by Wilbur Smith
There was a heart-beat of silence from Joe, and then his voice strangled and rough.
‘Two conforming.’
‘Kill them, Joe,’ David yelled and pressed against the spring-loaded tension of the trigger. There was a soft double hiss, hardly discernible above the jet din, and from under each wing-tip the missiles unleashed, they skidded and twisted as they aligned themselves on the targets, leaving darkly etched trails of vapour across David’s front, and at that moment the MiGs became aware.
At a shouted warning from their leader, the entire formation burst into its five separate parts, splintering silvery swift like a shoal of sardines before the driving charge of the barracuda.
The rearmost Syrian was slow, he had only just begun to turn away when one of the Sidewinders flicked its tail, followed his turn and united with him in an embrace of death.
The shock wave of the explosion jarred David’s machine, but the sound of it was muted as the MiG was enveloped in the greenish-tinted cloud of the strike and it shattered into fragments. A wing snapped off and went whirling high and the brief blooming flower of smoke blew swiftly past David’s head.
The second missile had chosen the machine with the red ring, the formation leader, but the Russian reacted so swiftly and pulled his turn so tight that the missile slid past him in an overshoot, and it lost the scent, unable to follow the MiG around. As David hauled the Mirage round after the Russian, he saw the missile destroy itself in a burst of greenish smoke, far out across the valley of clouds.
The Russian was in a hard right-hand turn, and David followed him. Staring across the imaginary circle that separated them, he could see every detail of the enemy machine; the scarlet helmet of the pilot, the gaudy colours of its roundels, the squiggle of Arabic script that was its identification markings – even the individual rivets that stitched the polished metal skin of the MiG.
David pulled back with all his strength against his joystick, for gravity was tightening the loading of his controls, opposing his efforts to place additional stress on the Mirage lest he tear its wings off the fuselage.
Gravity had hold of David also, its insidious force sucked the blood away from his brain so that his vision dimmed, the colour of the enemy pilot’s helmet faded to dull brown, and David felt himself crushed down into his seat.
About his waist and legs his G-suit tightened its coils, squeezing brutally like a hungry python, attempting to prevent the drainage of blood from his upper torso.
David tensed every muscle in his body, straining to resist the loss of blood, and he took the Mirage up in a sliding, soaring yo-yo, up the side of an imaginary barrel. Like a motor-cyclist on a wall of death he whirled aloft, trying once more for the advantage of height.
His vision narrowed, greyed out, until his field was reduced to the limits of his cockpit, and he was pinned heavily to his seat, his mouth sagging open, his eyelids dragging downwards; the effort of holding his right hand on the control column was Herculean.
In the corner of his vision the stall indicator blinked its little eye at him, changing from amber to red, warning him that he was on the verge of catastrophe, courting the disaster of supersonic stall.
David filled his lungs and screamed with all his strength, his own voice echoing through the grey mist. The effort forced a little blood back to his brain and his vision cleared briefly, enough to let him see that the MiG had anticipated his yo-yo and had come up under him, sliding up the wall of death towards his unprotected flank and belly.
David had no alternative but to break out of the turn before the MiG’s cannons could bear. He rolled the Mirage out, and went instantly into a tight climbing left-hander, his afterburners still thundering at full power, consuming fuel at a prodigious rate, and placing a limit upon these desperate manoeuvres.
Neatly and gracefully as a ballet dancer, the Russian followed him out of the turn and locked into his next manoeuvre. David saw him coming up into an attack position in his rear-view mirror and he rolled out again and went up and right, blacking out with the rate of turn.
Roll and turn, turn for life, David had judged the Russian fairly. He was a deadly opponent, quick and hard, anticipating each of David’s turns and twists, riding always within an ace of strike. Turn, and turn again, in great winging parabolas, climbing always, turning always, vapour trails spinning out from their wing-tips in silky arabesque patterns against the hard blue of the sky.
David’s arms and shoulders ached as he fought the control dampers and the weight of gravity, sickened by the drainage of blood and the adrenalin in his system. His cold battle rage turned gradually to icy despair as each of his efforts to dislodge the Russian were met and countered, and always the gaping shark’s maw of the MiG hung and twisted a point off his shoulder or belly. All David’s expertise, all the brilliance of his natural flying gifts were slowly being discounted by the store of combat experience upon which his enemy could draw.
At one stage, when for an instant they flew wing-tip to wing-tip, David glanced across the gap and saw the man’s face. Just the eyes and forehead above the oxygen mask; the skin was pale as bone and the eyes were deeply socketed like those of a skull – and then David was turning again, turning and screaming and straining against gravity, screaming also against the first enfolding coils of fear.
He rolled half out of the turn and then, without conscious thought, reversed the roll. The Mirage shuddered with protest and his speed bled off. The Russian saw it and came down on him from high on his starboard quarter. As David pushed the stick fully forward and left he kicked on full left rudder, ducking under the blast of cannon fire, and the Mirage went down in a spiralling dive. The blood which gravity had sucked from his head was now flung upwards through his body, filling his head and his vision with bright redness, the red-out of inverted gravitational force. A vein in his nose popped under the pressure and suddenly his oxygen mask was filled with a flood of warm choking blood.
The Russian was after him, following him into the dive, lining him up for his second burst.
David screamed with the metallic salty taste of blood in his mouth and hauled back on the stick with all his strength, the nose came up and over, climbing out of the dive, and again the blood drained from his head – going from red-out to black-out in the fraction of a second and he saw the Russian following him up, drawn up by the ploy. At the top David kicked it out in a breakaway roll. It caught the Russian, he was one-hundredth of a second slow in countering and he swung giddily through David’s gunsight, an almost impossible deflection shot that sluiced cannon fire wildly across the sky, spraying it like water from a garden hose. The MiG was in David’s sight for perhaps one-tenth of a second, but in that time David saw a flash of light, a bright wink of it below the pilot’s canopy, and then David rolled and turned out, coming around hard and finding the Russian still hanging in the circuit, but losing air space, swaying out with a feather of white vapour streaming back from below his cockpit canopy.
I’ve hit him, David exulted, and his fear was gone, become anger again, a fierce triumphant anger. He took the Mirage up in another soaring yo-yo and this time the MiG could not hold station on him and David flickrolled off the top and came out with the Russian centred in his gunsight.
He fired a one-second burst and saw the incendiary shells lace in and burst in quick little stabbing stars in the silver fuselage of the MiG.
The Russian came out of his turn, in a gentle dive, flying straight, no longer taking evasive action, probably dead at his controls, and David sat on his tail, and settled the pipper of his gunsight.
He fired another one-second burst and the MiG began to break up. Small unidentifiable pieces of wreckage flew back at David, but the Russian stayed with his machine.
Again David hit him with a two-second burst, and now the MiG’s nose sank until she was in a vertical dive still under full power and she went down like a silver javelin. David could not follow her without tearing off his own wings. He pulled out and watched the Russian
fly into the earth at a speed that must have exceeded Mach 2. He burst like a bomb in a tall tower of dust and smoke that stood for long seconds on the brown plains of Syria.
David shut down his afterburners and looked to his fuel gauges. They were all showing only a narrow strip above the empty notch, and David realized that the last screaming dive after the MiG had taken him down to an altitude of five thousand, he was over enemy territory and too low – much too low.
Expending precious fuel he came around on a westerly heading and went to interception speed, climbing swiftly out of range of flak and searching the heavens about him for sign of either Joe or the other MiGs – although he guessed that the Syrians were either with Allah in the garden of the Houris, or back home with mother by this time.
‘Bright Lance Two, this is Leader. Do you read me?’
‘Leader, this is Two,’ Joe’s voice answered him immediately. ‘I have you visual. In the name of God, get out of there!’
‘What is my position?’
‘We are fifty miles within Syrian territory, our course for base is 250°.’
‘How did you go?’
‘I took out one of mine. The other one ran for it, after that I was too busy keeping an eye on you—’
David blinked his eyes and was surprised to find that sweat was pouring down his forehead from under his helmet and his mask was slick and sticky with blood from his nosebleed. His arms and shoulders still ached, and he felt drunken and light-headed from the effects of gravity and combat and his hands on the control column were shaky and weak.
‘I got two,’ he said, ‘two of the swines – one for Debra, and one for Hannah.’
‘Shut up, Davey.’ Joe’s voice was stiff with tension. ‘Concentrate on getting out of here. You are within range of both flak and ground missiles. Light your tail – and let’s go.’
‘Negative,’ David answered him. ‘I’m low on fuel. Where are you?’
‘Six o’clock high at 25,000.’ As he answered, Joe sat up in his seat, leaning forward against his shoulder straps to watch the tiny wedge shape of David’s machine far below. It was climbing slowly up to meet him, slowly – too slowly, and low – too low. David was vulnerable and Joe was afraid for him, frowning heavily into his face mask and searching restlessly, sweeping heaven and earth for the first hint of danger. Two minutes would see them clear, but they would be two long, slow minutes.
He almost missed the first missile. The ground crew must have allowed David to overfly their launch pad before they put it up in pursuit – for Joe picked up its vapour trail as it streaked in from behind David, closing rapidly with him.
‘Missile, break left,’ Joe yelled into his mask. ‘Go! Go! Go!’ and he saw David begin his turn instantly, steeply, side-stepping the sizzling attack of the missile.
‘It’s lost you!’ Joe called, as the missile continued its crazy career through space, beginning to yaw from side to side as it hunted for a target and at last bursting in self-destruction.
‘Keep going, Davey,’ Joe encouraged him, ‘but keep awake, there will be more.’
They both saw the next one leave the ground from its camouflaged vehicle. There was a nest of them on a rocky ridge above a sun-blasted plain. The Serpent slid off the rock and lifted into the sky, climbing rapidly towards David’s little machine.
‘Light your tail,’ Joe told him, ‘and wait for it!’ He watched the missile boring in, converging with dazzling speed on David’s Mirage.
‘Break right! Go! Go! Go!’ Joe yelled and David twisted violently aside. Again the Serpent slid past him, overshooting, but this time not losing contact and coming around to attack again, its seekers locked to David’s machine.
‘He’s still on you,’ Joe was screaming now. ‘Go for the sun, Davey. Try for the sun,’ and the Mirage pointed its nose at the great blazing orb that burned above the mountain ranges of dark cloud. The Serpent followed him upwards, hunting him with the dreadful single-mindedness of the automaton.
‘He’s on to you, Davey. Flip out now! Go! Go! Go!’
David flicked the Mirage out of her vertical climb, and fell like a stone – while the Serpent fastened its attention upon the vast infra-red output from the sun and streaked on towards it, losing the Mirage.
‘You’ve lost it. Get out, Davey, get out!’ Joe pleaded with him, but for the moment the Mirage was helpless. In her desperate climb for the sun she had lost manoeuvring speed and was wallowing clumsily now. It would be many seconds before she became agile and lithe once more – and . by then it would be too late – for Joe saw the third missile become airborne and dart upwards on its feather of flame and smoke aiming at David’s Mirage.
Joe did not consciously realize what he was going to do until he had winged over and commenced his dive under full power. He came down with his Mach meter indicating twice the speed of sound, and he levelled across David’s tail, cutting obliquely across his track under the nose of the oncoming Serpent.
The Serpent saw him with its little cyclops radar eye, and it sensed. the heat of his exhausts – fresher, more tantalizing than David’s, and it accepted him as an alternative target and swung away after him, leaving David to fly on unscathed.
David saw Joe’s aircraft flash past his wing-tip at searing speed, and but an instant behind him followed the Serpent. It took him only a second to realize that Joe had deliberately pulled the missile off him, had accepted the attack that must surely have destroyed David.
He watched with fascinated horror as Joe pulled out of his dive, and used his speed to climb into the sun. The missile followed him smoothly, angling upwards, overhauling Joe’s Mirage with effortless ease. Joe was watching the missile in his mirror, and at the last instant he flipped out of the climb – but this time the Serpent was not deceived; as Joe dropped so it swivelled also, and as earlier David had wallowed helplessly now Joe was in the same predicament. He had taken his chance and it had not worked for him. The missile found him, and in a brusque burst of flame, Joe and his Mirage died together.
David flew on alone, his Mirage once more at manoeuvring speed and his throat dry with horror and fear and grief. He found himself talking aloud.
‘Joe, no, Joe. Oh God no! You shouldn’t have done it.’
Ahead of him through the gaps in the massive cloud bases he saw the Jordan.
‘It should be you that’s going home, Joe,’ he said. ‘It should be you, Joe,’ and felt the hard ball of sorrow in his throat.
But the instinct of survival was still strong and David yawned and glanced back to clear his blind spot – and he saw the last missile coming in on him. It was just a small black speck far behind, with a little frill of dark smoke around it, but it was watching him hungrily with its wicked little eye.
As he saw it, he knew beyond doubt that this one was his, the one that the fates had reserved for him. The attacks he had evaded so far had worn his nerves and strained his judgement, he felt a sense of fatalistic dismay as he watched the attacking missile gaining on him; nevertheless he gathered his scattered reserves for one more supreme effort.
His eyes narrowed to slits, the sweat sliding down his face and drenching his mask, his left hand holding the throttle fully open and his right gripping the control column with the strength of despair, he judged his moment.
The missile was almost upon him and he screamed with all his might and hurled the Mirage into the turn, but he had misjudged it by the smallest part of a second. As he turned away the missile slid past him and it was close enough to pick up the shadow of the Mirage in the photoelectric eye of its fusing device. The eye winked at him and the missile exploded.
The Mirage was in the critical attitude of its turn, and the cockpit canopy was exposed entirely to the centre of the blast. It hit the plane with a. blow that sent it tumbling; like a running man tripping it went over, and it lost life and flying capability.
The canopy was penetrated by flying steel. A piece struck David’s armoured seat with a clang and then it glanced off an
d struck his arm above the elbow, snapping the bone cleanly so that the arm dropped uselessly and hung into his lap.
An icy wind raged through the torn canopy as the Mirage hurled itself through space with suicidal force, whipping its nose through the , vicious motions and flat plane of high-speed spin. David was thrown against his straps, his ribs bruised and his skin smeared from his shoulders, and the broken arm flailing agonizingly.
He tried to hold himself upright in his seat as he reached up over his head, caught hold of the handle of the ejector mechanism and hauled the blind down over his face. He expected to have the charge explode beneath his seat and hurl him free of the doomed Mirage – but nothing happened.
Desperately he released the handle and strained forward to reach the secondary firing mechanism under his seat between his feet. He wrenched it and felt despair as there was no response. The seat was not working, the blast had damaged some vital part of it. He had to fly the Mirage out of it, with one arm and very little altitude left to him. He fastened his right fist on to the moulded grip of the stick, and in the crazy fall and flutter and whirl, David began to fight for control, flying now by instinct alone, for he was badly hurt, and sky and horizon, earth and cloud spun giddily across his vision.
He was aware that he was losing height rapidly, for every time the earth swayed through his line of vision it was closer and more menacing, but doggedly he continued his attempts to roll against the direction of spin.
The earth was very close before he felt the first hint of response, and the ferocity of her gyrations abated slightly. Stick and rudder together, he tried again and the Mirage showed herself willing at last. Gently, with the touch of a lover, he wooed her and suddenly she came out and he was flying straight and level, but she was hard hit. The blast of the missile had done mortal damage, and she was heavy and sick in his hands. He could feel the rough vibration of the engine shaking her, and he guessed that the compressor had thrown a blade and was now out of balance. Within minutes or seconds she would begin to tear herself to pieces. He could not try for climbing power on her.
