Forger exploded into flames.
“New target,” the Hawkeye announced, “on your right, six o’clock low.” Thor and Beetle both saw the contact immediately and, staying in their fighting positions, headed down to intercept him.
“Why does he have to send
Around Thor, black smoke and flashes of fire littered the air. He broke hard to the right, avoiding the shrapnel then rolling over and descending toward the new target. It would be a bitch to survive enemy fire only to be nailed by FOD in his own engine.
“Nasty,” Beetle said. The Forger had rolled inverted, winged over, and was trying to slip into position behind Beetle. But Beetle cut hard to the right then suddenly reversed the direction of his turn, forcing the Forger out into the open.
“Open range, Beetle,” Thor said, suddenly realizing how close they were. “You’re too close, you’re too close!”
“I’m pulling out,” Beetle said, his voice suddenly tight. He was still inverted, following the Forger down in the bottom half of a loop. He eased his Hornet out of the descent into level flight, now right side up, intending to clear the area for Thor’s shot. But as he did so, the Forger seemed to stagger in the air and Beetle’s Hornet clipped its tail assembly.
The Hornet immediately departed control flight, falling through the air like dead metal. Light, smoke, then black trailed from its tail. Thor was closer to the Forger but too close for a missile. He jammed the weapons selector to guns, and rattled off a long blast with his nose cannon. The Forger’s canopy shattered, glass hanging in the air for a moment to catch the sun like a rainbow. There was a blast of white smoke, and debris streamed out of the cockpit. Smoke billowed from the Forger’s right engine, followed shortly by a stream of liquid that burst into flames. Thor was already rolling out, moving away and hunting for Beetle when the Forger exploded.
“Beetle!” Thor shouted, scanning the air for the injured Hornet.
“Seven clock, low,” the Hawkeye said, barely pausing as it rapped out orders to the remaining Hornets.
Thor saw him then, sunlight blinking off metal as the Hornet tumbled. “Beetle!” Thor shouted again, kicking in the afterburner to intercept his wingman. Was Beetle even alive? The impact should have been survivable. Beetle had hit the tail assembly, sure, but he hadn’t hit the cockpit as far as Thor could tell. Had the g-forces gotten him?
Thor was on him now, following him down, screaming his name in the mike. He thought he heard a brief, clipped answer but he couldn’t be sure. He could see inside the cockpit, but the Hornet’s erratic movement made it hard to tell if Beetle was injured. If Beetle was still alive, his hands were glued to the controls and every ounce of his concentration would be focused on pulling out of the deadly spin.
Was it possible — was Beetle’s Hornet pulling up? It seemed to be, but the motion was still so severe that Thor could see no way to recover. If Beetle could just stabilize enough to punch out, that would be good enough. There was no way this aircraft was going to land, no way at all. It had no business being airborne. The best they could hope for was to save the pilot.
Unbelievable. The Hornet’s motion was stabilizing. It was still in a steep dive, but the yaw was damping out. It still maintained a slow rotation around its longitude, but maybe, just maybe it was slow enough to let Beetle get out.
“Beetle, you got it — eject, eject!” Thor shouted, still not knowing whether his wingman could hear him.
His own ESM warning gear beep cut through the cockpit, demanding to be heard. Lock, missile lock — but where? Thor broke off from following Beetle’s injured Hornet and searched the air around him.
At first he couldn’t find it. Then it came out of the sun, headed directly for him, two Forgers with nose guns blazing. Thor dropped his Hornet’s nose and shot under them, exposing his tailpipe for an instant but more willing to risk that than his undercarriage. The Forgers streamed past him, guns still firing, tracers blindingly white against a blue sky, searching for him. The Forgers started to turn back on him, but Thor was already back in position, his own gun firing now. Two could play this game.
The lead Forger turned away, tipped over into a steep dive, and headed for Beetle’s injured Hornet. Thor swore. Surely the Forger pilot could tell that the Hornet wasn’t quite flying anymore. What was the point in going after one that was already fatally injured?
Just then, the cockpit blew off Beetle’s Hornet, followed shortly by a small, black figure. Beetle ejected at a forty-five-degree angle from the cockpit, fire blazing under the ejection seat as the rocket drove him through the air.
“He’s clear, he’s clear,” Thor shouted, relief flooding him. For just a moment, he thought Beetle would make it. But then, just as his wingman was clearing the dying Hornet, the aircraft rolled again. The tail assembly smacked into his wingman, driving him sideways.
The Forgers, evidently having seen the ejection, tried to break off. Thor was torn between keeping Beetle in view and pressing the attack on the Forgers. There was really no choice — he was in the air for one reason, and that was to kill Forgers.
“Chute, I have one chute,” Thor shouted over tactical. “Beetle, immediately below my position. Requests SAR.”
“Roger, Packer lead, we have him,” the Hawkeye replied. “SAR is standing by.”
Thor wheeled his Hornet back and gave chase. The Forgers saw him immediately, and cut around, trying to throw him off, but Thor anticipated their maneuver, ascended, then dropped into perfect killing position. He toggled the weapons selector to Sparrows, then changed his mind and selected guns. He boosted into afterburner for a few seconds, closing the distance, the Forger gyrating through the air as it tried to shake him. Thor shot off a short blast, feeling an immense satisfaction as the tracers made their way through the Forger’s skin. He pulled out, then dropped back down to get another visual on Beetle. He couldn’t get too close, for fear that his jet wash would collapse Beetle’s chute. From this range, he could not tell whether Beetle was conscious and had his hands on his risers or was simply riding the chute down.
He would be okay, Thor knew he would. Hell, it hadn’t been that hard of a hit, had it? Marines survived far worse than that and came out okay, didn’t they? Sure they did.
His ESM demanded attention. “Son of a bitch,” Thor muttered, turning back to open sky to find the threat. It took him a moment, but then sunlight splashed on metal and he saw his new target coming at him out of the sun. No heat seekers, then — too dangerous. Too much danger that the missiles would take off after the sun instead of the aircraft, and Thor was getting low enough on weapons that he couldn’t afford to waste a single one.
The Forger was above him, descending rapidly, and it wasn’t alone. Slightly above and behind, a second one came, hoping to catch Thor as he broke for altitude to escape the lead aircraft. It would have been no problem with a wingman, since the wingman could have kept the higher aircraft distracted long enough for Thor to gain altitude, but it was slightly trickier now. The real problem was being low on weapons, especially in a two-on-one situation.
Thor punched into afterburner and pulled away from the two, briefly exposing his tailpipes before wheeling back in on them. His ESM was screaming now, warning that missile launch was imminent, that targeting radar had a lock on him. Thor ignored it. His eyes could tell him more than any electronics could right now.
A missile leaped off the lower aircraft’s wing, heading for the Hornet’s underbelly. Thor held steady for a moment, then ejected chaff and flares, winging over and descending, pulling up hard enough to come up on the other side of the aircraft. If the missile managed to follow the maneuver, there was at least a fighting chance that it would see its own aircraft as the target. Meanwhile, time to deal with the higher bird.
The other aircraft was waiting for him, standing off in the distance, evidently wary of the Hornet’s maneuverability. But Thor was starting to run low on fuel, and the danger of a prolonged two-on-one fight was quickly becoming a problem.
