Chapter 18 - War Over MidwayRounds snapped against the heavy armor-plated cockpit glass of the C-130 as the black Osprey banked hard to line up another attack run.
“Airspeed fifty knots!” Daniel called out, his hands hovering over the engine control panel. “60 knots... 70 knots!”
“Come on, baby,” I growled, pulling back on the heavy yoke with both hands. The control cables groaned under the massive aerodynamic load. “Fly!”
At ninety knots—far below standard rotation speed—I yanked the yoke back to the stop. The nose wheel lifted off the runway, followed by the main gear just feet before the strip ended in the crashing ocean waves.
The C-130 stayed suspended just ten feet above the water, salt spray splashing against the windshield as we struggled to gain altitude.
Behind us, the Osprey swerved into a sharp pursuit curve, its twin tilt-rotors transitioning into airplane mode to close the speed gap.
“They’re coming up on our tail!” Marcus warned, looking out the rear cargo window. “They’re clearing their tactical weapons system!”
“Not today!” Daniel shouted. He unbuckled his seatbelt, ran back into the cargo bay, and grabbed the manual emergency fuel dump lever mounted on the wall.
He yanked the red handle down.
Thousands of gallons of aviation fuel erupted from the wingtip dump vents, creating a massive cloud of atomized fuel trailing directly behind our aircraft.
The pursuing Osprey, flying directly in our slipstream, sucked the raw fuel vapors straight into its roaring turbine engines.
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There was a sudden, violent flash of orange fire in the sky behind us as both engines of the Osprey suffered immediate compressor stalls. The tactical aircraft wavered, lost lift, and autorotated down into the ocean, splashing violently into the Pacific surf.
In the cockpit of the C-130, silence fell, broken only by the steady, mechanical thrum of four vintage turboprop engines carrying us into the clouds.
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