“Guess not,” he said a few moments later as the Chinese heatseeker exploded into the middle of the flare grouping. “Let’s make this last one count!”
Bird Dog popped the speed brakes, losing fifty knots of airspeed almost immediately. The Chinese fighter quickly overshot them. “Fox three!” Another Sidewinder darted forward off the wing.
“You’re inside minimum range!” Gator said.
“By the book, I am. Wanna bet that the firing doctrine has a safety factor built into it?”
“You can’t count on-” The explosion two miles in front of him cut him off. “-that every time,” Gator finished. “Damn it, Bird Dog, those safety factors are there for a reason. See?”
Bird Dog stared at the fireball in front of him. The missile had detonated beyond the enemy fighter. The aircraft turned to meet him, putting him within gun range.
“All we got is one Phoenix and one Sparrow. No more knife fights, Bird Dog.”
“And guns. Don’t forget the guns.”
Bird Dog slewed the Tomcat to the left, turning head-on to the other fighter, and pointed the Tomcat’s nose slightly ahead of the other aircraft’s course. He carefully led the enemy fighter’s maneuver and squeezed off his gun. Six thousand rounds per minute streamed out of the six-barrel Vulcan 20-mm gatling-gun, stitching a ragged line down the side of the other aircraft. Bird Dog came close enough to see the windscreen shatter and chunks of the hardened Plexiglas spray out away from the airframe.
Smoke streamed from the right side of the aircraft, which was rapidly losing altitude. A punctured fuel tank, probably, he thought. At any rate, he was hurt badly enough to be out of the air battle raging above him.
Bird Dog turned the Tomcat back toward the aerial fur ball behind him. “Where’s Batman?” he demanded.
“Nine o’clock, six miles. He took out one Flanker, but he can’t shake the one on their tail.”
“Think they’d like a little help?”
“Might come in handy. Course, Tomboy’ll swear later that she could handle it alone.” The RIO grinned. “It’d be nice to pull her tail out of the fire for a change.”
“Tallyho!” Bird Dog said a few minutes later. “Looks like she’s in trouble to me!”
Batman’s Tomcat was heading for the deck, just finishing off a high altitude maneuver designed to give him tactical height and position on his opponent. It hadn’t worked. The smaller, more maneuverable Flanker had cut inside his turn. The JAST Tomcat was jinking like crazy, trying to screw up the shot. The maneuvers bled off airspeed and reduced the speed advantage the JAST Tomcat had over the Flanker.
“Batman, pull up and break right!” Bird Dog ordered. Without waiting for a reply, he screamed in on the pursuing Flanker and toggled the stick back to select a Sidewinder. As soon as the Sidewinder growled its acquisition signal and Batman had cleared the field of fire, Bird Dog shouted, “Fox three!” and shot his last close-range missile.
Seconds later, the Chinese Flanker exploded into a fireball. Shards of metal pinged sharply off the skin of the Tomcat.
Bird Dog got a quick acknowledgment of no damage from Tomboy and then grabbed for altitude, heading for the next engagement.
“You only got the Phoenix, Bird Dog,” Gator reminded him. “Too close quarters for another shot.”
“Still got the guns.”
“But not much ammo. Face it, Bird Dog, it’s time for us to be out of here. Let’s get up high, look down, and see if there’s anything we can do from there.”
Bird Dog reluctantly acknowledged the wisdom of Gator’s advice. Two minutes later, Batman and Tomboy joined them, the wings of their Tomcat clean and vulnerable. At fifteen thousand feet, they circled for the next ten minutes, listening to the tactical chatter, calls for assistance, and victory screams gradually subside. Finally, the last of the adversary air had either fled or fallen into the ocean.
The rest of the Tomcat squadron joined them at altitude. Most still had Phoenixes hanging under their wings. The Tomcats turned back toward the carrier while the Hornets lined up behind the two KA-6 refueling birds, eager to replenish their tanks before attempting a landing.
Less than half an hour after they’d met the American fighters, the remaining Chinese fighters turned west to head back to their base in Vietnam. Only twenty-five of the fifty Chinese aircraft survived the brief but furious ACM after being deserted by their supposed Vietnamese allies.
The aircraft straggled into a loose formation and watched in stunned silence as the Americans broke off the attack. Had the Chinese had the Americans’ tactical advantages, they would have pursued the retreating enemy. Burning airframes out of the sky was a good method of ensuring there would be no counterattack.
Ten miles from the coast, the Chinese flight leader — the senior pilot left alive — began to understand why the Americans had not come after them.
CHAPTER 27
Mein Low initiated shutdown procedures on the damaged engine, holding his breath while he watched for any indications of fire. None. Good, perhaps he’d shut down in time.
The aircraft felt oddly sluggish and heavy, although one engine was more than enough to keep him airborne. Not that that mattered right now — they were out of the battle for good, limited to 370 knots on one engine and such sluggish maneuverability that they’d be easy prey for anyone.
He headed for the deck, intent on avoiding any interest from the fighters circling and maneuvering above him. After he put some distance between them, he’d climb back to a more fuel efficient altitude and pray that his remaining fuel could at least get him to within range of the carrier. If he couldn’t kill fighters, then at least he could turn their flight deck into a fiery inferno. They couldn’t stay airborne forever. Ruin their landing area and they’d be forced to either eventually ditch or break off immediately and try to reach land with their remaining fuel and the tankers currently aloft.
“What are you doing?” his backseater demanded. “You’re way off course — we’re only a hundred miles from rescue forces.”
“Shut up.” Backseaters. Just for a second, he smiled with grim humor. He wondered if American pilots had to put up with pushy backseat drivers as well.
“Bien, you coward!” the Chinese lead pilot raged over tactical. “You slimy dogs, turning tail and running away from the strike. We lost over half of our forces, escaping with barely enough fuel to make it back to base. You’ll pay for this, you bastards!”
Bien clicked his mike a few times, wondering if he had the strength to resist temptation. He didn’t, he decided. He’d spent too many months under the crushing imperialism of the Chinese to not savor the sweet radar picture. A ragged line of Chinese fighters limped toward the coast, eking out every last mile from their remaining fuel.
He keyed his mike for the last time on the Chinese tactical frequency and said, “Go ahead, punk. Make my day.”
At that, the Vietnamese fighters broke formation and descended on the remaining Chinese fighters like starving sharks on a school of fat tuna. Only this time, the tuna didn’t have enough energy to run.
“We got contact on them while they were still in the high-altitude portion of their profile,” the Vincennes TAO told his counterpart on Jefferson. “They’re running about Mach 3, it looks like. Damned tough to see — if we’d stayed down south with the carrier, we wouldn’t have detected them until they’d gone into the sea-skimmer mode. Ten, maybe twelve seconds warning.”