Lions of the Sky

by Paco Chierici

  His bandit pitched pure vertical, so Slammer adjusted his lift vector to match. The two fighters leapt straight up toward the heavens, all four motors blowing in full afterburner.

  As they soared like rockets, the Flanker’s nose tracked hard toward Slammer. He knew they were both inside the envelope for a missile shot, but as he leaned the Rhino’s nose toward the Flanker he saw little sparkles, like fireworks, coming from the Flanker’s nose. It took a moment to recognize them for gun muzzle flashes. He cursed as he snapped the stick, turning his wingtip toward the Flanker, making himself as skinny as possible to avoid the 30mm cannon rounds.

  “Motherfucker!” he yelled into his mask. “You shot at me!”

  He recognized the Chinese pilot had sold all his energy for the gun shot, the most difficult kill in aerial combat. The risk failed and the bandit ran out of airspeed, falling off, nose collapsing toward the water, twirling for a moment like a leaf tumbling from a tree.

  “We got him now HOB!” He rolled and pulled hard, bringing his nose to bear on the Chinese fighter. He could tell the pilot was desperately attempting to recover airspeed and escape. He was close enough that he could clearly see his adversary’s rudders and ailerons deflecting to full throw as the pilot wrestled to regain control. He was only 500 feet behind, he just needed bring his nose to bear.

  “You got it?” Tumor asked.

  “Yup,” was all Quick could spit out. She was looking up through both fights, tracking Slammer and Lips as they engaged with their particular Flankers while she zipped just below them at 700 knots. Above her, Slammer had just merged.

  “Tumor, you padlock Slammer,” she added, assigning her WSO to keep sight of Slammer’s fight while she eyeballed Lips’.

  “Got ’em,” he replied as she streaked below and past Lips, who was merging with the second Flanker. Clear of the furball she reefed back on the stick pointing herself at the sky in full afterburner. In seconds, she was 10,000 feet above all four fighters, slightly offset in perfect position with a god’s-eye view of both engagements.

  Slammer was extremely offensive, chasing the Flanker in a descending right hand turn.

  Lips’ bandit had been farther away, so it took him longer to merge. He was stuck in a wide, neutral, right-hand turn about a mile east of Slammer’s fight. As she watched, Lips’ bandit eased his turn, bringing his nose to bear on Slammer.

  “Slammer, heads up!” she transmitted immediately. “Switch, switch. The other Bandit is coming nose on to you.”

  Slammer thumbed his radio without looking away from the bandit flailing just in front of his nose. “Copy. Lips, status?”

  His blood lust was up. He was drunk with the chase, seconds from pulling the trigger. The rest of the world faded, put on hold while he worked the stick and danced on the rudders, trying to line up on the desperately jinking Flanker like a cheetah nipping at a frantic antelope. It was just a matter of time.

  He was barely able to process Lips’ response, “Almost got him.”

  Then HOB’s voice piped into his ear, sounding more concerned than excited. “Sir, the other bandit is nose on to us. Should we defend?”

  He heard HOB, but didn’t listen. He was well inside the minimum range for a missile so he thumbed the switch to guns. The target in front of him was wearing down, running out of airspeed and ideas. His trigger finger was white, taut, ready to fully contract sending a stream of explosive rounds into the Flanker in the blink of an eye. The computer sent guidance to the Heads-Up-Display cueing him as to where to maneuver his gunsight. All he had to do was superimpose the gunsight pipper onto the bandit and squeeze. The Flanker pilot was yanking his controls violently, summoning every last bit of Bernoullis to stave off the imminent.

  He held his breath as the pipper inched over the back of the Flanker’s haunches. He could see the elevators at full deflection. He could count the rivets. He squeezed, and the gun spat out a hundred rounds, the sound like a rapid-fire jackhammer.

  Fuck. Missed low.

  Quick was parked directly over the fight now, hanging inverted as she watched with mounting trepidation. She saw the Flanker Lips was chasing close on Slammer.

  She was about to direct Slammer to defend himself when she saw a missile streak from Lips’ jet just a mile behind the Chinese fighter. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, she ticked off the seconds in her head, counting down till impact.

  Suddenly the Flanker turned hard, dispensing what seemed like a hundred decoy flares. She swore, spotting the missile’s trajectory change immediately. It had been suckered off by the intense heat of the decoys. Lips’ Flanker turned to close again on Slammer as Lips fired a second shot.

  She keyed the mic.

  In Slammer’s jet, Quick’s panicked order burned through his focus. “Slammer, break right!” He snapped the stick without hesitation. His first emotion was anger at Quick for calling him off a certain victory. He screamed in frustration into his mask as he craned his neck, fighting the 8Gs to look over his shoulder.

  For the second time in the last minute he spotted the twinkly sparkles of a 30mm cannon shooting at him. This time it was a much better shot, and the Rhino shuddered as the rounds thudded into his right engine, walking up the fuselage toward the canopy. Toward HOB and Slammer.

  Then, like a bolt of lightning, Lips’ missile struck the Flanker from behind, disintegrating it in an instant, silencing the cannon. Slammer rolled inverted and pulled, eager to regain the offensive advantage on his target below. But his Rhino wallowed despite his crisp stick inputs. A red Fire Warning light illuminated on the right side of the glare shield and the warning horn blared in his ears.

  “Sir, we lost the right engine!” HOB announced over the intercom.

  He would soon be easy pickings.

  Quick felt like a spectator at the world’s most lethal sporting event. “Yeah!” she yelled as Lips’ missile hit the Flanker on Slammer’s tail. Then she watched as Lips flew directly though the fireball, unable to avoid it because he had shot at minimum range.

  Lips emerged on the other side trailing smoke. “Lips bugging out! I’ve got damage to both engines!” She watched him angle his nose down and south, aiming for the ship.

  Slammer’s voice snapped her eyes back to the fight. “Slammer’s hit. Single engine. I’m offensive now, but not for long. Quick, where are you?”

  She had flown past the engagement as she was hawking from above. She was out of position, pointed the wrong way. The lone remaining Flanker had dumped his nose, using gravity to help regain airspeed in the few seconds Slammer was busy defending himself.

  As Slammer pushed over, trying to reacquire him, she watched the Flanker pitch up from below, almost close enough to touch Slammer. The Chinese pilot skillfully used the tight proximity to jam any hope of a shot by Slammer, zipping just in front of his nose then skying far above.

  “Quick’s engaged,” she transmitted. “I’ll call your turn for the shot.”

  She reversed her turn and descended into the fray, plugging in the afterburners for maximum acceleration. “You’d best hurry, Quick,” Tumor’s voice rasped though her earcups. “He’s not likely to be around for a second pass.”

  Slammer watched the Flanker zorch right in front of him, less than a hundred feet away. He pulled the trigger as the huge fighter transited low to high just off his nose, but he was too late.

  He reefed back, yanking the sick Rhino’s nose as high as it would go. Switching to AIM-9, he fired off a heat-seeking missile even though he had no lock. He hoped the IR seeker would get lucky and find the juicy heat signatures of the Flanker, now two thousand feet above him against the clear blue sky.

  But there was only one engine pushing him around, and with half the thrust the Rhino shuddered and the nose fell back toward the water. He banged his fist on the glare shield as he watched the missile corkscrew stupidly in the wrong direction.

  He reefed the stick again, pulling the nose up almost to the horizon. Craning his neck he tracked the Flanker
as it reached the top of its loop, easing its nose menacingly down toward him and HOB from a high perch, like a raptor descending on a wounded robin with talons extended.

  Quick was a mile away, closing rapidly. She had the Flanker locked and a heat-seeking AIM-9 selected. The missile tone was growling in her ear like a Doberman straining at the leash, indicating the seeker had a sweet lock on the heat from the Bandit’s engines. She yelled, “Fox-2!” over the radio as she pulled the trigger.

  The AIM-9 streaked off like a bottle rocket at the inopportune moment the Flanker pulled his engines to idle, eliminating the heat signature while it descended and accelerated toward Slammer’s tail. The Flanker dumped a stream of flares and she screamed, “No!” as the missile fused on a decoy.

  She flicked the weapons selector to AMRAAM but a huge X in her Heads-Up-Display indicated she was too close. Slammer’s tense voice came over the radio, “Jesus, Quick! He’s nose on to me. You’d better hurry, or you can have my car.”

  She was almost on top of the Flanker, but 300 knots faster. She immediately recognized if she pulled nose down to follow him she would race past hunter and prey both in an instant, flying by the action like a supersonic cheerleader. Nothing in her brief training had prepared her for this scenario, this geometry, this uncooperative Bandit who was about to kill her Lead while she flew high speed laps overhead.

  Watching powerlessly out her canopy as the descending Flanker converged on Slammer’s helpless Rhino, something about the picture clicked. The paralyzing static of indecision dissolved as the beautiful, instinctive part of her brain asserted itself.

  It was as if the Rhino became woven into her, proprioceptively indistinguishable from her own arms and legs. There was no longer a question as to what to do, she just did.

  At the position where the Flanker had nosed down, she yanked the throttles to idle while simultaneously thumbing out the speed-brakes.

  “What are you doing?” Tumor exploded.

  “Hold on,” was all she had time for as she grabbed the stick with both hands and snapped it all the way back into her lap. She screamed into her mask at full volume, fending off the crushing instant onset of the G forces scrabbling at her vision and consciousness. The Rhino’s nose reared up like a warhorse as the plane shuddered violently, bucking angrily while scrubbing off the speed she didn’t need. With the nose pointed up, and the stick still in her lap she kicked in a bootfull of right rudder, smoothly feeding in right aileron.

  Slammer thumbed the flare switch manically, sending a stream of decoys into the sky behind him hoping to fend off any missiles. But there was no decoy for 30mm bullets. He was a sitting duck as the Flanker eased down toward him.

  “Holy shit!” HOB said from the backseat.

  He wrenched his eyes from the Flanker for a moment, tracking Quick’s Rhino as it executed the most beautiful pirouette he had ever seen.

  As Quick held the full backstick and full right rudder the Rhino twisted in the sky, shedding the excess airspeed. The nose pivoted first up, almost directly toward the heavens. Then as the rudders took effect, the nose traced a graceful arc down through the horizon and tracked directly toward the Flanker.

  She anticipated perfectly, again jamming the throttles full forward into afterburner, reversing the rudders briefly to stop the traverse of the nose and pushing the stick forward. She was now parked 1,500 feet directly behind the Flanker with 100 knots of overtake. Perfect.

  Slammer yelled “Atta girl!” just as the Flanker released a salvo from his cannon.

  “Shit!” He broke hard right, stalling his plane as he defeated the shots. Now completely out of airspeed, he and HOB were powerless to avoid the next volley.

  Quick thumbed the switch to AIM-9 and the growl instantly returned, indicating good heat lock. But as she looked through her Heads-Up-Display she couldn’t determine if the missile had locked on the Flanker’s engines or Slammer’s just beyond.

  She flicked to guns. “Break right Slammer!” Then she pulled the trigger. The gun barked out 200 rounds in under a second, chewing up the Flanker’s right rudder.

  Slammer stuffed the stick far right but he had no airspeed remaining to move. He watched in horror as the Flanker maneuvered his nose directly at the Rhino’s cockpit. From 200 feet away, Slammer looked directly down the barrel of the Bandit’s gun. He was fucking toast.

  Quick adjusted her pipper two degrees higher and pulled again. This time she saw the rounds hit. First on the fuselage between the engines and then zipper across the mound encasing the left engine, then out toward the left wing.

  She released, tapped the right rudder and squeezed again. This burst hit in a dense cluster just behind the cockpit. Time compressed around her as she watched the Flanker wrench apart in slow motion. The nose and the cockpit broke away from the fuselage, snapping off and twisting away to the left as a red ball of flame blossomed in the middle. She’d found a fuel cell.

  The wings and rudders separated, fluttering past her as she continued her descent, but the massive engines and big bits of fuselage continued on their trajectory, falling in a smoky flaming ball toward Slammer at almost the same rate as when they were whole.

  “Slammer break right!” she screamed again over the radio. But there was no answer as the flaming wreckage intersected with Slammer’s wallowing fighter. His Rhino was enveloped in the smoke. “Oh god,” she whispered over the intercom. She blinked twice, slower the second time.

  Then she heard Tumor howl, “I’ll be dipped in shit!” She rolled her jet further right, peering over the canopy rail, her heart banging. Far below her was a Rhino, limping along, barely flying. “Slammer?” she transmitted over the radio.

  His voice filled her ears, sounding elated and amped. “You expecting someone else?” She laughed into her mask, relief and joy spreading like an electric current through her body.

  She heard Slammer transmit again as she dropped down to rendezvous on the stricken Rhino. “Banger, Lion One. Splash four Bandits. Picture?”

  Banger answered immediately, “Picture clear, Lion One. All the other groups turned back north right about the time your little shooting war started. Green south to Mother. You need any assistance?”

  “Negative Banger. I’m single engine and pretty shot up, but flyable. I’ve got a fighter escort on my wing now. Good to go.”

  She felt a flush of pride join the adrenaline cocktail coursing through her system. She laughed into her mask again as she eased up to Slammer’s right wing. From the top, the fuselage was pockmarked and black with smoke stains.

  She ducked under, slowly angling to the other side, counting the holes in the wings. Some were large enough to put a fist through. The belly under the shot-up right engine was smeared with red hydraulic fluid but otherwise looked sound.

  Now out on the left side she popped off her mask, smiling at them while she shook her head in wonder. Slammer and HOB flashed huge smiles and thumbs up. His voice came through the radio again. “Hell of a job Quick Silvers. You’re only four away from making Ace.”

  “If I have to keep saving your ass,” she responded, grinning, “I’m bound to make it soon.”

  She followed him to the carrier, hawking his approach from above as he limped to a landing on the USS Bush. She was abeam the ship at six hundred feet, paralleling his path as he came to a stop.

  Seeing he was safe in the wires, she advanced the throttles fully and the Rhino bolted forward like a spurred stallion. “Make it look good, Nugget,” Tumor said, his voice just marginally less cranky than usual.

  She smiled behind her mask as she turned hard to the left, low and fast, setting up for a tight lap. “You bet.”

  They parked him next to Lips’ damaged jet, and Lips and Chigga waved to Slammer and HOB from the deck as the plane captains chained the leaking, charred Super Hornet in place.

  Slammer’s last remaining engine was winding down and his canopy was just coming up as a single Rhino streaked silently past Bush at flight deck level, low enough fo
r the shock wave to leave a trail in the ocean. It was already past the bow when the thunderous supersonic boom shook the deck. He stood in his cockpit as the jet pulled straight toward the sky’s roof, rolling two, three, four times as Quick spiraled toward the heavens in classic victory rolls.

  He dismounted and crushed HOB in a bear hug, slapping him on the helmet as HOB grinned back at him like a fool. They joined Lips and Chigga along the edge of the landing area, watching while Quick circled the pattern and trapped. The only unblemished Lion Rhino had just taxied clear of the landing area when the PA system announced, “Helo inbound. Clear the landing area. Helo inbound.”

  His enthusiasm flagged as the helo clattered in from the port side, coming to rest in the center of the deck. The four squadron mates jogged over as the blades slowed. The door slid open as they approached and Tiny and Skids leapt from the helo still soaked in seawater, laughing when they spotted Slammer and the crew.

  “I could get used to this service. How’d we do?” Tiny asked.

  Slammer cracked up as he answered, “We did alright. You, my friend are working on a negative Ace. Not sure we can afford to spare three more Rhinos for you, though.” He grasped Tiny by the shoulders. “How the fuck did you survive that? You are the luckiest motherfucker I’ve ever met.”

  Tiny dropped to his knees laughing, kissing the black non-skid of the flight deck. “The missile blew our plane in half. The cockpit separated just behind Skids and I didn’t even know there wasn’t a Rhino behind us, I was fighting the controls all the way down.” He pointed at Skids. “This dude saved our asses.”

  Slammer helped Tiny to his feet, turning to watch as Quick hustled over to the group, followed closely by an almost cheerful looking Tumor. She slapped him on the back as they approached the huddle. “C’mon Tumor. Admit it, Alert-Sevens are awesome!”