"Maloney, Mack - Wingman 03 - The Lucifer Campaign UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maloney Mack)

"Well, he had no trouble icing those MiGs," Crunch said, shaking his head in admiration. "Maybe he doesn't need any help in tracking down Viktor either."

"Well, I agree that Hunter is the best to ever fly, and so he's very valuable to PAAC right now," Elvis said. "But I also know him pretty well, as you do, captain. And when he gets something set in his mind, it's impossible to talk him out of it. Viktor fooled with his lady big time. Screwed up the coun-

13

try too. That's playing with fire as far as Hawk is concerned. I don't blame him for going after Viktor. And he could probably track down the creep better if he is alone."

Crunch ran his fingers through his hair, then continued. "Hunter's a good friend of mine and a good friend to all the guys in PAAC. But Jones is the boss. He says find him and drag him back. So we find him."

"Well, it's not the finding him that will be difficult," Elvis said. "It's the 'dragging him back' part that worries me."

14

Chapter 2

The skies over Casablanca were busy the night Hunter arrived.

He had seen the lights of the city from seventy miles out, reflecting off the atmosphere and the nearby Atlantic. Now, as he descended from 55,000 feet, the city's blue-green glare got brighter, shining out like a beacon on the otherwise pitch-black Moroccan coastline.

Fifty miles out, he brought his F-16 down to wavetop level and throttled back to a 350-mph crawl. The jet fighter's terrain-radar-acquisition system had painted an infrared picture of the city's airport onto one of his control panel's TV screens and he had been studying it with much interest.

He had assumed that the airport -and the city - would be deserted. But just the opposite was true. In fact, there were so many airplanes circling Casablanca, it looked like a typical stack-up over Chicago's O'Hare in the old days.

Suddenly, his radio crackled.

"Casablanca control to approaching aircraft," a high-pitched voice sang over the static. "We have you on our radar screens. You are on an unauthorized

15

landing pattern. Break off! Break off!"

Hunter calmly pushed his radio transmission button. "Casablanca Control, this is an aircraft of the Pacific American Air Corps. I am requesting emergency landing clearance. I am low on fuel."

"Break off," the shrillish reply came back. "We are at over-capacity. Our airspace is at the critical point. We have no open landing zone for you. You are unauthorized."

Hunter checked his instruments. He was twelve miles off the coast. He tapped the back of the throttle bar twice, slowing the F-16 down further.

"Casablanca Control, I am down to a hundred pounds of fuel. I must land."

"We have no fuel for you," the air controller came back. "You are unauthorized . . ."

Hunter was carefully watching the action over the airport on his TV screen. The aircraft were stacked up ten high over the airport. More than forty airplanes at various altitudes were traveling around and around on the same lazy circling pattern. At the same time, other aircraft were taking off every thirty seconds from the airport's single runway.

Hunter could tell that most of the air traffic was made up of airliners. 747s, 707s, DC-lOs, Airbuses. Some appeared to be riding on each other's tails. Airplanes were taking off just as incoming aircraft bounced in. The radio chatter was a storm of pilot's voices, yelling put their coordinates and doing everything they could to avoid a midair collision. It was the most confusing aircraft handling pattern he'd ever seen. But somehow the overworked air controllers were making it -work.

He checked his instruments again. Ten miles out, fuel getting lower. Time to negotiate.

"Casablanca control," he said into his micro-