Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur - Страница 43

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Some leery old veteran with hawk's blood in his veins, tough and canny,

and dangerous as an angry black mamba.

Engage two port targets, David ordered Joe, reserving the MIG leader and

the starboard echelon for his attack.

In David's headphones the missiles were growling their anxiety, they had

sniffed out the massed jet blasts below them and already they were

tracking, howling their eagerness to kill.

David switched to command net.  Hello, Desert Flower, this is Bright

Lance on target and requesting strike.  Almost instantly the voice came

back, David, this is the Brig- he was speaking, rapidly, urgently,

discontinue attack pattern.  I repeat, disengage target.

They are no longer hostile.  Break off attack Shocked by the command,

David glanced down the deep valley of cloud and saw the long brown

valley of the Jordan falling away behind them.  They had crossed over a

line on the earth and immediately their roles had changed from defender

to aggressor.  But they were closing the target rapidly.  It was a fair

bounce, they were still unaware.

We are going to hit them, David made the decision through the cold

bright thing that burned within him and he closed command net and spoke

to Joe.  Two, this is leader attacking.  Negative!  I say again

negative!  Joe called urgently.  Target is no longer hostile? Remember,

Hannah!  David shouted into his mask.  Conform to me!  and he curled his

finger about the trigger and touched left rudder, yawing fractionally to

bring the nearest 1VUG into the field of his sights.  It seemed to

balloon in size as he shrieked towards it.

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 enULC 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 rounders, 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 slidin& 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 lefthander, 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

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