“Turning east.” The major was taking his ELINT plane deeper into Polish territory, probably diving and firewalling his throttles, too. But the Curl was too big and slow for agile maneuvering. It would be some time before they were out of danger.
Tad still had nothing. Shit. He needed help from the An-26. “Black, Yellow Seven. Interrogative elevation.”
“Target is slightly down, Seven, steady azimuth, two seven five.”
Rolling his aircraft inverted, Tad yanked back hard on the stick. Throttling back even more, he popped his speed brakes as well. The energy-wasting maneuvers went against his grain, but he didn’t need speed, he just wanted to dump some altitude.
Tad watch his altimeter unwind, at the same time keeping an eye on the horizon and the warning receiver and its mysterious signal. He knew exactly where to look. Almost due west. Eight thousand meters, seven, six…
A small gray dot rose from the landscape, silhouetted as it crossed the horizon line. The bogey was now slightly higher than his F-15, and easier to spot against the lighter sky. In a heartbeat it swelled from a dot to a shape, and then into a jet fighter, suddenly turning from a head-on to a side view as it banked sharply to the south, paralleling his course.
“Tallyho your signal, Black. Source is a fighter.” Tad fought a near-overwhelming urge to break hard left into the bogey. Instincts ingrained by long, hard air combat training ran deep.
“Roger, Seven, confirm lock.”
Tad clicked his microphone switch twice, all the time watching the bogey. He couldn’t type it. The other plane was still at least five or six kilometers away.
What he could see was a raked vertical fin and what appeared to be a delta wing, without any horizontal tail surfaces. It looked like a French Mirage of some sort, but he just could not make a precise identification.
Holding the stick with his right hand, he reached down with his left and opened a compartment containing a pair of light 7 × 35 binoculars. They were useless in a dogfight, but against aircraft flying straight and level, they gave him a set of long-range eyes.
Tad checked his course and position one more time before raising the binoculars to scan the narrow sector holding the stranger. He caught a glimpse of its nose, overcompensated back, and then steadied his view on the strange plane.
Obligingly the other pilot kept his craft straight and level, pacing Tad’s Eagle. The bogey’s nose was sharply pointed, and he could see a set of small fins, called canards, high on the fuselage, just behind and under the canopy. Instead of side-mounted intakes like a French Mirage, its intakes were smaller, and half under the fuselage.
There was only one fighter with that configuration: the Rafale. Tad whistled softly to himself. None of the intelligence briefings had warned him about this.
Every fighter pilot knew about the Rafale, although few had seen one. Now here he was flying side by side with one painted in shades of gray and carrying what looked like live missiles under its wings. That was a tricolor roundel on its fuselage, not the Maltese cross, so it was a French aircraft. Tad was a little disappointed. He would rather face a German opponent.
The Rafale shadowing him was brand-new, which made it sexy, and in foreign hands, which made it dangerous. The plane also had a reduced radar cross section, which explained how it had popped up so unexpectedly and unnervingly. Reports said it could engage several targets simultaneously with launch-and-leave air-to-air missiles. The French-made warplane was also supposed to be very maneuverable, more than a match for either the Eagle or the Fulcrum. Again, Tad fought the urge to yank his stick over, to maneuver and pit his machine against this potential enemy.
He beat back the urge and then thought again. By roaring right up to the frontier and radar-pinging the hell out of the An-26, this bastard had already shown that he wanted to screw around. Why not indulge him?
Tad pressed his mike switch. “Yellow Eight, this is Seven. Cover Black flight. I am maneuvering.”
“Let’s see what this bastard is made of,” Tad muttered to himself. He stowed the binoculars, then settled himself in his seat, tightening his harness.
As quickly as he could, he chopped the throttles to idle and popped his speed brake. He waited a beat for his plane to slow. As soon as he saw the Rafale start to slide ahead, he yo-yoed the F-15’s nose up and down sharply, killing even more speed. At the same time, he slewed one of the Sidewinder seekers to the right as far as it would go.
Turning to the west as far as he could dare, he kept one eye on the nav display while waiting for a tone from the Sidewinder’s infrared seeker. Letting the Rafale pull ahead allowed his missile to see its tailpipe, setting up a missile launch. Tad grinned. He wouldn’t fire, of course, but the other pilot would know that he had been set up.
He watched the Rafale as it came into view through his HUD. The Frenchman was reacting now, pulling his nose up. Too late. The enemy fighter was at his Eagle’s one o’clock, well within its missile arc. So where was the tone? Nothing, just a hissing noise in his headphones.
Wojcik swung the F-15’s nose a bit more to the right, still waiting for the familiar sound. A bad missile? Quickly he selected another Sidewinder. Still nothing. Son-of-a-bitch. The Rafale’s engines must be shielded, reducing its IR signature.
His nav display showed him crowding the border a little too closely. Damn. This was getting tricky. He turned back east a bit, opening the distance between the two planes.
The Rafale’s nose was climbing smoothly. Tad expected a loop, but instead of gaining altitude, the French fighter flew forward straight and level while its nose rose past the vertical and actually tipped backward.
It was the “cobra” maneuver, invented by the Russians, and it was the first time Tad had ever seen a plane do it in a maneuvering situation. It did look odd, but it was effective. The Rafale was dumping speed in a hurry.
Tad saw his opponent quickly slide back, first even with his Eagle, then behind him. When the other fighter reached his five o’clock, its nose tipped forward as smoothly as if the Rafale were mounted on a pivot. Now its own nose turned slightly toward him.
The other pilot was setting up his own heat-seeking missile shot. And the Eagle’s engines weren’t IR-suppressed like the Rafale’s. If he didn’t get out of this, he’d be the grape who got peeled, not the Frenchman. Yanking back hard on the stick, Tad pulled his Eagle into a smooth loop. The horizon disappeared, instantly replaced by an elevation ladder on the HUD showing his attitude and pitch angle.
Tad concentrated on keeping the F-15’s nose parallel with the imaginary border. With so many hostile eyes and radars watching, crossing over into German airspace, even accidentally, was unthinkable. His superiors would be interested in his report about the Rafale and its capabilities, but only if he didn’t screw up and create an international incident.
He neared the top of the loop, a thousand meters higher than when he started, pointed north. Now where was that Frenchman?
He scanned the landscape below and to the west, forcing himself to ignore the upside-down world and the fact that he was hanging in his seat. There was no sign of motion, no wing flashes below him. He widened his search, looking above the horizon.
There. The bastard was abreast of him now, also inverted and heading north. The other pilot must have waited a second and then followed him into a parallel loop on his side of the border. Good stick, Tad thought.
At least he’d broken the Rafale’s missile lock. Flying side by side like this meant neither of them would be in position to get a shot off when this maneuver ended.