Dark Wing

by Richard Herman

  The new respect Moose had been feeling for LaGrange turned to awe. Not only was she thinking tactically but she had countered the pulse-Doppler radar on the J-8s. On a heading of ninety degrees to the J-8s, the Warthog’s relative motion would be zero and a pulse-Doppler radar could not detect them.

  “Damn,” Moose said in a rare outburst of profanity. The dots that represented the bandits on his monitor were no longer in a race track. “Bossman!” he barked over the radio. “Two bandits on you. Zero-seven-five at eighteen. Descending through three-five thousand feet.”

  “You got it, babes,” LaGrange said, patting him on the shoulder and standing back. The situation was developing and changing so rapidly that she was in the way. She had to trust Moose to do it.

  “Fucking lovely,” Pontowski cursed under his breath. Moose’s range and bearing call had clearly defined the threat: two bandits coming at him from the east, eighteen miles away, descending through thirty-five thousand feet. And going at the speed of smell, he thought.

  “Bossman, Maggot,” Moose ordered, “strangle squawks—now.” Pontowski and Maggot flipped their IFFs to standby. The AWACS monitored a flurry of unknown interrogation signals. LaGrange had been right.

  “Fly down the river and into the Gullet,” Moose radioed. “Bandits now at your seven o’clock, co-altitude, twelve miles.” Moose watched his monitor in satisfaction as the J-8s maintained their last heading as the Warthogs altered course and flew down the Luoqing River, into the Gullet. “Bandits east of Dragon’s Teeth,” he transmitted. He ran the intercept geometry and calculated where the J-8s would be when the Warthogs came out of the Gullet. Not good. Even without a radar, the J-8s would get a visual contact. He had to do something. “Bossman, say state,” he radioed.

  “Two heat, gun,” Pontowski answered automatically. He had two AIM-9s and 1,100 cannon rounds. What the hell is Moose thinking of? he wondered. An engagement? I’m the one not thinking clearly, he warned himself.

  “I think the boy’s saying it’s gonna get interesting,” Maggot said over the UHF, “when we clear the Gullet.”

  It all made sense to Pontowski. They wouldn’t be able to hide from the J-8s once they cleared the Dragon’s Teeth. He considered the options.

  Moose was doing the same. “Bossman,” he transmitted, “at the Gap, vector zero-seven-zero for zero aspect. Bandits will be on your nose at six.”

  Pontowski understood immediately. The Gap was the one break in the Dragon’s Teeth a Warthog could fly through. Moose had just told him that if he reversed course by turning through the Gap to a heading of seventy degrees, the bandits would be on his nose at six miles. Right in the AIM-9s’ envelope for a head-on shot. With a little luck, he could get an AIM-9 shot off on each of the bandits. But he would have to be quick about it and not miss. And if Moose had the intercept geometry wrong, if he had miscalculated the closure rate between the bandits and the Warthogs, or misjudged the time it would take Pontowski to reverse course, the J-8s would eat his shorts in a close-in engagement. But it might give Maggot enough time to escape.

  Pontowski made his decision. “I’ll call the Gap,” he told the AWACS. “Maggot, head for the tanker.” He was almost to the break in the ridge line.

  “Maggot,” Moose radioed, “when clear of the Gullet, vector two-three-zero for rendezvous with Prima.”

  “Copy all,” Maggot answered.

  “Gap now,” Pontowski transmitted. “In the turn.” He firewalled the throttles and rolled left 135 degrees, knifing through the break in the ridge line. He caught a last glimpse of Maggot, still flying straight ahead down the Gullet. His left thumb hit the uncage switch on the throttle, freeing the AIM-9 seeker heads to search for a heat signature. He screamed out of the Gap still in a ninety-degree bank and saw the bandits. Exactly where Moose had predicted!

  His earphones filled with the reassuring rattlesnake growl of an AIM-9 tracking. Automatically, he thumbed the weapons release, the pickle button, on the stick. Nothing happened! A missile should have come off the rail. He hit the button again. The firing circuit stepped over the first missile that had misfired and the second one leaped off the rail, accelerating with blinding speed.

  The missile was homing on the bandit closest to him. Pontowski racked the Warthog to the right, looking for the second J-8. It was little more than a blur as it flashed in front of him. Pontowski mashed the trigger, sending a stream of thirty-millimeter cannon shells in the general direction of the J-8. He missed.

  Pontowski thought for a moment that the Chinese pilot would not want to engage down on the deck and would shoot the moon, disengaging. He was wrong. The J-8’s nose was coming back around onto him as a flash flickered in Pontowski’s rear view mirrors. The Sidewinder had stuffed the first bandit in the face. But he knew the odds. Going one-on-one with a J-8 at low level put his chances of survival on a par with the proverbial snowball in hell.

  He turned hard into the J-8 and his airspeed rapidly bled off. Bitching Betty bitched at him as he neared a stall. The two jets passed canopy to canopy with less than thirty feet separation. Neither was able to get off a shot.

  Extend! Pontowski told himself. He had to regain some airspeed if he was to keep turning with the J-8. He check turned left twenty degrees, and twisted around, looking over his left shoulder for the bandit while his airspeed increased. He could see the J-8 using the vertical to pitch back onto him. There was no choice. He pulled back into the bandit, aching with fatigue from the long mission. The steady tone in his earphones told him he was max performing the jet and couldn’t turn any faster. But the angles were all wrong.

  The J-8 had the advantage of speed and power and was using the vertical to maneuver on him. The Chinese pilot was herding him around the sky with ease, making him turn in the direction he wanted, not giving him a chance to disengage. “The bastard’s good,” Pontowski said to himself. The J-8 driver had a small but well-practiced repertoire of maneuvers. He was keeping his speed up while camping at Pontowski’s eight o’clock by either barrel rolling or lag rolling behind the American. An F-15 or F-16 driver would have taken the fight into the vertical, forced the J-8 into a high-speed overshoot, and then converted to a rolling scissors to go on the offensive. But that was beyond the Warthog.

  Pontowski watched the J-8 sweep down into his six o’clock, right into the envelope for a PL-2 shot. He keyed for the inevitable missile and kept his turn coming. His muscles screamed in protest as he fought the gs. Do something! he raged to himself. But there was nothing he could do—the angles were all wrong.

  The J-8 was tracking Pontowski with ease as he fired his first missile. Pontowski mashed the flare button on his throttle quadrant, sending out a stream of flares for the PL-2 missile to home on. The Warthog’s RHAW gear wailed at him. The high-pitched tone was warning that a J-band air-to-air radar was tracking him. Pontowski hit the chaff dispenser button to jam the radar. A burst of six chaff bundles mushroomed behind the A-10.

  The Chinese pilot was momentarily confused by both the exploding flares and his radar breaking lock. He pulled off and barrel-rolled with ease behind the Warthog. He was surprised by the tenacity of the A-10 pilot in always turning into him. He glanced at his fuel gauge and decided he had fuel for one more pass before he had to disengage and return to base. He positioned for another pass, intending to launch two missiles and then close for a firing pass with his twin-barreled twenty-three-millimeter cannon. This time, he would do it visually and not lock on with his radar. One more pass would be enough.

  Pontowski fought against the inevitable outcome and cursed loudly as he took the only course open to him. He dropped even lower, now turning at 235 knots barely fifty feet above the ground. He twisted in desperation as he watched the J-8 position. There was nothing he could do. He was low, slow, and out of ideas. The bitter, coppery taste of defeat flooded his mouth. He was going to die.

  A flicker of motion caught at Pontowski’s peripheral vision and then materialized into a Warthog. It was Maggot crawling al
ong at 160 knots and coming into the fight. Maggot was inside the J-8’s turn at its nine o’clock position. The Chinese pilot only had to look to his left and he would see the Warthog coming at him. But he had target fixation on Pontowski and had forgotten to check his six, or in this case, his nine o’clock position.

  A new emotion surged through Pontowski—hope! The J-8 driver solved the intercept problem for Maggot by simply keeping his turn coming and flying right by Maggot’s nose. With maddening slowness, Pontowski watched the Warthog’s nose turn to point directly at the J-8’s tail. The Chinese pilot never saw Maggot’s Sidewinder leap off the rail and snake toward him. A second Sidewinder followed the first.

  The J-8 disappeared in a fiery cloud as Maggot called, “Tallyho the fox!”

  Moose Penko turned and looked at LaGrange. She stared back. “Bossman, Maggot,” Penko transmitted. “Vector two-zero-zero to the tanker. No bandits in the area, Prima moving your way.” Maggot, not Pontowski, acknowledged the call.

  LaGrange cracked a smile. “Moose, if you ain’t a weapons controller, you ain’t shit.”

  He grinned back. He had never understood that strange phrase. But he agreed with the conviction behind it.

  “Hey, Boss,” Maggot radioed, “you still with me?” He was worried about the sudden silence.

  Pontowski fought the emotions surging through him. Moments before he had tasted the bitterness of defeat and death. But he was still alive. Alive, he thought, if only Shoshana were alive. But there was no joy in killing Kang and avenging Shoshana’s death—only a feeling of relief that it was over. He forced himself back to the moment. “Maggot, you were damn lucky he didn’t see you.”

  “But he didn’t,” came the cheerful reply. “Like the man says, ‘A kill is a kill.’”

  “You were ordered to beat feet for the tanker.”

  “I said ‘copied all.’ Didn’t say anything about doing it.”

  “I should court-martial you.”

  “You can’t court-martial me,” Maggot answered. “I’m a volunteer. Remember?”

  “Then I’ll fire your ass.”

  “That’s all we need,” Maggot laughed, “another homeless, unemployed aerial assassin on the streets.”

  EPILOGUE

  Tuesday, October 22

  The White House, Washington, D.C.

  “The AVG is at Cam Ranh Bay,” Mazie told Carroll, updating the national security advisor on the situation in China. “Apparently, Kang was killed when Pontowski bombed his headquarters.”

  “Strictly in self-defense,” Hazelton added, his face serious.

  “Of course,” Carroll conceded.

  Mazie wished they could be serious. But the two men were still enjoying the taste of victory. “What happens to the AVG now?” she asked.

  “They fly back to Whiteman,” Carroll replied, “and become the 303rd again.”

  “Are they still scheduled for deactivation?” Hazelton asked.

  Carroll allowed a tight smile. “Not if I can help it.” He changed the subject. “Any news of your father?”

  Mazie shook her head. “The last I heard he was still with his regiment at Bose, rebuilding the New China Guard.”

  “We need to get word to him to stay there,” Carroll said.

  “Nevers wants him arrested as a deserter and mercenary.”

  “She never gives up,” Hazelton groused.

  “We were warned she’d demand her pound of flesh,” Carroll replied, recalling the words of Cyrus Piccard. “I think this may be it. She lost a heap of credibility and is scrambling to recover before the elections.” He smiled. “But we did it. We pulled the dragon’s teeth. Beijing is salvaging what it can and won’t be much of a threat to its neighbors for quite a while. They’ve reached an understanding with Zou and the Republic of Southern China is now the Autonomous Republic of China and still part of China—sort of. Zou is a hero of the people for saving China from the evil warlord Kang, and Hong Kong is a self-governing international zone under the control of the UN.”

  “That will work for a while,” Mazie said.

  “You two did good,” Carroll said. “Take a break and be back—say in two weeks?”

  “After the election?” Mazie asked.

  Carroll nodded as Mazie and Hazelton rose to leave. As they left his office, they heard him buzz his secretary and ask for the two Secret Service agents who ran with him to join him for a brewski.

  “Two weeks sounds wonderful,” Mazie said as they walked down the corridor of the White House. “I’m going to collapse into a hot bath for at least a day. Are you doing anything special?”

  Hazelton thought for a moment. “I thought we could get married.”

  Mazie stopped, turned, and faced him. She almost told him to be serious. But she liked the idea and didn’t want to discourage the thought. Instead, she asked, “What will your mother say?”

  Hazelton pulled a face. He had been a major player in shaping events in China, killed a tank, and done things he still could hardly credit. Somewhere along the way, he had discovered who he was and didn’t need his mother’s approval. He needed Mazie. “She can say either yes or no when we invite her to the wedding.”

  “Went, this is one hell of a place to ask a girl.”

  He swooped her up in his arms. “What better place?” he said, gently kissing her and ending all her reservations. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him back. The president of the United States walked by and shook his head. They hadn’t even noticed him.

  Monday, November 4

  Nanning, China

  The four Junkyard Dogs and May May stood in the center of the warehouse next to the train station. Outside, a freshly painted sign announced the central office of Southern China Enterprises. Inside, the building was a mess. “I’ve seen worse,” Little Juan Alvarez allowed. “But I can’t remember where.” He brushed some debris off a chair and beckoned for May May to sit down. Instead, she looked at the large shadow filling the doorway.

  It was Kamigami. He said a few words to her in Cantonese and she walked over to him. “Thank you,” he said to the Dogs. “I owe you.” Then they were gone.

  “I’m going to miss her,” Larry Tanaka said. “So what do we do now?”

  “Make money,” Byers answered. “We almost own the Hanoi-Nanning railroad, so let’s use it.”

  “We’re still expediters,” Big John Washington intoned. “So who’s our first customer?”

  “Toragawa,” Byers grinned. “Who else?”

  Wednesday, November 6

  Whiteman AFB, Missouri

  The base chapel was filled to overflowing for the memorial service. Outside, four TV news crews held back at a respectable distance as the 303rd paid tribute to its fallen. The cameras came on when the doors opened and the people came slowly out and gathered on the lawn. A voice said “There” and they all looked to the east. Heading into the setting sun, four battle-scarred A-10s approached in a tight fingertip formation. The number-three man, Maggot, pulled up and away, leaving the three to overfly the chapel in a missing-man formation.

  It was over.

  “Melissa,” Waters said to her daughter, “I’d like you to meet John Leonard.”

  The eleven-year-old girl looked up at the tall, lean pilot, remembering the first time she had seen him. “We’ve met,” she announced. “But you looked like a teddy bear then. You look better now. I think you should marry my mom, don’t you?”

  Waters gave Leonard a weak smile. “I did warn you.”

  “That you did,” he deadpanned. “Where did the Bossman go?” he asked. “We need to talk.”

  “Over there,” she said. “But I think he needs to be alone.”

  Pontowski walked past the hangar and onto the deserted flight line. Across the runway, the moon was rising, casting a half-light down the long line of Warthogs parked neatly wingtip to wingtip. He stopped by the nose of the first jet and touched the scarred and pitted snout. The yellow-and-black nose art was chipped away and only t
he painted eyes were intact, still flashing with anger. His hand stroked the nose.

  Another figure stepped out of a shadow. It was Maggot. “Kinda hard to let them go,” he said. “I keep telling myself they’re only machines.”

  Pontowski nodded. “It’s the people who fly them,” he said. Maggot looked down the line of aircraft. “I know,” he said. “But I hate to see them go to the boneyard.”

  “They’re not,” Pontowski replied. Maggot’s head came up. “We’re flying them to McClellan for rebuild.”

  “Who’s getting them?”

  Pontowski allowed a tight smile. Maggot hadn’t heard. “Us.”

  “The 303rd?” Maggot was incredulous. “We’re not getting the ax after all?”

  “Nope. We picked up a new mission today—search and rescue.”

  Maggot smiled. “So we’re going to be Sandies.” Sandy was the traditional call sign for search and rescue aircraft. “Say, Boss, can we do that?”

  “Oh, yeah. We can do that.” The two men stood there, each lost in his own thoughts as a cool breeze washed over them. The part of Pontowski that belonged to Shoshana ached. I got most of them home, he told her.

  An inner voice told him she heard.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The A-10 Thunderbolt II ranks as perhaps the ugliest aircraft ever flown by the United States Air Force. It offends the basic sensibilities of many pilots because it is not glamorous, does not have a pointy nose, and is unbelievably slow. But for those who have been on the receiving end of a “Warthog,” it is a respected and feared weapons system. It was with good cause that Iraqi soldiers in the Persian Gulf War called the Warthog the “Silent Gun.”