CHAPTER 2
The MiGs dropped like hawks stooping on their prey, four silver-gray aircraft with backswept delta wings. Tombstone had only a glimpse of the odd-looking cone-in-open-cylinder cowlings before he was on the radio. 'Tango Seven-niner! Blue bandits! Blue bandits!' The code phrase had origins in the air war over Vietnam, identifying the attackers as MiG-21s.
'Four blue bandits, three o'clock and high!' Coyote echoed.
'Punch it, Coyote! Go to burner!'
'I'm out of here!'
Tombstone hauled back on the stick and his Tomcat clawed for sky, twin-throated torches of flame stabbing aft as he kicked in the afterburners. Down on the deck was no place for a dogfight, not if he expected to keep his airplane in one piece. MiG-21s had been around since the years right after the Korean War, but the modern versions were fast and mean, able to better Mach 2 and as good at dog-fighting as any fighter in the sky. His instant's glimpse had caught sight of the pair of air-to-air missiles slung under each wing.
'Rodeo Two! Rodeo Two!' The sky went gray as they plunged into the cloud deck. 'Where are you?'
'Right with you, Boss, at your five!'
'Level at nine point one!'
'Rog!'
They burst through the cloud deck and into the light. Heaven arched above him, achingly beautiful. At ninety-one hundred feet, the twin-tailed Tomcats rolled into level flight and turned west, away from the Korean coast. They were close to the twelve-mile limit here. Most likely the MiGs had been buzzing them to scare them off, and yet…
'Tally-ho!' Coyote called, the warning for enemy in sight. Like silver arrows, the four MiGs snapped up through the clouds a mile to the east.
'Got 'em, Coyote. Talk to me, Snowball!'
'Yeah! I have them!' the RIO yelled. At this range the heavy jamming would have little effect and his backseater would be able to tag them on radar. 'Bearing two-three-five, range twelve hundred…'
There was a flash and an unraveling thread of smoke.
'Launch! Launch!' Coyote yelled.
The surprise was almost paralyzing. For all of Magruder's hours of training, his eight weeks at Top Gun school, the concept of someone actually shooting at him seemed too strange to be believed.
The paralysis lasted only fractions of a second. 'Tango, Tango! We are under fire. Engaging!' The air-to-air missile swept up from the cloud tops, moving too quickly for the eye to follow. 'Coyote! Break right! Break right!'
'Rog!'
That single launch might have been an accident… or the result of inexperience. A mile was long range for a decent heat-lock, and with a broadside shot at the Tomcats, there was little hope for it to latch onto the hot flare of a fighter's tailpipes. The latest intel stressed that the North Koreans were still using old-style Atolls, missiles which had to be looking up the enemy's tailpipe to get a lock. If G2 was right, the November Kilos had just thrown away their first shot.
But then, Intelligence had been wrong before.
By breaking right, both F-14s had swung to face the oncoming missile. That would break the lock, unless the Atoll was an upgraded all-aspect heat-seeker like the deadly AIM-9Ls slung beneath his own wings.
Tombstone watched the oncoming MiGs and turned cold. Those pilots were not inexperienced. There was nothing he could point to, no specific clue which gave it away, but Tombstone knew aircraft and he knew good pilots. There was something about that rock-steady, welded-wing approach which told him that these four MiG drivers, at least, were the North Korean's first team. And that meant…
'Right break, Coyote! Break, break, break!'
'Rog, Boss!'
Tombstone was already leaning on his stick hard to the left, cutting away from the oncoming missile as Coyote broke in the opposite direction. If the pilots were good, he had to assume the decision to fire was good… and that meant an all-aspect missile at least as sharp as his own AIM-9Ls.
'Hang on!' he yelled to Snowball. 'I'm gonna make you bleed!'
Hard maneuvers by the Tomcat driver, felt more in the backseat than in the front, had more than once burst blood vessels in his RIO's nose, and his words were less threat than warning. The G-forces piled on as the Tomcat twisted away in a seven-G turn, then slipped into a dive to pick up speed.
He'd lost sight of the Atoll, already past him by now. The question was whether it could turn tightly enough to stick with one of the Tomcats. 'I can't see it!' Snowball yelled. 'I can't see it, man!'
'Forget it!' If the heat-seeker hadn't hit them by now, it wasn't going to. 'Stay on the scope! Tell me what the bandits are doing!'
'Closing! Range seven hundred!'
A close-knit pair of shapes rocketed past, silver against deepest blue, and Tombstone caught a glimpse of the red star painted on each of the Korean fighters' tails. The enemy formation had split, two and two, and suddenly the sky seemed to be filled with aircraft, rolling, twisting, and jockeying for position. His first assessment had been right. These fighter jocks were good… and he and Coyote were in for a rough time.
The enemy was too close now for the Tomcat's radar-guided Sparrows, which suited Tombstone perfectly. To guide them to their targets, the Tomcat had to fly his own aircraft straight and level and pointed at the enemy, which struck Tombstone as a silly way to enjoy a dogfight. Besides, the Sparrow had been dogged by problems since its inception, and he didn't trust the missile to hit anything it was aimed at.
The four AIM-9L all-aspect Sidewinders slung from his wings, though, those were something else again. Given the choice, Tombstone always preferred a Sidewinder kill.
'Rodeo Two! Rodeo Two! Coyote, you've got a pair closing on your six!'
'Rog, Tombstone. I see 'em!'
'Hold on. Ready to break right, on my word. I'll brush him off!'
'Pedal to the metal, man! This guy's all over me!'
'Break! Break!'
Coyote's F-14 sheered off sharply to starboard, the MiG on his tail hauling back in an attempt to hold the turn. Tombstone dropped in behind one MiG, leading him, too close now for missiles. 'I'm on him! Going for guns!' His finger closed on the trigger, and tracer rounds drifted like glowing, angry hornets toward the MiG-21.
'Tombstone!' Snowball called. 'They're behind us! Behind us!'
MiG cannon fire floated above his canopy, each round an orange-white flare hanging a few yards above his head and drifting closer. His initial surprise swallowed now in icy detachment, his hands and mind guided by training and countless hours of practice, he dropped his Tomcat's nose, plunging forward and down, knowing that if he twisted left or right one wing would snap up into that deadly train of fire.
Ahead and to the left, he could see the MiGs on Coyote's tail breaking left and right as Coyote hauled back and climbed, twisting his aircraft into a three-quarters turn and rolling out in an Immelmann which carried him clear of the immediate threat. Another burst of 23-mm cannon fire probed past his right wingtip.
'Coyote! Where are you? I need a brush-off!'
'Copy, Tombstone. Cavalry to the rescue!'
Since Vietnam, American Naval aviators had trained and refined the 'loose deuce' formation for dog-fighting, a system allowing far greater flexibility than the old wingman-on-his-leader concept. There were greater dangers… but advantages as well. A pair of aggressive pilots could confront a traditional wingman pair with two dangerous attackers instead of only one.
But the odds here were still two to one, no matter what tactics the Americans employed. Two MiGs clung to Tombstone's tail, following him down toward the cloud deck. Tombstone kicked the throttle, going to full burner, and the Tomcat lunged forward like a living thing. The MiGs lagged but kept on coming.
