Old man — why that little punk better… Thor pushed the thoughts aside, saving sorting that out for another time. Compartmentalization, that was the key to survival in the air. You keep focused on your task, don’t let your wife, your dog, your wingman, your anything, not even your bladder, distract you from what you’ve got to do.
“Take high,” he said abruptly. “Follow my lead. We take the first one with AMRAAM, the second with Sidewinder.”
“Or guns,” Hellman added.
“That bastard better be real dead before we get within gun range,” Thor said. “Now get your ass high.”
Hellman peeled off and put the Hornet in a steep, almost vertical climb. Thor shuddered as he thought of the fuel the light aircraft was sucking down. Another thing you learned early on, flying the Hornet. You had a maneuverability and speed that the Tomcat couldn’t touch, but God were they thirsty aircraft. You saved fuel when you could, knowing that it might be longer than you liked between tanking.
“Tally ho,” Thor said over tactical, acknowledging to the air traffic controller in CDC onboard Jefferson that he had contact on his incoming bogeys. “Hornet One-zero-six engaging lead flight of MiGs.”
Second Lieutenant Tai Huang curled his hand around the stick of his MiG, thankful that the thin cotton glove between his hand and it would absorb the moisture he felt seeping out of his palms. As section leader and lead for the forward-most pair of MiGs in this flight, it was his responsibility to order his disposition of forces, along with the assistance of the air traffic controllers on board the Chinese carrier. It was a new way of working, one that none of the four were completely at ease with yet, even after countless practice sessions before they’d left their homeland. But even after two hundred hours of concentrated airborne coordination, he still felt uncomfortable without a ground control intercept, or GCI, whispering guidance in his right ear over the circuit. Still, if the GCI could learn his job, then Tai could do it as well. No matter that the GCI didn’t have to concentrate on dancing a powerful aircraft through the air, evading missiles, and generally remaining airborne while he thought out the disposition of forces. It would have been impossible with earlier MiGs, but the 33 was so advanced it virtually did his thinking for him. Automatic trim control, heads-up display to prevent him from ever having to look away from the battle in front of him, and a host of electronic and weapons avionics that could virtually fight the battle on their own.
Almost, but not completely. As long as there were men in the cockpits of the enemy, there would be men in the cockpit of a MiG.
Just as now. While the MiG avionics was already suggesting that the section of two aircraft behind him be vectored to meet the oncoming Hornets, Tai knew better. Huan Tan, the lead in the second flight, was an excellent pilot and a particular master of the intricate geometries when a lighter, more maneuverable aircraft such as a MiG took on a monster like a Tomcat. Tai didn’t like admitting it, but it was one of his responsibilities as a section commander.
He himself, on the other hand, excelled in quick reflex actions, the bumblebee dance of equally matched foes in midair, the split-second decisions required when a MiG took on an equally agile Hornet. Yes, the correct thing to do was send Huan Tan after the Tomcats while Tai and his wingman took on the Hornets.
He made his orders clear over the circuits linking the four aircraft, even as he gained altitude and changed course slightly to put himself nose on to the lead Tomcat U.S. Marine or U.S. Navy? Too far away to tell. Not that it mattered anyway. Either way, the Tomcat would die. His wingman, Chan, chattered quietly over tactical to him, keeping him posted on every minute decision he made as he gained altitude and came in to form on Tai. They were fighting in the loose deuce position, the one that had been the favorite of American fighter forces for decades.
“On my mark,” Tai said. He wasn’t referring to a verbal mark, but to the notation that the avionics system would make in the link between the two aircraft data systems when Tai fired his first missile. Tai toggled the weapons selector switch into the proper mode, waited a split second, then pickled it off.
The missile shot out true and straight, descending quickly, its tail fire a bright phoenix in the sky. Seconds later, he heard his wingman cry out in exultation as he, too, fired his first real weapon in anger.
“Climb, climb,” Tai cried, gaining more sky even as he spoke. Altitude was safety, granting the aircraft room to recover from fatal mistakes, forcing the Hornet into a level game.
A harsh warning buzz went off just behind his left ear, and a missile symbol popped into being on his heads up display. An AMRAAM, one of the advanced medium-range missiles that all Hornets carried. Well, soon the Tomcat pilot would soon be too busy worrying about Tai’s missile to be so rash.
Tai put his aircraft into a hard, spine shattering turn, then pivoted about and waited at an angle just behind the Tomcat’s side as the other aircraft climbed. Behind him, he could hear Huan Tan chanting quietly to himself as he chased after the two Hornets.
They waited for what seemed like minutes, but in reality it must have been only a couple of seconds. Tai jinked hard, kicking out countermeasures, flares and chaff, then spinning his MiG away from the burning, noisy metallic cluster that he hoped would suck the AMRAAM in. He turned back to face the Tomcat, and saw empty sky, even though his heads-up display was chattering away that —
Wait. There he was. How the hell had he managed that? He stared at the heads-up display, glancing rapidly between the symbol displayed there and the actual airframe hurtling toward him at over Mach 1 in the sky. Before he could decide what had caused the discrepancy, the Tomcat had wheeled in and over him, the aircraft inverted and then rolling back into level flight to place himself squarely into the position that Tai had hoped to occupy on him.
“No, no, no, nononono — ” His wingman’s voice shattered up the scales, high, frantic and frightened. The heads-up display told him the reason — an AMRAAM missile inbound on him as well. There was the metallic cloud of chaff and flares, but Tai could already see it would not work.
“Brake hard. Descend, descend,” Tai shouted, frantically trying to coach his wingman back into basic sound defensive flying while simultaneously trying to figure out how to avoid the Tomcat now on his own ass.
Another AMRAAM? No, there would be no need at this angle. Better choose the Sidewinder, the potent small missile designed for short-range night fighting. The Sidewinder was infrared guided, and would seek out the bright, hot fire of his tailpipe. No chaff, no flare would be bright enough to distract it from his aircraft exhaust once it saw it. There was only one possibility — they’d tried it so often in practice and — there was the shot. Yes. Wait for it one second, then —
Tai pivoted the aircraft virtually in midair, overriding the automatic trim and anti-stall avionics to throw the MiG into a hard, flat spin. It was one of the most deadly emergencies any pilot could face, particularly in an aircraft such as the MiG. They had spent countless hours in the ready room discussing how to recover from one, had drilled repeatedly in the simulator, and even the most skilled of them had managed to achieve only a fifty percent recovery rate from a flat spin at this speed.
Still, fifty percent was better than the certainty of perishing in a hard white blast of noise and fire. If he could just pull it out, at precisely the right moment, he’d have a chance.
The sky spun dizzily around him, and Tai fought to keep his consciousness from fading away. It was important that he try to maintain some sense of where he was in the air, his orientation to the sun, whether the Tomcat had fired another missile.
Just as he felt his consciousness starting to gray out, he instinctively recognized the correct configuration of sun, Tomcat and MiG.
He snapped down hard, throwing the MiG into a steep descent. An almost deadly maneuver, one that usually resulted in an out-of-control tumble through the sky, ending in an uncontrolled impact with the ground. But it was his only chance.
Would the Tomcat follow him down? No, probably not. He would go help his wingman take on the remaining MiG, certain that no pilot could recover from the deadly tumble through the air.
But Tai could. He’d thought through the problem too many times, and now he felt instinctively that the right moves were his to make. The shudder slipped through the steel frame of his aircraft and passed without attenuation into his bones. He was no longer a separate entity, he was part of the aircraft, an integral whole with the fuselage and wings now in such odd orientation to the ground and sky. He steepened the descent, and felt the spinning motion of the aircraft lessen as the MiG fought for what it was designed to do, maintain an aerodynamic profile with the wind. A little more, a little more… he patted gently on the control surfaces, again overriding the automatic trim controls. The spin started to slow.
Finally, when he felt the nose in the proper orientation with the rest of his direction of movement, he
