'Roger. Left.'
'Watch out, Tombstone!' Dixie called. 'Twelve o'clock! We got two taking us head-to-head!'
Tombstone saw the MiGs streaking toward his plane dead ahead. 'Rog! Let 'em come!' In an instant they swelled from specks in the distance to aircraft flashing past. The combined speeds of MiGs and Tomcat amounted to better than Mach 2.
One of the strange effects of combat which Tombstone had noted before was the almost surreal slowing of time. At Mach 2 there was no way for an aviator to see any detail at all in the other aircraft… yet as he turned his head to follow the passing MiGs it felt as though he could count every rivet. He could see the J-7s' mid-fuselage delta wings, could see the arrow-slim heads of their Aphid and Atoll missile loads, could actually see into the cockpits and see two red-helmeted heads with the black sun visors canted up, looking back at him.
Then they were gone, vanishing into the blue distance behind him.
'Eagle Leader,' he called. He pulled back on the stick and the Tomcat climbed. 'I'm on them. Going for a vertical reverse.'
'You want to let me off at the next stop?' Dixie asked.
'Just keep your eye on those MiGs,' Tombstone replied. The F-14 was climbing straight up now, but Tombstone kept the afterburners off. The plane was losing speed. 'Where are they?'
'Going into a turn, Tombstone. Range one mile.'
The vertical reverse was the modern equivalent of the stall turn sometimes employed by fighter pilots in the age of prop planes. The aircraft climbed straight up, losing speed until it threatened to stall out completely, then turned toward the ground. The plane's low speed made it possible to turn in an extremely tight radius, but there was a very large risk that the fighter would lose control.
Tombstone brought the Tomcat's swept-back wings forward and engaged the flaps. The F-14 bucked, stress vibrating through the hull, but the airspeed indicator showed less than one hundred and forty knots as he kicked in the rudder and brought the stick over. For one shuddering moment, the F-14 fought and bucked, and the stall warning light on his caution/ advisory panel flashed once.
Then they were arrowing toward the ground once more. Tombstone cut the flaps and brought the wings back to full sweep, trading altitude for speed in an all-out dive for the deck. Two miles away, the MiGs were halfway into their turn, barely visible as a pair of black specks almost touching one another as they broke left in unison.
He pulled the F-14 out of its dive and hurtled toward the MiGs at almost five hundred knots. He selected the targeting display for his HUD and saw the small box symbols appear over the specks as the plane's computer identified potential targets. 'We'll go for a Sidewinder launch,' he told his RIO. He brought the targeting pipper on his HUD across one of the specks, saw the square flash into a circle with the computer graphic 'M' for missile displayed.
His fingers closed on the firing button, and an AIM-9J Sidewinder slid clear of its rail. 'Fox two!' Tombstone called, warning of a heat-seeker launch. 'Fox two!'
The MiGs held their turn as the all-aspect heat-seeker arrowed toward the left-hand target. Both J-7s began popping flares, bright orange pinpoints of light which arced away from their hulls like Roman candles, trailing smoke.
'Two more bandits,' Dixie warned. 'Coming on our six. Range three miles.'
'Let 'em come.' Tombstone pulled the stick left, turning inside the MiGs ahead, hoping to line up a shot at the second plane. He saw the contrail brush the MiG. There was a flash, and the J-7's wings folded toward one another, the fuselage disintegrating in white flame. Secondary explosions ate their way through the burning wreckage as fuel and munitions exploded.
Burning debris scattered smoking trails into the jungle below.
'Splash one MiG!' Dixie called. 'Chalk one for Tombstone!'
Tombstone began lining up for his second shot. The target was weaving and jinking now, aware that the American was closing fast inside his turn.
'Two bandits on our six,' Dixie said. 'Two miles. They're trying for a shot.'
'Almost there,' Tombstone said. 'Almost there-'
A warbling tone sounded in his ear. 'Stoney! They have lock! They have lock!'
'Damn!' Tombstone snapped the stick back to the right, throwing the Tomcat into a sudden split-S. The warble was the tone of an Atoll missile, the radar-guided Soviet and Chinese equivalent of the American Sparrow.
'They're still coming',' Dixie shouted. Tombstone could hear the RIO shifting back and forth in his seat, trying to keep his eyes on the approaching MiGs. 'They're breaking right!'
'Hold your stomach, Dixie!'
'Launch! Launch!'
Tombstone hauled the Tomcat's nose up and rammed the throttles forward, past full military power to afterburner. His F-14 shrieked toward heaven.
The That army column had deployed on either side of the trail and was well-hidden. The men were under orders not to fire, but the nearness of the enemy, the ear-piercing low pass by jet aircraft, the hiss and roar of launching SAMs had an unnerving effect. One soldier in particular, a private named Pang Rajathasithuk, found himself trembling as he lay in the jungle, watching a raggedly dressed column of troops walk south along the path.
It was a patrol, one of several sent out by the invaders to search for the leading elements of the Royal That Army, which was known to be in the area. Until this moment, Pang had not seen the enemy, had heard only stories and rumors about the coup, about the attack on U Feng, about pitched battles fought here and in Bangkok.
There were so many of them, some in Burmese uniforms, most in mismatched bits and pieces of uniform which suggested they were members of some private militia rather than an established army. Pang watched the line passing his position and wondered how large this invading army at U Feng really was.
Could General Vinjit match such a force?
One of the ragged-looking soldiers on the path broke away from the rest of the column, his hands fumbling with the buttons of his trousers as he searched for a place to relieve himself. Chance put him squarely in front of Pang, and only a little below the level of the slope on which the That private lay. He looked up…
Pang never knew whether the soldier saw him or not. To the That private, it seemed that the man was looking straight at him through the leaves. His finger closed on the trigger of his M-16, and the roar of the weapon on full auto echoed along the trail.
Burmese and rebel soldiers dove for cover. The other hidden That troops opened up, and the jungle trail became a bloody killing ground at the nexus of a deadly crossfire. Gunshots crashed and boomed among the leaves, and the steady, hammering thunder of an M-60 added to the racket. A Burmese soldier pitched to the ground, shrieking as he clutched his shattered knee. A rebel threw up his arms and toppled forward as bloody guts erupted from his side and back.
Long seconds passed before the ambushed troops recovered from their surprise enough to begin firing back, and by the time they did dozens of their number had crumpled to the ground or were already fleeing north as fast as their legs could carry them. The heavy crump of grenades and 40-mm explosive rounds joined in.
And from the control tower of U Feng, less than a mile to the north, Hsiao heard the gunfire and knew the base was under attack.
Shit! Lieutenant Miller's fist hit the ground in front of him with frustration. He'd heard the sudden eruption of gunfire to the south, knew the element of surprise was gone before the first of the ambush survivors began streaming out of the forest and onto the airstrip. From his hiding place, he could see their wild gestures, hear their shouted warnings as they spread the alarm.
Well, it couldn't have lasted long, not with several thousand men wandering around loose in these woods. He gestured for the radio, took the handset from the commo operator.
'Green Throne, Green Throne,' he said. 'This is Alligator. Do you read, over?'
'Alligator, Green Throne. We read you. Go ahead.'
