PART 7
I brought the Hercules into the cloud canyon and climbed hard.
The damaged engine shook.
The whole aircraft protested.
Warning lights flashed.
Parker glanced at me like she was deciding whether to pray or punch me.
“Addison,” she said quietly, using my first name for the first time all flight. “This is tight.”
“I know.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Not in something with a cargo ramp.”
“That did not comfort me.”
The fighters followed.
Three of them.
Maybe their commander wanted to prove the cargo plane had just been lucky.
Maybe pride had finally replaced discipline.
Either way, they came in too close.
I waited.
One second.
Two.
Then I cut right into the cloud wall and dumped flares.
The first fighter followed the heat.
The second followed the first.
The third realized too late that both of them had vanished into boiling white turbulence.
One missile detonated early.
The radar lit with confusion.
Parker whispered, “One of them is breaking off.”
“No,” I said. “He’s blind.”
The third fighter burst out of the cloud ahead of us, nose too high, correction too late.
He didn’t crash.
But he lost position.
Lost lock.
And ran straight into the path of Viper Flight arriving from the southwest.
Viper Lead’s voice came in calm.
“Splash one.”
Rodriguez shouted, “Did our friends just arrive?”
The sky answered for me.
Two F-35s tore across the horizon like knives thrown by God.
The first enemy fighter exploded into flame.
Then another missile streaked past our right side, chasing a second bandit that had been too focused on us to notice the hunters had arrived.
“Cargo 72,” Viper Lead said, “we have you in sight.”
“Glad you could make it.”
“Cargo 72, your left wing is smoking.”
May you like
“You should see the other guys.”
“Working on it.”
