So when I say the little bastard tripped me, I think that's pretty much the truth. Now, as to why ― that's an entirely different question.
Maybe he wanted me to see him, get some sort of first shot in on me. Or maybe he thought he'd shake my confidence a little, make me think I was more tired than I really was.
So I didn't let him know. Made some little remark about it and let it go at that, but I'd seen him. And that put me in the firing position, asshole.
The rest of the reception went pretty much as planned. I had my backseater, Lieutenant Commander Kennedy, under close control. I guess she had orders from Tombstone to keep an eye on me, make sure I didn't act like a jerk to the Russians. But if truth be known, I ended up keeping an eye on her as much as she did on me. The Russians aren't big on having either blacks or women fly their aircraft, so Sheila and I stood out like ― well, like a black male and a white female. They gathered around us, not saying a whole lot, like they wanted to reach out and touch us to see if we were for real.
Sheila didn't back down, not a bit. She wouldn't ― not her. You've got to fly with somebody to really know them, and Sheila and I had logged enough hours together in work-ups to have a pretty good idea of where each other stood. No, we didn't necessarily like each other much ― but hell, that's not a requirement for a pilot and a RIO. As long as you trust the other guy to do his job and keep some asshole from shooting your aircraft out from under you, that ought to be enough. It was for us.
I thought the Russians were pretty well snowed by Sheila. It's easy to do ― I made that mistake with her from the first. A little short blond-haired, blue-eyed cutie pie, something you might find on your local cheerleading squad if you were real, real lucky. You might ask her out a couple of times, even think about making it serious ― until you found out she had a mean streak about a mile wide and a temper not a whole lot longer than Bird Dog Robinson's. Now that would have been a pair, teaming up those two. They would have killed either a lot of Commies or each other within the first thirty minutes.
And Sheila's not only her real name, it's her call sign as well.
Somebody who thought Australian was the hottest liberty around decided that, since "sheila" down under is slang for female.
Anyway, Sheila and I found that flying together was pretty much all right by us, so the skipper left us teamed up for this exhibition. I suppose we might have been offended, like they were trying to see us as some equal opportunity poster children, but the truth was that we were just so very, very good. The captain knew it ― and we knew it. The way I figure it, there wasn't a single logical choice in the squadron except for the two of us for this mission.
I drew Sheila aside as soon as a hole broke in the Russians around her and said, "You hear what the admiral said? We fly the first mission this afternoon."
Sheila nodded, a slow, strange smile spreading across her face. I'd seen her knocking back the caviar, so I was hoping it wasn't due to indigestion, but she just said, "We're ready."
I nodded. "Bothers me not having a guard on our birds, though."
Sheila finished licking the last bit of fish eggs off a cracker, then said, "So we preflight ― and we check the telltales." She shot a glance at one of the Russians standing nearby, as though wondering whether he understood the slang.
After we'd done our shutdown, Sheila and I had set up a number of carefully prearranged little traps for anyone who wanted to mess with our bird. Nothing fancy, just a piece of tape here, a little scuff and some oil there ― enough so we'd know if somebody was tinkering with anything on the aircraft. Besides, maintenance had fitted some special locks on both the compartments and the engine intake covers. If somebody tried to bypass the key system, there would be a larger splotch of red ink on the inside panel. Not enough to let our guests know that they'd been busted, but enough to alert us to double-check for problems.
An hour and a half later we were both back out on the flight line, checking out our bird. I reminded Sheila to wear her gloves, since the metal had already cooled so much that we'd lose skin if we came in contact with the bare metal. Even in early afternoon, the sun was low in the sky, reminding me of how far north we were. I was almost surprised we had any daylight at all.
Not that it mattered much, not with the Tomcat. I wasn't so sure about the MiG.
We double-checked the Tomcat for any problems. All of our telltales were just where we left them, and I didn't even see anything that gave me a hinky feeling. Finally, satisfied that nobody had been tinkering with her, we climbed back up in. The enlisted technicians double-checked us as efficiently as Americans would have, making me wonder who the hell they'd been practicing on. As far as I know, the MiGs and other fighters in the Russian inventory don't have exactly the same setup for the four-point ejection harness and the ejection-seat safeties.
I kept my distance from the MiG. I like formation flying, especially when it's with somebody who's pretty damned good.
Like Admiral Magruder. There was nothing about the admiral in the air that gave me any reason to worry about him. Oh, his reflexes might be a little bit slower ― even he'd admit that. But he still had what it took.
Surprising, at his age. I had to figure he was nearly forty-five.
I watched the MiG's roll-out carefully, staying behind and to the right of him, and pulled my own Tomcat off the tarmac exactly where he had.
I caught up with him soon enough, slid back into a locked wing position to his right for just long enough to let him know I was hot, then went for altitude.
We'd rebriefed the ground rules in preflight, both in English and in Russian, with both of our admirals listening in gravely. Both of them made the point of saying that this was simply a test of airmanship, not combat; that there was no reason to risk life or equipment, that safety remained a paramount consideration. I wondered how they managed to make the same bullshit sound so much alike in both Russian and English.
I looked over at Kyrrul and saw he wasn't buying it any more than I was. He bore watching, and not just because he was supposed to be some hotshot fighter-jet jock. No, he was a sneaky little bastard. He'd tripped me.
We meandered up to thirteen thousand feet, and I switched buttons to the tactical frequency we'd agreed on. The air traffic controller was switching rapidly between Russian and English, directing us into our starting positions thirty miles apart. On the controller's signal, I put my radar in standby mode, hoping Kyrrul was doing the same thing. That was the deal ― neither of us knew where the other was, and we were both starting from that point with no initial intelligence. The floor was seven thousand feet, the ceiling twenty-nine. I wondered about that number for a moment, whether it said anything about the MiG or not. No matter ― I'd remember to tell the intelligence weenies when we got back to the ship.
I knew Admiral Magruder was up in the tower, keeping an eye on the tactical picture. He didn't speak much Russian, just a few phrases, but a radar scope looks the same in any language. He'd assured me he'd keep them honest, and that I would fulfill the same role when he was in the air.
Finally, the signal came. I heard the admiral's voice come out of the circuit ― "Good luck, Skeeter, Sheila" ― and then we were off. I flipped the AWG-9 radar back into search mode. It took a microsecond to warm up, then it kicked in and started acquiring crap in the sky. A nasty picture for a few moments then, suddenly, clarity. That was one of the advantages of holding this little experiment in Russian airspace. They had no compunctions at all about clearing out the whole area of commercial and private traffic just for their own war games. A pretty big deal from what I could see of the industrial area down below us.
We picked up contact on the MiG almost immediately. You hear all sorts of things about advanced radar systems, but in my mind, there is nothing that can beat the AWG-9 radar as a fighter weapons control system.
Even in the older models, it could track up to twenty-four targets and guide missiles to six of them simultaneously. Everything feeds into it, I mean ever
ything ― although it was developed particularly for the Phoenix air-to-air missile, it also takes care of your Sparrow, Sidewinder, AMRAAM missiles, as well as the gun ― though later upgrades have replaced almost all the old components with miniaturized digital packages. With the AWG-9, you get good detection capability out to a hundred and fifteen nautical miles, across a front of more than a hundred and fifty nautical miles. The latest versions track targets as low as fifty feet off the ground and up to eighty thousand feet, a vast improvement over the earlier look-down limitations of the original system.
I caught the MiG in general search mode and immediately switched over to single-target track mode. My RIO did, actually, although the way Sheila and I worked together it was like we were one mind.
"He's acquired us," Sheila warned. Like I needed her to tell me that ― I could hear the insistent beep beep beep of her ESM gear going off.
The MiG knew we had him, too. He turned away from us, probably in preparation for enticing me into an angles fight at this altitude. I wasn't buying it. I put the Tomcat into a steep climb, grabbing for altitude. We were closing each other at well over Mach Two, and I was hoping to force him into an altitude game early on. Not that I thought the very first maneuver would win ― they would have put their best guy up, and I was certain he wouldn't fall for a rolling yo-yo immediately. However, I couldn't let him get me on the defensive, make me start reacting to his maneuvers at altitude.
The basic game plan wasn't complicated. Standard tactics against a MiG, something the admiral wanted to see in operation for himself. We knew it generally worked ― hell, we kicked their asses every time we'd come up against them ― but in this encounter we had full telemetry of both the Tomcat and MiG, something our science guys would drool over later back at VX-1.
Not that gathering scientific data was my primary purpose in life.
Mostly, I just wanted to kick his ass.
I rolled up through twenty-five thousand feet, with Sheila feeding me information continuously on what the MiG driver was doing. He milled about uncertainly at altitude, then reluctantly gave chase. He couldn't catch me, I knew, so I was sure he was counting on calculating the exact moment of my climb, when I'd tip my nose over and start back down. He'd cut out of the pattern at that point and wait to catch me on the downswing, slipping in behind me for a tail shot. Or what would have been a tail shot, if we had actual missiles. Both of us sported blue-painted dummy loads rather than the real thing.
It's slightly inaccurate to call them dummy loads, because they're much more than just dead weight on your wings. Each one of these missiles, although it has no warhead and no propulsion system, is a simulator in its own right. It stores tracking data from the AWG-9, records your firing orders and targeting information, all of which can be downloaded later for study. Additionally, each one of these has the MILES gear mounted on it, the laser simulators for the actual missile.
I pulled out of my climb at twenty-nine thousand feet, letting the Tomcat nose over gently to give me a good look at the MiG. He was still climbing, but rolled out of it as soon as he saw me stop my ascent. He peeled off to the north, in level flight away from me before the Tomcat had even nosed over.
I felt the G forces push me back in my seat as we started our descent.
"Not too far, Skeeter," Sheila warned.
Right ― like I need a RIO to tell me how to fight an air battle. I clicked my mike once in acknowledgment. As we descended past twenty-four thousand feet, the MiG was already starting his turn back in toward us. I knew what his plan was use his maneuverability against my speed, catch me when my inertia was too great to let me turn away from him. He was closing quickly now, descending slightly to maintain an excellent firing position on my tailpipes. Sheila's ESM gear increased its frantic beeping, indicating that he'd shifted to targeting mode.
At the third frantic beep, I hauled back on the yoke and pulled us out of the descent, simultaneously rolling to my right to bleed off additional airspeed. It's always a trade-off, this altitude versus airspeed game, and I was betting that I knew my Tomcat performance characteristics a hell of a lot better than he did. When I finished the roll, I was at seventeen thousand feet, accelerating and ascending into nose-on battle with the little bastard.
Thirty seconds later, we screamed past him so close that I heard Sheila gasp. Yeah, a little bit too close ― more so than had been briefed, that was for sure. The rules of engagement said that we were to maintain a one-thousand-foot altitude separation at all times. But as much as they run on about the damn MiG's maneuverability, I figured it was at least more his hit than mine. Besides, we hadn't been that close ― but RIOs are like that, always getting excited about stuff.
"Maintain your separation," I heard a voice say over tactical. I groaned, recognizing it immediately. Not the Russian GCI, or the air traffic controller. No, this was somebody I had to listen to ― the admiral.
"Aye, aye, Admiral," I responded immediately. "He got me a bit on that one."
A moment of silence on the net, then, "Right." Even over the circuit, I could hear the admiral's tone of voice well enough to know that he wasn't buying it.
"Let's just try that again, shall we," I said out loud.
"You heard the admiral," Sheila answered.
"I'm not talking about that," I snapped. "The rolling scissors ― you know that's what is going to get him in the end."
She sighed. I let it pass.
We pulled back into a steep descent, and this time I kicked in the afterburners to give us an extra boost of power.
The MiG overshot us, and had to turn back into our plane of attack.
By the time he was back in position, following me up, I was passing twenty-four thousand feet again.
"He's got you," Sheila snapped. "Jesus, can't you let me get in position for just a second to get off a missile?"
"Always so eager," I murmured. "Just wait for it, baby." I could get away with that kind of comment in the air, although not on the ground. I might even have to pay for this one later, but I was enjoying myself just too much to care.
I waited for twenty-nine thousand feet again, then edged over into another descent. This time, I rolled it, and in afterburner that generated some significant G forces for my backseater. She yelped in protest at the lack of warning, then shut up and started her M1, the forced breathing exercises that keep you from graying out. Harassing her about panting in the backseat is always good for a few laughs. At least on my part. Too bad she's so quick with the elbows-to-the-ribs routine ― my last bruise was just starting to fade.
Again we descended, this time passing much closer to the MiG, who had not rolled out quickly enough. I waved as we went by, straining to move my hand under the mounting G forces. Just as we passed, I saw him roll out of his climb and stay inverted to keep an eye on me as I descended. Then he pitched nose-down into a descent himself, almost immediately in firing position on my tail. Again, the sharp warning of the ALR-67 threat receiver was my cue. I banked back out of the descent, swinging out in a tight arc to drop in behind the MiG.
"Nice, nice," Sheila said. "I've got him ― got a lock!"
"Sidewinder," I agreed, toggling the weapon selection switch on my stick to the appropriate location. We were close, almost close enough to go for the gun. For just a moment I was tempted.
"Get it off now," Sheila said. "Quick, so I can take a second shot if we need to. Hurry before he-"
The MiG shuddered, twitching a little as though the pilot were going to pull out of his descent. He held it for a couple seconds longer than I thought he would, but I didn't mind. I pickled off one Sidewinder, then another, letting the heat-seeking missiles get a good look at the hot exhaust flaring out of his tailpipes. At this range, it was a nobrainer.
"Skeeter, you have to-"
The MiG broke off suddenly, pulling up sharply and almost stalling, then accelerating away in level flight. I swore, jerked back on the yoke, and rolled out as well. But sixty thousand pounds of Tomcat, even
with five hundred and sixty-five square feet of wing area, is not near as maneuverable as a MiG-3 1. He had time to cut a hole in the sky and come back around to be directly overhead before I saw level flight.
"The little bastard ― let's see if he can keep up with this!" I swung the Tomcat around and went back into a steep, bone-rattling climb.
"No point in it now," Sheila said, disgust heavy in her voice. "Do you realize what you just did? Skeeter, you idiot ― why don't you ever listen to me?"
"What the hell do you mean?"
Admiral Magruder's voice over tactical answered the question for me.
"Tomcat 101, RTB."
"Return to base? What the hell for?" I asked, tactfully keeping my finger off the Transmit button.
Sheila answered immediately, "Don't you listen to the briefs? We had a seven thousand altitude restriction, you idiot. He suckered you, big time. And you followed him right down, right to the edge of the envelope.
He had time to pull out before he broke seven thousand feet ― you didn't.
Six thousand nine hundred and forty-five feet ― you lose." "No fair!" I said. "We got off two Sidewinders before we reached-"
"You broke the altitude restriction ― you were dead before the missiles left your wing," Sheila said wearily. "Quit arguing and answer the admiral, Skeeter." I paused a second, collecting my thoughts. The admiral's voice came over tactical again. "Tomcat 101 ― acknowledge last transmission.
RTB-now!"
Finally, I toggled the mike. "RTB-roger, wilco." I didn't bother to ask why. The admiral knew ― and now, so did I.
We were only twenty minutes out from the base, but it seemed to take forever to get back there. The air was cold and clear, perfect flying weather, but somehow I was enjoying it a hell of a lot less than normal.
It was the same Tomcat curled around me, a metal shell that felt like my second home. The reassuring thrum of the turbofan engines, the familiar heads-up display that almost felt like a part of me ― none of that had changed. It was still the most powerful fighter ever built, a hell of a lot better than the MiG-31. The aircraft hadn't failed ― I had.
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