The Uvalde Raider by Ben English (great books for teens TXT) 📕

hard in that direction, he heard the sound of impacts on the side of the old bomber as if someone was banging on it with a baseball bat. He knew the sound for what it was, he had been shot at often enough by the Iraqis.

However, Gholam’s biggest problem was not the incoming rounds, but in making the corrections needed to keep the staggering Boeing in the air. Yahla’s sudden action had upset the balance of the airplane and caused them to lose a lot of speed. He reached over and pushed all four throttles forward, while at the same time working control wheel and rudder to gently bring The Uvalde Raider back to level flight. Behind him he heard yet more cursing, this time in Arabic as the two Shi’a Lebanese bounced off the bare metal sides of the Boeing’s interior.

“Brother! Do not do that again!” he addressed Yahla with raw authority in their native Farsi. Qassam might be the leader of this team and the golden boy of many but Gholam Javad was the commander of the Boeing while in the air, as well as those who flew along with him.

Qassam whipped his head around and glared hard briefly at Gholam. But as a growing realization set in, the Hezbollah leader’s expression changed into a palpable chagrin. He had panicked for the briefest of moments and responded in a way that nearly brought on that one giddy mistake he so feared. If one of those containers of VX had ruptured or if Gholam had not responded as skillfully as he had…

The shooting had ceased and he ordered one of the Shi’a Lebanese aft to check the containers and delivery equipment. Then he began to peer around for the German fighter, wondering where it had gone. How had that old man managed to free himself, get that Messerschmitt in the air and track them down? The same Messerschmitt, by the way, which he had been assured by his men as being rendered inoperable?

And why wasn’t Max Grephardt flying the fighter? What had become of Mustafa Abbas, his young champion whom he left in charge of the hostages as well as the other half of his team? What happened to the rest of his Hezbollah men left on the ground? And most importantly, who all knew of his plan now and what was being done to stop him?

The man known as Yahla al-Qassam shook the growing list of questions from his mind, and concentrated on the here and now. Even if the captives had managed to escape, they were still some fifteen miles from the nearest town.  Their vehicles were disabled and all communications going into the ranch house had been cut off. Time and Allah were still on his side.

Looking through the windscreen of The Uvalde Raider he could plainly see the Guadalupe River below, even if he could not see Ezekiel Templar and the Messerschmitt. Moving his head and eyes all around, he wondered to himself: Where has that accursed infidel gone and what is his next move? The terrorist leader found himself wishing fervently that he had put that bullet into the old man’s head, rather than his leg.

At that same precise moment, Ezekiel Templar was recovering from several different problems of his own. In handling the unfamiliar AK, he mistakenly rotated the safety lever to full auto. The weapon had proven nearly impossible to control in that mode, twisting and bouncing around in the cyclone-like wind. Most of his shots went wild, and he had wasted precious ammunition as well as that element of surprise.

Most crucially, he had come back too much on the throttle and in the midst of firing felt the right wing begin to dip. The Me109 was starting to stall, and the buffeting turbulence from being so close to the large bomber only added to the Messerschmitt’s instability.

In a blur Ezekiel re-engaged the safety lever on the Kalashnikov and yanked the muzzle out of the blasting wind, then rammed the throttle forward. The Daimler inverted V-12 responded immediately but the right wing continued to dip earthward. Ezekiel knew that if he went into a full stall and began to spin, he would never recover at such a low altitude.

Instinctively he worked both stick and rudder, gently angling the control surfaces to go with the increasing bank, and at the same time easing the nose of the Messerschmitt down. With every fiber of both mind and body, he began willing the needed air velocity over the flight surfaces of the little fighter to regain some semblance of control.

The right wing continued to dip and Ezekiel found himself nearly inverted in a clumsy half roll. The empty shell casings from the AK rattled around and bounced off the interior of the cockpit as he fought the assault rifle itself to keep it from doing the same. Still with one hand on the stick, he began pulling back gently as the 109 Gustav went completely inverted and on its back. With the nose still pointed down, all he could see was a lot of way-too-close Texas terrain rushing up to greet him at a frightening pace.

But all 1,475 horses of water-cooled Daimler were pulling hard and combined with his maneuvering to keep the nose down, the gray camouflaged fighter was picking up speed again. Ezekiel kept the pressure on the controls and completed the slow roll with the ground still coming on fast to meet him. With no air speed indicator, he had no measure of how fast he was going, other than his decades of being one with an airplane. He began easing the stick back ever so slightly, and the agile German fighter responded in kind, leveling out in a distance measured in feet above the rock and cedar studded soil.

The colonel closed the flaps as his speed increased and pulled back into another zoom climb, looking every which