The fighter bore down on the incoming American aircraft, eking out another few tenths of Mach and accelerating again. The engine settled into a steady, screaming roar.
A little closer now, a little closer?that’s it. Commit yourself to this profile. In level flight, you have no chance. Not one. He kept his hands away from the radar switch, careful not to toggle it into fire-control mode. At the first sniff of the tightly focused radar beam beating down on the skin of their aircraft, the Tomcat crew would be justified in retaliating with a missile. At this distance, it was not the Falcon’s preferred fight. No, in close knife-fighting, his instructors in the United States had called it. The Falcon was a knife-fighter, the Tomcat a heavyweight boxer. In close, it was no contest.
“Remember, he’s an angles fighter,” Garber said rapidly, back-briefing his young pilot as quickly as he could. “His first priority is going to be to keep you at the same altitude. You’ll see him start to cut in on you, to turn inside your own turn, get position on you from behind. Skeeter, pay attention?it comes with experience, and you’ve gotta get that fast.”
An angles fighter?God, how he’d studied the maneuvers at the RAG.
Back then, there’d been pilots who’d flown against MiGs in Vietnam, and they were more than willing to share their experience bought at the price of their squadron mates’ lives with the incoming generation of fighter pilots.
Altitude?you have to use altitude to your advantage. The Tomcat, with its higher thrust-to-weight ratio and higher wing loading, could easily outstrip and turn inside the Falcon on the vertical plane. On the horizontal, it was a turkey trying to evade a chicken hawk. A beached whale trying to writhe away from pecking seagulls. Altitude is safety?altitude and maneuverability.
“I’m taking us up to twenty-five thousand,” Skeeter said firmly. “Energy fight?standard tactic while he’s down this low.”
“Concur.” The XO’s voice was slightly muffled. “I’m getting a fix?there. Solid data link with the Hawkeye. Good data, good solution. If we need to shoot-“
Skeeter’s burst of acceleration turned the XO’s last words into a grunt. The Tomcat accelerated rapidly, afterburners spitting unholy fire out the tailpipes, speed over ground decreasing to almost zero. The Tomcat was in a pure vertical climb, gaining altitude and, with it, kinetic energy. When the time came for forcing the Falcon into an energy fight instead of an angles one, Skeeter would be ready.
“Fuel,” the XO warned. “It kills more pilots than missiles. Skeeter, easy on the afterburners. Save it for when you need it.”
Cursing his impulsiveness, Skeeter eased back out of the afterburners and decreased his angle of attack. There was still enough separation between the two aircraft that afterburners had not been necessary. But his increasing sense of urgency not to be vulnerable to this second attack had overridden his professional good sense.
“I’ve got him?at five o’clock,” the XO said.
Skeeter leaned over and gazed down outside the right side of the cockpit. He could see the flash of light on metal that had caught the XO’s attention. “I’ve got him too.”
“Something odd about this guy,” the XO said tersely. “He’s climbing to meet us. Skeeter, watch your ass?he’s not much off your six.”
“Got it. I’m going to nose over here in just a second.”
Skeeter rolled over to the side opposite of the Falcon, preventing him from closing to within guns range on his tail. For just a moment, he thought he’d out-flown him. Over-confidence replaced his fear.
He pulled down, pressing in for a favorable angle of attack. To his surprise, the Falcon pulled up under him, again in excellent guns position.
“Skeeter,” the XO snapped, “you’re getting into a rolling scissors. You can’t play this game with him.”
“I know, I know?but he’s climbing with me. Every time I try to outrun him, I put him in guns position on me.”
“At least he hasn’t shot yet?Skeeter, we need to break out of this?now.”
The Tomcat was descending now, bleeding off energy advantage as it lost altitude. Skeeter searched his memory, tried to remember if any of his instructors talked about an angles fighter that didn’t mind fighting in the vertical. They weren’t supposed to?most of the MiGs in encounters that his instructors had discussed had either kept the fight strictly to the horizontal or turned to run if they didn’t have the advantage.
At eight thousand feet, with the Falcon still high above him, Skeeter put the Tomcat nose up and grabbed for altitude. The Falcon zoomed down not five hundred feet away, canopy to canopy. Skeeter resisted the impulse to job the afterburners again, lessen his angle of climb. “Watch him for me,” he said to the XO. “Keep an eye on him-“
“Got it. Skeeter, he’s at the bottom of his arc right now. He’ll be back up on our tail again.”
The XO’s voice was cold, professional, but Skeeter could hear the undertone of worry in it.
What was it, what was it, something he’d read somewhere, the story of a MiG and a?a Phantom?that was it. The details came flooding back. It had been Duke Cunningham, now a U.S. Representative from California.
Flying his F-4 Phantom against a MiG-17, the Duke, as he was known, had run into a MiG fighter who didn’t mind the vertical. They’d done the same maneuver, up and down, rolling scissors, with the MiG consistently turning inside the vertical and stitching the Duke’s ass with his nose gun. And the solution was?“Where is he now?” he asked the XO sharply. “Give me a range.”
“Just bottoming out at three thousand feet. We’ve got ten thousand feet of separation, Skeeter. Let’s turn and wait for him.”
“No. I think I know what?is he climbing now?”
“On afterburners,” the XO confirmed. “Skeeter, he’s just going to move back into perfect position on your ass. Let’s get out of here?while we can.”
“Hold on?I thought you wanted to see what this Tomcat could do.”
The note of cold glee in his voice surprised even him.
Five thousand feet?four thousand feet?Skeeter asked the XO to sing out the altitudes as the Falcon gained on them. Skeeter eased slowly back on the throttle, decreasing his speed of ascent while avoiding even the edge of the stall envelope. It was a tightrope calculation, walking the thin line between appearing to maintain a continual ascent and stalling.
“Five hundred feet?Skeeter, let’s-“
Skeeter pulled hard toward the Falcon and yanked the throttle back to idle. At the same time, he disengaged the automatic control that configured the Tomcat’s wings for the most efficient airspeed, driving the wings forward into their low-speed configuration. As he felt the aircraft start to turn, he kicked in the afterburners to avoid stalling.
Like a gray streak, the Falcon shot by him. Skeeter thought he saw the pilot’s face, hoped there was as much fear and confusion in it as Skeeter had experienced on La Salle.
“Take that, you bastard,” the pilot muttered. No, it wasn’t a kill, but if he had been free to shoot it would have been. He held position on the Falcon, in perfect guns position. If he hadn’t been so close, a Sidewinder up the tailpipe would also have been an ideal shot.
“Skeeter?he’s turning out of it.”
The lighter, more maneuverable aircraft turned sharply to the right, intentionally stalling as the pilot repeated Skeeter’s maneuver. It swung over to point down at him, nose first.
“Lockup,” the XO screamed. “There’s no time for-“
Skeeter was just closing his thumb over the weapons-selector switch to select guns when his world exploded.
He woke up when he tried to breathe. The metallic tang of salt water filled his mouth, his nose, and jolted his survival instincts into action.
Skeeter coughed violently, spewing out seawater before his eyes were even open. He flailed his arms, the motion driving him the last few feet up to the surface.
The paroxysm of coughing occupied his entire world for a few seconds.
