Arsenal c-10

by Keith Douglass

  Tombstone glanced down at his fuel gauge. It was dropping perilously low, far out of the acceptable range for beginning a dogfight. And the tanker with its fighter escorts was too far ahead to provide cover for them. He sighed it was always like this. Just when you thought it was over, the fat lady failed to sing.

  “Been a while since our last dogfight, my love.” He slewed the Tomcat violently back toward the incoming raid and grabbed for altitude.

  “Let’s get up where we can get a good look at what’s going on.” And where I’ll have some reserve altitude when this bird runs out of fuel, he added silently. Altitude was safety, safety and reserve airspeed and maneuverability. With it, he might have a chance. But without it, the starving Tomcat was no match for a MiG.

  0723 Local (+5 GMT)

  Fulcrum 101

  Santana tweaked his radar, looking in vain for the flight of attack aircraft he’d been so certain were outbound from his home base.

  Regardless of his delicate twiddling of the knobs, the radar insisted on showing only one air contact a Tomcat, according to the ESM gear that had made it an AWG-9 radar in search mode.

  But where were the others? There should have been at least three other Tomcats in Bombcat configuration, along with some fighters armed with antiair missiles for protection, not one lone Tomcat straggling off toward the boat. No, he corrected, not straggling already alerted to what was happening around him, and climbing for altitude to gain a superior fighting position.

  It was inconceivable that only one aircraft could have so fatally damaged Cuba’s master plan. Inconceivable and unacceptable. The Tomcat pilot was probably congratulating himself right now, dreaming of the awards and medals he’d receive for such a daring mission. Even more unacceptable.

  Santana pulled the nose of the MiG up and headed for the sky. He needed some altitude, something to force this into a horizontal-plane battle of angles as he’d had earlier with the last Tomcat victim. For if he had anything to say about it, this particular Tomcat pilot was going to see his dreams of glory turn into his worst nightmare.

  0723 Local (+5 GMT)

  Tomcat 202

  “Not so fast, buddy,” Tombstone murmured. He was concentrating on the attack geometry between the MiG and the Tomcat, seeing in three dimensions the advantage that the MiG was trying to obtain. “If you’re like the other MiG pilots I’ve been up against, you have a much better idea of what your aircraft will do than mine, although my former squadron may have given you just a little refresher course on it very recently. Still, I’m betting that you’re a lot more familiar with MiGs than you are with Tomcats. Let’s just see, shall we?” Tombstone kicked on the afterburners again and watched the fuel gauge spiral down. The Tomcat seemed to stop in midair, ceasing all forward movement to turn into a flaming arrow launched toward the sun. “Can you match that rate of climb? I don’t think so not with your low thrust-to-weight ratio. You may have the maneuverability, but I’ve got the power.”

  At least until I run out of gas. He winced to see how far to the left the arrow pointed. There wasn’t going to be time to try this twice it would be a close-in-knife fight, first punch-wins engagement. And after that … well, he’d try to make it to the tanker, and if not.

  .

  .

  well, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d ditched an aircraft.

  He radioed Batman and asked that the tanker be brought in as close as feasibly possible. “Already on it,” Batman said. “And he’s got two fighters buster with him, just aching to get a piece of a MiG.”

  “Not a chance. This one’s mine.” Tombstone brought the Tomcat into level flight, now at thirty-five thousand feet.

  His fuel consumption rate was much lower this high, but not sufficiently economical to make up for the gas he’d sucked up on afterburners. Still, the MiG probably didn’t know that.

  He watched the MiG ascend, climbing at a shallower angle, but still impressive. He vectored toward it, intending to cut him off before he reached Tombstone’s altitude. One of the purposes of gaining altitude was to force the MiG into playing Tombstone’s game, into trying to match the Tomcat’s rate of speed. He couldn’t all the MiG could do would be to gain altitude while-losing speed. With any luck, he’d be going too slow to maneuver quickly out of Tombstone’s way.

  The second reason for taking the MiG now was to avoid an angles fight.

  It was a battle that the Tomcat pilots were trained to avoid at all costs. Never play the adversary’s game make him play yours. The key to successful fighter tactics was an aggressive, heads-up attitude, exploiting the adversary’s weaknesses while playing to your own strengths.

  For the Tomcat, that strength was power. The MiG had the corresponding weakness.

  Tombstone flipped the Tomcat over to watch the MiG ascend, then nosed down still inverted to meet him. He heard the low growl of a Sidewinder insisting it had acquired an interesting target. Tombstone was headed east, right into the rising sun. Did the Sidewinder have the MiG or was it going to begin one of its famous solar attacks, veering off in the atmosphere toward the rising sun until it ran out of fuel? There was no way to tell, not with the angle as it was between the two aircraft. He would either have to let the MiG proceed up a bit farther and gain some separation from the sun, or take a chance on losing the missile.

  What the hell he had two. In fact, in relative terms, he had more missiles than gas. Tombstone toggled off a Sidewinder, crying “Fox Three, Fox Three” into the ICS.

  0724 Local (+5 GMT)

  Fulcrum 101

  Santana glared suspiciously at the Tomcat loitering above him, inverted in the air. When it nosed down to point at him, still inverted, he slewed the MiG around to put the Tomcat directly on his nose. Too far away for guns, but the Tomcat pilot might not know that. At any rate, seeing the tracers might distract him. He fired off two quick bursts.

  A missile leaped off the Tomcat’s rails, headed almost directly for him. Almost Santana watched with something that approached amusement as the missile vectored determinedly away from his aircraft and toward the rising sun.

  His confidence slowly returned. Perhaps he’d overestimated the Americans even he knew better than to take an eastern shot at the sunrise with the Sidewinder. He glanced down at the airspeed indicator, saw the MiG was still struggling to ascend. He swore quietly. Soon he’d have to either pull out of the climb or resign himself to ambling through the sky like a wounded turkey. At any lower speed, he’d be too easy a target for the Tomcat. He’d lose maneuverability, and his low speed vector would be no problem for the Tomcat to overcome.

  He reached a decision, dropped nose down, and plummeted one thousand feet within seconds. His airspeed picked up satisfyingly, and he quickly rolled back around to face the Tomcat.

  He was on the Tomcat’s six now, with a beautiful view of the Tomcat’s glowing tailpipes. He toggled off his own missile, another heat-seeker, satisfied that the angle might be almost sufficient to distinguish between the aircraft and the sun. Had the American made that same assumption, he wondered, studying the Tomcat’s undercarriage.

  Three more Sidewinders hung there, more than enough to waste one shot as the pilot had done earlier. Suddenly, he wasn’t quite so certain that the Tomcat pilot had been foolish.

  0725 Local (+5 GMT)

  Tomcat 202

  Tombstone heard the shriek of the missile indicator before Tomboy’s voice cut through the ICS, warning of it. He swore, slewed the Tomcat around to virtually pivot in midair, and pointed nose down at the MiG.

  The heat-seeker came on, clearly fixed on the Tomcat rather than the sun.

  The Cuban pilot had taken the same chance he had, with better results.

  Fortunately, he hadn’t touched his countermeasures so far.

  The Tomcat shook lightly as three packets of flares were ejected from the undercarriage. They burst into brilliant white phosphorescent fire, easily outshining both the sun and the heat signature of Tombstone’s exhaust. Later generat
ion heat-seekers were trained to ignore targets that were too good, thus correcting for the tendency to vector on a flare rather than an exhaust and reducing the probability of its racing off toward the sun. Tombstone was betting that the Cubans used an earlier version of the missile, given to them by their Soviet master or their new friends, the Libyans.

  “Got it acquiring the flare,” Tomboy said. ‘Tombstone, he’s coming around.”

  “I’ve got him. I’ve still got altitude on himhe’s not going to like this.”

  9726 Local (+5 GMT)

  Fulcrum 101

  Santana was already setting up for his next shot as his first heat-seeking missile exploded harmlessly into a flare. He hardly spared it a thought-he was too busy trying to coax the Tomcat into descending into an angles fight. He could understand the other pilot’s refusal to take the bait, but he was determined not to fight it out in a wild yo-yo of shifting altitudes that would inevitably provide the Tomcat with a marked advantage.

  Now what the he watched as the Tomcat nosed over and headed down toward him, surprised to see the pilot descending. Would he actually do that?

  Enter a horizontal battlefield, knowing that it would put him at a disadvantage?

  Well, he’d seen the pilot make one mistake. Perhaps it had been a mistake, and not a calculated chance. At any rate, this was the battle that a MiG excelled at. And if it was a mistake, it would be his adversary’s last.

  0727 Local (+5 GMT)

  Tomcat 202

  “Stoney,” Tomboy gasped. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “The only thing I have time to do before we run out of fuel,” Tombstone said grimly. “Start the pre ejection checklist. If this doesn’t work, we’re going for a swim.”

  0728 Local (+5 GMT)

  Fulcrum 101

  The Tomcat was indeed descending to his level. Santana smirked. It was as he’d thought Americans were not nearly as well trained and proficient as they pretended to the rest of the world to be. Here, in the sky, mono a mono, there was no disguising their foolishness. He swung the MiG around, calculated the intercept, and bore in for the kill. In the last twenty minutes, he’d discovered a real taste for knife fights.

  0739 Local (+5 GMT)

  Tomcat 202

  “I see what you’re up to, buddy,” Tombstone said. “It worked on that youngster you splashed, but I’ve been around guys like you too often.

  Your kind always does like the close-in fight. That’s because you treat those funny little things hanging on your wings like your balls, protecting them and not using them like you should. Well, if you want to learn some knife fighting, I’m not above teaching it to you.” He watched the MiG bore on in until he was almost within range. The Cuban pilot would be running the geometry through his mind, calculating the exact intercept.

  To encourage him to continue thinking the American had made a mistake.

  Tombstone toggled off another Sidewinder.

  He knew it was well inside the minimum range for shooting one, but he hoped the Cuban would think he didn’t.

  It seemed to work. The Cuban MiG didn’t even flinch from its course, continuing to bore on in toward him.

  Tombstone felt his eyes go squinty and a muscle in the side of his jaw start to jump. One more kill, one last kill that would be it.

  Just as the vectors approached range and optimum angle for firing.

  Tombstone did three things simultaneously. First, he swept the wings of the Tomcat forward, overriding the automatic angle configuration that selected appropriate sweep angle for speed. Moving the wings forward decreased his lift, rendering the Tomcat slightly more ungainly in the air, but from this angle was also an almost imperceptible way of draining off airspeed without the other pilot’s noticing. Second, in one quick motion, he popped the speed brakes and dropped his landing gear. Dirtying up all of his airflow surfaces peeled one hundred knots off his airspeed almost instantaneously. Instead of a graceful, powerful fighter, the Tomcat was now a lumbering aircraft configured for landing.

  An ugly turkey in the air with a MiG right in its sights.

  Third, Tombstone switched the selector over to guns, pressed the buttons, and heard the delicate beelike hum of the gun in his port wing firing. It was almost anticlimactic at first, watching the delicate line of bullets trace their way down the fuselage. He jinked the Tomcat slightly to the right, watching the tracery elevate up and penetrate the other aircraft’s canopy. An explosion of glass and body, followed shortly by a fireball.

  “Fuel,” Tomboy insisted, for all the world sounding as though she’d completely ignored the knife fight going on in front of her. “Stoney, vector three-two-zero. Now!”

  Tombstone did as ordered, then said, “No comment?

  Aren’t you going to congratulate me on that last kill?”

  “If it is your last kill, you idiot,” she snapped. “The next one will be us if you don’t get some fuel into this bird.”

  The tanker was waiting only one mile away. Tombstone vectored straight in on it, and pulled off the most remarkable plug of his entire aviation career. The probe slid in smoothly, as if the basket had been coated in Vaseline. Two other fighters hung nervously off his port and starboard bow, acting almost as though they could somehow buoy him up should his fuel tank suddenly run dry.

  Ah, but the luck was flowing his way now. A smooth plug, fuel good at probe tip within minutes. The tanks sucked the fuel in, and within moments he felt the Tomcat start to grow heavier. He corrected automatically, keeping the probe centered in the basket while the sun rose behind him.

  Fifteen minutes later, they’d topped off enough to make a run on the boat. Tombstone thanked the tanker crew, then peeled away from the formation.

  “Now about that last kill …,” he said casually. “Not bad for an old guy, huh?”

  Tomboy was silent for a moment, then said, “It was brilliant for any pilot. And that it was you just makes it that much better.”

  A grin crept across Tombstone’s face. Nothing like having your new bride admiring your latest kill.

  Four minutes later, he dipped quickly into the starboard marshal, then was vectored in toward the ass end of the carrier to make his approach.

  The trap went smoothly, as professionally done as anything he’d ever executed in his life. He followed the yellow shirt’s direction across the flight deck, moving the Tomcat into an unoccupied spot right behind the island. He popped the canopy and waited for the plane captain to safe the seat and assist him in unfastening the ejection harness.

  “Really something. Admiral,” the airman said as he climbed up the side of the Tomcat. “I heard about that MiG sir, I mean it was-I mean.

  Admiral” The airman’s voice trailed off into a confused panic as he realized who he was talking to. Behind him. Tombstone could hear Tomboy chuckling.

  Finally unstrapped. Tombstone sauntered back into the carrier and headed for Flag Plot. Bird Dog might have thought he was hot shit flying JAST birds back at Par River, but he was willing to bet that he’d earned bragging rights after today’s kill.

  Tombstone strolled into TFCC and was greeted by a wave of cheers. He started to wave in a self-deprecating manner, ready to display the traditional false modesty over a daring aviation exploit. Then he realized that none of the cheering men and women were even looking at him. Batman clapped him on the back. “Good news. Tombstone! An American sailboat just outside of Cuba’s territorial waters just picked up one of our aviators. You probably remember him Gator, Bird Dog’s RIO. That damned ejection seat of his must have had an extra forty pounds of charge or something.

  He was way the hell off where he ought to have been.”

  Tombstone tried to smile. “That sure is good news. Hey, about that MiG” “Hold on, old buddy. I need to get some SAR on this boy, then we’ll talk.”

  Tombstone stood silent for a moment in the middle of the roiling pack of aviators, each one celebrating Gator’s rescue. Finally, he Chuckled and headed off for his stateroom
. It was always dangerous, getting too damned impressed with oneself. He’d be better off going to the Dirty Shirt and grabbing a quick slider than looking for a pat on the back.

  SEVENTEEN

  Thursday, 04 July

  1000 Local (+5 GMT)

  United Nations

  Ambassador Sarah Wexler smiled as she walked into the crowded subcommittee meeting room.

  In the last twenty-four hours, there had been more than adequate proof that Cuba was in possession of nuclear weapons and intended to use them against the United States. While all of the island nations might not feel completely supportive of everything the United States had done in this scenario, neither were they willing to have that capability so easily retargetable and so deadly to the flora and fauna of the Caribbean basin unleashed against them. They would side with her, of that she was certain. The behind-the-scenes discussions with each of them had confirmed what she’d already known.

  The tiny island nations that crowded the Caribbean basin would insure that the United Nations sanctioned every action the United States had taken. War on this scale, involving weapons of mass destruction, was far outside of anything they ever saw their nations playing a role in.

  She surveyed the ambassadors and assembled staffs, favoring all of them with a calm, confident smile. There were times during the last two days when that smile would have been a lie, and victory was all the sweeter for having been uncertain. In the delicate balance of international politics, sometimes appearances mattered more than reality.

  Reality: The United States could have smashed Cuba into a glowing ember, had it wished. Illusion: The United States was a force for stability in the region. Result: Smaller nations would flock to America’s side, providing training opportunities and much-needed votes on the main floor and, she had to admit, a bigger drain on the State Department as they demanded money and technical assistance as their just due.