Mack cut sharply east then back south, and found himself head-on toward the two jets, only two thousand feet above them and separated by roughly five miles. The position in theory favored the interceptors, who could easily turn and get behind him, where they would be in a good position to fire heat-seeking missiles.
It was what Mack wanted them to do; he intended on suckering one close enough to dish out the airmines as he used flares to knock out the heat-seekers. But they didn’t play along. Instead, one aircraft broke east and began to climb, possibly trying to position himself for a front-quarter attack from above. The other Sukhoi turned and dropped down on the deck.
If Mack wanted to escape, all he had to do was hold the stick steady. But instead he put his wing down, intending at first to tack back west; just as he started to turn he came up with a better idea and rolled the plane into a loop to change direction.
It would have been a great idea if he had been flying an F-22 or F-15, much smaller planes designed to challenge Newton’s laws with some regularity. The Megafortress reacted by pushing her nose sideways and drooping her Y-shaped tail. The spine of the aircraft began to bend, and the computer belatedly screamed at its pilot for exceeding all reasonable bounds of stress and strain. Mack could feel the pressure himself — his head felt as if it were being pummeled from every direction. He managed to. get the aircraft upright and straighten her wings — just in time to narrowly miss getting clipped by the thoroughly confused Sukhoi pilot, who sailed over his wing.
“Stinger. Track one. Fire when locked.”
“Target tracked. Target locked,” replied the computer. “Firing.”
Mack had no time to check this barrage — the second Sukhoi was diving on his tail from four miles.
“Minister—”
“I see him, Jalan. Relax. Stinger. Track.” Mack pointed at the touchscreen where the plane was painted by the EB-52’s radar.
The computer replied that it was out of range.
“Stay with him, baby,” Mack said.
The computer complained that it did not understand the command.
“Range, three miles,” said Jalan. “He’s launching missiles.”
“Flares,” said Mack calmly.
“Target tracked. Target locked,” said the computer.
“Fire.”
As the airmines dished out behind them, Mack pushed hard on the stick, initiating a series of hard zigs to avoid the missile that had just been launched. It turned out to be unnecessary — one of the airmines immolated the missile. The Sukhoi, unscathed, broke off.
“Enemy is accelerating north,” said Jalan.
“He’s going to run out of fuel,” said Mack. “Let’s encourage that.” He twisted around to follow.
The helicopters were SA 330 F Pumas, French-made military helicopters that could carry sixteen troops as well as weapons to support them. The helicopters were unloading men via ropes as McKenna approached in her Dragonfly; they refused to answer her hails.
They were also clearly in Brunei territory.
“Mine’s the one on the right,” she told her wingman. “Shouldn’t we consult with the minister before opening the engagement?” replied Captain Yayasan.
“He’s busy,” said McKenna as she swooped into the attack. The Cessna’s sturdy frame shrugged off the four and a half Gs she threw at it, twisting into a dive that put its nose head-on for the side of the lead chopper. The Dragonfly’s nose gun was aimed through an optical sight; McKenna leaned forward and tilted her head, steadying her focus as she moved her plane into the sweet spot of her target. She juiced the trigger and a stream of 7.62-millimeter shells flew from the minigun.
The first wave of bullets spit downward and to the left of the helicopter. McKenna eased the pressure on her stick and fired again, managing to get a few dozen rounds into the lower portion of the helicopter’s fuselage before losing her angle on the chopper. She stomped the throttle and roared overhead, spinning on her wing as she angled for a second approach.
The helicopter shot upward, jinking back and forth as it tried to get away. McKenna couldn’t line up her plane quickly enough for another shot as she crossed back. She growled at herself, slapping her knee as if she were an animal that had tried to enter the wrong paddock on her family’s farm. She took this turn wider, coming around a bit more slowly and more consciously taking her time, aware of the adrenaline rush threatening to scramble her brain. She angled slightly to the right of the helo and about two thousand feet above it as it skimmed down close to the vegetation, desperate to get away. McKenna tilted her body with the plane’s and gave the gun a tentative tickle. She had the range down; as the first bullets sailed into the rotor she stomped her rudder pedal and nailed the trigger down, walking a stream of lead back and forth across the engine housing. Wisps of black smoke appeared at the side, but the helicopter did not go down.
“Dragon Two, how are you coming with that helicopter?” she asked her wingmate, climbing over Malaysian territory. She banked around for another run on the helicopter, figuring it would take one more pass to put it down; the 7.62-millimeter gun in the Dragonfly’s nose was a very light weapon by aircraft standards, and while being on the receiving end was no fun, its bullets did not have the sheer oomph of larger weapons like the twenty-millimeter and thirty-millimeter cannons carried by most frontline interceptors. But the helicopter had begun a hard tilt to the left, its tail rising. It flew onward for a few hundred meters, a duck winged by a hunter’s shotgun shell. Then it plunged into the hillside, flames erupting in a stream behind it.
“Two, what are we doing?” McKenna barked as she started south. She saw the other Dragonfly about a mile and a half away, on her left, above her by at least three thousand feet. She leveled out, not sure of the situation.
“Two? Two?” she snapped.
When her wingman still didn’t respond, McKenna began to fear that he had been hit. She had already started in his direction when she saw the shadow of a helicopter fleeing to her right. Cursing, she turned to pursue, but the helicopter had jinked down and managed to get behind a row of trees. By the time she finally saw it, it was scooting past a small town, flying deep into Malaysian territory. As McKenna checked her position in the sky she saw puffs of black cotton swirling off her left wing and realized for the first time that she was being fired at.
Time to call it a day.
“Two, what’s your situation? Please advise,” she said.
McKenna did a quick instrument check, knowing her fuel was getting low — it was actually a bit better than she thought, not quite hitting her reserves.
“Two? Is your radio out or what?” asked McKenna again. “Two,” said the other pilot finally. She could see Yayasan’s aircraft, well over hers and a tiny black dot in the sky.
“Were you hit?”
“Negative.”
While McKenna was sincerely concerned for the safety of her fellow pilots, and especially those on her wing, that wasn’t the best response, given the circumstances.
“Get back to the airbase,” she told him.
“Two,” he said, wisely guessing there was no sense in doing anything more than acknowledging.
Mack had no hope of keeping up with the Sukhois as they pumped dinosaurs into their afterburners. The dual Saturn Al-31 FMs pumped out over thirty thousand pounds of thrust, taking the Sukhois up over Mach 2, at least for a brief moment.