Strike Eagle by Doug Beason Read Free Book Online Page B

instructor, dryly. “You’ve got ten minutes before heading back. Go ahead and wring it out.”
    “Roger that.” Bruce squinted out of the cockpit. Luke lay off the horizon to his left; directly below were mountains; on the other side, a long fissure wound its way through the Arizona desert. “Request permission to descend through two thousand.”
    “Affirmative—but watch those mountains. We won’t be able to paint you on the scope.”
    “Rog,” said Bruce. That’s the whole idea .
    He pushed the stick forward and to the right. The F-15 broke out of its level flight and began to descend. Bruce flicked his eyes from the altimeter to the airspeed indicator to his radar.
    The fissure lay before him. The walls seemed far enough apart to safely bring the craft. He spotted the rugged cliffs that opened up like a yawning mouth. A thin ribbon of water lay at the bottom of the fissure. It must have taken hundreds of thousands of years for the river to create the fissure.
    “Five minutes, Assassin. Time to head back.”
    “Rog.” But not before I take a look-see. Bruce shoved the stick forward; the craft screamed to the ground. The numbers on the altimeter dropped like a rock.
    Bruce’s whole attention was outside the aircraft. The F-15 descended into the fissure. Rocky cliff walls rose up on either side. As on the desert floor, the fissure showed no sign of vegetation, only red-brown earth of a gravel-like texture. The sharp edges of slanted geological zones, painting the walls in weird striped patterns, zoomed by. The walls were treeless. He inched the craft even lower.
    The cliff walls closed to within a hundred feet of the wing tips. He lost radio contact in the canyon. As he flew closer to the water, he slowed the craft by pulling back on the throttles. The F-15E bounced slightly from the thermals.
    Bruce drew in a breath—the feeling was unfathomable: boulders as big as a house dashed by, a ripple of water lay below … it was almost a psychic experience, like that old scene in Star Wars.
    A fuzzydot ahead, just over the water, caught his attention. As he grew closer, he could make out two dots—two red balloons that hovered in the middle of the fissure. His eyes widened.
    Yanking back on the stick, Bruce hit full afterburners. The F-15E jerked up and stood on its tail, accelerating upward while still moving forward. “Come on,” muttered Bruce. Sweat formed at his brow and ran into eyes. The craft seemed to claw upward as the acceleration pushed him back into his seat. He forced his head to the right and tried to find the balloons.
    As the F-15E shot up from the fissure he spotted them below him. A thick strand of wire ran across the canyon, holding the balloons in place. The balloons warned low-flying planes that power lines crossed the fissure. If he had not pulled up when he did, his F-15E might have hit the wire and smashed into the rocky walls; a smoking pyre in testimony to his low-flying antics.…
    “… can you read? I say again, Assassin. Can you read?”
    Bruce tried to keep his voice steady as he kicked off the afterburners and nosed the F-15E back to Luke. “Rog. I … I was pulling out of a roll. I’ve got a vector back home.”
    “Copy that.”
    Minutes later, after the F-15E Eagle had rolled to a stop, Bruce climbed out of the cockpit. Buckets of cold water doused him, chilling the sweat that still covered his body. He held up a hand to his classmates, who were enthusiastically participating in the ritual: after a first solo, the pilot was drenched in water. Catman threw the last bucket on him. “Congrats, Assassin. With your reputation as a hot dog, we all thought you’d try something spectacular.”
    Bruce only flashed a wan smile.…

    The others kept watching the act. The woman lifted her hips high, arching her back and giving the audience an unobstructed view. From behind a set of curtains a man sauntered on stage to the music, also unclothed, carrying an assortment of