Miura felt the explosion, saw the right engine temp gauge swing toward the peg, and knew he was in big trouble. He pulled both engines to idle cutoff as the right engine fire light illuminated and honked on five G’s to help slow down. As the plane dropped below five hundred knots, he pulled the ejection handle. Three seconds later the parachute opened, just as his jet exploded. At this point, the fight was one minute old.
Holding the heavy night-vision helmet and goggles with his left hand, Jiro Kimura turned a square corner. Only he, of all the Japanese pilots, could see the American fighters descending upon them. At one point the G meter recorded eight G’s, and Kimura was not wearing a full-body G suit, as the Americans were. He was flexed to the max, screaming against the G to stay conscious, as he honked his mount around. It was then that Lee Foy made a fatal mistake. Perhaps he didn’t see Jiro turning, perhaps he had fixated on his intended next victim, Sasai, or perhaps he was checking the position of his wingman on his tac display. In any event, he didn’t react quickly enough to Jiro’s turn in his direction, and once Jiro triggered a Sidewinder at point-blank range, he had no more time. The American-designed, Japanese-made missile punctured the F-22’s fuselage just behind the cockpit and exploded in the main fuel cell, rupturing it by forcing fuel outward under tremendous pressure. When the fuel met oxygen, it ignited explosively. Lee Foy had just enough time to inhale deeply and scream into his radio microphone before he was cremated alive. Aaron Hudek saw the explosion out of the corner of his eye as he was dispatching the last of the Blue Flight Zeros with his cannon. He recognized Foy’s voice on the radio. “Sauce?”
Every F-22 pilot heard Hudek’s call. Jiro Kimura had already fired a second missile. While the first one was in the air, he got a growl on an F-22 four miles away, one turning hard after a Zero. He squeezed it off. Then he turned ten degrees toward an F-22 in burner that was coming at him head-on. This was Fur Ball Hudek. The F-22 was shooting. A river of fire, almost like a searchlight, was vomiting from the nose of the American fighter. The finger of God reached for him. just how he avoided it, Jiro could never explain. He slammed the stick over and smashed on the rudder and his plane slewed sideways, almost out of control. At that moment, he mashed his thumb down on the gun button. The shells poured from the cannon in his right wing root. He wiggled the rudder just as Hudek flashed through the steel stream with his gun still blazing. Aaron Hudek felt the hammer blows. His left engine fire light went on, the temp went into the red, and the rpm started dropping. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw fire streaming along the side of the plane. He started to reach for the ejection handle, but there was another Zero in front of him, this one flown by Jiro’s wingman, ta. At these speeds there was no time to think, but even if there had been, perhaps Aaron Hudek’s decision would have been the same. With a flick of his wrist he brought the two fighters together almost head-on.
Jiro’s second Sidewinder sprayed the belly of Dixie Elitch’s fighter with shrapnel. The plane continued to respond to the controls and the engines seemed okay, but horrible pounding and ripping noises reached Dixie in the cockpit. It sounded as if the slipstream was ripping pieces off. Automatically, she retarded her throttles, deployed her speed brakes, and pulled the nose skyward to convert airspeed into altitude.
After Cassidy and Scheer fired the last of their Sidewinders, only two of the eight high Zeroes were still under their pilots” control. Still in loose formation, these two nosed down steeply and went to full afterburner. They didn’t turn or weave, just kept descending until they were within thirty feet of the valley floor. Their sonic shock waves raised a dust cloud behind them.
Cassidy leveled at ten thousand feet and came out of burner. He didn’t want to use all his fuel chasing these two. “Can you get “em, Paul?”
“I think so.”
Scheer was gaining on the fleeing pair when Cassidy turned back toward the low fight, which was still being waged near the base.
Preacher Fain was ninety degrees off Jiro’s heading and a mile behind him when the Japanese pilot saw him with the infrared goggles. Jiro knew most of his comrades were dead, and if he continued to fight he soon would be, but to ignore this F-22 in his rear quarter would be suicide. Kimura pitched up hard and rolled toward Fain. Fain was surprised. This was the only Zero that engaged the F-22’s. This guy must see me, he thought. Perhaps the chameleon gear is not working He too pitched up, committing himself to a vertical scissors. Corkscrewing around each other, the two fighters went straight up, each trying for an angular advantage and each failing to get it. Jiro was beside himself. He was 950 miles from home base, surrounded by enemies, and time was running out. Time was on his opponent’s side. He had to end this quickly. He pulled the throttles to idle, popped the speed brakes. Going straight up, the Zero slowed as if it had hit a wall. Preacher Fain squirted out in front. Jiro rammed the throttles forward and thumbed in the boards as he pushed the nose toward Fain. Sensing his danger, Fain pulled back on the stick with all his strength. The F-22 came over on its back and dipped its nose toward the earth as bursts of cannon shells squirted past. The shells were going by his belly. Fain continued to pull. Then he realized the ground was rushing toward him. He was descending inverted, seventy degrees nose-down, in burner, passing eight thousand feet. Preacher Fain flicked the F-22 upright and pulled until he thought the wings would come off. The G meter read twelve G’s when his fighter struck the earth at Mach 1.2.
Dixie Elitch ejected when her airspeed dropped to 250 knots. The airplane was burning by then. She had shut down the left engine when the Left Fire warning light came on, but now the flames were visible in the mirror behind her.
“Dixie’s bailing out,” she said over the radio.
She took a deep breath and pulled the handle between her legs with both hands.
The fight had lasted just two minutes.
The maintenance troops at the base saw someone descending in a parachute, but they had no idea it was Dixie. Four of them went after her in a Humvee. The hardest part was finding her, a mile out in the forest from the nearest road. She was hung up in a tree. It took them twenty minutes to get her down, which they accomplished by chopping down the tree. Although shaken, she was none the worse for wear. An hour and a half after her ejection, Dixie and her rescuers walked out of the woods.
Jiro Kimura taxied into the revetment at Khabarovsk, opened the canopy, and shut down. The plane captain installed the ladder while Jiro unstrapped, then scampered up. “Sir, where are the others?”
“Dead. Or out in the forest. I don’t know.”
The plane captain couldn’t believe it. He thought Jiro was joking. As he walked across the ramp with the night-vision helmet and his flight bag, Jiro met his squadron executive officer. “Where are they, Kimura?”
“They were shot down, sir. All of them. I am the only one left.”
“Including the wing commander?”
“He died first, I think. My flight was well below him then, but I think his aircraft was struck by a missile and disintegrated. Then the Americans jumped us. It was over quickly.”
“F-22’s?”
“They never saw them, Colonel. Their airplanes are invisible. Without radar, the others had no chance. I had this.” Jiro held up the helmet. “I borrowed it from the helicopter squadron. I could see them only in infrared, not regular light.”
“Fifteen aircraft!” The colonel was incredulous.
“Yes, sir.”
“How many enemy aircraft were there?”
“Six or eight. I am not sure. No more than eight, I think.”
The exec reeled. He caught himself. “Did we get any of them?”
“I got one, I think, sir. Another F-22 flew into the ground trying to evade me. If anyone else scored, I do not know about it.”
“I want a complete written report, Kimura, as soon as possible. I will send it to Tokyo.” The colonel turned his back so that Jiro couldn’t see his face.
Jiro walked on toward the dispersal shack.
They couldn’t all be dead. Surely some of them had ejected safely. Sasai, Ota, Miura … As he walked, Jiro Kimura wiped away tears.
When Cassidy and Elitch got back to the squadron, Paul Scheer was sitting with his feet up on the duty desk, smoking a cigar. He gave them a beatific smile.
“Hear anything from the others?” Cassidy snapped.
“Nope. I watched the discs from your plane and mine. I’m pretty sure they’re dead.”
“You look awful damned crushed about it.”
Scheer refused to be flustered. He puffed on the cigar a few times, then took a long drag and exhaled.
