Thor snorted. “I’d just as soon wait. Wish Grumman built these birds instead of McDonnell-Douglas. At least they have the common sense to put relief tubes in their aircraft. I hate these damned piddle packs.” MD’s solution to the inevitable calls of nature was a small plastic Baggie with elastic on one end. Might as well use a Coke bottle, Thor thought, disgusted.
Suddenly, the E-2C Hawkeye NFO’s voice cut in on the radio static. “Homeplate, Snoopy 601. Strangers, bearing 318, range 130 miles. Negative mode four IFF.”
Unidentified aircraft, ones that did not broadcast the IFF modes and codes that would mark it as a friendly military aircraft. For a moment, Thor was interested. It was, he immediately decided, probably a commercial airliner, heading southwest and hugging the coast. He waited. So far, there was nothing on his own radar.
“Roger, Snoopy. Hold that contact on course 135, speed four hundred.”
Well, this was getting interesting. The unknown contact’s course would take it directly toward the battle group. Thor’s adrenaline kicked in with a little tingle.
It still could be a commercial airliner, headed across the South China Sea to Brunei or Malaysia, but most of the commercial routes curved slightly to the north, following a great circle route as the shortest distance between two points. He glanced at his radar and noted that the E-2C’s contact was now entered into LINK, the electronic data-sharing and targeting system that let the battle group elements share radar information.
“Break, break, Jigsaw One, Homeplate,” the Operations Specialist said, indicating a change of call-ups. “Jigsaw One,” Thor answered.
“Roger, come to new course 325. Request you close and VID contact in question. Jigsaw 2, maintain current station.”
“Roger.” Thor pulled out of his gentle CAP turn and headed northwest to intercept the contact and visually identify it.
“You get all the fun,” he heard his wingman mutter over the tactical circuit.
“You got any modes and codes on that contact at all?” the carrier TAO asked the operations specialist.
“Negative, ma’am. It’s off the normal COMMAIR corridor by at least a hundred miles. No modes at all.”
The TAO felt vaguely uneasy. A senior lieutenant commander, an E-2C Naval Flight Officer herself, she’d heard the slight change in pitch in her airborne counterpart’s voice. So far, there was no real cause for alarm, but experience born from thousands of hours in the back of an E-2C kept setting off alarms in her mind. Better safe than sorry, she finally decided.
“Get the alert five Tomcats in the air,” she said to her assistant. He nodded and reached for the 1MC microphone to broadcast the order. Seconds later, she heard scurrying feet pounding down the passageway as the Air Boss and his crew headed for Pri-Fly.
She picked up the telephone and punched the button for the TFCC TAO. If the world was about to go to shit, she wanted to make sure the admirals watch team was awake.
“Okay, what’ve we got?” Tombstone asked as he stepped into TFCC.
“Nothing solid yet, Admiral. The E-2 picked up an unidentified air contact, and a Hornet’s vectoring to intercept. Alert five Tomcats are on the cat — excuse me, sir, airborne,” the Flag TAO corrected himself as the distinctive grumble of the forward catapult launching aircraft interrupted his summary. The TAO rolled his trackball and positioned the pointer near the symbol for the contact.
Tombstone studied the screen, watching the symbol representing the Hornet track slowly across it. If it was a military aircraft, then it was probably Vietnamese. Its speed leader pointed directly back to the Vietnamese coast, near a major military airfield. Vietnamese fighters had every right to be in international airspace, and were probably just flying out toward the battle group to exercise their right to do so.
The Vietnamese air force flew a collection of Russian-built fighters. Until recently, the most advanced airframe in their inventory was the MiG-23F Flogger, a smaller and less capable version of the airframe reserved for Russia’s own use. The single-pilot fighter had limited-range “Jay Bird” radars, with little or no capability beyond fifteen nautical miles. With no infrared or Doppler tracking capabilities, and carrying only the ancient Soviet Atoll and Aphid air-to-air missiles, the export version of the fighter was considerably less threatening than the original model. Russia stopped building Floggers in 1980, although Tombstone recalled that India still built some versions of the airframe under license from Russia. The MiG-29 Fulcrum and the SU-27 Flanker had replaced most of the Floggers in the Soviet inventory.
However, Vietnam had upped the ante in mid-1994, when it had taken delivery of a squadron of SU-27 Flankers. The Flanker was a Russian-built multipurpose fighter aircraft used for air intercept by the former Soviet Union’s ground defense forces. There were six versions of the advanced fighter, all produced at Komsomolsk in the Khabarovsk Territory. While the basic airframe had entered service in the Soviet Union in 1984, new versions of the Flanker were reportedly under development. Interestingly enough, in 1991 the fighter had been observed undertaking ground attack roles as well.
The Flanker was also the first Soviet aircraft to make a non-VSTOL landing on a ship. That particular development had caused immense concern in the U.S. military establishment, since the Soviet Union had relied on its land-launched aircraft as the mainstay of its air power until then. Being tied to land bases naturally limited Soviet strategic options in pursuing domination of large areas of the world, and had helped to limit efforts at expansionism. But with a potent carrier air wing and fighters in its inventory, the Soviet Union could dramatically expand its theater of influence — and combat. Fortunately, the Evil Empire had collapsed under its own corruption before developing a truly workable carrier aviation program. Engineering details, such as developing a reliable catapult steam system, had stymied them long enough.
Equipped with afterburners and a relatively traditional airframe containing titanium components but no advanced stealth composite materials, the Flanker was a tough, versatile fighter. It would have been a deadly adversary flying from a carrier, and was no less potent as a land-based fighter in the relatively constrained waters of the South China Sea.
Still, Tombstone reminded himself, this was Vietnam’s backyard. There was no good reason for the country not to conduct surveillance on an American battle group in their pond. Given Seventh Fleet’s orders to exercise FON peacefully, it would not be appropriate to provoke a confrontation unless the battle group’s safety was at stake.
“VID and watch him. Unless his wings are dirty, I’m not opposed to a fly-over look-see,” Tombstone said finally.
“Yes, Admiral. The Hornet should be in position any minute now.” The two aircraft were closing in on each other at a thousand knots.
“Tomcat 201, airborne,” Tombstone heard a woman’s voice drawl. Tomboy, flying as RIO in the alert five. He felt a momentary irritation that he hadn’t known she was launching, and then realized his feeling was ridiculous. Why would they have told him who the alert five crew was? And, to be honest, if it had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have cared.
“Homeplate, Jigsaw One.” Another RIO’s voice cut in on the circuit, a hard edge of excitement in the tone. “This ain’t no MiG! It’s an SU-27—a Flanker, two-seater version. Wings are clean — no weapons on this boy — and Chinese insignia on the fuselage and tail. I’m moving off to his right, about five hundred yards away. Looks like he’s headed your way,” the Hornet conducting the intercept said.
“Roger, Jigsaw One. Escort him on in,” the calm voice of the carrier TAO answered.
“Chinese!” Tombstone said thoughtfully. “I’d heard there were some Chinese aircraft down there with a detachment conducting training, but what are they doing flying operational missions with Flankers out of Vietnam?”
In 1991, Tombstone recalled, China’d taken delivery of the first eight Flankers. Since then, the remainder of the first order of twenty-two had been delivered. Intell sources believed that China might buy up to twenty-eight more of the agile, fast fighters before Russia closed the door on foreign sales. Other sources reported that China was developing her own prototype advanced fighter, code-named the F-10.
It’s supposed to be years away from being fully operational, Tombstone thought. But that’s what I thought
