"Experiencing extreme turbulence," Chang reported. He was fighting the stick, working to keep the wings level and the steering centered.
"VDI active," Feng announced. "Watch your ordnance panel. Report target acquisition on count."
Chang, momentarily distracted by the lightning, sequenced all vector displays. "Oh-four, oh-two, oh-ten, oh-eight-sweep. I get negative. Chaos."
"Severe chop," Feng reported. "We're too low. I'm having trouble maintaining altitude"
"Target acquisition," Chang cut in. "MN-55. Profile on log two." He flipped the switch and the scroll began, stopping with the non-ident red light blinking on and off as the computer struggled to identify the target.
"That's good enough for me," Feng said. "Who else would be out here on a night like this?"
"Target maintaining two thousand," Chang confirmed. He punched the SLOsecure and lock-oninto the accretion file. "I'm getting some kind of ID chatter. Coming up on target fast."
"Give me a precise location," Feng said.
"Fifty nautical miles due east of the Anxi Islands. Read 21.2 and 57.7 and mark."
"He's losing altitude. Symbol deteriorating."
Chang changed the angle on the acquisition indicator. "I've lost him. He's flying too low. He's under the net." Suddenly the Flanker began to shake. Chang felt the stick begin to vibrate and his Su-27 yawed violently in the cloud base turbulence. "Losing altitude," he reported. "I'm breaking off."
Chang didn't wait for Feng's confirmation. He peeled off in a thirty-five-degree right turn and began his climb, passing through the cone of vertical turbulence in the center of the cell.
Feng waited for his wingman to break out and report. "4211. Do you read? Report breakout." He waited several seconds and repeated his transmission. "Four-two-one-one, verify."
Feng changed frequencies and tried again. Then he put the signal on A-SCAN. He activated his recorder and turned the switch to Vo-Act. "I think I've got him on ACQ." He retarded the throttle to drop to 2,000. "Four-two-one-one, if you're reading this, report 4107 AAT-POS at 0649L."
Driver had been monitoring the transmissions between the two Flankers, but now his attention was focused on the FFI. It had dropped from 3,500 to 2,500hh in the last four minutes. A computer check on the flashing red indicator light on the CFMG, central fuel monitor gauge, verified the rapid fuel loss.
His fears were confirmed. The CFMG had indicated seven thousand pounds of fuel at takeoff. Either a fuel line had ruptured or one of the shells from the APC had severed it. Either way, he did not have enough fuel to make it to Haiphong.
The transmissions between the trailing Flankers had broken off. He rotated to the HSD, horizontal situation display, and scanned his flight path. Nothing but water. He activated the 360-degree scan on the center display. One blip, not two. One of the Flankers had either broken off or ditched. Regardless, one was still on his tailand closing. If the Covert had been armed, and if he had fuel, he could circle back and engagebut he had neither. If the pilot of the Flanker knew what he was doing, Driver was a sitting duck. His only defense was the Covert's stealth profile. Between the rain and the RAM, he had to hope the jockey was still unable to get a fix. All bets were off if the Flanker pulled within the 25-n.m. range. The AA-9 missiles the Flanker was carrying could find Driver in a fogshrouded swampthere was no way to shut down the plume. That plume was like a whore in heat: find mecatch mefuck me.
He throttled back again, inclined the nose three degrees, and wondered if the Covert would hold together on wave impact. The inflate ring would give him enough time to crawl out if she held together going in. If it didn't, the odds of buying the farm soared.
Torrents of rain swept back over the canopy and lightning flashed all around him. The SD was flat, feeding him a steady diet of blue-black ocean, and to top it off, the radar altimeter was flickering. He concentrated on the altitude indicator and only occasionally glanced at the FFI.
By now he knew the Flanker had him in target range. He dropped the nose and began an evasive descent.
There was another lightning flash just off his right wing, and the instruments flickered. He could tell by the popping sound that one of the circuit breakers had kicked out.
Suddenly, there it was on the screen, a chunk of rock right in the middle of the damn water. He located the SD reference switch and watched the coordinates scroll out in flashing green symbols. The words anxi-1 and anxi-2 appeared on the screen just as the gyro blipped. There was a snapping noise and the acrid smell of burning wires. Two tiny dots appeared on the HSD, minute phosphorous explosionsthere one second, gone the next.
Le Win Fo had said something about two tiny islands, actually little more than rocks in the middle of the Gulf. What had he said about themsomething about taking Quan's political refugees to a pickup point?
Another lightning flashclose. Then the distinct smell of something burning. One by one the displays begin to extinguish. The SD panel was out. He unfastened his oxygen mask and hung it on the umbilical hose to the air supply.
With his good arm he fumbled in the E-kit for an emergency flashlight. It was under the ANGMQ on the F-117. Not there. Where the hell was it?
The breakers clicked out.
The cockpit went dark.
He fumbled along the instrument panel for the emergency power switch. There had to be a backupan E batterybut where the hell was it? Beads of sweat began to trace their way from under his helmet and down across his forehead. His palms were wet and the lightning razored through the blackness, giving him little more than transitory perceptions of a churning, storm-tossed hell only a few hundred feet below him.
Driver hammered forward on the throttle, pulled back on the stick, and dropped the flaps. He was going in… and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.
The tail dropped, the nose of the Covert pointed skyward, and Driver felt the impact before he heard it. The swell caught the Covert's stabilizer and jerked it down. There was a thunderous thumping sound and then a violent pitch forward. Harry Driver's body slammed forward against the restraint harness, and for a split second he felt as if the force of the collision would crush him. There was a stabbing pain in his chest and the wind rushed out of him. He was momentarily helpless, gasping for breath, and reaching for anything he could hold on to.
The Covert twisted violently, corkscrewing its fuselage into the chop and breaking off the left wing, then toppled over and slammed down on the surface of the water.
Driver heard hissing sounds and the canopy fogged over. A wave slammed into the broken carcass of Schubatis's brainchild and he knew he had only seconds before the aircraft started breaking up and was sucked down under the churning salt watertons and tons of salt water.
He grabbed the ram handle on the canopy release, heard the seal disengage, and felt the rush of fresh air as the canopy lifted. At the same instant he was inundated by a wash of seawater. The survival sequence had been drilled into him, practiced hundreds, maybe a thousand times. He ripped off his helmet, released the seat harness, pulled himself up and out of the flight deck, and triggered the mechanism for the flotation device. Another wave of salt water pounded in on him, and for the first time he could see the extent of the damage. Schubatis's wet dream, crude and powerful, was deepsixing. It was going under. It was only a question of how soon.
As the swirling sea poured into the cockpit of the Covert, Harry Driver, with one good arm, pulled the O ring trigger on the ASaR to release the raft. He gripped the crip handles on the wall of the cockpit, pushed up, cleared, and jumped. He lit in the water over the right wing and managed to flail his way to the raft just as he heard Milo Schubatis's scream for help. Driver caught himself thinking that it was a damned unfortunate time for the old bastard to regain consciousness. He dragged himself into the raft, lay there for what seemed like an eternity, and finally managed to pull himself into a sitting position to check his surroundings. To Driver's astonishment, he could see land. In the halflight of the storm-tossed water, he could see the faint outline of one of the two Anxi islands. He had come down less than a thousand yards from one of the rocky outcroppings.