heavy aircraft plunging toward the cloud deck in an inverted dive. They fell for a mile through clear cold air before he hauled back the stick and kicked in full burners once more. Fuel was becoming a problem, but bingo fuel was a worry he would gladly live with later if they survived the next sixty seconds.
The Gs built up as he continued to pull out of the inverted dive. He felt his mask, his skin dragging at his face as they pulled eight… nine… nine point five Gs. He felt the odd mixture of light-headedness and crushing weight. The Tomcat was easily capable of pulling Gs enough to put both Coyote and Mardi Gras to sleep. The trick was to pull just enough to stay awake, to stay in control.
His vision distorted, bluffed by a nebulous disk of black fog as though he'd stared hard into the sun, then looked away. The blackness spread…
… and he came out of the dive, pulling up at nine thousand and continuing to climb as he rolled upright. 'Mardi Gras! Are you with me?'
No answer. His RIO was out for the count. He continued his climb with a half roll to starboard, searching. Where was that damned gomer missile…?
The explosion came like a hard punch to his stomach, slamming him in his seat, then forward against his harness in a vicious one-two jolt.
He glimpsed silver fragments of high-tech aircraft hurtling past his canopy, felt the off-center surge as fuel ignited in a fireball a few feet behind him. What was left of the Tomcat rolled to the right as white flame swallowed the sky.
Coyote was functioning on pure, raw instinct as he reached down between his legs, grabbed the black and yellow ejection loop, and yanked it toward him. There was no time to think as ejection charges blew the F-14's canopy up and back. A second blast rocketed his seat up the rails and into cold blue sky, followed an instant later by a third explosion which sent Mardi Gras hurtling from the cockpit as soon as Coyote's seat was clear.
The ejection slammed Coyote's tail like a hard-swung baseball bat. Wind smashed against his face and chest. His head whipped to one side and he felt himself flung against his harness. He was tumbling. For a moment, he glimpsed his F-14 suspended above him, sleek nose protruding from a devouring monster of flame, the empty cockpit staring down at him like a huge, blind eye.
Then he was clear of his seat, falling through space with the clouds rising like a glaring snowfield to strike him in the face.
His parachute opened with a yank that whipsawed his body around, feet down, a sensation at once terrifying and wonderful, as though God himself had plucked Coyote from above. It felt as though he were whooshing skyward again, but that was illusion. He looked up to check his chute and was rewarded by what was at that moment the most welcome sight in the universe ? the full, undamaged expanse of his white canopy blocking his view of the sky.
Dropping through the clouds was like entering a heavy fog. Then he was in the clear again, the water rushing up to meet him.
Grasping the beaded loops at the waist of his life jacket, Coyote jerked them out, then down, and was rewarded by the hiss of gas inflating the vest. His feet hit the water with a jolt, and an icy shock engulfed him. Working on automatic, his hands fumbled at the Koch fittings which secured the parachute to his harness as he broke the surface. He took a breath and choked on salt water. His mask was filled with water and he tore at it, yanking the straps free and gulping cold, wet air.
He could still die very, very easily, if the parachute dragged him down, if the shrouds tangled his arms and legs before he could get free… if no one could find something as small as a man adrift in a wide and empty sea.
A stiff wind was blowing the chute clear as he finally freed the harness fittings. Gently, he reached down and pulled some shrouds clear of his legs, letting the canopy collapse downwind as he worked his way free. He felt the stiff collar of his life jacket pressing against his neck, holding his head above water as he bobbed in the icy gray sea.
There was no sign of Mardi Gras. Only then did Coyote realize how very much alone he was.
CHAPTER 3
'Tango! Tango! Rodeo Two is down!' Tombstone had seen the explosion as he clawed for altitude above the cloud deck, but he was so far away that he'd lost sight of Coyote as he hauled the Tomcat around to close with his wingman's aircraft. With mounting desperation, he searched the sky, praying for even a glimpse of parachutes.
'Tango, this is Rodeo Leader! Rodeo Two is down. I've lost him, over.'
'Copy, Rodeo Leader. What's the situation with your bandits, over?'
Tombstone put his F-14 into a shallow port turn. 'Situation clear, Tango. I think the bandits have decided to get out of Dodge, over.'
'Copy, Rodeo Leader. Be advised, help is on the way. Call sign Backstop, four aircraft, ETA mikes one- three.'
'I've got them on my scope,' Snowball reported. 'Bearing zero-eight-four, range one-seven-oh miles. The bad guys are breaking off and heading west.'
More than likely, the North Koreans had picked up the incoming flight of Tomcats from the Jefferson and decided a one-for-two kill ratio for the day was just fine. Rodeo had been jumped at close range, but in a situation such as this, the incoming F-14s could mark targets and launch long-range Phoenix missiles from well over one hundred miles out. The MiG pilots knew that and would not care to linger.
'We've got them, Tango,' Tombstone reported. 'And the bandits are definitely running for home. Over.'
'Copy, Rodeo. Can you orbit your station to cover Rodeo Two, over?'
Tombstone checked his fuel again, the scowl behind his mask deepening. There was no escaping the grim reality of those numbers. 'Negative, negative, Tango. I'm going to be burning fumes in a minute.'
'Understood, Rodeo Leader. Homeplate advises that a Texaco is on the way.'
'Texaco' meant one of Jefferson's four KA-6D tankers, an aircraft designed for air — to-air refueling operations. But he wouldn't be able to wait for the tanker to come to him. He would have to leave now if he wanted to rendezvous before his tanks went dry.
'Tango Seven-niner, this is Rodeo Leader. I'm going to have to boogie now to make it to the Texaco.'
'Copy, Rodeo Leader. The word from Homeplate is: break off and RTB.'
'Affirmative, Tango. Rodeo Leader, RTB.'
But there was time for a quick check first.
The Tomcat stood on its portside wing and dropped, arrowing down into the clear, cold space between clouds and sea. The swells and whitecaps of the ocean surface whipped past as he brought the aircraft level at five hundred feet and throttled back. His Tomcat's wings extended, reaching forward as his airspeed fell.
'This is Rodeo Leader, switching to SAR frequency,' he reported. In the backseat, Snowball clicked the F-14's radio over to the search-and-rescue channel and began sending out a call.
'Rodeo Two, Rodeo Two, this is Rodeo Leader. Do you copy, over?'
Tombstone, listening in over his own headset, heard the empty hiss of static, felt tightness in his chest.
'Rodeo Two, Rodeo Two, this is Rodeo Leader. Do you copy, over?'
The silence stretched on through the crackling static.
The radioman raised one hand to his earphones, narrowing his eyes as he listened to words filtered through static, 'One aircraft down, Admiral. No chutes. Rodeo Leader is still calling on the SAR frequency.
'Damned idiot,' Admiral Magruder muttered. 'Didn't CAG flash him an RTB?'
'Yes, sir. I guess he's stretching it a little.'
'I'll stretch him.' The words sounded angrier than he'd intended. He was feeling an inner, guilty tug of relief that his nephew had come through the dogfight in one piece, and he was covering his emotions with an acid
