Howe squeezed the side stick, as if that might force the anger from his body. He needed to get rid of the emotion so he could think logically, figure this out.
It was damn easy for Gorman to tell him not to worry about refueling.
“Colonel, please acknowledge,” said Gorman.
Howe’s fingers were now so tight that his pinkie felt numb, and he’d started to grind his teeth. His head, though, remained clear: He had one of the helicopters hovering off the tip of the island, five miles away. He could go guns, sweep in, and nail it.
“Two, I want you to hang back and try and conserve fuel,” he told Timmy. “I’m going to take that chopper there on my left and then see if I can gun out the other bastard quick. Get a fresh ETA from the C-17 with the assault team, see what they’re up to.”
“Two,” acknowledged Timmy without comment.
Howe clicked his arms selector over to Gun and slid into the attack, still too far to fire.
Hitting a helicopter with the cannon could actually be quite difficult, depending on the circumstances; the F/A-22V’s speed advantage turned into a liability as it closed for the attack. As Howe pushed into a shallow dive, the chopper spit right. He began to fire, though he was still a little far off; the bullets trailed downward and well behind the helicopter. He let off of the trigger and came around wide, in effect backing off for a better pass. The helicopter, meanwhile, threw out flares and jinked toward the sea, obviously expecting a missile attack. Howe’s turn put him in the direction of the helo’s course; he got off a shot but was by too fast and at too hard an angle to score a hit. By the time he recovered, the helicopter was headed back toward the island. That was a mistake: Howe, whose speed had slid down through two hundred knots, lined up easily on the helo’s tail and began pumping it full of lead. The chopper tipped to the left but Howe had it mastered; he put a burst through the engines and then pulled up to avoid the fireball.
“Missile in the air!” warned Timmy.
Howe shot flares and jinked right. The shoulder-launched SS-16 was a potent little missile, at least arguably the equal of an American Stinger. It caught a whiff of one of the flares as well as the Velociraptor’s tailpipes; confused, it decided to explode. Shrapnel from the small warhead flew in an elongated mushroom through the air; two small red-hot pieces struck the back end of Howe’s aircraft, though they did little except dent the metal.
The pilot felt nothing, not even aware that the missile had exploded until Timmy told him. He continued to climb, checking his tactical display and then working quickly through his indicators, making sure he remained intact.
“That second helicopter is lifting off,” said Timmy.
Howe looked up. The helicopter rose in the right quadrant of his windscreen.
“I have it,” Howe said. He switched back to the missiles, deciding at this point there was no reason to save the last Sidewinder: The Backfire was making no sign of getting ready to take off, and he still had the AMRAAM.
The helicopter fired at him as he came in from the west, loosing not only an air-to-air missile but its cannon. Howe had already started a turn, swinging first to the south but then quickly northward, guessing that the helicopter might try to turn inside and take another missile shot; his maneuver would keep the heat-seeker well off his tail. But instead the helicopter ducked back east. It took Howe a few seconds to pick it out, but when he finally did he was almost in perfect position for the Sidewinder shot. He started to close, launched, then pulled back around amid a cascade of flares, anticipating that the bastards on the ground would be taking another shot at him.
“C-17 is less than two minutes off,” said Timmy. “I have a boat on the surface, high-speed. Don’t think it’s ours.”
“Take it,” said Howe.
“What I’m talking about.”
Timmy put the Velociraptor into a shallow dive, letting the patrol boat grow in his sight. Four fat ship-to-ship missile launchers dominated the rear half of the ship, massive gray suitcases jammed into the hull. Timmy lit his cannon, lacing the water as he worked to get the spray into the front quarter of the ship. His bullets found the bow as the twin 30mm AA gun began sparkling; he rode the stream into the gun housing, then the superstructure, tearing across the bridge and off the boat’s starboard side.
He dished flares and chaff, starting to recover. The Velociraptor’s tail wagged behind him, responding sluggishly to the control inputs. As Timmy got his nose up, warning lights started to pop; he’d taken some hits along the rear fuselage and tailplane. Before he could sort it out, something red flashed in front over him: an SA-N- 12 from the patrol boat. Timmy started to turn away, only to be bracketed by two explosions from barrage-launched SA-N-5s, low-altitude heatseekers. The pilot struggled to hold his aircraft.
“Got a problem,” he told Howe.
“Come east, Timmy,” Howe told him. “Break ninety: Turn, damn it! You’re running back into his gunfire.”
Timmy couldn’t get the plane to turn fast enough to avoid the bubbling black mass as it rose in the sky. Wings peppered by flak, he fought desperately just to stay level. It didn’t matter how hard he pushed against the stick or throttle — the controls were electric, not hydraulic — but he muscled them anyway, as if his strength might somehow flow out to the control surfaces and buoy the plane.
From super shit to stuck in shit, all in less than sixty seconds. The cockpit looked like a Christmas display, warning lights flashing. Timmy heard something howling in his ears.
“Out,” Howe was saying. “Out!”
“Yeah, baby,” said the pilot.
He put his hand down to grab the yellow and black ejection handle. As he gripped it the last SA-N-5 from the patrol boat exploded just under the back end of the plane. Timmy pulled the handles. but it was already too late: He felt a sudden surge of heat behind him; then the world turned black and incredibly, instantly cold.
Howe saw his wingmate’s plane explode and felt his hand once more tighten involuntarily around the stick. He stared at the hurtling ball of metal, plastic, and fire, waiting, hoping, expecting the canopy to shoot off and the seat to appear, Timmy hurtling away with his good-ol’-boy chuckle. Howe got ready to note the location, follow the chute down, vector the SAR assets in.
Slowly he realized that wasn’t going to happen. The stricken Velociraptor disintegrated before his eyes, imploding from its many wounds. Howe flew on, finally forcing his eyes down to the tactical screen, pushing his head back into the game where it had to be.
The Russian ship was dead in the water, two miles from the island. Black smoke unfurled from the middle of the vessel. He pushed down, looked at the cue in the holographic HUD, the computer automatically drawing the dotted line for him.
“Fire,” he said, pressing the trigger as well.
One of his first bullets hit the Styx launcher on the port side; by the time he let off the trigger and began to climb, the rear half of the boat had vaporized.
“The helicopters and patrol boat are down,” he said over the shared frequency for the C-17. “If you’re coming, now’s the time to do it. I’ll rake the field.”
Chapter 16
Fisher leaned over the seat on the flight deck, trying to hear what Tyler and the pilots were saying.
“Once around to see what the layout is,” suggested the Special Forces captain.
“That just gives anyone on the ground a shot at us,” said the pilot. “Best bet is either parachute in or land right away. One or the other. They fired at least one missile at the Velociraptors. We’re a much easier target.”
“We’ll land, then,” said Tyler. The captain turned to Fisher. “We’re going to land.”
“You think that’s a good idea?”
Tyler looked at him as if he hadn’t understood, then pushed past to go down to his men. Fisher took his
