it from being accidentally fired with the airplane sitting on the ground. Only by manually shifting a switch in the nose-wheel well could the cannon be fired with the gear extended. Another peculiarity of the Zero was the fact that the pilot must wait for the gear to extend completely before he reversed the cycle and raised them again. Nakagawa sat in his Zero, indicating 240 knots, waiting for the gear to come up while watching Bob Cassidy dive cleanly away. Furious, he screamed into his mask.
He stopped screaming when a Sidewinder missile went blazing by his aircraft, headed for Mother Earth. He looked up, keeping his left hand under the infrared goggles, just in time to see an F-22 turning in behind him.
Fortunately the gear-in-transit light was out, so he turned hard into his attacker.
The slow speed of Nakagawa’s Zero caused Dixie Elitch to misjudge the lead necessary. Her first cannon burst smote air and nothing else. She was going too fast. She overshot the accelerating, turning Zero. With engines at idle and speed brakes out, she pulled G to slow and stay with her corkscrewing opponent. This guy was damned good! Amazingly, his nose was rising and he was somehow gaining an angular advantage. The G’s were awesome, smashing viciously at her. She fought to stay conscious, to keep the enemy fighter in sight. He was canopy-to- canopy with her, descending through twenty thousand feet. He was close … too close. Somehow she had to get some maneuvering room. She slammed the stick sideways, fed in forward stick. The other plane kept his position on her as she rolled. She stopped the roll and brought the stick back a little. Instantly, the enemy plane was closing, canopy-to-canopy…, fifty feet between the planes. She looked straight into his cockpit, looked at his helmet tilted back, at him looking at her as they rolled around each other with engines at idle and speed brakes out. She saw the infrared goggles and in a flash realized what they were. So that is how he kept track of the invisible F-22!
What she failed to realize was that Nakagawa was trying to hold his helmet and goggles in position with his left hand while he flew with his right. What he needed was a third hand to operate the throttle. Then he was above her, on his back…, and too slow, out of control. He released the stick with his right hand and reached across his body to slam the throttle forward. Dixie realized Nakagawa had stalled as his plane fell toward her. Before she could react, the two planes collided, canopy-to-canopy.
Bob Cassidy had pulled out far below and relit his burners to climb back into the fight. He was rocketing up toward the two corkscrewing fighters — two on his HUD, but he could only see the Zero. They were too close together to risk a shot. Just as he caught a glimpse of the F-22 alongside the Zero, the two fighters embraced. The planes bounced apart, then exploded.
Jesus!
Cassidy rolled and went under the fireball.
Jiro Kimura was on the deck, streaking toward Chita with both burners lit. His radar was off. His GPS gave him the bearing and distance: 266 degrees at 208 miles. Using nuclear weapons was insanity, but Japan’s lawful government made the decision and gave the order. Jiro Kimura had sworn to obey. He was going to do just that, even if it cost him his life. Right now imminent death seemed a certainty: He was hurtling toward it at 1.6 times the speed of sound. The odds were excellent that more F-22’s would intercept him very soon. They were probably maneuvering to intercept at this very second. Even if he dropped the weapon successfully, he would not have the gas to get back to the tanker waiting over Khabarovsk. He was using that gas now to maximize his chances of getting to his drop point. He was going to be shot down or eject. If he ejected, the Siberian wilderness would kill him slowly. If by some miracle he lived, the nuclear burden would probably ruin him. All this was in the back of his mind, but he wasn’t really thinking about it; he was thinking how to get to the weapon-release point. He had F-22’s behind and F-22’s ahead, he believed. And at Chita, the Americans had those missiles that rode up his radar beam. Jiro Kimura didn’t think he was going to get much older. Where, he wondered, was Bob Cassidy? Was he in one of the F-22’s that had been shot down, or was he in one of the planes waiting ahead?
A warning light caught his eye. Athena! The super-cooled computer was overheating. He turned it off.
At that moment, Cassidy was fifty miles behind. The last Zero was not on his tac display. The dust in the air must have screwed up the satellite’s ability to see planes in the atmosphere, he reflected. According to the White House, there had been four Zeros, each carrying a bomb. Three had gone down; the last had escaped. If the pilot abandoned his mission and returned to base, there was no problem. Knowing the professionalism and dedication of the Japanese pilots, Cassidy discounted that possibility.
If the pilot had gone on alone to bomb Chita, there was no one there to stop him. So Cassidy zoomed to forty thousand feet and lit his afterburners. Just now he was making Mach 2.2, maximum speed, toward Chita. The blank tac display was a silent witness to the fact that the three F-22’s he had taken off with were no longer in the air. The radio was silent. He had to find that enemy plane. Dixie Elitch was certainly dead, killed in the explosion of those two planes just a moment ago. Smith III and Paul Scheer … who knew? Maybe they managed to eject. Then again, maybe not. He had to catch that Zero. He checked his fuel. If that plane reached Chita … Cassidy reached for the radar switch, turned it on. It might not help, but it couldn’t hurt. He wondered which plane Jiro had been in. Jiro was one of the best they had, so he was undoubtedly one of them. Even as Cassidy thought about it, the question answered itself. The best pilots always find a way to survive. One Zero was still in the air. With a growing sense of horror, the possibility that Jiro Kimura was in the cockpit of that plane congealed into a certainty. Yes. It must be Jiro!
The ECM indicated that an F-22 was behind him. Jiro watched the strobe of the direction indicator. Yep!
The American probably hadn’t seen him yet, which gave him a few options. He could turn right or left, try to sneak out to the side. Or he could turn and engage. If he kept on this heading, the American would get within detection range before Jiro got to the drop point; then he would launch a missile. Jiro turned hard left ninety degrees, as quickly as he could to minimize the time that the planform of his airplane was pointed toward the enemy reflecting radar energy.
Cassidy saw the blip appear. Forty-three miles. It was there for a few seconds; then it wasn’t. The enemy pilot turned.
Right or left? At least he had a 50 percent chance of getting this right. Right. He turned twenty degrees right and stared at the radar. In a minute or so, he would know. Luckily, he was faster than the Zero, but only because he was high. The thinner air allowed him to go faster. The seconds ticked by. He couldn’t afford to wait too long for this guy to appear, or he would never catch him if he went the other way. But he had to wait long enough to be sure. Cassidy swabbed the sweat from his eyes. The enemy pilot must be Jiro. If he turned left too soon, before he was certain that Jiro wasn’t ahead of him, he was giving Jiro a free pass to kill everyone at Chita — all of them. Dixie was already dead. Scheer. Foy Sauce. Hudek. When the sixty seconds expired, Cassidy turned forty degrees left. He had made up his mind— one minute. Not a second less or a second more. Steady on the new course, he wondered if he should have stayed on the other course longer. Dear God, where is this Zero?
By the time Jiro realized the American had turned back toward him, it was too late. The American fighter was too close. If he turned now, the American pilot would pick him up for sure. Yet if he stayed on this heading— once again he was pointed straight for Chita — the American would see him before many miles passed. Perhaps … He applied left rudder and moved the stick right, cross-controlling. Perhaps he could make a flat turn.
Cassidy was beside himself. He couldn’t think, couldn’t decide on the best course of action. The Japanese fighter had escaped him. Every decision he had made had turned out badly. His comrades were dead, a Zero had escaped … and a boy he loved like his own son was either dead or was flying that plane and going to kill everyone at Chita — with one bomb. He swung the nose of the plane from side to side, S-turning, watching the tactical display intently. If the radar picked up anything, it would appear there.
Nothing. Bob Cassidy came out of burner to save some gas and laid the F-22 over into a turn. He would do a 360-degree turn, see if he could see anything. If not, he would go to Chita and sit overhead, waiting for the Zero to show up. Of course, the Zero pilot would probably announce his presence by popping a large mushroom cloud.
There it is! There! A coded symbol appeared on the radar screen and on the tac display.
Cassidy slammed the throttles into maximum afterburner. The fighter seemed to leap forward.
Although Jiro Kimura didn’t know it, the F-22 Raptor was so high, looking down, that its radar had picked up a return from the junction between his left vertical stabilizer and the fuselage.
He realized the enemy pilot had him when he saw the ECM strobe getting longer and broader. The F-22 was closing the distance between them, and that could only mean that he was tracking the Zero.
Jiro had no choice. He dropped a wing and turned to engage. Since he had the nuclear weapon taking up a weapons station on his left wing, Jiro had had only two radar-guided missiles, and he had shot them both. He had also fired a Sidewinder, leaving him one.
As the two fighters raced for each other, he got a heat lock-on tone and squeezed it off.
