The Hot Pilots (34 page)

“Steve, three-ring circus at four o’clock!” Robbie was shouting, sounding terrified.

“Just another second …” Steve muttered, counting to himself
Mississippi six, Mississippi seven
…

The pipper was staying glued to the MIG’s tail. “I’ve almost got this sucker …” he told Robbie.
And shooting down airplanes is what I do
—

Mississippi eight
— He was totally relaxed now. His mind was clear. He was not consciously trying to anticipate what the MIG would do, and yet
he was able to stay locked on his quarry, as if the 20-millimeter strand of gunfire connecting the hunter to the hunted was
a towrope. Steadily the MIG’s red tail was being whittled away, decreasing its pilot’s control. There was nowhere the MIG
driver could go where Steve wouldn’t be there at precisely the same moment.

Mississippi nine
— The MIG went into an inverted reverse turn. Steve followed him around, pleased at the way his fuel-light Thud was responding.

“There’s no time, dammit!” Robbie yelled. “Break now!”

Mississippi ten
— “Got ‘em!” Steve cried elatedly. The last of his tracers had blown off the MIG’s crimson-painted tail. The ruined MIG cartwheeled
across the sky in flames, trailing a freight train’s length of black smoke.

Steve scarcely registered the MIG’s earthward plummet. He was too busy searching for the SAMs coming to get him. He saw them
at twelve, three, and six o’clock high, riding herd on the sky as they streaked down to intercept his Thud. He went to afterburn,
jinking like crazy; maybe even panicking a little. It was weird and scary to know that those things adjusting their aim to
track him were not being piloted by men, but by electronics.

I’m up against mindless machines
, he thought.
I can’t outsmart them. I’ve to outfly them
. He was enduring maxium G as he slalomed his Thud in two directions at once. Still the SAMs closed on him.

It was a SAM that shot down Chet Boskins in his Mayfly spy plane over the Soviet Union
, Steve remembered, even as he realized just how well the SAMs had boxed him in. No matter where he put his airplane, that
particular piece of sky was well within the lethal vectors of at least one of the three SAMs looking to put the bite on him.

He dived and twisted, putting his Thud through paces like a hooked trout leaping from a stream. It was like being in a brawl
and trying to fend off three assailants at once; it was like being chased by hornets. The SAMs seemed alive, and yet it was
not life as man could understand it. Like enraged insects, these thirty-foot-long, buzzing, winged things racing so swiftly
and cunningly to destroy him seemed possessed of an implacably malign, alien intelligence …

Steve heard and felt the explosion as the SAM on his tail detonated. “Lucky, lucky, lucky—” he repeatedly chanted to himself
in a whisper. The sweat was running in rivulets down his back, dripping down his forehead from beneath his helmet. Trying
to escape the two remaining robot birds was taking everything he had.

He saw the SAM angling down toward him from his twelve o’clock flameout. Afraid he was going to run into it, he popped his
speed brakes. The SAM slashed past his nose, its stubby, triangular wings making it look like an arrowhead.

He retracted his speed brakes and cobbed the throttle, pushing it sideways to go to afterburn. His fuel gauges were on empty.
He had to be flying on fumes. He didn’t care. The one remaining SAM closing on his six o’clock had to be getting low as well.
All that mattered was outrunning it.

I’m going to make it
, Steve began to think.
I’m going to beat these machines
—

And then the two SAMs exploded—

The double blast of thunder and light engulfed Steve, deafening and blinding him. He blacked out as his stomach corkscrewed
around his spine, and his skull rattled like a pea in its pod inside his helmet. His Thud was batted straight up by the first
explosion, and then smacked tail over nose by the second ferocious detonation.

He was only semiconscious as his trained body went on auto pilot. He struggled reflexively with rudder/stick/throttle to regain
control of his airplane. As full awareness slowly returned he realized that his cockpit was filled with angry insectile buzzings
he didn’t immediately comprehend. His vision returned, to show a sky gone from blue to a shade of red as raw as an open wound.

Tumbling through the Sams’ twin fireballs
, Steve’s mind thickly registered.
Thud’s glistening with droplets of fire … Lucky my fuel’s just about gone; that I’ve got no ordnance left, and no ammo, else
I’d have exploded
.

As it was, bits of the flame cloud pressing in against his canopy had somehow wormed their way into the cockpit—

“No, those are warning lights,” Steve mumbled, struggling to clear his head as the red fire outside dulled to a black, smoky
fog. “Those are amber malfunction lights and red fire lights on the panel,” he said out loud, just to hear himself; to know
he was okay. The buzzing he’d been hearing was his warning signals going crazy.

He battled the Thud’s controls as he burst free of the spreading smoke cloud, regaining blue sky. He was climbing, but he
knew from the feel of his controls that his Thud was in trouble. He scanned his gauges, saw he was losing hydraulic pressure.
Control lines must have been severed by the blasts. This bird is never going to make it home
—

He looked around for Robbie, saw him about two miles off, and punched his mike button at the exact same moment as his fuel-starved
engine flamed out. “Robbie, come in! Robbie—!”

Nothing. His radio had evidently been deafened and muted by the blasts. The Thud, its engine dead and its control surfaces
locked due to lack of hydraulics, slowed in its climb. The war bird seemed to poise motionless in midair for a split second,
and then began a twirling belly flop. The ground some twelve thousand feet below began spiraling up.

Got to step out
, Steve thought.
Thank God Robbie’s there to see me and send a Mayday
.

He hunched down, pulling up the hand grips on both sides of his seat to release the canopy. As the canopy lifted away the
shrill wind whipping through the cockpit created a paper blizzard of the charts, reports, and navigational cards he’d received
during that morning’s briefing. He brought his knees up toward his chest, leaned his helmet back against the headrest, tucked
in his elbows, and squeezed the seat-ejection triggers. His pressure suit was automatically inflated as the explosive charge
blew his entire chair straight up out of the cockpit at close to one hundred miles an hour. He had a momentary, bird’s-eye
view of his massive Thud augering in for its embrace with the earth, and then his seat harness automatically released, and
another, smaller, explosive charge ignited, kicking him free of the chair. He tumbled helplessly through the sky, his legs
pumping furiously, his arms swinging, his fingers spread to claw futilely for purchase in the thin air. As he fell his own
involuntary howl trilled within the confines of the rubber oxygen mask. Then his chute deployed. He heard the cruel whip-snap
of nylon catching wind, and clenched against the bone-cracking, sudden halt of his downward plunge. He tore away the sour,
spit-wet rubber oxygen mask as he hung, gently swinging like a pendulum from beneath that blessedly billowing parasol.

It was then that he saw his mighty Thud go to ground. From his vantage point his airplane disappeared to a clap of thunder.
The Thud seemed like a majestic, olive and tan mottled sea bird, cleanly piercing the emerald ocean that was the jungle canopy.

The plane’s gone
, Steve realized.
Time to think about my own survival
.

He was going to be coming down very near that village, and that was bad news. The villagers were likely watching his descent,
and preparing search parties to trap and capture him.

No way
, he thought, shuddering. He’d die before he’d let himself be taken a P.O.W.; to spend the rest of the war eating fish heads
and bug-infested rice in the Hanoi Hilton, or worse …

He’d descended to about three thousand feet. He looked down between his legs. He was pretty much over where the jungle met
the North Vietnamese-tilled fields. If he spread his legs, his left boot was over the patchwork quilt planted area; his right
boot was over green jungle. He glanced toward the village. People looking like ants were threading out into the fields.
Yeah, it was going to be quite a welcoming committee
, Steve thought grimly.

Two thousand feet
— Steve looked up, and saw just beyond the edge of his chute a tiny glinting speck in the sky: Robbie, watching to see where
he went down.

Fifteen hundred feet
— He was tugging on the chute’s risers, trying to steer himself a little bit away from the jungle and a little more toward
the planted field. What he hoped to do was make a relatively safe landing on cleared, level ground, and then run into the
nearby jungle to avoid being captured until he could be rescued. He had no doubt that Search and Rescue would make the effort
to get him out. They would come. He knew they would—

But it was up to him to survive until they arrived …

Five hundred feet
— It was no good. The wind carrying him toward the jungle was too strong. He was going down into the trees—

One hundred feet
— He drew himself up into a ball and squeezed shut his eyes, lacing his fingers protectively across his face as he crashed
through the first, thin, leafy branches of the giant trees that ruled the jungle. The noise sounded like pistol fire as the
ever-thickening branches snapped beneath his cannonballing weight. As he fell the barbed vegetation slashed at his thin cotton
flying suit. It scraped with bony fingers against his helmet. He yelled out in fear and defiance, thinking that at any moment
he would be impaled by some upward jutting branch—

And then his chute’s harness bit into his armpits as he was jerked to a stop. He opened his eyes to see a sunlight-dappled,
silent, green world. On a branch at eye level, less than a yard from his face, a blue and yellow parrot was staring at him
with head cocked, as if to ask what he was doing here.

“Good question, pal,” Steve muttered. He looked down to where his boots were dancing in midair ten feet above the jungle floor.
He looked up to where his chute had become tangled in branches, checking his fall.

“Lucky, lucky, lucky,” he murmured. His heart was pounding. He took deep breaths to try and steady his nerves.
Lucky, all right—so far
.

He drew his survival knife from out of its sheath and began to saw through the risers, one by one. As each rope unraveled
and then parted beneath his blade, he dangled a little more lopsidedly. When only one riser remained, he stared at vegetation-carpeted
ground ten feet below, uttered a short but heartfelt prayer against broken ankles, and cut the last rope.

He hit the ground with his knees bent, and fell sideways, rolling away the impact in the soft ground cover. He got to his
feet and discarded his helmet. He drew his emergency radio—a small black walkie-talkie with a stubby, rubber-coated antenna—from
his mesh survival vest. He thumbed the beeper signal, hoping that Robbie was still up there somewhere, and could home in.

Robbie had hardly finished broadcasting his Mayday before his radio began exploding in reply. First on line was Major Wilson,
Rio flight’s lead.

“Do you see a chute, Three?” Wilson demanded.

“Rog, boss. I see his chute. I repeat. I see his chute. He’s going down into the jungle,” Robbie said excitedly. “Look, I’m
low on gas! The only reason I’ve got anything left is because I’ve been flying at reduced throttle in order to keep watch—”

“That’s just great,” Wilson muttered, sounding pissed. “You’re flying just above stall speed, presenting yourself as a target.
That’s one hot area.” Wilson paused. “As you and the colonel now well know…”

“Look, I need someone to take over to fly ResCap—” Robbie demanded. “We need Search and Rescue—”

“Settle down, Three,” Wilson ordered. “I’m refueling now, and will immediately return. I’ve got another tanker heading toward
you at this moment, and number two is on Rescue frequency. A Spad is on the way, and a chopper’s waiting on the border.”

“Rog,” Robbie said weakly, vastly relieved that somebody had set the Search and Rescue ball rolling. “Thanks, boss … What’s
the Spad’s E.T.A.?”

“About a half hour,” Wilson said.

“Rog.”

“Spad” was the nickname for the prop-driven, A-I Douglas Skyraider. The A-I was based on a design so old it reminded the jet
jockeys of the famous S.P.A.D. biplane fighter of the First World War. The Skyraider had originally been intended as a torpedo
diver bomber, created to see action in World War II. It had missed that war but had served admirably in Korea. In Vietnam,
the Spads were used for close air support and rescue missions. During the latter, the Spad drivers flew dangerously low, and
at suicidally slow speeds over hot areas in order to visually spot downed fliers, so that the rescue helicopter could get
in, grab the guy, and get out in the shortest possible time. The Spads could carry up to four tons of ordnance in addition
to its four 20-millimeter cannons. During rescue missions the weapons were used to protect the chopper, and, if possible,
to keep the enemy from capturing the pilot waiting to be rescued.

“Three—Rio lead here,” Wilson said. “I’ve finished refueling. Rio two and I are on the way to take over. E.T.A. seven minutes.”

“Rog,” Robbie said. He did some quick calculations. Chances were he could hightail it to his tanker, gas up, and be back in
time to rendezvous with the Spad. Robbie figured it was pretty important that he be on hand when the Spad arrived in order
to convince its pilot—if need be—that a rescue attempt was feasible; that the odds of getting Steve out were good enough to
risk exposing a chopper and its crew. It was up to the Spad drivers to make that call, and though most of them were great
guys, willing to give a downed pilot the benefit of the doubt, this particular situation that Steve had gotten himself into
was pretty sticky. The area was very hot, and Steve had gone down very close to an enemy village. The village had sheltered
SAMs, and where there were SAM sites there were usually soldiers …