spotting would be that much harder.
Mason craned his neck, straining to get a visual on the bogey even though he knew they were still too far out. At four miles, an aircraft was a speck when it was back-lit by the sky; this clown would probably be wearing camouflage, and he’d be down on the deck. But at almost six hundred miles per hour, they would cover four miles in just twenty-four seconds. In that same period of time, the bogey would cover just about another mile; thirty seconds and he and Cat would be smack on top of them.
Mountains rose to left and right, gray granite walls, some cloaked with pine trees, others barren. He was following a river valley now, relatively flat and a couple of miles across but bounded by sheer cliffs and woods- cloaked slopes. Snow flashed at the highest elevations.
“Hey, Dixie?” Cat called from the backseat. “Maybe we should back off from the wall a bit.”
She wasn’t referring to the valley wall, he knew, but to their speed.
Flying slower would be safer… give them both a chance to see something.
But he was eager. He wanted to get there, now.
“Just another few seconds, Cat. We’re almost there.”
The radar contact vanished off the screen, less than two miles ahead.
Dixie could see why ? the valley took a sharp turn to the left up there, and the slopes to either side went vertical, turning the valley into a tight, rock-walled canyon. The bogey must have just gone around the bend.
“Keep your eyes sharp,” he told Cat. “The bastard’s just around-“
“Radar contact!” Cat cut in. “We’re being painted!”
“The helo?”
“Negative! Negative! I read it as Gun Dish!”
“Christ!” Dixie swore. “A Shilka!”
Shilka was the Russian name for the quad-mount ZSU-23-4. Dixie’s first instinct was to haul back on the stick and grab some sky, but he held the Tomcat’s altitude steady as he eased into the dogleg of the canyon. Shilkas were relatively short-ranged and couldn’t reach targets at altitudes of more than a mile or so, but Dixie knew that he would offer a perfect sighting picture if he suddenly popped his Tomcat up out of that valley.
Instead, he increased the speed a notch, whipping around the twist in the canyon, coming up just a little to give himself some more maneuvering room if the ground rose sharply around the bend…
… and there was the contact!
He had only a glimpse, and from a difficult angle. The Tomcat was coming up on the helicopter from behind, about in the seven o’clock position, but he had time enough to see the heavy weapon pods mounted to port and starboard, the long, low, smooth curve of the fuselage. It was painted in a green-and-brown camo pattern that blended well with the valley floor.
“I see him!” Dixie called. “Target is a Hind gunship!”
Then he pulled the stick back, rammed the throttles all the way forward into Zone Five afterburners, and kicked his Tomcat into open blue sky.
CHAPTER 8
“Jesus H. Christ!” Cole shouted, jerking the control stick over and banking sharply as a silver shape thundered past the helicopter a few hundred feet overhead, then broke into a sharp climb. “What the hell was that?”
Dombrowski shook his head. “Oh, shit, man! Who told those Navy bastards they had the right-of-way?”
“Navy?” It took Cole a moment for that to register. “Oh, yeah, sure, the flyboys watching the no-fly zone. Man, that guy scared the shit out of me!”
“Guess he got bored flying CAP and decided to come hassle us,” Dombrowski said.
Cole swore and brought the helicopter back on course. “Man, the moment we get back, I’m reporting this one! That guy could’ve smashed us into a cliff with his jet wash!”
But something was nagging at him. According to the op plan he’d seen, the Navy fighters were supposed to fly racecourse tracks out over the sea unless there was a specific reason for them to fly inland. A reason like a no- fly zone violation.
“Dom,” He said, feeling cold. “Get on the horn. Raise Tara. Find out what the hell a Navy F14 is doing in here.”
“Radio silence, LT. Remember?”
“I don’t give a shit about radio silence! I want to know what the hell is going on!”
“Bird Dog Two, this is One,” Batman called. “Say again your last!”
“One, this is Two,” Dixie’s voice said, harsh with urgency and with the stress of a high-G climb. “Target Sierra One is a Hind gunship. I say again, Hind gunship.”
Batman pulled back on his stick, taking the Tomcat to eighteen thousand feet. His VDI showed three targets now, Mason and Garrity’s F14, the UN helo, and the bandit.
“Cat,” he radioed. “Do you concur?”
“Sorry, Batman. I didn’t see it. We’ve got a Zoo down here in the rocks and I was working my board.”
“Bird Dog One, this is Dixie. I only had a glimpse but it was pretty close. I made the weapons pylons.”
“Do you have it in sight now?”
“Negative,” Dixie replied. “Still in my climb. He’s behind us somewhere.”
At the top of his climb, Batman eased the stick left and put the nose over, lining up the shot. On his HUD, the targeting pipper drifted toward the bandit, moving up the mountain valley. At a range of just over five miles, he still couldn’t actually see the target, but the Tomcat’s computer had painted it on his VDI and again on his heads-up display, a tiny circle of green light. Pipper and circle connected.
“Batman,” Malibu said over the ICS. “I’ve got something from UN Two-seven. It’s garbled… something about they’re under attack.”
“That Hind must be taking shots at them. Tell ‘em the cavalry’s on the way,” Batman said. “I’ve got the bandit lined up. Target lock!”
He decided to go with a heatseeker rather than a radar-guided AMRAAM. With the target between his AWG9 radar and the valley floor, there was too great a chance that the missile would accidentally lock onto the ground instead of the Hind. The helicopter’s engine exhaust was hot, the ground cold. It would make a perfect target beacon for the AIM9.
He snapped a selector switch and immediately heard the high-pitched warble as one of his Sidewinder missiles “saw” the heat emitted by the helicopter.
His thumb closed on the firing switch. “Fox two!” he called, giving the alert that told all friendly aircraft that a heatseeker was in the air.
With a piercing shoosh, a Sidewinder slid free of its rail beneath his starboard wing, streaking toward the valley five miles away. As its exhaust flare dwindled, Batman suddenly remembered the date and broke into a grin behind his oxygen mask.
“Trick or treat, you sons of bitches,” he said.
“You raise Tara yet?” Cole demanded.
“Yea, but things are all screwed up. Sounds like a Chinese fire drill back-” Dombrowski stopped. He’d turned in his seat to illustrate his point and stopped in mid-sentence, staring out of the Black Hawk’s cockpit toward the
