streamed by, flashing past almost too fast to consciously see, and Hooter concentrated on lining his nose up exactly with the target line on the HUD. The word RELEASE flashed in the corner and he pressed the release button on the stick, simultaneously twisting it hard to the right. He grunted hard, tensing his muscles as his weight suddenly quintupled. The practice bomb flew off the rack, literally thrown toward the target as the plane turned away.
They both turned south and headed out on a prearranged bearing. Hooter called, “Good timing on the flare, Saint. Any earlier and I wouldn’t have locked on in time.”
Tony looked over to pinpoint his wingman’s plane against the dark night sky. “Your run looked good, Hooter. My turn now, watch the interval on approach.”
They reversed roles and prepared for another run on the target. In wartime, making a second run on a now- alerted enemy was a good way to suddenly lose an airplane. But this was training, and each aircraft had enough bombs for three attack runs.
Tony’s first run on the target was good, but Hooter’s evasive maneuvers were pretty limp. They switched again and Tony told John to keep one eye on him as he threw the ship around. On the next attack run, Hooter’s flare didn’t ignite so they bugged out of the target area and reformed. As they turned back south for Hooter’s final go at the much-abused paint spot, Tony shifted in his seat. He was starting to get tired and he had a few runs left to go. He frowned and settled in to concentrate on the oncoming target.
As Tony pulled up and hit the flare release, he heard a
His mask pressed into his face, and he tensed his body to fight the g forces.
Hooter’s voice was excited. “Roger, you have the lead. I’ll come up on your right.”
As he heard his wingman’s voice in his helmet, Tony thumbed a button on his throttle. The radar display changed to air mode, the pattern on the HUD display shifted, and the word CANNON appeared in the lower left corner. Although the bombs and Sidewinders were practice versions, the 20-millimeter ammo in his M61 gun was live. The weapons computer automatically selected cannon when he pressed the dogfight button.
As his nose swung around, the radar picked up two contacts about twenty miles out. Both showed positive IFF. They were friendlies. Whew. He turned the radar off, to avoid revealing his position.
Easing up on the turn so that Hooter could join up quicker, he looked over his right shoulder. His wingman was on burner, pulling into position about a mile to the right and back. “Hooter, they’re friendlies. Safety out your ordnance and we’ll play.”
“Arming phasers, Kyptin.”
Tony was unimpressed. “I’m going for a nine-lima slew, then we’re going vertical.” As he said this, he put the aircraft in a gentle dive since a lower altitude made them harder to spot or lock on to. Hooter followed him down automatically.
“Rog. It’s showtime.”
The range had closed to about ten miles. Still nothing visible in the night sky ahead. Tony turned the radar back on and put it in SLEW mode. A new circle appeared on his HUD marking the spot where the radar “saw” the lead bogey closing at five hundred knots. Tony used a small control to move it over to the left, well off his line of flight. This was going to be a difficult shot, but he was the squadron’s weapons officer. He had to teach it to everybody else.
Suddenly a small box appeared around the circle — he was locked on. He selected the AIM-9L Sidewinder on the left wingtip and was rewarded with a growl in his headphones. The IR seeker on the missile had its target in view and was telling him with an audible signal. SHOOT appeared on the HUD and he pulled the trigger.
The missiles were practice rounds without propellant or warheads, so nothing left the rail. But if it had been real, his target would be dead. Tony grinned under his oxygen mask. The video recorder would display all the data on the HUD as proof back at debrief.
The two oncoming planes were just visible now, rushing toward him out of the starlit darkness. They were F-16s.
Tony came up on the wing frequency. “Lead Falcon heading south over Range Alpha, this is Bluejay One. Gotcha.” The missile’s growl was audible on the circuit.
There was no answer, but their two opponents broke hard left, turning toward them. Tony saw it and called, “Burner.” He shoved his throttle all the way forward. As the engine responded with a satisfying roar, he pulled back sharply on the stick.
The F-16 Falcon is one of the most agile aircraft in the world. Among its other sterling qualities is an engine that puts out more thrust than the aircraft weighs. This means that it can do very interesting things, like accelerate while going straight up.
They climbed, quickly passing the altitude where their two opponents were still turning left. Tony did a rapid calculation in his head and rolled the aircraft to the right, still climbing, so that he was “facing” their adversaries, who were now behind and beneath him. Hooter kept with him, hanging on to his wing as if he were glued there.
Still pulling on the stick, Tony passed over the top and saw a dark horizon, the ground, climb up the back of his canopy. He searched quickly “over” his head and was rewarded with two bright points of light — the two “enemy” F-16s had also gone to burner, but it was too late. They were still turning left.
Diving on full burner, he pressed the cannon select button on his stick. As the radar shifted he called, “Hooter, I’m going for a gun on the aft ship.” He heard Hooter click his mike switch twice in answer.
The radar locked up immediately and he adjusted his dive slightly to put the “death dot” aiming reticle over the target. He forced himself to count “one potato, two potato” so the gyros could catch up with all his hard maneuvering. The SHOOT prompt came on again and he pulled the trigger. “Aft ship, this is Bluejay One. You’re a mort.”
Hooter’s excited voice came over his phones. “Beautiful, Saint. I wonder if we can frame a videotape?”
Without a word the two “enemy” planes pulled up and rocketed off for points unknown, and the Bluejays turned for base. Two blasts of afterburner had significantly reduced their fuel.
“Saint, who were they? I didn’t see any other Falcons scheduled in our area tonight.”
“Probably some Juvets from the 80th ordered to surprise us. I heard a rumor the wing commander was going to try something like this.”
Hooter chuckled, “Well, they can surprise us like that anytime they want.”
“I’ll pass. They might have been real gomers. Thank God we dropped enough ordnance to mark off the box. If they had interrupted us sooner, we’d have had to repeat the mission.”
“Yeah, then you wouldn’t have safetied out the cannon.”
Ten minutes later they were back at base, and it took just five minutes more to taxi to the arch. Tony climbed out of his cockpit feeling like he’d been there for a year. Pulling five to seven g’s wears you out. It was 2130 and he and Hooter still had an hour of debrief left before they could sleep. But there were two poor bastards in the 80th who’d be up late, too, and they wouldn’t have much fun watching their after-action videotape.
CHAPTER 6
Uncertain Welcome
Second Lieutenant Kevin Little was more than a little worried. So far, at least, on his first real day of active duty as an Army officer, nothing — absolutely nothing — had gone right.
It had started with his flight into Kimpo International Airport that morning. Bad weather in Seattle had kept him from making his KAL connection in Anchorage, and he’d had to wait for the next plane. That had turned a planned fourteen-hour trip into a full twenty-four-hour nightmare. That would have been bad enough. But then he hadn’t been able to get through to the battalion travel office at Camp Howze to let them know that he’d been delayed.
So now that he had finally gotten into Kimpo, his transport to the battalion had been and gone. And the Eighth Army captain in charge of ground transportation at the airport was making it crystal clear that sympathy was
