Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur - Страница 35

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in them was strengthened.

As David sat in his cockpit, dressed from head to foot in the stiff

constricting embrace of afull-pressure suit, breathing oxygen from his

closed face mask, although the Mirage still crouched upon the ground,

there were four black, red and white miniature rounders painted on the

fuselage below his cockpit.  The scalps of the enemy.

It was a mark of Desert Flower's trust that Bright Lance flight had been

selected for high altitude Red standby.  With the statter lines plugged

ready to blow compressed air into the compressors and whirl the great

engines into life, and the ground crew lounging beside the motor, the

Mirages were ready to be hurled aloft in a matter of seconds.  Both

David and Joe were suited to survive the almost pressureless altitudes

above sixty thousand feet where an unprotected man's blood would fizzle

like champagne.

David had lost count of the weary uncomfortable days and hours he had

sat cramped in his cockpit on Red Standby with only the regular

fifteen-minute checks to break the monotony.

Checking 1115 hours, fifteen minutes to stand down.  David said into the

microphone, and heard Joe's breathing in his ears before the reply.  Two

standing by.  Beseder.

Immediately after stand-down, when another crew would assume the arduous

waiting of standby, David would change into a track suit and run for

five or six miles to get the stiffness out of his body and to have his

sweat wash away the staleness.  He was looking forward to that,

afterwards he would There was a sharp crackle in his earphones and a new

voice.  Red Standby, Go!  Go!

The command was repeated over loudspeakers in the under-ground bunker,

and the ground crew boiled into action.  With all his pre-flight checks

and routine long ago completed, David merely pushed his throttle to

starting position, and the whine of the statters showed immediate

results.  The engine caught and he ran up his power to one hundred percent.

Ahead of him the blast doors were lifting.

Bright Lance Two, this is leader going to take off power.

Two conforming, said Joe and they went screaming up the ramp and hurled

themselves at the sky.

Hallo, Desert Flower, this is Bright Lance airborne and climbing. Bright

Lance, this is the Brig, David was not surprised to find that he was in

charge of command plot.

Distinctive voices and the use of personal names would prevent any

chance of the enemy confusing the net with false messages.  David, we

have an intruder approach at high level that should enter our air space

in four minutes, if it continues on its present course.  We are tracking

him at seventy-five thousand feet which means it is either an American

U.  2, which is highly unlikely, or that it is a Russian spy plane

coming over to have a look at our latest dispersals.  Beseder, sir,

David acked.

We are going to try for a storm-climb to intercept as soon as the target

becomes hostile in our air space.  'Beseder, sir.

Level at twenty thousand feet, turn to 186 and go to maximum speed for

storm-climb.  At twenty thousand, David went to straight and level

flight and glanced into his mirror to see Joe's Mirage hanging out on

his tail.

Bright Lance Two, this is the leader.  Commencing run now.  'Two

conforming.

David lit his tail and pushed the throttle open to maximum afterburner

position.  The Mirage jumped away, and David let the nose drop slightly

to allow the speed to build up quickly.  They went blazing through the

sound barrier without a check, and David retrimmed for supersonic

flight, thumbing the little top-hat on the end of his stick.

Their speed rocketed swiftly through mach 1.  2, mach 1.  5.

The Mirages were stripped of all but their essentials, there were no

missiles dangling beneath them, no auxiliary fuel tanks to create drag,

the only weapons they carried were their two 30 mm.  cannons.

Flying lightly, they drove on up the mach scale, streaking from

Beersheba to Eilat in the time it would take a man to walk a city block.

Their speed stabilized at mach 1.  9 just short of the heat barrier.

David, this is the Brig.  We are tracking you.  You are on correct

course and speed for interception.  Prepare to commence dimb in sixteen

seconds.  'Beseder, sir.  Counting now.

Eight, seven, six .  .  .  two, one.  Go!

Go!

David tensed his body and as he pulled up the nose of the Mirage, he

opened his mouth and screamed to fight off the effects of gravity.  But

despite these precautions and the constricting grip of his pressure

suit, the abrupt change of direction crammed him down into his seat and

the blood drained out of his head so that his vision went grey and then

black.

The Mirage was standing on her tail still flying at very nearly twice

the speed of sound and, as his vision returned, David glanced at the

G-meter and saw that he had subjected his body to nearly nine times the

force of gravity to achieve this attitude of climb without loss of

speed.

Now he lay on his back and stared up at the empty sky while the needle

of his altimeter raced upwards, and his speed gradually eroded away.

A quick sweep showed Joe's Mirage rock steady in position below him,

climbing in concert with him, and his voice came through calm and

reassuring.

Leader, this is Two.  I have contact with target.  Even under the stress

of storm-climb, Joe was busy manipulating his beloved radar, and he had

picked up the spy plane high above them.

In this manoeuvre they were trading speed for height, and as one

increased so the other drained away.

They were like a pair of arrows aimed directly upwards.  The bowstring

could throw them just so far and then they would hang there in space for

a few moments, until they were drawn irresistibly back to earth.  In

those few moments they must find and kill the enemy.

David lay back in his seat and watched with fresh wonder as the sky

turned darker blue and then slowly became the mid-night black of space,

shot through with the riM prickings of the stars.

They were at the top edge of the stratosphere, high above the highest

clouds or signs of weather as known to earth.  Outside the cockpit the

air was thin and weak, insufficient for life, hardly sufficient to keep

the jets of the Mirage's engines burning, and the cold was a fearsome

sixty degrees of frost.

The two aircraft slowly ran out of energy, and they came out together at

the top of a mighty parabola.  The sensation of flight was gone, they

swam through the dark forbidding oceans of space and far below them the

earth glowed strangely, with a weird unnatural light.

There was no time to admire the view, the Mirage was wallowing in the

thin and treacherous air, her control surfaces skidding and sliding

without bite.

Joe was on the target, tracking quietly and steadily and they came round

carefully on to the heading, with the aircraft staggering mushily and

beginning to fall away from these inhospitable heights.

David stared ahead, holding the Mirage's nose up for sustained altitude

but already the stall warning device was flicking amber and red at him.

He was running out of time and height.

Then suddenly he saw it, seeming startlingly close in the rare air,

ghosting along on its immense wings, like a black manta-ray through the

sable and silent sea of space, ahead and slightly below them, calmly and

silently, it drifted along, its height giving it a false sense of

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