“Cap’n, behind us,” Byers warned. He had not forgotten rule number two. A stream of four aircraft were coming at them. “Four bandits, six o’clock, on us,” Jack radioed. Kowalski started jinking the C-130. She’s getting the hang of it, Jack noted. Actually, Stansell was standing behind her on the flight deck, giving the pilot a crash course in defensive maneuvers. The colonel had ordered Hank Petrovich to raise the cargo door under the tail and to call out anytime he saw a MiG come to their six o’clock.
Jack turned hard now into the oncoming fighters, wondering how much longer his luck would hold. “Your tactics may suck,” he grumbled, “but you are persistent suckers …” Now it became a wild scrap. Jack would twist and turn, always bringing the nose of his F-15 onto a MiG, taking a snapshot, then disengaging. Once he had a good self-track during a head-on pass and fired a Sidewinder. It streaked past two Floggers and caused them to break off and momentarily run from the fight. But it missed, probably from being too close. Byers kept checking their six; it was the only thing he knew to do. And when he would warn Jack of a bandit at their six, Jack would wrack the F-15 around, dropping a flare every two seconds by mashing the trim button on his stick. In every one of these break turns Jack was loading the F-15 with anywhere from six to nine Gs and Byers would pass out. When Jack unloaded, Byers would start to regain consciousness, checking six as soon as his head cleared.
At one point Jack had let his airspeed decay to 250 knots as a MiG closed on him. He pulled into the vertical, doing a slow loop, and the MiG shot by below him. He then snapped the throttles into afterburner and taxied into a guns-firing position behind the Flogger, whose wings were starting to sweep forward as it slowed down. He fired the last of his 20mm rounds into the MiG, tearing it apart. And now he was dry. Again he pointed at a MiG in a head-on pass, wondering how long before they cottoned to the fact he was defenseless.
“Tallyho the fox,” came over the UHF, and Snake hooked into the fight from below, his wingman in an offensive fighting-wing position. Jack turned back to the C-130. It was gone. He had lost sight of it in the fight …
“A MiG’s behind us!” Petrovich yelled over the intercom. Kowalski sawed back and forth on the rudder pedals and yoke, skidding and jerking the Hercules, trying to break any tracking solution the Flogger might work out. Stansell was holding on to the back of her seat with both hands.
“Oh Christ!” from Petrovich. “Break left!” The MiG was firing its 23mm Gatling gun. Kowalski stood the C-130 on its left wing and tried to pull back into the fighter, as Stansell had told her. But it wasn’t enough. A string of shells tore into the right wing, ripping, tearing it. The prop on the number four engine on the right outboard flew off, separating from the aircraft. One of the fuel tanks in the wing was punctured and sent a stream of fuel into the slipstream. The number-three engine’s turbine froze when two high-explosive shells tore into it. Pieces of skin and paneling shredded away and part of the anti-icing boot on the forward edge of the wing peeled back, still flapping over the wing.
Kowalski fought for control while the MiG repositioned.
“Did you see that fucker,” Wade yelled at Baulck. Baulck had twisted around in his seat and was staring at the right wing. “Wish we had a tail gunner like a B-52,” Wade shouted. The two buck sergeants looked at each other, unstrapped, grabbed two SAW light-machine guns and ran for the rear of the plane. They threw themselves onto the ramp, which was in the up-position, and stuck their weapons out under the door that Petrovich had raised so he could look out behind the Hercules.
They could see the MiG start another run and both fired into the blue, sending bullets toward the MiG. The MiG pilot saw the flashes coming from behind the C-130 and broke off his attack to reposition. This time he would attack from above and behind, avoiding any gunfire from under the tail of the C-130.
But he forgot rule number two.
Jack climbed and used his radar to find the Hercules C-130. He accelerated after it in time to see the MiG break off its second attack and zoom for altitude. “What the hell do I do now?” he muttered. “Ram him?” He headed for the MiG as it repositioned. “Byers, the Maverick … the crosshairs … put ‘em over the MiG and lock on.” Jack had called up his one remaining weapon.
Jack had never thought about using the Maverick as an air-to-air weapon and he sweetened the shot as best he could by closing to inside three miles. “Not too close,” he warned himself. He checked the ready-light on the armament-control set and mashed the pickle button. The anti-tank missile leaped off its rail and streaked toward the MiG that was almost in position to gun Kowalski’s C-130 out of the sky. The Maverick’s 125-pound shaped-charge warhead that was designed to penetrate heavy armor and kill fifty-ton tanks speared the MiG. The plane disappeared in its own fiery cloud.
Jack checked his fuel, joined on Kowalski, and the Eagle and its Hercules headed for home.
CHAPTER 53
Chief Pullman was waiting with a crew van when Jack taxied into the chocks and shut the engines down. The chief waited impatiently while the pilot and then Byers climbed down the boarding ladder. “What the hell …” he muttered. Byers was a mess. The front of his shirt was streaked and it seemed he may have wet himself. The crew chief lay down on the ground and moaned. His neck hurt and his body ached.
Jack got down beside him. “You gonna be okay?”
“Fuckin’ A … heroes never die … oh, God …”
“Captain,” the chief said, “they want you in Intel for a debrief.”
“It can wait,” Jack told him. “Kowalski’s twenty minutes out.” Pullman nodded, reached into the van and handed Jack a plastic water bottle. He drained about half and poured the rest over his head, splashing his face.
“Captain Bryant’s hurt bad,” Pullman said, looking at the four ambulances that were waiting.
“Yeah. I know.” And now they had to endure the agony of waiting for the C-130 to land.
“Turbine inlet temps against the peg,” Maclntyre said.
Kowalski acknowledged the flight engineer. “Sue, how we doing on fuel?” she asked the navigator.
“Going to be close …” The C-130 was flying on its left two engines, and because of the drag created by the damaged right wing, the turbine inlet temperatures were in the red and fuel consumption was high. Kowalski had to keep pushing the throttles up to maintain altitude and control. Every time she backed the throttles off, the right wing came down — it was all but dead.
“Pilot, this is the loadmaster.” The formality in Petrovich’s voice struck at the flight crew. Something was up.
“Roger, loadmaster, go ahead.”
“Be advised that Captain Bryant has died.”
Silence. Then … “Please have everyohe strap in. We’re starting our approach into Incirlik.”
“There,” Jack half-pointed, half-nodded at the approaching C-130. The ramp was unusually silent as activity came to a halt. A huge crash truck rumbled down the taxiway followed by an ambulance, finally stopping near the approach end of the runway. Another crash truck was off to the side, halfway down the runway. Jack could hear the motors of the ambulances idling in the background as he watched the right wing of the approaching Hercules drop while the plane descended. “Up, get it up,” he muttered to himself. The wing dropped lower.