stomped hard on the rudder, brutally countering the remaining spin with his control surfaces. For a moment he felt the MiG shudder, scream protests as G-forces wrenched structural members past any tolerance they were designed to accommodate. Then, as he knew it would, the MiG straightened out.
Altitude. He felt a cold punch in his stomach as he realized how far he’d tumbled trying to regain control of his aircraft. Seven thousand feet, no more. Barely enough time to pull it out.
He jerked back hard, demanding, asking with every atom of his being that the MiG honor this one last request.
The water rushed up at him at a dizzying rate of speed.
“Got him,” Bird Dog howled over tactical. “You see that, Kelly? Now that’s the way it’s done.” He heard Gator sigh in the backseat, and ignored him.
“I saw. Just one question, Bird Dog,” Kelly’s voice was cool. “What are you going to do about his playmate that’s trying to climb up your ass?”
Chan watched Tai spiral down toward the ocean, and swore quietly. They were short enough on airframes as it was, and there were no replacements within three thousand miles. All the more necessary that he eliminate the Tomcat that had gotten his wingman.
He saw the Tomcat now, just ahead. It was doing wingovers, dancing around its wingman like a bumblebee. How foolish, to lose one’s grasp of the tactical scenario over just one kill. It would be the last mistake that this particular American pilot would make.
Chan bore in on the American, fixated on his target. A warning beep on his ESM gear was his first hint that all was not well. He broke off, pivoted off of his former course, and searched for the threat.
Without warning, a Hornet descended on him like a hawk swooping down on its prey. It had been hiding high overhead in a cloud bank, watching the action below, waiting for just such a moment. Was it possible that the Tomcats had intentionally feigned inattention in order to entice him into just this sort of position? No, surely not — the Americans were not that subtle, and they were known to have an almost fanatical fear of taking casualties. While Chan would have risked Tai in just such a manner, he knew that the Americans would not.
Chan slipped off some altitude, turning hard to his right at the same moment. He felt a deep sense of satisfaction at his final position. He was between the sun and the Hornet, thus complicating the task of using a heat seeker against him. Additionally, he had slipped behind the foolish Tomcat, and was in decent if not superb firing position. He also had the Tomcats between his MiG and the Hornet, and there was no way that the Hornet would be foolish enough to shoot through his shipmates just to kill one MiG.
The missile, when it came, was all the more surprise. He heard the warning tone and had just one second to look around before he saw it, arrowing off the wing of another Hornet also coming down from the clouds. He knew it was a killing shot the moment he saw it, and just before it nestled in to the hot target source of his engine exhaust, Chan jerked down on the ejection seat handle.
Tai was tumbling toward the ocean. Finally, at the last moment, he felt the wings bite into the air, and control returned to him as the heavy vibration shuddered out. The air was flowing smoothly over his laminar surfaces again, keeping the MiG airborne.
How far had he been? He dared not glance at the altitude indicator during the mad plummet from air to sea, knowing that if he watched the numbers unroll as he fought for control of the aircraft that he would never, ever believe he could accomplish it. Yet accomplish it he had. Now, as the aircraft eased into level flight, he glanced at the altitude indicator. Four hundred feet above the hungry surface of the ocean. Merely microseconds at the speed at which he’d been traveling. Adrenaline pounded through every inch of his body as he realized just how close he had come to dying.
No pilot that he knew of could have recovered from the deadly flat spin and tumble. He had no equal, not in this chunk of airspace. And now he would prove to the Tomcat just how right that was.
Thor spared a few moments to watch that crazy Chinese bastard lose control of his aircraft before he returned his attention back to the other MiG. They’d finish this one off, no big deal now. Two Hornets versus one MiG wasn’t even a fair fight.
But nobody ever said aerial combat was supposed to be a fair fight. That wasn’t the point — the point was to get there, take care of business, and get home in one piece, hopefully with everybody in the squadron making it back, too.
As he turned his attention back to Hellman and the other MiG, he let out a short, heartfelt, “Shit.” While Hellman hadn’t been taken in by the MiG’s initial maneuver to swoop in from above and take position astern, he had made the fatal mistake of trying to turn inside the MiG’s turning radius. It hadn’t worked — the two were too evenly matched to do that while fighting on the vertical. The best thing to do was disengage from a yo-yo, pull out and away, and circle back in to get in position.
But how had the MiG bastard beat him back into a tail chase? It didn’t matter — it would be thoroughly covered in the squadron debrief, and Hellman would get a chance to make his explanations in before an entire crowd of experienced aviators. Thor was tired of being the one carping on him about his dangerous tactics. Maybe hearing it from the squadron’s skipper would beat some sense into the young jarhead’s brain. But for now, it was time to bail his wingman out before he took it up the ass.
Hellman and his MiG were caught in a flat loop, chasing each other around in ever tightening spirals. Hellman kept trying to cut inside the radius of the circle to take up position on the MiG, spurting afterburner fire as he recklessly waded through his onboard fuel allowance. Thor swore quietly. Even if he did manage to pull the asshole out of this one, he had less than a fifty-fifty chance of making it back to the tanker in time at the rate he was spending fuel.
They were still five thousand feet above him, so Thor came in on a long, flat turn, gradually ascending, timing his intersection with their loop so that he would fall neatly into position behind the MiG. He almost made it without the MiG noticing, but at the last second, Hellman pulled up hard and tried to barrel roll over and around into position. That’s when Hellman evidently noticed his returning wingman for the first time.
“Shit!” Thor pulled the Hornet into a hard right turn, standing the aircraft on its wing and then rolling inverted. He lost sight of Hellman behind the breadth of his canopy, and felt cold, clear dread run through his veins. Bitch of a thing, to put away a MiG and then get nailed by your own wingman. “Where the hell is that little bastard?”
A second later, Hellman screamed past him, still gouting afterburner, his canopy just feet below Thor’s own. Thor screamed obscenities at him as he went by, not daring to take his hands off the controls long enough to render a salute with his middle finger. And where the hell was the MiG? There — coming in from on high, Thor desperately out of position, Hellman now having completely lost the tactical picture, while Thor’s own, more experienced mind immediately worked out the geometries. He yanked hard, pulling the Hornet into a screaming loop, narrowly missing a mid-air collision with the MiG as he did. Just as he went by, Thor toggled the weapons selector to gun and mailed off a short blast. He saw the tip of the MiG’s wing dissolve in a spray of shrapnel. One hit his canopy with a hard, ringing blow, and Thor started swearing again, alternately swearing and praying that it hadn’t hit a hydraulics line. Or a control surface line.
He rolled upright as he reached the top of his barrel roll and saw that the MiG had Hellman on the run. Too close for an AMRAAM, and too dangerous an angle on his own wingman to take a chance with a Sidewinder. No, this would have to be up close and personal.
“Hellman — break right, break right. Now!” Thor shouted. Immediately, Hellman’s aircraft went into a hard dive toward the surface of the ocean. For the first time since they’d been airborne, Thor shoved his Hornet into afterburner and felt the hard kick of acceleration mold his spine and back into the familiar curves of the Hornet’s ejection seat. The force snapped his chin up, and he felt the skin pull back from the corners of his eyes and his
