The bogeys were coming in on the deck, fifteen miles away, head-on. The merge would come in less than a minute.
“Radar air-to-air.” Maxwell switched his APG-73 radar from bombing mode to air-to-air. Within a few sweeps of the radar, he saw an EID — electronic identification — on the incoming bogey. It was what he expected — a MiG-29.
Fulcrum.
He looked again. No, not just one bogey. Damn it, there are three more. “Four bandits, twelve o’clock, ten miles low,” called the controller in the Hawkeye, confirming Maxwell’s radar display.
His RWR shrieked a high-pitched warbling sound. He was being targeted by a Russian Slotback radar.
“Runner One-one spiked at twelve, defending!” he called, rolling his Hornet and pulling hard. He hoped Pearly was staying with him. “Runner One-two, press!” he called, giving the tactical lead to Pearly.
A classic setup. The MiGs were getting the first shot. His best chance to defeat the missile — he guessed that it was a radar-guided Alamo — was chaff, a cloud of radar-decoying aluminum foil.
Rolling back to the left, he saw it. Coming up at him, trailing a wisp of gray smoke, the missile was flying a classic pursuit curve. Toward Maxwell’s jet.
“Brick, break left!” Pearly Gates’s voice was urgent. “Bandit ten o’clock low.”
Maxwell swung his head — and there it was, the cobralike shape of the lead MiG-29 silhouetted against the landscape. The MiG was in a climbing turn toward him.
But he had a more immediate problem — the incoming Alamo. The missile was in a maximum-rate turn, arcing upward.
Another barrel roll to the left, pulling hard, seven Gs. The missile was closing on him, curving toward his tail.
Whoosh.
Straining under the heavy G load, he watched the Alamo sizzling past his tail, then felt the concussion as the proximity fuse exploded the warhead a hundred yards behind him.
How close? Maxwell braced, waiting for the same sickening sensation of two days before — loss of control, warning lights, engine fire.
“You okay, Brick?” asked Pearly Gates.
“I think so. Everything is still working.”
“Runner Two, Fox Three on the lead group trailer.”
“Take him. I’ve got the leader engaged.”
“Roger. Yo-yo. Runner One-one engaged defensive with the leader.” Pearly was on his own while Maxwell fought the lead Fulcrum.
“Runner One-three and — four have the trailers,” called Leroi Jones, leading the second section of Hornets. “We’re sorted.”
Maneuvering to defeat the Alamo had cost him airspeed. The lead MiG’s nose was pointed well inside Maxwell’s turn radius, gaining a precious angle on him.
The fighters passed, a hundred yards apart. As the desert-colored MiG swept past, Maxwell glimpsed the yellow helmet, a visored face watching him. Puffs of vapor were spilling off the MiG’s wings from the high G load.
Who is this guy? What was with the yellow helmet?
Was it Al-Fasr?
As the MiG passed behind his shoulder, Maxwell swung his head, keeping the fighter in sight. He hauled the nose up, up, then rolled toward the MiG.
The MiG’s nose came up, countering Maxwell. Climbing, the two fighters pulled back toward each other. Again they crossed, noses high.
Now what? Maxwell asked himself. In a one-vee-one with a MiG-29, there was no way out. The aging Russian fighter was as fast as a Hornet. If you tried to bug out, the MiG had a free shot at your tail.
Now he was in a turning fight with a Fulcrum. And the guy flying it was matching the Hornet move for move. Definitely not your average undertrained and demoralized MiG pilot who just wanted to save his ass.
It had to be Al-Fasr.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE TROUBLE WITH SAM
“Splash One!” called Pearly Gates.
It was the brevity signal for an aerial kill. Pearly Gates watched his AIM-120 radar-guided missile slam into the right intake of the second MiG-29. The fighter split in half, spewing debris and pieces from the shattered airframe. Exactly one second later, the main fuel cell erupted in an orange fireball. From five hundred feet, the flaming wreckage tumbled to the floor of the desert.
Where were the trailers? Pearly picked them up on his situational display, then went outside again for a visual ID.
There. He saw the dark shapes of the two trailing MiGs a mile behind the destroyed fighter, fast and low in a combat spread.
He heard Leroi Jones call, “Runner One-three and — four have the trailers locked.”
Okay, the trailers were covered. But that left Brick and the lead MiG still in a furball somewhere.
“Runner Two blind on One,” Pearly called, declaring that he didn’t have Maxwell in sight.
“One’s blind on you, engaged neutral,” Maxwell answered.
Pearly called the Hawkeye. “Battle-ax, Runner Two. Vector for Runner One-one.”
“Runner One-one is ten miles, merged plot,” answered the controller in the Hawkeye.
“Runner One-two inbound.” Pearly reefed the Hornet’s nose around in a climbing turn, switching his scan from outside back to the APG-73 radar.
Then he saw the two blips — Maxwell’s Hornet and the MiG-29. The blips were nearly superimposed.
Another AIM-120 missile shot was out of the question. They were too close together. The autonomously guided missile was as likely to home in on Maxwell as the MiG.
Maybe a heat-seeking Sidewinder, which was a “fire and forget” weapon. He’d wait until he had a clear shot.
In the next second, Pearly’s blood ran cold.
“Burner six! Burner six hot!” It was Ironclaw, the EA-6B Prowler, reporting an SA-6 surface-to-air missile.
At the same time Pearly heard the warbling sound from his RWR. The SAM was airborne — locked on Pearly’s Hornet.
He saw it, bursting into the hazy sky like a fire-tailed comet. He hit the chaff-dispenser button on his throttle, releasing a trail of the finely cut aluminum foil into the wake of his jet.
“Runner One-two spiked, defending,” he yelled on the radio, declaring that he was leaving the fight. “Shit, it’s an SA-6.”
He rolled perpendicular to the missile and punched his chaff program dispenser. Make it maneuver. Make it break lock. Out-turn the sonofabitch. He pulled the Hornet’s nose down, seeing the rugged terrain of Yemen fill up his windscreen.
By modern standards, the Russian-built SA-6 wasn’t a highly sophisticated missile, but it was still deadly. Pearly guessed that the radar-guided weapon was smart enough not to be fooled by chaff or the electronic jamming being provided by the Prowler.
He was right. It was coming up in a corkscrew pattern, constantly adjusting its flight path to stay locked onto Pearly’s Hornet.
As the missile came nearer, Pearly yanked the Hornet into an orthogonal roll — a high-G, square-cornered maneuver — using the maximum G load the Hornet’s fly-by-wire control system would allow. The missile followed. Still accelerating. Still tracking him.
Pearly’s heart hammered in his chest. The goddamn missile was like a hunter from hell. He could see the nose of the thing pulling lead, making tiny directional changes as it homed in on Pearly’s jet.
Coming closer. So close now he could see the control fins on the tail. Any second now, it would detonate. Pearly saw the missile coming for him.
Wait, he told himself. Wait until…
Now. He jammed the stick hard into the corner, completing the last right-angle corner of the roll.