Still pumping chaff, Tombstone let the Tomcat slide into an inverted dive. The trick was to create a large enough radar target for the oncoming missile that its microchip brain would believe that the target's center lay somewhere behind the aircraft… instead of squarely between the stabilizers and the cockpit.
He held his breath as the missile closed…
… and flashed past the tail of his aircraft just as he cut in the afterburners once more.
The Atoll exploded somewhere astern, and the Tomcat shuddered with the blast. Tombstone heard a loud ping, metal striking metal, but the lights on his warning panel remained blissfully unlit.
Falling now, Tombstone righted the F-14 and throttled down to eighty percent. His eyes went to his fuel gauge. Not good. They'd been in the dogfight for less than three minutes, but using the afterburner had burned a hell of a lot of fuel.
He was on top of the dogfight now. Looking down, he could see aircraft and contrails everywhere he looked, spread out between him and the jungle, silvery specks moving against dark green. South he could see the scar of U Feng; west the sun flashed from the Taeng River.
'Eagle Three, this is Eagle Six! I've got two on my tail! Get 'em off!
Shit, they're going for lock! They've got lock!'
'Hold on, Nightmare!' Garrison's voice called. 'I'm on them!'
Still diving, Tombstone plunged back into the aerial melee. Pulling up, he saw a Tomcat in a hard turn a mile ahead, closely pursued by a MiG, which in turn was being pursued by another F-14. He was too far to read the numbers, but he knew the Tomcats were Nightmare Marinaro and Army Garrison.
'Break right, Nightmare!' Army called. 'Break right!'
The lead Tomcat cut hard to the right just as Garrison fired. 'Fox two!
Fox two!'
One of the MiGs exploded seconds later, a burst of jagged, flaming fragments spilling from the sky. Army's Tomcat overshot the second MiG before he could get a shot, however, and the enemy plane stuck to Nightmare's tail.
Tombstone saw that he was in a good position to cut across the arc of Nightmare's turn. He pushed the throttle to full military power, lining up his target pipper on the second MiG.
'Army!' Nightmare called. 'Where are you, man?'
'Steady, Nightmare,' Tombstone said. 'I'm on him.'
'He's still got lock!' Nightmare yelled. 'Hurry, Stoney!'
The two planes were leading Tombstone now. The pipper on his HUD trailed the MiG, but he couldn't turn hard enough to catch up. 'Nightmare!' he called. 'When I tell you, break left. That'll give me a clear shot at his six!'
'Rog!'
'On my mark… three… two… one… break!'
Nightmare snapped left in a sharp split-S, and the MiG followed. This guy is good, Tombstone thought. But he'd known in advance where Nightmare would be going and had been able to anticipate the MiG's move and be ready.
His HUD showed a target lock and a tone growled in his ear. 'Lock! Fox two!
Fox two!'
The missile sped from its rail, slipped up the J-7's tailpipe and exploded. The MiG's wings closed together like folding hands.
Colonel Wu pulled his J-7 around in a hard, left-hand turn, following the F-5 toward the jungle. He watched as his Aphid heat-seeker AAM slammed into the That Freedom Fighter's tailpipe. A blossom of orange flame engulfed the target's tail, blasting away bits of whirling metal, and the F-5 began plummeting toward the jungle.
That made five kills scored against the enemy, two of them downed by Wu himself. The That aircraft were relatively easy targets. The American-made F-5s were as good as his squadron's J-7s, but the superiority of the Chinese pilots' training was making itself felt.
'Wu t'uan chang! Wu t'uan chang!' an excited voice yelled over his headset. In Chinese military usage he was 'Regimental Commander Wu' rather than 'Colonel.'
'Who calls?' he snapped. The other pilot's voice betrayed growing panic, and Wu could not allow that to continue.
'The American planes, Regimental Commander! They are turning the battle against us!'
Wu looked up through his canopy. Contrails snarled and twisted above him. He saw the black streak of an aircraft burning as it fell and realized it was one of his own.
He'd lost track of the numbers on either side. There was no way to follow the battle in any detail now, not with so many combatants involved.
But the Thais seemed scattered… and between the onslaught from Wu's J-7s and the SAMs at U Feng and along the river, they'd taken heavy casualties.
There seemed to be six American aircraft… and he still had eighteen J-7s in his squadron. Discounting the Thais, that made the odds three to one in his favor.
Wu made a snap decision. 'All Dragons,' he called. 'This is Dragon Leader. Ignore the Thais. Concentrate on the Americans! Repeat, concentrate on the Americans!'
It was the only way to stop the deadly attrition of his own forces.
Airplanes fell from the sky. Tombstone watched another That F-5 explode, victim of a MiG-launched Aphid. Seconds later, Price Taggart loosed a radar-guided Sparrow from almost ten miles away, tracking a MiG which dove for the jungle. The Chinese pilot tried to lose the Mach 4 hunter by weaving in close among the forested ridges… and failed in a spectacularly blazing fireball.
Garrison and Marinaro both reported kills as well. The MiGs were frantic now, and Tombstone thought he detected a new pattern to their movements.
Though spread now across twenty miles of sky, all the way from U Feng to the green line, they appeared to be trying to close with the American planes, forcing them into close combat.
'This is Eagle Two, Eagle Two!' Batman called. 'I've got two on my tail.
Correction… four on my tail! Four on me! Jeez, where're they coming from?'
Under that kind of pressure, the Americans' luck wouldn't hold for long.
There were at least eight That aircraft still in the area, but they were not understanding ? or responding ? to Victor Four Delta's calls, and the battle was quickly collapsing into a slugfest, eighteen MiG-21s ganging up on six Tomcats.
Tombstone saw Batman ahead, a black speck pursued by four smaller specks, weaving and twisting back and forth, working to shake his pursuers.
Tombstone checked his position, then swung left, positioning himself so that the morning sun was squarely behind his Tomcat. 'Eagle Two, Eagle One,' he called. 'Coming in on your four, right out of the sun. Give 'em a high speed yo-yo!'
'Copy, Tombstone,' Batman replied. 'Give the word.'
'Ready…' Tombstone studied the rapidly swelling MiGs. They showed no sign that they were aware of the Tomcat stooping on them out of the sun's glare. 'Do it!'
Batman's plane started to turn left, then pulled up sharply just as three of the four J-7s on his tail were committed to the turn. They shot past him as he went high, inverted, then dropped again, pulling in behind the former hunters.
The fourth MiG had been lagging behind and countered Batman's maneuver, sticking to the American's tail.
But Tombstone had assumed that the tail-end charlie would be the one to cause trouble… and had already locked on with a Sparrow radar homer. 'Fox one! Fox one!' The heavy missile slid out from under the Tomcat's wing.
Tombstone was already concentrating on his next target, a J-7 which was now turning sharply across his line
