Batman grumbled. “Just when we’re winning, they want to turn tail and run.” He switched his gaze back over to the far left-hand side of the screen, where the small blip representing Tomcat 202 was just going feet wet. “At least Stoney’s out of the area.”
But maybe he’d spoken too fast. As he watched, the gaggle of remaining Cuban fighters turned toward the southern boundary of the air base.
The American fighters milled about in the air uncertainly for a few moments, awaiting direction from the carrier. Taking on Cuban fighters in the air was one thing chasing them back down to their home base over Cuba was another. Absent orders, they’d remain where they were.
Batman snatched up the microphone. “Get on them!”
Within moments, the small blue blips turned to follow the MiGs back toward Cuba. “It’s what you want to do anyway,” he muttered. He glanced at Tombstone’s aircraft symbol. The tanker was only thirty miles away, patiently circling with an anxious fighter aircraft. If he had any sense of how his shipmate flew, Stoney would be sucking fumes in another twenty minutes. Batman always did like the afterburner.
“Stoney, you’ve got a load of Cuban MiGs inbound on your nine o’clock.
They’re at altitude, and the rest of the wing’s giving chase. You might want to vector to avoid them until you can tank.” Batman knew how much Tombstone would hate doing that, but it was the only sensible thing to do under the circumstances.
“Nothing to come home to, boys,” Tombstone said to the incoming MiGs.
“Nothing at all. You might as well park those puppies on the tarmac for all the good they’re gonna do from here on out.”
‘Tombstone, there’s one out in front of that pack,” Tomboy’s worried voice reported. “He’s got a big lead on the Hornets and Tomcats Stoney, he’s gonna be here before they are.”
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.
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.
“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.
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
