Rebecca hit the afterburners and swept the wings back to 54 degrees. “Chaff!” she shouted, and she banked hard left — she tried to break, but she didn’t have the strength to pull the control stick over the heavy nose-low loads until Mace got on his control stick with her, pulling with his left hand while ejecting chaff with his right. Their break was only half the authority of a full-power break, but they quickly ran out of airspeed and had to stop. Their airspeed was down to half normal speed, and nothing else except 24-degree wing sweep would keep the angle of attack in the normal range. Furness pulled the throttles back to military power, and with the wings at 24 degrees they could get 350 knots and six alpha — slow and sluggish, but still flying.
“I don’t see the missiles anywhere—” Then, far off to the right behind the right wing, he saw a blazing streak of fire fly into the earth and explode, illuminating the snowy ground for miles in all directions. “God, somebody got hit!” Mace screamed. “Thunder Two, do you read me? Thunder Two …?” There was a long, terrifying pause — no reply. “Thunder Two, respond!”
“I copy, lead,” Hembree replied. “It was one of the Ukrainians. Thunder Ten, do you copy me? Over.”
“Yes, I hear you,” Pavlo Tychina, flying the lead Su-17, radioed back. “It was my wingman. I did not see the missiles coming until they hit him.”
“We’re IP inbound,” Mace reported solemnly. “Coming up on the missile launch point in four minutes.”
“Okay, Two, we’ve got a forward CG problem, and we’re barely maintaining three-fifty. Dick, you wanna do the honors? You got the lead. I got one HARM left. I’ll cover your butt.”
“I got the lead,” Hembree replied. A few moments later, Hembree said on the channel, “Fence check, Thunder Flight. Arm ’em up, lead is hot.”
“God, this is it,” Furness muttered. She made sure her flight suit sleeves were rolled down, her zippers zipped up, her helmet and oxygen mask on tight, and her shoulder harness as tight as she could make it. Mace did the same, then checked Rebecca. They then pulled their flashblindness curtains and canopy screens closed, turned on all the interior lights full bright, and turned the cockpit pressurization to COMBAT. She lowered her PLZT (Polarized Lead-Zirconium-Titanate) antiflashblindness goggles in place on her helmet and activated them. “I’m ready, Daren,” she said. She looked at her partner after he lowered his goggles in place. “My God, you look like the Fly.”
“I feel like it’s déjà vu all over again,” he replied. He checked the RHAWS scope. “Search radars at one o’clock, Rebecca — that’s Moscow. Two minutes to launch point.”
“I think we’ve gotta be crazy, Daren,” Rebecca said. “I mean, I can hardly think … I can hardly breathe. How can anyone do this? How can anyone launch a nuclear weapon?”
“Part of the fucking job. SA-10 coming up,” Mace said. “Give me 10 degrees left and we’ll launch our last HARM.”
Furness made the turn, the missile processed and computed its target, and they let it fly. The launch and destruction of the SA-10 SAM site was anticlimactic, almost boring. “Two weeks ago, the idea of launching so many HARMs would have been overwhelming,” she said. “Now it feels as if I just shot a spitball compared to what we’re about to do.”
“SA-10’s down,” Mace reported. “One minute to launch point. Missiles powered up and ready.”
Rebecca clicked on the interplane channel. “Godspeed, Thunder,” she radioed.
“To you too, Thunder,” Hembree replied. “Over and out.”
“Thirty seconds. Prelaunch checks complete, doors in MANUAL, center up the steering bars, Becky.” The Vampire banked slightly to the right, then leveled out. “Twenty seconds …”
“Missile away, Thunder One,” they heard Hembree say. The first missile was on its way to its target — it would hit about half a minute before their own.
“Can’t get a final radar launchpoint fix … I hope the system’s running tight enough with GPS,” Mace said, his voice still carrying a sharp, determined edge. “Search radar, twelve o’clock … that’s Domodovedo. They’re trying to pick up Dick Hembree’s missile. They got an SA-17 system but it’ll be too late—”
“Daren!”
“It’ll be all right, Rebecca. Let’s do it and get it over with.” He flicked the bomb door switch to OPEN. “Ten seconds … doors coming open …”
Rebecca gripped the control stick and throttles as tightly as she could, waiting for the wrath of God to hit. Something is going to happen, she thought. She was sure of it. No supreme being was going to allow any human to unleash this much destructive force on—
“Missile away, Rebecca,” Mace said as he mashed the pickle button and started a stopwatch. She could feel the three-thousand-pound missile leave the bomb bay, and suddenly her stick felt lighter and control returned. “Left turn, heading two-five-nine, let’s get the hell out of here.” Rebecca swept the wings back to 72.5 degrees as she cranked the Vampire bomber around and accelerated away from Domodedovo. “Missile-one flight time thirty seconds, impact in thirty seconds.” Their speed was building slowly, but they would be over forty miles away from the target when the missiles hit.
“Coming up on missile-one impact … now.” Rebecca could hear a loud roaring in her ears — her heart was pounding blood against her eardrums like a jackhammer. Daren glanced into his radarscope and turned a switch. “I’ve got video from the AS-13 missile,” he said. He grasped the tracking handle and gave it a few nudges to the right. “I think I see Malino Airfield — I’ll try to set this thing in there.” Malino Airfield was a small fighter base outside Domodedovo. “Hey, these Ukrainian missiles work pretty well.”
Rebecca shook her head, wondering how he could be so flip at a time like this. Just before launch, the order for them to fire the nukes was recalled. It seemed the President had had a politically expedient change of heart. Or the Steel Magnolia did. Anyway, the nukes were still going to go off … it was just that the President had decided, and the Ukrainians agreed, that the Ukrainians would do the dirty deed. Which was why she and Mace were now carrying Ukrainian weapons, and the Ukrainians were carrying the American nukes. “Daren — how can you joke about something like this when you know what’s about to … happen?”
Mace ignored her. “Impact,” he said. “Direct hit on the terminal building. Should be plenty of fragments to find.” He shut off the attack video system, sat upright, and pulled his shoulder harness tight. “Okay, to answer your question: you have to joke about something like this. You think too much about it, well, then you really have doubts. But, Rebecca, this whole mission is a joke, anyway. Leave it to the President to wimp out again. Letting the Ukrainians fight our battle for us is going to make us the laughingstock of the world. But it’s what our beloved commander in chief wants … or his wife does, anyway. Actually, it’s a pretty shrewd political move: the President’s getting to knock out Velichko and cover his ass at the same time. Nobody can say we launched the nukes, which is a lot more palatable to his liberal constituency than actually doing it. Boy, I bet Eyers was ready to spit bullets. They’ve robbed him of his chance to play John Wayne.”
Furness sighed. “Well, as much as I like Pavlo and the Ukrainians, I’m frankly glad they’re cooking them off. After all, it’s his homeland and his fight. He might as well have the chance to finish it.”