The Englishman stood up, nearly at attention. “Roger, Wolf Flight. Cleared direct Stonewood. Descend to sixteen hundred feet at your discretion. I will clear all traffic.”
“Roger, Eastern.” Jack acknowledged the clearance.
“Welcome home, Wolf Flight,” the controller added, looking around the room at the approving faces, and said quietly, “Bloody hell, it might be interesting here tonight.”
The sound of the fighters turning onto final echoed through Gillian’s salon, drowning out conversation. Margaret stopped her work and looked at her employer. “That’s the wing. They’re home. Jack’s with them.” She made it an announcement.
Gillian looked at the older woman, not quite believing her. “How can you be so sure?”
“I just am; he’s a survivor.” Margaret was carefully combing the woman’s hair in front of her, her voice matter-of-fact.
“I don’t know…he’s probably dead like the rest of them. Look at those wives at Stonewood. Hoping and waiting…”
“Gillian, for God’s sake, go. If he’s there, he’s going to need you.”
Gillian stared at her, tears beginning to form in her eyes. What if Margaret was right? That Jack was back? “Oh, bloody hell,” she said, running out of the salon to find him…
General Cunningham watched the Phantoms’ final turn. He had been briefed that it would be a radar recovery with one aircraft landing at a time and about five minutes apart. But like every flyer on the ramp he knew that Jack was bringing the flight down final for an overhead pattern. Cunningham looked at Brigadier General Shaw, not concerned about the unauthorized change in landing. “You trained most of the crews at Alexandria South.”
“Yes, sir. But Egypt was some time ago.”
“What were they like then?” Cunningham asked.
“Typical fighter jocks, General. Hair on fire, young hell-raisers. That Captain Locke, especially. Got tangled up with the ambassador’s daughter.” Shaw paused, remembering not only Locke but Mike Fairly too…
“A regular skirt-chaser?”
“No, sir. A regular fighter pilot. One of the best.”
Cunningham nodded and watched Jack execute a sharp break to the left as he crossed thirteen hundred feet above the approach end of the runway. Every five seconds a Phantom would peel off to the left, circling onto a short downwind leg, bleeding off airspeed and lowering flaps and gear before circling to land at intervals of two thousand feet. The symmetry and grace of the recovery pattern was testimony to the skill of the pilots. Cunningham knew how battle weary the birds were, and knowing, especially appreciated the precision of the maneuver. He also knew the scars the pilots and WSOs would carry for the rest of their lives.
On downwind Thunder called the landing checks, then added: “Looks like they’ve got a reception committee for us.”
Jack extended his downwind leg, retracted the gear and flaps and held his airspeed. He rolled out on final and stroked the afterburners, accelerating straight ahead.
“Do it,” Thunder said.
“Tower, Wolf Zero-One on the go,” Jack radioed.
“Roger, Wolf Zero-One, report Initial.”
Jack leveled 512 off at a thousand feet and shoved the throttles into full afterburner, touching 450 knots as he passed the tower. He snapped the stick to the right, executing a neat aileron roll. Neither he nor Thunder said a word—the roll itself announced the 45th had returned home. Winners. One after another the warbirds went around, each doing a victory roll as they passed down the runway. The noise was overpowering and constant.
“They did good, Shaw,” Cunningham said.
“Good enough, General.”
Praise
THE WARBIRDS
“What Tom Clancy did for the Navy with The Hunt for Red October, Richard Herman, Jr., has done for the Air Force with The Warbirds. But Herman has done it better. It is doubtful that anyone has ever written more vividly and realistically about the exhilaration of aerial combat…Once you pick this book up, you won’t put it down until you’ve finished.”
Richmond News Leader
“From the first scramble to the last victory roll, The Warbirds soars into the wild blue yonder…A gripping story which could be the basis for tomorrow’s headlines”
Pittsburgh Press
“A military thriller that stands out from the pack…Unusually well written…Truly hair-raising…Thoroughly believable”
Kirkus Reviews
“One of the most honest novels of the Air Force in a very long time…A tip of the wings to Richard Herman”
W.E.B. Griffin, author of The Brotherhood of War
“The Warbirds is hot! Outstanding action…Makes it easy for the armchair pilot to put on a Nomex flying suit and put bombs on target. Excellent and completely authentic”
Lt. Col. Dave “Bull” Barker, USAF F-15 fighter pilot and former POW
“There’s no slowing down, the dialogue never lags or wavers and the novel’s men and women come across as real people facing true-to-life problems…Herman writes a good one!”
Chattanooga News Free Press
“Richly detailed…Jolting, mesmerizing”
South Bend Tribune
“[A] slam-bang action novel…Chillingly real…Breathtaking”
Wichita Times Record News
“Thrilling…Harrowing…Exciting”
San Diego Union
“A terrific adventure with some of the best dogfight scenes I’ve ever read”
Dale Brown, author of Silver Tower and Flight of the Old Dog
“One heck of a ride…A convincing, fascinating edge-of-the-seat look at modern air combat…A book that you just can’t bail out of until the final page”
Flint Sunday Journal
“High excitement”
Orlando Sentinel
“Rendered with chilling realism…Honest as well as accurate”
Sacramento Union
“Puts the reader on an emotional roller-coaster…Herman’s characters are richly and vividly drawn…Superb…Gripping…Will keep you reading long into the night and wishing there were more”
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Copyright
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or publisher.
I would like to extend my thanks and gratitude to George Wieser and Donald I. Fine who saw something in a very rough manuscript and decided to take a chance; and to George Coleman and Rick Horgan who taught me how to tell a better story.
THE WARBIRDS. Copyright © 1989 by Richard Herman, Jr., Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 88-45380
First Avon Books Printing: February 1990
EPub Edition © September 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-195612-6
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