PART 9
The missile came off the rail.
Fast.
Bright.
Deadly.
Rodriguez yelled, “Power routed!”
I flipped the emergency broadcast switch and dumped every watt into the air like a scream.
The cockpit screens flickered.
For one terrifying second, the aircraft went half blind.
Then the missile behind us twitched.
Not much.
Enough.
It veered toward the massive heat bloom from our flares and the screaming electronic noise from the overloaded comm gear.
It missed our tail by so little the aircraft shook like it had been punched.
Then it locked onto the next hottest, loudest thing in the sky.
The enemy commander’s wingman.
Parker whispered, “No way.”
The missile detonated in the wingman’s path.
The fighter disappeared in a white flash.
Rodriguez came over the intercom, breathless.
“Did we just make his own missile hit his own guy?”
I stared at the radar.
“Technically, he brought it.”
The enemy commander broke hard.
For the first time, he ran.
Viper Lead saw him.
“Cargo 72, hold steady. We’re taking the last two.”
“Gladly.”
Two more missiles streaked across the sky.
One enemy fighter vanished into cloud trailing fire.
The other dove away, damaged, no longer interested in the slow fat cargo plane he had come to kill.
The sky went quiet in the way only battlefields do.
Too sudden.
Too wide.
Too full of the question of why you were still breathing.
Inside the cockpit, nobody spoke.
The alarms still screamed.
The left wing still smoked.
The number one engine was dead.
The number three engine was angry.
Fuel was bleeding somewhere I did not want to think about.
But we were alive.
Viper Lead circled close.
“Cargo 72,” she said, voice different now. “You are clear.”
May you like
I let out a breath I had been holding for twelve minutes.
“Copy. Cargo 72 clear.”
