Realizing he needed to get a quick report to the ship, Wilson keyed the mike. “Knight, they shot down four-one-two! I’m engaging a bandit to the northeast!”
“Say again!”
“Four-one-two is shot down. Didn’t see a chute, and I’m targeted! Turning to engage!”
Wilson grunted through clenched teeth as he pulled his Hornet hard into the unknown threat. Despite his senses and mind working overtime, and despite his confusion and anxiety, he had never felt so alive.
A feeling of déjà vu came over Wilson… Everything reminded him of his TOPGUN graduation hop high over the Nevada desert: going into a merge with an unknown bandit, the intense pressure to succeed, even the topography below. Even his thoughts were the same. What will I meet? Who will be flying it? The difference? This was not a training sortie but deadly single combat — and he was unarmed.
Wilson rolled out and up into the expected threat position, pulled the throttles to idle, bumped the radar mode into WIDEACQ and searched the sky around him for the bandit. Close to hyperventilating, his mouth was bone dry and his eyes were frantic to find Prince’s assailant. To the left, several miles away, he saw a dark gray cloud suspended against the blue sky. An irregular trail of smoke led to the desert floor, smaller trails of debris fanning out along the path of the main plume. Pieces of Prince’s Hornet continued to flutter down. Still, Wilson saw no chute.
A radar spike at 10 o’clock jerked his head left. Wilson saw a large fighter pointed at the Hornet less than two miles away, slightly low. He yanked the stick left and put his nose on, selecting VERTACQ to place the bandit inside the two dashed lines formed on the HUD. He was rewarded with a lock at once, and the Sidewinder seeker tone screamed loud in his headset. With over 700 miles per hour of closure rate between them, Wilson was inside a mile in seconds and pushed the throttles into burner to regain the air speed lost in his uphill glide. By instinct he looked for a wingman … the empty sky reminded him he was alone. His eyes returned to the big fighter. Wilson feared being peppered by a high-angle snapshot from the fighter’s gun, but the bandit was not pulling a great deal of lead.
“Knight, four-zero-two’s engaged, visual!”
At first Wilson identified the bandit as a Russian-built MiG-29 Fulcrum, but as they drew closer, he sensed a larger, longer aircraft with a square intake under a huge nose and a big missile on a wing pylon. The bandit took his nose off, and the geometry on both sides dictated a left-to-left pass. Wilson pressed it inside 500 feet.
He was awestruck at what flashed past him.
The aircraft was something he had never seen before. The small nose section was stuck far forward of an enormous single intake, behind it a long fuselage with delta wings. It was painted in shades of sky-blue camouflage with a beige nose cone and the circular red, white, and green Iranian Air Force roundels on the wingtips, but it possessed characteristics of a Russian design. He saw only the one huge missile under the right wing and an unusual feature — two wing canards over the intake which signaled to him an ability to fight slow. The twin vertical stabs sat on large booms adjacent to the massive engines. He realized he was fighting something big and powerfuclass="underline" a fifth-generation Russian with great turning capability, top-end speed, and probably a lot more gas than he had. The fighter bowed in a graceful curve from the needle-nose cockpit down to the empennage.
What is this? he thought.
As it flashed past, Wilson inhaled and held his breath, making an audible Hookkkkkk as he closed his windpipe. When he pulled the stick hard into his lap, the top of his aircraft turned white with condensation as the force of seven g’s gripped the Hornet and inflated his G-suit. The familiar anaconda-like pressure squeezed his legs and abdomen as his horizontal stabs dug into the clear winter air and pitched his nose up. The combination of g force and his muscles resisting its pressure affected every part of Wilson’s body. Wedging his head between the seat box and canopy he continued to fight against the pressure and keep sight, inhaling and exhaling—Hookkkkk—ah, ha, Hookkkk—ah, ha — keeping his lift vector on and bleeding air speed fast. I have to get inside this guy.
Wilson managed the presence of mind to keep a running commentary on strike frequency. “Knight, I’m, Hookkkkk, ah-ha, one-circle with a single-seat twin engine fighter,” he gasped into his mask between breaths. “Never seen b’fore. Delta wings.”
If the E-2 responded, though, Wilson did not hear it. He was completely absorbed with the unknown aircraft he was fighting. He pulled everything he had and got inside the Iranian’s circle. Despite the fact Wilson was unarmed, he reasoned he could push around the mystery jet and hold him off long enough that the Iranian would have to disengage because of low fuel. Wilson then looked at his fuel—3,700 pounds. His F404 engines were devouring it at well over 10,000 pounds per hour. Wilson had no choice but to stay and fight.
At the second merge, Wilson guessed that both aircraft bled airspeed to around 250 knots, and he unloaded while reversing his turn to take a 30-degree bite. With looping air speed he planned to take it up at the merge. By taking advantage of his superior slow-speed controllability, he could park his nose high and flush the Iranian out in front of him. Maybe I can spook this guy, he thought.
As they passed, he fed top rudder, eased his angle of bank and took it up, skates on ice, milking the most of every knot of air speed to get above and behind the bandit. He looked inside for just a moment, a second, to check his fuel. When he returned to the bandit, he was stunned by the image of the enemy plane. Just a few hundred feet away, it went up with him and even out-zoomed him as it stood on two long pipes that belched a cone of fire visible even in the midday sun. Soon Wilson would be below and out front.
For a moment Wilson froze and looked at the white-helmeted pilot who sat high on the nose of the colossal fighter. Across the small void, he saw the pilot’s eyes peer over his mask. Dark, chilling eyes… looking right at Wilson.
Holy shiiiit!
Wilson kicked right rudder to slide closer and jam any chance for a bandit gunshot. When the bandit pulled all the way over, almost on its back but in control, he cursed in frustration at what he knew was coming next. The hostile fighter reversed over the top in a negative g maneuver, his nose tracking down on Wilson like a falling sledgehammer in slow motion. Horrified, Wilson realized he faced an imminent snapshot. With the little air speed he had, he inverted his Hornet to avoid it. His aircraft still rolling, Wilson saw that the monster had another weapon at its disposal. Thrust vectoring!
Wilson managed to float, barely in control, in front of the bandit. Shocked at the gaping maw of the intake only 200 feet away, Wilson, upside down, looked out his left side. At that moment, the right side of the Iranian’s fuselage unleashed a bright tongue of flame. Inside the flame was a nearly solid stream of what looked like flaming supersonic baseballs. Under Wilson, an earsplitting POP-POP-POP-POP-POP penetrated the canopy. A low guttural BORRRRP sounded in the background as the cannon rounds missed low, mere feet from his head.
Mo-ther-FUUUCK!” he cried into his mask.