Ammon shoved his right rudder all the way to the floor, jamming his foot against the steel pedal. The aircraft’s rolling motion stopped. Ammon glanced once again at the passing trees, unable to force them out of his peripheral view. He shoved again at the pedal. Then slowly, ever so slowly, a few degrees at a time, the aircraft began roll back to the right. It heaved and shook as it rolled to an upright position. Fiberglass panels began to vibrate loose from the cockpit ceiling. Ammon’s main CRT screen shattered with a dull paaang, unable to withstand the violent vibration. The entire aircraft threatened to rattle apart.
Ammon glanced at his Master Caution Display, where there were no less than thirty warning lights flashing. He tried to note the more critical ones in an effort to determine how badly Reaper’s Shadow was damaged. He began to count the systems that he had lost: two engines, three hydraulic systems, two of three generators, three flight computers, two main electrical buses. The list went on and on.
Ammon realized his time was almost over. There just wasn’t much more he could do.
He glanced around the cockpit and saw Morozov in a heap on the floor. It was ironic. Morozov had chosen a very bad time to get out of his ejection seat.
Major Vasyl Peleznogorsk pulled his head to the right. He banked his SU-27 slightly up on its side as he scanned his eyes through the moonlit darkness.
There it was again, a flicker of fire. It flashed and then quickly disappeared. He stared down through the thick Plexiglas of his canopy at the spot where he had last seen the flame.
Then he saw it again. No more than six kilometers away, off at his two o’clock and very low. The aircraft couldn’t have been any higher than thirty meters. He could see the fire as it burned, huge yellow and blue flames flowing back from the bomber, billowing horrible and bright in the night. He squinted at the burning aircraft. As his eyes focused in the darkness, he began to see the vague outline of the enemy bomber. It seemed to be in a slow roll as it sped along the ground.
“I’ve got good visual on the Bandit!” the fighter pilot screamed into his microphone. “Six kilometers, two o’clock, low!”
No less than fifty other aircraft, both Ukrainian and Russian fighters, heard the pilot’s frantic call.
“Who’s calling Bandit?” asked one of the Russian Mainstay airborne controllers. “Calling Bandit, say your ID!”
“Dark seven-zero-niner!” Peleznogorsk responded. “Two, have you got him? Low. Two o’clock. Five kilometers.”
The slightest pause. “Two’s visual!” Peleznogorsk’s wingman replied.
“Control, we’ve got a positive visual identification. Heading one-four-zero, thirty-six west of Dergachi. Looks like he’s on fire. I’m too close for missiles. I’m selecting guns. Seven-zero-nine flight is in for the kill!”
With that the SU-27 pilot banked his aircraft hard to the right. His wingman fell in beside him. The bomber’s shadow wisped along the ground, illuminated by the fire that burned over the left wing. Major Peleznogorsk had the aircraft clearly in his target acquisition box, but it was still three miles away. He pushed his two throttles up to full after-burner and felt the Saturn/Lyulka turbofans push him back into his seat. He began to move in on the bomber. Once he got to within 1.5 miles, he would press the trigger on his cannon and blow the bomber away.
FIRE WARNING lights continued to blink insistently. Ammon reached up and jammed in his two fire suppression buttons. The fire lights remained on. He selected the reserve fire bottles. The fire lights didn’t even blink, but continued to blaze in his face.
He was still on fire! He was sitting on almost fifty thousand pounds of fuel, and he was still on fire!
The fire was completely out of control. He was amazed that the white hot flames had not already burned through the protective firewalls that surrounded his fuel cells. By now, they surely were about to explode.
Morozov struggled to his feet. He thought for a minute about finding his gun. Then he shook his head. How could he be so stupid! Finding the gun was the last thing he needed to do.
He was nothing but a walking dead man if he didn’t get back in his seat! That much was perfectly clear. He could see the flickering fire outside the left window. The aircraft bounced and rolled through the air. It could only be seconds away from exploding. There was nothing more he could do. Let Ammon die trying to be a hero. He was getting out of the jet!
Morozov began to struggle to the back of the cockpit. The aircraft shuddered under his feet, making it impossible to walk. Morozov dropped to his knees and began to crawl the four feet that separated him from his ejection seat. A thick piece of metal, part of an overhead hatch, fell down on top of his legs. He reached down and pushed the panel aside. Stretching his arms, he grasped a thick nylon hand-hold and used it to pull himself back toward his seat.
The SU-27 pilot was pulling inside of two miles. The bomber continued straight ahead. It made no effort to evade the fighter that was sneaking up on its tail. Apparently the B-1 crew didn’t yet know that they was being pursued by one of the world’s premier fighter pilots. The Russian pilot broke into a smile. It would be like shooting a bird m a cage.
The aircraft shuddered again. It was breaking apart, actually shaking itself into pieces. Ammon was thrown against the side of the cockpit. His head bounced around on his shoulders. He could barely see. He could barely think.
Reaper’s Shadow bucked and rolled, then descended toward the earth. Ammon reached up for the ejection handles. The aircraft was less than forty feet above the ground and going down very quickly.
Ammon jerked up on the handles. The explosive bolts that secured the overhead hatches fired, blowing them free from the aircraft and leaving gaping holes where the hatches used to be. Ammon felt an incredible rush of air as the cabin depressurized around him. The cockpit filled with flying debris; pencils, paper, checklist, dust, carpet, maintenance logs. Anything that was not securely strapped to the frame of the aircraft was immediately sucked out of the hole. Even the checklist that Ammon had strapped around his leg was torn from its bindings and sucked away. A thick vapor of fog burst inside the cockpit from the moisture mixing with the super-cold air.
Ammon could actually feel the oxygen in his lungs expand in his chest.
His ejection seat fired its rocket, shooting him upward through the open hole and one hundred feet into the air. A small drogue chute opened to slow him down before popping the primary chute from its housing. With a violent jolt, the main chute deployed. Ammon began to slowly drift to the earth.
Morozov was just pulling himself to his feet when Ammon’s ejection seat fired. The blast from the seat’s rocket filled the cabin with heat and smoke and a dazzling white light.
Reaper’s Shadow was traveling faster than 600 mph. The outside air flowed over the nose of the aircraft and across the smooth, polished skin with a force greater than the strongest tornado, creating an enormous vacuum of low pressure over the entire front of the aircraft. The pressure sucked at the inside of the cockpit with incredible force, pulling everything through the open hole. Instantly, four thousand pounds of over-pressure lifted Morozov off the floor and pulled him toward the open hatch, his arms and legs flailing around him. The pressure sucked him through the small opening, folding him over like a rag doll, breaking both of his shoulders and most of his ribs as he was yanked through the hatch-jettison hole.