PART 3
The sky ripped open with cannon rounds.
“Rodriguez,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Strap in tight.”
A pause.
“Why did your voice just get scary?”
“Because this is going to get violent.”
“Define violent.”
I shoved the yoke left and rolled one hundred seventy thousand pounds of American cargo aircraft ninety degrees like I had stolen it.
Rodriguez screamed.
Not a short scream either.
A full-bodied, church-parking-lot, I-have-seen-the-face-of-God scream.
The C-130 groaned around us.
Every rivet filed a formal complaint.
Loose gear banged somewhere behind me.
A clipboard flew across the cockpit and slapped the side window.
The enemy cannon fire passed through the space where we should have been.
The fighter overshot.
Fast.
Too fast.
He flashed past our left wing so close I could see the shape of his aircraft through the smoke.
“Was that a barrel roll?” Rodriguez shouted.
“No.”
“What was it?”
“A professional disagreement with physics.”
“Captain, with respect, physics usually wins.”
“Not today.”
The fighter pilot had expected a helpless cargo plane.
What he got was a Hercules that suddenly stopped behaving like prey.
That was the first crack in their confidence.
In air combat, confidence matters.
It makes pilots decisive.
It also makes them predictable.
I leveled the aircraft, dropped the nose, and built speed.
The wounded engine coughed smoke.
The frame vibrated.
The Hercules didn’t like what I was doing to her.
But she stayed with me.
Good girl.
Then the radio finally broke through.
“Cargo 72, this is Viper Flight. Two F-35s ninety miles southwest. We can reach you in approximately eight minutes. Can you hold?”
Eight minutes.
Against ten fighters.
May you like
In an unarmed cargo plane.
I almost laughed.
