor Tony’s status. In the cockpit he saw his wingman give him a thumbs-up gesture.
Okay, so he was leaving work a little early today. First he hit the switch that wiped out his IFF codes. If that black box survived a crash with the codes still loaded, the enemy would learn a lot. The only documents in the cockpit were a small code card and his map. He stuffed those in his pocket. He would shred the card and bury it after he landed.
After he landed. Tony forced himself to think positively. The Aces II was a very smart seat and had gotten a real workout since the war began. If the pilot survived the initial hit and was able to pull the ring, the seat was certain to get him out of the aircraft.
The problem was that in order to clear a fast-moving jet fighter, the seat had to move even faster. If not, the ejecting pilot would be struck by the tail of his own plane and certainly killed.
About half the pilots that had ejected so far had suffered some sort of injury on ejection: compression fractures of vertebrae, dislocated shoulders, even concussions.
At six hundred knots air was almost as solid as the ground. Something as nonaerodynamic as a man in a seat would be whipped by winds that made a hurricane look tame. Add little or no oxygen and freezing temperature to a parachute landing, and any pilot would be very reluctant to leave his nice, safe damaged fighter.
Tony had a lot of things going for him, though. He was uninjured, could set his airplane up at the optimum altitude and speed, and would have time to brace himself for the ejection shock.
