The Aviator: A Novel of the Sino-American War by Craig Dilouie

Author:Craig Dilouie [Dilouie, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798731981729
Google: ZtFazgEACAAJ
Amazon: B08Y678PZP
Publisher: ZING Communications, Inc.
Published: 2021-04-01T23:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

In war, whether you individually survive or die, triumph or lose, become a hero or don’t, well, a lot of it comes down to dumb luck. All the training, all the planning, all the leadership, it’s about getting better odds when you bet your life.

As I’d find out firsthand. My first big battle was about to begin.

Right now, though, we were still playing our long-range game of chicken, and neither side was flinching.

“Nightwing, roll tape,” the skipper said. “Assume combat spread.”

Dispersion in our flying formation widened for defensive advantage and shifted to line abreast, a moving wall of incredible firepower. I raised the elevators and climbed to about fifteen hundred feet above my flight lead.

Our Rhinos and the J-15s closed at a rate topping nine hundred knots.

Both sides were now in missile range.

The Chinese rapidly approached the foul line.

“Defensive!” Gargoyles yelled on the radio, while my console toned its own warning. I echoed that I was spiked as well.

Somewhere out there, a bandit had me radar-locked.

“Nightwing, tag a target,” Tiger growled. “Turn on the music.”

My console bonged as Kyra gained a lock on one of the approaching planes. The Growler trailing our formation activated radar jamming. From my STORES page, I selected AIM-120 AMRAAM.

Dead silence on the radio. The sky a radiant blue. The sun glaring in my eyes. Seconds grinding slowly past. Sweat trickling under my oxygen mask.

The HUD displayed my diamond-bracketed target’s heading, airspeed, closure rate, and aspect angle, or angle between his nose and mine.

I wondered what the Chinese aviator was thinking and feeling right now.

I didn’t have to wonder long. My shoulders clenched as my missile warning system detected the distinct thermal signature of launches.

“Missiles in the air!” somebody called out.

A lot of PL-12 missiles, the PRC’s answer to the AMRAAM, now hurtling toward us at three thousand miles an hour.

I still couldn’t even see the Chinese fighters. They’d fired at standoff range.

“Nightwing, cleared to kill,” Tiger said. “Fox Three!”

I mashed my control stick’s pickle switch. “Fox Three!”

My airframe thumped as three hundred pounds dropped from one of my wings. Twelve feet long, the AIM-120 streaked away at nearly Mach 4.

Trailing smoke, missiles reached out from our formation toward the horizon. I didn’t see any coming back at us, as the PL-12 used smokeless rocket fuel. My console assured me they were there, and one was going to try to kill me. Dedicated, able to turn on a dime under extreme G forces, and nearly as fast as a bullet.

“Lost lock!” Kyra said.

The targets started to jump across my radar attack display. The Chinese had brought a Growler Shark with them, an electronic warfare plane equivalent to our Growler. Its “music” messed with our targeting system. We’d just lost our radar lock and missile tracking.

Not good.

I pitched my nose down and plunged into a high-energy dive at full throttles.

Of course, our Growler’s electronic warfare system might have made the missile hunting me lose its tracking, but I wasn’t sticking around to find out.

When an active radar missile is coming for you, you have three defenses.

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