The audio tone inside his helmet screeched as the diamonds appeared inside the green rectangles in his HUD.
“Pike! Weapons release! Fire!”
All eight Mig-29 pilots depressed the weapon’s release button on their control sticks within split-seconds of each other. And eight R-77s dropped clean off the pylons and fell underneath the aircraft for a dozen feet before their rocket motors ignited. The missiles accelerated from underneath the aircraft and climbed above them washing the parent aircraft with a large smoke cloud. Oberoi’s cockpit glass swept aside the smoke from his launch as he kept his eyes focused on the large exhaust flash of the missile showing up against a green-black background on his night-vision goggles. The missiles were on their way. Eight R-77s against two enemy F-16s.
His helmet audio screeched again. This time it was a more urgent screech. The two F-16 pilots had released four AMRAAM missiles.
Shit!
“Pike! We have missiles inbound! Watch the skies and find the inbounds before you dive! Do not take your eyes off the inbounds!”
Several seconds passed during which he could feel his heart pounding inside his chest. No visuals. Were the missiles smokeless?
I hope not… He continued to focus on the northern horizon as the radar-warning-receivers on his aircraft registered not just the F-16 radar but also their supporting kilo-echo bird much further north.
There! Four specks of light arcing down from the north.
“Pike! I have V–I-D on four missiles! Arcing down at eleven-o-clock high! Break formation and dodge these suckers! Break! Break!”
He rolled his aircraft inverted and dived. The rest of the Mig-29s did the same. All of them punched out metallic chaff shards as they completed their dives and entered into the cloud floor below. Oberoi’s cockpit disappeared inside a muck of clouds and he lost all visibility within a blink. His hands instinctively pulled his aircraft level to avoid running into a mountain at point-blank range. Out here in the Himalayas, this was a real problem.
“Oh shit!” Oberoi shouted as he flipped his aircraft to its side and skipped past a solid rock mountain peak at eight-hundred kilometers an hour. He realized he had dropped significantly in the clouds and not having a ground reference, had not realized it. This needed correction and he pulled his aircraft up into the cloud cover above. His audio screeches confirmed that the missiles had stopped following him a while back. But his radio was alive with the chaotic chatter of his pilots dodging missiles within the mountains.
Time to get up there… Oberoi pushed the throttle forward and pulled the control stick back. Agile as the Fulcrum was, it responded like a sports-car and pitched up to seventy degrees and yet continued to accelerate through the clouds. Within seconds he was above the cover and was staring at the brilliant starry skies above. Of course, now that he was up here, he didn’t like feeling so alone.
“Pike-two! Where are you? I lost visual!”
“I have you at my nine-o-clock, leader!” Oberoi turned his head to the left and saw his wingman’s Mig-29 climbing through the cloud floor, trailing wingtip contrails. He then looked back to his right to see where he thought the F-16s should have been. But there was nothing to be seen there…
“Mongol-two, this is Pike-one,” he opened the comms channel with Verma, “I need a fix on our two bandits right away! Over!”
The response came few seconds later: “Roger. We have one bandit within two kilometers, due west. We have lost contact with the other after he dived behind clouds of chaff.”
To my west… Oberoi scanned the skies as he brought the aircraft heading in that direction. There were large cumulous clouds in the skies showing in his helmet optics as white against the green night sky. But no relative motion suggesting man-made presence. “Pike-two, do you see our prey? I got nothing over here.”
“Roger! I have our prey noon-high within the cloud bank! Two kilometers!” Oberoi jerked his head up and saw the F-16 as it cut through one cloud bank and into the other, looking for its own prey.
“Follow my lead!” Oberoi brought the control stick back into his stomach and felt the aircraft pitch up even more as they climbed. This time they leveled out underneath the clouds and waited for the Pakistani pilot to burst out of the cover. A few seconds later he did and Oberoi saw the clipped-delta silhouette of the F-16 punch through the white cloud embankment. By this time both Indian pilots had switched to their R-73 missiles. Oberoi lined up behind the single-engine exhaust of the diving F-16…
Except the Pakistani pilot had other plans. The F-16 abruptly flipped to its right and dived for the cloud floor below. If he got within it, there would be no chance of a pursuit.
“Pike-two! The bugger has spotted us! Don’t let him reach that cloud cover! Follow me in!”
“Wilco!”
Oberoi punched the throttle forward and felt the sudden burst of acceleration as the three aircraft dived for the clouds below them. The Pakistani pilot was now punching bursts of flares that instantly decimated the night-vision of the two Indian pilots so close behind him.
This guy knows his trade! Oberoi waited for the audio tone confirming his lock. Aerodynamically, the F-16 was no match for the Fulcrum in a close-up fight. And try as he might, the F-16 pilot could only stave off the inevitable for a while…
“I have tone! Pickle one!” Oberoi shouted as the gravity forces pulled him into his seat coming out of another tight turn behind the desperate F-16 pilot. Oberoi always taught his pilots not to panic in combat. And here was a classic example why. In his desperation to stave off the Indian pilots, the Pakistani pilot had punched flares faster than he had probably realized. And now he had none left. He had also let the flares act as a glowing path leading to himself within the night sky. Now he had other Mig-29s converging from all sides. There was no escape.
Oberoi felt the shudder as the R-73 flew off its pylon. Unlike the R-77, its motor ignited simultaneously and flew in a quick clockwise arc into the orange-yellow exhaust of the F-16. The small fireball that ensued enveloped the small aircraft and broke it to smithereens. Oberoi and his wingman flipped in opposite directions and flew on either side of the explosion as the pieces flew past, trailing smoky columns with them…
“Splash one bandit!” Oberoi exclaimed as he pulled his aircraft level near some mountain ridgelines below. But that jubilation was short lived. The aircraft suddenly became backlit by flashes and thunderous rumble of explosions all around. Tracers flew past in streaks and he could hear the whizzes of their flight inside his cockpit. He looked down from the cockpit and saw on either side a ridgeline lit with flashes of anti-aircraft fire aimed at him…
“Oh shit! Pike flight! Climb, climb, climb! We are over a hornet’s nest!” He punched flares and afterburner and brought his aircraft into a near vertical climb above the gunfire. He saw the tracers and explosions falling behind him as he reached above the clouds.
“Pike leader, you all right?” His wingman asked as he pulled level to his portside. Oberoi didn’t respond. His heart was pounding in his chest and he swore that if he relaxed his hands from the stick and throttle, they would start shaking uncontrollably. So instead he grabbed them even stronger.
“Roger, pike-two. All clear. Some dings and scratches but otherwise clean. Wouldn’t want to do that again, though. Where’s the other bugger?”