As soon as he was past, he brought the stick back and cut in his afterburners. G-forces pressed him down in his ejection seat, draining the blood from his brain and threatening him with unconsciousness. Then he was hard into a right break, twisting his head back in an attempt to locate his opponent.
'Where is he, Dixie? Do you see him?'
'One-two-zero, Stoney. Three o'clock high.'
There he was. Tombstone held the turn, climbing slightly now, rising under the other plane. The MiG driver was trying to turn inside Tombstone's break, but the Tomcat's position was perfect.
One Sidewinder left. Tombstone got the lock and triggered the launch.
'Fox two!'
The missile arced away toward the enemy plane, drawing closer… closer… No! The MiG was twisting away, scattering dazzling pinpoints of light in its wake. Tombstone watched as his last Sidewinder curved away, uselessly following a flare.
'Let him go, Tombstone! We're almost bingo fuel, man! We don't have the gas!'
'Just a moment more!' At full military power he closed the gap between the Tomcat and the MiG.
'We're out of missiles, Tombstone.'
'Switching to guns.' He thumbed the selector switch on his stick. The concentric rings of the M61 target reticle appeared on his HUD. The MiG was turning again, trying to break right. Tombstone anticipated the turn, leading the MiG by a generous margin. They crowded in closer… closer…
He brought his thumb down on the firing switch. The F-14's four-barreled Gatling cut loose with a buzzsaw shriek, pumping out 20-mm shells at the rate of one hundred per second. The MiG was jinking, the pilot throwing the delta-winged aircraft back and forth, up and down, trying to break Tombstone's aim.
Puffs of smoke appeared on the tail section, and bits and pieces of metal began falling away. Tombstone kept the trigger depressed, firing round after round after high-velocity round into the stricken aircraft.
The MiG fell.
Colonel Wu knew the aircraft was lost when he pulled back on the stick and felt no response in the controls at all. The ground was twisting crazily as his MiG began tumbling, and still the American's cannon shells were crashing into the plane, shredding hull metal and control surfaces and electronic circuitry. His control console was lit with a dozen systems-failure lights, and the fire warning light was on.
'Dragon, Dragon,' he called over the radio. 'This is Dragon Leader.
Break off the attack. Regroup, then make for Fuhsingchen. Repeat, make for Fuhsingchen.'
It was useless to continue. Half of his unit was destroyed or would never fly again, and the Americans were on their guard. By ordering his people to break off, perhaps some would survive. Perhaps General Hsiao would be able to reorganize the unit back in the People's Republic.
He felt a savage bitterness at the failure of Hsiao's plan. It was the American carrier planes that had broken the operation. The coup, he thought, might yet succeed.
But it would fail or succeed without the help of his Dragons.
The American had stopped firing, whether because he was out of ammo or because he'd lost a workable firing angle, Wu couldn't tell. His surviving pilots began acknowledging his last transmission as his MiG fell toward the ground, now some eight thousand feet below. It was time to abandon the aircraft.
He hit the canopy release, bracing himself for the blast of wind which buffeted him full force as soon as the cockpit was open. Then he grabbed the ejection handle and pulled.
The ejection seat's rockets fired, rocketing him clear of the aircraft.
It was unfortunate for Colonel Wu that the canopy had not separated completely from the aircraft, a defect in the original Soviet design which had never been corrected by the Chinese engineers who'd reworked the J-7.
Wu's body slammed into the cockpit at two hundred miles per hour. His chute opened and lowered him gently to the floor of the Taeng Valley, but he was dead long before he hit the ground.
Tombstone watched the stricken MiG fall into the jungle and wondered who he'd just been facing. That guy had not been That, had certainly not been Burmese. Chinese?
'He's gone, Tombstone,' Dixie said. 'And it looks like the other bandits are breaking off.'
Tombstone didn't answer. At Wonsan he'd led his men into combat, knowing who the enemy was, knowing that they fought to save American hostages held by the North Koreans. But this… this was different.
He found that, like millions of military men before him, he wasn't entirely sure what he was fighting for… or why.
'Tombstone? We're bingo fuel. We've gotta get this bitch to a Texaco.'
'Right, Dix. Whistle 'em up and let's get a drink.'
There would be time for analysis later.
Once the remaining Q-5s turned away from the That LZ, the rest of the battle was anticlimax. The RTAF Hueys and the Marine helos on loan to the That airmobile forces lifted from the jungle clearing at almost the same moment that the American Hornets were hitting SAM sites at U Feng and along the Taeng River Valley. Ten surviving RTAF planes regrouped at Chiang Mai as the last of the enemy aircraft vanished across the border, and control of Thailand's skies returned to the Thais.
Within moments, the A-6F Intruders of VA-84, the Blue Rangers, call sign Thunderbird, roared out of the south, scattering antipersonnel bomblets. On the airstrip and among the barracks at U Feng, Burmese soldiers, That rebels, and drug lord militiamen died by the tens… by the hundreds, cut down by shrapnel like wheat before a scythe. Orange flames leaped into the sky, and a pall of smoke hung above U Feng like a shroud.
The helicopters skimmed in above the treetops, door gunners ready to fight for the U Feng LZ, but only isolated and scattered gunfire met them.
That Rangers and Special Forces dropped from the helos while they were still airborne, dispersing throughout the compound. The defenders began surrendering. A ponderously fat general named Kol ordered all of the Burmese troops remaining at U Feng to lay down their arms and give up. Within moments, the rest of the defenders were following the example of the Burmese, surrendering en masse.
The battle was over by 0830, when members of the That First Division (Airborne) raised the national flag of Thailand over the traffic control tower.
It had been a near thing for the Tomcats of VF-95. Fuel almost gone, each aircraft had received only enough from one of the two orbiting KA-6 tankers to get them safely to the ground. Aircraft with enough fuel remaining in their tanks bingoed to Chiang Mai or all the way to Don Muong. Others, like Tombstone and Batman, set down at U Feng, dropping onto a runway partly masked by drifting smoke.
He saw her waiting by the runway as he climbed out of his Tomcat.
'Pamela!' Then she was in his arms as his flight helmet clattered on the tarmac. He embraced her for a long time. 'Pam, it's so good to see you.'
After a long moment, he pulled back. 'Where's Made It?'
A shadow passed behind her eyes, and he knew Bayerly was dead. 'Show me.'
She took him to the place beyond the burned-out skeleton of an old Huey Slick. He lay where she said she'd left him, staring up at the sky.
'Tombstone… he died saving my life,' she said. 'He thought he was a coward, but he died saving my life.'
Tombstone squatted next to the body and gently closed the man's eyes. He wanted to do something… something more for the man who'd saved Pamela.
He became aware of a weight in the shoulder pocket of his flight suit.
Wondering what it was, he reached in and pulled something out.
The medal… his Navy Cross. Tombstone remembered stuffing it there, back on the fantail of the Jefferson.
