142

Lonesome Dove

QUAI KOTAL. SULAIMAN MOUNTAINS. SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN.

It took almost ten minutes before Vaccaro spotted them, and only for a moment, while flying a couple hundred feet over the twisting pass.

The forward-looking infrared camera under the belly of the Warthog interfaced with her helmet, painting in her clear visor thermal images of the darkness below. Something very hot was moving very fast near the bottom of the canyon.

The problem was finding it again, and keeping it in her sights long enough to lock on one of her two AIM-9X Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles. But the ravine was too narrow and winding for a clear shot.

“Red One One, Bravo Niner Six. SitRep.”

Vaccaro frowned under her mask. Wright had convinced her to turn her other comm radio back on, tuned to KAF’s frequency, and now the same controller who had requested her to RTB wanted a situation report.

“A little busy, guys,” she replied.

“Red One One, this is Major General Thomas Lévesque of the Canadian Armed Forces and commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan.”

Well, she thought, turning the Warthog back over the narrow pass, looking for the runaway plane, that’s certainly a proper fucking introduction.

“Still busy, sir. Had eyes on the plane for a moment and—There you are!”

She spotted the heat signature again and immediately activated a Sidewinder, trying to get a lock. That was one of the advantages of the AIM-9X version of the venerable missile. When she used it in conjunction with her Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System, she could point the AIM-9X’s seeker and lock it by simply looking at the target, making her job easier, especially in her condition. Her shoulder continued to throb, especially when working the throttles, but it was her forehead that really bothered her, as the lining of her helmet pressed against her stitches.

Gut up, she thought, as the range finder reported the target almost two thousand feet below her and four thousand downrange.

But before she could release the Sidewinder, her missile warning system blared inside the cabin. Someone had achieved missile lock on her.

“What the—”

The side of the mountain lit up, and she reacted by throwing the Warthog into a tight right turn while pushing the throttles forward.

“Missiles!” she shouted. “Someone’s firing missiles at me!”

*   *   *

Bin Laden led the group of men on the clearing overlooking the pass, aiming the launcher at the incoming jet, which was barely visible in the night sky.

He positioned the target in the center of the sight assembly range ring, trying to get the missile’s heat-seeking head to lock on to the hot exhaust plumes of the large engines in the rear of what he recognized as an A-10.

The cold night and the lack of any other heat source gave the seeker the upper hand. It responded with the acquisition tone, a steady, high-pitched sound signaling missile lock.

Bin Laden pressed the Uncaging switch before squeezing the trigger, momentarily blinded by the blaze as the missile shot out of the launcher, leaving behind a yellow contrail as it streaked across the sky.

A moment later, two of his men also released their missiles.

*   *   *

The g-forces tore at her as Vaccaro cut hard right in full afterburners, losing sight of the narrow pass or the plane getting away, her senses focused on the three pulsating lights rapidly closing in.

She worked the SUU-42A/A countermeasures system, dispensing a combination of flares and infrared decoys, before dropping the nose and turning in the opposite direction, trying to increase the distance between her and the—

Two missiles went for the hot lures dropping behind the Warthog, detonating their high-explosive annular blast fragmentation warheads less than five hundred feet away.

The A-10C shook from the combined shock waves, followed by the sound of dozens of sizzling fragments, like red-hot hail, thrashing her armored skin.

She jerked her head back when a flaming fragment pounded the armor-glass, breaking up into dozens of smaller pieces. Like a burst of smoldering ash, the pieces vanished in her slipstream, leaving behind a dark, grazed spot the size of her fist on the canopy.

Two down. One to go, she thought, working through the pain in her shoulder and forehead while giving her instrument panel a quick glance, verifying no damage, before releasing more flares.

The countermeasures ejected from their underside pod stained the sky in bright crimson as she leveled out less than fifty feet over the forested mountain, cutting back power while turning hard left at almost three hundred knots to position the Warthog at a ninety-degree angle relative to the incoming missile.

G-forces slammed her into the seat, and the titanium frame screeched from the stress—as did her wounds. The A-10C’s wings trembled as she pushed her plane, and her body, to their limits.

“Red One One, Bravo Niner Six. SitRep.”

Seriously?

She couldn’t reply even if she wanted to, not while the g-meter read 7.8 and her head felt as if it would burst at any moment. But she still managed to complete the turn, leveling the wings and pushing full throttle again, accelerating to 330 knots while searching left, then right, trying to locate the incoming—

The blast lit up the sky just above and to her right, where she had released the last load of flares, and the shock wave pushed the Warthog down into the trees.

Shit!

For a second, the belly of the plane sank into the upper branches as glowing shrapnel rained on her like molten lava, bouncing off the armored canopy while the airframe trembled, the control column almost slipping from her grip.

Airspeed plummeted from the sudden friction as branches tore into her undercarriage munitions.

She pulled back on the column while the afterburners torched the forest in her wake. The control panel lit up, signaling failures in multiple weapons systems, from Hydra rockets to her Sidewinders and MK77 incendiary bombs. Her port engine was also overheating.

But she had more immediate problems. Clutching the control column with both hands now, she pulled as hard as she had ever pulled, ignoring her shoulder while slowly inching the A-10C from the forest’s deadly grip.

Her eyes glanced at the airspeed.

230 knots.

If it reached 120 knots, the Warthog would stall and sink in the sea of stone pines while she still had over half her fuel, triggering an inferno.

Never stop fighting, Red One One. Never.

She needed an edge, something to cut the friction.

And it came to her an instant later, as airspeed dropped to 210 knots.

She pulled the trigger on the Avenger 30mm gun, which came alive with a thundering blaze of depleted uranium hell, carving a wide track in the canopy directly in front of her—and producing a twenty-knot decrease in forward airspeed.

But she persisted, praying that the reduced friction created by the rotary canon mowing down the forest ahead of her would offset the increased counterforce of the 30 × 173mm rounds, each nearly a pound in weight, fired at the rate of 4,200 rounds per minute. The tops of pines in her path vanished in a blur of mulch and green debris, ripping away the mountain’s hold, allowing her to spring skyward.

Airspeed shot back up, but not all the way to cruise speed. Her port engine continued to overheat and she had to throttle it back, using opposing rudder and aileron to counter the asymmetrical thrust.

She was free, accelerating once more in the night sky while searching for the runaway craft, but her FLIR camera was malfunctioning, unable to produce any heat images, likely damaged along with most of her underside systems.

Dammit.

Switching on the night vision optics in her helmet turned the darkness into shades of green. But like the team on the ground, who had been unable to see the plane at the bottom of the gorge, she was now blind, incapable of discerning anything deeper than a few hundred feet.

Unless 

As she considered the thought, KAF came back on.

“Red One One, Bravo Niner Six. SitRep.”

Vaccaro shook her head, not at the controller but at the maneuver she might have to do in order to have a chance at catching the fugitive plane.

“I’m running out of options, boys,” she replied. “Dodged three missiles and nearly bought the farm. All weapons systems down except for the Avenger. Where is the cavalry?”

“On its way, Red One One. Ten minutes out. Hang in there. Try to keep eyes on the target.”

“Roger that. Will—”

Another flash down by the edge of the pass.

Realizing she could not continue to play the enemy’s game, Vaccaro used the only card she had left. Pumping the last of her flares, which she was thankful to see were getting dispensed in a red-hot stream arcing away from her flight path, she pushed both engines into full afterburners while dropping the nose and banking the plane, sinking into the chasm while topping 340 knots, just a dash below her maximum speed.

She was going way too fast and also stressing her port engine. But survival depended on proper spacing from the flares.

The blast came once again, from somewhere above and behind her, powerful, reverberating, splashing the canyon with yellow light. Shrapnel tore into her bird, the airframe once again trembling as the armored skin absorbed the detonation. More alarms blared inside her cockpit, more systems malfunctioning.

But her primary enemy now was her speed.

She needed to slow down fast or risk crashing inside the pass.

Deploying the air brakes while cutting back the throttles pushed her into her restraining harness, her shoulder stinging from the pressure.

Damn.

Mustering control, she swung the stick to the left and pressed hard on the left rudder pedal, shoveling the Warthog into a wickedly tight turn to clear the next twist in the winding canyon, her head pounding from the g-forces.

Airspeed dropped to 210 knots. 190 knots. 170 knots.

She adjusted the throttles to hold 160 knots, flying with flaps at ten degrees while diving almost to the bottom of the ravine, leveling off a couple hundred feet from the dry riverbed.

Her eyes scanned ahead now while she managed her speed, turn after turn, as walls of black granite and snowy trees blended into a green-washed corridor.

She had to constantly adjust, constantly compensate for the port engine, which she now kept at idle, letting it cool while she relied on the starboard turbofan to keep her in business.

And that’s when she spotted the rogue plane, disappearing around the next turn, a few hundred feet ahead and just below her, its green silhouette clear against the canyon wall.

It’s a Caravan!

“Bravo Niner Six, Red One One. Be advised target is a Cessna Caravan. Repeat. A Cessna Caravan.”

No response.

What the hell?

She repeated the message and again got no response, which made her think that her comm radios were among the growing list of malfunctioning systems.

Adjusting power to avoid overshooting the Cessna, she slowed down to 150 knots. Doing so placed her dangerously close to her stall speed of 120 knots, but now she had a clear shot with the Avenger.

However, the Caravan turned again, momentarily disappearing from sight. She followed, only to realize that the turn led into a narrower pass. The Cessna had already gone into a slip, wings banked forty degrees with opposing rudder.

Since she had roughly the same wingspan as the Caravan, Vaccaro copied the maneuver, narrowing her profile, squeezing through the constraining walls until they opened up again after the next turn.

She leveled her wings at almost the same time as the Cessna, whose pilot seemed unaware of her presence. At a distance of just three hundred feet, she squeezed the trigger.

And nothing.

Not a damn thing.

Dammit, she thought, glancing at her systems, noticing the red warning light on the Avenger cannon, and also noticing her fuel gauge at 30 percent.

She didn’t have enough fuel to get back to—

Gunfire erupted from the bottom of the gorge, the muzzle flashes pulsating in rhythm with the hammer-like blows to the Warthog’s underside—the Taliban covering the Caravan’s escape route.

Bastards are everywhere, she thought, while trying to diagnose the Avenger malfunction—and also while managing the constant turns, controlling airspeed, and offsetting the asymmetric thrust due to her overheating port engine.

She muscled her way through the volleys pounding her bird, trusting the Warthog’s armored skin, and glanced at the GPS screen. It highlighted the canyon, which was splitting into dozens of fingers as it approached the desert in another fifteen miles, meaning the Cessna could take any one of them, disappearing in the sand dunes. And given the level of resistance she had witnessed inside this canyon, she didn’t want to think about what awaited her in the open.

She had to act, and act now.