From their movements around the aircraft, I surmised they'd spent a fair amount of time studying our own people during our short stay here.
That was confirmed as we taxied off the apron and toward the runway. The plane captains directing our motions could have been American, for all you could tell from their hand signals. Another data point. Had we learned as much about them as they had about us?
I rolled out first, followed ten seconds later by Skeeter and Sheila.
We followed the vector given to us to depart the airfield, as we had done in the previous days, then turned north toward the coast and open water.
"We're gonna have company, Admiral," Gator said. Somehow, I'd figured we would. "Looks like MiGs ― yeah, MiGs," he said, checking the electronic warfare detection gear to confirm his guess. "That's their radar."
"We're going home, that's all," I said. I clicked on to tactical.
"Skeeter ― I don't want any problems with our escort, you hear?"
It wasn't his RIO I was worried about. She'd already proved her levelheadedness too many times to count. No, that little message was for Skeeter alone. "All they're going to do is escort us to the coast, maybe to the twelve-mile limit," I said, hoping they didn't know I was guessing.
"But keep your heads up ― we're not going to be the aggressors, but neither will we take the first shot. That clear?"
"Admiral, I-"
"We've got it, Admiral." Sheila's cool voice broke in. "Message sent and received."
I laughed. "Skeeter, son, you just stay welded to my wing. If there's any heavy thinking that needs to be done, you let Sheila do it."
Two sharp clicks on his microphone key ― Skeeter's or Sheila's, I wasn't sure which ― acknowledged my transmission.
There were six MiGs, grouped in sets of two. They took station on either side of us, with a final pair trailing and slightly higher. A good formation, one that gave them a fairly clean shot no matter what we decided to do. A little too close for comfort ― except for the trailing pair, the MiGs were only three hundred feet off our wings.
I had the carrier's TACAN loud and clear by now, and I adjusted my course slightly to vector in on it. Once we were settled in, I clicked on the ICS. "Eyes peeled," I said. "That goes for you, too."
"Of course, Admiral," Gator replied, his voice calm and unruffled.
"Anything in particular I should be aware of?"
I hesitated for a moment, wondering just how much to tell him. It was instinctive, this need for secrecy and caution, a lesson I had learned the hard way during the Cold War. Yet there was something to be said for briefing my backseater in full, to a degree that not even Batman knew. If anything happened, it was going to happen fast, and I needed his immediate reaction without explanation. Skeeter and Sheila, too, for that matter, but they'd follow my lead.
"Our approach on the carrier ― it may be a little bit different than you're normally used to," I began, thinking my way through it. "I'm not sure exactly why, but ― oh, hell. There's something on the seaward side of the aircraft carrier that we don't want them to see. So, if whatever it is is still there when we get to the carrier, we'll have to make up some excuses to delay trapping. Jefferson will help us out on this, I know. We may tank, we may take a couple of practice looks at the deck, but whatever it is, we have to keep the MiGs away from the ship."
"Yes, Admiral, I understand." Again, there was no trace of curiosity in his voice. That worried me a little. But then he said, "If you can't tell me, I understand. But it would help."
"I'm not entirely sure why it is myself," I said, faintly relieved.
"But it's got something to do with our submarine."
"Our submarine?" Finally, a break in the professional monotone of Gator's voice. So he was surprised ― that wasn't anything like what I was going to face when I hit the deck of the carrier and Batman found out about my little collusion with Lab Rat. "Yes, our submarine. There's been one trailing the battle group the entire time. It was supposed to be a covert mission, but I take it something's gone wrong."
"Huh." And that was it, no further comment.
We were almost there now. The carrier had been painting on the radar for several minutes, and I thought I could see it out on the horizon, a small irregular bump on the otherwise flat horizon. There was an E-2 Hawkeye up for command and control, as well as a KA-6 tanker. I let out my breath as a friendly voice spoke reassuringly in my headset.
"Roger, Admiral, I hold you at sixteen miles, inbound on radial one-eight-zero. State souls and fuel status, sir."
"Two, and," I glanced down at the fuel indicator, "eight thousand pounds."
"Roger, sir, copy eight thousand pounds. Recommend we top you off before your first pass at the ship, Admiral." The E-2 pilot's voice betrayed no emotion, but he and I both knew that at eight thousand pounds I ought to be taking a look at the deck first before I tanked. If I got on on the first pass, there would be no need for it. Still, Batman's message had warned me to be ready to respond instantly to any unusual approach guidance, and I quickly complied. "Roger, Hawkeye, copy all. Give me a vector to the tanker, if you would."
"Roger, Admiral, turn left and come to the new heading two-niner-zero."
The same query and directions were repeated to Skeeter, and I heard Sheila answer the call. Evidently she'd decided to take her hotheaded young pilot out of the loop of talking with the rest of the world.
We turned smoothly, moving as one, Skeeter never varying a millimeter out of position. I swear, that man drives me to distraction some days, but truth be known, he's an excellent pilot. One of the very best, and if we'd been in the same Top Gun class, at the same age, he might have been the only one who could have beaten me.
Might have been. Even now, I wasn't willing to admit that anyone could have pulled it off back then. But still… I knew the MiGs were listening in on our frequency. There was only a second's hesitation before they, too, joined the smooth turn east. "Give me their positions relative to us," I said over the ICS.
"They're out of position a bit, Admiral," my backseater replied. "The one trailing us has descended by three hundred feet, and is only four hundred feet above our altitude at this time. The two on the wings look like they're not as comfortable with night formation flying. They've moved out a little bit, increasing separation to three-quarters of a mile. And… that's funny," he said, a worried note in his voice. "Admiral, I thought they would return to the briefed distance when we finished the turn, but they're still opening. Not opening, they're ― Admiral, they're peeling out of formation. One set's going high, the other low."
"Combat formation," I snapped immediately over tactical. "Skeeter, you take high. Get that guy off my tail first. Break right, break right."
Almost before I'd gotten the words out of my mouth, I saw Skeeter's Tomcat peel off my wing. I followed, cutting hard to the right and underneath him, losing him, losing altitude as I did so.
The MiGs reacted instantly. The Hawkeye was howling warnings now, too. He broke off mid-sentence as he evidently saw on his radar scope what we were doing. He fell back into the mode for which the aircraft was designed, giving us long-range warnings. Had there been other fighters airborne, he would have been watching who was Winchester, vectoring other aircraft in to engage additional targets as necessary.
As it was, with only two of us, he wasn't much use.
I kicked the Tomcat over, tightening the turn until it felt like we were pivoting on the right wingtip. Both wings were fully swept back now, the automatic mechanism compensating for our angle of attack and speed.
Behind me, my RIO called out distances and bearings, keeping me mentally in the picture as I fought for position.
"I'm on him ― fox two, fox two." It was Skeeter now, calling out in savage glee as he toggled off a Sidewinder at the tail MiG. I grunted, clicked my mike twice in response, straining against the G forces that were pulling the blood away from my brain and trying to pool it in my extremities. I tightened my muscles again,
forcing it upward, fighting off the gray that was creeping in around the edges of my vision. I could hear my RIO behind me performing the same maneuver.
"Break left, break left," Gator called out. "Too much debris to-"
I didn't wait for the rest of the sentence, and instead reversed my turn immediately. Getting too close to an exploding MiG was the last thing I needed right now.
Shards of fuselage and aircraft peppered my Tomcat. Directly overhead, the canopy cracked and starred into a fragmentation pattern. The safety fibers embedded in it kept it intact, but its ability to withstand the strain of high G maneuvers was now seriously in doubt.
"Any other damage?" my RIO called out.
"Negative. Give me a vector to the unengaged MiG."
As it stood, we had five MiGs still in the air ― four, I amended, as I heard Skeeter cry out again the deadly fox two warning. "Two on one, by God," Skeeter cried. "Hell, those aren't even fair odds, not for them."
Still, taking on two MiGs with an aircraft in less than optimal condition was not something I thought of as good odds. The MiGs were faster, more maneuverable, but the Tomcat made up for that in sheer power and endurance.
"Give me a vector to the pair," I repeated, then I found it myself.
They were off my starboard quarter, closing fast, automatically falling into combat spread. It was the most effective fighting position for two aircraft ever invented, and one that we had perfected and taught them ourselves.
My pair of MiGs had evidently misjudged exactly how fast I could come out of the turn. That, or they hadn't anticipated my sudden cut back to the left. Either way, they were out of position, too high and off angle for an infrared missile, and in each other's field of fire for a radar lock. I took advantage of that, jammed the throttles full forward, and grabbed for altitude like a bat out of hell. I split up right between the two of them, their rate of closure dangerously high, and my rate of climb too slow.
The MiGs peeled back out of my flight path like a banana. There was a moment of confusion, as they tried to sort out who was following me up and who would linger down below.
The Tomcat was picking up airspeed now, her heavy engines pounding against the air behind us. The full-throated scream of the afterburners roared through the Tomcat's interior, and I glanced upward to check my shattered canopy. It appeared to be holding, but I suspected we were dangerously close to the envelope of what it would withstand.
In the moments when we passed between the two MiGs, I didn't think we would make it. The Tomcat was bringing every inch of power to bear in those massive engines, hurtling us straight up with virtually zero speed over ground as every bit of energy was diverted to increasing our altitude.
Finally, I felt the response, saw indeed that we were going to clear the MiGs, and I knew that I'd just tipped the balance in my Tomcat's favor.
One MiG spiraled up after me, his rate of climb considerably slower than mine. The other cut tight circles down below, waiting for the moment when I would inevitably be forced to trade altitude for airspeed. The Tomcat has an effective combat threshold considerably above that of a MiG, and I was counting on those few extra thousand feet to give me the break I needed.
The distance between us and the trailing MiG grew wider. I heard the brief beep of a radar trying to lock on.
I glanced at the altimeter. Good, just where I wanted it to be. I cut the Tomcat hard, wrenching her into a violent turn, then darted east back toward Skeeter. There was not much I could do to help him at this point, not if he were in trouble, but it was a good idea to stay within fighting range of each other.
The MiG below me took the easy, angular vector away from his direct climb and followed. By moving into the vertical, I had just decreased the amount of energy he would have to expend to catch up with us, while simultaneously complicating my own problems. Below me, the lower MiG paced us, waiting for his chance.
As the MiG reached a range of ten thousand yards, I turned back into him. The G stress was worse this time, cutting almost half my field of vision despite a hard push on the M-1 maneuver. I felt the first lazy, soft drifting of my thoughts, redoubled my efforts to stay conscious, and finally eased my rate of turn.
We descended on the MiG, now in head-to-head closure rate in excess of twelve hundred knots. I was still in full afterburner, the Tomcat gulping down fuel at a tremendous rate. It was risky, but not as dangerous as having two fully capable MiG-31s after my ass.
The trick to fighting a MiG, I've always found, was to keep the battle in the vertical. There is no way they can match a Tomcat for sheer climbing power and endurance, and you have to take advantage of that. If you let a MiG force you into a horizontal knife fight, you're going to lose. No matter how good a pilot you are, how good shape your Tomcat is in, the damn things are just so light and maneuverable that it's like swatting at flies. You have to keep a MiG climbing, keep him fighting for altitude and airspeed until you have a chance to take your shot.
This MiG must have been paying attention. I was descending on him, and he had broken out into level flight now, twisting and turning to prevent a radar lock. He couldn't know just how good our avionics were, and how little a chance he had of avoiding that, but I gave him points for trying. Finally, he made a fatal error of descending slightly, exposing for a few moments that warm, rich source of energy that a Sidewinder loves so well ― his tailpipe. "Fox one," I called, as I toggled off a Sidewinder.
I followed up with a Sparrow, after checking to make sure that we were still well clear of Skeeter and Sheila. Then the MiG made the last mistake he'd ever make. He panicked.
He headed for his wingman, descending rapidly now and racing for the surface of the ocean. There was at least a chance that the Sparrow would get confused by the sea-clutter radar return off the surface of the water, but that played right into the strongest capabilities of the Sidewinder.
Hot jet engine, fiery exhaust, warm metal silhouetted against the cold, black ocean ― add to that a starlit night, with no sun to generate a dangerously attractive alternative source of heat.
As luck had it, neither the Sidewinder nor the Sparrow minded descending at all. Eight seconds after I'd toggled them off, they found their prey.
I could hear my backseater swearing, and easily deduced the cause.
Gator had made the mistake of glancing out the canopy just at the moment of missile impact, and the explosion had robbed him of his night vision.
Fortunately for him, I knew enough to look away from the fire spewing out of the tail end of the missiles, and had had my eyes shut at the moment they'd caught up with the MiG.
"Where is he? Where is he?" he demanded.
"Get your head back in the scope until your vision clears," I snapped, silently damning every RIO that had ever lived who had been so incautious as to poke his or her head up like a gopher coming out of a hole at just precisely the wrong moment. "You've got the radar ― use it."
I saw the second MiG before he had a chance to vector me in on him.
He was almost at my altitude now, arrowing straight in, curving around behind me. Maybe he counted on me being slightly blinded by the explosion, maybe not, but whatever his intentions, it put him in almost perfect firing position.
There was no way I had time to climb, not with having expended so much energy in turning and firing on the first MiG. I took the only other option available to a Tomcat who needs to get back in the game.
I tipped the Tomcat's nose over and headed for the deck. The altimeter clicked past eight thousand feet, and the Tomcat was quickly picking up speed. I let it spin out for another two thousand feet, jinking and weaving across the sky to make myself a more difficult target. This MiG was a little bit more cautious ― or maybe he was just a fast learner.
He followed, but kept sufficient separation between us to avoid getting lured into the vertical battle.
I could almost hear him thinking, read his mind as he tried to compute the vectors. The MiG knew as well as I did that we weren
't going to fight in the horizontal, that the only reason I was screaming down toward the surface of the ocean was to build up enough speed to start my next ascent.
I would be hoping to lure him into a yo-yo maneuver, heading first up, then back down, drawing him in on me until I could maneuver into position behind him. The MiG knew that's what I was thinking ― and he evidently decided not to play. As my Tomcat passed to five thousand feet, he pulled out of the descent and broke out in a wide turn that quickly steepened into a sharp arc. If he'd timed it right, it would bring him right back in on me in perfect firing position just as the Tomcat came thundering past him on its next upward pass. I watched his progress through the canopy, shifting in my seat to see past the star-crazed section of the windscreen. There he was, tailpipe hot and bright against the field of stars, looking like a giant stingray must look as it passes over creatures deeper in the ocean.
The only way to deal with a MiG that's trying to avoid the vertical game is to force him into it. I pulled out of the descent, but instead of pulling back into a climb, I broke hard right, kicked the afterburners back in, and pivoted virtually in midair, until I was directly underneath him.
A beautiful target, although not the best firing position in the world. Still, the Sparrow howled out its radar lock, almost demanding to be released. I toggled one off, waited for a moment, then rolled the Tomcat away again and broke away from the immediate vicinity.
Seconds later, another explosion told me that however good the MiG pilot's training had been, however much intelligence they'd gleaned from one recent knife fights in the sky, it hadn't been good enough. That's the problem with fighter combat ― good enough isn't.
"Where are they?" I demanded, searching the sky overhead for the familiar shape of a Tomcat. I hadn't heard another missile call out of Skeeter since he'd taken out the lead pair, nor had my backseater given me any indication what was going on in the other battle. "I can't find him ― what happened?"
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