“YS86(^ 75AB.” A tap on the SEND key. A three-second delay.
“MISSILE DESTROYED.” flashed again on the screen.
Two missiles down. Three to go. Ammon continued to punch at the keys.
Sergei Motyl sat up with a jolt as the fighter sped by overhead. The roar from the aircraft had jerked him out of a fitful sleep. He looked to the sky and located the aircraft, its flaming tailpipes glowing a faint orange against the cold winter night. He watched as the fighter receded into the distance, toward the northwest. Within half a minute, it was followed by several more. All of them were flying very low, no higher than a thousand meters. MiG-31 s, probably from Kazakiezainkpof, just on the other side of the border.
The fighters had disappeared. Motyl continued to stare to the west. The clearing in which he had been sleeping was small, but still it offered him a clear view at the now starry sky.
Suddenly, the air crackled and roared once again. Four more fighters flew overhead. These too were flying very low, but instead of continuing westbound, they climbed and began to circle overhead.
Motyl suddenly had an idea. This was it. The perfect opportunity to do a check on the product. Shooting down a fighter was something he would remember for the rest of his life. And Motyl didn’t care who he killed. Russian, Ukrainian, it didn’t really matter. He held them both in equal disdain.
Motyl rolled onto his knees and began to fumble in the darkness. His breath formed into tiny clouds of white vapor as he pulled one of the missile warheads from his pack.
Ammon glanced at his navigation display. They had just passed over the Ukrainian border and were only a few minutes away from Khar’kov. He punched in the last of the numbered codes.
“MISSILE DESTROYED,” appeared for the fifth time.
Ammon immediately pushed the nose of the aircraft toward the earth and hooked up his terrain-following system. The aircraft descended abruptly, dropping toward the ground at over 20,000 feet per minute. The darkness rushed up to meet him. He leveled off at 200 feet above the ground and began to pray.
He knew that by climbing so high to send the code to the missiles, he had certainly betrayed his position. Without the hills and terrain to hide behind, without the frozen ground to clutter up the Russian radar screens, without the benefit of low-level flight, he was no longer hidden. Every aircraft, every SAM site, every piece of aerial artillery, now knew exactly where he was.
And then he saw it. A sudden flash in the darkness. Straight ahead of him. Two Russian fighters. Their afterburners glowing orange against the night sky. He stared again. He could see the twin engines. SU-27s or MiG-31s. Like a pair of sharks, they moved through the night. He took a deep breath. One of them broke to the right. The other broke to the left. They knew something was there. Must have picked up a trace of his radar and were coming around to have a quick look.
Sergei Motyl heard the bomber before he ever saw it. He could hear and feel its massive engines as the aircraft approached from the north. Looking down from his hilltop, he caught an occasional glimpse of the aircraft’s gray wings, the dark paint flashing against the white powder-topped trees. The aircraft was flying up the valley, approaching with incredible speed. Even as he watched, the bomber raised its pointed nose and began to climb up the mountain where Motyl stood hidden among the trees.
Ammon pushed himself down in his seat, shoved his engines into full burner and pushed the aircraft through the speed of sound. If he could outrun the fighters as they turned back to meet him, maybe…
He felt something cold and hard poking into the flesh of his neck. Slowly he turned his head. The barrel of the gun jabbed even deeper. Ammon turned to look into Morozov’s cold eyes. The dim lights from the instrument panel bathed his face in a pale green and blue. Morozov’s thumb moved up to the hammer and pulled it back.
Motyl hoisted the SA-18 launcher onto his right shoulder. He had already loaded it with a missile. He flipped the battery on as the aircraft approached him. Peering through the optical sight, he followed the bomber as it flew over his head.
The sound from the four engines almost deafened him. It shook him and rattled his bones. He turned as the aircraft overflew him.
The receding aircraft filled the eyepieces. Motyl flipped the arm switch and pressed on the trigger.
The blast nearly knocked him to the ground as the SA-18 missile fired from the shoulder-mounted tube. The heat seeking missile immediately picked up on the aircraft. With 140,000 pounds of heat and thrust flying in its face, there was no way the missile would let the bomber get away.
Everything seemed to turn in slow motion. Ammon recoiled from the weapon. Morozov lifted his thumb from the hammer. Ammon closed his eyes.
A long moment of silence. Ammon waited to die.
Morozov called out over the roar of the cockpit.
“Carl, I wish that I had already killed you. That is my only regret.”
Morozov moved his finger to the trigger of the gun.
The missile’s flight lasted only two seconds. That’s all the time it took to cover the 2,000 feet that separated Motyl and the receding bomber. The missile impacted and exploded on the aircraft’s left side. As it detonated, it sent thirteen pounds of high explosives into the number one and two engines. The engines immediately blew into a thousand white-hot pieces of burning steel, then disintigrated into two hollow shells.
Baseball-size chunks of metal were sent flying through the Bone’s tender wings and body. Some of these metal chunks were the shrapnel from the missile. Some were pieces of the GE-101 engines that had just blown themselves apart. Whatever the source, it didn’t matter, the damage they did was the same. Hydraulic lines were immediately severed. Precious electrical cords were burned and cut. One particularly large piece of steel made its way through the wing root, puncturing a huge fuel tank that ran along the entire length of the wing. As fuel spewed from the gaping hole, it immediately burst into flames. The heat burned through the number one primary hydraulic line, providing even more fuel for the blaze.
Sergei Motyl watched the aircraft explode into bright yellow flames. He stood for a moment, not knowing how to react. As he watched, the aircraft began to roll and descend down the back side of the small mountain. It soon was lost to his vision by a row of high trees. He waited and listened, expecting to hear a loud explosion as the aircraft impacted the ground.
THIRTY-NINE
Morozov was thrown from his feet as the aircraft rattled and shuddered. The explosion blew him against the floor, his gun was thrown from his hand. For a moment he lay there in a daze. The aircraft bucked and rolled beneath him, bouncing him violently into the air. His face contorted in pain and rage. The entire cockpit was bathed in a faint red sheen as dozens of fire and warning lights began to blink on the instrument panel.
Morozov tried to stand. The aircraft lunged and cracked with whip-like force. He was knocked to the floor once again. Another explosion. Then a dull yellow light began to illuminate the cockpit; warm, like a flickering fire. It grew and began to blend with the harsh red lights that flashed on the instrument panel. Morozov felt the floor begin to tilt to his left as Reaper’s Shadow began her death roll.
The cockpit blared with warning horns. The Bone continued to roll.
Ammon fought with the bomber. He shoved the stick all the way to the right. The rolling slowed, but then continued. The enormous bomber had already banked up to almost ninety degrees. Her nose began to drop toward the ground. Through the side of his canopy window, Ammon could see the dim shadows of the trees that sped by underneath him, less than one hundred feet below. They seemed to be reaching out, pulling him earthward, as the Bone rolled onto her side.