Viper Strike

CHAPTER 27

"Made It!" Pamela said. "What's that? Shooting?"

She'd heard the sound before in the streets of Bangkok, a distant rattling sound. It was hard to associate that fireworks snapping with gunfire and death.

"Sure as hell is," Bayerly said, listening. "We'd better get ready to didi."

"Pardon?"

"Di di mau. Move out!"

"Move?" she asked, confused. "Where?"

Bayerly jerked his head toward the door. "Gunfire means someone's closing in. Probably a pretty big op if it's supported by Tomcats off the Jeff. These bozos here can't afford to let us go or get rescued. They'll either move us, maybe try to use us for bargaining later… or they'll shoot us."

"Oh, God…"

He gave her a tight-lipped smile. He seemed calmer now than he had earlier, calmer and more self-possessed. "Something tells me our friend Hsiao isn't going to want witnesses around talking about his part in things. Like kidnapping, torture, and murder for a start. Or revolution." He stood next to the shed's door, stooped slightly as though listening. "Okay. Stand back."

"What are you doing?" she asked.

He didn't answer but took several steps back to the far end of the shed, then threw himself at the door, smashing against the wood with his shoulder.

There was a loud crash, but the door held. "Made It! What are you doing?

The guards will hear!"

"Shit," he said, rubbing his shoulder. "It always works in the movies!"

He backed up again, paused, then took another run at the door. The crash was so loud that Pamela thought the sound must be carrying all over the base.

"They'll hear…!"

"I think our guards took off the first time those Tomcats buzzed us," Bayerly said. He slammed his shoulder against the door again… and again.

"By now they're halfway back to Burma."

He hit the door once more, this time with a splintering crash which tore the door from its hinges. Bayerly plunged through, landing on his hands and knees on the wreckage of the door.

Bayerly grinned. "Let's get out of here."

"Yin kin! Yin kin!" The soldier appeared out of nowhere, an AK-47 raised to his shoulder, the muzzle thrusting at Bayerly's face. Pamela didn't know if he'd been there all along or had just arrived to investigate the noise. His face twisted in fury. "Reho kaho!"

"Okay, okay!" Bayerly said, holding up one hand. He started to rise.

"Keep your shirt on-"

He sprang forward and up, getting under the soldier's AK and knocking its muzzle toward the sky just as the man's finger jerked at the trigger. A burst of full-auto fire rattled the walls of the shed.

The rebel soldier went down on his back, Bayerly on top of him, both men wrestling for the AK between them. The American outweighed his opponent by at least fifty pounds and had the advantage of having one knee on the man's chest. Bayerly tugged hard at the weapon… then changed tactics and pushed down as hard as he could. Caught off guard, the enemy soldier took the full force of the blow across his chest. Bayerly pulled again, and this time broke the AK free of the soldier's grasp. Pamela saw the assault rifle rise in the air, butt down… then descend sharply. There was a crack, and the guard lay motionless on the ground, his forehead oddly misshapen.

Bayerly racked back the bolt on the AK, checking the chamber. A gold cartridge spun through the air. "Let's go."

They hurried around the corner of the shed, then sprinted for the fuel tanks.

Beyond, a hundred-yard clear stretch separated them from the jungle.

Tombstone kept the Tomcat in a vertical climb, afterburners howling. At thirty-five thousand feet he put the aircraft into a half-twist, then cut the burners and let the plane fall on its back, canopy down, as his fingers stabbed at the chaff-release button. Looking "up," Tombstone could see the dark green folds of mountains and valleys, the silver twistings of the Taeng River.

The contrail of the Atoll AAM arrowed toward him from the Earth.

Still pumping chaff, Tombstone let the Tomcat slide into an inverted dive. The trick was to create a large enough radar target for the oncoming missile that its microchip brain would believe that the target's center lay somewhere behind the aircraft… instead of squarely between the stabilizers and the cockpit.

He held his breath as the missile closed…

… and flashed past the tail of his aircraft just as he cut in the afterburners once more.

The Atoll exploded somewhere astern, and the Tomcat shuddered with the blast. Tombstone heard a loud ping, metal striking metal, but the lights on his warning panel remained blissfully unlit.

Falling now, Tombstone righted the F-14 and throttled down to eighty percent. His eyes went to his fuel gauge. Not good. They'd been in the dogfight for less than three minutes, but using the afterburner had burned a hell of a lot of fuel.

He was on top of the dogfight now. Looking down, he could see aircraft and contrails everywhere he looked, spread out between him and the jungle, silvery specks moving against dark green. South he could see the scar of U Feng; west the sun flashed from the Taeng River.

"Eagle Three, this is Eagle Six! I've got two on my tail! Get 'em off!

Shit, they're going for lock! They've got lock!"

"Hold on, Nightmare!" Garrison's voice called. "I'm on them!"

Still diving, Tombstone plunged back into the aerial melee. Pulling up, he saw a Tomcat in a hard turn a mile ahead, closely pursued by a MiG, which in turn was being pursued by another F-14. He was too far to read the numbers, but he knew the Tomcats were Nightmare Marinaro and Army Garrison.

"Break right, Nightmare!" Army called. "Break right!"

The lead Tomcat cut hard to the right just as Garrison fired. "Fox two!

Fox two!"

One of the MiGs exploded seconds later, a burst of jagged, flaming fragments spilling from the sky. Army's Tomcat overshot the second MiG before he could get a shot, however, and the enemy plane stuck to Nightmare's tail.

Tombstone saw that he was in a good position to cut across the arc of Nightmare's turn. He pushed the throttle to full military power, lining up his target pipper on the second MiG.

"Army!" Nightmare called. "Where are you, man?"

"Steady, Nightmare," Tombstone said. "I'm on him."

"He's still got lock!" Nightmare yelled. "Hurry, Stoney!"

The two planes were leading Tombstone now. The pipper on his HUD trailed the MiG, but he couldn't turn hard enough to catch up. "Nightmare!" he called. "When I tell you, break left. That'll give me a clear shot at his six!"

"Rog!"

"On my mark… three… two… one… break!"

Nightmare snapped left in a sharp split-S, and the MiG followed. This guy is good, Tombstone thought. But he'd known in advance where Nightmare would be going and had been able to anticipate the MiG's move and be ready.

His HUD showed a target lock and a tone growled in his ear. "Lock! Fox two!

Fox two!"

The missile sped from its rail, slipped up the J-7's tailpipe and exploded. The MiG's wings closed together like folding hands.

Colonel Wu pulled his J-7 around in a hard, left-hand turn, following the F-5 toward the jungle. He watched as his Aphid heat-seeker AAM slammed into the That Freedom Fighter's tailpipe. A blossom of orange flame engulfed the target's tail, blasting away bits of whirling metal, and the F-5 began plummeting toward the jungle.

That made five kills scored against the enemy, two of them downed by Wu himself. The That aircraft were relatively easy targets. The American-made F-5s were as good as his squadron's J-7s, but the superiority of the Chinese pilots' training was making itself felt.

"Wu t'uan chang! Wu t'uan chang!" an excited voice yelled over his headset. In Chinese military usage he was "Regimental Commander Wu" rather than "Colonel."

"Who calls?" he snapped. The other pilot's voice betrayed growing panic, and Wu could not allow that to continue.

"The American planes, Regimental Commander! They are turning the battle against us!"

Wu looked up through his canopy. Contrails snarled and twisted above him. He saw the black streak of an aircraft burning as it fell and realized it was one of his own.

He'd lost track of the numbers on either side. There was no way to follow the battle in any detail now, not with so many combatants involved.

But the Thais seemed scattered… and between the onslaught from Wu's J-7s and the SAMs at U Feng and along the river, they'd taken heavy casualties.

There seemed to be six American aircraft… and he still had eighteen J-7s in his squadron. Discounting the Thais, that made the odds three to one in his favor.

Wu made a snap decision. "All Dragons," he called. "This is Dragon Leader. Ignore the Thais. Concentrate on the Americans! Repeat, concentrate on the Americans!"

It was the only way to stop the deadly attrition of his own forces.

Airplanes fell from the sky. Tombstone watched another That F-5 explode, victim of a MiG-launched Aphid. Seconds later, Price Taggart loosed a radar-guided Sparrow from almost ten miles away, tracking a MiG which dove for the jungle. The Chinese pilot tried to lose the Mach 4 hunter by weaving in close among the forested ridges… and failed in a spectacularly blazing fireball.

Garrison and Marinaro both reported kills as well. The MiGs were frantic now, and Tombstone thought he detected a new pattern to their movements.

Though spread now across twenty miles of sky, all the way from U Feng to the green line, they appeared to be trying to close with the American planes, forcing them into close combat.

"This is Eagle Two, Eagle Two!" Batman called. "I've got two on my tail.

Correction… four on my tail! Four on me! Jeez, where're they coming from?"

Under that kind of pressure, the Americans' luck wouldn't hold for long.

There were at least eight That aircraft still in the area, but they were not understanding ― or responding ― to Victor Four Delta's calls, and the battle was quickly collapsing into a slugfest, eighteen MiG-21s ganging up on six Tomcats.

Tombstone saw Batman ahead, a black speck pursued by four smaller specks, weaving and twisting back and forth, working to shake his pursuers.

Tombstone checked his position, then swung left, positioning himself so that the morning sun was squarely behind his Tomcat. "Eagle Two, Eagle One," he called. "Coming in on your four, right out of the sun. Give 'em a high speed yo-yo!"

"Copy, Tombstone," Batman replied. "Give the word."

"Ready…" Tombstone studied the rapidly swelling MiGs. They showed no sign that they were aware of the Tomcat stooping on them out of the sun's glare. "Do it!"

Batman's plane started to turn left, then pulled up sharply just as three of the four J-7s on his tail were committed to the turn. They shot past him as he went high, inverted, then dropped again, pulling in behind the former hunters.

The fourth MiG had been lagging behind and countered Batman's maneuver, sticking to the American's tail.

But Tombstone had assumed that the tail-end charlie would be the one to cause trouble… and had already locked on with a Sparrow radar homer. "Fox one! Fox one!" The heavy missile slid out from under the Tomcat's wing.

Tombstone was already concentrating on his next target, a J-7 which was now turning sharply across his line of fire, still in a tight break after passing Batman.

"Target lock!" Batman yelled. "Fox two!"

Tombstone locked onto his target and triggered a slim, heat-seeking package of death. The Sidewinder arrowed away.

The Sparrow caught its target behind the cockpit. Eighty-eight pounds of high explosive shredded the MiG's starboard wing. Fuel in the wing tanks ignited.

Seconds later, Batman's AIM-9 made its kill, followed by the flash and billowing debris cloud of Tombstone's Sidewinder. The surviving MiG was already fleeing, throttled up to full afterburner and lunging for the far side of the green line.

Tombstone dropped onto Batman's wing. "Good to have you back," he radioed.

"Good to be back. Watch it! Three more, nine o'clock!"

"Let's take 'em. Break left."

"Eagle Two in!"

The Tomcats stood on their port wings, turning toward the new targets.

The MiGs, aware that they were being stalked, abruptly broke off and fled north.

"This is Eagle Four!" Taggart called suddenly. "I'm in trouble!"

"Eagle Four! Where are you?"

"On the deck! Two bandits on my six. I've taken a hit!"

Tombstone looked down, saw Taggart's 203 aircraft streaming smoke low above the treetops. VF-95's luck had just run dry. The MiGs on his tail were too close to use missiles. Tombstone could see the puffs of smoke from their cannons dotting a pair of long, straight lines behind them.

"Let's go, Batman!"

"With you, Boss."

Tombstone brought his Tomcat over, plunging toward the ground. He let the lead MiG slide into his targeting pipper as he switched his selector switch to radar homing. Target lock! He heard the familiar growl in his headset and fired. A Sparrow homer shooshed toward the enemy plane.

"Fox one! Fox one! I'm on him, Price! Hold on!"

"Hear you… Stoney…" Taggart's voice was straining against the G-forces as he pulled up. The J-7s followed.

Tombstone's Sparrow started to follow… then swerved erratically and slammed into a jungle-covered ridge.

"God damn it…!" Either the Sparrow had accidentally locked onto the ground… or the MiG had decoyed it with chaff. He opened the F-14's throttle wider, closing the gap.

The lead MiG was firing again. Tombstone saw bits of metal flaking away from the twin stabilizers of Taggart's F-14. The smoke from his engine was heavier now. Taggart was still climbing, but his plane was reacting sluggishly. Tombstone dropped down on the two MiGs less than a quarter of a mile behind them.

"Got the one on the right," Batman yelled. "Lock! Fox two!"

"I've got the left!" Tombstone decided to stay with the Sparrow missiles. He had two of them left, and only one heat-seeker. "Fox one!"

The hunted Tomcat seemed to stagger. Tombstone could tell that Taggart was fighting to keep the wounded turkey under control.

"Eagle Four, Eagle Leader," he called. "Punch out, Price!"

"I can hold it, Stoney!" His Tomcat was dropping again, skimming the trees as the MiGs weaved back and forth on his tail.

Taggart's aircraft exploded with stunning suddenness, bursting into flame, then tumbling over and over and over again until the wreckage sheared through the uppermost branches of the forest canopy.

"Tomcat down, Tomcat down!" Batman called. Tombstone could hear pain in his wingman's voice. "Eagle Four down three miles east of Taeng River, five miles south of the green line…"

The MiGs were climbing on full burners. Tombstone's second Sparrow followed, zeroing in on the lead MiG. He could see the number 612 on the MiG's nose. Tombstone found himself willing the missile to detonate.

A miss! Damn! The Sparrow had passed fifty feet behind the jinking MiG, decoyed this time, Tombstone was certain, by a timely burst of chaff.

His attitude and position were wrong to pursue. "Two-oh-one breaking, Batman! Going high!" He pulled the F-14 clear of the trees.

"I'm with you, Stoney," Batman replied. He sounded shaken.

Behind them, black smoke curled into the sky, grave marker for Lieutenant Ronald Taggart and his RIO, Lieutenant Charles Ziegler.

Their flight was an all-out run away from the shed, past the neatly aligned fuel tanks, and into the open space beyond. The camp was in complete chaos. Pamela could hear the rising whine of the planes she'd seen being started earlier. Once she chanced a look back over her shoulder and saw two heavy-bodied aircraft lifting from the runway with a thundering roar. Other planes seemed to be milling about at one end of the runway, readying for takeoff.

Where were the Navy planes? She could hear a distant rumble of jet aircraft, but outside of wisps and streaks of white high in the sky, she could not see them, couldn't tell if they were engaged in battle or not.

She could see soldiers in the camp, but none were close by, and none appeared to notice the two fugitives. "Run!" Bayerly yelled, and she ran, her legs pumping away. Memories of Hsiao and the warehouse drove her on.

The clearing around U Feng was a hundred yards across, but the ground was soft and broken, making each step treacherous. She quickly found herself slowing. She'd eaten little more than a bowlful of rice in two days, had slept no more than a few hours. In minutes, her lungs were burning with the effort, her breath coming in gasps. She clutched at her side as a stitch hobbled her. She couldn't run much farther.

They were halfway across the clearing when someone saw them. Pamela heard a burst of gunfire behind her, much closer than the rattlings off in the jungle, and something went snap-snap-snap just above her head, making her duck involuntarily. She started to recover… and then her foot turned and she went sprawling to the ground.

"C'mon! C'mon!" Bayerly yelled. He stood above her, breathing hard, the AK-47 raised to his shoulder and pointed back toward the base. "Run!"

But Pamela was on her hands and knees, unable to get up. Her knees, her legs were trembling with the effort which had brought her this far. "I can't…"

"Move, damn you!"

Bayerly's scream was like a physical blow. She found her balance and got her feet under her. Still shaking, she lurched forward.

"Yoot!" a shrill voice yelled behind them. "Yawm pa!"

Bayerly's AK fired, a short burst that assaulted Pamela's ears. She turned in time to see three Thais less than fifty yards away. Two of them staggered and fell with the burst. The third turned and ran back the way he'd come.

She looked back toward the camp. More of those heavy-looking aircraft Bayerly had called Q-5s were climbing into the sky. Her attention was drawn by a loud roar… not the thunder of jet engines but a chattering, propeller sound. Something was rising above the fuel storage tanks.

A helicopter. She recognized the distinctive shape, an American-made Huey, probably, a relic of Vietnam.

And it was skimming low across the fuel tanks, coming directly toward them.