James Huston - Fallout

Khan saw the Archer racing toward him at the same time he saw the lead MiG-29. He pulled up and turned inland toward Luke. The missile tried to turn the corner but was just outside the lethal range of its warhead when its proximity fuse detonated it.

Luke suddenly felt panic sweep over him; he remembered that the F-16s had Sidewinders. “They’ve got Sidewinders!” he reminded the others.

“Roger,” someone transmitted. The Fulcrums came at the three remaining F-16s in flights of two in combat spread, with Luke and Vlad in the lead, and Stamp and Thud off their left, to the south. Vlad fired an Archer at the lead F-16, at Riaz Khan.

Suddenly, while Luke watched in horror, a flash diverted his attention from Khan’s airplane to San Onofre as the first laser-guided bomb hit directly on the top of a long, flat building just east of one of the domes. The blast was bright yellow for an instant, the concussion visible in the moist sea air. The building was crippled, but the dome was untouched. The second bomb, dropped by Rashim, went in through the now open structure and hit right where Khan’s bomb had hit. The rest of the building’s flat roof collapsed.

Luke saw an Archer come off Thud’s wing and scream toward the last F-16 that was in the middle of its bomb run.

Luke was amazed that they were somehow unable to hit the enormous domes, the home of the active reactors at San Onofre. Whoever was doing the laser designation for the bombs was doing a piss-poor job, Luke thought.

Rashim was right on Khan’s wing as they climbed toward Luke and Vlad. A small cloud of white steam began shooting out of the low building behind them, hissing and screaming into the golden predawn of the coast of California. Thud’s Archer from the south reached the third F-16 almost simultaneously. The plane never had a chance. The missile tore off both its wings, but it had already released its bomb. The third laser-guided bomb went into a flat building next to the second domed plant and blew a large cloud of dust, debris, and steam into the sky. The third F-16 tumbled to destruction on the beach below.

Khan and Rashim climbed through three thousand feet, heading up toward the MiG-29s that were passing through eight thousand feet on their way down. The F-16 radars scoured the sky in front of them. The MiGs’ electronics countermeasures in the humps behind the cockpits were effective in convincing the F-16 radar to look elsewhere.

Luke could now clearly see the waves breaking on the beach behind San Onofre, behind the white steam shooting into the sky. Cars were piling up on the freeway below them.

Vlad pulled to the right of Luke, trying to gain an angle on Khan so he would have to choose to go after one of them. Khan chose Luke, who was straight ahead of him. Luke and Khan raced at each other at nearly twice the speed of sound, now three miles apart. Vlad pulled hard into a high-G turn and tried to get his helmet-mounted sight on Khan. Khan had fought the MiGs enough to know what the outside limit of the helmet-mounted sight was and when he was in danger. He knew that Vlad was nearly to the point where he could fire an Archer. What he didn’t know was that Vlad didn’t have any more missiles. Khan broke off his attack on Luke to defend himself from Vlad. He pulled hard to his left as Rashim passed him on his right and headed toward Thud and Stamp.

Luke was tempted to fire his last Archer missile at Rashim, but knew that the other F-16, the one in the lead, was Khan—and he wanted him. Luke pulled hard right after Khan’s F-16.

Vlad screamed in Russian and pushed his throttles into afterburner to regain airspeed as Khan turned into him. Luke saw his chance. He squeezed the autolock on the radar to find the nearest airplane and lock it up, flooding it with radar illumination, then to slave the Archer missile’s seekerhead to the radar. The MiG had too many switches and moves required, though; he had to keep looking into the cockpit.

He pulled hard on the stick and banked to the right to get his nose on Khan, now only a mile away and turning toward Vlad. Luke pulled harder, with his nose only forty degrees behind the tail of the F-16. He pulled through seven Gs, then eight. His face distorted under the force, his cheeks pulled down. His radar suddenly showed a good lock on the F-16 and good missile parameters. He slipped his finger around the stick until it rested on the trigger and he waited for a clear shot, but Vlad’s MiG was in the windscreen. The Archer was just as likely to go after Vlad as Khan.

Luke pulled harder still to get a better shot and maybe get Khan to reverse himself and see Luke as the threat. Vlad could escape, or even drag Khan northeast into the low-level California mountains over Camp Pendleton, where Luke could get a clear shot. Luke fought to keep the blood in his head and to keep from blacking out. He noticed he was already seeing in black and white, his vision beginning to get grainy around the edges.

“Eagle 105 flight six miles out. State your posit.”

Luke grunted as he tried to speak through the eight-G turn. “Splashed two. Still over San Onofre. Plant has been… ugh… hit.”

“We have you. We’re right behind you.”

Vlad was in a low rolling scissors with Khan that Luke couldn’t get into or stop. They were heading toward the ground at three hundred knots as each tried to turn inside the other without gaining any angles.

Luke eased the stick forward and rolled left to see Thud and Stamp. They were two miles south, embroiled in their own 2 v. 1 with the other F-16. Luke watched them for five seconds, to make sure they weren’t in trouble. He instantly knew that the F-16 was Rashim. Overly aggressive.

Luke turned back hard right to head down toward Vlad and Khan. As he relocated the F-16 against the dark landscape behind them, a small explosion on Khan’s airplane startled him. Too late he realized it was the rocket motor of one of Khan’s Sidewinder missiles. It raced across the circle toward Vlad, less than half a mile away. Luke fumbled for the radio transmission button, but he couldn’t warn Vlad in the short time it took for the missile to cross the gulf between them. The Sidewinder slammed into the tail of the MiG-29, and the airplane burst into flames. Vlad immediately pulled the ejection handle, and his ejection seat rocketed him out of the burning wreck.

Khan knew he had the MiG-29 as soon as he launched his Sidewinder. He pulled up, somehow now aware of the F-15s closing on him. Khan was between four F-15s coming from the north and Luke coming from the east.

Rashim had his own problems with Stamp and Thud. He turned into the two MiG-29s, hoping to avoid the combination of their Archer missiles and their helmet-mounted sights. He turned hard, keeping them at bay but not trying to get behind them. He was playing a defensive game, knowing that there were now four F-15s in the mix.

Rashim suddenly dumped his nose and headed for the ground toward the power lines that climbed up the hill from the nuclear plant. He couldn’t see the plant from his current position, but he knew the fat wires would lead him right back to it.

He performed a split S as he headed down toward the power lines, hoping to avoid Thud and Stamp as they locked their radars onto his fleeing airplane. He leveled off just above the freeway, crowded with stopped cars, the drivers of which had gotten out to watch the aerial dogfight and gawk at the flames coming from a building on the property of the nuclear power plant, wondering what the screaming sirens meant.

Rashim hugged the ground as he screamed north, then pulled up to climb over the power lines. He was half a mile from San Onofre. He glanced at the growing plume of steam. It was now illuminated by the morning sun and was starkly white and radiant. Rashim pulled hard left and headed toward the steam as he looked over his right wing toward Khan.