There was nothing else that had even a chance of catching the missile at this point, not from a nose-on-nose aspect.
Behind him, his backseater, a new guy he’d never even had a chance to talk to, muttered vector information and guidance. Skeeter followed the orders mechanically, watching the missile, relying on his eyeballs to warn him if the geometry got radically out of synch. So far, the backseater seemed to know what he was doing.
“Recommend you fire nownow, now, now,” the RIO said finally.
Skeeter toggled the missiles offone, twothen made the Fox call over tactical. He could see the bright flares of the engines of his own missiles, tracked them readily as they dove down toward the incoming missile.
“Skeeterget the hell out of there,” he heard another voice say over tactical. He glanced back over at Bird Dog, as if he could see who was talking.
“Skeeter, that’s ThorMarine jar-head. He just took out the bastard that launched that missile.”
Bird Dog’s voice was almost frantic. “Head for the deck, Skeeterthat missile’s probably a tactical nukeyou stay within range of it and you’re going to catch the EMP blast head-on. It’ll wipe out everything you’ve got, even if the buffet doesn’t knock you out of the air. You hear me? Get out of the way.”
“I can’tthe Sparrows haven’t shifted to independent tracking. I’ve got to keep the radar lock ongot to.”
Skeeter’s voice was determined. “If you think it’ll do some damage to me, just think what it’ll do to every aircraft in the air, not to mention the surface ships. I’ll get out of here as soon as I see it dead, not before.”
“Skeeter!” Real anguish permeated Bird Dog’s voice. “The Sparrows will make it, they’re close enough nowget the hell out.”
Skeeter bore on, following his missiles into their target. Finally, as the two tracks were intercepting, he rolled violently to starboard and dove for the deck. Seconds later, a hard wash of air buffeted the massive Tomcat like a boat bobbing in the water. He fought the aircraft, lost control, and the Tomcat spiraled down to the deck in a flat spin.
Skeeter let the aircraft go, fighting with the controls to establish a stable flight attitude. The violent spinning slowed slightly, then stopped completely as Skeeter pushed the nose down and traded altitude for airspeed. The increased airflow over the wings, coupled with the manual extension of the wings, gave him back control of the aircraft.
But they were close to the sea, so close. At one thousand feet, the Tomcat had broken out of its spin, but was still headed at a steep angle for the deck. Skeeter howled, yanked back on the yoke, not even bothering to warn his backseater about the maneuver. It either worked, or it didn’t.
He suspected the man’s hand was poised over the ejection-seat handlethat is, if he could get to it under the driving G forces of their flat spin.
At the last second, the Tomcat pulled out of the dive, returning to vertical flight a bare forty feet above the ocean.
Skeeter howled again, this time in victory. He heard the backseater breathing raggedly over the ICS, and said, “What’s the matter, man?”
His bravado masked the real fear he’d felt just a few seconds earlier.
“Nothingeverything’s fine back here,” the backseater snapped. “There’s just one little problemwhen we get back to the carrier, I’m gettin’ the fuck out of your cockpit and never gettin’ back in again.”
“Now, now, nowdidn’t I just pull us out of one of the nastiest spins you’ve ever seen in your life?” Skeeter inquired, recklessly confident with the adrenaline screaming through his veins. “What more could you ask from a pilot?”
“The common sense God gave a gnat would do for starters.”
With that, the backseater fell silent.
“The air battle is still a standoff,” Batman reported to Tombstone.
He sighed, feeling the weight of responsibility of sending young pilots out to die. They were the finest pilots in the world, flying the most capable aircraft, but air combat was still unpredictable. Most would come backbut some wouldn’t.
“They don’t have a sustainable force,” Tombstone said shortly. “I notice there’re no tankers reportedthat means they have to land to refuel. Lost timewe’ll take them eventually.”
The Turks were proving to be surprisingly tenacious, remaining engaged against the American fighters even after a second wave of Hornets and Tomcats arrived from Jefferson, even after it was clear that the Americans were outperforming their adversaries in all categories of skill. One by one the Turkish F-14’s dropped into the water, either accompanied by billowing parachutes as their aircrews escaped or raining down on the water in a fireball. “Sooner or later, they’ve gotta quit.”
Batman frowned. “There’s something else odd about itthat last wave of MiGs,” he said slowly. “They’re not Turkishthey’re Ukrainian. Oh, they’ve got Turkey’s colors painted on their tail, but it’s absolutely clear at this point that they’re not what they seem to be.”
Batman turned to Lab Rat. “Isn’t that so, Commander Busby?”
The senior Intelligence Officer nodded. “We caught one of them transmitting in the clearotherwise, they stayed on secure lines. Definitely Ukrainian.”
Tombstone tossed his pencil on the table, and leaned back in the chair. “Ukrainianthat explains it, I suppose.”
He looked at the two men steadily. “So what do we do now?”
Batman turned to Lab Rat. “Go ahead and brief him.”
Lab Rat took a deep breath. “I’ve taken the liberty of preparing two strike packages. One is aimed against Turkey, the other Ukraine.”
He passed over a large-scale chart with hastily scribbled pencil markings on it. “Here you can see the two command centers, one in Sevastopol and the other in Izmir. Shiloh can have her Tomahawks retargeted against either one of them in a matter of minutes. Once we take out command-and-control facilities, the fighters may become confused, pull back some while they wait for an alternate command center to take over with new orders. You know how dependent they are on their ground-control-intercept officers.”
Tombstone studied the charts. He tapped the penciled target symbol on the Crimean Peninsula. “These bastards started it allthat first attack on La Salle. It looked like Turkey, but at this point I’m willing to bet it was Ukraine. That’s the first target. Let’s teach them a lesson.”
“You’ll get flak from State over this,” Batman cautioned. “After all, we’re supposedly en route to their shipyards for technical assistance.”
“I don’t give a fuck about State,” Tombstone blazed. “Their calls already got us into thisdammit, neither you or I would ever have been caught dead in this strait, not under these circumstances.”
“I agree,” Batman put in. “Just wanted to bring it up. But to hell with them all.”
He turned back to the Intelligence Officer. “You’ve got your orderslet’s retarget against Ukraine.”
Busby nodded. “Just as wellI was afraid you were going to say both. That would complicate matters a bit.”
“I can take out the command centers, but where does that leave us in the end?” Tombstone said, staring down at the chart. “This whole tactical scenariodammit, one aircraft carrier is not enough. Shiloh’s doing her best, but we need an additional show of force, a battle group stationed with some air-power just off Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, while we quell the Black Sea. The U.S. Air Force base in Turkey at Incirclik is no helpthey scrambled their aircraft out to safety when La Salle got hit. Greece bitched about allowing overflights, so they’re staging out of the United Kingdom for now. Too long a lead time to use them for immediate support, but just where the hell am I gonna get another carrier and some fighters?”