element of surprise if Penrose’s RIO kept his radar off-but if he had to, they would go it alone. . There was a brief pause from the AWACS controller, but he was obviously not in the mood or not authorized to argue. “Roger . . . Bullet Six flight, four bandits at one o’clock, fifty miles, take angels three-five, that’ll put you ten thousand above them.”
“Six flight.” Penrose held his heading and started his climb. “Bogey-dope.”
“Bandits at your one o’clock, level, fifty miles, closure rate eleven hundred. Be advised, Bullet flight, Flashlight reported naval radar and possible naval antiair at your twelve o’clock, two hundred miles. You may be coming within detection range. “Six copies.” Well, if that happened, they’d be about even it was a two-vee-four, but there was not yet any sign that they’d been detected. Penrose wasn’t going to turn on his radar until absolutely necessary. “Two.”
“One o’clock, moving to one-thirty, forty miles . . . thirty miles, two o’clock, low . They weren’t going in completely blind. Penrose’s RIO was adjusting his IRSTS, or Infrared Search and Track System, a long-range heat- seeking imager that could detect and display hot targets at medium to short range; his was one of the few older F- 14A models with both an IRSTS sensor as well as the typical TCS telescopic camera system, in side-by-side chin pods. IRSTS allowed the crew to launch missiles against targets at long range and activate their AWG-9 radar only a few seconds before the missiles impacted-that was precisely what they were trying to do now. “Two-thirty position, thirty miles.. .” Penrose corrected his course to keep the bandits within the 30-degree limit of the IRSTS seeker. “Cowboy, can you get an IR track on these guys?”
“We got ‘em all the way, ” Penrose’s wingman, Lieutenant Commander Paul “Cowboy” Bowman, replied. “Ready when you are. “Stand by.” On interphone Penrose asked, “Got ‘em yet, Lion Tamer?”
“Hold on… tally-ho, finally got ‘em… IR track. Compiling data… got a good data feed. Wish we had a laser ranger right now-their guys would be dog meat. Be advised, Razor, my radar’s coming on three seconds after missile launch. We won’t be invisible no more… okay. I got a firing solution. Clear to launch.”
“Good. Lock up the rest as soon as the radar’s on.” On the interplane frequency, he called out, “Seven, give it to ‘em. Bullet Six, fox one. “Seven, fox one. Penrose squeezed the launch button on his radar, and the light-gray outline of his Tomcat fighter lit up again as the big Sparrow missile leaped into the dark sky. He could see a missile from his wingman slash through the sky just a few hundred feet away-the two missiles appeared to be flying in formation as they streaked toward their targets. The missiles seemed to track perfectly . But suddenly Penrose’s missile seemed to diverge away faster and faster-his wingman’s missile curved to the right, tracking all the way, but Penrose’s Sparrow was going off in the weeds. “Lion Tamer, what’s going on…?”
“Damn! Radar’s not coming up!” Watson shouted. “Shit, it cooled down too much!” A status light to the right of the RIO’s tactical information display read ENV STBY, meaning that the system would stay in nonradiating mode until the electronics fully warmed up. “Two! Take the lead! Six is gadget-bent!”
“Seven’s taking the lead.” Penrose began searching to his right, hoping he could see his wingman, but he made it easy for him: Bullet Seven had his left engine in min afterburner, both to help Penrose find him and start closing in on the Chinese fighters faster. “Cowboy, got a tally on you, kill your burner, ” Penrose said. The burner flicked off. They continued their right turn to put themselves right on the four Chinese fighters’ tails. Lion Tamer’s APR-45 radar threat scope suddenly came to life. It showed first a friendly search radar directly aheadBullet Seven-and, seconds later, several bat-wing symbols appeared off to the right as the Chinese fighters, after detecting the Tomcat’s radars, activated their own search radars to find their ambushers. All four bat-wings were superimposed, with a diamond around the closest one. As Penrose searched out his canopy bubble to see if he could see any of the enemy fighters, he saw a tiny puff of fire in the distance-Bullet Seven’s Sparrow missile had exploded. One of the bat-wings promptly disappeared. “Bullet flight, splash one bandit, ” the AWACS controller reported. “Dead bandit descending rapidly, turning right, decelerating. Two bandits breaking left, same altitude, nine miles. One bandit looks like he’s descending, heading straight ahead… lone bandit is thirty miles from Flashlight, appears to be closing on him.”
“Six, go after the solo. I’ll take these two.”
“Negative. I’m bent. I’m staying with you. “I can take these two. Use your IR and the AWACS. Get the solo.” “Dammit, Cowboy, if those two are bugging out, let ‘em. Don’t get sucked into a one-vee-two. Let’s go get the solo together.”
“We got these two locked up, no sweat. Take the solo. I’ll be back in a flash.” He punctuated his sentence by banking hard left in pursuit. Penrose and Watson were suddenly right between two enemy cells. “You gotta protect the recon plane, Razor, ” Watson told him. “Fuck the recon plane. My wingman might be in trouble…”
“So what happens when that bandit smokes that RC-135? There’s eighteen guys on that thing.” He was right-he had no choice. “Shit. We’re going after the solo. Basket, Bullet Six, vector to the solo inbound.”
“Bullet Six, bandit at your twelve to one o’clock, eleven miles, five thousand below you, airspeed six hundred thirty.” Penrose shoved his throttles to full military power, anxious to get within missile-firing range but not enough to risk using afterburners and getting himself in a low-fuel situation-he fully intended to go back and see to Cowboy after dealing with the lone bandit. “Lion Tamer, what’s with the radar? Can’t you get it going?” “Keeps resetting. I’m recycling it . This is going from bad to worse, Penrose thought. On interplane, he asked, “Cowboy, how goes it?”
“We got one in the kill zone, ” Penrose and Watson heard on the interplane frequency. “Looks like the other guy’s bugging out-he’s out of it. Thirty seconds and I’m back with you. “Don’t get cocky, ” Penrose said. “Shoot and clear. Basket, dammit, keep an eye out for Seven’s trailer.” “Basket copies. Second bandit on Bullet Seven is two o’clock, eleven miles, accelerating, descending. Bullet Six, your bandit is twelve o’clock, ten miles. Your bandit is twenty-five miles from Flashlight and closing. Watson manually slewed the IRSTS along the bearing given by the AWACS controller and finally found the Chinese fighter, a tiny green dot on his screen. He hit the “Lock” button, and a big square superimposed itself on the dot; a second later as the IRSTS refined its aiming and stabilized its gyro platform, the square compressed to slightly larger than the dot, and a stream of tracking figures appeared on the screen. Watson slaved one AIM-9R Sidewinder missile to the IRSTS boresight, and Penrose heard a low, menacing growl as the missile’s seeker head locked on. “Got the Chink on IR, Razor, ” Watson said. “Select a Sidewinder and nail this bugger. “Bullet Seven, second bandit climbing through your altitude, two o’clock, twelve miles . . “Bullet Six, fox two . . .” Penrose shot one Sidewinder, decided against selecting his last one-Cowboy might need the extra missile. The tiny missile raced ahead, obliterating the IR sensor in the sudden glare, but the missile tracked straight and true this time and they were rewarded by a huge ball of fire far ahead of them. “Bullet Six, splash two.” “Good shooting, Razor, ” Penrose heard Bowman reply in between deep grunts-Bowman was performing his anti-G force grunts called M-maneuvers. He was obviously right in the middle of a hard-turning battle, but the cocky sonofabitch still found time to chatter on the radios. “Bullet Seven, fox one. . . die, sucker, die!”
“Bullet Seven, warning, second bandit four o’clock, high, eight miles, descending behind you… “Cowboy, dammit, get out of there!” Penrose shouted. “Cowboy, extend, extend!”
“Bullet Seven, starboard turn to evade . . . Bullet Seven, extend… Bullet Seven heading zero-nine-zero, thirty degrees starboard to extend… Bullet Seven, check altitude… Bullet Seven, if you are in a spin, release your controls . . . Bullet Seven, if you are in a spin, release your controls and lower your landing gear. . . Bullet Seven, Bullet Seven, altitude warning . . . Bullet Seven only, Bullet Seven only, eject, eject, eject. . .” No use. Penrose never got another transmission from Bowman. “Basket, this is Six, vector to Bullet Seven’s last position.” Penrose could hear the panic, the gut-wrenching anxiety, in the controller’s voice. “Er . . . Bullet Six, lone bandit at your nine o’clock, forty miles, he’s northwest-bound at six hundred knots, altitude ten thousand and descending. Appears to be withdrawing. No other bandits detected. Say your bingo.”
“I said, I want a vector to Seven’s last known position, dam”No ELT, no transmissions. . . Six, say your fuel.” Penrose finally curbed his anger long enough to check his fuel-he was well past bingo, and with a damaged carrier and his tankers more than a hundred miles away, he was in emergency fuel conditions now. “Basket, Six requests you vector a KA-6 over here, because I’m not moving from this spot until I make sure there’s no ELT or distress calls. You better call Sterett or Ffe or somebody over here to investigate, because I’m staying right here until we find Cowboy.”
“Bullet Six… Six, all group vessels involved at this time.” The controller sounded as if he were trying to think of some detached, official-sounding terminology to tell Penrose that no one was likely to come and search for wreckage or survivors. Penrose suddenly remembered the Ranger and knew they weren t going to send any big ships anywhere near this area for a long time-the Chinese held it too tightly. “Shamu rendezvousing with Basket and Flashlight for recovery. Orders from home plate, return and prepare for divert recovery. Acknowledge.” The battle
