Page 43 of Gryphon

The meter-and-a-half-long, three-finger-wide missile drove upward.

Weighing only ten kilos compared to the jet’s fourteen thousand, a Stinger attained two and a half times the speed of sound in the first two seconds of the initial boost phase. However, the Gripen was so close that the missile had barely crossed Mach 1 when it drove the warhead into the belly of Arne’s jet a hundred and seventy meters above.

The impact fuse fired the charge and the kilogram of HTA-3 high explosive launched the fragmented shrapnel in a lethal forward-aimed cone.

To either side, the shrapnel riddled the wing tanks with dozens of holes. Extremely volatile Jet A fuel began dumping through the holes. This had no significant relevance to what happened next.

To the rear, the shrapnel impacted the General Electric jet engine’s primary intake fan, shattering the blades. Finally answering the peak thrust Kapten Arne Sorenson had hoped would drive him clear, the result was that the fragments of the intake fan’s broken blades were sucked that much faster into the core of the engine. They struck the inner titanium blades of the smaller high-pressure compressor fan spinning at twenty-seven thousand rpm deep within the engine.

For the briefest moment before they shattered in turn, the engine jammed on the fragments. The entire force of the stalled turboshaft was transferred to the engine housing. The quick-change guide rails, allowing for an emergency engine change in an unexcelled sixty minutes, were stout enough to transfer the full rotational force into the rear chassis of the Gripen.

Like green carrot tops twisted off a slender carrot, the snap roll of the rear section of the aircraft as it absorbed the jammed engine’s momentum tore away from the forward fuselage. The rear fuselage, with its long delta-shaped wings and engine core, impacted the frozen Rusfors Reservoir hard enough to break the ice and disappear below. Other than the Black Box retrieved by a lone diver sent through the ice, it wouldn’t be seen again until after the spring thaw still four months ahead.

Arne cared about none of this.

At the last moment, he’d yanked the ejection handles.

The MDC, mild detonation cord, split the cockpit canopy and launched it into the slipstream. The two large curved sections fell to earth like the wings of a wounded snowy owl, fluttering chaotically as they abruptly slowed by several hundred knots and gravity took over.

A section of the shrapnel cone cast by the FIM-92E Stinger’s warhead missed the top of his helmet by mere centimeters. But the missile itself had sliced through the ejection seat’s controller. Receiving no sequenced signal, the seat’s rocket motor didn’t fire to launch Arne clear of the wreck.

He rode the arcing flight of the remaining forward fuselage, aerodynamically balanced on its stubby canard wings mounted to either side of the cockpit. The unpowered flight granted him five long seconds to appreciate the airfield his grandfather had flown from, his favorite fishing lake, and the first place he’d made love to Maja.

After a long morning, skating miles on the frozen lake, they’d shaped a snowy bowl that blocked the wind and reflected the sun’s warming heat until they lay comfortably naked together on the narrow blanket he’d had the foresight to bring.

At the sixth second, almost clear of the trees, wondering if he’d survive a long skid on the ice—what a story that would be to tell, finally outskating Maja—the starboard canard wingtip caught the trunk high on the final tree. The only thing higher was the single branch that decapitated Kapten Sorenson. The cockpit landed belly-first, indeed skating well down the frozen reservoir.

If he’d kept his head, he’d have had a fine chance of survival.

But he hadn’t.

His head tumbled down through the tree branches to bury itself in the snow that had gathered in the lee of the trunk. It would greatly puzzle the boy scout troop that literally stumbled upon it four years later.

The Arctic char asleep under the winter ice, briefly startled from their somnambulant winter slumber by the crash, possessed no way of knowing they’d be that much safer when spring arrived but Arne Sorenson didn’t.

34

Löjtnant Hugo Bodin saw the streak of the Stinger take out Arne as he rotated aloft from the E12 roadway.

Too late to abort, Hugo hit full thrust, then reached forward to slap the Gear Up lever the moment he rotated. By the time Arne’s Gripen was shredding in midair, Hugo was accelerating hard and climbing above it.

The curve of the road and his position behind Arne had initially hidden the missile’s launch point behind the towering Norway spruce trees on the inside of the bend. As he climbed aloft, it was hidden directly below.

Tipping over seventy-five degrees, he carved a hard turn to the east. Looking down and back from his steep-angled turn, he spotted a blue van. Beside it, a man tossed aside a Stinger surface-to-air-missile launch tube, separating it from the distinctive front-end targeting block. He reached into the van and pulled out another ten kilos of ugly-in-a-tube to fit onto the block.

Hugo didn’t need to see anything more.

“Tower, Gripen Three-three is down hard. SAM attack. Three-seven engaging.”

Unlike Arne, Hugo now had maneuvering speed and altitude.

And he had a JAS 39E Gripen, the best plane in any air force.

He’d never done a J-turn Herbst Maneuver at this low an altitude before, but there was always a first time.

Right now, headed away from the attacker, he blasted through Mach 1. How many seconds could he stretch it before he took a Stinger missile up his tailpipe?

Don’t think.

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