Batman could see the foam-lashed shape of an LCAC making its way across the water below, making for the Little Rock. Farther away still, at the very edge of visibility, Batman could see the gray shadow of Jefferson, at the point where sea met sky.
Batman brought the Tomcat around in a shallow turn, passing back across the tip of the Kolmo Peninsula. Wonsan lay spread out before him, a gleaming city of white buildings and towers, of columns of greasy smoke hanging above burning ships, shattered buildings…
'Where are they, Malibu? Where are the other Fantans?'
'One's down, Batman. You killed him. Lost the other no, wait! I can get a feed from one of the Hawkeyes! Bearing… two-eight-five. Batman! He's running!'
'We'll take him with Phoenix! Arming… Hot! Lock 'em!'
'Damn! He's ducked back through the pass. I think he's running for home, dude. Looks like he doesn't like the surfin' around here!'
For a moment, the killer's fury threatened to overwhelm Batman. He could have had a clean sweep, four for four. He could still go to burner, still…
He let out a long breath. 'Let him go. Just so he doesn't circle back on us. Give me a vector to Tombstone.'
'I'm on it, compadre. Two-five-nine, angels five.'
The Tomcat streaked toward the mountains.
Major Pak took a deep breath as he brought his MiG around in a climbing turn, positioning himself high on the wounded American's tail. He recognized that aircraft; he'd glimpsed hull number 205 once before, during the dogfight out over the Sea of Japan. He wasn't sure If American aviators always flew the same aircraft or not, but meeting this one was like meeting an old friend.
The Yankee's cockpit was shattered, and a thin trickle of black smoke was leaking from the left engine. Another burst at close range would send the American plunging into the sea.
Over his headset, Pak could hear the North Korean air assault falling to pieces. Three of the Q-5s had been shot down, and the survivor had broken off and was fleeing west. Eleven MiGs had gone down in the space of eight minutes, and the others were scattered across the sky… or fleeing for a friendly airfield covered by SAMs.
And there were reports of more American aircraft approaching from the east.
There was, Pak knew, no use in attempting to return to P'yongyang himself. The best he could hope for was exile to some isolated post in the Yalu Valley. The worst…
He didn't want to think about it. His leaders did not easily forgive failure.
His death would not atone for this disaster, but he might be able to arrange things so that the defeat was not so shockingly one-sided. Major Pak would shoot down the Tomcat, then turn east. There were American carriers out there, and transports filled with Marines. He would find a target. His MiG carried no bombs, but that hardly mattered. Fifty years before, the detested Japanese had shown how to use the aircraft itself as a bomb. There were infinitely worse ways to die…
With a grimace of determination, Major Pak dropped his MiG once again onto the tail of the damaged American Tomcat.
Tombstone pulled the stick left, praying his Tomcat would hold together. He'd seen the Korean MiG approach, seen the number 444 on the hull in front of the cockpit. He pulled into a sweep to get inside the MiG's turn, but indicators lit up, warning of damage to his port engine, forcing him to break and roll clear. The MiG followed.
Launch!
Tombstone saw the flash of the missile. He waited, keeping the flare of its exhaust in sight until the last moment, then popped flares and turned. The missile decoyed toward the flares and Tombstone brought the F-14 around hard for a riposte.
No good. His radar was out, and an indicator showed his weapons systems were inoperable. Damn! He had two Sidewinders still hanging from his wings, but no way to lock on and fire them. All he had left were his guns.
He found himself wondering about his opponent. Most Korean aviators ? at least according to Intelligence ? were mediocre pilots. The PDRK's air defense forces had nothing similar to Top Gun or Red Flag, schools where they could sharpen their dog-fighting skills against live opponents. There were a few, though, who had received special training in the Soviet Union, men who had gone on to train the fighter pilots of other countries: Iraq, Syria, Libya.
It was hard thinking of his opponent as a person… as someone who might have trained in Moscow or worked for a time in Damascus. Tombstone had an eerie sense of identity with Batman, knowing exactly the shock he'd felt after his first kill.
But it was also part of the job, a job which was quite literally kill or be killed. The Korean pilot was doing his level best to kill him.
They were at five thousand feet now, a mile above the patchwork of grays and browns, roads and factories and buildings northwest of Wonsan. The two aircraft were traveling at over six hundred knots. The F-14's wings were folded back, but the damage to the aircraft was bad enough that Tombstone was considering overriding the control. If the wing pivots froze, he didn't want to try to maintain lift with the wings back when his airspeed started falling.
But not yet. He kept jinking his F-14, trying to avoid a missile lock by the other pilot, but the MiG kept closing in, apparently trying for another pass with his guns. He was less than a mile away now, and still closing.
A maxim he'd picked up at Top Gun came to him. When you can't out-fly the other guy, you have to out-think him. This guy had anticipated every scissors, every yo-yo, every maneuver designed to reverse their positions. But perhaps there was something else Tombstone could try.
He pulled the Tomcat into a shallow turn to port, banking the aircraft more and more as he tried to turn inside the MiG's turning radius. The MiG followed. Tombstone tightened up on the turn, wings still folded, luring the MiG closer.
F-14 Tomcats had one particular weakness in air combat, a subtle weakness which could nonetheless give the enemy a powerful advantage during a dogfight. Unless the pilot hit the override, the aircraft's computer controlled the angle on the wings automatically, folding them back at high speed, opening them wide for better lift at low speed. An enemy pilot who knew what he was looking at could glance at a Tomcat's wings and make a very good guess at just how much energy the F-14 had at the moment, information which let him adjust his own speed to avoid overshooting the target.
Tombstone's speed was down to three hundred knots now, and his wings were starting to come forward. He slapped the override, keeping the wings tucked back. It was like avoiding a 'goose mode' when making the break toward a carrier trap. He was losing altitude now as he lost speed and lift, but he kept the wings tucked in.
'C'mon,' he told the Korean pilot. 'C'mon, you bastard!'
Pak was still turning inside the Tomcat's circle. The American fighter's wings were still folded. Pak's Spin Scan radar was too primitive to provide him with speed data on the target, but the fact that the F-14's wings were still folded told Pak that the Yankee was maintaining the turn at better than three hundred knots. Pak's own airspeed was falling below two hundred eighty knots as he tightened his turn. The Yankee was going to slip away!
He kicked his throttle forward for a sudden burst of speed.
He kept his eyes on the MiG floating off his portside tail, still staying inside the F-14's turn. When the MiG accelerated with a rush, Tombstone knew he'd won.
The MiG passed the Tomcat barely thirty yards to port at the same instant that Tombstone opened his wings
