“Tomcat flight, help’s on the way,” the carrier announced over the open circuit. “Launching nowstand by, fellas, the cavalry’s on the way.”
Bird Dog glanced down at his fuel indicator. “They’d better be the damned Pony Express if they’re going to get here before I’m in trouble.”
Yuri craned his head back, could see the other fighters peeling off from the pack as they vectored in to engage the small cluster of American forces already beating back the Turkish marauders. He snapped his head back forward and took a quick visual scan on the sky around him. It appeared clear. No one was watching him. He reached out and toggled on the sensitive skin that covered his airframe, completely engaging the stealth capabilities.
Had they been watching, the other aircraft would have seen him waver in and then blip off their radar screens. He doubted that they werethere were too many missiles, too many bogeys in the air for a pilot or a RIO to concentrate on anything but survival.
He tipped the fighter forward and dove for the deck. As briefed, he pressed in straight toward the carrier, ignoring the smaller escort floundering in the water before it.
Forty miles away, he got a warning on his ESM gear. He scanned the sky around him, annoyedwhy the hell was somebody paying any attention to him with all the ACM in the air all around?
He saw the aircraft before he could even pick it out on his radar scope. An American Hornetthe worst possible choice.
The Hornet, unlike the Tomcat, was a close match for the MiG in weight-to-thrust ratio and maneuverability. With a Hornet, Yuri would find himself more equally matched, less able to exploit the slower turning radius of a heavier aircraft.
He glanced back down at his range indicator. Still too far away from the ship to firealthough who knew exactly how critical the briefed distance from target was?
Not very, probablynot if the weapon under his wings was what he thought it was.
In a small way, the appearance of the American Hornet was a relief.
It bought him time, a few more minutes to try to answer the questions that kept nagging him about the use of tactical nuclear weapons. If they could have listened in on his thoughts, his superiors would have been appalled that he dared to even question the nature of his mission. But that was the nature of a fighter pilotto take responsibility for his own life, to make his own destiny in the skies. They might think he was simply a glorified carrier pigeon, but Yuri knew better.
Yuri tipped the nose of his MiG up to grab altitude, climbing to meet the Hornet.
Thor bore down on the MiG that was separated from the rest of the pack. It puzzled him momentarily why this one bird seemed to be avoiding the growing furball behind him. Was the other pilot frightened, running away from the battle?
If so, why wasn’t he headed back the way he’d come, to the east?
Or would that take him within range of his own radars, quickly exposing him for the coward he was?
Maybe the MiG was looking for a nice, safe corner of the sky to hide out from the battle, hoping to join the survivors after the action and finesse his way back to home base.
Attracting Thor’s attention had just eliminated that possibility.
“Kill them all and let God sort them out,” Thor said aloud. He waited until the MiG began its maneuver to gain altitude, then fell in behind it, easily pacing it.
As soon as he was in position, he selected a Sparrow, waiting for the tone lock telling him he had a good radar fix for the semiactive guidance head to follow. No tonewhat the hell?
He tweaked and peeked, trying to regain radar contact on it, but there was simply nothing on his scope.
Too far for a Sidewinderhave to close him. Maybe even get in guns range if he could. Thor kicked his Hornet in the ass and headed off after the aircraft. The only contact he had on it was visual, and he was damned if he was going to lose that.
The MiG streaked upward, then rolled into an oblique turn that was the beginning of a maneuver to circle back on him. With two fighters of relatively equal performance capabilities, battle often came down to thisa matter of maintaining the proper angle of separation to enable a lock on the bogey.
But how was he going to get a lock?
Whatever it was about this MiG, it sure as hell looked like a ghost on radar. That left only guns and a Sidewinder, the heatseeking missile that didn’t give a damn about the radar-reflective characteristics of an aircraft. All it saw was the hot, burning hell of jet engines and afterburners.
Thor let the MiG begin its oblique roll and descent to the left, holding his own hard turn until he judged he was directly over the bandit.
He snapped the Hornet over at the top of his turn, dove back down, and was annoyed to find himself slightly leading the bogey.
A rolling scissorsthat’s what we’re getting into. Not a bad tactic against a similar fighter, but a dangerous way to live, at least half the time. The aircraft in the top of the serpentine maneuver generally had the better firing position, and as they looped through the sky, alternating altitudes and relative advantage, Thor’s Hornet would be exposed to a rear-quarter-aspect missile during the period when he was at low altitude.
Well, it was better to cut this short. Thor rolled out of the scissors, then threw the Hornet into a tight starboard turn, all the while watching over his shoulder to see what the other pilot was doing. With any luck…
Luck was with him. The other pilot continued evasive maneuvers, but continued pressing in on the carrier. Now just what was so damned urgent about the carrier?
Thor checked his radar again to see if there were any heavy bombers coming in behind the fighters, but his radar screen showed nothing. Not that that meant anything, not with the lack of contact that this bogey was generating. Still, it was possible that there was a flight of stealth-equipped bombers carrying antisurface weapons just behind the fighters.
Thor tucked the jet into a tight roll and dropped back into a high rear-quarter position on the MiG. He was just barely within range of his Sidewinders, and had only two on the wings. He debated waiting, trying to gain a more favorable position on the MiG, but decided against it. The MiG seemed bound and determined to head for the carrier. Ergo, Thor was bound and determined not to let him do it.
But what was the bogey carrying?
Thor replayed his last glimpse of the aircraft’s undercarriage in his mind, simultaneously readying the Sidewinder. He heard the low growl indicate a lock, and toggled it off.
The missile on the undercarriage had looked like a standard anti-air missilenow why the hell would he want to be close to the carrier with that?
A number of possibilities flitted through his mind, and suddenly the only reasonable one seemed obvious.
Another tactical nuclear weaponthat had to be it. Thor felt his blood run cold. Even if the missile didn’t strike anything, the resulting EMP would effectively wipe out every aircraft now in the air, as well as destroying the combat capabilities of all ships within range. He reached forward and jammed throttles into the slots as hard as they would go, desperately seeking a few more knots. The Hornet responded, almost exceeding the design specifications on the books. Thor urged her on silently, rocking forward in his seat as though he could help her gain a few more knots.
He toggled the weapons-selector switch to Sidewinder again, waited for the growl, then let it rip. The first one was still en route to the jet.
The first missile locked onto the MiG’s starboard tailpipe. It bore in at Mach 2, entranced by the blazing infrared radiation coming out of the tailpipe and the jet’s hot exhaust.