Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 5 - Red Horseman

by Red Horseman (lit)

  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 fight 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 glimpseat 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 outmaneuver 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 this speed would be certain inches.

  To kiss the ground at 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 fight 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.

  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 awa
y 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.

  FirstA-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 andfollow 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'llfly 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.

  Jake knifed through the falling debris and tried to right his machine.

  Fuel was boiling out the left wing and the left engine was unwinding. He shut it down. A big red light on the left side of the bombsight was illuminated-fire. fie needed a lot of right rudder to control his plane.

  Now he was level. And alive.

  For how long?

  That depended on the fire warning light.

  It flickered Several " times, then went out.

  Maybe he had a chance after all.

  He glanced at the compass. He was heading east.

  He dropped the right wing into a gentle turn and let the nose drift down as he juggled the rudder to maintain balanced flight. He had to get low again, avoid the radar that was probing this sk3-.

  He steadied up heading south, descending. One of the Russian's cannon shells had impacted the second weapons pylon on the left wing, shattering it and twisting it so badly fuel was
coming out of the wing.

  Even as Jake stared at the damaged pylon the last of the wing fuel rushed away into the slipstream.

  Primary hydraulic pressure was on its way to zero. If that was the primary system gauge.

  The warning lights seemed predictable. The damaged engine hadn't blown up-if it did there was nothing he could do but die. His heart was still beating, thud, thud, thud.