Dan and the Bottle Ch. 13

Ten days later, there were four blown up Hummers littering the sides of the road.

Within a month, the Chinese were beside themselves. Patrols were unable to leave the base without running across mines, some of which were apparently made from wood; undetectable with the cheap metal detectors they were using. Those that managed to actually leave the safety of the base and evade the mines were just as likely to come under attacks by snipers, or RPGs, or old American LAW rockets.

Commander Kwan, in typical fashion, took American hostages, broadcasting his intent to kill them in retaliation if his troops were attacked again, over every frequency of the radio he had access to.

Jim Archer responded in kind.

Getting the nod from Kathy, he pressed the button on the big microphone and began to speak.

"To the commander of the invading yellow scumbags. You are holding American citizens hostage. You will release them immediately and get the hell out of our country or face total annihilation. I can destroy your base at will. For every one American citizen that you bring harm to, I will flatten ten of your pathetic occupation bases. You have ten days to pack up and get out or you will be destroyed. We will no longer accept your illegal occupation of our country. We, the American people, have declared war upon you, and we will not stop until every last one of you is a rotting corpse."

Kwan listened as the broadcast from the arrogant American repeated. 'Bold words.... I wonder if he can back them up?' he thought, as he asked his tech to pinpoint the origin of the signal.

Lieutenant Chin scanned all over the range of frequencies; the signal strength remained constant. It appeared to originate from more than a dozen communication satellites in orbit, including a few that he hadn't even been aware of! The Commander was not going to like this.

"Sir, I cannot determine the source. The broadcast appears to be coming through fourteen different satellites at once."

"I thought you said there were only ten satellites still functioning?"

"I only found ten at the time, Sir. The others may have been on the other side of the planet at the time."

"I see... are these broadcasts going worldwide, then?"

"Yes Sir, they are. Beijing is getting the same broadcast, at the same time."

Kwan considered the implications of this, and they weren't good. If he didn't get this situation under control soon, he faced the real possibility of being recalled to China, which he knew would not end well. He'd already had to send two seperate requests for reinforcing troops, just to replace those killed or maimed by mines; and more were falling to sniper fire and rocket attacks every day. He'd sent out four helicopters on patrol.... one had returned, and it had, in fact, been hit by heavy machine gun fire. It was still in the repair shop. One of the surviving pilots had made his way back to the base after bailing out; he had reported coming under attack by some sort of fighter jet that he'd never seen before. His description matched an American jet, of a type not seen in well over a hundred years.

Bob Sharpe rolled the F-16 trainer out to the end of the runway, Jenny Barlow in the seat behind him, and spoke into the mask microphone.

"Ready, Jenny?"

He could hear the nervous excitement in her voice as she replied "Hell yes!"

He grinned, boosted the engine to full power, and released the brakes. The jet shot forward, and as the wheels left the runway, he kicked in the afterburner, boosting their airspeed considerably. He pulled back on the stick, climbing at a steep angle, spiraling up to an altitude of fifteen thousand feet, then leveling off and flying around in a wide circle around the base.

On the westward leg of the wide circle pattern they were flying, the radar started beeping. There was a contact, about twenty miles out... and they'd be on top of it in a few minutes at this rate.

Bob switched the radio frequency quickly, asking "Juniper tower, are there any other birds in the air today?"

"That's a negative, Captain. No other flights scheduled today. If there's another bird in the air, it isn't one of ours."

"I have a visual now, Juniper... it appears to be a flight of Chinese choppers."

By the time these words were out of his mouth, three of the four helicopters were turning towards him.

"Well, Jenny, it appears you're going to get your wish. We're going to get into a fight."

"Can't we outrun them?"

"We could.... but they'd still have us on radar... I don't want to give them any idea of where the base is at. Nope... we're going to have to shoot them down."

With that, he turned towards the enemy helicopters, using the keypad by his right knee to arm his Sidewinder missiles. Targeting the leader, he fired off one of the heat seekers as he tore through the formation, climbing steeply and turning back towards them.

Two of the big choppers turned in midair, facing him and firing a barrage of rockets; he thumbed the button that released a cloud of chaff, then hit another, dropping several flares behind him, noting one of the enemy choppers bursting into flames as his Sidewinders caught up to it. He looped back around, turning perhaps a bit too tightly, hearing young Jenny groaning in the seat behind him, and targeted another of the big helicopters. Firing off another pair of the air to air missiles, he tore through their formation again, hearing their machine guns chattering as he felt his plane taking hits. The controls felt a bit sluggish, but he still felt in control.

He wasn't sure just how many missiles he had left, but this time around, as he spun around to once again target the helicopters, he saw that he'd gotten lucky; the two heat seekers had each locked onto a seperate helicopter, and two more were headed groundwards in flames. He thumbed the switch on the stick, switching over to guns, and felt the 20MM Vulcan drop down from the belly of the plane. Getting the last of the choppers in his sights, he fired off a long burst, the heavy rounds tearing into the enemy, watching as it began to spiral towards the ground.

Turning the jet to the south, he took a deceptive, roundabout path back to the base, just in case anyone from one of the choppers had survived, finally landing and quickly taxiing the fighter back into the camoflagued hanger.

Pete Coswell came running up as he was helping Jenny out of the second cockpit, surveying the damage and saying "Geez, Captain.... you don't try to make life easy on me, do you?"

Sharpe grinned back at him. "Where's the fun in that? I don't think I did too bad... scratched four enemy choppers and brought my bird back in one piece."

"Well, when you put it that way... I guess I can forgive ya. Are you ok, Miss?"

Jenny nodded, not really trusting her voice yet. She'd been right.... it WAS better than sex!

Bob escorted her back to her quarters, where she asked him in for a drink, and before long, they were kissing on the couch.

"MMMmmmm.... I see flying isn't the only thing you're good at!"

Bob smiled back at her, as she moved to crawl into his lap. "I try, hun... " he replied, as his left hand worked at the buttons of her uniform blouse.