Fallout (28 page)

Luke’s weapon selector had automatically cycled to the next Alamo. He held down the trigger, and his second—and last—Alamo fired. He knew he didn’t have time to break lock to select another airplane. He simply needed to get some ordnance into the area and hope he hit one or more of the F-16s now hurtling down toward the nuclear plant.

Luke watched the altitude readout on his target spin through twenty thousand feet, then eighteen thousand feet, then fifteen thousand feet as the F-16s plunged toward the target in a near-vertical descent. They couldn’t have planned a more effective way to evade the Russian missiles headed at them. Two of the missiles went stupid almost immediately, clearly not guiding. Vlad’s single missile flew straight into the ground. Luke’s second missile seemed to be guiding on the target, its motor still rushing to its destination.

Luke checked his radar just as it broke lock and went back into a track-while-scan mode, a fine radar mode of its own but not one in which the Alamo could be guided to a target. “Shit!” Luke yelled to himself. “Chaff? They’ve got chaff?” Where the hell did they get chaff? Damn it!”

On the beach below, the scavenger with a Dodgers cap knelt with his can sifter and grabbed some sand. He glanced around and put the can down. He looked up into the sky at the F-16s plummeting toward the earth with their engines screaming. He pulled off his backpack, grabbed the heavy black laser designator out of his pack. He looked through a gunsight on top of the device to aim it, then pulled the trigger. The invisible laser illumination immediately flooded over the target in eager anticipation of the laser-guided bombs attached to the F-16s above.

Khan pointed directly at the now laser-illuminated target. The two large domes were well outlined in the predawn light.

Vlad’s second Alamo flew by the trailing F-16 and was detonated by the proximity fuse in the warhead. The warhead ripped the tail off the F-16, which flipped upside down and headed straight for the ground. The pilot stayed with his plane and fought to regain control, at least enough to drive his bomb-laden aircraft directly into the nuclear plant. His F-16 tumbled slowly toward the dark ocean to the west of the power plant.

Luke switched his missile selector to Archer, the infrared missile considered by many to be the best in the world.

Suddenly a new voice came on the radio. “Nevada Fighters, this is Eagle 105, flight of four. State your position.”

It was the F-15s. “Five miles northeast of San Onofre,” Luke said, struggling to talk, fly, and shoot all at once.

“Roger. Confirm you’re flying MiG-29s?”

“Affirmative,” Luke yelled, angry they couldn’t get there before now. “The F-16s are the bad guys.”

“Roger. We’re twenty miles out.”

Luke’s heart sank. He didn’t respond.

“Say location of the bogeys.”

“Directly over San Onofre. They’re dropping. The shooting’s already started. We’ve splashed one and are closing on the others.”

The Nevada Fighter Weapons School instructors all knew they had gotten there too late but had to limit the damage as much as they could. They charged in toward the F-16s to kill them any way they could—or at least disrupt them. They fired any missile they had, at any distance, hoping it would cause one or all of the F-16s to change their flight path enough to miss.

Luke locked up the lead bogey with his radar. He was outside the maximum range of the Archer, but he couldn’t wait. He pulled the trigger, and one of his Archer missiles hissed off the rail toward the lead F-16, which was now pulling up, away from the power plant.

Khan saw the Archer racing toward him at the same time he saw the lead MiG-29. He pulled up and turned inland toward Luke. The missile tried to turn the corner but was just outside the lethal range of its warhead when its proximity fuse detonated it.

Luke suddenly felt panic sweep over him; he remembered that the F-16s had Sidewinders. “They’ve got Sidewinders!” he reminded the others.

“Roger,” someone transmitted. The Fulcrums came at the three remaining F-16s in flights of two in combat spread, with Luke and Vlad in the lead, and Stamp and Thud off their left, to the south. Vlad fired an Archer at the lead F-16, at Riaz Khan.

Suddenly, while Luke watched in horror, a flash diverted his attention from Khan’s airplane to San Onofre as the first laser-guided bomb hit directly on the top of a long, flat building just east of one of the domes. The blast was bright yellow for an instant, the concussion visible in the moist sea air. The building was crippled, but the dome was untouched. The second bomb, dropped by Rashim, went in through the now open structure and hit right where Khan’s bomb had hit. The rest of the building’s flat roof collapsed.

Luke saw an Archer come off Thud’s wing and scream toward the last F-16 that was in the middle of its bomb run.

Luke was amazed that they were somehow unable to hit the enormous domes, the home of the active reactors at San Onofre. Whoever was doing the laser designation for the bombs was doing a piss-poor job, Luke thought.

Rashim was right on Khan’s wing as they climbed toward Luke and Vlad. A small cloud of white steam began shooting out of the low building behind them, hissing and screaming into the golden predawn of the coast of California. Thud’s Archer from the south reached the third F-16 almost simultaneously. The plane never had a chance. The missile tore off both its wings, but it had already released its bomb. The third laser-guided bomb went into a flat building next to the second domed plant and blew a large cloud of dust, debris, and steam into the sky. The third F-16 tumbled to destruction on the beach below.

Khan and Rashim climbed through three thousand feet, heading up toward the MiG-29s that were passing through eight thousand feet on their way down. The F-16 radars scoured the sky in front of them. The MiGs’ electronics countermeasures in the humps behind the cockpits were effective in convincing the F-16 radar to look elsewhere.

Luke could now clearly see the waves breaking on the beach behind San Onofre, behind the white steam shooting into the sky. Cars were piling up on the freeway below them.

Vlad pulled to the right of Luke, trying to gain an angle on Khan so he would have to choose to go after one of them. Khan chose Luke, who was straight ahead of him. Luke and Khan raced at each other at nearly twice the speed of sound, now three miles apart. Vlad pulled hard into a high-G turn and tried to get his helmet-mounted sight on Khan. Khan had fought the MiGs enough to know what the outside limit of the helmet-mounted sight was and when he was in danger. He knew that Vlad was nearly to the point where he could fire an Archer. What he didn’t know was that Vlad didn’t have any more missiles. Khan broke off his attack on Luke to defend himself from Vlad. He pulled hard to his left as Rashim passed him on his right and headed toward Thud and Stamp.

Luke was tempted to fire his last Archer missile at Rashim, but knew that the other F-16, the one in the lead, was Khan—and he wanted him. Luke pulled hard right after Khan’s F-16.

Vlad screamed in Russian and pushed his throttles into afterburner to regain airspeed as Khan turned into him. Luke saw his chance. He squeezed the autolock on the radar to find the nearest airplane and lock it up, flooding it with radar illumination, then to slave the Archer missile’s seekerhead to the radar. The MiG had too many switches and moves required, though; he had to keep looking into the cockpit.

He pulled hard on the stick and banked to the right to get his nose on Khan, now only a mile away and turning toward Vlad. Luke pulled harder, with his nose only forty degrees behind the tail of the F-16. He pulled through seven Gs, then eight. His face distorted under the force, his cheeks pulled down. His radar suddenly showed a good lock on the F-16 and good missile parameters. He slipped his finger around the stick until it rested on the trigger and he waited for a clear shot, but Vlad’s MiG was in the windscreen. The Archer was just as likely to go after Vlad as Khan.

Luke pulled harder still to get a better shot and maybe get Khan to reverse himself and see Luke as the threat. Vlad could escape, or even drag Khan northeast into the low-level California mountains over Camp Pendleton, where Luke could get a clear shot. Luke fought to keep the blood in his head and to keep from blacking out. He noticed he was already seeing in black and white, his vision beginning to get grainy around the edges.

“Eagle 105 flight six miles out. State your posit.”

Luke grunted as he tried to speak through the eight-G turn. “Splashed two. Still over San Onofre. Plant has been . . . ugh . . . hit.”

“We have you. We’re right behind you.”

Vlad was in a low rolling scissors with Khan that Luke couldn’t get into or stop. They were heading toward the ground at three hundred knots as each tried to turn inside the other without gaining any angles.

Luke eased the stick forward and rolled left to see Thud and Stamp. They were two miles south, embroiled in their own 2 v. 1 with the other F-16. Luke watched them for five seconds, to make sure they weren’t in trouble. He instantly knew that the F-16 was Rashim. Overly aggressive.

Luke turned back hard right to head down toward Vlad and Khan. As he relocated the F-16 against the dark landscape behind them, a small explosion on Khan’s airplane startled him. Too late he realized it was the rocket motor of one of Khan’s Sidewinder missiles. It raced across the circle toward Vlad, less than half a mile away. Luke fumbled for the radio transmission button, but he couldn’t warn Vlad in the short time it took for the missile to cross the gulf between them. The Sidewinder slammed into the tail of the MiG-29, and the airplane burst into flames. Vlad immediately pulled the ejection handle, and his ejection seat rocketed him out of the burning wreck.

Khan knew he had the MiG-29 as soon as he launched his Sidewinder. He pulled up, somehow now aware of the F-15s closing on him. Khan was between four F-15s coming from the north and Luke coming from the east.

Rashim had his own problems with Stamp and Thud. He turned into the two MiG-29s, hoping to avoid the combination of their Archer missiles and their helmet-mounted sights. He turned hard, keeping them at bay but not trying to get behind them. He was playing a defensive game, knowing that there were now four F-15s in the mix.

Rashim suddenly dumped his nose and headed for the ground toward the power lines that climbed up the hill from the nuclear plant. He couldn’t see the plant from his current position, but he knew the fat wires would lead him right back to it.

He performed a split S as he headed down toward the power lines, hoping to avoid Thud and Stamp as they locked their radars onto his fleeing airplane. He leveled off just above the freeway, crowded with stopped cars, the drivers of which had gotten out to watch the aerial dogfight and gawk at the flames coming from a building on the property of the nuclear power plant, wondering what the screaming sirens meant.

Rashim hugged the ground as he screamed north, then pulled up to climb over the power lines. He was half a mile from San Onofre. He glanced at the growing plume of steam. It was now illuminated by the morning sun and was starkly white and radiant. Rashim pulled hard left and headed toward the steam as he looked over his right wing toward Khan.

On his left, what he couldn’t see was that Thud had stayed at altitude and was racing downhill toward him, rapidly closing the distance. To Rashim’s right, Luke was locked in a death fight with Khan.

Luke was on the ragged edge of the aircraft’s performance. He reversed his airplane and pulled his nose up to slow down and to slice in on Khan’s F-16. He waited for Khan to pull into him aggressively again, as he knew he would. Luke would be ready to cut inside his turn and drill him. Khan had wrestled back, keeping the fight neutral, no one gaining an advantage, countering every one of Luke’s moves, but this time, instead of pulling into him, Khan suddenly broke off and headed for the power plant behind Rashim.

Luke was surprised. He leveled his wings, waiting for Khan to commit himself. He saw Rashim with Khan following him. He jerked his MiG over on its back and pulled down toward the ground, his throttles at full throw, accelerating with gravity’s help to chase the fleeing F-16s. They were bugging out. Luke made sure his spine was straight so his head wouldn’t get buried in his lap by the huge Gs he was about to pull. He yanked back hard on the stick and loaded up the MiG with eight Gs. He went to full afterburner and stayed after Khan, who fell in a mile behind Rashim.

Luke had no idea what Khan was doing, but he was going with him. He eased back on the stick as they leveled out at ground level. Khan tore toward the Pacific. Luke glanced up to his left and saw another MiG descending, much faster than Luke, cutting across toward the lead F-16.

The F-15s finally arrived and crossed from Luke’s right to left, above and behind the MiGs, joining in the tail chase of the fleeing F-16s. There were too many airplanes too close together for anyone to lob a missile.

“Thud, that you going after the westernmost F-16?”

“Yeah, Stick. I’ve got him. No way he’s getting away.”

Thud was going at least two hundred knots faster than the F-16. Luke watched as he closed on Rashim. Thud had pushed his MiG-29 toward the F-16 nearly supersonic. Rashim stayed low. He knew that Thud was too close for a missile shot and, with the closure he had, was likely to overshoot and expose himself. Rashim was content with that.

Thud rushed in with reckless abandon.

Luke didn’t like what he saw. He transmitted, “Thud, watch your closure.”

Thud didn’t reply.

“Thud, pull off and let me have a shot at him. They’re bugging out! Thud!”

“I’ve got him,” Thud replied. “As soon as he sees me closing on him, he’ll come back at me. Then I’ll have him.”

He had gotten it almost completely right. Rashim was looking over his shoulder. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to get away. He’d done what he’d come here to do. Rashim pulled back on the stick, and the F-16 instantly went to 9.5 Gs, as much as the computer would allow. He pulled up and back, directly into Thud.

Thud pulled back on his throttles and tried to increase his distance from Rashim.