SALIM MUST DIE by Mukul Deva Page B

rapidly into attack profile and, splitting into pairs, began the final approach.
    ILAN SAW THE TINY BALL OF FIRE FLARE OUT FROM THE DARKNESS below and arc up into the sky. Like a bolt of lightning it raced towards them with incredible speed and silently coalesced with the aircraft it had targeted. For one tiny fraction of a second the hunter and the hunted slid through the air together in perfect harmony. Then there was a blinding explosion. Bits of blood, bone and metal confettied out into the darkness.
    Ilan saw the plane on his left mushroom into nothingness. One moment it was there and the next there was just an uneasy dark cloud hanging in the air. His jet tore through the night, soon leaving the flaming debris behind.
    In his mind's eye, Ilan saw the missile slam into the jet. He heard Sierra Two's scream as the plane disintegrated around him. Ilan's body cringed as it waited for another missile to seek him out. His heart egged his fighter on towards the target racing towards them at twice the speed of sound.
    Then a mosaic of anti-aircraft fire ripped apart the night. It seemed like a blizzard of fireflies was slashing through the skies, tearing it up into random shapes.
    Suddenly he felt his mind expand and take charge. It seemed to be willing away everything that the Iranians were throwing at him. A strange icy calm settled over him. It froze everything around him, yet left him intensely aware and alive. Ilan could clearly feel each individual heartbeat as it thrummed through his body. He was acutely aware of the droplets of blood pulsing through the vein in his temple, of each icy-cold breath that swept through him. The Zen-like calm shrouding him deepened as the target loomed larger and larger on the instrument panel in front of him. His fingers flexed and stressed as they itched to trigger the bomb release. He wanted the bombs held in the belly of his aircraft to be on their way before his luck ran out.
    Not yet !
    His mind stilled his fingers as the target moved relentlessly into the gun sights on the electronic display glowing before him.
    Not yet !
    Slowly… unbelievably slowly… with each nanosecond spanning a century… the electronic cross-hairs began to settle on the target.
    Almost there !
    The weapons-targeting computers told him the time was right.
    NOW !
    The unspoken command jolted out of Ilan's mind and raced towards his waiting fingers. Simultaneously the shroud of calm enveloping him lifted away, as though its job was done.
    Frantic fingers jabbed at the weapons release. There was a very slight, almost imperceptible jerk and lightening up of the aircraft as the bombs fell away. A fraction of a second later, the pair of F-16Is behind him also triggered their weapons release.
    Ilan was so intent on his task that he did not see the blizzard of TOR M-1 missiles geyser out of their launchers. The second wave of Iranian missiles raced forward, converging on the Israeli jets like rapidly increasing pinpricks of light. With a hit probability of over ninety-two per cent there was little chance of the missiles missing the low flying jets as they screamed over the target area.
    They didn't.
    Ilan did not even realize the exact moment when his aircraft disintegrated. Nor did the pilots of the remaining two fighters, although one almost managed to get clear. He was zooming heavenwards in a perfect vertical charlie and was nearly out of range when the dying anti-aircraft missile sought him out and speeded up his journey to his maker.
    They all died without knowing whether they had managed to complete their assigned task.
    FALLING AWAY FROM THE F-16IS, THE B61-11 BUNKER BUSTERS righted themselves and swooped down towards their designated target.
    The B61-11 is supposed to be a modification of the B61-7 bomb that was first pressed into service by the Americans in 1985. It can be fused for an air or a surface burst and has a hardened ground-penetrator nose with a retarded contact burst fusing option. It can be