"Missile lock!" until he was hoarse.
Suddenly the F-16XL was beside him. The F-4 pilot looked up and saw the man inside the exotic fighter wave, then point up. The Phantom driver got the message. He suddenly yanked back on his stick and put the F-4 into a straining, gut-wrenching climb. No sooner had he moved when the F-16 did an near-impossible sideways maneuver, taking his place in the line of the Fulcrums' fire.
As the F-4 pilot watched, the F-16 suddenly dropped straight down, then, all in one motion, pointed its nose in the vertical and fired off two 300
Sidewinders. The Fulcrum pilots had had no time to react whatsoever. Both of the 'Winders ran true, destroying the MiGs within two seconds of each other.
The F-4 pilot couldn't quite believe his eyes.
"How the hell did he do that?" he yelled back to his radar officer.
"I'm dizzy just watching him," came the reply.
For the next 45 seconds, the F-16XL twisted, turned, yawed, rolled, climbed, dove and generally "translated" through the enemy fighters. Fulcrums were falling out of the skies in two and threes. Finally they pulled back.
Not one had reached the B-52s . . .
But the heavies were already in enough trouble.
The chaff airplanes were doing their best, but a stiff wind was scattering the tin foil strips, thereby cutting down on their effectiveness. Jones's aircraft's ECM was cranking so hard it was getting hot, but still it was all he could do to keep the Stratofortress level in the barrage of SAMs coming up toward them.
"Thirty seconds to go!" he called out, remembering that prior to this mission, the heaviest action he'd seen was a strike against a Circle nuclear plant in the Badlands. But that had been a cakewalk compared to this . . .
Suddenly he saw a speck of light climbing up to meet him in amongst the streams of SAM smoke.
It was Hunter.
"Hey, Hawk!" Jones called out to him, dodging 301
a pair of SA-5s on his starboard side. "It's getting .very hairy up here."
"Just follow me," Hunter radioed back.
With that, Hunter put the F-16 a quarter mile out and 500 feet below Jones's lead airplane. Then, to the astonishment of all, he started shooting. At SAMs
. . .
Turning the F-16XL in its yaw-axis mode, Hunter swayed back and forth, shooting at all the approaching SAMs with his Vulcan Six Pack. He looked like a farmer clearing a row of wheat through a field. The nine bombers simply tightened up their formation and followed him
through.
They were soon roaring directly over the downtown section of the city.
"Ten seconds . . ." Jones yelled out. "Five. Four. Three. Two . . . One . . .
Bombs away!"
On his call, each B-52 bombardier pushed his release button. Instantly, more than a half million pounds of bombs were falling toward the city.
"Climb! Climb!" Jones shouted into his microphone, but the Strat pilots needed no further encouragement. As one, they put their huge jets into a steep climb.
Then they banked away from the city, which was now just feeling the impact of the first of 270 tons of bombs . . .
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Yaz's infrared scope was flashing like crazy . . .
"Jesus, there's something hot down there," he said to Ben Wa who was next to him, piloting the A-37 Dragonfly spy ship.
Wa noted the heading and banked toward it. They were some 100 miles east of Syracuse, patrolling the highways for evidence of Circle troop movements, more mystery trucks or any other enemy activity. After his first taste of behind-the-lines combat, Yaz had to admit he felt more comfortable riding along at 10,000 feet.
"Signal getting stronger," he said, fine-tuning the infrared scope. "This one is burning. Sun's been down for three hours and it's glowing. Pushing out a lot of internal heat . . ."
"Let's go down and take a closer look," Wa said, putting the A-37 into a dive.
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They were over what used to be known as the New York State Thruway. Now the highway-which at one time stretched up and across the entire state-was little more than a collection of long strips of concrete separated by fallen bridges.
Air pirates had been known to set up shop where the roadway was straight and flat and boasting tree cover on each side. These the long spans of highway proved ideal for landings and take-offs. Hunter and his cohorts had once fought a brief war in this area against a notorious air pirate gang known as The Cherry Busters. But now it appeared that most of the road was abandoned and little used by either surface vehicles or aircraft.
Except for those right below them. "I read ten vehicles in all," Yaz said, as the A-37 passed directly overhead. "The hot one is right in the middle. They are not semis. Much smaller readings. And they're not barreling along like the semis did. They're only going about 35 mph, tops."
"Something's slowing them up," Ben replied. "They already know we're here, might as well go down for a real close look . . ."
With that, he put the A-37 into a tight 180 and brought it down to just 250
feet. Yaz automatically turned on the small jet's ECM pod, and he armed its ten small, air-to-surface missiles-just in case. He also switched on the AGM-65 radar's threat warning indicator.
"No threat indications," he reported, meaning that no one on the roadway below was warming
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up a weapon-such as shoulder-launched SAM-to launch at them.
Ben headed straight for the convoy, the A-37's bright nose light switched to on. The glare illuminated the ten vehicles enough for the airplane's belly cameras to get a good photo of them.
"Smile guys," Wa said as the A-37 streaked over the convoy, which had now stopped.
Yaz felt several pings! hit the underwings of the Dragonfly; someone below had taken a few shots at them with a rifle or an automatic weapon.
"No damage done," he reported ten seconds after they made their photo sweep.
"Did you see anything really unusual?" Wa asked him. The pilot had been so busy during the low pass just controlling the jet that he had barely caught a glimpse of the vehicles in the convoy.
Yaz had had a better, albeit brief view. "Armored jeeps I think," he said. "It looks like they're escorting a tank of some kind . . ."
"Only one way to find out for sure," Ben said, turning the Dragonfly westward.
"Let's get the hell back and look at what the camera saw . . ."
Three hours later, Hunter, Jones, Ben and Yaz were gathered around a small video monitor, waiting to see the footage the A-37 had shot for the first time.
"Here we go," Ben said as he started the VCR.
The screen flickered to life. At first it was simply dark. Then gradually, outlines of the roadway, the center island and the trees on either side came 305
into view. Suddenly a bright flash sent a wave of static across the screen, the result of Ben turning on the A-37's nose beacon.
"Here's where we get illumination," Yaz said.
Now the footage clearly showed the ten vehicles lined up on the side of the roadway, stopped at the first sound of the airplane. A few figures were seen scurrying about as the camera drew nearer.
"The vehicle in the middle of them was the one giving off all the heat," Yaz said as the camera passed right over the front end of the convoy. "Here it comes . . . right now!"
The airplane was moving so fast, it was hard to discern just what kind of vehicle it was. But that was what slow motion and freeze-frame were for.
"Let's back it up," Jones said.
Yaz did so and within a few seconds they were watching the fast sweep in slo-mo and reverse.
"Freeze it right there . . ." Hunter said.
Yaz complied and when the static cleared, all four of them were looking at a relatively clean image of the vehicle that had been glowing on the infrared scope.
It was the gold APC . . .
Viceroy Dick gobbled up the handful of painkil- | lers and washed them down with a swig of cham- { pagne. !
"Is your head better, baby?" the young girl be-j side him cooed, softly stroking the bandage over ' his left eye.
"It's getting there," he said, taking another gulp 306
of bubbles.
He had been knocked out cold during the A-7 air strike-while he was watching the scope showing the heavy bombers approaching Syracuse, the attack planes had caught those at the Aerodrome completely by surprise. When they pulled him out of the rubble of the base's communications center, he was covered with bumps and scrapes, the most serious needing twenty stitches over his left eye.
But Dick made the best of the situation. His wound relieved him from the hideous duty of pulling the 150 corpses from the demolished communications center. The Circle doctors had patched him up, gave him a bottle of codeine pills and sent him on his way. He had gone straight to one of the Aerodrome's still-functioning bars, and although it was about three in the morning, was able to pick up the young hooker and bring her back to his quarters to start his recuperation.
Like some many of the girls who had chosen to stay at the Aerodrome, she was dressed in this latest "Queenie" fashion-woman's tux, silk low-cut blouse, dark nylons and short boots. Her hair was cut in the perfect blond shag style that completed the look.
Dick had her remove the blouse and as he fondled her pert breasts, he evaluated his situation.
The United American air strikes-both the raid on the Aerodrome and the carpet bombing of downtown Syracuse-had been devastatingly accurate. Not only had the A-7s creamed the base's communications center, they had so cratered its main runway, that the surviving Fulcrums had had
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a bitch of a time returning to base and landing on the shorter secondary runways. Two of the valuable airplanes had wound up in ditches because of the abbreviated landing space.
"Sixteen airplanes shot down," he murmured. "Two in the goddamn ditch, two take off for parts unknown. And we didn't get a single shot on those bombers .
. ."
"What are you talking about, baby," the girl asked as she rubbed him softly between his legs. "Those guys who bombed us yesterday?"
"Yeah, that's it," Dick said, at first not even realizing he was talking aloud. The codeine was starting to take effect. "What would you know about it?"
She shrugged and pushed her hair back, preparing to perform oral sex on him.
"I just know that guy they call the Wingman was involved," she said. "Everyone was talking about it right afterward . . ."
That's all he needed to hear. Even the lowliest bargirl knew that the great Hawk Hunter-he being the person whose bones were supposedly rotting over in the Arabian desert-was very much alive and working with the United American air forces. Dick had believed all along that Hunter was alive. Even Viktor couldn't take out the famous flag-waving pilot.
"Yeah, what do you know about this guy?" he asked her.
She reached for the champagne bottle and gargled down a mouthful.
"We hear all kinds of things," she said. "He's 308
the best in the air. He's the best in bed. He has
.£. You know> they say the Queen is his girlfriend and . . ."
"Enough!" Dick scolded her. "I'm sick of hearing about this guy. Just get on what you've been paid for ..."
She took another gargle of champagne and then went down on him.
He lay back and tried to figure his next move Damn these United Americans! he thought. It's time they got a taste of their own medicine 309
The sun was just coming up when Hunter spotted the ten-vehicle convoy. They were 60 miles east of the position where Ben and Yaz had first spotted them and were now close to the old state capital of Albany.
He had loaded up his F-16XL with an even dozen air-to-surface missiles and had set his radar on the search and destroy mode. He was intent on taking out the convoy, quickly, thus allowing him to get back to the more pressing duties of the battle for Syracuse.
Once they were certain the gold APC was part of the convoy Wa and Yaz had found, he and Jones engaged in yet another round of speculation as to what the armored vehicle was carrying. They had estimated more than 100 troops-probably Spetsnaz-were accompanying the vehicle, a heavy guard which indicated whatever was inside the
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APC was more important in the enemy's eyes than the cargo being hauled in the Mystery Trucks.
It was also something small, so Jones's guesses included the so-called "key"
mechanisms used to launch ICBMs. With proper adjustment, the keys could fire the remaining midwest-cuw-Badlands ICBMs - assuming there were some left-to just about any spot in the world. Hunter leaned more toward something having to do with the SDI systems in space. Perhaps the Russians were stealing the essential elements to the old SDS system in an attempt to reprogram their own bargain-basement orbiting stations. Rumors to that effect had been floating around the continent since the New Order was installed. And Hunter knew that it was more in the Soviet way of doing things to steal the technology than bother to develop it on their own.
But no matter what was inside the gold tracked vehicle, he had taken off from Erie determined to blast it to smithereens. Because whatever it was, he was sure that the whole United American cause would be better off without it.
He rolled in on the convoy and fired off his first two-missile barrage. Both AGM-65 Mavericks ran true and found the first two armed jeeps in the convoy to their liking. The pair of enemy vehicles disappeared in a flash of fire and smoke.
Hunter looped quickly, watching over his shoulder as the vehicles in the convoys scattered to either side of the road. His "threat warning" buzzer started humming, indicating that someone on the ground was preparing to launch a SAM at him. He took note of the alarm, and set his ECM package to "on."
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Once again he swooped down on the convoy, once again launching two missiles, and once again finding two targets. He was certain that most of the vehicles were empty now -their passengers having taken refuge in the nearby woods. All except the APC, that is. He could see it trying to maneuver its way through the snarled wreckage on the thruway.