flame. An ejection seat rocketed out of the mess, which pleased him even more. Personally, he loved to shoot down hardware, not software. “Splash one Flanker!” he cried.
Then he gasped as Reedy’s Hornet dissolved into fire and smoke.
He immediately compartmentalized his fury and did what he’d been trained to do: broke into a hard evasive turn and scanned his radar screen. Instantly, he knew what had happened. The descending Flankers had pulled a fast one. One of them split off from its fellows and returned to the high-altitude battle. The bastard had killed Reedy.
And at the same time, reversed the odds.
Bird Dog didn’t need to hear the radio signals from the Vipers to know that the dogfight had started in earnest. He could see it all over his radar screen as the various blobs and blips began to move in fast, devious directions. And one Marine had been splashed already.
He forced himself to relax. One advantage of coming in from a distance was that he’d already had the time to tag each bogey’s radar image with a targeting marker.
But that didn’t make his fellow aviators any less outnumbered. For a moment he felt unreasoning anger at the admiral and all the other boneheads who’d failed to be prepared for something like this… then he remembered that he was one of those boneheads.
He assessed the situation playing out over his radar screen. One Marine F/A-18s was still up high, tangling with a pair of bogeys. Down low, Lobo and Hot Rock were engaged with two Flankers — and in between, descending fast, were three more Flankers exchanging the high-altitude furball for the lower one. They were going to bounce Lobo and Hot Rock.
Not if Bird Dog Robinson could help it. “Phoenix,” he snapped, setting his weapons control switch accordingly. The Phoenix had the longest range of any missile in the American inventory. The downside was that as a radar- guided weapon, it required a nice steady course from the targeting plane to maintain radar lock. Also, it was rather easy to shake and had therefore earned a mediocre rep for successful kills; still, there was nothing like seeing a one-ton missile coming at you from over the horizon to make you rethink your attack strategy.
But before Bird Dog could hit the trigger, Catwoman said, “Uh, Birdy-boy, you might want to remember how close we are to one of the most populous city in the world.”
Bird Dog started to make a sharp retort, then realized what she was saying: The Phoenix had a range of over one hundred miles, and if it missed its target, it would simply fly until it ran out of fuel… or struck something else. Like a skyscraper. At this angle, that was likely.
“Oh, hell,” Bird Dog said. He considered the range. “Okay, Sparrows.” Although the current distance was at the outer limit for the Sparrow, at least the missile wouldn’t free-fly into Hong Kong if it got dodged.
He had two Sparrows on his wings. He assigned one of them a target blip, then triggered it off and felt the pleasant upward bump as their weight left the Tomcat. He watched the Sparrow depart on a strand of white smoke, and felt, as always, a strange sense of empathetic fear for the pilots on the other end. Missiles moved so quickly, they were like a bad dream. Especially if they were sniffing for you.
“Come on, baby,” he said. “Come on…”
Tai heard the warning alarm in his helmet, and saw the return image of the incoming missile on his Heads-Up Display. Cursed. Took his focus off the battle raging below, and turned it to the radar. Waited. Waited…
He released a bundle of chaff and juked hard to one side without breaking out of his dive. The chaff expanded in the air behind him, creating a metallic cloud designed to fool radar signals. An instant later, the shock wave of an explosion rocked his plane. The missile had taken the bait.
“Status?” he cried over tactical. All three of Sukhois reported back. Tai smiled.
So far, the score was one kill for the PLA fighters, and zero for the Americans. That was about to change — but not in the Americans’ favor. As Tai’s plane shot through the spot where sunset turned to twilight, he was at last able to visually select a target from the possibilities below.
As Lobo bottomed out of her dive, she pulled the stick back and then sideways again, once more reversing both the Tomcat’s direction and its orientation, so now she was following the top curve of an outside loop back toward the bogey. If what she’d pictured in her head was accurate, the Flanker should now be above and in front of her, still climbing, clawing for precious altitude.
And so it was. Better still, the reach between them was just about broad enough to —
“Clear,” Handyman said.
“Fox three!” Lobo triggered a Sidewinder.
Given enough room, a Sidewinder would attain supersonic velocity in a matter of seconds. In this case, it didn’t have the chance. Nor did the Flanker. Lobo saw a flare pop out of the enemy fighter and start to ignite as a lure to the Sidewinder’s infrared seeker head, but the move was much too late.
“Splash one!” Handyman cried as the Flanker turned into a fireball with wings. A moment later the wings were alone, fluttering down toward the water like falling leaves, flipping this way and that, preceded by a shower of miscellaneous smoking debris.
“Oooh,” Handyman said, “that has
“Where the hell is my wingman?” Lobo said.
“Come on, Rock, shake him,” Two Tone said from the backseat.
Hot Rock didn’t bother telling him to shut up. If he did that, it would look like he had time to chat.
The Flanker pilot was good, he’d give him that. No sooner had Hot Rock taken out the helo than the Chinese plane was dropping in on his tail, cannon blazing. Ever since, the Flanker had been right there, trying to get a clean shot. An occasional burst ripped past, tracers stitching the air first on one side, then the other. Not one hit, though.
The Chinese pilot was good, but Hot Rock was better. He felt it instantly in his heart, and in the seat of his pants. He knew he could take this guy. He could get on his tail and take him whenever he wanted.
It would be the first real kill for Hot Rock Stone. You couldn’t count the helo, that sitting duck.
And yet… what if he missed, after all? What if he reversed positions on the Flanker, took the offensive and then, for whatever reason, blew it? Everyone would know. Everyone would know that Hot Rock wasn’t good enough.
This way, only he knew.
“We got all these weapons here,” Two Tone growled, “and no one to shoot them at.”
Again Hot Rock said nothing. He was giving the Flanker pilot all he could handle just keeping within killing range. Not quite throwing the Chinese plane, but not allowing the Flanker a clear shot, either. Hot Rock knew he could do this all day long, or at least until he ran out of fuel. Or the Flanker did. Or the fighting ended and they could all go home.
“Heads up, boy,” Two Tone said. “Three bogeys straight up; one’s picked us out to bounce.”
Hot Rock glanced up, and saw three flashes of light that winked out abruptly at the place where sunlight gave way to shadow.
“Sparrows,” Two Tone said. “They’ll go where we want no matter what direction they start out in.”
“Can’t keep radar lock like this,” Hot Rock grunted, half-rolling to the right, then abruptly left again.
“Never mind; bogey’s too close now, anyway,” Two Tone snapped. “Hotshot, I suggest you get us off the killing floor here.”
“Lobo, my love,” Handyman said, “we got two Flankers who love the looks of your ass — not that I blame them.”
