Chapter 67
Joe kept the Starlifter’s nose pointed down even as the plane threatened to shake apart. With Saber One diving as well, the two aircraft were now engaged in a massive game of chicken from which neither could safely exit.
If Joe pulled up first, Saber One would fry them from close range. If Saber One’s pilot got cold feet and leveled off, Joe would have the speed to slingshot forward and rip into Saber One from below.
Glancing at the dials on the instrument panel, Joe saw the airspeed indicator above the redline, the engines hitting an overspeed condition, and the altimeter unwinding like a broken clock. Thirty thousand feet had already become twenty thousand, it would be fifteen thousand in less than a minute.
He pulled back on the throttles a fraction. He wasn’t sure how much the old plane could take.
They crossed the Chinese coast in a pair of matching dives. Two huge planes streaking toward destruction at the steepest of angles.
They closed in on ten thousand feet. Alarms began to go off. Joe had no idea what they were, but they couldn’t possibly mean anything good.
They passed eight thousand feet without either pilot letting up.
“Kurt?” Joe asked.
“He’s going to pull up,” Kurt insisted.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because if he doesn’t, we win.”
Win?
Joe guessed that was one way to look at it. If both planes went full lawn dart mode, the rest of Ahab’s plot would be foiled. It was something, though Joe wouldn’t necessarily call it a win.
As they passed through five thousand feet, another alarm went off, but neither Kurt nor Joe bothered to look for the source. With the aircraft shaking almost uncontrollably, they passed through four thousand and on down.
Saber One grew closer and closer until it filled the windshield. And then, with a suddenness that suggested the plane had been yanked skyward by a giant string, it vanished from sight. Its tail-heavy condition had allowed it to flip the nose skyward with surprising agility.
Its pilot had had enough.
Joe followed suit, figuring this was their chance. He grunted as he pulled back on the control column. The old plane shuddered, threatening to break apart. Its wings leveled quickly, but even then its momentum continued to carry it downward like a car hydroplaning toward a guardrail.
With agonizing sluggishness, the descent slowed and then stopped. They were flying at a height of two or three hundred feet now, and heading directly for the spine of a jagged hill, which threatened to cut the plane in half.
Joe rolled the wings to the right, flipping the plane onto its side for a brief second. The belly of the aircraft missed the mountaintops like a matador avoiding the horns of an angry bull. Joe snapped the wing back down and continued on, trying once more to cut under Ahab’s plane.
Though it had pulled out of the crash dive, Saber One had still come down to the deck, just at a more controlled pace. It was now racing along at an absurdly low altitude.
Joe chased it once more, locking in behind it as both planes thundered across the undulating hills, heading overland across the Chinese countryside.
“No more room to get under him now,” Joe said dejectedly.
“Not sure we can catch him, either. At least we’ve brought him down from the stratosphere.
At this altitude, the laser might have an unobstructed range of ten to twenty miles.
And that’s if a mountain doesn’t pop up in the way.
They can’t hit the premier’s plane from here. ”
“One small victory,” Kurt said.
The data link chirped, a message popped up. It came from Rudi. Our jets are turning back. Chinese forces mobilizing nationwide. No response to attempted contact. President asks that you do what you can.
It was a second victory, Kurt thought. Or part of one. Though the Chinese mobilization could turn it all into a defeat, and they still had to prevent Ahab from wiping out the Chinese air force or pivoting to whatever alternate target he and the Yellow Tigers deemed worthy of destruction.
“Stay in behind him,” Kurt said. “I’m going to rattle his cage.”