Callsign: King (Jack Sigler) (Chesspocalypse #1)

Fulbright’s face grew dark as he received the status report from the assault team he’d left behind. Sara’s headset wasn’t wired into the external comms, but she had no trouble interpreting the message written in his scowl. Not only was Jack still alive, but he was fighting back. She tried, unsuccessfully, to hide her smile.

Fulbright must have noticed because an evil gleam appeared in his eyes. “Patch me through to our contact in the Ethiopian Air Force. There’s an unauthorized aircraft out here that they need to know about.”

He moved the mic away from his lips and Sara saw that his smile was back. “Your boyfriend should have kept his feet on the ground.”





23.


The two ETAF Russian-made Sukhoi Su-25 fighter jets approached from behind King and struck without warning.

Fortunately for him, the pilots had been instructed to engage with guns only. With an equivalent price tag of more than $70,000, the Vympel R-73 infrared guided air-to-air missiles they carried were deemed too costly to be used as a first-strike measure against a slow moving and evidently unarmed helicopter. Absent that consideration, he would have died without even knowing that he was in danger. Instead, the lead plane greeted him with a short burst from its Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-30-2 30 millimeter cannon.

Eighteen of the twenty-one rounds fired in that initial volley arced harmlessly past the JetRanger. Two of the rounds were phosphorous-tipped tracers that lit up the display of King’s night-vision device like streaks of lightning. But even as those rounds were flashing by, betraying the presence of hostile aircraft, the other three rounds hit their target. The helicopter shuddered as the projectiles, as thick as flashlight batteries and nearly three times as long, penetrated the aluminum and Lexan airframe. Even though they struck neither flesh nor critical systems, King felt the heat and concussive force on his skin as the rounds passed through the cockpit, far too close for comfort.

King had no idea who was shooting at him, or even what kind of aircraft was involved, but he knew luck alone had saved him. He was an easy target. He hastily reduced the collective pitch and the helicopter immediately dropped almost straight down. More tracers lit up the night, flashing harmlessly overhead. He looked up and saw, blazing like a miniature suns, the engine exhaust of the two attack planes as they flew through the space where he had been only a moment before. The jets arced across the night sky, maneuvering to come around for another pass at him.

The planes’ superior speed was both an advantage and a liability. Because they were so much faster than the helicopter, they could attack from almost anywhere, but at the same time that speed would make it very difficult to hit him with cannon-fire. King didn’t know why they hadn’t simply fired a heat-seeker up his exhaust pipe, but he had no doubt that eventually they would, and then it would all be over. There was, he realized, only one way to survive this.

He kept descending, tilting the cyclic forward and increasing speed in a power dive. The barren landscape, rendered even bleaker in the monochrome night-vision display, rushed up at him. He leveled out less than a hundred feet above the uneven terrain, and began weaving the aircraft back and forth, all the while keeping an eye on the distant moving lights in the sky.

The jets made another attack run, strafing the ground nearby as if he were a stationary target, but King came about and steered under them, well away from danger. The jets broke off and winged skyward, repositioning once again.

King’s instincts told him that the gloves were about to come off. His attackers had probably expected him to be easy pickings, but now that he had demonstrated his ability to elude them, they would look for a quick, decisive solution. His mind raced to find anything that would help him survive the next few seconds.

The JetRanger wasn’t equipped with any weapon systems. He had the M-4 he’d taken from the cavern, but that wouldn’t be much use in a dogfight, even if he had a hand free to use it. He also had one frag grenade.

Maybe… A grin spread across his King’s face. It was a crazy plan, but crazy was better than nothing.

He felt certain that the fighter pilots would use missiles on this pass, almost certainly thermal guided missiles, and there was only one way to elude those—make something else even hotter. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. Since most air-to-air missiles could travel in excess of twice the speed of sound, it would take split second timing.

He watched. He waited. And then, when he saw a bloom of fire under one of the jets, he dropped the grenade out the sliding window, and then hastily pulled up on the collective. The helicopter rose sluggishly, and with each passing second, King knew he was getting closer to the missile now streaking toward him.