Doleckis radioed his estimated position, trying to pick out some definite landmarks and finally requesting a DF (direction-finding) steer to his position. As he flew closer to the plane’s impact point, he noticed the CV-22 seemed relatively intact — one small fire visible, but still generally in one piece. There was still dark fuel smoke rising, but already white smoke was replacing it — that meant automatic fire extinguishers had been activated. He needed to shoot it up some more in case there were survivors.
The young Byelorussian pilot immediately lined up his cannon gun-sight pipper on the downed airplane and fired off a two-second burst from his cannon — but all rounds missed, ripping up trees far above the CV-22. He finally realized he still had the gunsight mil settings for air-to-air. It was too late to correct by the time he dialed in the proper air-to-ground settings, so he overfiew the target, banked right to keep the CV-22 in sight, and set up for another gun pass. The rockets and mines he carried would do too much damage — he was sure his commander wanted this aircraft intact.
He was on the downwind leg of his re-attack orbit when a puff of smoke and a white shoestring suddenly leaped out of the forest near the impact site. Immediately, Doleckis threw his MiG-27 hard right and hit his chaff and flare buttons, ejecting bright magnesium flares from ejector racks under the tail.
The white streak spiraled right toward him …
It was going to hit …
The missile’s arc gradually became larger and larger. It zeroed in right at the trail of flares left in his wake and missed him by no more than a few meters. There was no proximity explosion. The crew of that downed CV-22 had fired a Stinger at him! Not only were the Americans not helpless and out of the fight, but they had attacked! “Control, seven-one-one, crew of downed CV-22 launched a man-portable missile at me! Advise all aircraft to exercise extreme caution.” The missile launch was actually a blessing in disguise, because by the time he had turned onto the base leg and was lining up for a gun pass, the smoke from the crash had subsided but the residual smoke from the Stinger-missile launch pointed right at the crash site.
Doleckis started his cannon run at one thousand meters, four hundred kilometers per hour airspeed, at a range of ten kilometers. At eight kilometers he lowered the nose, centered the CV-22 in the pipper, and watched the range counter click down. The range counter suddenly stopped, then counted down rapidly, then stopped again — the ranging radar was being jammed. No matter. He simply waited until he could clearly make out the outline of the CV-22 in the pipper and, at the proper moment, squeezed the trigger …
A sudden flash of motion caught his eye as he fired. He glanced to the left and saw what appeared to be a large insect, skimming just over the treetops — then there were two, then three, then three or four more on the right side. One by one the tiny insects jumped at him, with two bright winking eyes focused right on him. Doleckis turned his attention briefly to his ammunition counter — one hundred and fifty rounds gone. The impact marks were walking perfectly across the target — a perfect gun pass. All the rounds were hitting squarely on target. Little puffs of black were popping atop the CV-22, and the right wing sagged and dropped to the forest floor …
A terrific shudder tossed Doleckis against his shoulder straps — it felt like a giant wrecking ball had hit the side of his MiG-27. He pulled back on the stick and saw the insects flitting across his windscreen again — except this time he saw they were no insects. They were small two-man helicopters, with two machine guns mounted on the skids. They were all over him, surrounding him like bees around a hive… he would pass five or six of them in a second, only to be confronted by six more, each firing their machine guns at him. The small-caliber bullets peppered the armored sides of the MiG like rapid-fire sledgehammer blows. Doleckis knew they would not penetrate the fifteen-millimeter-thick steel-and-ceramic armor around the cockpit or penetrate the bullet-resistant canopy, but the rest of his jet was thin steel alloy.
Warning lights flashed inside the cockpit. The cannon gunsight went blank, replaced by a crosshatched caution bar. The banging that reverberated through the aircraft was now a solid shuddering. It was impossible to move the control stick, and even if he could, he could not hope to counteract the shaking in the flight controls. Doleckis activated the auxiliary hydraulic booster pumps and tested the rudder pedals — they were functioning normally. Already a little control-stick authority was returning… good.
Maybe there was time for one more pass …
Doleckis was so intent on saving his aircraft and making one more cannon or bomb pass that he never noticed the warning lights that told him his engine had been destroyed, never noticed the rapid loss of airspeed or altitude. He flew the MiG-27 right into the ground in a nose-high left bank, scissoring through the trees and exploding in a large mushroom fireball.
“I never believed in fucking Tinker Bell — until now,” Martin Watanabe said. He was lying on the soft mossy ground, being treated by Lobato’s corpsman for severe chest and facial wounds, but he was fully conscious. He watched as several small, buglike helicopters turned and flitted above them. “Who are they?”
“I don’t know,” the corpsman asked. “Gunny’s going to meet up with them.” Jose Lobato was going out to meet one of the helicopters that was landing in a clearing nearby.
With four or five helicopters hovering nearby — Lobato saw they were McDonnell-Douglas Model 500 Defenders, two-man, American-made light patrol helicopters, with an infrared scanner and two 7.62-millimeter machine guns mounted on the forward part of the landing skids-the leader of COBRA VENOM took cover behind a tree as one of the choppers touched down in a clearing. A soldier with a Soviet-made pistol drawn stepped out of the helicopter and approached him. Lobato raised his rifle and shouted, “Stop!” in English and Russian.
The soldier ordered the helicopter to cut its engine, and he stopped and raised his pistol. In a loud voice over the winding-down engine, he shouted, “You COBRA VENOM? American Marines? COBRA VENOM?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I am Mayor Balys Pakstas, First Brigade of the Iron Wolf, Third Air Infantry, Lithuanian Self-Defense Force. Are you Gunnery Sergeant Lobato, COBRA VENOM?”
Lobato couldn’t believe this guy had been out here looking for him and his team, but he still wasn’t ready to divulge any classified information. “What do you want, Major?”
“I was sent to escort you to your landing zone at Krovo,” Pakstas said. Lobato couldn’t believe his ears — this guy knew the exact location of their intended landing zone, a hamlet hidden near a forested butte near Smorgon Army Air Base. Could someone in the other assault team have been captured? “You will ride with us to your landing zone. We will assist in your mission.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lobato shouted. “You had better clear out or I’ll order my men to attack.”
“Gunnery Sergeant Lobato, I know your objective is to mark the command-and-control center at Smorgon for a laser-guided weapon attack and locate and destroy the SS-21 Scarab missiles garrisoned there,” Pakstas said. His English was very, very good, which only made Lobato that much more suspicious — to his knowledge, only well-trained intelligence agents had a command of the English language like that. “We have been briefed by your Colonel White on your mission and we are prepared to assist or take over if you are unable to continue. I need to transmit your team’s status to General Palcikas and to the American Embassy.”