by Robert Gandt
The silence of his Sirena radar warning receiver told him that he was not targeted. They had lost him, at least momentarily. In their own confusion, they were not yet aware that he was behind them. Perhaps his own appointment with Allah would be postponed. The trick was to not lock any of them up until he was ready to fire his missile. Shoot quickly and run. There. He saw it in his radar—an enemy blip in the middle of the spread out formation. If the geometry of his turn had been correct, it would be the same one who killed Al-Rashid.
Which was appropriate. An eye for an eye, an American for an Iraqi. Let one of them join Al-Rashid in eternity.
He commanded the radar to lock, then squeezed the trigger. The airframe of the aging Russian-built fighter rumbled as the Acrid missile roared off its rail and streaked away like a fire-tailed comet.
He waited, watching the missile vanish in the darkness. His own Sirena continued its silence.
They still didn’t know he was there.
< >
Maxwell saw it first. “Anvil flight, missile in the air!” he called. “Six o’clock!”
It had to be another Acrid. The flash came from beneath and behind him. The missile was targeting one of the Hornets up ahead.
It was the fighter pilot’s nightmare scenario. Someone shooting at them from behind. It had to be another Foxbat. A wingman. After his leader was killed, he had merged with Anvil Flight and performed what was called a stern conversion—sweeping past the oncoming Hornets, then reversing course to put himself at their six o’clock.
Aimed at their tails.
Two thousand feet beneath the other three Hornets of Anvil flight, Maxwell scanned the black sky where he had seen the missile flash.
Nothing.
He hauled the nose of his Hornet to the left, probing with his radar. Still nothing. Where was the Foxbat?
< >
Missile in the air. The most dreaded words a fighter pilot could hear.
As if triggered by his own adrenaline, Rasmussen’s RWR was warbling at a high, urgent pitch.
He was targeted.
Rasmussen’s years of training kicked in. He rolled the Hornet into a hard break turn, dumping the nose and hauling back on the stick. His left hand found the chaff dispenser. Pull. Turn into the missile. Make it overshoot.
Grunting against the Gs, trying not to gray out, he peered over his shoulder. He saw it. A flicker of light, a faint zigzag motion behind him.
With a grim certainty, he knew what would happen next. He tensed himself and waited.
As he expected, the impact came from behind. Rasmussen was dimly aware of the explosion, a blinding wave of flame that engulfed the Hornet and turned the darkness into a scarlet hell. He knew his life had ended and his remains would be scattered over the ancient dirt of Iraq.
< >
Captain Jabbar watched the fireball of the Hornet plummet like a meteor toward the floor of the desert. Al-Rashid had been avenged.
It was enough. Jabbar knew that he could stay here and maybe kill another enemy Hornet, perhaps two. It would also mean his own certain death. At any moment now, one of them would find him on his radar. The enemy fighters would pounce like dogs on a rat.
He shoved the nose of the MiG-25 down and eased the throttles back. He would stay under the enemy formation, let them continue on their mission toward Baghdad. He would live to fight another day. Martyrdom was for fanatics.
As he descended, he glanced again at the burning hulk arcing downward in the night. He wondered about the pilot. Was he a frightened young man on his first mission? Or was he a veteran, one who had seen combat before? Jabbar guessed that he was probably a man like himself—willing to die for his country, not willing to throw his life away for nothing. He had dreams, hopes for the future, a family who would miss him.
Jabbar pushed the thought from his mind. This was war. It wasn’t wise to have such thoughts about the man you had just killed.
< >
Rasmussen’s numbed brain accepted the finality of his death, but his body did not.
Following a script he had rehearsed a hundred times in training, his hands reached for the ejection lanyard between his legs. His head slammed back against the headrest. With both hands, he yanked the lanyard upward.
The ejection seat fired. Rasmussen catapulted like a cannon shell from the roiling fireball of the Hornet. A nearly supersonic wall of air slammed into his body.
Downward he tumbled through the thin air of the stratosphere, the automatic features of the SJU/5A Martin-Baker ejection seat performing as advertised. Its occupant hung slumped and unconscious in his straps.
At ten thousand feet, precisely on schedule, the main parachute canopy deployed. Borne on a twenty-five knot wind, the inert body of Raz Rasmussen drifted toward the floor of the desert. He was not aware of the descent, nor did he feel the thunk of the landing.
Still in the parachute harness, he was dragged by the wind for another two hundred meters until the canopy wrapped itself around a pair of jagged boulders.
When he regained consciousness, Rasmussen thought he was blind. Then he realized that his eyes were swollen shut. He was lying against a rocky slope, still wrapped in the canopy and shroud lines of the parachute. When he tried to move, waves of pain shot like jolts of electricity through his limbs.
For several minutes he lay where he was, assessing the damage. Though every bone in his body ached, nothing seemed to be fractured. He wasn’t blind, but he could peer only through a pair of crusty slits.
He released the Koch fasteners on his torso harness, freeing himself from the chute. He rose creakily to his feet, taking a few small steps, testing each limb. Everything still worked. It just hurt like hell.
Nothing made sense.
His brain was processing information at about one-tenth its usual rate, but that was to be expected. He was in no hurry. He was alive, and they’d come to get him. He’d get out of this place. The thought gave him comfort, and he clung to it. He’d get out.
How will they know where I am?
Simple. He’d tell them. Which was why he had the survival radio. The PRC-112 survival radio was his ticket home. He could communicate with other aircraft, give his location, call in the SAR helo. It was the new model they’d just issued, which he’d taken the trouble to put in a Ziploc bag and stuff right here in the vest pocket of his. . .
His hand felt inside the pocket. The flap was already open. The pocket was empty.
No radio. In the violence of the ejection, the damned thing must have flown out of his pocket and whirled off into space. The pocket was designed for the older PRC-90. The PRC-112 was taller and thinner, and didn’t quite fit in the standard vest pocket. The survival experts didn’t think it would make any difference in an ejection.
So much for the experts.
Rasmussen fought off the sense of desolation that settled over him. Okay, think. They know where you went down. They’ll be searching for you.
Then another thought. Wasn’t there an emergency locator beacon in the seat? He tried to remember, then it came to him. Yes, an ELT was installed in the seat, but the air wing brass had ordered the things disabled on the eve of the strike. They’d gotten intelligence that the Iraqis had their own homing devices and would track the signals from a downed American jet.
Of course, he could go looking for the seat and activate the ELT. He discarded the idea. The seat separated from him in the descent at ten thousand feet. It could be anywhere in a twenty-mile radius.
The cold night was coming to an end. A pale light had begun to illuminate the bleakness of the desert. Through his slitted eyes Rasmussen could make out the irregular shapes of boulders and low ridges.
He was gathering his equipment, stuffing the chute and life raft out of sight behind an outcropping, when he sensed movement behind him.
He turned and saw them. They had approached without his hearing them. They were no more than twenty feet away, a dozen of them, and each had his rifle aimed at Rasmussen.
