the ground-intercept radar that had snapped on.
“The open bay’s going to give us away,” Breanna reminded Chris.
“Having trouble picking out the MiG that’s spiking us,” he replied.
“Can we get the SAMs?”
“Two MiGs heading for us. Twenty miles, dead-on. They’ll nail Vector if they take off.”
“Get the lead MiG,” Breanna directed. “They we’ll go for the SAMs.”
“He’s too low. They’re firing.”
“Missile type?”
“No ID. No radar.”
“Impossible. They wasted heat-seekers from that range head-on?”
“Lost the missile. We’re still being spiked. Missile launch.”
The RWR buzzed a warning; the second MiG had fired an AA-10 Alamo radar missile at them. Breanna pulled the Megafortress into a hard bank, unleashing tinsel and then pushing the plane into a dive. The strategy essentially provided the enemy missile with an easy – but nonexistent – target.
She sensed what the Iranians were doing, and fired dirversionary flares as she cut a series of zigs in the sky.
“Yeah,” said Chris, catching on. “Three missiles tracking. The first much have been long-range heat-seekers, looking for our butts when we turned. I have a target.”
“Fire!” Breanna steadied the Megafortress as the missile dropped from the bay.
“We’re boxed. Damn it,” said Chris. His voice went up several octaves. “Okay, I’m firing. Shit. Here’s another Alamo –”
“Close bay. Hold on,” said Breanna calmly. She nailed the Megafortress nearly straight down, goosing off chaff and flares. At a thousand feet she rolled inverted and turned ninety degrees into the Doppler radar, in effect making the plane invisible in the eddy of the radar waves. The carbon fiber wings strained at their design tolerance as the massive plane twisted.
The Russian missiles realized they had missed, and blew up a thousand feet overhead. Shaking off the shock waves, Breanna rolled the mammoth plane upright, nudging her even lower.
“Splash One MiG!” said Chris. “Scorpion got it.”
Breanna grinned, then went back to trying to sort out their location as well as that of their enemies. They were north, heading in the direction of A-1. One of the MiG-29’s was running north toward the Red Sea.
“F-117’s got something,” blurted Chris. “Shit. Lots of secondaries. Wow! Big-time explosions. Nailed those mothers!”
“What happened to that SAM that was tracking us?” Bree asked.
“Lost it. Nighthawks got it or it just turned itself off without firing anything.” Chris clicked the radar into long-distance scan, searching for the MiGs. “We may have the scope. I have two, moving out at warp speed into the Red Sea. Spooked ’em good.”
“Go back to passive systems.”
’Damn straight.”
Breanna checked the bearing and speed that ghosted in the screen against the instrument readings in the MUD. She punched the Megafortress’s selt-test circuits, having the computer run its diagnostic as if they’d been tooling around Dreamland for the past hour.
The computer congratulated itself with perfect scores. All systems green and growing. Time to go back to the barn.
Almost.
“Let’s make it hard for the SOB to land,” she told Chris.
“Bree?”
“We still have the JSOWs in the bay. We’ll be within range of A-1 in zero-two.”
“What about that MiG-21 on the ground?”
“Something to aim at,” said Breanna.
Chris sighed deeply, but turned back to his displays without saying anything. He had meant that they were out of air-to-air weapons, which Breanna already knew.
“We have plenty of fuel,” she told him.
“We’ll be into reserves on the trip home,” he said.
“You’re not going after A-1 because of Mack, are you?”
“What?”
“I mean, you’re not getting emotionally involved here?”
“Screw you, Chris. I’m trying to do my job.”
“Yes, Captain.”
