He was fretting, examining miserable options, when he realized he wasn’t strapped to his ejection seat. Oh, he had armed the seat all right, just before takeoff. Unfortunately, he had forgotten to strap himself to it, so if he ejected he was going to be flying without wings or parachute. Even an angel needs wings, he thought. He engaged the autopilot and began snapping Koch fittings, pulling straps tight. There. Amazing how a man could forget that. Or maybe not. He had too much on his mind. “Hey, Taco! Any word from Washington?”
Taco Rodriguez was the duty officer, sitting by the satellite telephone in Chita. The encrypted radio buzzed, then Cassidy heard Taco’s voice. “They rounded the corner at Khabarovsk, Hoppy, and left the tanker. Four of them, they say. About five hundred miles ahead of you. Call you back in a bit.”
“Thanks, Taco.”
The F-22’s were making Mach 1.4, better than a thousand knots over the ground. Presumably, the Zeros were also supercruising. Five hundred miles — the flights would meet in about fifteen minutes.
A quarter of an hour. Not much. Just a whole lifetime. He had just four F-22’s to intercept the Zeros. Cassidy would have brought more along if he had had them. His only other planes, exactly two, were being swarmed over by mechanics. Several more planes were inbound from Germany, but this morning he had just four flyable fighters. The ground crewmen had been pretty blase about the whole gig when the pilots manned up, Cassidy thought. The word went around the base like wildfire: The Japs are on their way to nuke us! Still, the men did their jobs, slapped the pilots on the backs, grinned at them, and sent them on their way. Just before the canopy closed, the crew chief had said to Cassidy, “Go get “em, sir.” Like it was a ball game or something. Like his ass wasn’t also on the line. Good-looking kid, the crew chief. Not Asian, of course, but he did look a bit like Jiro. About the same age and height, with jet black hair cut short. Jiro wouldn’t be out here in this dirty sky with a nuclear weapon strapped to his plane. Naw. He was probably back in Japan someplace, maybe even home with Shizuko. Sure. Bob Cassidy wiped his eyes with a gloved hand and tried to concentrate. The tac display was still blank. How good was that info the brass in Washington passed to Taco Rodriguez? Could Cassidy rely on it? There were two hundred Americans and several thousand Russian lives on the pass line at Chita. Just how many souls should you bet on that Washington techno-shit, Colonel Cassidy, sir?
Bob Cassidy lifted his left wrist and peeled back the Nomex flap to get a squint at his watch. Fourteen minutes. He had fourteen minutes left in this life.
Dixie Elitch lifted the visor on her helmet and swabbed her face with her glove. The dirty sky irritated her. Dirt at these altitudes was obscene, a crime against nature. The Japs infuriated her. Nukes. She checked her master armament switch, frowned at the blank tac display, and flicked her eyes around the empty yellow sky.
Maybe I should have stayed in California, found a decent man, she thought. God, there must be at least one in California. “If i live through this experience, I am going back to California, going to find that man.” She told herself this aloud, talking into her oxygen mask over the drone of the engines reaching her through the airframe. Well, Dixie, baby, that’s a goddamn big if.
Paul Scheer was the calmest of the F-22 pilots. When he’d been diagnosed with a fatal disease three years ago, he had worked his way through the gamut of emotions one by one: denial, rage, lethargy, acceptance. The comment that had struck him with the most impact during those days of shock and pain was a quote he had seen in a magazine in a waiting room: “We are all voyagers between two eternities.”
Out of one eternity and into another. That’s right. That’s the truth of it. Scheer sat relaxed, his eyes roaming the instrument panel.
Layton Robert Smith III, riding Scheer’s wing, was an unhappy man. He shouldn’t be here. He had been in the United States Air Force for nine years, nine peaceful, delightful years, cruising without sweat or strain toward the magic twenty. Eleven years from now he planned to retire from the blue suits and get a job flying corporate moguls in biz jets. Weekends in Aspen, nights in New York and San Fran, occasional hops to the Bahamas, he could handle it. Fly the plane when the paycheck man wanted to go, then kick back. His mistake had been volunteering to fly an F-22 from Germany to these idiots at Chita. Praise God, if he lived through this he was going to get NEVER VOLUNTEER tattooed on his ass. In Chita, that damned Cassidy had shanghaied him, called Germany, said he needed Smith III “on his team.”
And Colonel Blimp in Germany had said yesst Layton Robert Smith III was scared, angry, and very much a fish out of water. He stared at his master armament switch, which was on. Holy shit!
The Japanese were going to try to kill Smith III. The prospect made his blood feel like ice water pulsing through his temples.
He should have told Cassidy to stick it up his ass sideways. Now he knew that. What would Cassidy have done? Court-martial him for refusing to join the Russian air force? Hell, there was nothing Cassidy could do, Smith told himself now as he lawyered the case, then wondered why he hadn’t thought of that two hours ago. Maybe he should just turn around, boogie on back to Chita. Look at this dust, would you! You don’t see shit like this floating over the good ol” US of A. Or even in Germany. What the hell kind of country is this where you fly through dirt?
Smith III told himself he should quit worrying about the injustice of it all and concentrate on staying alive.
Jiro Kimura adjusted his infrared goggles. They were attached to his helmet above his oxygen mask, and they were too heavy. He would have to hold the helmet in place with his left hand while he pulled G’s, or helmet, goggles and all, would pull his head down to his chest. Maybe he wouldn’t have to pull any Go’s. Perhaps the colonel was right about the radar. At least he had a plan. Jiro looked at his watch. Shizuko was teaching at the kindergarten this morning. She was there now, telling stories to the children, singing songs, comforting the ones who needed a hug. He had been so very lucky in his marriage. Shizuko was the perfect woman, without fault. She was the female half of him. He loved her and missed her terribly. With the goggles on, Jiro Kimura scanned the dusty sky. He suspected he would have only seconds to see the Americans and react — and not many seconds at that. The forecasters had been wrong about this dust. There seemed to be no end to it. He checked his watch again. Yes, it was time. Jiro gave a hand signal to his wingman, then pulled the power back and began a descent.
“Call the Japanese and Russian ambassadors,” President David Herbert Hood told the national security adviser, Jack Innes. “Ask them to come to the White House again as soon as possible.” It was one o’clock in the morning in Washington. Innes didn’t ask questions. He got up from the table and went to a telephone in the back of the White House war room.
Hood turned to General Tuck, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “It’s time for us to get in the middle. Congress has been loath to get involved. Things have changed. We’ve got to step between these people before they trigger something no one can stop.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want to get on television later this morning, when the sun comes up, talk to the nation and to the Japanese and Russian leadership.” The secretary of state asked, “Sir, shouldn’t we get the congressional leadership over here first, get their input?”
“They can stand behind me when I talk to the nation. Putting out fires is my job, not theirs. And let’s raise U.s. forces to Defense Condition One.”
“Whom are we going to fight?” General Tuck asked. “Anybody who doesn’t like the gospel I’m going to read to them.”
Bob Cassidy was breathing faster now, although he didn’t notice it. As the minutes ticked by, he was sorely tempted to use the radar. What if the satellites couldn’t pick the Zeros out of this goo? Maybe the Zeros’ Athena gear wouldn’t work. “Taco, talk to me.”
“Hoppy, Washington says they are at your twelve-thirty, three hundred miles. Space Command is having some difficulty, they say…, but they won’t say precis
ely what.”
Cassidy growled into his mask, shook his head to keep the sweat from his eyes. He checked his watch again. If the Zeros were transmitting with their radars, he should pick up the emissions. Maybe the Sentinel batteries had educated them. Perhaps the Zeros were running silent, as were the F-22’s. In that case, the advantage would go to the side with outside help. The satellites were Cassidy’s outside help, and just now they didn’t seem all that reliable. He played with the tac display, trying to coax a blip to appear on its screen. Nothing. “Two-fifty miles, Hoppy.”
“Can the satellites see us?”
“Wait one.”
If the satellites could see the F-22’s, Cassidy could safely divide his flight into sections, secure in the knowledge that the other three F-22’s would remain on his tac display even though the dust blocked out the laser data link between planes. Of course, the question remained: If the satellites could see the Zeros, why weren’t they appearing on the tactical displays?
And if the satellites were blind, the F-22’s had to stay together to ensure they didn’t shoot down one another. Was it or wasn’t it?
A minute passed, then another. The tension was excruciating. Unable to stand it any longer, Cassidy was about to fire a verbal rocket at Taco when he got a bogey symbol on his scope, way out there, 260 miles away. He put the icon on the symbol and clicked with the mouse. Zero. Quantity one plus. One thousand seventy-nine knots over the ground. Heading 244 degrees magnetic. Altitude four hundred, which meant forty thousand feet. Distance 257 miles … 256 … 255 … The numbers flipped over every 1.8 seconds. “Stick with me, gang,” he said into the radio, and turned left thirty degrees. He would go out to the north, then turn and come in from the side, shooting at optimum range as the F-22’s flew into the Zeros’ right-stern quarter. When he was ten miles or so to the north of the Zeros’ track, Cassidy turned back to his original course. The two formations rocketed toward each other. Please, God. We need to kill these guys. It’s a hell of a thing to ask you for other men’s deaths, but these guys are carrying nukes. If even one gets through, they could kill everyone at Chita. His formation was where it should be, spread out but not too much so — everyone in sight in the little six-mile visibility bowl. Cassidy wondered what his wingmen were thinking. Perhaps it was better that he didn’t know. Still only one plus on the quantity of Zeros. Damn the wizards and techno-fools!
Fifty miles…, forty…, thirty … At twenty, Cassidy spoke into the radio: “Okay, gang, get ready for a right turn-in behind these guys. Try for a Sidewinder lock. On my word, we will each fire one missile. Then we will continue to close and kill survivors.”
“Two, roger,” replied Dixie. “Three’s got it,” said Scheer. “Four,” Smith answered. Cassidy would not have brought Smith if Taco hadn’t been trying to get over a case of diarrhea; the idiot drank some water from the shower spigot. Joe Malan was fighting a sinus infection, the others were exhausted: Cassidy had kept planes in the air over the base every minute he could these past few weeks. Smith had no combat experience, none whatever. Still, he was the only person Cassidy had to put in a cockpit, so he had to fly. Life isn’t fair. “Turn … now!”
Cassidy laid his fighter into the turn. The Zeros continued on their 244-degree heading. After ninety degrees of turn, the Zeros were dead on his nose, ninety degrees off, five miles ahead, and two thousand feet above him, according to the tac display. Cassidy looked through the heads-up display and got a glimpse of one, then lost it. Damn this dust!
He got a rattle from his Sidewinder. It had locked on a heat source. Cassidy kept the turn in. His flight was sweeping in behind the Zeros. Through his HUD, he saw specks. Zeros. Two. Two?
were there other Zeros? Where were they?
“Let “em have it, gang.” Cassidy touched off a ‘winder. “There’s only two Japs in front of us. They’ve mousetrapped us.”
“Red Three, the Americans are behind us. I have them in…”
Colonel Nishimura made this broadcast over his encrypted radio, and fifteen miles behind him, twenty thousand feet below, Jiro Kimura heard his words. Jiro and his wingman turned their radars to transmit. Yes. The four F-22’s appeared as if by magic. “Five miles at your four-thirty position, Red One,” Jiro said into the radio as he locked up the closest F-22 and pushed the red button on his stick. The first missile roared away. As he was locking up his second target, his wingman fired a missile. They alternated, putting six missiles in the air. Meanwhile, Colonel Nishimura turned hard right and his wingman turned hard left, pulling six G’s each, trying to evade the missiles the Americans had just put into the air.
Bob Cassidy knew for certain he had been ambushed when his ECM indicators lit up. The strobe pointed back over his left shoulder; the aural warning began deedling; the warning light on the HUD labeled “Missile” lit up, then seconds later began flashing. The Japanese planes behind him had just launched missiles.
Cassidy already had fired his first missile. As the targets in front of him separated, he squeezed off a second at the target turning right, Colonel Nishimura, although he didn’t know who was in the plane.
Cassidy’s chaff dispensers kicked out chaff bundles and the ECM tried electronically to fool the radars in the missiles aimed at him. All this was done automatically, without Cassidy’s input.
Bob Cassidy was busily trying to turn a square corner to force any missiles chasing him to overshoot. He lit his afterburners and pulled smoothly back to eleven G’s, two more than his airplane was designed to take. His vision narrowed, he screamed to stay conscious, and the two missiles behind him overshot.
Nishimura’s wingman signed his own death warrant when he turned left, a flight path that carried him out in front of the Americans. Two Sidewinders were aimed at him, and they had no trouble zeroing in. The first went up his tailpipe and exploded; the second went off twelve inches above the main fuel tank, puncturing the tank with hundreds of bits of shrapnel and shredding it. The plane caught fire in a fraction of a second.
Without thinking, the pilot pulled the ejection handle. He died instantly when the ejection seat fired him from the protection of the cockpit. A sonic shock wave built up on his body and disemboweled him before he and his ejection seat could slow to subsonic speed.
Nishimura was lucky. Two of the missiles fired at him went for decoy flares that he had punched off. The other failed to hack his turn. Unfortunately, his flight path was taking him into the area directly downrange of the Americans.
Jiro Kimura’s first missile smashed into Paul Scheer’s airplane several feet forward of the tail. Scheer knew something was wrong when he lost control of the plane — it simply stopped responding to control inputs. Instinctively, he glanced at the annunciator panel, which told him of problems with the plane’s health; he saw that every light there was lit.
What the lights and engine gauges could not tell him was that the plane had broken into two pieces. The tail was no longer attached to the main fuselage.
He glanced at the airspeed indicator. Still supersonic.
The nose was falling and the stick position had no effect. It was then that Scheer glanced in the rearview mirror and realized the tail was gone.
The attitude indicators showed the plane in a steepening dive. He retarded the throttle to idle and popped the speed brakes open. They came completely out and would probably have slowed the plane below Mach 1 had it not been going straight down.
Then the plane began to spin like a Frisbee.
Paul Scheer fought to stay conscious. He wanted to experience every second of life left to him.
Layton Robert Smith III never realized Japanese planes were behind the Americans, so the explosion that blew off half his left wing was a complete surprise.
He had managed to get one Sidewinder in the air and was preparing to launch another at Colonel Nishimura when the explosion occurred under his wing. He had his ECM gear on and the audio warnings properly adjusted, but in the adrenaline-drenched excitement of shooting miss
iles to kill people, he never heard the warnings or saw the flashing lights.
Shooting to kill was exciting. He had never felt so alive. He had never even suspected that the joy of killing another human being could be this sublime.
Then the Japanese warhead went off under his wing and his plane rolled uncontrollably, faster and faster and faster. He blacked out from the G, despite the best efforts of his full-body G suit. When the G meter indicated sixteen times the force of gravity, Layton Robert Smith III’S heart stopped. He was dead.
The coffin of steel, titanium, and exotic metals containing his corpse smashed into the earth forty-two seconds later.
One of the missiles missed Bob Cassidy by such a wide distance that its proximity fuse failed to detonate the warhead. There was another radar target beyond Cassidy, one slowing to subsonic speed in a very hard turn. The missile might have missed it — the angle-off and speeds involved were beyond the missile’s guidance capability — had not the target turned toward the oncoming missile — turned just enough.
The proximity fuse in the missile detonated this time. The shrapnel penetrated the cockpit canopy and decapitated Colonel Nishimura. The hit was a one-in-a-million fluke, a tragic accident.
Dixie Elitch somehow avoided the shower of missiles that killed Scheer and Smith. She had also turned a square corner, and now she found that she had a head-on shot developing with one of the Japanese planes far below, one of the two that had fired the missiles. Both these planes were now on her tac display. She locked up a Sidewinder and fired it, then another.
One of the missiles guided; the other went stupid.
Dixie didn’t have time to watch. Her ECM was wailing, so she pulled straight back on the stick and lit her burners. She wanted to get well above this fur ball and pick her moment to come down.
Jiro Kimura knew that if he remained in this dogfight, the odds of being the last man left alive were slim. The Zeros had come to bomb Chita, not to shoot down American fighters. Kimura rolled over on his back and pulled his nose straight down. Going downhill, he came out of burner in case one of the Americans was squirting off Sidewinders.
Fortunes of War Page 41