Fortunes of War

25

Other flight of four F-22’s leveled off at 38,000 feet, conning in the dust-laden sky. Bob Cassidy wasn’t worried about the white ice crystals streaming behind the engines — visibility was so bad the Japanese wouldn’t see the contrails. He played with the satellite data down-link and adjusted his tac display. The screen was blank. That worried him. With the dust and the thermals, maybe the satellites weren’t picking up the Zeros. He looked longingly at the on-off switch for the radar. He badly wanted to turn it on, sweep the sky. If the Americans missed the Zeros in this crud, everyone at Chita was going to be cremated alive. Assuming the brass in the White House war room knew what they were talking about. This whole thing was insane. Nuclear weapons? In this day and age?

He was fretting, examining miserable options, when he realized he wasn’t strapped to his ejection seat. Oh, he had armed the seat all right, just before takeoff. Unfortunately, he had forgotten to strap himself to it, so if he ejected he was going to be flying without wings or parachute. Even an angel needs wings, he thought. He engaged the autopilot and began snapping Koch fittings, pulling straps tight. There. Amazing how a man could forget that. Or maybe not. He had too much on his mind. “Hey, Taco! Any word from Washington?”

Taco Rodriguez was the duty officer, sitting by the satellite telephone in Chita. The encrypted radio buzzed, then Cassidy heard Taco’s voice. “They rounded the corner at Khabarovsk, Hoppy, and left the tanker. Four of them, they say. About five hundred miles ahead of you. Call you back in a bit.”

“Thanks, Taco.”

The F-22’s were making Mach 1.4, better than a thousand knots over the ground. Presumably, the Zeros were also supercruising. Five hundred miles — the flights would meet in about fifteen minutes.

A quarter of an hour. Not much. Just a whole lifetime. He had just four F-22’s to intercept the Zeros. Cassidy would have brought more along if he had had them. His only other planes, exactly two, were being swarmed over by mechanics. Several more planes were inbound from Germany, but this morning he had just four flyable fighters. The ground crewmen had been pretty blase about the whole gig when the pilots manned up, Cassidy thought. The word went around the base like wildfire: The Japs are on their way to nuke us! Still, the men did their jobs, slapped the pilots on the backs, grinned at them, and sent them on their way. Just before the canopy closed, the crew chief had said to Cassidy, “Go get “em, sir.” Like it was a ball game or something. Like his ass wasn’t also on the line. Good-looking kid, the crew chief. Not Asian, of course, but he did look a bit like Jiro. About the same age and height, with jet black hair cut short. Jiro wouldn’t be out here in this dirty sky with a nuclear weapon strapped to his plane. Naw. He was probably back in Japan someplace, maybe even home with Shizuko. Sure. Bob Cassidy wiped his eyes with a gloved hand and tried to concentrate. The tac display was still blank. How good was that info the brass in Washington passed to Taco Rodriguez? Could Cassidy rely on it? There were two hundred Americans and several thousand Russian lives on the pass line at Chita. Just how many souls should you bet on that Washington techno-shit, Colonel Cassidy, sir?

Bob Cassidy lifted his left wrist and peeled back the Nomex flap to get a squint at his watch. Fourteen minutes. He had fourteen minutes left in this life.

Dixie Elitch lifted the visor on her helmet and swabbed her face with her glove. The dirty sky irritated her. Dirt at these altitudes was obscene, a crime against nature. The Japs infuriated her. Nukes. She checked her master armament switch, frowned at the blank tac display, and flicked her eyes around the empty yellow sky.

Maybe I should have stayed in California, found a decent man, she thought. God, there must be at least one in California. “If i live through this experience, I am going back to California, going to find that man.” She told herself this aloud, talking into her oxygen mask over the drone of the engines reaching her through the airframe. Well, Dixie, baby, that’s a goddamn big if.

Paul Scheer was the calmest of the F-22 pilots. When he’d been diagnosed with a fatal disease three years ago, he had worked his way through the gamut of emotions one by one: denial, rage, lethargy, acceptance. The comment that had struck him with the most impact during those days of shock and pain was a quote he had seen in a magazine in a waiting room: “We are all voyagers between two eternities.”

Out of one eternity and into another. That’s right. That’s the truth of it. Scheer sat relaxed, his eyes roaming the instrument panel.

Layton Robert Smith III, riding Scheer’s wing, was an unhappy man. He shouldn’t be here. He had been in the United States Air Force for nine years, nine peaceful, delightful years, cruising without sweat or strain toward the magic twenty. Eleven years from now he planned to retire from the blue suits and get a job flying corporate moguls in biz jets. Weekends in Aspen, nights in New York and San Fran, occasional hops to the Bahamas, he could handle it. Fly the plane when the paycheck man wanted to go, then kick back. His mistake had been volunteering to fly an F-22 from Germany to these idiots at Chita. Praise God, if he lived through this he was going to get NEVER VOLUNTEER tattooed on his ass. In Chita, that damned Cassidy had shanghaied him, called Germany, said he needed Smith III “on his team.”

And Colonel Blimp in Germany had said yesst Layton Robert Smith III was scared, angry, and very much a fish out of water. He stared at his master armament switch, which was on. Holy shit!

The Japanese were going to try to kill Smith III. The prospect made his blood feel like ice water pulsing through his temples.

He should have told Cassidy to stick it up his ass sideways. Now he knew that. What would Cassidy have done? Court-martial him for refusing to join the Russian air force? Hell, there was nothing Cassidy could do, Smith told himself now as he lawyered the case, then wondered why he hadn’t thought of that two hours ago. Maybe he should just turn around, boogie on back to Chita. Look at this dust, would you! You don’t see shit like this floating over the good ol” US of A. Or even in Germany. What the hell kind of country is this where you fly through dirt?

Smith III told himself he should quit worrying about the injustice of it all and concentrate on staying alive.

Jiro Kimura adjusted his infrared goggles. They were attached to his helmet above his oxygen mask, and they were too heavy. He would have to hold the helmet in place with his left hand while he pulled G’s, or helmet, goggles and all, would pull his head down to his chest. Maybe he wouldn’t have to pull any Go’s. Perhaps the colonel was right about the radar. At least he had a plan. Jiro looked at his watch. Shizuko was teaching at the kindergarten this morning. She was there now, telling stories to the children, singing songs, comforting the ones who needed a hug. He had been so very lucky in his marriage. Shizuko was the perfect woman, without fault. She was the female half of him. He loved her and missed her terribly. With the goggles on, Jiro Kimura scanned the dusty sky. He suspected he would have only seconds to see the Americans and react — and not many seconds at that. The forecasters had been wrong about this dust. There seemed to be no end to it. He checked his watch again. Yes, it was time. Jiro gave a hand signal to his wingman, then pulled the power back and began a descent.

“Call the Japanese and Russian ambassadors,” President David Herbert Hood told the national security adviser, Jack Innes. “Ask them to come to the White House again as soon as possible.” It was one o’clock in the morning in Washington. Innes didn’t ask questions. He got up from the table and went to a telephone in the back of the White House war room.

Hood turned to General Tuck, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “It’s time for us to get in the middle. Congress has been loath to get involved. Things have changed. We’ve got to step between these people before they trigger something no one can stop.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want to get on television later this morning, when the sun comes up, talk to the nation and to the Japanese and Russian leadership.” The secretary of state asked, “Sir, shouldn’t we get the congressional leadership over here first, get their input?”

“They can stand behind me when I talk to the nation. Putting out fires is my job, not theirs. And let’s raise U.s. forces to Defense Condition One.”

“Whom are we going to fight?” General Tuck asked. “Anybody who doesn’t like the gospel I’m going to read to them.”

Bob Cassidy was breathing faster now, although he didn’t notice it. As the minutes ticked by, he was sorely tempted to use the radar. What if the satellites couldn’t pick the Zeros out of this goo? Maybe the Zeros’ Athena gear wouldn’t work. “Taco, talk to me.”

“Hoppy, Washington says they are at your twelve-thirty, three hundred miles. Space Command is having some difficulty, they say…, but they won’t say precisely what.”

Cassidy growled into his mask, shook his head to keep the sweat from his eyes. He checked his watch again. If the Zeros were transmitting with their radars, he should pick up the emissions. Maybe the Sentinel batteries had educated them. Perhaps the Zeros were running silent, as were the F-22’s. In that case, the advantage would go to the side with outside help. The satellites were Cassidy’s outside help, and just now they didn’t seem all that reliable. He played with the tac display, trying to coax a blip to appear on its screen. Nothing. “Two-fifty miles, Hoppy.”

“Can the satellites see us?”

“Wait one.”

If the satellites could see the F-22’s, Cassidy could safely divide his flight into sections, secure in the knowledge that the other three F-22’s would remain on his tac display even though the dust blocked out the laser data link between planes. Of course, the question remained: If the satellites could see the Zeros, why weren’t they appearing on the tactical displays?

And if the satellites were blind, the F-22’s had to stay together to ensure they didn’t shoot down one another. Was it or wasn’t it?

A minute passed, then another. The tension was excruciating. Unable to stand it any longer, Cassidy was about to fire a verbal rocket at Taco when he got a bogey symbol on his scope, way out there, 260 miles away. He put the icon on the symbol and clicked with the mouse. Zero. Quantity one plus. One thousand seventy-nine knots over the ground. Heading 244 degrees magnetic. Altitude four hundred, which meant forty thousand feet. Distance 257 miles … 256 … 255 … The numbers flipped over every 1.8 seconds. “Stick with me, gang,” he said into the radio, and turned left thirty degrees. He would go out to the north, then turn and come in from the side, shooting at optimum range as the F-22’s flew into the Zeros’ right-stern quarter. When he was ten miles or so to the north of the Zeros’ track, Cassidy turned back to his original course. The two formations rocketed toward each other. Please, God. We need to kill these guys. It’s a hell of a thing to ask you for other men’s deaths, but these guys are carrying nukes. If even one gets through, they could kill everyone at Chita. His formation was where it should be, spread out but not too much so — everyone in sight in the little six-mile visibility bowl. Cassidy wondered what his wingmen were thinking. Perhaps it was better that he didn’t know. Still only one plus on the quantity of Zeros. Damn the wizards and techno-fools!

Fifty miles…, forty…, thirty … At twenty, Cassidy spoke into the radio: “Okay, gang, get ready for a right turn-in behind these guys. Try for a Sidewinder lock. On my word, we will each fire one missile. Then we will continue to close and kill survivors.”

“Two, roger,” replied Dixie. “Three’s got it,” said Scheer. “Four,” Smith answered. Cassidy would not have brought Smith if Taco hadn’t been trying to get over a case of diarrhea; the idiot drank some water from the shower spigot. Joe Malan was fighting a sinus infection, the others were exhausted: Cassidy had kept planes in the air over the base every minute he could these past few weeks. Smith had no combat experience, none whatever. Still, he was the only person Cassidy had to put in a cockpit, so he had to fly. Life isn’t fair. “Turn … now!”

Cassidy laid his fighter into the turn. The Zeros continued on their 244-degree heading. After ninety degrees of turn, the Zeros were dead on his nose, ninety degrees off, five miles ahead, and two thousand feet above him, according to the tac display. Cassidy looked through the heads-up display and got a glimpse of one, then lost it. Damn this dust!

He got a rattle from his Sidewinder. It had locked on a heat source. Cassidy kept the turn in. His flight was sweeping in behind the Zeros. Through his HUD, he saw specks. Zeros. Two. Two?

were there other Zeros? Where were they?

“Let “em have it, gang.” Cassidy touched off a ‘winder. “There’s only two Japs in front of us. They’ve mousetrapped us.”

“Red Three, the Americans are behind us. I have them in…”

Colonel Nishimura made this broadcast over his encrypted radio, and fifteen miles behind him, twenty thousand feet below, Jiro Kimura heard his words. Jiro and his wingman turned their radars to transmit. Yes. The four F-22’s appeared as if by magic. “Five miles at your four-thirty position, Red One,” Jiro said into the radio as he locked up the closest F-22 and pushed the red button on his stick. The first missile roared away. As he was locking up his second target, his wingman fired a missile. They alternated, putting six missiles in the air. Meanwhile, Colonel Nishimura turned hard right and his wingman turned hard left, pulling six G’s each, trying to evade the missiles the Americans had just put into the air.

Bob Cassidy knew for certain he had been ambushed when his ECM indicators lit up. The strobe pointed back over his left shoulder; the aural warning began deedling; the warning light on the HUD labeled “Missile” lit up, then seconds later began flashing. The Japanese planes behind him had just launched missiles.

Cassidy already had fired his first missile. As the targets in front of him separated, he squeezed off a second at the target turning right, Colonel Nishimura, although he didn’t know who was in the plane.

Cassidy’s chaff dispensers kicked out chaff bundles and the ECM tried electronically to fool the radars in the missiles aimed at him. All this was done automatically, without Cassidy’s input.

Bob Cassidy was busily trying to turn a square corner to force any missiles chasing him to overshoot. He lit his afterburners and pulled smoothly back to eleven G’s, two more than his airplane was designed to take. His vision narrowed, he screamed to stay conscious, and the two missiles behind him overshot.

Nishimura’s wingman signed his own death warrant when he turned left, a flight path that carried him out in front of the Americans. Two Sidewinders were aimed at him, and they had no trouble zeroing in. The first went up his tailpipe and exploded; the second went off twelve inches above the main fuel tank, puncturing the tank with hundreds of bits of shrapnel and shredding it. The plane caught fire in a fraction of a second.

Without thinking, the pilot pulled the ejection handle. He died instantly when the ejection seat fired him from the protection of the cockpit. A sonic shock wave built up on his body and disemboweled him before he and his ejection seat could slow to subsonic speed.

Nishimura was lucky. Two of the missiles fired at him went for decoy flares that he had punched off. The other failed to hack his turn. Unfortunately, his flight path was taking him into the area directly downrange of the Americans.

Jiro Kimura’s first missile smashed into Paul Scheer’s airplane several feet forward of the tail. Scheer knew something was wrong when he lost control of the plane — it simply stopped responding to control inputs. Instinctively, he glanced at the annunciator panel, which told him of problems with the plane’s health; he saw that every light there was lit.

What the lights and engine gauges could not tell him was that the plane had broken into two pieces. The tail was no longer attached to the main fuselage.

He glanced at the airspeed indicator. Still supersonic.

The nose was falling and the stick position had no effect. It was then that Scheer glanced in the rearview mirror and realized the tail was gone.

The attitude indicators showed the plane in a steepening dive. He retarded the throttle to idle and popped the speed brakes open. They came completely out and would probably have slowed the plane below Mach 1 had it not been going straight down.

Then the plane began to spin like a Frisbee.

Paul Scheer fought to stay conscious. He wanted to experience every second of life left to him.

Layton Robert Smith III never realized Japanese planes were behind the Americans, so the explosion that blew off half his left wing was a complete surprise.

He had managed to get one Sidewinder in the air and was preparing to launch another at Colonel Nishimura when the explosion occurred under his wing. He had his ECM gear on and the audio warnings properly adjusted, but in the adrenaline-drenched excitement of shooting missiles to kill people, he never heard the warnings or saw the flashing lights.

Shooting to kill was exciting. He had never felt so alive. He had never even suspected that the joy of killing another human being could be this sublime.

Then the Japanese warhead went off under his wing and his plane rolled uncontrollably, faster and faster and faster. He blacked out from the G, despite the best efforts of his full-body G suit. When the G meter indicated sixteen times the force of gravity, Layton Robert Smith III’S heart stopped. He was dead.

The coffin of steel, titanium, and exotic metals containing his corpse smashed into the earth forty-two seconds later.

One of the missiles missed Bob Cassidy by such a wide distance that its proximity fuse failed to detonate the warhead. There was another radar target beyond Cassidy, one slowing to subsonic speed in a very hard turn. The missile might have missed it — the angle-off and speeds involved were beyond the missile’s guidance capability — had not the target turned toward the oncoming missile — turned just enough.

The proximity fuse in the missile detonated this time. The shrapnel penetrated the cockpit canopy and decapitated Colonel Nishimura. The hit was a one-in-a-million fluke, a tragic accident.

Dixie Elitch somehow avoided the shower of missiles that killed Scheer and Smith. She had also turned a square corner, and now she found that she had a head-on shot developing with one of the Japanese planes far below, one of the two that had fired the missiles. Both these planes were now on her tac display. She locked up a Sidewinder and fired it, then another.

One of the missiles guided; the other went stupid.

Dixie didn’t have time to watch. Her ECM was wailing, so she pulled straight back on the stick and lit her burners. She wanted to get well above this fur ball and pick her moment to come down.

Jiro Kimura knew that if he remained in this dogfight, the odds of being the last man left alive were slim. The Zeros had come to bomb Chita, not to shoot down American fighters. Kimura rolled over on his back and pulled his nose straight down. Going downhill, he came out of burner in case one of the Americans was squirting off Sidewinders.

He rotated his plane onto the course he wanted, 260 degrees, and began his pullout. He would get down on the deck and race for Chita while the Americans milled about with Nishimura and the others.

The last Japanese pilot in the fight was Hideo Nakagawa, who had the reputation as the best fledgling pilot in the Japanese Self-Defense Force. He came by it honestly. He was very, very good.

And he was lucky. The first Sidewinder Dixie Elitch triggered in his direction went stupid off the rail; the second lost its lock on his tailpipe and zagged away randomly after six seconds of flight.

The instant Nakagawa realized the second missile was not tracking, he pulled his plane around to target Bob Cassidy, who had come to the conclusion that both the Zeros in front of him were fatally damaged and so was completing his turn toward the threat in his rear quadrant.

Both pilots were in burner — Nakagawa in a slight climb, Cassidy in a gentle descent. And both were almost at Mach 2. Nakagawa managed to get a lock on Cassidy, whom he saw only as a radar target. He squeezed off the radar-guided missile, then pulled his infrared goggles down over his eyes to see if he could locate the American visually. There he was! At about five miles. Nakagawa switched to “Gun.”

Cassidy saw the flash of the missile’s engine igniting under Naka-gawa’s wing or he would never have been able to avoid it. He pulled the stick aft into another square corner while he punched off decoy chaff and flares.

The missile maintained its radar lock on Cassidy’s plane, but it couldn’t hack the ten-G turn. It went under Cassidy and exploded harmlessly.

Nakagawa pulled with all his might to get a lead on Cassidy’s rising plane. As the two fighters rocketed toward each other, he squeezed off a burst of cannon fire, then overshot into a vertical scissors.

Canopy-to-canopy, Bob Cassidy and Hideo Nakagawa went straight up, corkscrewing, each trying to fly slower than the other plane and fall in behind. The winner of this contest would get a shot; the loser would die.

Nakagawa dropped his landing gear.

When he saw Nakagawa’s nose-wheel come out of the well, Cassidy thought he had the stroke. Nakagawa drifted aft with authority.

Cassidy shot out in front. He jammed both throttles to the stops, lit the burners, and pulled until he felt the stall buffet, bringing the plane over on its back, all the while waiting for cannon shells to hit him between the shoulder blades.

Nakagawa had a problem. The designers of the Zero had placed a safety circuit in the gun system to prevent it from being accidentally fired with the airplane sitting on the ground. Only by manually shifting a switch in the nose-wheel well could the cannon be fired with the gear extended. Another peculiarity of the Zero was the fact that the pilot must wait for the gear to extend completely before he reversed the cycle and raised them again. Nakagawa sat in his Zero, indicating 240 knots, waiting for the gear to come up while watching Bob Cassidy dive cleanly away. Furious, he screamed into his mask.

He stopped screaming when a Sidewinder missile went blazing by his aircraft, headed for Mother Earth. He looked up, keeping his left hand under the infrared goggles, just in time to see an F-22 turning in behind him.

Fortunately the gear-in-transit light was out, so he turned hard into his attacker.

The slow speed of Nakagawa’s Zero caused Dixie Elitch to misjudge the lead necessary. Her first cannon burst smote air and nothing else. She was going too fast. She overshot the accelerating, turning Zero. With engines at idle and speed brakes out, she pulled G to slow and stay with her corkscrewing opponent. This guy was damned good! Amazingly, his nose was rising and he was somehow gaining an angular advantage. The G’s were awesome, smashing viciously at her. She fought to stay conscious, to keep the enemy fighter in sight. He was canopy-to-canopy with her, descending through twenty thousand feet. He was close … too close. Somehow she had to get some maneuvering room. She slammed the stick sideways, fed in forward stick. The other plane kept his position on her as she rolled. She stopped the roll and brought the stick back a little. Instantly, the enemy plane was closing, canopy-to-canopy…, fifty feet between the planes. She looked straight into his cockpit, looked at his helmet tilted back, at him looking at her as they rolled around each other with engines at idle and speed brakes out. She saw the infrared goggles and in a flash realized what they were. So that is how he kept track of the invisible F-22!

What she failed to realize was that Nakagawa was trying to hold his helmet and goggles in position with his left hand while he flew with his right. What he needed was a third hand to operate the throttle. Then he was above her, on his back…, and too slow, out of control. He released the stick with his right hand and reached across his body to slam the throttle forward. Dixie realized Nakagawa had stalled as his plane fell toward her. Before she could react, the two planes collided, canopy-to-canopy.

Bob Cassidy had pulled out far below and relit his burners to climb back into the fight. He was rocketing up toward the two corkscrewing fighters — two on his HUD, but he could only see the Zero. They were too close together to risk a shot. Just as he caught a glimpse of the F-22 alongside the Zero, the two fighters embraced. The planes bounced apart, then exploded.

Jesus!

Cassidy rolled and went under the fireball.

Jiro Kimura was on the deck, streaking toward Chita with both burners lit. His radar was off. His GPS gave him the bearing and distance: 266 degrees at 208 miles. Using nuclear weapons was insanity, but Japan’s lawful government made the decision and gave the order. Jiro Kimura had sworn to obey. He was going to do just that, even if it cost him his life. Right now imminent death seemed a certainty: He was hurtling toward it at 1.6 times the speed of sound. The odds were excellent that more F-22’s would intercept him very soon. They were probably maneuvering to intercept at this very second. Even if he dropped the weapon successfully, he would not have the gas to get back to the tanker waiting over Khabarovsk. He was using that gas now to maximize his chances of getting to his drop point. He was going to be shot down or eject. If he ejected, the Siberian wilderness would kill him slowly. If by some miracle he lived, the nuclear burden would probably ruin him. All this was in the back of his mind, but he wasn’t really thinking about it; he was thinking how to get to the weapon-release point. He had F-22’s behind and F-22’s ahead, he believed. And at Chita, the Americans had those missiles that rode up his radar beam. Jiro Kimura didn’t think he was going to get much older. Where, he wondered, was Bob Cassidy? Was he in one of the F-22’s that had been shot down, or was he in one of the planes waiting ahead?

A warning light caught his eye. Athena! The super-cooled computer was overheating. He turned it off.

At that moment, Cassidy was fifty miles behind. The last Zero was not on his tac display. The dust in the air must have screwed up the satellite’s ability to see planes in the atmosphere, he reflected. According to the White House, there had been four Zeros, each carrying a bomb. Three had gone down; the last had escaped. If the pilot abandoned his mission and returned to base, there was no problem. Knowing the professionalism and dedication of the Japanese pilots, Cassidy discounted that possibility.

If the pilot had gone on alone to bomb Chita, there was no one there to stop him. So Cassidy zoomed to forty thousand feet and lit his afterburners. Just now he was making Mach 2.2, maximum speed, toward Chita. The blank tac display was a silent witness to the fact that the three F-22’s he had taken off with were no longer in the air. The radio was silent. He had to find that enemy plane. Dixie Elitch was certainly dead, killed in the explosion of those two planes just a moment ago. Smith III and Paul Scheer … who knew? Maybe they managed to eject. Then again, maybe not. He had to catch that Zero. He checked his fuel. If that plane reached Chita … Cassidy reached for the radar switch, turned it on. It might not help, but it couldn’t hurt. He wondered which plane Jiro had been in. Jiro was one of the best they had, so he was undoubtedly one of them. Even as Cassidy thought about it, the question answered itself. The best pilots always find a way to survive. One Zero was still in the air. With a growing sense of horror, the possibility that Jiro Kimura was in the cockpit of that plane congealed into a certainty. Yes. It must be Jiro!

The ECM indicated that an F-22 was behind him. Jiro watched the strobe of the direction indicator. Yep!

The American probably hadn’t seen him yet, which gave him a few options. He could turn right or left, try to sneak out to the side. Or he could turn and engage. If he kept on this heading, the American would get within detection range before Jiro got to the drop point; then he would launch a missile. Jiro turned hard left ninety degrees, as quickly as he could to minimize the time that the planform of his airplane was pointed toward the enemy reflecting radar energy.

Cassidy saw the blip appear. Forty-three miles. It was there for a few seconds; then it wasn’t. The enemy pilot turned.

Right or left? At least he had a 50 percent chance of getting this right. Right. He turned twenty degrees right and stared at the radar. In a minute or so, he would know. Luckily, he was faster than the Zero, but only because he was high. The thinner air allowed him to go faster. The seconds ticked by. He couldn’t afford to wait too long for this guy to appear, or he would never catch him if he went the other way. But he had to wait long enough to be sure. Cassidy swabbed the sweat from his eyes. The enemy pilot must be Jiro. If he turned left too soon, before he was certain that Jiro wasn’t ahead of him, he was giving Jiro a free pass to kill everyone at Chita — all of them. Dixie was already dead. Scheer. Foy Sauce. Hudek. When the sixty seconds expired, Cassidy turned forty degrees left. He had made up his mind— one minute. Not a second less or a second more. Steady on the new course, he wondered if he should have stayed on the other course longer. Dear God, where is this Zero?

By the time Jiro realized the American had turned back toward him, it was too late. The American fighter was too close. If he turned now, the American pilot would pick him up for sure. Yet if he stayed on this heading— once again he was pointed straight for Chita — the American would see him before many miles passed. Perhaps … He applied left rudder and moved the stick right, cross-controlling. Perhaps he could make a flat turn.

Cassidy was beside himself. He couldn’t think, couldn’t decide on the best course of action. The Japanese fighter had escaped him. Every decision he had made had turned out badly. His comrades were dead, a Zero had escaped … and a boy he loved like his own son was either dead or was flying that plane and going to kill everyone at Chita — with one bomb. He swung the nose of the plane from side to side, S-turning, watching the tactical display intently. If the radar picked up anything, it would appear there.

Nothing. Bob Cassidy came out of burner to save some gas and laid the F-22 over into a turn. He would do a 360-degree turn, see if he could see anything. If not, he would go to Chita and sit overhead, waiting for the Zero to show up. Of course, the Zero pilot would probably announce his presence by popping a large mushroom cloud.

There it is! There! A coded symbol appeared on the radar screen and on the tac display.

Cassidy slammed the throttles into maximum afterburner. The fighter seemed to leap forward.

Although Jiro Kimura didn’t know it, the F-22 Raptor was so high, looking down, that its radar had picked up a return from the junction between his left vertical stabilizer and the fuselage.

He realized the enemy pilot had him when he saw the ECM strobe getting longer and broader. The F-22 was closing the distance between them, and that could only mean that he was tracking the Zero.

Jiro had no choice. He dropped a wing and turned to engage. Since he had the nuclear weapon taking up a weapons station on his left wing, Jiro had had only two radar-guided missiles, and he had shot them both. He had also fired a Sidewinder, leaving him one.

As the two fighters raced for each other, he got a heat lock-on tone and squeezed it off.

Cassidy was already out of burner and popping flares. He didn’t have the Zero visually, but this guy wouldn’t wait. He would shoot as soon as possible, and Cassidy was betting that since he wasn’t using his radar, he would shoot a Sidewinder.

When the missile came popping out of the yellow haze from almost dead ahead, Cassidy rolled hard right, then pulled the stick into the pit of his stomach.

Pull, pull, fight the unconsciousness trying to tug you under while the chaff dispenser pops out decoy flares And the missile went off behind the F-22. The Zero was turning back toward Chita. Cassidy had him again on the tac display. How far is Chita?

Holy … it’s only thirty miles. This guy is almost there!

With his nose stuffed down, Cassidy came down on the fleeing Zero like a hawk after a sparrow. At six miles, he visually acquired the Zero, which appeared as a small dot against the pale, yellowish sky. The speed he gained in the descent was the only edge Cassidy had or he would never have caught Jiro Kimura. Perhaps he should have launched his last missiles at him, or closed to gun range and torn his plane apart with the cannon. He did neither. Cassidy came down, down, down, closing the range relentlessly. He knew Jiro was flying the Zero. He had to be. He wanted it to be Jiro.

Looking over his shoulder, holding his helmet and infrared goggles, Kimura saw the F-22 at about three miles. The pilot kept the closure rate high.

There is time, Jiro thought. If I yank this thing around, I can take a head-on shot with the cannon. But he didn’t turn. He was flying at four hundred feet above the ground. He put his plane in a gentle left turn, about a ten-degree angle of bank. He glanced over his shoulder repeatedly, waiting for the approaching pilot to pull lead for a gun shot. And he waited. It’s Cassidy! He’s going to kill me because I couldn’t kill him. The distance was now about three hundred meters. Two hundred … One hundred meters, and the F-22 was making no attempt to pull lead. It was still closing, maybe thirty or forty knots. Jiro realized with a jolt what was going to happen. He grabbed a handful of stick, jerked it hard aft. The damned helmet … He couldn’t hold it up, so he lost sight of the incoming F-22.

Bob Cassidy’s left wingtip sliced into the right vertical stabilizer of the Zero. The planes were climbing at about fifty degrees nose-up when they came together. Jiro felt the jolt and instinctively rolled left, away from the shadowy presence above and behind him. This roll cost him the right horizontal stabilator, which was snapped off like a dead twig by the left wing of the F-22.

Two feet of the left wingtip broke off the F-22, which was in an uncontrolled roll to the right. Bob Cassidy’s eyes went straight to the airspeed indicator. He’d had enough time in fighters to have learned the lesson well — never eject supersonic. Fortunately, the climb, the lack of burner, and the retarded throttles- he had pulled them to idle just as his wing sliced into the Zero — combined to slow the F-22. In seconds, it was slowing through five hundred knots. Amazingly, Cassidy regained control. He automatically slammed the stick left to stop the roll, and the plane obeyed. He dipped the wing farther, looking for the Zero. There! The enemy fighter was slowing and streaming fuel. Get out, Jiro! Get out before it explodesst

Jiro Kimura fought against the aerodynamic forces tearing at the crippled fighter. He had no idea how much damage his plane had sustained in the collision, but at least it wasn’t rolling or tumbling violently. He glanced in the rearview mirror, then looked again. The right vertical stab was gone!

And the right horizontal stab!

Even as the damage registered on his mind, the plane began rolling. He saw the plume of fuel in his rearview mirror. Jiro tried to stop the roll with the stick. The roll continued, wrapping up. Sky and earth changed places rapidly. The airspeed read three hundred knots, so Jiro pulled the ejection handle.

When he saw the Japanese pilot riding his ejection seat from his rolling fighter, Bob Cassidy devoted his whole attention to flying his own plane.

With full left rudder and right stick, the thing was still going through the air. Chita was fifteen miles northwest. Bob Cassidy gently banked in that direction. He looked below, in time to see Jiro Kimura’s parachute open. He pulled the power back, let the badly wounded fighter slow toward 250 knots. As the speed dropped he fed in more and more rudder and stick. He sensed that the airplane would not fly slowly enough for him to land it. Forget the gear and flaps — he would run out of control throw before he slowed to gear speed. He was going to have to eject. And he didn’t care. A deep lethargy held Bob Cassidy in its grip. Ten miles to Chita. After all, in the grand scheme of things, the fate of individuals means very little. Nothing breaks the natural stride of the universe. But he was still a man with responsibilities. “Taco, this is Hoppy.”

“Yo, Hoppy.”

“All four of the enemy strike planes are down. I am the last one of ours still airborne.”

“Copy that.”

“Relay it, please, on to Washington.”

“Roger that.”

“And tell the crash guys to look for me. I’m about to eject over the base.”

“Copy. Good luck, Hoppy.”

“Yeah.”

He kept the speed up around three hundred. The plane flew slightly sideways and warning lights flashed all over the instrument panel as the base runways came closer and closer. When he was past the hangar area, with the plane pointed toward Moscow, Bob Cassidy pulled the ejection handle.