Fallout

by James W. Huston

  The two fighters raced toward each other at twelve hundred miles an hour, neither able to see the other, both following the vaguely remembered strobe of the F-16 radar, which had broken lock seconds before. Luke suddenly noticed a return on his infrared receiver and slaved the seekerhead of the Archer missile to it. The Archer missile picked up the heat signature of the F-16 as it climbed away from the land. The missile seekerhead growled in eager anticipation. Luke fired immediately, reduced his throttle to idle, and turned back hard to his left to stay on Khan’s trail.

  He saw a flash out of the corner of his eye. The second F-16 had taken a shot at Vlad.

  Vlad transmitted, “I’ve got one coming directly at me!”

  Luke saw another flash to the right and behind him as Vlad fired a radar missile back at the F-16, which he almost certainly couldn’t see. Vlad made a hard left turn to follow behind Luke and went to afterburner and dropped several hot burning flares to draw off the Sidewinder missile.

  Luke saw Vlad scream by in full throttle toward Khan and his wingman as they in turn headed toward the Indian nuclear power plant. The Sidewinder chasing Vlad slammed into one of the flares Vlad had dropped and blew it into a bright orb like the one at the end of a fireworks show.

  Just then Luke’s Archer missile reached its target and flew into the engine intake. The invisible F-16 exploded in a ball of flames and tumbled toward the ground. Luke saw two bright plumes of afterburner ahead of him. It had to be Vlad—the F-16s had only one engine.

  Luke wanted to kick himself. He had flown an intercept on the lead F-16 with fighters in cover behind. If one of his students had done that at NFWS, he would have given him a “down” for the flight. He stole a look toward the other F-16, or where it should be, but couldn’t see anything. It was like a knife fight in a dark closet.

  Luke’s radar was on, as was his infrared search-and-track. His plan for a secret intercept of the F-16s to a nice rear-quarter Archer shot had gone up in missile smoke. He pulled back on his stick, deselected afterburner, and climbed to three thousand feet, well above the F-16s somewhere below him.

  He was also now in the position of being to the side of the attacking F-16s with no ability to pick them out of the clutter of the ground. He raced toward his expected intercept point but was losing confidence with every second. “Did you get that bogey?” he asked, wondering if Vlad’s first missile had hit its target.

  “I don’t know. Didn’t see impact,” Vlad replied.

  Luke’s radar-warning receiver was clear. The F-16s had not reacquired him.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Vlad replied. “I’ve got them three miles ahead of me.”

  “Hit your burner,” Luke said.

  He saw a burst of two afterburners ahead, then darkness again. “Got you,” he said. Luke pulled hard left to get back on the F-16s’ course. Now he was chasing them from behind, but there was an F-16 somewhere behind him that probably hadn’t gotten shot down.

  Suddenly the voice of Prekash, the Indian squadron commander, came on their frequency calmly. “Let us know if they get through.”

  “Wilco,” Luke transmitted with supreme annoyance.

  He glanced up at the moon to see which side of the airplane would be illuminated. He wanted to be up-moon of the F-16s so they would see only his shadow. Luke accelerated as he began searching the air in front of them with his radar. “Still have them?” Luke asked Vlad.

  “Lost them. Too low!”

  “Still searching,” Luke said.

  “I’ve got them!” Vlad transmitted. “They are three miles ahead of me. On the deck. Heading 130.”

  Luke pulled to his left, took up a position of combat spread off Vlad, and redirected his radar toward Khan. Luke’s track-while-scan radar picked up the targets quickly this time. They had a hundred knots of closure on the bogeys, not enough for Luke. “Push it up,” he said. They closed on the two F-16s. Luke glanced at the navigation aid they’d been using, then the chart on his kneeboard, and noted they were seventy-five miles from the nuclear plant. Fifty was their limit. If they didn’t get Khan stopped by fifty miles, Prekash would take over with the rest of his squadron. Luke was tempted to let them do it, to break off the chase and leave it to the Indians, where it belonged. But he wasn’t there to help India.

  A red glow began to illuminate the horizon, and the rest of the countryside was now almost visible, even though still in mostly dark grays and black. Luke strained to see his enemy through the windscreen. He glanced down at his radar picture. “I’m showing them in tight formation,” Luke transmitted.

  He had no doubt Khan knew they were there. He was certainly getting a radar strobe from the MiGs. But now Luke wanted Khan to know they were behind him. He wanted Khan to pull up, to do anything that would stop his progress toward the target. “Alamo!” Luke transmitted to Vlad as he pulled the trigger on the stick and the heavy radar missile dropped off his wing. One second later the rocket motor ignited, nearly blinding him with its intense yellow flame, as it headed for Khan’s flight of two jets.

  Luke heard a buzz in his headset, the sound of a radar locked on to him. He glanced down to his radar-warning receiver screen and saw a strobe from directly behind him. Shit! That other F-16 had caught up with them. The missile launch had shown him where they were. “I’ve got one on my tail!” he transmitted.

  Vlad immediately broke into a hard turn to cover Luke’s tail. “Looking.”

  The radar-warning receiver couldn’t tell the range, only the direction. The strobe showed just that the bogey was directly behind him. It could be a mile back, or ten.

  Luke’s eyes were fixed on the ball of fire ahead of him that was still heading toward Khan. Khan hadn’t jinked or moved up at all. He watched the missile hit the ground a full half mile before the fleeing jets. Luke yelled to himself, “Damn it!” as he smashed his fist into the canopy. “Stupid damned Russian missiles couldn’t hit the ocean if you dropped them off a pier!”

  Vlad continued to pull hard left a thousand feet off the ground, with his radar searching for a target behind where he knew Luke must be. His radar was in auto-acquisition mode, and it locked onto a target a mile and a half behind Luke. He didn’t have any time at all. He slaved one of his Archer missiles to the radar to point in the direction of the bogey and fired before he even had a good tone or could see the bogey. He was looking into the black sky to the west, well aware he was presenting a nice silhouette for the bogey as the sun approached the horizon behind him. The Archer screamed off the rail, and Vlad squinted and turned back toward Luke.

  The Archer wasn’t to be fooled. It angrily bore down on the bogey, hitting it directly on the tail, just forward of the exhaust. Then it exploded, cutting off the entire back half of the airplane. The pilot ejected as the F-16 slammed into the ground.

  “Stay behind me and high. I’ve got to close on these guys.”

  “Roger,” Vlad said as he pulled his Fulcrum up to five thousand feet and scanned the sky for any other Pakistani fighters. No more surprises.

  “You need help?” Prekash transmitted.

  Only Vlad heard it, as he was high enough to catch the transmission. He replied, “Negative. Will keep you posted. Splash two F-16s.”

  “Roger. How many remaining?”

  “We think two.”

  “You need support?”

  “Recommend you vector a flight of four out now, heading”—Vlad looked quickly at the chart with the nuclear plant marked—“290. If the F-16s are still airborne by there, we’ll need a lot of help.”

  “Roger. Flight of four outbound.”

  Luke heard Vlad’s transmission. He assumed that Vlad was talking to Prekash, who no doubt was watching a radar picture of two bombers inbound to his nuclear power plant with the two world-class fighter instructors chasing them from behind. Not how it was supposed to go.

  Luke noticed that his fuel was lower than he’d hoped. He didn’t have much more time to complete this
intercept. The F-16 had more fuel than the Fulcrum could ever hope to have; the F-16 had only one engine. He had to get Khan now, or he’d be out of gas. He went to full afterburner and accelerated toward Khan and the infrared signature he had. He again worked his radar onto Khan’s jet. He fired another Alamo, his last radar-guided missile. He didn’t have much faith in the large Russian missile by now. He had yet to see it hit anything, not at San Onofre, not here.

  The morning air was clear and smooth as he started to see color in the landscape. It was the same patchy color as the camouflage scheme on his Indian MiG. He could make out a few trees or an occasional road as he raced across the countryside below him. He watched the Alamo speed toward Khan and knew that Khan was getting the radar-lock indication on his radar-warning gear.

  Luke almost smiled, as he could see Khan’s face in his F-16 trying to decide whether he was safer by pulling up and doing a hard turn into the missile or staying low and fast and hoping the missile would hit the ground. He’d stayed low last time, and he might again. But it was going to be harder. Luke was closer, and Khan had to know that. It took a special coolness to take no evasive action when a missile was tearing up on you from behind.

  Luke had closed to within a mile of Khan and could finally see the two F-16s as they danced over the Indian countryside. He could get only occasional glimpses of the airplanes, since they blended in with the darkness, but the missile had a very clear picture. It was getting radar return off the F-16s that guided it beautifully toward them. Luke saw small flashes on the underbellies of the two F-16s as they dropped chaff behind them to try to deceive the missile. The Alamo headed right toward them in a downward line like an arrow, when suddenly Luke’s radar broke lock.

  Khan went even lower, literally at treetop level, still running for the nuclear power plant. As much as he would have loved to turn and fight the two Indian MiGs he was sure he could defeat, he was determined to get to the target.

  “Shit!” Luke yelled inside the noisy Russian cockpit as he watched the Alamo fail. He had only one Archer missile left.

  Luke closed to within three-quarters of a mile of the fleeing F-16s and reacquired them with his radar. He selected Archer, the fast, infallible, maneuverable missile that he’d taught everyone to fear. He slaved the seekerhead to the radar, heard that growl, and fired. The hungry heat-seeking missile went right at Khan. Its motor burned brightly in the morning, illuminating the white smoke trail it left from Luke to the bogey. Khan knew what was coming. Flares dropped from the F-16s like rain. They burned at different intensity from a jet engine, a different color. The Archer chose one of the flares and blew it to hell.

  What? Luke thought. The Pakistanis have a flare that will beat the Archer? When did they get it? It suddenly occurred to him for the first time that he might not be able to get Khan. He had failed to shoot him down with the best maneuvering missile in the world. He was out of missiles and options. The Indians were going to have to take care of him themselves.

  He suddenly heard the buzz of a radar that had him locked up. His heart jumped. He looked down at the radar-warning receiver. It was a MiG-29 radar. “Vlad, you’ve got me locked up!”

  “Vlad!” he transmitted. “I’m Winchester. Get ahead of me and take a shot!” He continued to close on Khan, now only half a mile ahead. As he tore his eyes away from Khan to glance over his shoulder at Vlad, Luke noticed to his surprise that his thirty-millimeter gun was fully loaded. Bullets! But he’d never fired a Fulcrum gun. He wasn’t even sure how to interpret the gunsight. He slaved the IR system to the radar and saw the hot signature of the F-16s against the cool ground. He selected laser, and the laser range finder showed one thousand meters to the F-16. He selected the gun and wrapped his finger around the large trigger on the back of the stick. He studied the gunsight picture in the HUD. He had almost two hundred knots of closure. He pulled hard left and back to the right, to allow himself to pull lead on Khan and have a downward shooting angle. “Vlad, hold off! I’m going to guns.”

  Again there was no reply.

  Luke pulled back around hard to the right, with the buzz of Vlad’s radar ever-present in his mind. Luke was finally close enough to begin his gunnery run, although he was nearly supersonic—much faster than he wanted to be—but the F-16s weren’t slowing down for anything. Luke pointed his nose directly at the lead F-16 and watched the pipper—the aiming point—march toward the dark figure streaking across the ground.

  The laser range finder and IR system were on target. Luke pulled the trigger, and the thirty-millimeter cannon spit the huge bullets out the front of the MiG. He watched the tracers arc toward Khan and fall just behind him. He pulled hard left to pull more lead on Khan.

  Khan knew he had to move. If he continued straight ahead, he’d be dead. He pulled hard left as his wingman broke hard right, in a controlled, disciplined turn. They stayed low to the ground, not giving up the safety of their altitude.

  Luke tried to pull lead, but the turn was too tight to saddle in, and too low. If he continued ahead, he would overshoot and fly into the ground. “Vlad, take the one in the right turn!” he transmitted with some difficulty through the seven-G turn. He leveled his wings and pulled up to avoid the overshoot. At least he’d gotten Khan to turn from his target, and he was burdened with whatever bomb he was carrying, not a help in a dogfight.

  Khan continued to turn hard right next to the ground, making it almost impossible to get a shot on him as he waited for a chance to pull his nose up and take a snap shot at Luke.

  It was a clever tactic, Luke acknowledged, but not clever enough. Luke had three dimensions within which to work, and Khan had two. Luke leveled his wings and pulled up away from the earth, the nose of his Fulcrum pointing anxiously into the purple darkness above. He looked over his shoulder to see if Khan was going to follow him up. Khan continued to fly in his tight circle until he saw Luke almost completely vertical, then turned back to his original heading and accelerated away. It was what Luke had been waiting for. He pulled the Fulcrum down and pointed the nose of the Russian fighter toward Khan’s F-16. As he plummeted toward the earth, he saw the flash of the missile out of the corner of his eye as Vlad fired.

  Luke’s heart stopped. Vlad’s radar was still on Luke. He waited to see if the missile was heading toward him and saw it was going toward Khan’s wingman. Luke finally realized that Vlad was keeping Luke on his radar to make sure he didn’t shoot him. He’d fired an infrared missile and had slaved the missile seekerhead to the IR receiver instead of the radar. Leave it to Vlad to come up with that, Luke thought.

  Luke pulled the trigger as soon as his pipper was near the F-16. It was a bad shot, but he wanted Khan to know he was still around and wasn’t going away. Khan would have to fight or go down. In his peripheral vision Luke saw Khan’s wingman coming back to support Khan. He was higher than Khan and in afterburner, trying to regain some of the speed he’d lost turning with Vlad. Vlad was behind him about a mile. Luke’s tracers arched in front of Khan again, daring him to keep flying straight.

  Khan’s wingman never saw Vlad’s missile. It hit him in the canopy and spiked the F-16 into the ground like a tent peg.

  Khan couldn’t take any more. He pulled up hard away from the earth toward Luke. Luke quickly selected radar and locked on to the climbing F-16. He placed Khan directly in the middle of his windscreen. The radar grabbed the reflected return from the metal airplane climbing away from the diminishing clutter and held on.

  Khan pointed his nose directly at Luke. Khan’s bomb limited his ability to maneuver, especially nose up as he now was. Luke heard the buzz from an F-16 radar lock as Khan got his radar onto Luke, then fired one of the Sidewinder missiles on his wing rail at Luke.

  “Low fuel, low fuel!” the Indian woman warned Luke.

  Luke dropped several flares and headed toward the ground at the same time Vlad did. The Russian-made flares were calculated to defeat the known enemy of all Soviet-bloc airplanes, the AIM-9L Sidewinder. The version the U
nited States had sold to Pakistan was the older model Sidewinder. The Russian-made flare was exactly the right infrared frequency and deceived the Sidewinder into thinking that it was a jet exhaust in afterburner. The Sidewinder slammed into the small burning flare, its warhead exploding two hundred feet from Luke’s MiG.

  Luke and Vlad were both behind the fleeing Khan now, fifty miles from the nuclear plant. Vlad transmitted, “One left.”

  Prekash replied, “Roger, break off your attack. We have you inbound at fifty miles. We have four fighters ten miles away. Repeat, break off your attack.”

  “Stick, did you hear that? They want us to break off.”

  “I need you down here, Vlad! We’ve almost got him.” “Emergency fuel! Emergency fuel! Land immediately!” the nice Indian woman told Luke in her inimitable voice. He longed for Glenda.

  Vlad replied to Prekash. “Yes, roger that. Luke is closing on him. He is still with him, hold your fire!” he yelled as he rolled over and pulled toward the ground.

  “Are you Winchester?” Luke asked Vlad.

  “One Alamo left,” Vlad replied.

  “Lock him up.”

  “I’m on my way,” Vlad said, selecting afterburner and racing ahead toward Luke, whom he’d again locked up with his radar. Vlad broke the radar lock on Luke and searched for Khan. He rolled wings level. “Got him.”

  “You got a good shot?” Luke demanded.

  “Not very.”

  “Shoot!” Luke insisted.

  “Too low! You’re between us! It will never—”

  “Shoot now! That’s an order!”