Tom Clancy's HAWX

Chapter 30

Troy was taking the long way around. From the Firehawk Compound at Kota Bharu, Malaysia, he had flown due east, rather than south to Kuantan. Over the South China Sea, he leveled out at twenty-two thousand feet and snuggled into the flight path, the highway in the sky that was traveled by commercial flights between Manila and Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. The odds that Sandringham was tracking Firehawk flights on radar was remote, but Raymond Harris was taking no chances.

Troy might have climbed up to a commercial altitude above thirty thousand feet, but he didn't want to be seen visually by the airliners on their highway, and he wanted to be closer to his operational altitude when it came time to turn on his camera pod. He would cross the Sandringham base at around ten thousand because a low-level pass would seem too deliberate. At ten thousand, he'd be high enough to be just another plane in the fairly busy airspace, but low enough to get good resolution on the digital images that he would be transmitting back to Kota Bharu.

As he approached the Malay Peninsula and began his descent, Troy could look off to the left and see the sprawl of red roofs and occasional ivory-colored skyscrapers that marked the city of Kuantan, Malaysia's ninth largest.

Turning north, he could soon make out the Sandringham base. It was larger than he expected, dwarfing the nearby village of Kemasek. He saw the black stripe of a recently paved runway. He also saw — and did a double take when he did — what looked to be a pair of F-16 fighters, just like his.

How could this be?

Harris had insisted that Sandringham airpower consisted of helicopters and executive jets.

It's a good thing we're doing this recon flight, Troy thought to himself as he imagined Harris reacting to pictures of the F-16s that were streaming back to Kota Bharu from his camera pods.

"How the hell did they get those?" Harris asked rhetorically and angrily as Troy climbed out of the cockpit. It was almost as though he were mad at Troy for them being there — blaming the messenger for the bad news.

"Good thing we know about them," Troy said. Maintenance people were already pumping fuel into his F-16.

"We had the rest of the crews watching the feed from your pods live. They're loaded and just about ready to go."

"Just let me drop the camera pod and I'm ready to load some JDAMs myself."

"Change of plans," Harris said. "Loading bombs would take time. I want to launch the strike ASAP. I'm going to have you fly CAP for the strike package. The aircraft carrying bombs won't be able to maneuver as well as they enter the target area. They'll be at a disadvantage if they're challenged. If you come in with just your Sidewinders, you'll be ready to engage immediately."

"Sounds like a plan," Troy said. He was no stranger to air-to-air combat, and the idea of going into a dogfight without a ton or so of bombs under his wings was appealing.

"The strike pack will go in at five thousand feet and drop to one thousand for their bomb runs," Harris explained. "They'll be in two waves of three, hitting separate targets. They've already been briefed on this. You'll stay at five thousand, so you have the altitude advantage if the Sandies react and launch their fighters."

"Two against one." Troy smiled, having been assigned as the lone CAP.

"As the others exit the target area without ordnance, they'll be ready for air-to-air. Your job is just to protect them at their most vulnerable. Then the odds will be two against seven."

This time, there was no long way around. The Firehawk F-16s headed straight down the coast, flying low enough to hope that ground clutter would mask their approach for at least part of the half hour it would take. Sandringham probably didn't anticipate a surprise attack, but then Firehawk had not anticipated the presence of F-16s at the Sandringham base. Surprises can happen, even to surprise attackers.

Troy made his return flight to the Sandringham base flying above and behind the strike aircraft, watching the sky and waiting to engage his search radar until he reached an initial point about five minutes out. If the Sandies detected search radar, they would know that a fighter aircraft was in the area.

The first wave of strike aircraft descended to the prescribed altitude as Troy lit up his radar. Watching the three aircraft going in abreast reminded him of the old days in Sudan, when he had flown a similar pattern with Jenna Munrough and Hal Coughlin.

"Bombs away."

The crackly radio sounds of the first wave attack echoed in Troy's ears.

"One 16 on the runway… don't see the second." At that moment, Troy saw the other F-16 on his radar. It was airborne.

"I've been made," Troy heard someone say as he twisted his neck to get a visual on the Sandy F-16. There!

He saw it closing on one of the first-echelon Firehawk F-16s.

A Firehawk F-16 coming in at low level, laden with bombs, didn't have the ability for evasive action. It became a huge ball of flame as its own ordnance was ignited by a Sandringham Sidewinder.

"Fox Two!" Troy shouted as he locked on to the enemy aircraft and picked off a Sidewinder of his own.

The Sandy F-16, obviously in the hands of an excellent pilot, twisted left, then right. Troy's AIM-9 made the left turn but was going too fast to make the right.

Troy climbed to stay above the other F-16, to maintain his altitude advantage as he attacked again.

With one Sidewinder left, Troy wanted to narrow the distance as much as possible. He wanted to be sure that his next shot was a kill shot.

Just as he tried to achieve a lock-on, though, the other plane sidestepped and broke the lock.

Troy bored in, eager to close in and finish the fight. Closer.

Closer.

Whoa! What happened?

One second, he was closing on the other F-16; the next, he was watching it slip beneath him like sand through your fingers at the beach. The opposing pilot had throttled back and let Troy overshoot.

Troy banked hard. Having overshot, he was outside the other pilot's turn radius. If the other plane continued its turn, Troy knew he could possibly get back inside, but the pilot reversed his own turn as Troy turned. Again, Troy overshot him.

Troy throttled back, trying both to jockey himself back into shooting position and to prevent his opponent from getting a clean shot.

As the two aircraft scissored across the Malaysian landscape, Troy knew that if he could coax the other guy into maintaining his defensive turn, rather than reversing and turning the other way, he would have the opening that he sought. But this wasn't working. The other pilot could not be coaxed.

Again and again, Troy turned and watched the other F-16 slip away.

Gotta try something, Troy thought.

As he got behind the other aircraft, and just before the guy reversed his turn, Troy throttled back, allowing him to stem their lateral separation and turn with the other F-16.

This gave him the split second that he needed. "Fox Two," Troy whispered.

The other F-16 banked hard to the left to avoid the missile.

This deft maneuver worked.

The missile missed by no more than a few feet from the aircraft.

However, the shock wave from the Sidewinder blowing by prevented the other pilot from reversing his turn as he had become accustomed.

Troy was very close and still in firing position as the other plane was momentarily locked in a turn and unable to execute a turn reversal.

Within a second, this situation would change, but that was then, and Troy was in the moment.

He thumbed the trigger of his M61 and watched the stream of twenty-millimeter rounds streak toward the other plane — and connect.

Troy saw a piece of the tail tear off and cartwheel upward.

Troy watched the puffs of dust and smoke as his rounds struck home and watched the hits march up the belly of the F-16, which was still locked in its leftward bank.

Everything turned into a blinding sheet of light as one of Troy's twenty-millimeter high-explosive rounds connected with the fuel tank of the other aircraft.

The whole engagement had lasted less than thirty seconds, the burst from the Vulcan cannon no more than two or three.

Troy looked around to get his bearings.

He saw the plume of black where once there had been another F-16. Beneath him, there was only jungle. There was no ocean to be seen. His rolling, running dogfight had taken him deep into the mountainous middle of Malaysia, far from Kuantan.

"Firehawk CAP here, scratch one bogie," he reported. "This is Firehawk Leader, CAP. We're over the target. Firehawk Three didn't make it. No chute."

Part of the strike package had continued to orbit the target area looking for signs of life in the wreckage of the aircraft that was shot down by the F-16 that Troy had killed.

As he passed over the newly paved, now newly cratered, Sandringham runway, Troy could see the wreckage of the Firehawk F-16 and the other Sandy F-16. The latter had the misfortune of being ready for takeoff just as the bombers arrived. It didn't stand a chance.

When it was determined that the Firehawk pilot had not survived, the eight surviving Firehawk aircraft formed up and headed back toward Kota Bharu.

The score was Firehawk two, Sandies one. As far as the bombing was concerned, Raymond Harris had wanted to deal a blow, and a blow had been dealt.