XO”s target must be. Tracer fire smeared the darkness near the bombers’ tracks.
Jake and Cole continued to orbit as the bombers crossed the delta toward the coast. The missile-control radars were silent. Lundeen finally called “feet wet,” and, a minute later, Rabbit Wilson as well.
They flew southeast toward the waiting ocean, steady at 400 knots at 18,000 feet. They heard a Fansong in the area of Haiphong, off to their left.
It came on the air for several seconds, shut down, then repeated the cycle a half-minute later. Jake searched the darkness below for the moving points of light that betrayed the flight of SAMs. Nothing.
He was looking at the Fansong light on the indicator panel, now on again, when he noticed another light also lit: I-band. He examined the circular dial on the threat-direction indicator and, sure enough, a weak I-band strobe pointed behind them. When the Fansong fell silent he could even hear the other radar, a two-tone, high-frequency pulse. As he listened, he heard the audio separate into three distinct, clicking, rhythmic tones that repeated about once a second. Virgil Cole cocked his head at the direction indicator. He, too, seemed to be listening.
“Sounds like we have a Mig-21 on our tail,” he announced. “Doesn’t that sound like a conical scan to you?”
Mig! Even as Cole said it, Jake thought he could now hear the intermittent clicks. If it were a Mig, it was getting closer. Grafton jammed the throttles full forward and punched the chaff button three times as fast as he could, then slammed the stick full left and forward in one fluid motion.
The nose tucked down and the plane flipped on its back, 180 degrees of roll in one second. In a continuation of the same motion he brought the stick aft and center, and the nose of the inverted warplane dropped through to the vertical where he stabilized in a straight-down dive. The altimeter spun insanely as Jake listened for the beat of the conical scan, mixed in with the wail of the Fansong now back on the air in the target-acquisition mode. If the Mig saw the false target the chaff created and went after it, he could escape out below. Near the ground the Mig couldn’t acquire him. He hoped.
He rolled ninety degrees about the longitudinal axis and at 7000 feet began a hard, five-G pull in the direction of Haiphong, punching chaff all the way.
The primary gyro tumbled, apparently, because the l still indicated a vertical descent. He ignored it an included the standby gyro in his scan. Virgil Cole said “Pull up to twenty degrees nose up, ten degrees right and we’ll shoot the STARM.”
“Are you crazy?” The radar altimeter dipped below. 3000 feet, the nose still five degrees below the horizon His right arm tightened slightly, six Gees, 540 knots indicated. The I-band warning was gone, the earphones silent. The Mig had lost them.
Cole’s fist slammed into his right biceps. “Do like I told you!”
They bottomed out at 2000 feet and Jake kept the nose coming up. Stabilizing in a twenty-degree turn he waited for Cole to ready the missile. The airspeed dropped below 480 knots, then 460.
“Come on, you crazy bastard,” Jake shouted at Cole “Let’s shoot and get the fuck outta here before the Mig figures out which way we turned.”
“Just a sec … almost…. Shoot! Jake heard the Fansong kick in his earphones as the last standard missile ignited under the right wing an shot forward, trailing a dazzling sheet of fire. They were in trouble again unless that Mig pilot was blind Grafton turned hard right to run for the coast.
“Black Eagle, Devil Five One One,” Cole said over the radio. “We have a bandit on our tail. Get the BARCAP headed this way. Buster.”
“Buster” meant hurry, bust your ass.
Jake was at 5000 feet, 510 knots when he again heard the beat of the Mig’s Spin Scan radar. It was out to his right, at four o’clock. He had to get down, near the ground. The Mig was coming in at an angle and he wouldn’t have time to turn.
“Devil, this is Mustang. We’re coming! State your posit.”
“Thirty miles south of the lighthouse, fifteen miles inland,” Cole said.
Jake selected the station for the remaining Shrike and held the buttons down. The missile shot forward toward the earth. Now to give the Mig a real false target, not just a chaff cloud. He depressed the emergency jettison button above the gear handle. The empty missile racks and belly tank were kicked away with a whump. The Mig was closing fast from the side. Two thousand feet above the ground.
“Devil, don’t let him get away!”
“Fuck you!” Grafton shouted and chopped the throttles to idle and deployed the speed brakes as he shoved the nose over.
A missile raced across the windscreen above and in front of him. He pulled up to avoid the ground. He pushed on the throttles but they wouldn’t move! Then the cockpit went dark.
Mother of God! He had inadvertently pulled the throttles past the safety detents and had shut down the engines. The speed brakes were still out, but they should come into trail with the loss of electrical power. He desperately groped behind him for the handle to the ram-air turbine, the emergency generator. He had to have electrical power for a restart.
Where was it? Oh, God, no!
His fingers closed on the handle in the darkness and he pulled with the strength of the damned.
The lights came on. The left wing was down.
He picked it up.
Two hundred fifty knots! He advanced the throttle on the left engine as he held the emergency ignition button on the throttle down with his thumb. Wings level, 400 feet.
Warning lights were erupting on the annunciator panel: both generators, fuel, oil pressure. It looked like a Christmas tree. Without the background noise of the engines the cockpit was quiet as a coffin.
“Light off!” he screamed at the recalcitrant engine he checked the standby gyro. If the circuit breaker the emergency igniters had popped, the engine would never light. The breaker was on a panel beside his left foot and he didn’t have time to check it. He kept the ignition button firmly depressed.
210 knots. At the weight, without flaps or power, they would quit flying at maybe 180 knots.
The engine lit with an audible moan. The RPM ran up toward the sixty percent idle range agonizing slowly. Sweet Jesus! There! Sixty percent. He advance the left throttle to the forward stop and reached for the right to repeat the procedure. One hundred ninety-five knots on the dial.
‘Only a hundred feet,” Cole advised. A glance again at the altitude - stable at 195. Left engine still winding up, passing eighty-five percent. He slipped in more back stick and trimmed. As the left engine reached full power, the right lit off.
When both throttles fully forward, he reset them. The radar-warning indicators were dark Nothing in his earphones. The annunciator panel lights were all extinguished. Two hundred knots and increasing.
“Black Eagle, Devil’s feet wet,” Cole said.
“Where were you? You didn’t answer.”
“Uh, we had a little mechanical problem back there, Black Eagle,” Cole said. “Where’s the bandit?”
“The Mustangs are after him.”
“Glad I’m not driving that Mig with those Phantoms after me,” Cole said over the ICS.
Jake climbed to 500 feet and stayed there, weaving erratically- They were thirty miles out to sea before Jake decided his heart might not after all beat itself out of his chest. Only then did he establish a climb and pull the throttles back off the stops.
As Cole talked on the radio, Jake took off his oxygen mask and wiped the sweat from his face. Lordy, lordy!
Jake Grafton told Cole he was a crazy fucker. “How come you wanted to shoot that last STARM?”
“That Fansong was providing altitude and position info to the interceptor pilot. They were vectoring him enough to lock us up. That’s how the until he got close enough Red Baron knew just where to find us.”
“How come you shot that last Shrike into the ground?”
“I figured if he was working on an infrared lock-up for a missile, the Shrike would give us a few seconds. And I was gonna jettison the racks and didn’t want to give the gomers an unfired missile to play with.”
“You know, Grafton, you’re the only pilot I know who’d intentionally shut down the engines in combat. And that close to the ground.”
“You know goddamn well that was a screw-up, an accident. I made a mistake. How come you didn’t
