squadron and rejected each one as lacking sufficient balls even to attempt to come after him. Could it have been someone from the second flight? No, they were still too far to the east and dealing with the mass of Tomcats intercepting them.
No matter. He would make short work of him, and then continued his intercept to the AGI.
“This is no novice,” Tombstone said, grunting against the G forces. The light, quickly accelerating MiG was constantly challenging his ability to remain conscious during maneuvers that would have been prosaic in a Tomcat. “Whoever he is, he’s good — real good.”
“Tombstone — you know I have some time in Hornets,” Greene said. “You’re good, real good in this MiG. You already proved that. I’m just reminding you, pilot to pilot. You’re fighting an equal now, not a Tomcat. Remember, as maneuverable as he is, you are too.”
“I know that,” Tombstone said. “But, you’re right — this is going to take both of us. Eyes and ears, Jeremy. If you got any thoughts, I want to hear them.”
“I’m trying get a lock on him, but damn!” Greene said. “The avionics do
“Does it work the same way for us?” Tombstone asked.
“It should. The bottom line is, I wouldn’t guarantee that either one of you can fire smart weapons on the other.”
“Then he knows that, too.”
“I imagine so. There’s a reason he has the gain turned up on his IFF.”
“Okay. We do this the hard way.” Tombstone put the MiG into a hard turn. The other pilot was already climbing, exposing his tailpipes to Tombstone, but, before he could toggle off a heat seeker, the MiG abruptly turned, and came back down toward him head-to-head, and closing fast.
“Shit!” Tombstone felt the MiG shudder and swore quietly. “Any damage?” He tried all the controls, assessing her response. “I don’t think so.”
“Looks all right back here — wait, no. I lost radar. We must have taken a round in the radome. And I wouldn’t vouch for the communications, either.”
“Two can play this game,” Tombstone said. “Where is he? You’re going to have to keep him in visual for me.
“Low, three o’clock.”
Tombstone rolled his MiG inverted and located his target. The other aircraft was rising to meet him. Tombstone flipped nose on to him and pivoted, so nimble that the turn was almost midair, and then launched a heat seeker. The other MiG immediately filled the air with chaff and flares, but the missile had achieved its main purpose, that of shaking up the other pilot and breaking his concentration. Every time he had to stop to evade a missile, there was a chance he would make a mistake.
“I don’t see any damage,” Greene said, his voice strained as he twisted in his seat to keep the MiG in view. “He’s climbing again, Tombstone — seven o’clock and going high. And I think east—
“I hope you’re right about the IFF,” Tombstone said quietly. “Because I’m about to try something.”
Tombstone ignored the missile completely. The other pilot was counting on it to shake him up to make them break off from the offensive, into the defensive, for just a moment, just as Tombstone had done a moment ago when their positions were reversed. But if Greene was right, the missile couldn’t target them, and he could play on the false assumption. Play on it and win. Tombstone put the MiG into a short arc, intending to make it look like the beginning of an expected evasion maneuver. But, instead of completing the turn, he turned back toward the other contact while simultaneously ejecting his own mass of chaff and flares. With any luck, there might be one, maybe two seconds when the other pilot didn’t know what was going on.
He was at a perfect angle for a gun shot, the other aircraft beam on to him. He let rip an extended blast from the nose cannon and had the satisfaction of seeing a short line stitched down the metal fuselage. But had he hit anything vital? Judging from how well his own MiG had absorbed several rounds, he suspected that key components had additional shielding he hadn’t been told about.
“Any damage?” Tombstone shouted, turning away from the contact and climbing for altitude. “Hydraulics, anything?
“I don’t see anything, but I can’t see it all,” Greene shouted, frustrated beyond measure. “I know you got him, but I can’t see what it did.”
Korsov swore quietly as he saw the other aircraft ignore the smart missile and continue toward him. His aircraft shuddered as the rounds from the nose cannon connected and warning lights popped on. The main hydraulics line had been punctured, and he was losing hydraulic fluid. He toggled the primary valves shut electronically and switched to the secondary loop. The MiG had triple redundancies built in to all control systems, so, while leaking hydraulic fluid certainly posed a fire hazard, it wouldn’t cause him to lose control.
He circled back around to meet the other contact, still trying to figure out what happened. There was something inconsistent in the other pilot’s reactions. After the first missile, he behaved as though he thought it would actually target him. But any MiG pilot would have known that such could not be the case, that the only thing he had to worry about was the heat seeker and the guns. Could he have forgotten? Again, Korsov mentally surveyed the faces of the pilots in the first flight. No. Not a one of them would have forgotten that single most vital concept.
Then who? It was almost as if—
A thought struck him like a bolt of lightning, and all at once everything made sense. The vague reports of a MiG firing on the antiair sites, the questions shouted out that one aircraft was at too low an altitude — it was a MiG, but it was not a Russian MiG!
Then who? A pilot from a former client state, drafted into the service of the Americans? Or an American himself?
Yes. An American. That explained the unexpected appearance of the MiG. It had launched from the aircraft carrier, closed the air battle, and proceeded on to Bermuda. Once finished there, it had noticed his aircraft departing, and chosen to give chase.
Outrage boiled over him. How dare they! Insult to injury — well, the pilot would pay for this. It was probably a Hornet pilot, the most comparable aircraft the Americans possessed. But, regardless of how experienced he was, he would never know the MiG as well as Korsov did. Training and experience would make the killing difference.
It was time for a sucker punch.
“I lost him,” Greene announced. “He’s in the sun somewhere, and I can’t make him out in the glare.”
“Let’s just take a precautionary shot, then,” Tombstone said. He toggled off another heat seeker toward the sun and followed up with a short burst of the gun. “Anything?”
“No. The radar’s completely down.”
A sudden thought occurred to Tombstone. “Do you remember how many rounds they carry in the nose gun?”
“Not exactly. I remember it was less than the Tomcat, that’s all.”
“Shit.” Tombstone’s instinct told him that he had expended approximately half of the rounds in his gun, but his instincts were based on the larger carrying capacity of the Tomcat. With a MiG, who knew how low he was? “Is there any way to check in the avionics?”
“No. It’s down — everything down.”
Suddenly, the aircraft came screaming in on them, coming out of the sun, apparently completely undamaged. Tombstone toggled off the short burst, falling away in a barrel roll as he did so in an attempt to evade the return fire. He took a visual on the sun to maintain situational awareness, then tried to duplicate the maneuver the other had attempted.
“He’s coming at us, Tombstone — his radar’s still working.”
