The tape stopped its rewind and Monaghan hit the play button. There was a whirring, then a title appeared on the screen:
RED FLAG AIR FORCE vs. NAVY
Red Flag was a training exercise that pitted the best fighter pilots in the Air Force against one another in mock aerial combat. Sometimes Navy and Marine pilots were invited by the Air Force to participate in a simulated shoot-/'em-up competition-just as Monaghan had been invited seven years ago. The videotape had been taken by Monaghan's gun camera during his last engagement of the competition.
When Air Force and Navy fighter jocks square off, old inter-service rivalries heat up to a white-hot pitch, and some zealous ground crew chiefs would load live ammunition into their pilot's aircraft if given half the chance. During this Red Flag match at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, Monaghan had been flying an FA-18 Hornet. Going into the last day of the competition, Mad Dog was enjoying himself immensely, having Waxed four of four air-crap pilots in mock dogfights over the Nevada desert. Two of his victims belonged to the elite Aggressor training squadron at Nellis — American pilots who played the part of the bad guys in the air. The Aggressors flew with Russian tactics, wore Russian flite suits, and thought they were really hot shit. Monaghan couldn't help but crow about his shoving it to the Aggressors. That was really sweet. But then things changed.
On the last day of competition, Monaghan wasmatched with his only remaining contender for the Red Flag trophy — some air-crapper named Iceberg. What happened then, Monaghan still had a hard time believing.
The tape played, and Mad Dog went back in time.
Mad Dog's Hornet and Iceberg's F-15 Eagle executed a lateral cross at seven thousand feet. Monaghan yanked back on his stick to try to gain altitude on his opponent, but Iceberg put his Eagle into the same maneuver. Going past Mach 1 with his afterburners screaming, Mad Dog craned his neck back to look out the top of his canopy, only to see Iceberg doing the exact same thing in the Eagle. They were heading straight up in a dead-heat, back-to-back interceptor climb. Monaghan saw that neither aircraft was gaining on the other, so he changed tactics. He threw his Hornet into a series of scissor switchbacks, causing the Eagle to sail past him. This gave Mad Dog tail position on the F-15, but he couldn't lock on to the Eagle's exhaust pipes because it was headed directly into the sun. He had to wait for Iceberg to make a move.
At 52,000 feet, Mad Dog saw the Eagle pull out of the climb, go over in a loop, and plunge straight down in a power dive. Monaghan followed and groaned under the strain of the eight-g turn — he couldn't allow the air-crap to get behind him. Mad Dog anticipated that Iceberg would start pulling up and go into a climbing turn, but he didn't. The Eagle kept going down-straight down. Monaghan followed, and began lining up his Hornet's head-up display targeting circle on the F-15's blazing dual tailpipes; but before he could hold it steady long enough for a kill, Iceberg started jinking the Eagle back and forth, then he put the fighter into a spiral — still headed down. The Eagle's spirals were too wide for the targeting scanner's sweep, so Mad Dog cursed and rolled his Hornet in behind Iceberg, following him down toward a canyon. The spirals became tighter and tighter — and the rugged Nevada mountains drew closer and closer. Water vapor enveloped the wings of both aircraft as the extreme lift created by the tight turns sucked the moisture right out of the ambient air. Monaghan pulled the Hornet almost to nine g's, the point at which blood is literally pushed out of the brain and blackout occurs. But Mad Dog fought back into consciousness and began inching his aiming circle toward the Eagle. Closer… closer… mountains… almost there… altimeter… almost got him… into the canyon… put him in the ring… altimeter… canyon floor… closer…I've got—Ridgeline! Pull up! Pull up! Pull up! Mad Dog yanked the stick all the way back and went through nine g's, blacking himself out for a few moments before yelling, "Jesus! The damn fool plowed into the mountain!" Shaken to his core, Monaghan steadied his climb, then leveled off to regain his equilibrium. God in heaven! he thought. The crazy sunovabitch flew right under the overhang beneath the ridgeline! I didn't clear that ridge by a fingernail! I'd better call this in—
Beeeeeeeeeepppp!!!
The warble of Monaghan's threat-warning receiver told him he'd been locked on. He whirled around to look behind him. No! It couldn't be!
"Mad Dog, this is Red Flag Base. You are a kill. I say again, you are a kill. Chalk one Hornet and a trophy up to Iceberg. Game's over, gentlemen. Return to base."
What the fuck is going on? Monaghan asked himself. That Eagle could not be Iceberg. He'd just seen him crash. He kept his Hornet steady while the Eagle pulled up alongside him. Monaghan's eyes caught the six tiny North Vietnamese flags painted on the Eagle's fuselage, just below the canopy. Yeah. It was Iceberg… but howl Iceberg returned Monaghan's stare. No wave. No thumbs-up. No friendly salute. Just a clinical onceover by the champion. After the cold-blooded appraisal was completed, Monaghan watched Iceberg lower his sun visor, then bank and pull away.
Monaghan kept his Hornet level for a few seconds, then shook his head. "I saw what I saw," he told himself, and pulled the FA-18 back around toward the ridgeline.
The terrain around Nellis is full of rugged, bone-dry, saw-toothed mountains, similar to a moonscape. Monaghan flew over the jagged ridge twice, trying to re-create what had happened, but it only made him more puzzled than before. He'd seen Iceberg fly under that ridge overhang. He'd seen it. Mad Dog shook his head one last time and made a visual fix on the location, then headed back for the runway.
After landing and securing the Hornet, he commandeered somebody's Bronco and drove it overland to the small canyon where the Eagle should have crashed. When the vehicle couldn't negotiate the rugged terrain any farther, he got out and walked up the canyon floor. The scene that greeted him was unbelievable.
Monaghan climbed up to the base of the jagged ridge — where Iceberg should have impacted — and inspected it more closely. Beneath the top of the ridgeline there was the rocky overhang— which he'd seen from the air — but underneath the overhang was a large natural arch that had been formed through eons of erosion by windblown sand. Monaghan climbed into the arch, which he estimated had a diameter of about fifty feet. The arch couldn't be detected from above because the overhang concealed it. You had to hug the canyon floor to see that it was almost a perfect hole in the base of the craggy ridge. That son of a bitch Iceberg had flown his goddam F-15 Eagle through the goddam arch at 500 goddam miles an hour. In the pursuit, Monaghan hadn't been quite low enough to see that the hole was there. That's why he'd had to pull the Hornet up to clear the jagged ridge. After the Eagle popped out the other side of the arch, Iceberg had found Mad Dog in nice level flight — the perfect target.
Monaghan shook his head and walked through the arch. He estimated the Eagle had maybe six feet of clearance for each wingtip, and that rattled him even more. Mad Dog figured his own Hornet had cleared the top of the ridgeline by three centimeters at best.
In a dogfight the concentration of the pursuer on the target is so intense that the pilot becomes oblivious to anything else. Just like formation flying. Monaghan remembered when an entire four-plane formation of the Thunderbirds, the Air Force aero-batic team, crashed during a practice session. Three of the pilots were concentrating so hard on their tight formation with the leader that they followed him right into the ground.
Monaghan surveyed the arch and knew that Iceberg's move must have been a well-thought-out and planned trap. He'd intentionally lured Monaghan into a lose-lose situation. If the Hornet wasn't plastered against the ridge while trying to follow the Eagle, Iceberg would nail Mad Dog after he pulled up the FA-18 to avoid it. Either way, it spelled T-R-O-P-H-Y for the Iceberg. It was a wicked strategy that was as clever as it was crazy. It had meant almost certain death for the Hornet — as well as a certain trophy for Iceberg. Not being familiar with the terrain, Monaghan had escaped with his life by the narrowest of margins. A stunt like that wasn't just crazy, it was… well, any flyer who would endanger a fellow fighter pilot for a goddam tin trophy was… psychotic.