Air Battle Force by Dale Brown Page B

for you,” Hal replied. He had launched in the MV-32 Pave Dasher tilt-jet aircraft off the deck of their covert-operations freighter as soon as he saw Patrick’s turn inland to pursue the errant StealthHawk. Loaded with extra fuel as well as electronic warfare jammers, Hal and his crew sped inland and established an orbit right along the Pakistan-Iran frontier, then activated their jammers and decoy transmitters. The decoy transmitters made the MV-32 appear a hundred times larger than its actual size on the Iranian and Pakistani radarscopes—too inviting a target to be ignored.
    â€œWe appreciate it, Tin Man,” Patrick said, “but we see at least a half dozen Iranian and Pakistani fighters within thirty miles of your location and one less than twenty miles that might have detected you. Get as low as you can and bug out to the southeast.”
    â€œWe’re outta here, Puppeteer, but not to the southeast,” Hal responded. “You head southeast. We’ll draw the bad guys away until you’re clear. Save your fuel.”
    â€œAre you armed?”
    â€œNegative,” Hal replied. Normally the MV-32 carried two retractable pods that held laser-guided Hellfire missiles, Maverick TV-guided attack missiles, Stinger heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles, Sidearm antiradar missiles, or twenty-millimeter gun pods—but they also held three-hundred-gallon fuel tanks, and that’s what this mission required. The MV-32 had a chin-mounted twenty-millimeter Gatling gun—that was its only defensive armament, almost completely ineffective against high-speed aircraft. “I need you to give us a heads-up on where the bad guys are, Puppeteer—and remember the third dimension.”
    â€œI hear you, Tin Man,” Patrick replied. He switched his display to one that accentuated terrain even more—the laser-radar view was so detailed and precise that it looked like a daylight photograph. “Head south and stay as low as you can. Nearest bandit is at your four o’clock, moving in to fifteen miles, high. He’s painting you with his radar. You have your jammers on?”
    â€œRoger that.”
    â€œThere’s a pretty deep crevasse at your one o’clock, eight miles. See it yet?”
    â€œNegative.”
    â€œHe’s counterjamming you—looks like he’s got a solid lock on you,” Patrick said. “Turn right twenty degrees, hard .” Patrick knew that the MV-32 was fitted with infrared suppressors on the exhaust end of its fanjet engines, but they would still create very hot dots against the night sky that made easy targets for heat-seeking missiles. The first important task was to turn those hot exhausts away from the Iranian fighter’s infrared sensors. “He’s descending and slowing. He’s trying to line up a shot.”
    â€œTerrific.”
    â€œHe’s too far away for us to reach you in time, Tin Man,” Patrick said. “Turn ten more right. He’s closing to max IR missile range. Get ready to—”
    â€œHe fired!” Briggs shouted. “He fired again! Two incoming!” The MV-32 carried a tail-warning receiver that tracked the heat of enemy aircraft behind it—when the system detected a flash of heat from the same target, it assumed that the target fired a missile and issued a missile launch warning. “We’re maneuvering . . . popping flares.” Patrick could hear the tension in Hal’s voice, hear him grunt as the MV-32’s pilot maneuvered hard into the missile. Once the Pave Dasher turned toward the missiles, the decoy flares would be the hottest dots in the sky, and the enemy missiles would go after them instead—he hoped.
    â€œTranslate positive Z!” Patrick shouted. “Now!”
    The Pave Dasher had one feature the Iranian fighters lacked—the ability to fly vertically. As Patrick watched the pursuit unfold on his multifunction display, the