Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (109 page)

 
          
Two
more drops, and it would be all over . . .

 
          
Salazar
now found himself pulling back on the F-5’s throttles to maintain his position
on the Antonov-26 cargo plane. He checked his watch and flight plan—five
minutes until the next drop. The An-26 was slowing down for the drop, getting
into the proper flight parameters—precise airspeed, altitude and drift correction—for
a ballisti- cally computed drop. For a safety margin, Salazar extended the
flaps ten degrees to allow the F-5 to fly at the slower speed with better
control, and increased his altitude so he could better watch all sides of the
Antonov for signs of pursuit. At his new vantage point just a few meters above
and behind the cargo plane’s rudder, he could see the big vertical stabilizer
oscillate back and forth as the pilot made small corrections to stay on course
. . .

 
          
The
beam of light lanced out of the night sky like a spear thrown from the
Almighty. It hit the pilot’s side of the cockpit like a thunderbolt, the glare
so bright, so sudden that the An-26’s pilot had to fight to maintain control—it
was even too bright in Salazar’s F-5’s cockpit, where it wasn’t even aimed. The
An-26’s pilot was so badly startled he almost lost control of the plane, and
Salazar finally had to peel off to the right, take spacing and put in more
power to stay with him. At less than one hundred feet above the ground there was
no room for error.

 
          
The
An-26 pilot did somehow get back control, but the drop was blown—they had
already moved several hundred meters closer to the
Rio Grande
River
than they should be. Salazar gained more
altitude and saw it: less than a mile behind them, a silver bullet illuminated
like a Christmas tree from hell—a Hammerheads AV-22 Sea Lion tilt-rotor
interceptor with its flashing warning lights, the steerable NightSun
searchlight. Salazar could even see the “FOLLOW ME” sign in huge
electroluminescent letters on its fuselage.
What
was an AV-22 doing in Mexican airspace?

 
          
“Break
radio silence,” Salazar radioed to the Antonov-26. “Get back on course and make
the drop. Ignore the aircraft off your left wing ...”

 
          
“Attention
cargo plane, attention fighter plane, this is the Air Force of the
Republic
of
Mexico
,” a voice cut in on the emergency GUARD
channel. “You are in violation of Mexican air-navigation and national-security
laws. Lower your landing gear and follow me. If you do not comply you will be
forced to land or be attacked. I am authorized by the
Republic
of
Mexico
to use deadly force if necessary.” The
message began to be repeated in Spanish.

 
          
“Continue
the drop,” Salazar ordered over the command radio. “We’ve lost the WET SNOW
beacon, colonel,” the AN-26 pilot relied. “Repeat, we’ve lost the beacon ...”

 
          
“Damn
them . . .” Salazar meant the ground crew that had obviously spotted the
AV-22’s lights and run off. “Proceed on backup timing and flight plan route.
Make the drop. ”

 
          
The
AV-22 had moved closer, almost abeam the pilot’s left side and now less than a
quarter-mile away. The NightSun searchlight was boring into the Antonov’s
cockpit—Salazar’s eyes almost hurt thinking of what the pilots were
experiencing. “Make the drop, ’ he called out again. And then realized that the
An-26 had lost several dozen feet and a good deal of airspeed—the pilot
probably couldn’t see the instrument panel any more. “Get your nose up, get
back on course ...”

 
          
As
the pilot panicked when he saw that his altitude had deteriorated, the An-26
heeled sharply left and up with the engines at full power. A few canisters of
cocaine dropped out of the big cargo doors on the left and right sides, but the
crew had abandoned the drop as well.

 
          
“Lower
your landing gear and follow me or you will be fired on,” the Spanish-accented
voice said again on GUARD. “This is your final warning.”

 
          
Salazar
now threw full afterburner power on the twin turbojets and accelerated above and
past the Antonov-26. When clear of the cargo plane he punched off the two
nearly empty fuel tanks and armed his AIM-4 and AIM-9 missiles as well as the
20-millimeter cannons. He climbed to five thousand feet in twenty seconds,
rolled hard left, and searched for the AV-22.

 
          
Nothing.
The AV-22 crew had extinguished the searchlight and the warning lights as soon
as his F-5 broke formation . . .

 
          
Aboard the AV-22 Sea Lion Two-One

 
          
“Two-One,
target two is climbing rapidly at your twelve to one o’clock position, now four
miles,” the P-3 Orion controller’s warning blared on the scrambled channel.
“Target two is level at five thousand feet, moving to your
eleven o’clock
, airspeed three hundred knots and
accelerating. He’s turning in front of you.”

 
          
Hardcastle
shut down the searchlight the moment he saw the F-5’s afterburners ignite. “Set
the MMR to air-search mode,” he ordered. He pushed in full power, set the
AV-22’s engine nacelles to forty-five degrees for maximum velocity and
vertical-lift authority and began a slow, nose-high climb. “Get the lights off,
crew, we’re under attack.”

 
          
Sanchez
quickly shut off all the exterior lights and dimmed the cockpit lights, but
while she set the multi-mode to air-target search mode she said, “What are you
doing, you can’t dogfight this guy—” “We can’t outrun him, either,” Hardcastle
said. “We’ve got to hold on until—”

 
          
The
center multi-function display on Hardcastle’s instrument panel flared to life.
The Sea Lion’s phased-array radar, which sent out a cone of radar energy that
swept thirty degrees in every direction around the nose, picked up an air
target and locked on. Hardcastle switched the targeting system to slave to the
radar, which locked the infrared scanner onto the fast-moving fighter.
Hardcastle tried to turn fast enough to keep the radar aimed at the fighter,
but the radar quickly broke lock. The fighter was racing in a tight circle
around the Sea Lion.

 
          
“Two-One,
target two has moved around to your
eight o’clock
position, three miles, airspeed
three-fifty,” the Orion controller reported. “Descend and maintain one hundred
feet AGL, turn to heading one-zero-five, vector to the border. You can use the
terrain along the river banks to hide from him.”

 
          
“It’s
no use,” Hardcastle said. “He’s moving too fast. Hang on.”

 
          
Leaving
the throttles at full power, Hardcastle moved the engine nacelles to full
vertical position, then did a tight pivot to face the F-5 fighter head-on and
translated into a hover just out of ground effect at three-hundred feet,
adjusting the throttles to hold the Sea Lion’s altitude steady. The radar
locked on as the nose swept around. “There he is,” Sanchez called out. “We’re
head-to-head. His airspeed’s up to four hundred knots, range two miles ...”

 
          
Hardcastle
shoved the throttles back to full power. With the engine nacelles full
vertical, the Sea Lion darted straight up at six hundred feet per minute. Just
as he started to climb, he could see tongues of flame and bright winks of light
erupt from the point in the darkness ahead where the F-5 was—he was firing on
them . . . Hardcastle quickly switched to the M230 cannon, slaved the cannon
pod’s aiming system to the multi-mode radar and pulled the trigger when the
fighter was within one mile.

 
          
But
the M230 cannon pod wasn’t designed for high-speed dogfights—it was made for
attacking surface vessels and aircraft flying less than half the speed of
Salazar’s F-5. Hardcastle caught a glimpse of the F-5 as it sped less than a
hundred feet under the hovering Sea Lion, wheeled left and tried to turn the
Sea Lion fast enough for the M230 pod to keep track, but he had no chance with
the Chain Gun pod . . .

 
          
Quickly
he selected the Sea Stinger missile pod, then pivoted further to align on the
retreating F-5 fighter as he waited for the aiming donut to appear. But the
instant it popped onto his field of view he made a small correction to center
it on the radar-tracking signal, got a lock-on beep from one of the Sea Stinger
missiles—and fired.

 
          
He
knew the game was over moments after the missile left the pod. It tracked dead
on the hot tailpipe of the F-5E fighter—until Salazar made a hard climbing
right turn to line up again on the AV-22. The small Sea Stinger missile made a
sharp but erratic bob to try to keep up, immediately lost the heat signal, and
exploded moments later. Like the Chain Gun pod, the Sea Stinger, Hardcastle
knew, was just not designed to kill fast-moving jets, especially one as small
and maneuverable as an F-5.

 
          
Now
he dialed the engine nacelles down to begin moving forward—the closer he could
get toward the oncoming F-5, the less time Salazar would have to aim and fire.
But with the F-5 now travelling seven miles a minute, the AV-22 appeared as if
it was in a constant hover. Hardcastle switched back to the Chain Gun pod,
raised the nose and held the trigger down as the F-5 bore in for the kill.
Firing ten high-explosive rounds per second and already partially depleted from
the earlier attacks, the Chain Gun ran out of ammunition in a few seconds, well
before the F-5 fighter opened fire. In a last-ditch effort to save them,
Hardcastle chopped the power and dumped the nose, throwing the AV-22 toward the
earth.

 
          
The
sudden maneuver may have kept Salazar in the F-5 from concentrating a sustained
burst on the Sea Lion but it wasn’t enough to keep Hardcastle’s plane from
getting hit. Twenty-millimeter shells plowed into the center-wing area,
rupturing fuel-transfer lines and causing a fire in the hydraulic and fuel
systems. The F-5 used a little right rudder and walked the murderous gunfire straight
down the left wing, chewing great holes in the wing and splitting open the
left-engine nacelle. The Sea Lion heeled sharply over into the free- rotating
left rotor, and the aircraft plummeted to the ground.

 
          
Because
Hardcastle had almost landed the plane before the attack the drop was only
thirty feet. The left engine nacelle and wing hit first, collapsed into a ball
of flames and burst apart. The destroyed wing tore free of the weakened
center-wing pivot, and the fuselage was thrown another two hundred feet along
the desert and scrub brush before nosing over an embankment and skidding down
into the
Rio
Grande
.

 
          
Although
smoke filled the cockpit, Hardcastle found his harness- release switch,
unstrapped and climbed out of his seat. The left side cockpit windows were
smashed in, clouds of smoke and debris flowing inside and waves of searing heat
enveloping Sanchez. Fueled by a rush of adrenaline, Hardcastle unstrapped her
from the seat and carried her from the plane, cradling her bleeding head on his
shoulder.

 
          
Nearly
ankle-deep in fuel-soaked sand, Hardcastle ran into the
Rio Grande
, waded in thigh-deep water until his legs
gave out, then half-floated, half-crawled to shore, a hundred yards downstream
from the crash site. The Sea Lion lay crumpled on its right side, the
right-engine nacelle bent awkwardly and nearly snapped off the wing and the
right rotor blades stuck deep into the side of the embankment. It looked like a
mangled bird, with its huge cockpit windows a blank death’s stare, imploring
for help. A fire had started in the area of the sheared left wing, and quickly
spread to the right wing.

 
          
“Rice!”
Hardcastle shouted. “
Hidalgo
!” He tried to crawl up to his feet but his legs were too weak. Gursing
his body, Hardcastle made sure Rachel Sanchez was safely out of the water and
breathing, then began crawling through the sand up the embankment.

 
          
Suddenly,
the sound of burning fuel and popping metal was replaced by the smooth,
rattlesnakelike hissing of a jet fighter passing overhead—the F-5 fighter
screaming less than fifty feet overhead. He was coming around for one last pass
. . .