“Break right!” shouted Reisman, and every fluid four in the American box swung away in a unison that rivaled the Navy’s elite Blue Angel Hornet formation team. And every pilot hated the break. Running away from their sole reason for being — to fight.
“And every driver on our side,” Reisman reminded Tomcat leader Drummer Crouper, “knows our mission. We’re tasked to be peacemakers. That’s all. Just let ’em know we’re here.”
“Drummer to Hummer One. They’re coming at us again. Thirty miles.”
“Break due west,” said Reisman, his voice sounding tight, the increased G force pressing hard on his chest, he and his two squadrons making a hard left turn once more. And then Reisman did something neither he nor many other fighter pilots had done in their career — he flicked from his Fighter Composite Squadron’s radio frequency to 243.000, the Coast Guard Mayday channel, which all pilots — ChiCom, ROC, and anyone else aloft, and, most important, the carriers — would have open. If a dust-up was about to occur, Reisman wanted everyone to know who shot first so that no U.N. son of a bitch would be able to complain about U.S. aggression. Whether he liked it or not, Reisman was trying to implement the White House’s policy — a totally unrealistic one, in his view — of trying to play referee between the two warring Chinas.
Cuso and Crowley in McCain’s CIC were duly astonished. “What the hell—” the admiral began, then paused, listening.
“Crazy to taunt us like that,” said Cuso, watching the blue screen. “Don’t they remember what happened to the Libyans?” It was a reference to the downing of two Libyan MiG 23s in January 1989 who were brash and brave enough to jinx a pair of Tomcats off the John F. Kennedy.
Crowley could feel his blood pressure soaring with the sense of urgency in the plane-to-plane chatter, frying noises of static surge, and labored breathing of his pilots in their exhausting turns as they ran from the ChiComs.
“Bogeys jinxing again twenty-six miles!” Cuso and Crowley recognized it as Tomcat leader Drummer Crouper, his “again” so emphatic that it conveyed all the frustration of the FITCOMPRON’s aviators at being ordered by Reisman to evade rather than engage. Crowley was more conscious than anyone on the ship that while pilots might speak to their RIO or other crew members in a completely informal manner, he or she knew that whatever you said on interplane radio could be heard by everyone in the squadron and on the carrier, that it was your reputation on the line. Drummer’s “again” was telling everyone that he thought the squadron had “breaked” too much already. Cuso saw his point. What kind of “referees” could expect to do their job without respect?
“He thinks Reisman’s being too cautious,” Cuso said. “Wants us to do a Freeman.” It had slipped out before he had a chance to cage it. Cuso thought Freeman was great, had a naval aviator’s daring.
“Oh, really?” replied the admiral caustically, his eyes still on the screen, his tone a measure of his frustration, the frustration of all battle group commanders who, despite a military man’s instinct, know full well that they and their careers are under control of the top civilian executive of the United States. He turned sharply to face Cuso. “What do you want me to do, John? By doing a Freeman? Start shooting? Get us into a punch-up in the strait when we’re already overextended, spread from Afghanistan to Korea, to the drug wars in Colombia, to the four-thousand-mile-long border with Canada? And in the Philippines? And never mind we’re still in the Balkans and Japan. You talk about Freeman — I can’t understand why the President is using an old warhorse like him anyhow. Should be pensioned off!”
Cuso said nothing. Freeman was being used by the White House precisely because Crowley was correct — the United States, its superpower status notwithstanding, was stretched dangerously thin throughout the dangerous world, at sea, on land, and in the air. All reserves in the three armed services had been called up, including Marine reserves. Everyone, including Freeman and his ex-SpecFor warriors, was needed.
They heard Johnny Reisman once more order his fighters to “break west,” the twelve ChiCom Fulcrums jinxing yet again. Crowley saw an EWO officer at his console glance questioningly at another.
“Something wrong, Abrams?”
“No — no, sir.”
“Then watch the screen.”
On the ship’s signals exploitation space intercom, the “boffins” informed CIC that the ChiCom Sukhoi-30 fighter bombers were still proceeding northward in air space above the Penghu island group.
“Thank you!” acknowledged Crowley, turning again to Cuso, his tone, though still edgy, more conciliatory. “We can see that on our own screen. They think we’re blind in here or—” Crowley had suddenly divined what Reisman had realized a minute or so earlier. The ChiCom fighters were jinxing McCain’s squadron to protect their fighter-bombers heading for Penghu. The admiral snatched the mike from its cradle, his short stature requiring him to perform what the less charitable among McCain’s six thousand souls called his “tippy-toe” maneuver.
“Mother to Hummer One. Do you read me?”
“Loud and clear,” came Reisman’s response.
“Give bandits warning on two four three — repeat, two four three — that if they jinx again you will engage. Repeat — if they jinx again you will engage. Do you read me?”
“Roger that. Warn bandits on Guard Channel. If they jinx again we will—”
“Bogeys jinxing twenty miles!” It was Reisman’s wingman. “Noses on, Angels Nine plus,” which told McCain’s CIC that the carrier’s twelve Hornets were at nine thousand feet and climbing out of the way. Instantly, Crowley gave his aviators “weapons-free independent decision authority.” To engage, not evade.
“Roger that,” began Reisman when Drummer Crouper, five miles ahead, his eyes on his Tomcat’s vibrant green heads-up display, saw the flashing MASTER CAUTION light on his right side advisory panel. Master Caution was now replaced by the flashing black on yellow acronym AAM, an air-to-air missile, seen as a green tadpole symbol on Drummer’s radar screen, the missile fired by a Fulcrum and closing fast on the green X that was Drummer’s bird.
Drummer broke hard right, hit the afterburner, broke hard left, left again, piling on the G force, using his upgraded digital readout that was telling him the Chicom’s AAM was a PLA air force R-77, NATO code AA-12 Adder radar-guided active terminal, range thirty-one miles, speed Mach 4, warhead sixty-six pounds, HE fragmentation. It was still closing. He hit the cat’s afterburner, again broke hard left, left again, piling on more G’s, then hard right. “Ready for chaff!” he yelled to his RIO.
“Ready.”
Drummer looked for his wingman. He wasn’t there. No one was there but gray stratus, his radar showing him that what had been the ordered formation of Hornets and his fellow Tomcats was now dispersed to hell and gone, Fulcrums swarming in to attack. In the background babble, Drummer could hear Crowley’s voice ordering Reisman’s Hornets to go after the Flankers. Crowley, then Cuso, had realized that the Flankers were not stopping to jinx. Their intention was obviously to keep flying farther north, the real purpose of the Russian-made fighter-bombers not to help the Fulcrums intercept returning ROC Falcons and Mirages, but to bomb Penghu Island prior to invading it, the Fulcrums providing a fighter umbrella. Penghu, lying only thirty-five miles from Taiwan, would provide the ChiComs with several thousand Taiwanese hostages and an invaluable air base less than two and a half minutes away by air from Taiwan, closer than Cuba was to the United States.