that were growing as the sun warmed the atmosphere.
The planes flew east. Cassidy began hearing the deep bass beep of a search radar probing the sky on a regular scan. The beep made Cassidy fidgety. Of course, the stealthy shape of the F-22 prevented the operator from getting enough of a return to see the American fighters — he knew that for a fact — but still … The visibility today was excellent. On the left, a huge range of mountains wearing crowns of snow stretched away to the horizon. On the right, another range ran off haphazardly into the great emptiness toward Manchuria. The land was so big, so empty. A pilot who ejected into this trackless wilderness was doomed to die of exposure or starvation. At Cassidy’s insistence, the following day the U.s. Air Force would fly in a Cessna 185 on tundra tires, with long-range tanks, to use as a search and rescue plane if the need arose.
To fly the plane and operate the computers — there were actually five of them: three flight-control computers, an air-datastnavigation computer, and a tactical computer — the Raptor pilot had to concentrate intently on the torrent of information being presented graphically on his HUD and the three MFDS. There was no time for sight-seeing, for trying to spot the enemy with the human eye. The pilot was merely the F-22’s central processing unit.
This thought went through Bob Cassidy’s mind as he forced himself to concentrate on the displays in front of him.
The miles rolled by swiftly at Mach 1.3. Not much longer … Clad in a full-body G suit and a helmet that covered his entire head, Cassidy couldn’t even scratch his nose. Sweat trickled down his face. Since he couldn’t do anything about it, he ignored it. Cassidy was nervous. He shook his head once to clear the sweat from his eyes, toyed with the idea of raising the Plexiglas face shield on his helmet so he could get his fingers to his face and wipe the sweat away. That would take maybe fifteen seconds, while the plane would traverse almost three and a half miles of sky. Not yet. Cassidy took a few seconds to stare at the spot in space where the computer said Scheer had to be. Nothing. The chameleon skin had blended the fighter into the sky so completely it was invisible to the naked eye. Today, of course, the F-22’s had their radars secured, the tac display no longer blank. The Sky Eye had located the enemy and the satellite was beaming down the information. Two Zeros were in the air over Zeya. These must be the two that were on the ground with their engines running an hour ago. As the range decreased and Cassidy shrank the scale of the display, he realized that the Zeros were on some kind of training mission. They were not in formation. They flew aimlessly back and forth over the base, did some turns, just wandered about. Perhaps the pilots were flying post-maintenance check flights. At fifty miles, Cassidy and Scheer began their letdown. The transports bringing bombs to Zeya would not arrive until tomorrow, so today all the F-22’s could do was strafe. Gvelich and Foy stayed high and together. They would go for the airborne Zeros. Cassidy could hear the baritone beep of a search radar sweeping past his plane. The beeps were quite regular, which made him believe that the operator did not see him. Too little energy was being reflected from the stealthy shape of the F-22 to create a blip on the operator’s screen. Finally, as the range closed, the returning energy would be sufficient to create a blip, and the operator would see him. Cassidy wondered how close that would be. He acquired the airfield at fifteen miles. The afternoon sun was behind him and slightly to his right, so he and Scheer would be essentially invisible as they came over.
Throttling back more, Cassidy let his speed drop to Mach 1. He wanted every second he could to shoot, but he wanted to arrive with minimum warning. Down to three thousand feet, ten miles, lined up on the ramp, Cassidy pulled the throttles back even farther. Scheer was already separated out to the left, looking for his own targets. The other plane had faded from view. Cassidy had to check the tac display to make sure where Scheer was. The routine beeps of the enemy radar changed drastically. Now the operator was sweeping the beam back and forth over the two F-22’s repeatedly. Nine miles. They had made it in to nine miles before being picked up. Bob Cassidy was down to five hundred knots when he saw the enemy fighters. There were five of them, parked in a row on the ramp. At least he hoped they were Zeros. They might have been Russian iron, but he didn’t have time to make sure. Cassidy turned hard to get lined up, checked to make sure he had the ball in the center, and glanced at the altimeter. The row of fighters was coming at him fast. And Paul Scheer appeared out of nowhere in his left-frontal quadrant, no more than fifty feet away. Paul was going to strafe these guys, too. Cassidy throttled back still more. He was down to three hundred knots now. Scheer opened fire, walked a stream of shells across the parked planes, and broke left. Smoke poured from one of the planes. Cassidy walked his shells across the planes, too, and broke right. “Make a pass at the hangars, Paul, and we’re out of here. I’ll join on you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Cassidy circled to the south as Scheer shot up the hangars. The pilot could see several missile batteries sitting in plain sight. He snapped four fast pictures of the base area with a digital camera. When he got back to Zeya, he could plug the camera into a computer and print out the pictures: instant aerial photos. Paul headed west after his second strafing pass and Cassidy joined on him. They lit burners and climbed away. No one had fired a shot at the Americans.
Dick Gvelich was ten miles behind his intended victim and closing at Mach 1.8 when the bogey dot on the HUD moved left. The guy must be turning, he thought.
He dropped his left wing to compensate and centered the dot. There, he could see him, just a speck slightly above the horizon, turning left. Five miles, four, now the Sidewinder tone…, and Dick Gvelich squeezed off the missile. It leapt off the rail in a fiery streak and disappeared into the blue sky, chasing that turning airplane ahead. A flash on the enemy airplane! Got him.
Hudek pulled off right and watched the Zero. It rolled upside down, its nose dropped, and then the ejection seat came out.
Lee Foy’s Zero was potting along straight and level. Foy’s ECM was picking up enemy radar transmissions, but the Zero was pointed in the wrong direction to see the F-22’s. Precisely what the Japanese pilot was doing, Foy couldn’t imagine. He just prayed that the enemy aviator kept doing it for a few more seconds. At four miles with the enemy in sight, Foy was closing fast, overtaking him with maybe three hundred knots of closure.
Half a world away from the warehouse, Foy decided not to waste a missile. He clicked the cursor on the gun symbol on his main MFD and pulled off a gob of power.
His speed bled down quickly. The enemy pilot kept flying straight and level.
Foy checked his tac display. Nobody around except Gvelich, stalking his victim six miles to the west. Because he didn’t have religious faith in these gadgets, Foy checked over both shoulders to ensure the sky was clear.
The Zero was still potting along like an airliner going to Newark.
One mile away, a hundred knots of closure.
A half mile, seventy knots.
Now, Foy reduced power, put the crosshairs in the bull’s-eye made by the horizontal and vertical stabilizers. The center of the bull’s-eye was the exhaust pipe.
Foy was coming up from dead astern. Whum? — he entered his victim’s wash and began bouncing around.
Closer still, no more than three hundred yards.
Still closer … At a hundred yards, Foy stabilized. Although his plane was bumping along in the Zero’s wash, the crosshairs in the heads-up display were skittering around on the enemy plane’s tailpipe.
I should have used a Sidewinder/th isn’t aerial combat — this is murder.
Unable to pull the trigger, he sat there staring at the Zero. At ninety yards, he could wait no longer.
The Gatling gun hammered at the enemy plane, which seemed to disintegrate under the weight of steel and explosive that was smashing through the fuselage from end to end.
As the Zero faded in a haze of fuel, an alarm went off in Lee Foy’s head. He released the trigger as he pulled back hard on the stick. The F-22 responded instantly, climbing away from the gasoline haze just as the Zero caught fire.
The fire ignited the vapor trail, which became a flame a hundred yards long. Then the Zero blew up.
Lee Foy bit his lip, glanced at his tac display to see where Hudek was, then turned that way.
For a moment there, he had flown with his heart, not his head, and he had almost paid the price. He had come very close to dying with the Zero pilot.
“Sorry, pal,” Foy Sauce whispered.
Cassidy, Gvelich, and their wingmen were fueling from a bladder on the ground at Chita when four Zeros came hunting late in the summer evening. The Zeros were radiating, searching for airborne bogeys. The F-22 raid on Zeya had caused a seismic shock in the war room in Tokyo.
