He reached to the throttle slide at the side of his seat, coaxing more power from the EB-52’s four engines.
“It’s going to get a bit twisty at the end:’ he told his crew. ‘The pilot has put on the no-smoking sign. Please fasten your seatbelts. Remember to keep your hands inside the car at all times.”
He pitched the plane onto her wing, sliding down in a three-dimensional pirouette as he got the Megafortress’s nose turned toward the border post. The EB-52 growled at him as the G-forces shot up exponentially, but it complied nonetheless, speed increasing as he dove down toward the border. The copilot began reading off the altitude as the altimeter ladder revolved downward. Meanwhile, the Sukhois had not altered course.
“Try getting them on the radio,” Mack told Jalan. “Tell them they better not go over the border.”
Jalan broadcast on the Malaysian air-force frequencies, but got no response.
“They’re sixty seconds from the border,” said Deci.
“There they are!” said Jalan. His voice lost its professional calm and he jerked his hand toward the windscreen, pointing out the window toward the two airplanes, black blurs in the lower left-hand quadrant of the glass. “Motherfuckers.”
It was the first curse—in English at least—Mack had heard from a member of his crew.
“You’re starting to get the hang of this piloting thing, Jalan,” he said. “I’m proud of you.”
“Computer’s optical system confirms they’re carrying bombs beneath their wings,” said Deci. “Something in the 250-pound range”
Mack held to his course to the last possible second, then pulled sharply on the stick, sending the EB-52 into a controlled skid across the sky in front of the two Sukhois.
“Where are we? Our territory or theirs?” he said as gravity slapped his head and chest back against the ejection seat.
“Ours!” managed Jalan.
“Stinger:’ Mack told the computer. “Track one.”
“Target tracked. Target locked,”
replied the computer. A bracket had appeared on his HUD, boxing the lead Sukhoi.
“Fire.”
Six airmines flashed from the rear of the Megafortress. The airmines were essentially unaimed canisters of metal shards which exploded behind the rear of the Megafortress, producing a cloud of engine-killing shrapnel. The Malaysian jets, belatedly realizing they were in trouble, dove violently away, then escaped to the north. The computer recorded a minor hit on its target, but not enough to take it down.
“They dropped their bombs in the jungle:’ said Deci. “They definitely missed the border post—they may have landed on in their side of the border.”
“Great,’ said Mack, wrestling his wings level and preparing for the inevitable counterattack. “ECMs. Full suite—play every song in the jukebox.”
The Sukhois’ weapons radars tried desperately to poke through the electronic fuzz kicked out by the Megafortress’s countermeasures. The radar warning detector indicated that the planes were carrying R-27Rs, known to NATO as AA-I0 Alamo-As. These were radar-guided anti-air missiles, efficient killers but easily confused by the Megafortress. One of the Malaysian pilots fired anyway; the ECMs blew out its brain circuitry and sent it sailing off to the west.
Mack cut sharply east then back south, and found himself head-on toward the two jets, only two thousand feet above them and separated by roughly five miles. The position in theory favored the interceptors, who could easily turn and get behind him, where they would be in a good position to fire heat-seeking missiles.
It was what Mack wanted them to do; he intended on suckering one close enough to dish out the airmines as he used flares to knock out the heat-seekers. But they didn’t play along. Instead, one aircraft broke east and began to climb, possibly trying to position himself for a front-quarter attack from above. The other Sukhoi turned and dropped down on the deck.
If Mack wanted to escape, all he had to do was hold the stick steady. But instead he put his wing down, intending at first to tack back west; just as he started to turn he came up with a better idea and rolled the plane into a loop to change direction.
It would have been a great idea if he had been flying an F-22 or F-15, much smaller planes designed to challenge Newton’s laws with some regularity. The Megafortress reacted by pushing her nose sideways and drooping her Y-shaped tail. The spine of the aircraft began to bend, and the computer belatedly screamed at its pilot for exceeding all reasonable bounds of stress and strain. Mack could feel the pressure himself—his head felt as if it were being pummeled from every direction. He managed to. get the aircraft upright and straighten her wings—just in time to narrowly miss getting clipped by the thoroughly confused Sukhoi pilot, who sailed over his wing.
“Stinger. Track one. Fire when locked.”
“Target tracked. Target locked,”
replied the computer.
“Firing.”
Mack had no time to check this barrage—the second Sukhoi was diving on his tail from four miles.
“Minister—”
“I see him, Jalan. Relax. Stinger. Track.” Mack pointed at the touchscreen where the plane was painted by the EB-52’s radar.
The computer replied that it was out of range.
“Stay with him, baby,” Mack said.
The computer complained that it did not understand the command.
“Range, three miles,” said Jalan. “He’s launching missiles.”
“Flares,” said Mack calmly.
“Target tracked. Target locked,”
said the computer.
“Fire.”
As the airmines dished out behind them, Mack pushed hard on the stick, initiating a series of hard zigs to avoid the missile that had just been launched. It turned out to be unnecessary—one of the airmines immolated the missile. The Sukhoi, unscathed, broke off.
“Enemy is accelerating north,” said Jalan.
“He’s going to run out of fuel,” said Mack. “Let’s encourage that.” He twisted around to follow.
THE HELICOPTERS WERE SA 330 F PUMAS, FRENCH-MADE military helicopters that could carry sixteen troops as well as weapons to support them. The helicopters were unloading men via ropes as McKenna approached in her Dragonfly; they refused to answer her hails.
They were also clearly in Brunei territory.
“Mine’s the one on the right,” she told her wingman. “Shouldn’t we consult with the minister before opening the engagement?” replied Captain Yayasan.
“He’s busy,” said McKenna as she swooped into the attack. The Cessna’s sturdy frame shrugged off the four and a half Gs she threw at it, twisting into a dive that put its nose head-on for the side of the lead chopper. The Dragonfly’s nose gun was aimed through an optical sight; McKenna leaned forward and tilted her head, steadying her focus as she moved her plane into the sweet spot of her target. She juiced the trigger and a stream of 7.62-millimeter shells flew from the minigun.
The first wave of bullets spit downward and to the left of the helicopter. McKenna eased the pressure on her stick and fired again, managing to get a few dozen rounds into the lower portion of the helicopter’s fuselage before losing her angle on the chopper. She stomped the throttle and roared overhead, spinning on her wing as she angled for a second approach.
The helicopter shot upward, jinking back and forth as it tried to get away. McKenna couldn’t line up her plane quickly enough for another shot as she crossed back. She growled at herself, slapping her knee as if she were an animal that had tried to enter the wrong paddock on her family’s farm. She took this turn wider, coming around a bit more slowly and more consciously taking her time, aware of the adrenaline rush threatening to scramble her brain. She angled slightly to the right of the helo and about two thousand feet above it as it skimmed down close to the vegetation, desperate to get away. McKenna tilted her body with the plane’s and gave the gun a tentative tickle. She had the range down; as the first bullets sailed into the rotor she stomped her rudder pedal and nailed the trigger down, walking a stream of lead back and forth across the engine housing. Wisps of black smoke appeared at the side, but the helicopter did not go down.
“Dragon Two, how are you coming with that helicopter?” she asked her wingmate, climbing over Malaysian territory. She banked around for another run on the helicopter, figuring it would take one more pass to put it down; the 7.62-millimeter gun in the Dragonfly’s nose was a very light weapon by aircraft standards, and while being on the receiving end was no fun, its bullets did not have the sheer oomph of larger weapons like the twenty-millimeter and thirty-millimeter cannons carried by most frontline interceptors. But the helicopter had begun a hard tilt to the left, its tail rising. It flew onward for a few hundred meters, a duck winged by a hunter’s shotgun shell. Then it plunged into the hillside, flames erupting in a stream behind it.
“Two, what are we doing?” McKenna barked as she started south. She saw the other Dragonfly about a mile and a half away, on her left, above her by at least three thousand feet. She leveled out, not sure of the situation.
“Two? Two?” she snapped.
When her wingman still didn’t respond, McKenna began to fear that he had been hit. She had already started in his direction when she saw the shadow of a helicopter fleeing to her right. Cursing, she turned to pursue, but the helicopter had jinked down and managed to get behind a row of trees. By the time she finally saw it, it was scooting past a small town, flying deep into Malaysian territory. As McKenna checked her position in the sky she saw puffs of black cotton swirling off her left wing and realized for the first time that she was being fired at.
Time to call it a day.
“Two, what’s your situation? Please advise,” she said.
McKenna did a quick instrument check, knowing her fuel was getting low—it was actually a bit better than she thought, not quite hitting her reserves.
“Two? Is your radio out or what?” asked McKenna again. “Two,” said the other pilot finally. She could see Yayasan’s aircraft, well over hers and a tiny black dot in the sky.
“Were you hit?”
“Negative.”
While McKenna was sincerely concerned for the safety of her fellow pilots, and especially those on her wing, that wasn’t the best response, given the circumstances.
“Get back to the airbase,” she told him.
“Two,” he said, wisely guessing there was no sense in doing anything more than acknowledging.
MACK HAD NO HOPE OF KEEPING UP WITH THE SUKHOIS AS they pumped dinosaurs into their afterburners. The dual Saturn Al-31 FMs pumped out over thirty thousand pounds of thrust, taking the Sukhois up over Mach 2, at least for a brief moment.
Mack plotted a course toward the area where he thought their airfield was. But as he started to pursue, the ground controller relayed a request from the police for assistance at Badas, a small city in the south-central portion of the country. They claimed they were under attack by helicopters.
“Not on our screen,” said Deci.
Nonetheless, Mack felt obligated to check it out at close range. They overflew Badas, taking a pass below a thousand feet. Whether that had any effect or not, the police reported that the attackers had fled.
A few minutes later, another request came from the authorities in Muara, north of the capital. Mack directed his second flight of Dragonflies into the area, orbiting with the Megafortress overhead. But even the low-flying A-37Bs couldn’t be of much help as the situation unfolded; two terrorists were holed up in a residential area at the eastern end of the city. After a thirty-minute gun battle, the men immolated themselves, destroying the shanty they had holed up in as well as the two on either side.
With the Sukhois gone for the moment and no fresh helicopter attacks—real or bogus—reported, Mack decided to take the opportunity to refuel the Megafortress and give the crew a rest. He also wanted to see if he could come up with some air-to-air missiles for the aircraft, and needed to check on the Dragonfly pilots.
Mack had Jalan land; the copilot came in a little fast, but the vast runway gave him plenty of margin for error. All in all, the crew had performed pretty well, and Mack made sure to give them attaboys as they shut down. He unsnapped his restraints and went down to the runway, planning to change and then shoot over to the tactical center at the tower.
Prince bin Awg’s car was sitting in front of the hangar. Mack walked over to the car, but instead of the prince he found a staff member from the central defense ministry.
“Prince bin Awg needs to see you right away,” said the man. “I’ll be right with him once I get out of these duds and check with my people,” said Mack.
“The prince’s orders were to bring you directly to town”
“Yeah, very good,” said Mack, starting to walk away.
The aide got out of the car. He was about six-two, with shoulders that looked like they could bounce a cement truck. “The prince gave his orders,” said the man.
“No shit,” said Mack, annoyed. “Have a seat, asshole, I’ll be right with you”
Two of Mack’s security people came out from the hangar. Maybe because of that, the aide stayed back by the car. Meanwhile, Mack went into the life-support shop, a small area at the side used for maintaining and changing into flight gear. The two women in charge of the shop began clucking at Mack as soon as he walked in.
“One at a time,” said Mack. He had trouble with their accents when they weren’t excited.
“Miss McKenna under arrest,” blurted one of the women. “They took her away.”
“What?”
The women explained that six soldiers had come to the gate demanding to see McKenna soon after she landed; mindful of his orders, the security team had denied them access—and then been threatened with being shot. McKenna was called over and apparently agreed to go with the men.
“Why are you saying she was arrested?” asked Mack.
“They said that.”
“The whole world’s gone mad,” said Mack. He left his flight suit on but took a moment to make sure his pistol was loaded. Brown, his maintenance officer, appeared near the doorway.
“Minister, we have difficulties—”
“Can the minister crap and spit it out, Brown,” said Mack. “What’s up?”