"Maloney, Mack - Wingman 05 - The Twisted Cross UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maloney Mack)

Still unaware who the life-saving Good Samaritan was, the pilot once again tried to rouse his copilot. This time the man responded, though groggily.

"Can you get hold of the controls, even with one hand?" die pilot asked him. "We're only twenty minutes out from New Orleans."

The copilot did as he was told, trying not to look at his wounded shoulder.

"What happened?" he asked, his face a mask of shock and puzzlement.

"Fm not sure," the pilot said as he grabbed the radio mike and started broadcasting to New Orleans tower. "But someone up here likes us ..."

The 727 came in for a smoky, but successful wheels-up landing at die New Orleans' International Airport. Emergency crews surrounded the airplane immediately, washing it down with foam as its passengers leaped, walked or crawled out of the wreckage.

Despite the hundreds of cuts on and about his face, the pilot helped the rescue crews extricate his copilot and navigator before accepting any medical attention himself. He was sitting on the back bumper of an emergency van, talking to the base doctor when he finally took stock of what had just happened.

"We were jumped by three fighters ..." he told the doctor. "They had us dead to rights. Then suddenly, the first' two just blew up -boom! boom!. . ." '

"Blew up or were shot down?" the doctor asked him as he cleaned out the pilot's nastiest cuts.

"Well, that's just it," the 727 pilot said, just now enjoying the indescribable rush of realization that he was still alive. "There was another airplane out there. The guy got the third Phantom with a shot that I didn't think was possible. He put his jet into a screamer of a climb. It must have had six Goddamn cannons in its nose. All of them firing. Smoke. Fire. Jesus, it was unbelievable!"

A military officer from the airport's security forces had joined them by this time and had heard the pilot's story.

"What did this other airplane look like?" the officer asked. "What color was it?"

The 727 pilot, still jittery from the ordeal, had to stop and think a moment.

"It was all painted up ... it was red, white and blue," he said finally. "It looked like a delta-type wing. But I've never seen an airplane like it. Ever . . ."

The doctor wrapped a bandage around the pilot's head, covering his left eye and ear.

"Red, white and blue, you say?" the military man asked. "You sure?"

The pilot nodded, gingerly feeling the wounds under his bandage.

"And it was a flashy, souped-up kind of delta-wing?"

Again, the pilot nodded.

The officer looked at the doctor and shrugged. "Could it

be?" he asked the physician.

The doctor shook his head. "If you mean who I think you

mean

The pilot looked up at the two men. "Who are you talking about?" he asked.

Just then, as if to answer his question, all three of them heard a high whining sound, the unmistakable call of a jet fighter. Shielding their eyes against the hot Louisiana sun, they saw a jet fighter streak over the base and turn for a landing. The airplane was a delta-wing design and was painted in red, white and blue.