DEADLY DILEMMA by Dan Stratman (story read aloud .txt) 📗

“Sorry, guys, that’s not going to happen.” She armed the Gatling gun and squeezed off fifty rounds.

Chapter Forty-Four

Bullets traced a line across the runway, five feet in front of the formation.

Cyndi knew the fighter pilot personality well. Her provocation had the exact desired effect.

“Lead has the first helicopter; you take the second one! Viper One-Six flight, release breaks. Go to full afterburner. Shoot to kill!”

The F-16s leaped forward with a thunderous roar.

Cyndi put her helicopter into a dive and aimed it at the end of the runway. The missile warning tone stopped pulsating and went solid. She held her heading.

The fighters rapidly gained speed as they rolled down the runway.

A suicidal game of chicken was about to take place.

The Fighting Falcons broke ground and scooped their landing gear up into their bellies. The leader kept the planes on the deck to maximize acceleration.

Cyndi caught site of them at her twelve o’clock and closing fast. She held her heading.

The wingman spread out into tactical position, thirty feet to the leader’s right side. The pilots flipped on their AN/APG-68 fire control radars. Antennas in their nose cones swept back and forth sending out radar pulses.

The antennas stopped searching and pointed straight at Cyndi’s helicopter.

“Game over, crazy lady.” The leader took one last look up from his radar screen before firing. The AH-6M Little Bird attack helicopter flew right between the two fighters.

The stunned pilots instinctively jerked their planes away from each other.

The lead pilot put his jet into a bone-crushing nine G climb to start a half loop and then double back on Cyndi from above after executing an Immelmann maneuver.

The wingman turned his attention to Pierce’s helicopter. Unfortunately, he had failed to notice the missile warning tone in his own headset during all the chaos.

The Stinger missile that Pierce had fired had broken lock with Cyndi’s helicopter and latched on to his plane.

Traveling at Mach 2.2, it rapidly closed the gap on the unsuspecting wingman—who was almost supersonic himself—at a combined closure rate of 2,300 miles per hour.

The pilot never had a chance to get off a shot. He yanked back on the stationary fly-by-wire control stick with one hundred pounds of brute force. The missile struck just as he pulled up. The right wing of the Fighting Falcon was blown off by the detonation. Black smoke and bright red flames trailed the plane as it corkscrewed up into the sunny Wyoming sky.

“I’m hit! I’m hit!” the wingman screamed over the radio.

The leader was inverted and just about to roll out of the Immelmann. He looked back over his shoulder and yelled, “Eject! Ej—”

Before he could finish his transmission, his wingman’s plane disintegrated. Blazing pieces of fighter aircraft spread gracefully across the sky like a spectacular firework display.

Cyndi waved at the controller as they flew past the tower.

After resuming breathing, Lance asked in a shaky voice, “How did you know?”

With Warren now in sight, she turned to her copilot. “My dad loved to talk about practice dogfights he flew against his squadron mates. He would weave his hands back and forth when he talked, replaying the engagements. According to him, he never lost. His favorite tactic was to turn in to his opponents, so that their missiles were inside their minimum firing range. All that deadly firepower became useless.”

“With two pissed-off pilots out for blood coming straight at us, you calculated the minimum firing range of their missiles in only a few seconds?” Lance asked incredulously.

“No, not exactly…” Cyndi smiled and shrugged. “I just guessed.”

Lance’s mouth dropped open.

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?” Cyndi countered in her defense.

The panicked tower controller grabbed a phone and dialed the security office on base. When the dispatcher on duty picked up, the controller yelled, “This is Cheyenne airport tower, an unauthorized helicopter is headed for your base. I believe we have a 9/11 scenario in progress. I think the helicopter is going to pull a kamikaze and crash into the headquarters building. Alert all your men. This is not a drill!”

“Your ass is mine, you son of a bitch!” The formation leader broke off his attack on Cyndi’s helicopter and put his plane into a tight turn to the east. He locked on to Pierce’s helicopter and fired off an AIM-9 Sidewinder infrared missile.

Pierce saw the missile launch and deployed flares to draw it away. The missile sailed by his helicopter and chased after one of the flares until it nosedived harmlessly into the ground next to the runway.

The F-16 pilot turned away, setting up for an attack from the rear.

Pierce slammed on the brakes and put his helicopter into a hover. Using the anti-torque pedals to rotate his helicopter, he tracked the fighter like a skeet shooter tracks the clay target as it flies across his view. Pierce mashed his trigger down. The three barrels of the GAU-19 Gatling gun glowed white hot as they spewed out two thousand rounds a minute.

Chunks of lead pierced the jet’s engine. Flames and oily black smoke erupted out of the tailpipe. The pilot pulled up into a climb to get his crippled bird as far from terra firma as possible as he assessed the damage and looked for an uninhabited area. To save time, he rested his left hand on the ejection seat handle .

Pierce spied Cyndi’s helicopter flying over the base. It was slowing down to begin its approach for landing. He slammed the cyclic forward and revved the engine past redline. He quickly closed the distance between the two helicopters and fired the Gatling gun.

“I’ll land at the base heliport, then we’ll go to headquarters and tell General McNeil what happened,” Cyndi informed Lance.

Suddenly, a loud drumbeat of a noise came from over their heads.

Bullets tore through the oil tank in the engine compartment, setting it on fire. Without vital lubrication, the engine instantly seized up.

The instrument panel lit up with flashing red warning lights. The rotors began to slow, robbing the helicopter of