then threw himself at the door, smashing against the wood with his
shoulder.
There was a loud crash, but the door held. “Made It! What are you
doing?
The guards will hear!”
“Shit,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. “It always works in the movies!”
He backed up again, paused, then took another run at the door. The
crash was so loud that Pamela thought the sound must be carrying all
over the base.
“They’ll hear …!”
“I think our guards took off the first time those Tomcats buzzed us,”
Bayerly said. He slammed his shoulder against the door again … and
again.
“By now they’re halfway back to Burma.”
He hit the door once more, this time with a splintering crash which tore
the door from its hinges. Bayerly plunged through, landing on his hands
and knees on the wreckage of the door.
Bayerly grinned. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Yin kin! Yin kin!” The soldier appeared out of nowhere, an AK-47
raised to his shoulder, the muzzle thrusting at Bayerly’s face. Pamela
didn’t know if he’d been there all along or had just arrived to
investigate the noise. His face twisted in fury. “Reho kaho!”
“Okay, okay!” Bayerly said, holding up one hand. He started to rise.
“Keep your shirt on-”
He sprang forward and up, getting under the soldier’s AK and knocking
its muzzle toward the sky just as the man’s finger jerked at the
trigger. A burst of full-auto fire rattled the walls of the shed.
The rebel soldier went down on his back, Bayerly on top of him, both men
wrestling for the AK between them. The American outweighed his opponent
by at least fifty pounds and had the advantage of having one knee on the
man’s chest. Bayerly tugged hard at the weapon … then changed tactics
and pushed down as hard as he could. Caught off guard, the enemy
soldier took the full force of the blow across his chest. Bayerly
pulled again, and this time broke the AK free of the soldier’s grasp.
Pamela saw the assault rifle rise in the air, butt down … then descend
sharply. There was a crack, and the guard lay motionless on the ground,
his forehead oddly misshapen.
Bayerly racked back the bolt on the AK, checking the chamber. A gold
cartridge spun through the air. “Let’s go.”
They hurried around the corner of the shed, then sprinted for the fuel
tanks.
Beyond, a hundred-yard clear stretch separated them from the jungle.
0750 hours, 21 January
Tomcat 201
Tombstone kept the Tomcat in a vertical climb, afterburners howling. At
thirty-five thousand feet he put the aircraft into a half-twist, then
cut the burners and let the plane fall on its back, canopy down, as his
fingers stabbed at the chaff-release button. Looking “up,” Tombstone
could see the dark green folds of mountains and valleys, the silver
twistings of the Taeng River.
The contrail of the Atoll AAM arrowed toward him from the Earth.
Still pumping chaff, Tombstone let the Tomcat slide into an inverted
dive. The trick was to create a large enough radar target for the
oncoming missile that its microchip brain would believe that the
target’s center lay somewhere behind the aircraft … instead of
squarely between the stabilizers and the cockpit.
He held his breath as the missile closed …
… and flashed past the tail of his aircraft just as he cut in the
afterburners once more.
The Atoll exploded somewhere astern, and the Tomcat shuddered with the
blast. Tombstone heard a loud ping, metal striking metal, but the
lights on his warning panel remained blissfully unlit.
Falling now, Tombstone righted the F-14 and throttled down to eighty
percent. His eyes went to his fuel gauge. Not good. They’d been in
the dogfight for less than three minutes, but using the afterburner had
burned a hell of a lot of fuel.
He was on top of the dogfight now. Looking down, he could see aircraft
and contrails everywhere he looked, spread out between him and the
jungle, silvery specks moving against dark green. South he could see
the scar of U Feng; west the sun flashed from the Taeng River.
“Eagle Three, this is Eagle Six! I’ve got two on my tail! Get ’em