Which coincidentally was its exact distance from the Sukhoi at the moment it opened fire. In a head-on attack situation, against an unswerving enemy target confidently barreling in behind his missiles at 1,000 miles an hour, it was hard for the GUA8/L to miss. In the three seconds before the two Russian missiles slammed into it, the Fantom put nearly 200 25mm shells into the Sukhoi.
Its pilot was dead before his missiles hit their target, taking Bunny’s sacrificial drone off the board.
With his flight leader off the air, and his threat warning alarm telling him there was still one enemy drone out there, the second Sukhoi pilot decided to get while the going was good. One on one with a human pilot, he would back himself any day. Down on the deck, out of energy and facing a damn robot, those weren’t odds he liked. Bunny watched with satisfaction as he bugged out and she regained stealth status. She gave her surviving Fantom a dogleg route home to try to confuse any satellite surveillance that might be lucky enough to pick up her heat signature along the way, and leaned back in her chair.
“Permission to declare myself freaking awesome ma’am?” Bunny said, grinning widely but keeping her eyes on her monitors.
During the dogfight, Rodriguez had hovered behind the pilot’s chair, biting her bottom lip so hard she could taste blood now. It was ridiculous. Not like my life was on the line. But it felt like it. And that was the way O’Hare was running her drones too — as though her life depended on it.
“Denied,” Rodriguez said. “You don’t get to do that. I get to do that. That was simply awe-inspiring, Lieutenant. From ingress to egress.”
“You know ma’am, I agree with you,” Bunny said. “What was it that inspired the most awe, in your personal opinion? Was it the way I snuck in under that IL-77 like a freaking ninja and blew it out of the sky, or was it the four solids I laid on Ivan at Lavrentiya?” She spun her chair around, giving Rodriguez a deadpan look. “Or was it the way I burned that Nebo, evaded like a hundred missiles and bagged myself a Sukhoi-57 in the process?”
Rodriguez knew better than to say something that would bring her ace pilot back down to earth. It was O’Hare’s moment, and she had earned it.
“Honestly?” Rodriguez smiled. “None of that. The most awesome thing of all, is that all that hurt was laid on the Russians by an Australian pilot whose handle is ‘Bunny’.”
Perri saw the Russian soldier drop and roll, then he disappeared from view behind some low scrub.
“Did you hit him?” Dave asked, scanning the ground in front of them with binoculars.
“Yeah I hit him,” Perri said. Crouched on one knee, the Russian was not a big target. He’d aimed for the guy’s center mass, not taking any chances. The shot had knocked him down, he hadn’t ducked, of that he was sure.
“I can’t see him,” Dave said. “Should we go look for him? Make sure he’s dead?”
“No, we should not go look for him, we should get the hell out of here. He might not be the only one looking for us. Someone could have heard that shot.”
“You want to go back to Gambell?” Dave asked, hopefully.
“Shut up, I’m thinking.” He and Dave were on a small rise, about two miles out from the south-west end of the long runway. Savoonga town was a ways off, on the other side of the runway. The bombed out radar facility cantonment was south of it, about two miles south-east of the runway. It wouldn’t have as clear a view over the town and airport as they had now, but they couldn’t stay here, and they had to hide out somewhere. “Saddle up,” Perri said, pointing at the ruins in the distance. “There’s our new home.”
He expected Dave to argue, but the guy just shouldered his rifle, lifted his pack onto his other shoulder and stood there waiting. “What?” he said, when he noticed Perri was staring at him. “You want me to congratulate you for taking down that Russian?” He walked off in the direction of the cantonment, muttering. “I’m the one spotted the guy. Shooting him was the easy part. I’ve shot sleeping walrus that were harder to shoot than that dumbass Russian…”
That dumbass Russian was having trouble breathing.
Lying on his back, looking up at the sky, Zubkhov had clawed his pistol off his belt and had its butt propped against the ground, left hand with a finger inside the trigger guard, ready in case the bastard who shot him decided to come and finish the job. He had almost no chance if he did. Zubkhov’s right arm was completely numb, and he couldn’t even lift the pistol, let alone hold it steady and point it properly.
The American was good, Zubkhov had to give him that. The way he’d escaped back in Gambell, diving straight into the water instead of being stupid and trying to run for it along the runway. Found a Russian radio and got it working. It had to be the same guy. He’d tracked the Russian troops all the way to Savoonga, somehow realizing Zubkhov was on his tail, got around behind and set him up for a hit at a range so great Zubkhov hadn’t even heard the report of his rifle. Guy like that, he couldn’t be a simple radar technician. He had to be at least base security or something more, maybe special forces — just happened to be in Gambell. Yeah, you had to give him credit.
But not too much credit. Zubkhov was still alive, for now. He waited, expecting every second to be his last. But the kill shot never came.
When he was sure the guy wasn’t coming to confirm his kill — which either made him very cocky, or very careful — Zubkhov let his pistol drop and felt around under his uniform. His shirt was soaked in blood: not good. But he could feel an entry wound at the front of his right shoulder, and a pretty damn huge exit wound at the back, which was where most of the blood was coming from. From a pouch on the leg of his uniform trousers he pulled a small field first-aid pack. Ripping open the foil with one hand and his teeth, he pulled out the sterilized gauze bandage, shoved the wrapping between his teeth, and then jammed the bandage as far into the wound in his back as he could. He had to stifle a scream, but he got a fair wad of gauze in there, and then rolled back onto it to try to keep some pressure on it.
He’d told Sergeant Penkov he was no medic. Zubkhov had basic combat medical training though, so unfortunately he knew enough to realize he was hit pretty good, but his wound wasn’t sucking air, so he hadn’t suffered a punctured lung cavity. Hurt like hell though and it was bleeding pretty good. If the shoulder blade wasn’t broken, the slug had taken a big chunk out of it. He could see blood pulsing out of the entry wound. He fumbled with the first aid pack, trying to find the large plastic adhesive wound patch he knew was in there. Finally his fingers grabbed the thin film and he ripped the back off it with his teeth. Luckily he was one of those semi-neurotic guys who were terrified of battlefield wounds so he shaved his chest, arm and legs to get rid of hair. And yeah, some of the others had given him shit about it, but right now, right now, who was the smart guy huh? Who was laughing now? He laughed out loud.
He realized his mind was wandering. The patch. He pulled the plastic film off the back of it, and slapped it over the entry wound, then remembered something. Something, something. He was doing something wrong. He needed a pressure bandage on there too but was it supposed to go over the patch, or under it? Whatever. He put a wad of gauze over the patch, bound a bandage around his arm and shoulder as best he could with one hand.