of whom were now dead. Only the woman remained alive.
Success. All of his planning, the decision to wait until the aircraft took off and returned from another flight — it had all paid off. They were his, considerably more easily than he had hoped.
“Call in the transports and technical crew,” Luksha told his communications specialist. He turned to his sergeant, who’d just run up next to him and was hunched over, collecting his breath. “Secure this woman. She is our prisoner, and a very valuable one.”
Chapter 15
Howe had little trouble ducking the Russian’s Alamo missile, a semiactive radar home that had been launched from outside its optimum range. But his defensive maneuvering took up time and forced him to turn to the east; before he could recover and sort out the situation, four more Russian fighters, all MiG-29s, had appeared over the horizon. They had their pedals to the metal as they came to help out the two Super-Flankers that had launched the attack.
Howe’s computer buzzed as Timmy fired an AMRAAM at one of the nearby Russians, the missile track dotted in the HUD hologram.
“I have the bandit at the south,” Howe told his wingman, starting a turn to cut toward its tail. “Watch out for the four Johnny-come-latelies.”
“Oh yeah, copy that. Bring those suckers on,” said the wingman. “Got your back.”
Howe and the Sukhoi were separated by about five miles, just outside of a good Sidewinder shot. Howe went for more power, needing to accelerate but wary, anticipating that the enemy fighter would try to pull him into a quick turn. He blew a wad of air into his mask. His hand curled tightly on the stick, waiting for the sensor in the missile head to growl at him, indicating that it was ready. Howe told himself to ease off, to relax, to just follow. The missile got a good strong scent of the enemy plane and began screaming at him, telling him to fire. Howe waited a few more seconds, confident now he had him, confident he was gaining sufficiently on the enemy jet.
“Fire,” he told the computer.
The missile ripped out from the side bay of the Velociraptor, plunging downward momentarily and then pushing its nose too far to the left as the Sukhoi pilot came hard right. But the circuitry in the all-aspect Sidewinder, refined after generations of dogfights, quickly corrected, driving the missile back toward the big Russian jet and its hot tailpipe. The Sukhoi started to jink east just as the warhead exploded; shrapnel ripped through the left engine and severed the controls to the tailfin, leaving the pilot no option but to bail.
By that time Howe was already turning northward to meet the newcomers.
Timmy swept into the battle eagerly, his hand gripping the stick with the sort of gentle firmness he’d use to guide a date to bed. The encounter shaped up as an almost textbook four-on-two dustup, with the Russian MiG-29s blustering forward, seemingly oblivious to the approaching F/A-22Vs. The two Velociraptors were at fifteen thousand feet, a good five thousand below the MiGs, but that was their only disadvantage; they had an intercept from the east, and even thirty miles away the Russians seemed not to know where they were.
“I’m going to save one of my AMRAAMs in case the laser plane gets off,” Howe told him. “I have that lead one on the left.”
“Yeah, roger that. I have number two.”
Timmy’s HUD hologram had the target plane boxed and tied with a bow. He fired about a half-second after Howe, sliding around to get into position for a tailpipe shot on the last two MiGs in the formation. Belatedly, the MiGs began throwing chaff and hitting ECMs.
“Yours on the right,” said Howe as the bandits divided.
Timmy started to follow but quickly lost his Russian, who’d taken out a hammer and nailed his throttle on the last stop, burning through his relatively limited store of fuel in his bid to get back home in one piece. Timmy pulled off, circling to the south and looking for Howe.
The Velociraptor’s radar system was light-years beyond the primitive scopes that fighter pilots of old had to decipher as they rode their steeds into battle; the unit could select its own modes, interpret its contacts, fight off electronic countermeasures, and paint a three-dimensional picture of the battlefield, all with minimal input from the pilot. But no gee-whiz technology could eliminate the effects of high-g turns, mission fatigue, and what planners referred to as the fog of war. The pilot’s instincts and his ability to think clearly under stress were far more important than the convenient cues projected in glorious 3-D on his HUD, or the melodious warning tones of his RWR. Timmy pushed left; then, for some reason he couldn’t have explained, he jerked his stick and threw the Velociraptor the other way. The maneuver put him four miles behind one of the MiGs.
“I’m on him,” he told Howe.
He had a good closure rate on the enemy, who was just starting to accelerate after a series of maneuvers. The Sidewinder’s sensor began to growl; Timmy waited a second or two more, then fired, alerting Howe and once again breaking away, knowing he was northeast of the target island but not sure exactly where.
“Good shot, Two,” said Howe as the second Sidewinder tallied. “I want you to come south now. How’s your fuel?”
He’d splashed three planes in the space of what, five minutes? Four?
Between India and this, he’d lived the life of twenty fighter pilots inside a week. His heart raced in his chest, and his head wasn’t more than a half-stride behind.
Like winning the Super Bowl, this. People’d be parading him all around, buying drinks. Women — God he was the man,
Not that he hadn’t been before.
“Fuel, Timmy,” prompted Howe.
He took a breath and got back to dealing with reality.
“Bird One, what’s your situation?” asked Jemma Gorman.
Howe laid it out for her, emphasizing their rapidly diminishing fuel states. The tanker was a little closer than he thought — five hundred miles — but even so, they had at best five minutes before having to head back. A pair of F-15s from the task group had tanked and were coming west, but they were still roughly a half hour away. The Eagles scrambling northward from Kadena were a little closer but still wouldn’t be in sight for about twenty minutes, maybe a little less.
Which, in his mind — and in any reasonable mind — meant the assault team should hold off.
“We need to be on that island now,” said Gorman. “I need the assault team down there. Take out the helicopters so they can land. Your tanker is en route.”
“It’s too far,” he told her. “Even if we left now, we’d be on a bingo profile. We’re way low on fuel.”
“Bail out or land on the damn island if you have to,” she told him. “Just take out the helicopters and cover the assault team.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“We need the laser,” said Gorman. “We’ve already tried contacting the Russian forces by radio and they’ve refused to acknowledge. They’re hostile.”
“Yeah, no shit they’re hostile,” said Howe. “I’ll take out the plane. I have two small-diameter bombs.”
“Take out the helicopters. My orders are to recover the laser intact if we can, and we can. My people want a look at that plane and what mods they’ve made.”
