Taking a deep breath and relieved to be safely on deck, she idled the jet while the arresting wire pulled it backward to allow the tail hook to drop the cable.
Her heartbeat drumming against her temples, Amanda found herself holding her breath. She exhaled hard and took a deep breath, trying to calm her heartbeat.
It took the crew a minute to lower the barricade, and she followed the directions of the yellow-jersey flight director to a spot clear of the foul deck line. And it was there that she spotted Maintenance Master Chief Gino Cardona standing by with his arms crossed, his mirror-tint sunglasses reflecting the morning sun as he shook his head.
Shutting down the engine and unfastening her oxygen mask, Amanda breathed a deep sigh of relief. She noticed her hands were shaking. She was pretty sure, though, that her panties were still clean.
And that’s something to be proud of, I guess.
Lian grew angrier as she approached the coast at Mach 2.3. Her N011 pulse-Doppler radar, capable of tracking up to fifteen aerial targets, showed two Super Hornets flying a racetrack pattern almost sixty miles behind her. The other two jets had returned to the carrier. And higher above, an E-2D Advanced Hawkeye similar to the one she had buzzed yesterday kept a watchful eye on the airspace.
I lost two pilots. I can’t go back empty-handed.
She had three Vympel R-37 long-range air-to-air missiles, which she could fire at the American aircraft in shoot-and-forget mode, letting the missiles’ active radar homing track their respective targets.
But Lian was also aware of the countermeasure capabilities of a Super Hornet, which could evade one, maybe even two missiles if the pilot was a really, really good stick.
But three?
Making her decision, she slowed down to make a tight 360-degree shooting run, briefly pointing the nose toward the southwestern skies. Picking at random, she locked all three R-37s on one of the BARCAP Super Hornets, firing them at five-second intervals while still turning.
The thirteen-foot missiles, each with a range of more than two hundred miles, shot off and made slight turns before rocketing up to Mach 6.0, or 4,603 miles per hour.
At that insane speed, over twice that of a 9 mm bullet, the lead missile closed the sixty-mile gap in forty-six seconds.
“Missile lock! Got three missiles on my Rhino!” Kowalski heard Malloy scream as he broke right to place the lead missile at a ninety-degree angle and began dispensing chaff.
Jesus Christ, he thought, staring at the incoming vampires on his radar, all closing in on Malloy’s bird at a staggering speed.
It took a moment for Kowalski to do the math before he shouted, “You can’t shake them, Mullet! Too fast and too close! Eject! Eject!”
“I’ve got this, Skipper!”
The first missile went for the chaff, exploding in an impressive ball of fire and shrapnel less than a half mile from Malloy. Instead of ejecting, Malloy performed a second turn to once again position himself at ninety degrees from the second missile while releasing more chaff. The maneuver worked, fooling the second missile, which detonated a couple thousand feet from the F/A-18E.
“Dammit, Mullet!” Kowalski screamed. “Get the hell out of there!”
“Nope. I’ve got it, Skipper!” he replied, making a third turn after releasing more chaff. “This one’s for the history books!”
The third missile also went for the chaff, and for an instant Kowalski thought the hotshot pilot had indeed written a new chapter in missile-evasion techniques. But the vampire detonated just a bit too close to the jet, tearing into the rear fuselage.
“I tried, Skipper! Punching out! Need a helo and a driver!”
Malloy’s canopy blew back in the slipstream followed by the Mk14 ejection seat firing. But before it could achieve enough separation, the blast propagated to the front of the Super Hornet.
One second Kowalski watched his wingman shooting away from the jet, and the next instant flames swallowed the entire bird and Malloy as the blast ignited thousands of pounds of jet fuel.
“Dammit!” he cursed beneath his oxygen mask as he flew around the falling debris in the hopes that somehow the Martin-Baker ejection seat had managed to punch through the fireball.
But after thirty seconds, Kowalski keyed his mic, “Liberty Bell, Liberty Bell, Dragon Three-Three-Niner reporting that Dragon Four-Zero-Seven is gone.… Mullet… he bought the farm.”
— 23 —
Col. Lian Guõ worked her way through a bottle of Moutai, the prestigious brand of the sorghum-based alcoholic drink commonly called baijiu, also referred to as Chinese vodka.
She sat alone at the bar in the officer’s club, while Hai Jing pinned a photo of Major Zhao Ren and the other officer killed that day on the base’s wall of heroes. The five-by-eight corkboard behind the bar, flanked by glass shelves packed with assorted bottles, depicted close to eighty fallen pilots. The tradition had been started by her jiujiu following the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.
Refilling her shot glass, Lian regarded the quote from Tao Te Ching along the top of the sixty-year-old memorial.
Those who die without being forgotten get longevity.
She lifted her shot glass toward it and whispered, “Here’s to becoming a fucking picture on a wall.” She downed it, feeling the warmth in her throat, then refilled her glass. She ignored the look the old bartender, Hai, gave her. His heavily scarred face showed obvious concern.
Hai looked at Lian with his good eye and said, “All of life is a dream, Lian. All of death is a going home.”
“Do me a favor, would you, Hai? Spare me the damned proverbs. And, when my turn comes, just don’t bother with this crap. I don’t want to be some ghost on your wall.”
Hai slowly retreated to the other side of the bar as she continued glaring at the array of photos, but in her mind, the PLAAF colonel saw the weathered Super Hornet with the peculiar hot-pink call sign. Although killing the other jet with her missiles had given Lian some solace, it wasn’t enough.
I will find you, Lieutenant Amanda Diamante… and help you reach your fucking home.
Amanda Diamante was in tears as she sat next to a stoned-faced Juan Ricardo in the ready room, along with the rest of the somber-looking pilots from their fighter squadron.
Cmdr. Benjamin Kowalski walked in, followed by a few officers, including Lt. Cmdr. Vince Nova, the squadron’s safety officer, as well as the squadron’s XO, and even the air boss, Capt. James Buchelle, a hard-looking man with a full head of silver hair, whose grim expression reflected the sentiment in the room.
Kowalski stood in front of the group and said, “Let this be a lesson to all of you. You can whine all you want about that Sukhoi pilot firing three radar-controlled missiles from that distance, but the reality is that we do the same damn thing all the time. Mullet bought the farm not because that Chinese pilot shot those missiles. He died because he didn’t follow orders. As much as I rag on you about protecting the equipment — and as much as the photo of the CAG standing there looking through that hole in his Phantom might inspire you to bring your bird home — when I order you to eject, by God, you better eject.