Ambush over Plumtree!

A thick band of oppressive gray concealed the earth beneath him almost like a second level of horizon as Doug “Draco” Dowlen roared overhead. In the rain-cooled Rhodesian air, his A-37b Dragonfly seemed to have even more of a shrill tone in its twin engines, though he also wondered how much of that was due to the full racks of unguided rockets hung on his wings. Somewhere below the layer, benefiting greatly from the natural cover, anti-government militants were lugging their contraband across the unnamed rocky plains separating Rhodesia from its western neighbor Botswana in exchange for weaponry and additional recruits.

Which, if I ever see them, are going to have a very bad day…Draco scowled, checking his kneeboard against his airspeed and remaining fuel. His best math put him close to a small settlement called Plumtree on his map, but not being able to see it gave a wide margin of assumptions to that. “Relay, Draco. Anything from base?”

A ‘click’ of static replied to him as, halfway across the nation, Aadi changed over to Draco’s radio channel. “No, nothing heard. Weather not good.”

“Tell me about it.” Draco scoffed. Part of the American pilot wanted instinctively to dive into the soup and scan the ground from below the cloud layer, but he’d been warned about an increasing number of anti-air weapons pouring into the country earlier that morning. Pairing that with news that the Rhodesian Air Force had lost one of its precious Hawker Hunter fighters yesterday to a surgically-precise missile shot, all the New Horizon pilots were more cautious and sullen during the morning assignments. 

Checking over his left wing, then his right, Draco caught the slight change in transparency where the cloud layer looked to be thinning, and banked toward it. “Relay, looks like I’ve got a break in the front over Plumtree, heading east.”

“Look quickly, my friend!” Aadi replied. “Don’t want storm to swallow you!”

“Gotta catch us first!” Draco countered, banking toward the break in the rain. It only took a few minutes for the Dragonfly to catch the gap, which had aligned itself nicely with the settlement below. Draco caught the movement of headlights below, as well as the even smaller specks of individual people going from building to building. None stopped to idle in the reprieve from the rain, and all the vehicles he could see kept to the roadways cut into the landscape. 

Keeping with the cloud break, Draco orbited in lazy circles, hoping to catch something out of place. A truck rushing over the wet plainsland, someone running for cover away from his overflight, anything suspicious would do. Again, he checked his fuel. “I can hang out here another hour…what say you, rain?”

It was then that Aadi’s voice cut back in over the radio, but it was nowhere near the jovial tone of a few minutes ago. “Draco, advise! Control says unknowns coming in over border near you!”

Draco’s eyes snapped to the horizon, and he yanked the Dragonfly’s nose up to gain altitude. “Draco is blind, no joy on unknowns.” His mind was racing now on what could be heading his way. The Rhodesian government didn’t have anything on the schedule for his area, but in a fight against terrorists and radicals, how fast could that change? Was there some rich bastard’s safari ride that had gotten lost on its way? “Relay, give me details!”

“Course is zero-eight-eight, speed six hundred!” Aadi was panicked now, even if he was hundreds of miles away.

Draco felt that same cold ball of fear grip his stomach. His Dragonfly couldn’t make anything close to that speed, which was close to breaking the sound barrier. That told Draco that he was facing a fighter or interceptor. He was far enough away from New Horzon’s home base that their third-rate tracking system was doing the best it could, but if things went south, he’d be dead long before they were able to get anyone else over to him. Things were bad enough that no one had passed the inbound’s altitude, which was not lost on Draco. 

Letting the Dragonfly’s climb continue into a loop, the laden attack plane dropped quickly when its belly faced skyward. Draco quickly rolled back upright and dumped the rocket racks from his wings, wincing as he did so. There’s ten thousand dollars I’m not gonna get back… “Relay, how close is it to me?”

Aadi didn’t need to answer. Another look over Draco’s right shoulder rewarded him with a silhouette of steel among the gray-blue sky and the tell-tale trail of smoke from a high-powered engine. Even if it looked a few hundred feet above him, Draco watched in silence as it flew parallel to him. “Don’t see me, don’t see me, don’t you goddamn see me!” 

As if in defiance of his prayer, the unknown banked sharply and dipped its nose toward Draco. The American got a solid glimpse of sharp hawk-like wings carrying missiles, a rounded maw bearing thundering cannons, and the sleek tail of an interceptor, and it yanked him back to memories from a lifetime ago, when a young US Air Force Lieutenant Dowlen faced something similar-looking over the skies of South Korea. “Relay! Confirmed hostile, Soviet-made!”

Not waiting for a reply, Draco turned into the incoming interceptor, forcing his opponent to overshoot him at blinding speed. Smartly, instead of trying to turn back on Draco and attack, the enemy used its speed to climb away where the Dragonfly couldn’t follow.

Knowing that he didn’t stand a chance against such a predator, Draco pushed his control stick forward, forcing the Dragonfly down into the cloud. Sparing a moment to look above him, Draco watched the enemy fighter reach the top of its loop and roll to dive down on him again. This time, with so much distance between them, the enemy let loose one of the two heat-seeking missiles on its wings.

“Shit!” Draco yelled, shoving the stick hard to his left without even thinking. Pulling the Dragonfly into as hard a descending roll as it would manage, he gritted his teeth against the G-forces and looked over his shoulder at the incoming smoke trail that stood out among the clouds. His breath caught in his chest as the missile screamed closer and closer in a matter of a couple seconds. So this is it? All these years and I get smoked over this wasteland of a country?

And then the missile streaked past him, coming within mere feet of his belly. Once it lost sight of his tail, the missile had stopped its pursuing turn and pointed itself straight. Now, the target-less missile screamed forward and down, Draco quickly losing sight of it in the clouds. 

Whatever breath of relief he wanted to release was quickly choked back as the Dragonfly broke through into the rain, less than five hundred feet off the ground. Righting his fighter to level, Draco looked back left and right over his shoulder. And saw no sign of whatever had ambushed him.

He checked his fuel gauge and compass once again, and turned eastward, away from Plumtree. “Relay! I’m blind to the bandit! Give me its vector!”

A few agonizing seconds later, Aadi reported back. “Control reports bogey rejoined second unknown, probably hostile. Heading north now.”

 Away from me, but towards what? Draco wondered. “Anyone working up there?”

“No, not on schedule,” Aadi replied. “May be going after Garmstone.”

Draco grimaced. That’s a lot of Rhodesian crude oil about to go up in smoke. “Copy. Let Skorost know I want to talk to him when I get back! I’m scrubbed and heading back.”

“Fly safe and quick, my friend.” Aadi responded with a breath of relief that Draco wished he could vent even now. Every few seconds, he looked back over his shoulders to ensure no one was behind him. 

“Pavel, you red bastard, you better have good news for me.” Draco muttered aloud. “That was a MiG, no doubt about it. So what are your comrades doing so far south of their Motherland?”

Only the rain followed Draco back to Air Station Diana, and the Dragonfly kicked up water vapor and spray as he landed. Even with the many runway lights on and the floodlights from the parking spots and control tower, the airbase looked dark and dank. Just as it was when he’d left, Draco counted most every one of New Horzon’s aircraft as still parked. Only Da’veed’s aircraft was still unaccounted for, which mattered little to Draco.

As soon as his Dragonfly was parked and spooling down, he almost leapt from the cockpit onto the thin cement floor. As he’d requested, the taller and leaner former Soviet flyer was waiting for him in the covered roof between the Dragonfly and his own MiG-21.

“What did you see?” Pavel asked.

Instinctively, Draco felt his fist curl at the foreign accent, despite Pavel’s passable English. Years of adversarial teaching and experience triggered the resentment in his gut, and the first few months of the company’s deployment into Rhodesia had been rough for both men. After a second’s internal reasoning with common logic, Draco reminded himself that Pavel personally was not against him. “It looked like the MiG-15s the Koreans used. But different, maybe longer with a harder sweep on the wings. Had some kind of guided missiles on it.”

Pavel looked behind himself, into the rain and beyond. “Where was tail stabilizer? Mid-body or high on tail?”

“Mid-body, looked level with the wings.” Draco answered, looking to where Pavel was staring. “You know what it is, don’t you.”

The Russian nodded. “Mikoyan-19. You Westerners called them ‘Farmer’. I flew many times in Vietnam, teaching others and flying combat.”

Draco’s blood went cold again. He hadn’t flown personally in Vietnam, having left the uniformed service long before that air war kicked off. But some of those who’d flown with him in Korea had stayed in service and were probably there now. Radio broadcasts from the local stations didn’t speak much about the war half a world away, but Santa sometimes spoke of events and battles there whenever he went that way to acquire parts or supplies from corrupt contacts. “Any kills?”

“Would it matter if I told truth?” Pavel countered, turning to face Draco eye-to-eye.

Draco ground his teeth a little at that. What could he do to undo anything now? “No, I don’t think it would. So why is it here?”

Pavel sighed and shrugged. “Don’t know. But we may see again later. Maybe Botswana now falls into Soviet grasp…”

“I sure as shit hope not. We’re supposed to be fighting a bunch of terrorists with small arms, not the goddamn Red Air Force!”

Pavel shook his head, “Not normal operations. Probably State Security. Everywhere, like worms.”

Draco shuddered unintentionally. “Shit…”

********

Another mission for the New Horizons Air Service, and another encounter far more difficult that it should have been. Building out this storyline had been a challenge of narrative vs creativity, as what I want to write personally conflicts with what is grounded and realistic. Maybe this story will tell me more of what it wants to be as it goes alone.

I hope you all enjoy.