If those were Flankers up there, they were probably carrying AA-10 “fire and forget” antiaircraft missiles with active radar seekers.
And a missile could be on its way down right now.
He lowered the nose and dropped to fifty feet above the rocky creek. Rita was still with him, in tighter now, only forty or so feet away and a little behind.
The warning light was on steady.
They’ve found us. Missile to follow. Or a lot of missiles.
The land was a rough wilderness devoid of trees. Rock outcroppings, meandering creeks in rocky draws, sandy places — Jake Grafton was working hard holding the attack plane in the draw. Several times he couldn’t make a turn and lifted the plane across the rim with only several feet of clearance, then banked hard and slipped the plane back into the draw.
Vaguely he was aware that Rita had slipped into trail behind him where she could ride just above his wash.
“We have fighters above us,” he told her on the radio.
No response. Radio silence meant radio silence to Rita Moravia. If she heard—
A flash on his left. He glanced over and saw a rising cloud of dirt and debris as it swept aft out of his field of vision. A missile impact!
“They’re shooting,” he announced over the radio.
He lifted the nose of the plane and cleared the little valley, then dropped the left wing. Throttles to the stop, stick back — the Gs tugged him down into the seat.
Another flash, this time on his right side.
Jesus, each Flanker can carry up to eight missiles! How many have they fired?
When he had completed about ninety degrees of turn he rolled wings level, eased the nose back down. He was running only twenty feet above the high places in the lumpy ground, which gave him a tremendous sensation of speed. The warning light was blinking.
A pulse Doppler radar identified moving targets by detecting their movement toward or away from the radar. If he could fly a course perpendicular to the searching fighter, its radar could not detect him. When it lost him the searching fighter would probably turn to alter the angles and try to acquire him again. Still…
Trying to ensure he didn’t inadvertently feed in forward stick, he craned his head to see aft.
The missiles will be coming at three or four times the speed of sound, fool! You’ll never see them. But you will kill yourself looking for them.
He concentrated on the flying. After twenty seconds on this heading, he rolled into a right turn, then leveled the wings after ninety degrees of heading change. Back on his original course, southeast. The warning light went out.
A small miracle. A temporary reprieve. Jake Grafton was under no illusions — he was flying a plane designed to destroy tanks and provide close-air support to friendly troops: those Sukhoi masterpieces above were designed to shoot down other airplanes. The Russians couldn’t make a decent razor or even an adequate toothbrush, but by God they could build great airplanes when they put their minds to it.
He looked for Rita.
Not there.
Did they get her?
How much fuel have those guys got? He and Rita were late getting off. Maybe the fighters were already airborne and are running out of fuel. There’s a maybe to pray for.
The warning light was blinking again.
He rolled into enough of a turn that he could look behind him. Visibility was truly terrible out of this Soviet jet! Clear right. He rolled left and twisted his body around. Uh-oh. Up there at the base of that cloud, coming down like an angel on his way to hell — a fighter!
And Jake was still toting ten 250-kilogram bombs, about 5,500 pounds of absolutely dead weight. He was going to have to get rid of the bombs or he would be meat on the table for the fighters.
He turned hard left to force the fighter into an overshoot, make him squirt out to the right side because he couldn’t hack the turn. As he did so, Jake worked the armament switches. In a strange plane he had to look to check each one, all the time pulling Gs and hoping the fighter was doing what he wanted him to do.
He couldn’t just pickle off the bombs, not this close to the earth: they would hit the ground almost under him and might detonate. If they did the shrapnel and blast would destroy his aircraft, and him with it.
When he had the switches set, he rolled hard right and stabilized in an eighty-degree bank, four-G turn. Then he pickled the bombs. The G tossed them out to the left. The instant the last one went he tightened the turn to six Gs.
Where was that fighter?
There — crossing over above in an overshoot.
And Lord, there’s another one at eleven o’clock honking around hard.
These guys weren’t first team — they came in too fast and scissored the wrong way. Pray that they don’t learn too fast!
He checked the compass. He was headed southwest. He brought the nose more west and punched the nose down. He wanted to run right in the weeds until he found those ravines and valleys that led down to the Volga. If he could just hide in those…
The fighter high on his left was pulling so hard vapor was condensing from the air passing over his wing — he was leaving a cloud behind each wing. Damn — it was an Su-27! He had to be in afterburner. That guy was aggressive enough, no question about that.
And the other one — Jake twisted his body halfway around, risked flying into the ground just to get a glimpse — at six-thirty, thirty degrees angle off, nose already down, accelerating.
How much fuel do these clowns have?
The rough ground ahead was his only chance. These guys could go faster, accelerate faster, and probably out-maneuver him. A stand-up dogfight with two of them would be suicide.
Jake was down to fifteen or twenty feet above the ground now, going flat-out with the throttles against the stops, doing maybe five hundred knots — the damn airspeed indicator was calibrated in kilometers and only God knew the conversion factor.
He was too close to the ground to look behind him. In fact, he was too close to the ground — he was sure he had hit a rocky outcrop but somehow managed to avoid it by inches. To kiss the ground at this speed would be certain death, yet his only hope to stay alive was to fly lower than those two fighter pilots would or could.
There—on the right! The ground dropped away into an eroded valley.
Quick as thought he had the stick over and was skimming down into the valley. Turn hard — pull, pull, pull! — to keep from hitting the sides that rose steeply above him.
Well into the winding valley, Jake Grafton eased over to the left side as he pulled the power levers back and deployed the speed brakes.
His speed bled off quickly. If one of those guys came into the gorge after him…
Cannon shells went zipping across the top of his right wing like orange pumpkins.
The right wing fell without conscious thought. Speed brakes in. Throttle full forward.
The fighter slid by on his right side, the pilot climbing and trying to slow.
As the sleek fighter went in front Jake pulled up hard and squeezed the trigger on the 30mm cannon. No time to aim! Just point and shoot!
The cannon throbbed and Jake hosed the shells in front of the twisting fighter, which flew into them. A piece came off the Su-27. Fuel venting aft. A flash.
Jake released the trigger and rolled away as the fighter exploded.
Where was the wingman?
A blind turn to the right coming up. Jake pulled hard to make it and got the nose coming up. As he went around the turn he climbed the side of the little valley and popped out on top. He swiveled his head.