was hoping it wasn't due to indigestion, but she just said, 'We're ready.'
I nodded. 'Bothers me not having a guard on our birds, though.'
Sheila finished licking the last bit of fish eggs off a cracker, then said, 'So we preflight ? and we check the telltales.' She shot a glance at one of the Russians standing nearby, as though wondering whether he understood the slang.
After we'd done our shutdown, Sheila and I had set up a number of carefully prearranged little traps for anyone who wanted to mess with our bird. Nothing fancy, just a piece of tape here, a little scuff and some oil there ? enough so we'd know if somebody was tinkering with anything on the aircraft. Besides, maintenance had fitted some special locks on both the compartments and the engine intake covers. If somebody tried to bypass the key system, there would be a larger splotch of red ink on the inside panel. Not enough to let our guests know that they'd been busted, but enough to alert us to double-check for problems.
An hour and a half later we were both back out on the flight line, checking out our bird. I reminded Sheila to wear her gloves, since the metal had already cooled so much that we'd lose skin if we came in contact with the bare metal. Even in early afternoon, the sun was low in the sky, reminding me of how far north we were. I was almost surprised we had any daylight at all.
Not that it mattered much, not with the Tomcat. I wasn't so sure about the MiG.
We double-checked the Tomcat for any problems. All of our telltales were just where we left them, and I didn't even see anything that gave me a hinky feeling. Finally, satisfied that nobody had been tinkering with her, we climbed back up in. The enlisted technicians double-checked us as efficiently as Americans would have, making me wonder who the hell they'd been practicing on. As far as I know, the MiGs and other fighters in the Russian inventory don't have exactly the same setup for the four-point ejection harness and the ejection-seat safeties.
I kept my distance from the MiG. I like formation flying, especially when it's with somebody who's pretty damned good.
Like Admiral Magruder. There was nothing about the admiral in the air that gave me any reason to worry about him. Oh, his reflexes might be a little bit slower ? even he'd admit that. But he still had what it took.
Surprising, at his age. I had to figure he was nearly forty-five.
I watched the MiG's roll-out carefully, staying behind and to the right of him, and pulled my own Tomcat off the tarmac exactly where he had.
I caught up with him soon enough, slid back into a locked wing position to his right for just long enough to let him know I was hot, then went for altitude.
We'd rebriefed the ground rules in preflight, both in English and in Russian, with both of our admirals listening in gravely. Both of them made the point of saying that this was simply a test of airmanship, not combat; that there was no reason to risk life or equipment, that safety remained a paramount consideration. I wondered how they managed to make the same bullshit sound so much alike in both Russian and English.
I looked over at Kyrrul and saw he wasn't buying it any more than I was. He bore watching, and not just because he was supposed to be some hotshot fighter-jet jock. No, he was a sneaky little bastard. He'd tripped me.
We meandered up to thirteen thousand feet, and I switched buttons to the tactical frequency we'd agreed on. The air traffic controller was switching rapidly between Russian and English, directing us into our starting positions thirty miles apart. On the controller's signal, I put my radar in standby mode, hoping Kyrrul was doing the same thing. That was the deal ? neither of us knew where the other was, and we were both starting from that point with no initial intelligence. The floor was seven thousand feet, the ceiling twenty-nine. I wondered about that number for a moment, whether it said anything about the MiG or not. No matter ? I'd remember to tell the intelligence weenies when we got back to the ship.
I knew Admiral Magruder was up in the tower, keeping an eye on the tactical picture. He didn't speak much Russian, just a few phrases, but a radar scope looks the same in any language. He'd assured me he'd keep them honest, and that I would fulfill the same role when he was in the air.
Finally, the signal came. I heard the admiral's voice come out of the circuit ? 'Good luck, Skeeter, Sheila' ? and then we were off. I flipped the AWG-9 radar back into search mode. It took a microsecond to warm up, then it kicked in and started acquiring crap in the sky. A nasty picture for a few moments then, suddenly, clarity. That was one of the advantages of holding this little experiment in Russian airspace. They had no compunctions at all about clearing out the whole area of commercial and private traffic just for their own war games. A pretty big deal from what I could see of the industrial area down below us.
We picked up contact on the MiG almost immediately. You hear all sorts of things about advanced radar systems, but in my mind, there is nothing that can beat the AWG-9 radar as a fighter weapons control system.
Even in the older models, it could track up to twenty-four targets and guide missiles to six of them simultaneously. Everything feeds into it, I mean everything ? although it was developed particularly for the Phoenix air-to-air missile, it also takes care of your Sparrow, Sidewinder, AMRAAM missiles, as well as the gun ? though later upgrades have replaced almost all the old components with miniaturized digital packages. With the AWG-9, you get good detection capability out to a hundred and fifteen nautical miles, across a front of more than a hundred and fifty nautical miles. The latest versions track targets as low as fifty feet off the ground and up to eighty thousand feet, a vast improvement over the earlier look-down limitations of the original system.
I caught the MiG in general search mode and immediately switched over to single-target track mode. My RIO did, actually, although the way Sheila and I worked together it was like we were one mind.
'He's acquired us,' Sheila warned. Like I needed her to tell me that ? I could hear the insistent beep beep beep of her ESM gear going off.
The MiG knew we had him, too. He turned away from us, probably in preparation for enticing me into an angles fight at this altitude. I wasn't buying it. I put the Tomcat into a steep climb, grabbing for altitude. We were closing each other at well over Mach Two, and I was hoping to force him into an altitude game early on. Not that I thought the very first maneuver would win ? they would have put their best guy up, and I was certain he wouldn't fall for a rolling yo-yo immediately. However, I couldn't let him get me on the defensive, make me start reacting to his maneuvers at altitude.
The basic game plan wasn't complicated. Standard tactics against a MiG, something the admiral wanted to see in operation for himself. We knew it generally worked ? hell, we kicked their asses every time we'd come up against them ? but in this encounter we had full telemetry of both the Tomcat and MiG, something our science guys would drool over later back at VX-1.
Not that gathering scientific data was my primary purpose in life.
Mostly, I just wanted to kick his ass.
I rolled up through twenty-five thousand feet, with Sheila feeding me information continuously on what the MiG driver was doing. He milled about uncertainly at altitude, then reluctantly gave chase. He couldn't catch me, I knew, so I was sure he was counting on calculating the exact moment of my climb, when I'd tip my nose over and start back down. He'd cut out of the pattern at that point and wait to catch me on the downswing, slipping in behind me for a tail shot. Or what would have been a tail shot, if we had actual missiles. Both of us sported blue- painted dummy loads rather than the real thing.
It's slightly inaccurate to call them dummy loads, because they're much more than just dead weight on your wings. Each one of these missiles, although it has no warhead and no propulsion system, is a simulator in its own right. It stores tracking data from the AWG-9, records your firing orders and targeting information, all of which can be downloaded later for study. Additionally, each one of these has the MILES gear mounted on it, the laser simulators for the actual missile.
I pulled out of my climb at twenty-nine thousand feet, letting the Tomcat nose over gently to give me a good look at the MiG. He was still climbing, but rolled out of it as soon as he saw me stop my ascent. He peeled off to the north, in level flight away from me before the Tomcat had even nosed over.
I felt the G forces push me back in my seat as we started our descent.
'Not too far, Skeeter,' Sheila warned.
Right ? like I need a RIO to tell me how to fight an air battle. I clicked my mike once in acknowledgment. As we descended past twenty-four thousand feet, the MiG was already starting his turn back in toward us. I knew what his plan was use his maneuverability against my speed, catch me when my inertia was too great to let me turn away from him. He was closing quickly now, descending slightly to maintain an excellent firing position on my tailpipes. Sheila's ESM gear increased its frantic beeping, indicating that he'd shifted to targeting mode.
