She lowered the left wing and let the nose sag down into the turn. When she leveled the wings they were on the run-in line at a hundred feet, throttles against the stops, bouncing moderately in the turbulence as the engines moaned through their helmets.
He got the reticle, or cross hair, on the IR display onto the tower. The cross hairs started drifting. The wind he typed into the computer was wrong. He pushed the velocity correct switch, then held the cross hairs on the tower bulls-eye.
“Master Arm on, in attack, and in range.”
“I’m committed,” she said. This meant she had squeezed the commit trigger on the stick, authorizing the computer to release the weapon.
Toad glanced out his side window. The desert was right there, close enough to touch, racing by beneath them. He came back to the IR scope. All okay. If Moravia got distracted and let the nose fall just a smidgen, they would be a fireball rolling across the desert so quickly they would never even know what happened. “Release coming,” he advised. The cursors started to drift in close and he held them on the base of the tower.
When the release came she eased back on the stick and Toad felt the G press him down even as he watched the tower on the IR scope — now going inverted — for the hit. Pop. There it was. Almost dead-on.
That was the last bomb. He glanced at the panel in front of her. They were climbing and heading north for Yakima. He flipped the radar to transmit and began to adjust the picture.
“Your hit forty feet at seven-thirty.”
“Boardman, thanks a lot. We’re switching to Center.”
“Have a safe flight.”
“Yo.” Toad dialed in the Seattle Center frequency.
“Pretty good bombing for a fighter puke,” Moravia said.
“Yep. It was that,” he agreed smugly, relishing the role and willing today to play it to the hilt. Moravia had had her fun last night. His head was still thumping like a toothache. “Ain’t any- body better than the ol’ Homy Toad.”
“0r anyone more humble.”
“Humble is for folks that can’t,” he shot back. “I can.”
Rita called Center and asked for a clearance to the military operating area over Okanogan. She leveled the plane at Flight Level 220. Toad played with the scope.
Entering the area, Rita disengaged the autopilot and looked about expectantly. She and her pilot instructor of the previous week, Lieutenant Clyde “Duke” Degan, had agreed to and briefed an ACM engagement. She was right on time. Now if she could just find him first. She dialed in the squadron tactical frequency and gave him a call.
“I’m here,” Degan replied.
Toad caught the first glimpse of the other A-6. It was high, near the sun. 0l’ Duke didn’t intend to give Moravia any break at all. “All right,” Toad enthused. “Now, by God, we’re playing my game!” Toad pointed over her left shoulder. “Up there. Better turn under him and get the nose down for some airspeed.”
Rita knew Toad had just recently finished a three-year tour in the backseat of F-14 Tomcats. He had ridden through literaly hundreds of practice dogfights. Fighter crews lived for Air Combat Maneuvering (ACM), the orgiastic climax of their training and their existence. So she knew Toad Tarkington undoubtedly knew a thing or two about dogfighting. She took his advice. “Think he’s seen us?” The A-6’s radar had no air-to-air capability.
Toad kept the other plane in sight. Immediately above them— maybe two miles above — it rolled inverted, preparatory to a split S. “Looks like it,” Toad murmured. “Already you’re at a serious disadvantage, assuming he’s smart enough to cash in.”
With the throttles on the stops, she began a climbing right turn holding 340 knots indicated, the best climb speed. Toad glanced across the panel, then cranked his neck to keep the other plane in sight. “He’s coming down like a ruptured duck,” Toad advised. “If you had guns you could get a low-percentage deflection shot here. Shake him up some.”
The other plane came rocketing down with vapor pouring off its wingtips. Now his wingtip speed brakes — boards — came open. “He’s trying to minimize his overshoot.” The other Intruder went dropping through their altitude with the boards still open, vapor swirling from his wings. “Work the angles,” Toad advised. “Turn into him and get the nose down.”
Rita Moravia did just that in a workmanlike four-G pull. “Not too much nose-down,” Toad grunted against the G. Duke Degan would undoubtedly use his energy advantage to zoom again and try to turn in behind her, but he should not have left the boards out as long as he did. That was his second mistake. His first was the split S; he should have spiraled down to convert his energy advan- tage to a lethal position advantage.
Degan zoomed. Moravia smartly lifted her nose into a climb, still closing, then eased it to hold 340 indicated. “Very nice,” Toad commented. Inexperienced pilots would just yank on the stick until they had squandered all their airspeed. Moravia had better sense. Patience, Toad decided. She was patient.
Degan was above them now, spread-eagled against the sky, maybe a mile ahead and four thousand feet above. And he was running out of airspeed.
“You got him now,” Toad said, excitement creeping into his voice.
Apparently Degan thought so too. He continued over the top of his loop and let the nose fall through as he half-rolled. He was going to try to go out underneath with a speed advantage and run away from her, then turn and come back into the fray on his own terms. Moravia anticipated him; as he committed with his nose she dumped hers and slammed down the left wing and honked her plane around.
“You get another deflection shot here,” Toad advised. “You’re kicking this guy’s ass! What a clown! He should never have come back at you out of the loop.”
She was dead behind him now, both diving, but Degan lacked the speed advantage to pull away cleanly.
“Fox Two,” Toad whispered over the radio. Fox Two was the call when you were putting a heat-seeking missile in the air. “You’re dead meat”
“Bull.” Degan’s voice did not sound happy,
“Go ahead, try something wonderful and Rita will get a guns solution.”
“I have enough gas for one more series of turns,” Rita told the instructor.
A long pause. Degan wasn’t liking this a bit. Part of the pain, Toad suspected, was Rita’s well-modulated feminine voice on the radio and the ribbing Duke knew he would have to take in the ready room about getting whipped by a woman. Toad would have wagered a paycheck the guys back in the ready room at Whidbey were crowded around the duty officer’s radio this very minute. Toad whacked Rita playfully on the right arm with his fist. He was having a hell of a good time. “Okay,” Degan said at last, “break off and well start again with a head-on pass at twenty-two grand. I’ll run out to the west.”
Rita dropped her wing to turn east. Toad cackled for her benefit over the ICS. Then he keyed his radio mike switch. “Hey, Duke, this is Toad. I got ten bucks to put on ol’ Rita if you can spare it.”
“You’re on, asshole.”
Toad chuckled over the radio. On the ICS he said, “We got him now, Rita baby. He’s mad, the sucker.”
“Don’t Rita-baby me, you — you—“
“Goddamn, cool off, willya?” Toad roared. “I don’t give a damn if you’re the lesbo queen of Xanadu — but right fucking now you’re a fighter pilot. This ain’t for fun.” He paused for air, then mut- tered, ” ‘Fight to fly, fly to fight, fight to win.’ There ain’t no other way,”
“You didn’t just make that up.”
“That’s the Top Gun motto. Now what’re you gonna do on this high-speed pass?”
“I thought a turn in the same direction he turns.”
“He’ll probably make a horizontal turn as hard as he can pull. No imagination. Wait to see which way he turns, then nose up about forty degrees and roll hard into him, the rolling scissors. If he’s not too sharp you’ll get a winning position advantage, and this guy hasn’t impressed me.”
The two Intruders came together out of the emptiness at a com- bined speed of a thousand knots. At first the other plane was just a speck, but it grew larger quickly until it seemed to fill the wind- shield. Toad had been there before, in a head-on pass with Jake Grafton in an F-14 that resulted in a collision. Involuntarily he closed his eyes.
His head snapped down and the floor came up at him. She had the G on. He opened his eyes and used the steel handgrip on the canopy rail to pull himself around to look behind. “Which way?”
