There! Coming in from the left side, shooting.
Nose down hard. Back toward the valley.
The second fighter was going too fast and overshot. That’s the problem when you’ve got a really fast plane: you want to use all that speed the designers gave you and sometimes it works against you.
This guy pulled Gs like he had a steel asshole. The fighter tried to turn a square corner, the down wing quit flying and the plane flipped inverted. In the blink of an eye the Su-27 hit the ground and exploded.
Jake got into the valley, retarded his throttles to about 90 percent RPM and stayed there.
He examined the electronic warfare panel. Goddamn light still blinking.
He rammed his left fingers under his helmet visor and swabbed the sweat away from his eyes.
They would find him again. How many more? He had seen four up there when he and Rita crossed the Volga a lifetime ago. Two were down, two still flying, perhaps off chasing Rita, perhaps now up there somewhere in the great sky above examining their track-while-scan radars and looking for him, perhaps calling on the radio to their comrades who would never answer again.
Could they find him in this valley, which was fast ceasing to be a steep gorge and was spreading out as the creek flowed its last few miles to the Volga?
There — on the left — another valley coming into this one. Jake dropped the left wing and pulled the plane around. He went back up the new valley, still seeking shelter as the EW light blinked intermittently.
Jake Grafton had flown his first combat mission in Vietnam over twenty years ago. He knew the hard, inescapable truth: in aerial combat the first pilot to make a mistake is the one who dies. The two men who had died in the Sukhoi fighters had each made fatal mistakes. The first man pursued too fast, so he had overshot when his victim unexpectedly slowed down. The second was overanxious, had pulled too hard and departed controlled flight too close to the ground. He was dead a half-second later, probably before he even realized what was happening.
The next time Jake might not be so lucky.
He swabbed more sweat from his eyes as he examined the fuel gauge. Still plenty. Like the A-6, the engines of this Russian attack bird were easy on fuel and the plane carried a lot of it. That was the only advantage he possessed when compared to the fighters, which sacrificed fuel economy to gain speed and range to gain maneuverability.
Where were the other two fighters? Chasing Rita?
A flicker of concern for Rita crossed his mind, but he forced it away. Rita was a professional, she had been an F/A-18 Hornet instructor pilot for two years before she went to test pilot school — she could take care of herself.
He hoped.
No time to worry about her. If only he knew where she was…
They came in shooting from the rear quarter on each side. His first inkling that they were there was the sight of glowing cannon shells passing just in front of the nose, from left to right. He rammed the stick forward and his peripheral vision picked up shells passing just above the canopy from right to left. Just streaks really, but he knew exactly what they were.
The negative G lasted only for an instant before he had to jerk the stick back to avoid going into the ground. But it was enough. Even as he fought the positive G he saw the pair of fighters flash across above his head and arc tightly away for another pass.
He wouldn’t survive another pass.
Slamming the throttles full forward, he kept the nose coming up and topped the cliff on the right side of the valley, then ruddered the nose down. He pulled hard in a tight turn, trying to turn inside the faster fighter.
And the fighter pilot wasn’t looking!
The idiot had his head in the cockpit — he was worried about flying into the ground. That was a serious threat this close to the earth, the brown land whirling by at tremendous speed just scant feet below the right wingtip.
The nose of Jake’s plane passed the fighter and he began to pull ahead. Range closing as the aspect angle changed. The fighter was turning into Jake. Angle off about seventy degrees, now eighty, ninety as the two planes flashed toward each other. Jake eased out some bank. A full deflection shot—
Now!
He triggered the cannon. The tracers passed in front of the fighter’s nose, then in an eyeblink the fighter flew through the stream, which stitched him nose to tail. His nose dropped and his right wing kissed the earth.
Jake raised his nose a smidgen to ensure he didn’t share the same fate, banked and pulled.
If he could get around quickly enough, he would present the second fighter with a head-on shot, and if that guy had any sense he would refuse the invitation and pull up into the vertical, where Jake lacked the power to follow.
And that is what happened as the two planes flashed toward each other nose to nose. Jake wanted to take a snapshot but couldn’t get his nose up fast enough. He slammed it back down and was pulling hard to get the plane’s axis parallel to the canyon when he flashed over the rim. He let the plane descend on knife edge until the rock wall shielded him.
His heart was threatening to thud its way out of his chest. Talk about luck! Three mistakes, three dead men who would get no wiser.
But this last guy — he was no overeager green kid who thought he was bulletproof. He had pulled his nose up the instant he saw the head-on pass developing. This guy would take a lot of killing.
And Jake Grafton didn’t know if he had it in him. Somehow he got his visor up and swabbed away the sweat that poured into his eyes when he pulled Gs, this while he threaded his way up the valley and looked above and aft to see what the Russian was up to.
What would you do, Jake Grafton?
I’d slow down to almost coequal speed and follow along, getting lower and lower, and when my guns came to bear I’d take my shots. And he would fall.
Jake got a glimpse of his opponent. He was high up and well aft, on a parallel course, his nose down. He must have lost sight for a moment and allowed Jake to extend out. But now he was closing.
You’ve had a good life, Jake. You’ve known some fine men, loved a good woman, flown the hot jets. Maybe your life has made a difference to somebody. And now it’s over. That man up there is going to kill you. He’s going about it just right, slowly and methodically; he isn’t going to make any mistakes. And you are going to die.
The Russian was throttled back, coming down like the angel of doom.
What’s ahead? I’ll out-fly the bastard. I’ll fly that son of a bitch into the ground.
Even as the thought raced through his mind, he knew it wouldn’t work. This guy wasn’t going to make any mistakes unless Jake forced the action. If he were allowed to play his own game he would win.
Jake Grafton risked another over-the-shoulder glance to see if he had room. Maybe. It was going to be tight.
He kept the wings level and pulled the stick straight aft. The throttles were up against the stops. A nice four-G pull so he would have something left on top. If this guy were wise and had plenty of fuel, he would light his burners and climb, avoid the head-on that was developing. A head-on pass that gave each guy a fifty-fifty chance — that was the best Jake could play for when the other pilot had every performance edge.
But the Russian pilot accepted the challenge!
Upside down at the top of the loop, Jake fed in forward stick and placed the pipper in the reticle high to allow for the fall of his shells, then pulled the trigger. The Russian was already shooting. Strobing muzzle blasts enveloped the nose of the opposing fighter as Jake pulled his trigger.
Jake felt the trip-hammer impacts as cannon shells ripped into his plane. Then the Russian blew up.