a desperate attempt to throw himself clear of the deadly volleys but succeeded only in presenting his aircraft plan- view-on to his relentless pursuer. Twenty-millimeter cannon shells smashed through his fuselage. The Mig began coming apart.
The Flogger-D’s hinged, squared-off canopy blew off. There was a flash, and Batman glimpsed the tiny figure of the pilot as his ejection seat rocketed him clear of the crumbling aircraft. Seconds later, there was another, far brighter flash … then another and another as the Flogger’s load of half-ton bombs detonated.
“Splash one Mig,” Batman called.
Around him, the dogfight swirled from just above the sea to over thirty thousand feet, dozens of aircraft circling one another in a melee across hundreds of square miles.
“We’re turnin’ and burnin’ now, Batman!” Malibu called.
“Affirmative!” But the American defenses were already leaking. Indian aircraft were falling from the sky one after another, but plenty of strike aircraft had already made it through, were holding a steady course for the southwest, for Jefferson.
There were just too many of them to stop.
Batman checked the readout on his HUD that registered the number of rounds he had remaining for his Vulcan cannon. The M61 was loaded with 675 rounds, but since it had a rate of fire that burned up seventy to one hundred rounds a second depending on the setting, the F-14’s ammo store did not last for long.
The readout showed 206 rounds remaining. Three seconds’ worth of fire at the 4000 RPM setting … perhaps four or five quick bursts.
And then he would have neither missiles nor guns.
Batman began searching for his next target.
Tombstone pulled up hard as the Mig-29 in his sights cut in his afterburners and stood on his tail.
“Watch it, Stoney!” Hitman yelled. “He’s goin’ ballistic!”
“I’m on him!” Tombstone rammed his throttles forward to Zone Five to build up speed, then cut back to eighty-percent power, allowing the climbing Mig to drift into his line of fire. The angle was bad with a sharp deflection, but he squeezed off a long burst in hope of getting one or two hits that might, might puncture something vital.
The Fulcrum rolled sharply right, seeming to float just beyond the reach of the line of glowing tracers arcing past his wing.
“Damn,” Tombstone muttered. “This guy can fly!”
The Mig-29 danced away, its pilot using his aircraft’s superb maneuverability to best advantage. Tombstone cut back hard on his throttles as he tried to follow, putting the Tomcat into a hard, skidding turn to the right.
He could see before he was halfway into the turn that the Mig was outperforming him, circling inside the best turn radius he could manage.
Unwilling to finish the maneuver on the other guy’s terms, Tombstone punched in the throttles and pulled the stick hard left, slamming the F-14 into a split-S that carried him past the Mig’s tail and off in the other direction.
“What’s … he … doing …?” He had to force each word out explosively through clenched teeth. The G-readout hit seven Gs. He felt his head growing fuzzy, saw blackness closing in at the periphery of his vision.
“Lost … uh! Lost him!” Hitman replied.
The compass reading swung around until Tombstone knew he was heading back toward where his opponent had vanished during the last pass. Damn it, where was he?
“On our six!” Hitman warned as Tombstone broke out of the turn. “Coming fast!”
Tombstone pulled up, twisting the F-14 into a short, fast-spinning Immelmann designed to bring him over the other plane and down on his tail. Looking “up” through his canopy as he went over the top, Tombstone caught a glimpse of the other plane between him and the ocean, already going into a break to counter the maneuver.
Another target loomed ahead as Tombstone righted the plane, a wingtip-to-wingtip pair of Jaguars, steady on course toward the southwest.
The Fulcrum pilot was one of the best Tombstone had ever gone up against. With so many bandits coming through the line, he was better off not wasting time jousting with the Fulcrum driver.
So he dropped on the Jaguars from behind and above, lining up the left-hand aircraft before he’d completed the roll-out, squeezing off a burst from his cannon at a range of less than five hundred yards. It was a snap shot from a difficult angle, but he saw pieces flaking from the target plane as he dropped through its slipstream.
Then the Jaguars were behind him. More aircraft were scattered across the sky ahead and he dropped into position behind yet another strike plane, an ancient BAC Canberra. Lining up on the junction of the broad, almost triangular unswept wings, he opened fire from eight hundred yards and watched as his stream of tracer rounds drifted into the Indian bomber. The port engine began smoking, and the Canberra’s wing dropped sharply. The aircraft slipped into a steeply falling turn, its engine ablaze. Three parachutes appeared in the falling bomber’s wake.
“Hey! Just like fish in a barrel, Tombstone,” Hitman said.
Tombstone didn’t answer. Canberras had been hailed as a match for any fighter in the air when they’d first made their appearance with the RAF in 1951, but they were virtually helpless in a match with a modern F-14.
But there was no other way. The Indian attack planes were breaking through toward the American ships.
Coyote had launched all four of his Sparrows within the first few minutes of the approach. Now he was switching to Sidewinders as a pair of Indian interceptors streaked toward him from the north. From two black specks in the sky, side by side, they grew with astonishing swiftness into sleek, delta-winged jets that flashed past his F-14 to port at a range of less than half a mile. In the instant’s glimpse he had, he recognized them: Dassault- Breguet Mirage-2000Hs, a French design, though these particular aircraft were probably built in India under license. They were excellent aircraft, capable of bettering Mach 2 and mounting Magic AAMS for close-in fighting.
“Tally-ho!” he called over the tactical frequency. “Two Mirage two-triple-ohs. Two-oh-four is on them!”
“Roger, Two-oh-four,” the Hawkeye controller said. “Stay on the strikers, over.”
Stay on the strikers. The 2000H was an interceptor, a jet designed to kill jets. The people watching this fight from the bird farm would be concerned about strike aircraft, planes carrying antiship missiles and bombs. Obviously, it was better to shoot down a plane carrying several Exocets before it had a chance to release its payload … and complicate the electronic musings of Jefferson’s point defense system.
But it wouldn’t pay to ignore the strike aircraft’s fighter escorts, not when those escorts outnumbered the F- 14s by at least three to one, and probably more.
He put his Tomcat into a hard left break, dumping speed with flaps and spoilers in order to turn in the tightest possible radius. “Where are they?” he called to his RIO.
Radar Mendoza was one of Jefferson’s latest crop of replacements, a young j.g. with black eyes and mustache and a Hispanic’s cocksure machismo.
“Tryin’ to cut us out, Coyote,” Mendoza replied. “Breakin’ left, man.
Comin’ past our seven o’clock!”
“Hang onto your stomach.”
Coyote slammed the Tomcat into a right-hand turn with a snapping half-twist, then brought the stick back as he cut in his afterburners.
The Tomcat’s nose came up … up … and over as he slid from a split-S into an Immelmann turn that left them flying inverted toward the two Mirages, now two miles to the south and still turning.
“Surprise, guys,” Coyote said. The Mirages were presenting themselves in a perfect plan view as they crossed his line of sight from right to left. He let the Tomcat barrel-roll out of its inverted position and dropped the targeting pipper squarely across the lead Indian fighter.
The target lock warble sounded in his headphones.
“Fox two!” he called, and a Sidewinder slid off his port wing. The Mirages, aware that they’d been outmaneuvered, split. The one he’d targeted changed his left turn into a split-S to the right, and the other one
