and with hard outline so close now that the individual aircraft in the
enemy formation stood out clearly.
Target is increasing speed and tightening starboard turn, Joe intoned
and David compensated for the enemy's manoeuvre.
David was certain that they had not detected his approach, the turn away
was coincidental. Another glance at the screen showed that he had
achieved his height advantage. He was now two miles off their quarter
above them, with the sun at his back. it was the ideal approach.
Turning now into final leg of attack pattern, he alerted Joe to his
intention and they began to pitch in.
The last-second strike which would send their speed rocketing as they
closed.
The target centred dead ahead, and the gunsight lit up, glowing softly
on the screen ahead of him. The sidewinder missiles caught the first
emanations of infrared rays from their victims, and they began to growl
softly in David's earphones.
Still blinded by thick grey cloud they raced in, and suddenly they burst
out into the clear. Ahead and below them opened a deep through of
space, a valley between cloud ranges and close below them the five MIGs
sparkled silvery in the sunlight, pretty and toylike, their red, white
and green markings festive and gay, the clean geometrical sweeps of wing
and tail nicely balanced and the shark-like mouths of the jet intakes
gaping, as they sucked in air.
They were in loose V-formation, two stacked back on each flank of the
leader and in the fleeting seconds that David had to study them, he had
assessed them. The four wingmen were Syrians, there was an indefinable
sloppiness in their flying, a looseness of control. They flew with that
lack of polish and confidence of the pupil.
They were soft targets, easy pickings.
However, it did not need the three red rings about the leader's fuselage
to identify him as a Russian instructor.
Some leery old veteran with hawk's blood in his veins, tough and canny,
and dangerous as an angry black mamba.
Engage two port targets, David ordered Joe, reserving the MIG leader and
the starboard echelon for his attack.
In David's headphones the missiles were growling their anxiety, they had
sniffed out the massed jet blasts below them and already they were
tracking, howling their eagerness to kill.
David switched to command net. Hello, Desert Flower, this is Bright
Lance on target and requesting strike. Almost instantly the voice came
back, David, this is the Brig- he was speaking, rapidly, urgently,
discontinue attack pattern. I repeat, disengage target.
They are no longer hostile. Break off attack Shocked by the command,
David glanced down the deep valley of cloud and saw the long brown
valley of the Jordan falling away behind them. They had crossed over a
line on the earth and immediately their roles had changed from defender
to aggressor. But they were closing the target rapidly. It was a fair
bounce, they were still unaware.
We are going to hit them, David made the decision through the cold
bright thing that burned within him and he closed command net and spoke
to Joe. Two, this is leader attacking. Negative! I say again
negative! Joe called urgently. Target is no longer hostile? Remember,
Hannah! David shouted into his mask. Conform to me! and he curled his
finger about the trigger and touched left rudder, yawing fractionally to
bring the nearest 1VUG into the field of his sights. It seemed to
balloon in size as he shrieked towards it.
There was a heart-beat of silence from Joe, and then his voice strangled
and rough. Two conforming. Kill them, Joe, David yelled and pressed
against the spring-loaded tension of the trigger. There was a soft
double hiss, hardly discernible above the jet din, and from under each
wing-tip the missiles unleashed, they skidded and twisted as they
aligned themselves on the targets, leaving darkly etched trails of
vapour across David's front, and at that moment the MIGs became aware.
At a shouted warning from their leader, the enULC formation burst into
its five separate parts, splintering silvery swift like a shoal of
sardines before the driving charge of the barracuda.
The rearmost Syrian was slow, he had only just begun to turn away when
one of the sidewinders flicked its tail, followed his turn and united
with him in an embrace of death.
The shock wave of the explosion jarred David's machine, but the sound of
it was muted as the MIG was enveloped in the greenish-tinted cloud of
the strike and it shattered into fragments. A wing snapped off and went
whirling high and the brief blooming flower of smoke blew swiftly past
David's head.
The second missile had chosen the machine with the red ring, the
formation leader, but the Russian reacted so swiftly and pulled his turn
so tight that the missile slid past him in an overshoot, and it lost the
scent, unable to follow the MIG around. As David hauled the Mirage
round after the Russian, he saw the missile destroy itself in a burst of
greenish smoke, far out across the valley of clouds.
The Russian was in a hard right-hand turn, and David followed him.
Staring across the imaginary circle that separated them, he could see
every detail of the enemy machine; the scarlet helmet of the pilot, the
gaudy colours of its rounders, the squiggle of Arabic script that was
its identification markings, even the individual rivets that stitched
the polished metal skin of the MIG.
David pulled back with all his strength against his joystick, for
gravity was tightening the loading of his controls, opposing his efforts
to place additional stress on the Mirage lest he tear its wings off the
fuselage Gravity had hold of David also, its insidious force sucked the
blood away from his brain so that his vision dimmed, the colour of the
enemy pilot's helmet faded to dull brown, and David felt himself crushed
down into his seat.
About his waist and legs his G-suit tightened its coils, squeezing
brutally like a hungry python, attempting to prevent the drainage of
blood from his upper torso.
David tensed every muscle in his body, straining to resist the loss of
blood, and he took the Mirage up in a slidin& soaring yo-yo, up the side
of an imaginary barrel.
Like a motor-cyclist on a wall of death he whirled aloft, trying once
more for the advantage of height.
His vision narrowed, greyed out, until his field was reduced to the
limits of his cockpit, and he was pinned heavily to his seat, his mouth
sagging open, his eyelids dragging downwards; the effort of holding his
right hand on the control column was Herculean.
In the corner of his vision the stall indicator blinked its little eye
at him, changing from amber to red, warning him that he was on the verge
of catastrophe, courting the disaster of supersonic stall.
David filled his lungs and screamed with all his strength, his own voice
echoing through the grey mist.
The effort forced a little blood back to his brain and his vision
cleared briefly, enough to let him see that the MIG had anticipated his
yo-yo and had come up under him, sliding up the wall of death towards
his unprotected flank and belly.
David had no alternative but to break out of the turn before the MIG's
cannons could bear. He rolled the Mirage out, and went instantly into a
tight climbing lefthander, his afterburners still thundering at full