Fly by Night

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Davis was captain of a seventy-year-old airplane, one in which he had logged no more than four hours of flight time. He was nearly out of fuel, violating Egyptian airspace, and heading for a high-profile political event without clearance. His copilot was a general practice physician with zero hours of flight time. But at least I’m not high on khat, he mused.

He scanned the northern sky, looking high and low, not sure what kind of profile Blackstar had been programmed to fly. Stay high and rely on stealth? Or go low and mask behind the terrain? The landscape was relatively flat, no mountains or canyons in which to hide, so Davis’ gut told him to look high. That would also give Blackstar more kinetic energy in its terminal dive — more bang for the buck. He figured he was twenty-five miles from Giza. Blackstar had to be close, no more than five miles ahead. Unless it had been programmed to fly a circuitous route. Swing wide and come in from the east? Davis had no way to tell.

“There!” Antonelli shouted.

Davis saw her pointing to the four o’clock position, back over her shoulder.

“Christ, we passed it up.”

The doctor had good eyes — Davis banked right and saw it, the arrow-like Blackstar daggering ahead like some kind of remote controlled demon. Which was exactly what it was. He picked up an intercept track. They’d be right beside the drone in a matter of minutes. Whatever good that would do.

“Where the hell are the fighters?” he asked.

“The what?” Antonelli replied.

“The Egyptians must have air cover, fighters watching out for trouble. They can’t see Blackstar — that’s why Khoury used it, because it’s stealthy. But now we’re here. This old trashwagon must have a radar cross section the size of a building. Somebody has to be tracking us. I figured that if we followed along and tied ourselves to Blackstar, we’d draw some support. Somebody who can take it out.”

They both swept their eyes over the sky but saw nothing. Then an F-16 flying at supersonic speed flashed a hundred yards in front of them.

Antonelli jumped back in her seat, and a second later they hit the jet’s wake vortices, two sharp bounces that made the old airplane groan.

“What was that?” she exclaimed.

“Egyptian Air Force,” Davis answered. “Just like I was hoping.”

“What are they going to do?”

“Good question.”

Davis had a lot of air combat training, much of it flying against F-16s like the one that had just screamed past. He was, however, used to having a little more performance at his disposal.

“I’m hoping these guys will be on our side.”

“So am I,” Antonelli agreed.

Davis watched the fighter that had just dusted them go high, a big whifferdill to reposition. That’s what I’d do. He looked left and right, searching for the other jet. Fighters always came in pairs. You might not see the second, but it was there somewhere. If Davis were to guess, he’d have it camped out at their six o’clock right now, flying S-turns, because F-16s weren’t meant to be driven at a hundred and twenty knots. The pilot probably had an AIM-9 heat-seeker locked and loaded, giving a nice solid “ready” tone on one of their big radial engines. That idea didn’t sit well with Davis, but there wasn’t much he could do. He had asked for fighters, now he had them. But they clearly hadn’t seen the drone. Their radars had guided them to a big, ponderous DC-3, so that’s what their eyes had locked onto.

Davis searched for Blackstar but didn’t see it. In all the commotion he’d lost his visual.

“Dammit!” he said. “Do you see the drone?”

Antonelli craned her neck left and right, searching the sky. “No, not anymore.”

“Great. Just when we get help.”

“What can we do?” she asked.

Davis saw the high F-16 dropping to his altitude, probably getting ready to introduce himself with a few visual signals.

“There’s only one option right now. We surrender.”

Davis held the control column firmly and rocked his wings, big side-to-side rolls that were unmistakable. It was a signal any fighter jock in the world would understand. Knock it off. A pilot’s white flag.

The lead F-16 pulled up on his left, no more than a hundred feet away, trying for a visual to the captain’s window. Davis tuned his primary radio to 121.5 MHz, the international distress frequency, and tried to make contact. The fighter didn’t reply. He was watching the lead airplane edge closer when Antonelli blurted, “There!”

He looked where she was pointing and saw Blackstar. It was five, maybe seven miles away, still heading north. Closing in on its target.

“I see it,” Davis said, “but they don’t. These guys intercepted a blip on their radar, and found an old DC-3. If we keep this heading, we’re going to lose sight of the drone. All we’re doing is pulling them away from the real threat.” He tried the radios again. Still no reply.

“Why don’t they answer?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe they haven’t tuned the frequency yet, or maybe they’ve got people on other radios yakking in their headsets — a command center or air traffic control. It can get pretty busy at a time like this. In a minute or two or ten, we’ll be talking to them. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.”

Antonelli looked out her window at the sleek jet. “But if we cannot talk to them, how will they find the other craft?”

“There is one way,” Davis said. “If I break away toward Blackstar, they’ll follow. The problem is, there’s a guy parked behind us right now. If we make a threatening move, he’s going to fire a missile — but I don’t know how long he’ll wait to do it. Could be five minutes, could be five seconds. For us, it’s a risky maneuver.”

Antonelli didn’t waver. “We’ve come this far.”

Davis looked at the doctor in his copilot’s seat. She had sharp eyes and a cool head, so she was already a better copilot than Achmed. And she was still damned nice to look at. He smiled at her. “You know, by the time you’re done with me — those divorce lawyers back in Milan are going to look pretty tame.”

“No. They are still far more trouble.” She added a grin.

The light moment was interrupted by an orange light flickering on the forward panel. FUEL LOW. Davis checked the gas gauge and saw the needles bouncing on the big E. At this point, he figured bouncing was good. That meant there were still a few gallons of 100-octane sloshing in the tanks. When that stopped, when the needles didn’t move at all — that was trouble.

“Well,” he reasoned, “if we crash, we won’t burn.”

Antonelli’s smile faded.

Davis looked at the lead fighter to make sure the pilot was paying close attention. He then yanked the control wheel all the way to the left. The big airplane rolled into a steep bank, heading right for the F-16. The Egyptian pilot pulled up hard to avoid the collision and disappeared over their heads.

When Davis rolled out of the turn, they were heading straight for Blackstar. He realized he was holding his breath, waiting for the heater to smack into an engine any second. Left or right? he wondered. Davis waited, watched the engine gauges and the fire warning lights. His hands might have crushed the control wheel. But no explosion came. A minute passed, then another. Davis couldn’t see either fighter, but Blackstar was getting bigger in his windscreen.

Davis spotted it first this time. “There!” he said, pointing straight up. They both watched as one of the F-16s raked down from high on Blackstar.

“They see it!” Antonelli said, joy in her voice.

Davis didn’t feel the same joy, not when he saw what they were doing. “No, no! They see it but they’ve got it all wrong. They’re trying to shoot from a forward aspect, nose to nose. They’re trying to use radar missiles, or maybe a face shot with a heat-seeker. That’ll never work against a stealthy target.”

Right then Davis glanced ahead and spotted something else in the distance. Three pyramids no more than fifteen miles away.

“Guns, guns!” he shouted over the radio.

Davis wasn’t sure if the fighters were even tuned to the emergency frequency. Using old-fashioned bullets was the only way they were going to stop Blackstar in time, and that had to be a visual shot, no radar-computed, death-dot gun solution from a heads-up display. The two fighter pilots had to forego all their training, all their gadgets, and go back to basics. In the age of computer-guided smart weapons, their only chance was to throw stones.

Davis had the DC-3 almost next to Blackstar, a half-mile abeam and easing out front. He could see the pyramids clearly, ten miles and closing fast. They were surrounded by what looked like ancient ruins, and beyond that the city of Giza baked in the mid-morning haze. He saw a small airfield in the middle of the city, and thought with a strange calmness, Maybe I can glide there when I run out of gas. At the base of the right-most pyramid Davis saw a collection of tents and vehicles. A collection of people. At this speed, he figured they had four minutes. Then he noticed Blackstar nosing down toward its target, accelerating. Three, he corrected.

The fighters were high, their pilots clearly stumped as they shuffled through modes on their radars, thinking and coordinating with time they didn’t have. The DC-3 was a mile in front of Blackstar now, but Davis didn’t pull back on the power. He didn’t have armament of any kind. But there was a way. There was also one big complication.

“What are they doing?” Antonelli asked, her head craning to watch.

“They’re failing,” Davis said. “They’re not used to dealing with stealthy targets, so they don’t know how to bring this thing down. But we can.”

When her eyes came inside the cockpit they were full of surprise. “What could we do?”

Davis told her. Then he told her the risk involved. He said, “I can’t make a call like that. It’s up to you.”

Antonelli paused briefly. Davis couldn’t imagine what was going through her mind. She looked at him confidently, almost serenely, and nodded.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“Yes, do it!”

“Okay, here goes.” Davis shoved the throttles all the way to the forward stops, and the old radials gave a beastly howl.