by T. E. Cruise
It’s all over, Robbie thought in shock, but then, incredibly, he saw Steve’s Thud arrowing up out of that spreading hell of smoke and fire.
“You fucking made it, you wild man!” Robbie crowed, but he shut up fast. He could see from the way Steve’s Thud was handling that something was wrong.
“Steve, come in!” Robbie frantically transmitted. “Steve —”
There was no reply. Had something happened to Steve’s radio?
Robbie looked around for the rest of the flight, but they’d gone. We’re all alone, over enemy territory, he realized. He checked his fuel situation: not good …
He glanced back toward Steve in time to see his Thud still climbing, but then it faltered as its engine flamed out. The Thud dropped into a stall, and then the sleek war bird was transformed into almost twenty-five tons of flying brick as it began to fall out of the sky.
“Steve, you’re out of control. Get out!” Robbie cried, hammering his mike button.
Maybe Steve was only semiconscious, he thought. Maybe his radio could receive, if not transmit. If he were only a little stunned, Robbie’s voice in his ears might snap him awake.
“Get out, Steve!” Robbie screamed hoarsely. “Get out! GET OUT!”
Robbie saw the Thud’s canopy blow, and then Steve, punching out. As his chute blossomed its beeper began emitting its doleful, electronic cry of despair. The high-pitched wailing seemed transformed in Robbie’s earphones into a keening: don’t-leave-meldon’t-leave-meldon’t—
I won’t, Robbie vowed silently. He was already on the horn, broadcasting a Mayday.
(Two)
Call it bravery, or call it defiance, but Steve Gold knew as soon as he’d spotted those MIGs that he was going after them. Shooting down enemy airplanes was what he did best. Not dropping bombs, or giving pep talks to hotshot young jet jockies who thought he was a prehistoric relic, or trying to make sense out of his future as past choices inexorably closed in—
Steve knew what was right for him, and what was wrong. He knew he really didn’t have the kind of smarts it took to make it at war college, and that once this tour was over he really would have to make good on his threat to leave the Air Force. But that was all in the future. What was here and now were these two fat, juicy MIGs that the good Lord had seen fit to put within reach of his gun.
Wax those two birds, Steve thought, and you will have counted coup on the enemy in three wars…
“Be right back,” he told the flight, arming his cannon as he banked his Thud toward his prey.
“Steve, no!” he heard his nephew cry out.
“Negative, Rio four!” Major Wilson ordered him. “Four, you get back here—”
Steve ignored them. Ahead stretched a long future during which the world could tug and prod him to its heart’s content, but this was his moment. Here in the cockpit of his war bird, with his finger resting lightly on his cannon’s trigger, he was supreme.
There were various electronic shrieks, beeps, and drones coming from his ECM and navigational gear, competing for his attention with the multiple, garbled exchanges from the other pilots on the airwaves, and the controllers back in Thailand. Steve flicked the switches to silence the electronic bedlam, until only his radio was left on. What a relief! How’d they expect a pilot to hear himself think through all that black-box racket?
It was time to get back to basics, Steve thought. To remember that first and foremost a fighter plane was a platform for its weapons systems. All the black boxes in the world couldn’t take the place of a man who knew how to shoot …
The MIGs were now about a mile away. Hold on, Steve thought. Don’t get overeager; a thousand feet is optimum range.
So far, so good: The MIGs still seemed unaware of his presence. His cherry red, notched circle gunsight was closing in on them like some luminous UFO intent on joining their formation.
The MIGs were 17s. With their short, swept wings, blunt, piglike air-intake snouts, and bubble canopies they looked a lot like the Commie birds Steve had tangled with almost fifteen years ago in Korea. He knew that the 17s usually carried a pair of cannons in a chin pod. They were a lot slower than his Thud, but much more maneuverable. Going up against them without a wingman was risky. If they got behind him his only alternative would be to go to afterburn and get out of here.
He glanced at his fuel gauges. At least he could run as far as he could on what little gas was left in his tanks.
And if these MIGs do bag me, so be it, Steve told himself, brooding on how poor old Howie Simon had been forced to retire to Texas to spend the rest of his life with nothing to keep him company but his aching ulcers and bum heart. Hell, if that was what a man’s future held once the Air Force was done with him, Steve could think of worse ways to die than with his finger on the trigger of the baddest-assed popgun in the history of breech-loaders, riding 49,000 pounds of war bird into the afterlife …
I may be afraid of a classroom, Steve thought, still smarting from the memory of the look in Robbie’s eyes during last night’s argument, but I am not afraid to fight, and if necessary, die for my country—
Something began tickling the hairs on the back of Steve’s neck. Someone—he hoped without fish sauce and rice on his breath—was on his six o’clock.
He punched his mike button. “Trust that’s you behind me, Three?”
“Rog—”
Robbie was sounding a mite pissed off, Steve noticed, but the important thing was that he was there.
That’s my boy, he thought fondly. He’d always believed that Robbie would be there to back him up. “Closing on the rear MIG now,” Steve said. “You hang back, make sure I’m not being boxed in.”
It had crossed his mind that this might be a trap. That the MIGs he was chasing were the lambs staked out to lure the tiger into an ambush.
“Three, we’ve got to leave the vicinity,” Wilson called, sounding harried.
Steve chuckled, thinking that the major was probably too pissed at him to address him, as well.
“Two and I are both getting low on fuel—” Wilson was saying.
“Rog,” Robbie replied. “You guys go on, and ask that tanker to alter its course to meet us as close to hostile territory as it dares to come.”
Good idea, Steve thought, nervously eyeing his fuel indicators. With all the afterburn he’d been doing, that tanker was going to have to meet him more than halfway…
“… I’m gonna be flying on farts by the time I manage to rope in my crazy uncle,” Robbie added.
“I heard that,” Steve said absently, grinning as the red dot pipper floating in the center of his gunsight’s red circle moved into position on the rear MIG, just behind the canopy, smack between the wings. “Don’t worry,” he added. “This won’t take long.”
“The colonel’s closed on the rear MIG!” Steve dimly heard somebody shouting as he squeezed the trigger, feeling the recoil reverberating up through the cockpit floor as the Vulcan’s six revolving barrels began spitting 20-millimeter rounds. The individual tracers looked like glowing orange beads as the cannon spewed a fiery rope that ran between the nose of Steve’s Thud to the backbone of the thrashing MIG.
“Mississippi one, Mississippi two,” Steve counted out loud to himself as he held down his trigger. He was aware that his cannon could empty its thousand-round ammo drum in ten seconds. He still had another MIG to wax.
The 20-millimeter rounds were pelting the MIG. The multiple hits raised sparks and left ugly black pockmarks on the enemy plane’s drab silver aluminum exterior.
“Mississippi three, Mississippi four—”
The MIG banked hard to starboard, trying to escape the lethal circle of Steve’s gunsight. Steve let the red pipper in the center of the circle slide onto the MIG’s port wing, and watched his cannon shear it clean off at the root. He released the trigger as his first kill dropped away, knitting its own mourning shawl of thick black smoke. Steve shifted to the lead MIG, which was now rolling and jinking in the general direction of tha
t little village they’d passed some time ago.
“Steve, get out of range and I’ll fire off a Sidewinder,” Robbie called.
Steve ignored him. No way am I surrendering a kill to a fucking machine, not while I’m in control of this airplane, with ammo in my gun. Watch and learn, li’l nephew—
His bright red gunsight was chasing the MIG. Just a little too low, Steve mused. He eased back a hair on the stick. The Thud’s nose lifted. The retreating MIG was framed like a cameo in the gunsight’s circle. The red pipper became lost in the glowing exhaust emanating from the MIG’s tail pipe.
“Got’cha!” Steve laughed. He mashed the trigger. The Vulcan gun chattered maniacally. The MIG went to after-burn, writhing as flaming 20-millimeter gunfire tore relentlessly at its red-painted tail.
“Jesus Christ! SAM launch—” Robbie abruptly bellowed.
Huh—? Where—? Steve guiltily pondered the ECM gear that he’d muted. Spilt milk, he thought. He did not take his eyes off the MIG in his gunsight.
“Steve, three-ring circus at four o’clock!” Robbie was shouting, sounding terrified.
“Just another second …” Steve muttered, counting to himself Mississippi six, Mississippi seven …
The pipper was staying glued to the MIG’s tail. “I’ve almost got this sucker …” he told Robbie. And shooting down airplanes is what I do—
Mississippi eight— He was totally relaxed now. His mind was clear. He was not consciously trying to anticipate what the MIG would do, and yet he was able to stay locked on his quarry, as if the 20-millimeter strand of gunfire connecting the hunter to the hunted was a towrope. Steadily the MIG’s red tail was being whittled away, decreasing its pilot’s control. There was nowhere the MIG driver could go where Steve wouldn’t be there at precisely the same moment.
Mississippi nine— The MIG went into an inverted reverse turn. Steve followed him around, pleased at the way his fuel-light Thud was responding.
“There’s no time, dammit!” Robbie yelled. “Break now!”
Mississippi ten— “Got ‘em!” Steve cried elatedly. The last of his tracers had blown off the MIG’s crimson-painted tail. The ruined MIG cartwheeled across the sky in flames, trailing a freight train’s length of black smoke.
Steve scarcely registered the MIG’s earthward plummet. He was too busy searching for the SAMs coming to get him. He saw them at twelve, three, and six o’clock high, riding herd on the sky as they streaked down to intercept his Thud. He went to afterburn, jinking like crazy; maybe even panicking a little. It was weird and scary to know that those things adjusting their aim to track him were not being piloted by men, but by electronics.
I’m up against mindless machines, he thought. I can’t outsmart them. I’ve to outfly them. He was enduring maxium G as he slalomed his Thud in two directions at once. Still the SAMs closed on him.
It was a SAM that shot down Chet Boskins in his Mayfly spy plane over the Soviet Union, Steve remembered, even as he realized just how well the SAMs had boxed him in. No matter where he put his airplane, that particular piece of sky was well within the lethal vectors of at least one of the three SAMs looking to put the bite on him.
He dived and twisted, putting his Thud through paces like a hooked trout leaping from a stream. It was like being in a brawl and trying to fend off three assailants at once; it was like being chased by hornets. The SAMs seemed alive, and yet it was not life as man could understand it. Like enraged insects, these thirty-foot-long, buzzing, winged things racing so swiftly and cunningly to destroy him seemed possessed of an implacably malign, alien intelligence …
Steve heard and felt the explosion as the SAM on his tail detonated. “Lucky, lucky, lucky—” he repeatedly chanted to himself in a whisper. The sweat was running in rivulets down his back, dripping down his forehead from beneath his helmet. Trying to escape the two remaining robot birds was taking everything he had.
He saw the SAM angling down toward him from his twelve o’clock flameout. Afraid he was going to run into it, he popped his speed brakes. The SAM slashed past his nose, its stubby, triangular wings making it look like an arrowhead.
He retracted his speed brakes and cobbed the throttle, pushing it sideways to go to afterburn. His fuel gauges were on empty. He had to be flying on fumes. He didn’t care. The one remaining SAM closing on his six o’clock had to be getting low as well. All that mattered was outrunning it.
I’m going to make it, Steve began to think. I’m going to beat these machines—
And then the two SAMs exploded—
The double blast of thunder and light engulfed Steve, deafening and blinding him. He blacked out as his stomach corkscrewed around his spine, and his skull rattled like a pea in its pod inside his helmet. His Thud was batted straight up by the first explosion, and then smacked tail over nose by the second ferocious detonation.
He was only semiconscious as his trained body went on auto pilot. He struggled reflexively with rudder/stick/throttle to regain control of his airplane. As full awareness slowly returned he realized that his cockpit was filled with angry insectile buzzings he didn’t immediately comprehend. His vision returned, to show a sky gone from blue to a shade of red as raw as an open wound.
Tumbling through the Sams’ twin fireballs, Steve’s mind thickly registered. Thud’s glistening with droplets of fire … Lucky my fuel’s just about gone; that I’ve got no ordnance left, and no ammo, else I’d have exploded.
As it was, bits of the flame cloud pressing in against his canopy had somehow wormed their way into the cockpit—
“No, those are warning lights,” Steve mumbled, struggling to clear his head as the red fire outside dulled to a black, smoky fog. “Those are amber malfunction lights and red fire lights on the panel,” he said out loud, just to hear himself; to know he was okay. The buzzing he’d been hearing was his warning signals going crazy.
He battled the Thud’s controls as he burst free of the spreading smoke cloud, regaining blue sky. He was climbing, but he knew from the feel of his controls that his Thud was in trouble. He scanned his gauges, saw he was losing hydraulic pressure. Control lines must have been severed by the blasts. This bird is never going to make it home—
He looked around for Robbie, saw him about two miles off, and punched his mike button at the exact same moment as his fuel-starved engine flamed out. “Robbie, come in! Robbie—!”
Nothing. His radio had evidently been deafened and muted by the blasts. The Thud, its engine dead and its control surfaces locked due to lack of hydraulics, slowed in its climb. The war bird seemed to poise motionless in midair for a split second, and then began a twirling belly flop. The ground some twelve thousand feet below began spiraling up.
Got to step out, Steve thought. Thank God Robbie’s there to see me and send a Mayday.
He hunched down, pulling up the hand grips on both sides of his seat to release the canopy. As the canopy lifted away the shrill wind whipping through the cockpit created a paper blizzard of the charts, reports, and navigational cards he’d received during that morning’s briefing. He brought his knees up toward his chest, leaned his helmet back against the headrest, tucked in his elbows, and squeezed the seat-ejection triggers. His pressure suit was automatically inflated as the explosive charge blew his entire chair straight up out of the cockpit at close to one hundred miles an hour. He had a momentary, bird’s-eye view of his massive Thud augering in for its embrace with the earth, and then his seat harness automatically released, and another, smaller, explosive charge ignited, kicking him free of the chair. He tumbled helplessly through the sky, his legs pumping furiously, his arms swinging, his fingers spread to claw futilely for purchase in the thin air. As he fell his own involuntary howl trilled within the confines of the rubber oxygen mask. Then his chute deployed. He heard the cruel whip-snap of nylon catching wind, and clenched against the bone-cracking, sudden halt of his downward plunge. He tore away the sour, spit-wet rubber oxygen mask as he hung, gently swinging like a pendulum from ben
eath that blessedly billowing parasol.
It was then that he saw his mighty Thud go to ground. From his vantage point his airplane disappeared to a clap of thunder. The Thud seemed like a majestic, olive and tan mottled sea bird, cleanly piercing the emerald ocean that was the jungle canopy.
The plane’s gone, Steve realized. Time to think about my own survival.
He was going to be coming down very near that village, and that was bad news. The villagers were likely watching his descent, and preparing search parties to trap and capture him.
No way, he thought, shuddering. He’d die before he’d let himself be taken a P.O.W.; to spend the rest of the war eating fish heads and bug-infested rice in the Hanoi Hilton, or worse …
He’d descended to about three thousand feet. He looked down between his legs. He was pretty much over where the jungle met the North Vietnamese-tilled fields. If he spread his legs, his left boot was over the patchwork quilt planted area; his right boot was over green jungle. He glanced toward the village. People looking like ants were threading out into the fields. Yeah, it was going to be quite a welcoming committee, Steve thought grimly.
Two thousand feet— Steve looked up, and saw just beyond the edge of his chute a tiny glinting speck in the sky: Robbie, watching to see where he went down.
Fifteen hundred feet— He was tugging on the chute’s risers, trying to steer himself a little bit away from the jungle and a little more toward the planted field. What he hoped to do was make a relatively safe landing on cleared, level ground, and then run into the nearby jungle to avoid being captured until he could be rescued. He had no doubt that Search and Rescue would make the effort to get him out. They would come. He knew they would—
But it was up to him to survive until they arrived …
Five hundred feet— It was no good. The wind carrying him toward the jungle was too strong. He was going down into the trees—
One hundred feet— He drew himself up into a ball and squeezed shut his eyes, lacing his fingers protectively across his face as he crashed through the first, thin, leafy branches of the giant trees that ruled the jungle. The noise sounded like pistol fire as the ever-thickening branches snapped beneath his cannonballing weight. As he fell the barbed vegetation slashed at his thin cotton flying suit. It scraped with bony fingers against his helmet. He yelled out in fear and defiance, thinking that at any moment he would be impaled by some upward jutting branch—