Final Storm

by Maloney, Mack;

  Yet, he knew this was not likely. According to the latest intelligence reports, all the American SAC forces were at their home bases.

  So why had the Americans pursued this apparently insane strategy?

  It wouldn’t matter soon anyway, he thought. NATO’s crazy fighter sweep had drawn off the costly harassing attacks on the Red Army’s vital supply lines through Eastern Europe. Their trains would be rolling again in no time, bringing fresh troops and tanks and materiel for the final assault. They would punch through the stubborn NATO line and capture Paris. Then the rest of the continent would fall and this crazy, totally unexpected war would be won.

  He picked up another ream of reports—details on the supplies and reinforcements soon to move up to the front. The Red Army supply pipeline was now chock full of every scrap of war materiel that the Soviet Union could muster. Almost a million reservists on troop trains. Thousands of tanks drawn from the vast reserves of the Chinese border units. Plus all the fuel, ammunition, SAMs, and equipment that could be spared.

  The military might of the Soviet Empire was riding those steel rails to a great battle with destiny, Ilyushin thought proudly, and nothing he knew of could stop them.

  But for some reason, Ilyushin’s thoughts turned back to a strange report he’d received from one of his wing commanders. It told of a mysterious all-white F-16 that had single-handedly destroyed two thirds of a pair of MiG-23 squadrons, forcing the remainder to return to their base.

  A war tale, the air marshal thought. Already they are springing up! Even the Americans cannot have such a pilot or an airplane that could launch so many air-to-air missiles. And surely even if they did, he too would become a victim of the battle in the skies over France before the fight was over.

  At least Ilyushin hoped so.

  Chapter 31

  TOOMEY HAD BEEN HANGING in the tree for more than twelve hours.

  He was cold, hungry and exhausted—but at least he was still alive and, as far as he could tell, he had no serious injuries.

  That was more than he could say for the Soviet pilot who was also hanging from a parachute on the tree nearby. This man was quite dead—his broken, frozen body hanging like a grotesque, discarded marionette.

  Toomey wasn’t sure if the dead pilot across from him was the same one who was flying the MiG he had collided with the night before. In fact, there wasn’t much Toomey remembered about how he came to be hanging from the massive tree that was located he believed somewhere in the Ardennes forest. All he knew was his parachute harness and straps were the only things preventing him from plunging the last 150 feet to the frozen ground below.

  He had been on his twelfth sortie, reaching the outer limits of the two-day-old massive dogfight just as the sun was setting. He had greased a Foxbat almost immediately after joining the fray, but then, somehow, he collided with a MiG-29 Fulcrum, the Soviet jet clipping off his entire tail section. He hit the ejection button a mere two seconds later, and saw that the Soviet pilot had done the same thing. His F-16 had crashed about two miles from his present position.

  The dead Soviet pilot was already hanging in the nearby tree when Toomey came floating down.

  It was from this strange vantage point that Toomey bore eyewitness to a particularly bizarre chapter of the massive, never-ending aerial battle.

  The night skies had been lit as bright as day as nightfighters from both sides clashed in fierce dogfighting, that was now visible from the rooftops of Paris. That in itself was chillingly spectacular, leaving even a veteran pilot like Toomey awestruck.

  But it was the battle that commenced at dawn and continued into the morning that left Toomey with his mouth wide open in fascination.

  At first sunlight, it was as if he was watching a scene from another era. For the most part, the skies were filled with NATO aircraft that were much older than Toomey himself. Challenging the NATO planes was an equally motley collection of Warsaw Pact jets, supplemented by a few newly arrived interceptors from the Soviet Air Defense Command.

  Surprisingly, Toomey saw that the older planes in the NATO inventory were holding their own with fighters of similar vintage from the dregs of the Warsaw Pact aerodromes. He witnessed innumerable battles that went on right above him. In one particularly close battle, a British Lightning, an early supersonic interceptor, flashed across the crowded sky in hot pursuit of a Polish-built MiG-19 Farmer. The speedy Lightning quickly overtook the slower MiG and pumped a Firestreak air-to-air missile up the hapless Pole’s exhaust, exploding the MiG in a puff of orange and black.

  Everywhere, the ubiquitous F-4 Phantoms painted with the markings of a half-dozen NATO nations were dueling with the even more ubiquitous MiG-21 Fishbeds of the Warsaw Pact. The two fighters were of similar vintage, but the Phantoms had been continually upgraded with avionics improvements and better radar systems, while the Soviets had been reluctant to make the same investment in the air forces of their East European satellites. The disparity was evident as the Phantoms clawed through the MiGs, firing Sidewinders, Sparrows, and cannon with deadly precision.

  On it went—an East German Fishbed was flamed by a West German Luftwaffe Phantom in a particularly savage rolling scissors exchange of cannon fire, while a Czech MiG loosed a pair of AA-2 Atoll missiles at a National Guard Delta Dart. One of the lethal air-to-airs exploded near the F-106’s triangular wing, crumpling it and sending the plane spiraling downward in flames.

  A squadron of Spanish A-4 Skyhawks was doing a number on the clumsier MiG-21s, but the Italian and Greek Starfighters in the fight had been jumped by a squadron of Floggers and had taken several losses before they joined the main battle. The diminutive G-91 interceptors were also taking a beating, dwindling the already-small Portuguese contribution.

  In an eerie replay of the early days of the Korean conflict, a pair of Turkish Sabres tore into a flight of Romanian MiG-I5s, smoking several of the older planes.

  In between watching the incredible air battles, Toomey was forced on several occasions to play dead as Soviet ground units passed right below him. The enemy troops paid no attention—to him or to their dead comrade dangling nearby. This told Toomey that the war had taken a particularly nasty turn—one in which the dead were not collected, simply because they now outnumbered the living.

  As the day progressed, Toomey joined a million other combatants on both sides who caught themselves looking skyward once again.

  Once the antique fighters had left the scene, a battle royal erupted at high altitudes between the newly returned F-16s and the swift Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat interceptors.

  In the middle of it as usual was the crazy pilot in the white F-16.

  Flying with his avionics turned back on, Hunter rolled out high above the dogfight to swoop down on a pair of the big Foxbats.

  He knew the heavy MiGs were initially designed to intercept the US B-70 Valkyrie, a Mach 3 strategic bomber that was never built. Even after the American bomber was scrapped, the MiG was deployed as an air defense interceptor with incredibly high speed (Mach 3.2) and as an unarmed reconnaissance version.

  The two MiGs below Hunter were not the recon versions, he soon found out.

  The F-16’s nose cannon spat out a continuous tongue of flame as it sent shell after shell cascading down into the Soviet planes. One took several shells in the starboard fuel supply and burst into flames below the diving F-16, forcing Hunter to fly through the debris.

  The second Foxbat, getting the hint when his partner exploded, had punched his afterburners and shot off toward the horizon in an incredibly fast, but wide turn. The Soviet pilot used his primitive but effective radar targeting system to pinpoint the F-16 that had just tried to blow him out of the sky, seeking to pump off one of his two large AA-6 Acrid missiles toward the speeding American.

  When the smoke from his kill had cleared, Hunter found himself on the receiving end of the huge air-to-air missile fired by the fast Foxbat. With the shrill wail of the radar threat warning blasting his ears, The Wingman executed a c
omplex series of rolls and dives, designed to break the missile’s radar lock on his plane. For extra security, he pumped his chaff dispenser release several times, and ejected two bright flares that shot far away from the F-16.

  The big Acrid missile was designed to take out larger targets, like strategic bombers, and was confused by the combination of decoy flares, chaff and Hunter’s evasive action. Unable to reacquire a suitable target, the missile detonated itself.

  All of Hunter’s concentration had been focused on evading the deadly airborne harpoon, and now he searched the skies—and his radar screen—for a glimpse of the Soviet pilot who fired it. He saw the incredibly fast blip enter the field of his radar screen just as the low-pitched warble of the threat warning system started emitting a radar detection alarm once again.

  The lower pitch, Hunter knew, indicated that the Foxbat’s powerful but narrow-beam targeting radar was probing the skies for him with invisible pulses.

  Suddenly he knew the heavy Foxbat was directly behind him—almost three miles out—and moving at near its maximum speed of Mach 3. Sooner or later, the Russian’s crude radar would lock on his F-16 and another big missile would be fired.

  Hunter’s computer-like brain was flying through a series of calculations even as the radar threat warning’s wail notched up an octave. The Soviet pilot had him locked in…. The Acrid missile was seconds away from launch. Closing at three times the speed of sound, there really was no way the Soviet pilot could miss.

  A supernatural calm descended over Hunter in the tiny cockpit as the seconds turned into hours. As if time were suspended, Hunter was thinking about his first combat flight instruction, back at Nellis. He could hear Jones’s gravelly voice giving a dogfighting “Golden Rule:”

  “The surest way to scare the hell out of a bandit diving on your six is to flip over and fly straight at him,” Jones had said. “It is guaranteed to make rookies panic and grown men wet their flight suits.”

  Hunter knew what he had to do. Even as the threat warning siren song reached its crescendo, he snap-rolled the agile fighter and executed a punishing high-g turn that put him in a steep climb directly toward the diving Foxbat. He punched the afterburner, and the F-16 quickly reached its maximum climbing speed as the two adversaries closed on each other at an incredible combined rate of five times the speed of sound.

  The Foxbat pilot had just pushed the missile release when he noticed the distortion in his radar trace. What was the American up to now? he wondered. Searching the skies ahead, all he saw was the blazing trail of the big missile streak ahead of him. The heavy Foxbat was slicing through the sky right behind the missile when he saw a black dot directly ahead of him, growing larger.

  The Soviet pilot’s jaw sagged in disbelief, held in place only by his oxygen mask. The crazy Yankee was charging the missile—and him! Before he could react, he saw the American plane deftly jink and stand the speedy little F-16 up on its wing to evade the missile’s flight path as he continued the hair-raising climb.

  The deadly Acrid missile zoomed past the streaking American plane, unable to acquire it from a head-on angle at that unbelievable speed, and unable to make the turn to allow the infrared sensors to lock onto the hot exhaust. The missile plunged harmlessly to the ground where it exploded near an abandoned French village.

  Still the all-white F-16 was closing on the larger Foxbat, using the Soviet’s speed in the dive against him. The instant the two airplanes came within range, they both opened up with their cannons. Tracer shells filled the rapidly decreasing space between the fighters as the two pilots tried to aim and fire their powerful cannons in the few seconds before their planes passed each other.

  At the final split second, the Soviet flier hesitated. Surely the American would pull up now … A thousand yards away—now five hundred! And still the F-16 was climbing directly at him, firing away with the nose cannon. Tracer shells whizzed by the Soviet’s canopy, adding to the tension. A hundred yards’ distance disappeared in less than the blink of an eye. The distracted Soviet pilot had but one thought: The crazy bastard is going to ram me.

  Instinctively, the Soviet pilot jammed his stick hard left to avoid the collision he felt was inevitable. Bracing himself in his diving fighter’s cockpit, he shut his eyes as the roar of the F-16’s engine shook his plane violently. He heard the dull thud of shells lancing his wings as the American fighter sprayed the Foxbat with 30mm cannon fire. He was sure the end would come any second …

  But then—silence. Or at least relative silence compared to the deafening din of the past few seconds. Only the dull roar of the Foxbat’s own engines rushed in the pilot’s ears. The threat was suddenly gone. There was no enemy plane. No engine noise. No cannon fire. It was as if the American had simply vanished like a spirit.

  Slowly, the Russian regained his composure. He leveled the big interceptor out and checked for damage. A few holes in the wings and fuselage, but no critical wounds. Radar was operable, although it showed no trace of the F-16. Now his relief turned to anger, then to furious rage. How dare the crazy Yankee play this insane game, causing him to panic and turn away?

  Suddenly his threat alarm sounded again … Missile fired from above and behind …

  Now, incredibly, the ivory F-16 was diving on him. Its pilot fired one of the deadly Sidewinder air-to-airs at the Foxbat’s red-hot exhaust nozzles. There was no time for fancy maneuvering, just a burst of raw speed to escape the lethal arrow. The Foxbat rolled sharply and began to dive again.

  Hunter cursed as the missile overshot the fleeing Foxbat, plunging out of sight in the cloudy sky. He followed the Sidewinder’s downward track, flashing the F-16 past the big Soviet jet. Once again, Hunter was preparing to use the Foxbat’s superior speed as an advantage.

  Busy evading the missile, the Soviet pilot cursed aloud when he saw the F-16 fly over him in a shallow dive. He would show this cocky American what a Foxbat could do with full afterburners in a steep dive. Snap-rolling the heavy interceptor and nosing over to follow Hunter, the Soviet began to quickly overtake the slower American plane. He had the Yankee’s tail section in his gunsights as the distance between the two fighters closed rapidly.

  Just a few more seconds, and the American would be scattered to the four winds in a million pieces, victim to the Foxbat’s 23-mm internal gun.

  The screaming whine from the F-16’s radar threat warning pierced Hunter’s ears with its shrill one-note alarm. Calmly, he reached out and switched it off. His radar screen showed the Foxbat descending on him at Mach 3. Despite the extra thrust provided by the F-16’s afterburner, the big GE turbofan was being outrun by the bigger Soviet engines in the Foxbat.

  But this was exactly what Hunter wanted …

  With a deliberate move, Hunter armed the Sidewinder missile on the jet’s right wingtip. Then he gently cupped the side-stick controller in his right hand and placed his left hand on the manual override flap controls. At the last possible second, he cut the throttle back, hauled sharply up on the stick, and dropped every square inch of control surface on the F-16 to its full “down” position, all in one smooth motion.

  If the F-16 could have left skid marks in the sky, they would have tracked the fighter’s abrupt deceleration from almost fifteen hundred miles per hour to just under three hundred in just a few seconds. Hunter was thrown hard against the shoulder harness of his reclining seat by the impact, recovering just in time to see the dark shadow of the Foxbat pass overhead at full speed, overshooting him.

  With the merest flick of the side-stick control, Hunter found the Foxbat’s twin tails dead in his radar sights. He released the Sidewinder that covered the short distance in seconds and disappeared into the left-side exhaust nozzle of the diving Foxbat.

  The Soviet pilot never saw the missile coming. His fingers had just tightened on the cannon trigger, when the American plane had simply disappeared. It was as if the small F-16 had stopped dead in the air, hovering like a bird of prey before striking. Unable to stop or even slow the heav
y Foxbat, the startled pilot could only watch as the Yankee trickster vanished beneath him.

  A split second later, he realized the American’s tactic. But it was too late to maneuver. The deadly air-to-air missile from the F-16’s wingtip exploded deep inside the big interceptor, blowing apart the left-hand engine and severing the left wing at its junction with the fuselage.

  The stricken Foxbat crumpled like a paper airplane caught in the grasp of an invisible hand. The left wing section fluttered away in flames as the main body of the plane began a sickening wobbly spiral down to the ground, propelled by the intermittent thrust of the right-hand engine. When the plane’s violent spasms finally choked off its life-giving fuel, the remaining engine coughed and died, leaving the huge interceptor to plunge to the earth by the force of gravity alone.

  The last thing the Soviet pilot heard as he helplessly plummeted to the ground, desperately clawing at controls that were no longer connected to wings that were no longer connected to his aircraft, was a voice that had either come from inside his head, or from the crazy American, who may have somehow found the proper radio frequency.

  At that instant, he realized in horror that he would have the rest of eternity to figure it out.

  “Dos vadanya, tovarich,” the strangely-accented voice echoed amid the swirling chaos inside his cockpit.

  Then the blackness came.

  Far below, Toomey had witnessed the intricate battle between Hunter and the huge Foxbat.

  Alternately screaming and cheering during the fight, the American pilot was hoarse—too hoarse to yell down at the patrol of French soldiers that were now passing below him.

  Thinking quickly, he undid his left flight boot and let it drop. It hit the last man in the patrol, square on the head, stunning him. The rest of the soldiers turned their weapons upward, ready to fire on the source of the flying boot. It was only Toomey’s wide grin and animated waving that saved him from joining the swelling ranks of the war dead.