The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

seem willing to learn, and that was something. Besides, their oil-rich country,
having learned its own lessons from the Iraqis, had decided that if it were to
have an air force at all, it had better have a properly trained one. That meant
the Soviet Union could sell a lot more of its MiG-29s, despite the fact that
sales in the Israel area were now severely curtailed. it also meant that Major
Arabov was being paid partly in hard currency.
The instructor pilot looked left and right to see that the formation was – well,
not exactly tight, but close enough. The aircraft were behaving sluggishly with
two fuel tanks under each wing. Each fuel tank had stabilizing fins, and looked
rather like bombs, actually.
***
'They're carrying something, skipper. MiG-29s, for sure.' 'Right.' Jackson
checked the display himself, then keyed his radio. 'Stick, this is Spade, over.'
'Go ahead.' The digital radio circuit allowed Jackson to recognize Captain
Richards' voice.
'Stick, we have ID on the bogies. Four MiG-two-niners. They appear to have
under-wing cargo. Course, speed, and altitude unchanged.' There was a brief
pause.
'Splash the bandits.'
Jackson's head snapped up. 'Say again, Stick.'
'Spade, this is Stick: splash the bandits. Acknowledge.'
He called them 'bandits', Jackson thought. And he knows more than I do.
'Roger, engaging now. Out.' Jackson keyed his radio again. 'Bud, follow me in.'
'Shit!' Shredder observed. 'Recommend we target two Phoenix, left pair and right
pair.'
'Do it,' Jackson replied, setting the weapons switch on the top of his stick to
the AIM-54 setting. Lieutenant Walters programmed the missiles to keep their
radars quiet until they were merely a mile out.
'Ready. Range is sixteen-thousand. Birds are in acquisition.'
Jackson's heads-up display showed the correct symbology. A beeping tone in his
headset told him that the first missile was ready to fire. He squeezed the
trigger once, waited a second, then squeezed again.
'Shit!' Michael 'Lobo' Alexander observed, half a mile away.
'You know better than that!' Sanchez snarled back at him.
'Sky is clear. I don't see anything else around us.'
Jackson closed his eyes to save as much of his vision as possible from the
yellow-white exhaust flames of the missiles. They rapidly pulled away,
accelerating to over three thousand miles per hour, almost a mile per second.
Jackson watched them home in as he positioned his aircraft for another shot if
the Phoenixes failed to function properly.
***
Arabov made another instrument check. There was nothing unusual. His threat
receivers showed only airsearch radars, though one reading had disappeared a few
minutes earlier. Other than that, this was an exceedingly routine training
mission, proceeding straight and level on a direct course towards a fixed point.
His threat receivers had not detected the LPI radar which had been tracking him
and his flight of four over the past five minutes. It was able, however, to