chief political officer of the VNPAF, found himself commanding the remains of the 931st Fighter Regiment, following the death of its commander from a Yankee AMRAAM missile three days previously. The 931st now consisted of just nine flyable MiG-29Cs and a rugged antique AN-2 biplane. These had narrowly escaped from the burning and exploding rubble of the air defense command center at Gia Lam Airport northwest of Hanoi only hours ago. The colonel had realized that the Americans were not making his planes a target unless they were actually flying. The unit's first attempt to break the aerial blockade had resulted in the loss of five of his precious MiG-29s to long-range AMRAAM shots. Since that time, they had been whittled down to the survivors that resided in the earth and concrete shelters surrounding the airfield's perimeter.
The colonel had almost lost his own life two nights before, while trying to intercept one of the big B-1B bombers on a mining mission. He had flown alone that night, trying to hide in the clutter with his IFF transponder off, just in case they were trying to use that against him also. He had just sighted the black monster in the mouth of the Red River near Nam Dien when he saw the flash of a Sidewinder missile coming at him from an escorting F-16. Only a quick snapshot with one of his own R-73/AA-11 Archer missiles and a rapid run behind a nearby karst saved his life.
At the time, the incident severely shook him, though now he was just furious, angered by his regiment's impotence against the aerial invaders. He and the surviving planes and pilots lived at the discretion of a hostile opponent, only as long as they did not threaten them. That was the reason why the Yankees wiped out the surface-to-air rocket batteries that protected his base here in the Vietnamese highlands valley from which it drew its name. When the survivors of the four rocket batteries returned, they were cursing the HARM missiles that destroyed their engagement radars like thunderbolts from the blue. Despite this loss, the People's Army was still providing base defense, in the form of a few well-hidden S-60 57mm AAA guns, and some shoulder-fired missile teams equipped with the Chinese version of the SA-16, dug in on hilltops to the south and west.
Just finding the American intruders was almost impossible. Every intercept radar site in North Vietnam had been taken out in the first few days of the American intervention. So for early warning the colonel had only an Inmarsat-P satellite phone that connected him to agents on the ground in Thailand. He knew when a strike or patrol left Takhli or U-Tapao, but he could only guess where it was headed; and more than once he had scrambled his handful of fighters, wasting precious fuel and alerting the ever-vigilant AWACS planes, only to discover that aircraft had doglegged somewhere too far for him to have a chance at interception.
But today would be different. Several flights of F-15Es had just struck one of the last of the leadership cavern complexes, and an urgent coded message on the satellite phone told him that their return route would pass almost directly over his position. The odds for once were more than two to one in his favor. He would have the advantage of surprise, and this might be the last chance for the 931st Regiment to strike a blow before it was targeted and wiped out for good. He headed to his MiG, strapped in, and gave the order for the rest of the regiment to start engines. As the last of the howling Klimov RD-33 engines came to life, Colonel Nguyen Tri Loc taxied his MiG out for what would be the last air battle of the Vietnam People's Air Force.
General Perry brought the Wing King away from its target run and pulled into the standard Strike Eagle trailing formation. This had two pairs of F-15Es, with the trailing pair up to four miles behind the first two. Because he and his wingman had hit a large leadership cave complex that was close to the old PRC/Vietnamese northwest rail line, they had wound up as the trailing pair in the formation for the return leg of the mission, which would take them within five miles/8.2 km. of the Yen Bai Airbase. The Gunfighters' commander was elated. The last of the leadership caves had been destroyed by a total of eight GBU-24/Bs. Amazingly, the last of the Leadership Council had insisted on staying in their own private grave complex, even when warned about the imminent danger posed by the 366th's penetration bombs. It was as if they'd realized their time was up… like old elephants going off to die. General Perry smiled. For once, those responsible for making war on innocent people had themselves paid with their lives. Justice. His eyes were scanning the cockpit, looking for signs of mechanical and systems problems, when they fixed on the moving map display, and froze.
'Ahab,' the general snapped, 'get me an SAR picture of the runway at Yen Bai. Do it now!'
The young captain immediately slewed the big dish of the APG-70 radar around to the left and painted the airfield, just coming into sight now about 20 miles/32.8 km. distant. The Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mode gave them photographic-quality images of ground targets from many miles away; targets as small as 8 feet/2.4 meters in size could be imaged. Both men stared tensely at the image in their MFDs. What they saw chilled them both, for on the screen were eight or nine small targets, clearly identifiable as aircraft. General Perry saw that most of them were clustered at what he remembered from satellite photos of the base as an arming and fueling pit. Two others were clearly getting ready for a takeoff roll. Immediately, he yelled over the intercom for Captain Ontra to take another sweep with the APG-70 in SAR mode, and saw that two more of the aircraft were missing from the arming pit. From the back seat, he heard his WSO mumble, 'Oh, Allah!' They were in trouble.
Colonel Nguyen and his wingman stayed low in the valley, not turning on their radars or any other electronic gear which might reveal their positions or intentions. As they rocketed on full afterburner through the saddle at the western end of the valley, they pulled up and sighted a pair of the Yankee Eagle strike aircraft directly in front of them. Nguyen exulted as he set this up, and called to his wingman, 'Captain Tran, you attack the right-hand target, I'll take the left one.' With that, he checked his sensors. His Infrared Search And Track (IRST) system, contained in a small transparent ball in the nose, was giving him a good lock for his two R-73/AA-11 Archer short-range IR missiles. But the range was still too long, so he activated the RLPK-29/Slot Back radar, and set up a shot with his two R-27/AA-10 Alamo long-range radar-homing missiles. When the HUD showed the lead Eagle locked up, he depressed the trigger twice, and the two missiles were on their way. At the same time, he saw Tran's missiles leap off their launch rails and head for the second American fighter.
'Oh, Christ!' thought General Perry as he saw the smoke trails from the missiles angle up towards the leading pair of Strike Eagle Flight. He jammed a finger on the guard frequency transmit button and yelled, 'Harry! Tony! Alamos coming up. Get the hell out of there
One of Captain Tran's missiles failed in mid-flight, and the other was decoyed by the Strike Eagle's internal ECM system, flying off into the western sky. The lead Eagle had no such luck. While the first missile went after a chaff decoy, the second was dead on target. It struck the F-15E at the base of the port wing, detonating there and taking it off completely. As the big fighter began to cartwheel into a spin, both crewmen activated their ACES II ejection seats and headed for a 'nylon letdown' and God-knows-what on the ground. General Perry shook off the shock from the suddenness of the strike and realized that three or four more flights of MiG-29s just like this one were about to do the same thing to the remaining three planes of his strike force. He had to act fast, and time was burning.
But then things slowed down, as the adrenaline rush compressed time and events into a dizzying swirl. He slammed the twin throttles of the -229 engines to afterburner and punched the button for the radio channel again, thinking of the two men in their chutes as he spoke. 'Tony, extend and get back into the fight when you can. Get us some CSAR' — combat search and rescue—'support up here to look for the guys.' He then turned his attention to his wingman, a young First Lieutenant named Billy 'Jack' Bowles, a full-blooded Cherokee from Oklahoma. He called over, 'Billy, get the flight taking off
Next he called to Captain Ontra in the backseat and ordered, 'Lock up the second airborne pair with Slammers. Get the ECM going. And get me a raid count with the FLIR.'
He needn't have said anything. Already, Ahab had the APG-70 in TWS mode, searching for and finding the second pair of Fulcrums. He quickly set up an AIM-120 Slammer for each of the approaching MiGs and fired them in Fire-and-Update mode. The two missiles quickly ate up the 5 miles/ 8.2 km. to the two Vietnamese fighters, obliterating them in a pair of dirty orange explosions. There were no survivors.
He heard Ontra in the backseat yell, 'Splash two,' over the guard channel, and heard a similar call from
