aircraft or ramming it, they had no way to attack. Even the nose gun had not been loaded.
Just then, a hard tone cut through the cockpit. It was louder and more insistent than the earlier ESM alarm. Tombstone glanced at the frequency and pulse rates on the alarm display, and knew immediately what it was.
“SAM! Get us out of here!” Greene shouted. “Tombstone, it’s got a seeker head and—”
Tombstone broke hard to the right, and kicked the MiG into afterburner. He glanced down at his fuel gauge, keeping up his scan, absorbing all the information from all the sources immediately, integrating them into a coherent threat picture, and calculating his options without even being conscious of it.
He knew instinctively he could not outrun the missile. They were too close, and had too little time. And, if he used the afterburner now, there was a good chance they would not be able to return to base.
“Do you see it?” Tombstone demanded, keeping his attention on the terrain ahead. They were now at 500 feet and still descending.
“No, I — yes! I got it, ten o’clock low. It’s got a lock!”
“That’s what they’re supposed to do. Options?”
“Faster!”
Tombstone didn’t answer. Ahead of them were the low hills that had shielded them from the air search radar as they were approaching. Now, they would serve a similar function, only in reverse. But the descent angles would have to be calculated perfectly. Since the missile was rapidly gaining altitude, it would have a look-down capability that would negate the masking effect of the hills. If he could just entice it down, then cut back behind the terrain, it might work.
“What are you doing?” Greene screamed. “You’re heading back toward it!”
“Tell me when it turns!” Tombstone demanded. He pulled the MiG into a tighter turn, decreasing the range to the missile, dividing his attention between the HUD, the terrain, and the missile. This close to the ground, a hill could kill him just as fast as a missile.
“It’s got us, it’s got us.” The tone sounding in the cockpit increased in frequency and pulse rate, indicating the missile had a lock on them.
“Hold on!” Now the trick would be to see if he could shake it.
Tombstone put the MiG nose down, still in afterburner, and headed for the deck. Eighty feet, seventy feet — Tombstone yanked up hard at forty feet. He maintained level flight for a few moments, and watching for the missile to react.
“It’s coming after us,” Greene said, his voice disbelieving. “Damn you, you—”
Tombstone dropped the MiG’s nose down hard again, grunting to maintain the blood flow to his brain, then jerked the MiG back up. Already he could feel the G forces eating away at his vision, threatening to rob him of the only sense that would keep them alive. Greene was unprepared for the new maneuver, and let out a moan of protest.
“Stay with me!” Tombstone snapped. The missile was closing, only 200 feet behind him now, and just for a moment he felt despair. It wouldn’t work — there wasn’t enough time — they would have to punch out, take their chances on the ground, which was no chance at all, not at this altitude, not in Chechnya.
“Oh,” Greene moaned. “It’s — it’s still coming, Tombstone.” His voice, while slightly fuzzy, contained none of his earlier panic.
“Hold on. This is our only chance.” Tombstone dropped the nose of the MiG down and headed for the hill in front of him.
The area around base was composed of a mixture of ridges and valleys, with hardwood trees and pines dominating the hills. The hardwood trees had already started to lose their leaves, but the evergreens formed a solid line thirty to forty feet above the cold ground. Tombstone aimed directly at a group of pines. At max speed, the deciduous trees were little more than sticks against the gray sky, and the evergreens were easier to see.
“No!” Greene howled. “No, you can’t—”
“I can’t,” Tombstone screamed, shouting not only at his backseater but against the Fates as well. “I can!”
The trees were so close, too close. At the last second, he yanked the MiG over on her side and pulled her up hard. Almost too late — the aircraft jolted violently as the top branches smacked against her wingtip. She started to cartwheel, but for the first time Tombstone was part of her, melded to metal as he’d never been before. Her wings part of his body, her hydraulics lines and cables his blood vessels and ligaments. He reacted without having to think, countering the aircraft’s insistence that she must rotate,
In a Tomcat, he would have been dead. He knew that with cold certainty. And even in the MiG, so light, so responsive, so willing, it was a close thing. Time stopped and the trees seemed to creep past him. He had time to examine each branch, each needle, it seemed.
Greene was screaming, no words just inchoate sounds of terror and protest, scrabbling forward with his hands as though to reach for the controls but too panicked to remember that he was strapped in. As the MiG careened past—
Suddenly, they were clear of the trees, climbing hard, the dense cold air caressing the fuselage and urging the aircraft to fly, fly. Time resumed its normal progression, and the feeling of detachment started to disappear. He noticed dispassionately that his hands were trembling ever so slightly at the fingertips, the only sign of the adrenaline that was flooding through him.
A hard blast of air rocked the aircraft, threatening to destroy her precarious aerodynamic stability. He calmed her as he would an unsettled horse, letting his hands and feet form the words on her controls.
“It detonated! It hit the trees! Or the ground! I don’t know which — oh, dear God.” Greene was almost sobbing. “There was nothing I could do. I was — I was—” Greene’s voice dissolved into sobs.
It struck Tombstone at that moment precisely what Greene’s problem was. It had nothing to do with courage or with his confidence in Tombstone. No. That wasn’t it at all.
The problem was simply that Greene was a pilot. And no pilot, no matter how good or how bad, no matter how brave or how timid, ever tolerated being a passenger.
A pang struck Tombstone. He had done this. He had asked another pilot to fly back seat, to go against every instinct and reflex in his body.
Would he have done it, if asked?
“As soon as we get back on the ground, I’m getting you an aircraft,” Tombstone said, pretending that Greene had not been crying. “I should never had done this, asked you to fly back seat this long. And we’re heading for the
No answer. Tombstone didn’t expect one. Words were cheap, but he’d prove he meant what he said as soon as they were back on the ground.
TWELVE
Sarah Wexler stormed down the passageway to the Oval Office, past Secret Service agents and the chief of staff and the press secretary and past a group of Boy Scouts waiting in the hallway. The head of the president’s protection details stepped in front of her. “Just what the hell are you doing, Madame Ambassador?” he asked.
She stood with a steely glare. “Going to see the president. As is my right.”
“He’s not free right now,” Leahy replied, trying to gently ease her away from the door, and applied more force. “Come on — you know the drill,” he cried, exasperated, as she resisted.
“The drill doesn’t count today,” she snapped.
