'Batman!' the RIO called. 'Bandits, one o'clock! Watch it… watch it!'
Taggart squeezed the trigger on his stick. 'Fox two! Fox two!' The call gave warning to friendly planes that a heat-seeker was in the air. The target MiG broke to the right, wildly trying to lose the Sidewinder which was closing with its engine flare with relentless persistence. Flares broke from the MiG's tail, tumbling away to either side like roman candles at a fireworks display.
The Sidewinder caught up with the fleeing MiG, ignoring the flares for the far hotter and more inviting target of the J-7's tailpipe flare. There was a flash, and black smoke boiled from the plane's engine. Taggart could see the wings flutter as the pilot struggled to regain control.
Aflame now, the J-7 hit the treetops a second later. An orange fireball boiled up through the trees, uncoiling like the head of some gigantic, hooded snake.
'Score…!' Ziegler yelled. 'Splash one MiG!'
The two incoming MiGs flashed past the damaged Tomcat, hurtling toward the south before beginning a broad, sweeping turn which would bring them in behind Batman and Malibu.
'Where's Taggart?' Batman asked. 'Malibu! Do you see Taggart?' If Tomcat 203 was close by they had a chance. Unfortunately, the failed attempt to cut the MiGs off from the TARPS plane, followed by a brief dogfight, had separated the two American planes by a number of miles.
'Negative! I've got nothing on the scope! Shit, Batman, I'm dead back here!'
Batman tried again to turn the stricken F-14, to bring the nose up in a bid for altitude, to do anything. Slowly, the Tomcat began to respond. The aircraft was still bucking and kicking, but he managed to drag it into a slow, rising turn to starboard.
Then he heard the telltale warble of a radar lock in his headset.
'Batman!' Malibu yelled. 'They're locking on!'
'I hear it! I hear it!' Damn the controls! The Tomcat kept bucking as he coaxed the ship into a tighter turn.
'Launch! We've got launch! Coming in hard on our six!' They were still turning, but it wasn't going to be enough. A moment later something hard slammed into the Tomcat's tail, filling the sky with flames.
'Price!' Zig-Zag yelled. 'I've lost the Batman!'
'What do you mean, lost him!'
'He's dropped off the screen, man! I don't see him!'
'Shit…!' The terrain here was rugged. 'Keep watching! He may pop up again!'
'We got two more targets at two-eight-three,' Zig-Zag announced. 'Range seven miles, heading north at six hundred.'
'Where's the green line, Zig-Zag?'
'Shit, man, I don't know! We could be in Burma now for all I know!'
'You'd better hope we're not. If those bastards nailed Batman, I want them!'
'Too late, Price. They're scooting north like nobody's business. I think they've had enough.'
The dogfight was over. Taggart forced himself to relax, almost muscle by muscle. It was over, and they were still alive!
But where were Batman and Malibu?
The Tomcat was coming apart around them as they plummeted toward the rugged terrain. Batman saw jungle rushing past his canopy as they skimmed a towering hill, falling into the valley beyond. 'That's all she wrote,' he told Malibu. There was nothing else to be done. 'We're punching out!'
'Rog!'
Altitude eight hundred. It was now or never. He grabbed the bright, yellow-and-black painted ejection loop between his knees and yanked back.
There was an explosion, and the Tomcat's canopy broke away. Then Malibu's ejection seat slid up the rails and into the sky with a shrill roar, followed an instant later by a slamming kick in the butt as his own escape system fired.
Wind smacked him in the face and chest, clawing at him, snapping and whipping like a living thing, and for a horrible moment, Batman thought he was going to be torn in two, that the force would break his neck, that…
The parachute deployed above him, checking his tumbling fall with a rush that felt as though he were rocketing once more into the sky. Quickly, he looked around, hoping for a glimpse of Malibu, but he couldn't see him. He did spot the F-14, still falling toward the jungle, upside down now with its empty cockpit like a blind eye. Flame boiled from the shattered tail, unfolding in a trail of smoke all the way down.
He looked down, suddenly aware of the jungle. The unbroken green beneath his flight boots was taking on more and more shape and texture as it swept up to meet him from below. At close range, he was aware of folds in the terrain he'd not seen before; he was dropping into a steep-sided valley which had been all but invisible from the sky, but which now was taking on the proportions of the Grand Canyon.
And there was no way he could avoid those trees.
CHAPTER 10
'Homeplate, Homeplate, this is Tomcat Two-oh-three.'
'Go ahead, Two-oh-three.'
'Homeplate, we are declaring an emergency,' Taggart said. He continued to scan the hills and jungle below as he sent in the message. 'Tomcat Two-three-two is down, repeat, down.'
'Copy, Two-oh-three. Do you have chutes in sight? Over.'
'Negative chutes, Homeplate. We didn't even see where they went down.
They were out of visual when they were hit. Over.'
There was a long, static-filled silence. Finally, the voice of Jefferson's Air Ops controller came on the air again. 'Tomcat Two-oh-three, RTB. Please confirm.'
'Negative, Homeplate. I have fuel to orbit until a SAR can arrive.'
They would need help from a Texaco if they stayed up that long, but they could extend their stay over the border by two or three hours at least.
'Tomcat Two-oh-three, Homeplate. Negative on SAR. You are directed to RTB. That is, Romeo-Tango-Bravo, execute immediate. Do you confirm, over?'
Taggart sighed. If he circled long enough, he might pick up their radio, but the terrain here was so rugged they would have to be mighty lucky to fly over the right spot at the right time. Another possibility was to spot the flyers' chutes from the air, but with so much jungle, that was an even longer shot than the radio.
Homeplate was right. No doubt they'd be coordinating a rescue with the Thais. 'Affirmative, Homeplate. We copy. Two-oh-three, coming home.'
He brought the stick over, swinging Tomcat 203 onto a southern heading.
Batman remembered reading once about British SAS tree jumpers, an elite airborne unit trained to parachute into the jungles of Malaysia. The idea had finally been abandoned. There was simply no way that jumping into a jungle canopy could be made safe.
