"Brown, Dale - Patrick 7 - Battle Born" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Dale)

the pilot said. "I'm not going to let this Navy puke get a clear shot on us!"
Both pilots clearly saw the oncoming fighter as it plummeted toward them. It was a Navy or Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet, the primary carrier attack plane, which also had a good air-to-air capability. The Bone's nose was thirty degrees above the horizon in the steep climb. All they could see was blue sky and the fighter diving down on them.
The sharp zoom maneuver was sapping their speed quickly. "Airspeed!" the copilot shouted-just a warning right now, not an admonition. The aircraft commander was still in charge here, no matter how unusual his actions seemed.
"I got it," the pilot acknowledged. He pushed the throttles forward into full afterburner power. "C'mon, you squid bastard. You don't have a shot. You're running out of sky. Break it off."
"We better get back down, pilot," the OSO urged him. "We're off our force timing!"
"Get the nose down, pilot," the copilot warned.
"You lost us, bub," said the pilot, addressing the pilot of the Hornet.
The OSO switched his radar display to air-to-air, and the ORS immediately locked onto the Hornet. "Range three miles and closing!" he shouted. "Closure rate one thousand knots! This doesn't look good!"
"Airspeed!" the copilot warned again. They were



now draining fuel at an incredible three hundred pounds of fuel per second and going nowhere but straight up.
"Pilot, we're off our force timing and three thousand feet high!" the OSO called. "We're inside the one-mile bubble!" For safety's sake, the rules of engagement, or ROE, at Navy Fallon prohibited any pilot from breaking an invisible one-mile-diameter "bubble" around all participants. "The ROE-"
"Shut up, co!" the pilot snapped. "We still got three seconds!" Breaking the ROE could put all the players in serious danger-and he was breaking rules one after another. "We're not going to show ourselves. He'll have to break it off."
"Get the nose down, dammit!" the copilot shouted again.
Then, seconds before the copilot was going to push his control stick and try to overpower the pilot, the fighter rapidly rolled right. They had lost almost three hundred knots of airspeed-and for what? They saved themselves from the fighter but were now in the lethal envelope for any surface-to-air missile battery within thirty miles.
"Ha! Where are you going, you wussie?" the pilot shouted happily. He was breathing as hard as if he had just finished a hundred-yard sprint. "Keep him in sight, co," he panted.
"This will work out perfectly, hogs," the OSO said. "This next target is a Zeus-23. We'll stay high and nail him! Center up."
The pilot started a left turn toward the next target. "Where's that fighter?" he asked.
"Eleven o'clock, moving to ten o'clock, way high," the DSO reported.
"Zeus-23 at twelve o'clock," the DSO reported. The real "Zeus-23," or ZSU-23/4, was the standard Russian
antiaircraft artillery weapon system, a mobile unit with four 23-millimeter radar-guided cannons that could fill the sky with thousands of shells per minute out to two miles away-deadly for any aircraft.
"That's our target, crew," the OSO stated. He put his cross hairs on the Zeus closest to the preplanned target area. "Action left forty-five." When the pilot rolled out of his turn, the OSO took a radar patch on the target. "I got the patch. Steering to the target is good. Give me full blowers, Rodeo!" The pilot shoved the throttles back into max afterburner, and a few seconds later they broke the speed of sound.



"Bandit now at nine o'clock, ten miles and closing!"
"Stand by ... bombs away!" the OSO yelled. The CBU-87 cluster bomb scored a direct hit.
"Zeus-23's still up," the DSO said.
"What?" the OSO yelled. "That run looked great! We were a little off, but well within the kill zone. Those squids are jacking us around, guys! That was a good kill all the-"
"Forget about it, Long Dong," the pilot interrupted. "Where's my steering?"
The OSO called up the last target in the third restricted-area bombing range. "Steering is good," he said. "Single Scud-ER transporter-erector-launcher with communications van. Supposed to be tucked in between some hills. Max points if we get this one, guys-it's worth more than all the other targets put together. Gimme a little altitude so I can see into the target area."
"Scope's clear," the DSO immediately reported.
It was clear to see why the OSO needed some altitude. The pilots couldn't see much more than a few miles ahead, and if they couldn't see, the radai could see even less. They were several seconds late too, and the faster speed meant even less time to spot the target.



"Get ready for a vertical jink," the pilot said. He reset the clearance plane switch to one thousand feet, and the bomber responded with a steep climb.
"I got . . . squat," the OSO reported. The cross hairs went out to a large section of blackness. There were no radar returns yet in the target area. His hesitant voice infuriated the pilots even more. "ADF a onethree-five track, pilots. Clear back down."
The pilot released the pitch interrupt trigger, and the bomber settled back down to its roller-coaster ride just two hundred feet above the blurred earth zooming by. "You got the target?" he asked.
"Not yet," the OSO responded. "The radar predictions said we won't see the targets until four NAP if we stay low-we'd need to go up to two thousand to see it sooner. Let's get back on planned track, and then give me another jink so I can get a better-"
"Bandits!" the DSO interrupted. "Eight o'clock, fifteen miles and closing! I think it's an F-14-no, two F-14s! Give me a hard left thirty!"
"I'll lose my look down the canyon!" the OSO objected. But the pilot rolled into a hard ninety-degree bank turn, rolling out just far enough to track perpendicular to the fighter. "Reverse as fast as you can!" the OSO said. "I need one last look down that canyon!"
"Clear to turn back!" the DSO said after only a few seconds. The pilot started a right turn. "Trackbreakers active! Bandits never turned. They're nine o'clock, nine miles."
"Give me a vertical jink now!" the OSO said.
"Negative!" the DSO interjected. "We'll be highlighted against the horizon! If the fighter gets a visual on us, he's got us!"
"I need the altitude!" the OSO cried. "I can't see shit!"