Afterburn c-7

by Keith Douglass

  “Mr. Brady!”

  “Yes, Captain!”

  “Pass the word for all hands to abandon ship.”

  He could feel the pain in his ship, feel her wounds in the way she was shuddering and grinding with the turn to port. The Falcon Patriot was finished; she would break apart soon if she didn’t burn to a cinder first. His instrumentation showed that automated fire control systems were engaged, but the flames from amidships were so hot, so violent, he knew that any firefighting efforts mounted by the automatic systems or by his twenty-man crew were doomed to failure. Better to get his people off now, while they could.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Brady replied. He reached for the intercom mike.

  “And Brady?”

  “Sir?”

  “Make sure you have a head count before you go over the side. I don’t want anybody left behind to fry!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Another missile struck, the impact smashing at the bottoms of his feet through the steel deck. Damn, what was this? Someone was deliberately slamming missile after missile into his vessel! All he could imagine was that a full-fledged war had just broken out, and the Falcon Patriot was squarely in its eye.

  The fire forward was so thick he could not see where they were going.

  Heat was blasting back at the face of the bridge, turning the compartment into a furnace. He kept his eyes on the compass, however, bringing the ship around into a more and more westerly heading, praying that she stay afloat and responsive to the helm for just a few more precious moments…

  1008 hours (Zulu +3)

  Air Ops, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  “It’s confirmed, Commander,” Lieutenant Crosby said as he hung up the telephone handset. “At least a dozen Russian aircraft just hit the northern Bosporus bridge and dumped it in the water. The Falcon Patriot was hit and is afire. Her skipper appears to be trying to put her aground near Sariyer, but her cargo is going up in flames.”

  Coyote felt a dawning horror… not just at the loss of the UNREP ship ― though that was certainly a factor ― but at what the attack meant. The Falcon Patriot had been carrying almost ten million gallons of fuel ― three million gallons of aviation gasoline, and the rest diesel fuel for the nonnuclear elements of the carrier battle group.

  Without avgas, Jefferson’s aircraft would not fly. Worse, while the Jefferson, the Shiloh, and the attack subs were all nuclear powered, the battle group’s guided-missile destroyers and frigates were powered by gas turbines fired by diesel fuel. With their current stores, they could operate under normal routine for perhaps another ten days… but then the entire carrier battle group would virtually have to shut down completely. And if they found themselves in combat, making rapid surface maneuvers and flying aircraft off the roof round the clock, that ten-day leeway would be cut back to two to four days at the most.

  And after that time, Jefferson and her escorts would be little more than large, expensive, and utterly useless toys, locked into the Black Sea by the closing of the Bosporus Strait.

  It was impossible to escape the obvious conclusion ― that someone, Russians or Ukrainians, had just found an indirect but deadly means of rendering the CBG impotent.

  “Deputy CAG?”

  He turned. “What is it?”

  Crosby was holding out a headset. “Sir, CAG’s on the line. Something’s going on ashore.”

  Coyote felt cold. Had the attack on the Bosporus bridge been timed to coincide with an attack against the UN party ashore?

  He took the headset and slipped it down over his ears. “CAG? This is Coyote! What’s happening?”

  “Coyote!” Tombstone’s voice sounded distant and static rough. “There’s just been an attempt on Boychenko’s life! The Ops duty officer just told me you pulled our air cover out! What the hell’s going on?”

  Oh, God, no…

  “Tombstone, we’ve got trouble, big-time. We picked up a flock of bogeys heading toward the Bosporus.” Quickly, he told Tombstone about the reshuffling of the three CAP groups, explaining that BARCAP Three would be on station south of Yalta in another few minutes. “But things have already started going down,” he concluded. “We’ve just had a report that unidentified aircraft dropped the northern Bosporus bridge across the channel, and fired on one of our UNREP ships.”

  “Sounds like someone doesn’t want us leaving,” Tombstone said. He sounded grim.

  “That’s the way it looks. We have BARCAP One and Two investigating, but it’s going to be another few-“

  “Coyote!” Crosby said. “BARCAP Two’s engaging!”

  He gestured toward a speaker mounted on the bulkhead, and Coyote became aware of the crackle of voices emerging from it. “I’m closing, I’m closing with bandit India-three,” Dixie’s voice was calling. “Range seven miles!”

  “Watch yourself,” another voice, the voice of the air control officer aboard the Hawkeye, warned. “You have multiple bogeys swinging in on your six.”

  “Okay! Okay, I see him!” Dixie replied.

  Damn. Who did he see, Coyote wondered? The guy he was chasing, or the “multiple bogeys” closing on his tail?

  “Badger!” Dixie’s voice called, suddenly anxious. “Badger! Where are you?”

  “Missile! Missile! Bandits have launched!”

  “We confirm bandit launch at one-zero-zero-niner and thirty seconds,” one of Crosby’s officers said. “Weapons free!”

  “Gotta go, Tombstone,” Coyote said into the headset’s mike. “Looks like we have a situation developing here.”

  “Go take care of it. We won’t be moving until we know we have air cover.”

  “We’ll keep you posted. You keep your head down, Stoney, you hear me?

  The natives aren’t as friendly as we thought.”

  “Roger that.” He could hear Tombstone’s grin on the other end of the radio link. “And you take care of my boys and girls! You’ve got the wing, Coyote.”

  “I copy. Dog House out.”

  “I’ve got one on my tail!” Dixie was calling from the bulkhead speaker.

  “Break left, Dixie!” Badger replied. “Break left! Fox two!”

  It sounded like Dixie and Badger had just flown smack into a full-fledged dogfight.

  CHAPTER 19

  Thursday, 5 November

  1010 hours (Zulu +3)

  Tomcat 218

  The bandits had dropped out of nowhere, it seemed, coming in between Dixie and the now-distant Jefferson, their approach masked by jamming and the confusion of the moment.

  “Break left, Dixie!” Badger yelled in his earphones. “Break left!! Fox two!”

  The cry Fox two warned that Badger had just released a heatseeking Sidewinder missile; his order to break left meant either that he was trying to set up a shot, with Dixie pulling the bad guy into position when he swung left, or that any other maneuver might expose Dixie’s hot exhaust to the Sidewinder… and break its lock on the bandit with some rather serious consequences for Dixie.

  Hauling back and to the left on his stick, he pushed the rudder over and dragged the Tomcat around in a hard turn to port. Sea and sky tilted on end, and both he and Mickey began grunting heavily, fighting against the rapid buildup of G-forces in their lower bodies. As his F-14 came around through nearly 180 degrees, he caught a glimpse of his pursuer, a black, winged speck a mile and a half behind him, reaching hard to match his turn.

  “I see the missile!” Mickey yelled. “I see it! Coming in at seven o’clock! Pop flares!”

  “I’m on it.” Dixie hit the flare release, spilling a line of white-hot flares to confuse the incoming heatseeker. A moment later, the missile streaked past, flashing beneath the Tomcat’s belly and off to the right.

  “Suckered him!” Dixie yelled.

  “Who are these guys?” Mickey wondered, twisting in his seat to get a better look at the other aircraft.

  “Don’t know,” Dixie said. He kept the stick hard over, maintaining a steady eight Gs of acceleration in the turn. “Where the
hell is Badger?”

  “There. Nine o’clock, coming in on the bandit’s six.”

  “Thank God. “Badger missed. That bandit’s popping flares, too.”

  “Let’s see if we can help.” Leveling off at ten thousand feet, Dixie sent the Tomcat arrowing back toward the other aircraft.

  The bandit was coming toward them, nose on. They only had a second in which to register each detail as it flashed past, but Dixie recognized the bandit as soon as he could make out its twin stabilizer configuration and the widely separated engine nacelles. Back in fighter school, he’d studied silhouettes, films, and photos of all possible aggressor aircraft, and he knew that one well.

  Mig-29, “Fulcrum” in the NATO code list of hostile aircraft. A deadly aircraft, capable of Mach 2.23 at high altitude, of climbing fifty thousand feet in one minute, of out-turning, out-climbing, and outmaneuvering nearly every combat aircraft in the Western arsenal.

  Moments later, Badger’s gray Tomcat approached, still trailing the bandit, wings folded back like those of a stooping eagle. Mickey had five more bandits on radar within twelve miles, closing fast, and plenty more within a thirty-mile radius. “Hey, Dixie!” he said. “We’ve got bandits all over the sky! I’m not sure I like these odds!”

  “You wanna go to Phoenix, man?”

  “Damn, I don’t know.” They had weapons free, but the big Phoenix missiles were long-range, standoff weapons, designed to knock down attackers threatening the battle group. The strategic situation was still murky; just who was attacking whom here?

  “Hey, Mickey! You get a good look at that red bird we passed?”

  “Sure did, Dixie. Mig two-seven, no bout a-doubt it.”

  “Pass the word to ‘em back at the farm, will you? I don’t think they’ll believe me.”

  “I think they’ll believe this one, Dixie. Only question is, was it a Russki or a Uke?”

  “I couldn’t see a rounder or a star, could you?”

  “Negative. He was going too fast.”

  Damn. It was frustrating to be in combat with someone… and to not even know who it was you were fighting! The assumption back aboard Jefferson ― both in the briefings and in the bull sessions in the squadron ready room ― had been that the likely aggressors today, if indeed anybody came out to play, would be Ukrainians bent on jumping the gun on the Russians before Boychenko turned the Crimea over to the UN.

  The aggressor aircraft appeared to be forming up in a loose-knit cloud to the west now, moving in a more or less northerly direction. As Dixie studied the pattern on his Vertical Display Indicator, he had the impression that he was looking at essentially a defensive formation, that the attacks he and Badger had endured had been launched by hostile barrier forces to keep them from breaking through to the main body.

  “BARCAP Two! BARCAP Two! This is Dog House!”

  “Yeah! Go ahead, Dog House!”

  “We’re reading at least ten bogeys in your vicinity! Break off! Break off and RTB. Repeat, break off and RTB!”

  “First sensible advice I’ve heard all day,” Dixie said over the tactical channel. “It’s gettin’ too damned crowded out here!”

  “Roger that!” Badger’s voice came back.

  A warbling tone sounded in his headset. Threat warning!

  “Hey, Dixie!” Mickey called from the backseat. “They’ve got us painted!”

  “I hear it.” That particular warning chirp ― and a red light winking on the threat display on his instrument panel indicated that a hostile aircraft had just established a radar lock on their Tomcat.

  “Okay, Dixie,” Badger called. “The bandits’ve got missiles inbound at three-zero-two… looks like AA-9s. You got ‘em on your scope?”

  “We have them,” Mickey replied. “Range… two-five miles.”

  “Yeah, I think they just popped those things to scare us,” Red Burns said from Badger’s backseat.

  “They’re doing a hell of a job,” Mickey said. “Let’s didi out of here, man!”

  “I’m with you, brother.” Dixie brought the stick over again, swinging the Tomcat into a northeasterly course… back toward the Jefferson.

  AA-9 Amos was the NATO designation for the Russian equivalent to the Navy’s AIM-54 Phoenix, a large missile with a range of at least eighty miles and active radar homing.

  “What’s the range on the missiles, Mickey?”

  “Nine miles.” The RIO sounded tight, and totally focused on his rear-seat console display. “Let’s go to burner.”

  “Zone five, now!”

  The Tomcat’s twin afterburners kicked Dixie hard in the back. The aircraft’s computer swung the wings all the way back as they passed Mach 1.5. Moments later they slipped past Mach 2; the Tomcat’s maximum speed at high altitude ― say, at forty thousand feet ― was Mach 2.34. At their current altitude of twelve thousand feet, the air was denser and sound traveled faster; Mach 2 was about the best that they could manage.

  The AA-9 had a speed of about Mach 3.5, so there was no outrunning the thing in the short run. The long run was something else again, however. At Mach 3.5, the missile would cover nine miles in something like twelve seconds, but its speed relative to the Tomcat was only Mach 1.5 ― eleven hundred miles per hour, give or take a bit, at this altitude. At a closing speed of eleven hundred miles per hour, the missile would eat up that nine miles in about thirty seconds… a small eternity when it came to combat in the air.

  “You got an idea about who they’re hunting?” Dixie asked. Likeliest, of course, was that one missile had been tossed at Tomcat 218, and another at 210.

  “One’s definitely got our name on it,” Mickey said. “I think the other one’s tracking Badger.”

  “Fun for everyone,” Badger said. “Fun the whole family can enjoy!”

  “Yeah, well, it’s time to start partying,” Mickey said. “Dixie! On my call, break right hard! I’ll release the chaff!”

  “Roger that.” He tightened his grip on the stick, trying to ignore the unsettling prickling sensation at the back of his neck. There was a terrible temptation to turn in his seat and try to see the incoming missile, but Mickey had a much clearer and surer picture of what was going on showing on his rear-seat display.

  Range was down to one mile. Three seconds…

  “Popping chaff!” Mickey yelled. “Break right.”

  Chaff could be released both from the front seat and the back. Mickey was dumping clouds of aluminized mylar slivers to leave Dixie free to concentrate on the turn. Reacting at an almost instinctive level to Mickey’s call, Dixie hauled the stick right and kicked in the rudder, diving with the turn in order to pick up a critical bit of extra speed.

  The G-forces piled on, crushing Dixie down against the hard back and bottom of his seat. For just a moment, his vision narrowed slightly, the only warning he was likely to get of the blackout he would suffer if he didn’t ease up a little. He held the turn as long as he could, willing the missile to miss them. By turning into the missile, he was using its greater speed to defeat it, since it could not turn at Mach 3.5 as sharply as he could turn at Mach 2. The chaff gave it a choice of radar-bright targets, enough to confuse its microchip brain and maybe give Dixie and Mickey an extra second or so to break out of the cone of its radar vision.

  The explosion jolted Dixie as hard as kicking in the afterburners had, a solid thump from aft and left, accompanied by a piercing note, like the ricochet on a TV Western. For a moment, the controls went soft and he was afraid that they’d gone dead… but then he felt them biting the air again. He scanned his threat warning panel. No fires… no flameouts… no electrical failures. Christ, what had just happened?

  “Mickey! You got any damage readouts?”

  There was no answer from the backseat.

  “Mickey! Yo! What’s happening back there?”

  He checked the small rearview mirror, then twisted in his seat, trying to see aft, but the layout of the F-14 cockpit was such that it was almost impossible for the front-seat man to see
his RIO, with his own ejection seat back and the RIO’s instrument panel between them. If Mickey was slumped down or forward…

  “Mickey!”

  Still no answer. He turned again in his seat, this time trying to check both wings and his stabilizers. Yeah… they’d taken some shrapnel, all right. The trailing edge of his left wing was showing some pretty bad damage; the inboard high lift flap was shredded, and there was damage both to the spoilers and the maneuver flaps as well. Three thin, smoky white streams from beneath the center of his wing were almost certainly avgas leaking from his port wing tank. He was conscious now of a shrill whistle, the sound that all combat aviators recognize at once as air escaping from their pressurized cockpit.

  “Dixie, this is Badger! Do you copy?”

  “Yeah.” He blinked behind his helmet visor. Things had happened so quickly that he was a little surprised to find that statement true. “Yeah, Badger, I’m here. I think we got a little shot up. And Mickey’s not answering.”

  “Hang on. We’ll be there, in a sec.”

  “What about the other missile?”

  “It’s gone.” Dixie could hear the relief in Badger’s voice. “We outran the sucker.”

  AA-9s packed enough solid fuel to give them a flight time of about two minutes. If the target aircraft could stay ahead of it until its fuel was exhausted, the missile would fall into the sea.

  “What’s the gouge? Where’re the bad guys?”

  “I think we’re clear. Batman and Libbie’ll be here in a few minutes.

  I’ve got you in sight now. Coming up on your five.”

  “The damage is on my port side,” Dixie told him. “I think I’m losing fuel from the left wing.”