He was about to head down again but instead he broke hard left, avoiding by a hairs breadth a mid-air with a flaming comet that cut right across his path. The pilot of the stricken aircraft had an open radio channel, and over the roar of the flames could be clearly heard the pitiable screams of intense pain, the screams of a trapped animal enduring unbelievable searing agony. The burning aircraft wasn’t losing height, if anything it was slowly gaining altitude and prolonging the suffering of its pilot, trapped and burning alive in its cockpit.
Arndeker unplugged his headset, tearing the lead out of its socket to cut off the awful cries before vomiting into his oxygen mask, not just because a human being was being burnt to death, but also because that human being was female. Something else struck his aircraft and this time he felt it, the F-16 lurched with the impact and he snatched away the oxygen mask to spit out the bilious remnants of his breakfast as he waited helplessly for flaming fuel vapour to fill his cockpit too, but nothing happened and no master warning lights flashed.
A red light blinked on the HUD, flashing the symbols ‘00’ next to the Chaff icon. He was out of radar decoys, and on checking the store’s inventory for flares he noted that he had only four of those remaining. His heart was in his mouth as he flew, oblivious to the whereabouts of the rest of the aircraft, determining only to get clear of what had become a waking nightmare.
Without realising it he passed beyond the Soviet armour and was above open country once more, but he was still shaking and in his mind’s eye tracer was still seeking him out. He became aware of an F-16 at his left wingtip, its pilot looking worriedly at him, and beyond that F-16 was a single Gripen that was trailing smoke.
With great effort he pulled himself back to the present, attempting to replace the headset lead in its socket but only succeeding after several abortive tries, his hands just shook too much.
Beside his own aircraft, only the other F-16 and the damaged Gripen had got out. His No.2 was in the aircraft off his port wing, asking him for his situation and for further instructions. Should they make a third run, strafing with cannon, sir?
They had left dozens of enemy fighting vehicles in flames, scattered mines in the paths of others that would blow off tracks and hinder them, but they had not deflected the enemy one single degree from his purpose and the advance was continuing unchecked.
Arndeker could only respond to the radio requests with single syllable answers, and his voice sounded so weak, so frail, that his wingman assumed he had been wounded and took the lead, shepherding his squadron commander toward their home field.
The return flight was uneventful, which was just as well because there was no fight left within Arndeker’s frame. The control tower slotted them for landing in order of damage and injury. The Gripen and its pilot were in no condition to return to Sweden so it accompanied them west to their field. The pilot was losing blood so he entered the pattern first, and Arndeker followed behind him, flying woodenly in jerky motions like a nervous pupil on his first solo.
The Gripen was a quarter of a mile ahead of Arndeker, grey smoke still leaving a thin trail behind it as it let down toward the airfield. There had been a raid whilst the flight had been up, and thick black smoke rose from a dozen places within the facility. The runways had been prime targets for the raid this morning, as they had for previous raids and the longest was now peppered with small craters along a third of its length. A second runway was blocked, and a bulldozer was shoving the still smouldering remains of a Red Air Force Flogger from the tarmac but the runway they were lined up on was intact, and soon they would be safely down once more.
The whine of electric motors announced his gear was lowering, and he felt the triple thumps as the gear locked into place. The flaperon’s extended further as the airspeed bled off, and the F-16 followed the Gripen toward the tarmac.
The Swedish aircraft was above the outer marker when it exploded like a thermite grenade, and Arndeker gawped uncomprehendingly at the fireball, his brain not registering the warning shouts in his headset from the controller and his surviving wingman, or the tracer flashing past from behind, missing widely at first but zeroing in.
His ECM suite was silent, it hadn’t warned him of an approaching enemy because no radar energy was being radiated and no infrared systems had locked him up. They had been caught at their most vulnerable by a pilot who had gone back to basics, relying on nothing more complex than a gun sight projected onto his HUD.
Bangbangbang! The impacts snapped him out of his trance-like state and he realised his danger. He selected Gear Up and pushed the throttle all the way forward to Zone One Afterburner, needing to recover some airspeed fast before he could manoeuvre worth a damn but there was no accompanying kick in the pants. ‘AB Fail’ flashed on the HUD, informing him the Afterburner was non-functional. Bile rose into Arndeker’s mouth, it tasted acrid and he spat it out. His flight suit was already stained with vomit, and in truth he was past caring about such things as appearance. The turbulent wake of a Fulcrum shook the F-16 as it passed above him and to the right, its cannon still firing at him as it overshot. Arndeker looked down toward the Patriot site that guarded the base, but only a blackened, scorched area of earth marked where it had been when he had taken off for this mission, less than an hour before.
His heart was beating a tattoo in his chest as he watched the airspeed build, but far, far too slowly. Any drastic evasive action he took right now would only result in a stall but he tried a shallow bank to the right, to avoid being a sitting duck for anyone else that may be back there.
His F-16 wallowed drunkenly despite his gentle touch on the side stick and rudder, so the Fulcrum had damaged some control surfaces at the very least. He could land, and save his aircraft for the repair shop, or punch out here and now. What remained of his self-esteem rose to the surface and he determined to stay with the machine, to put it down in one piece.
He was at 400 feet as he crossed the airbase perimeter and his airspeed had risen to 200 knots. He couldn’t see the Fulcrum any longer and maybe it had cleared off back to its own lines. Arndeker called up the controller, telling him he was going around before trying to land once more.
230 knots and Arndeker was muttering aloud to himself, mouthing encouragements to the F-16 like a coach egging on a flagging member of a cross-country team.
“Come on, come on, that’s it, good girl, push it a little more, give me a little extra, that’s it, that’s it, not much further now.” The canopy exploded into a thousand fragments and the cannon strikes sounded like a sledgehammer hitting a trashcan as the rounds struck the fuselage. Arndeker screamed in pain and fear as something struck him hard in the side of the chest, he felt ribs snap but then a sheet of flame filled the bottom of the cockpit, lapping around his feet, ankles and lower legs. The Neoprene of his G-suit may be fire proof, but it didn’t prevent him feeling the heat of the flames.
The master fire warning light shone a bright crimson on his panel and the stall warning whooped in his ears as the nose of the F-16 rose drunkenly, announcing its departure from controlled flight and began a sideslip toward the earth. Arndeker blacked out momentarily as the blood was forced from his brain by the acceleration of the ejector seat throwing him clear. He was oblivious to the sudden release of pressure to his shoulders and waist as the safety harness that bound him to his seat fell away, but he registered the nauseous vision of ground then sky, ground then sky, before his parachute opened. At a height of only fifty feet the canopy fully deployed, arresting his head over heels fall to deposit him on the grass beside the far end of the runway, the shrouds of the parachute settling behind him.