He had two Sparrows on his wings. He assigned one of them a target blip, then triggered it off and felt the pleasant upward bump as their weight left the Tomcat. He watched the Sparrow depart on a strand of white smoke, and felt, as always, a strange sense of empathetic fear for the pilots on the other end. Missiles moved so quickly, they were like a bad dream. Especially if they were sniffing for you.
“Come on, baby,” he said. “Come on…”
Tai heard the warning alarm in his helmet, and saw the return image of the incoming missile on his Heads-Up Display. Cursed. Took his focus off the battle raging below, and turned it to the radar. Waited. Waited…
He released a bundle of chaff and juked hard to one side without breaking out of his dive. The chaff expanded in the air behind him, creating a metallic cloud designed to fool radar signals. An instant later, the shock wave of an explosion rocked his plane. The missile had taken the bait.
“Status?” he cried over tactical. All three of Sukhois reported back. Tai smiled.
So far, the score was one kill for the PLA fighters, and zero for the Americans. That was about to change — but not in the Americans’ favor. As Tai’s plane shot through the spot where sunset turned to twilight, he was at last able to visually select a target from the possibilities below.
As Lobo bottomed out of her dive, she pulled the stick back and then sideways again, once more reversing both the Tomcat’s direction and its orientation, so now she was following the top curve of an outside loop back toward the bogey. If what she’d pictured in her head was accurate, the Flanker should now be above and in front of her, still climbing, clawing for precious altitude.
And so it was. Better still, the reach between them was just about broad enough to —
“Clear,” Handyman said.
“Fox three!” Lobo triggered a Sidewinder.
Given enough room, a Sidewinder would attain supersonic velocity in a matter of seconds. In this case, it didn’t have the chance. Nor did the Flanker. Lobo saw a flare pop out of the enemy fighter and start to ignite as a lure to the Sidewinder’s infrared seeker head, but the move was much too late.
“Splash one!” Handyman cried as the Flanker turned into a fireball with wings. A moment later the wings were alone, fluttering down toward the water like falling leaves, flipping this way and that, preceded by a shower of miscellaneous smoking debris.
“Oooh,” Handyman said, “that has got to hurt.”
“Where the hell is my wingman?” Lobo said.
“Come on, Rock, shake him,” Two Tone said from the backseat.
Hot Rock didn’t bother telling him to shut up. If he did that, it would look like he had time to chat.
The Flanker pilot was good, he’d give him that. No sooner had Hot Rock taken out the helo than the Chinese plane was dropping in on his tail, cannon blazing. Ever since, the Flanker had been right there, trying to get a clean shot. An occasional burst ripped past, tracers stitching the air first on one side, then the other. Not one hit, though.
The Chinese pilot was good, but Hot Rock was better. He felt it instantly in his heart, and in the seat of his pants. He knew he could take this guy. He could get on his tail and take him whenever he wanted.
It would be the first real kill for Hot Rock Stone. You couldn’t count the helo, that sitting duck.
And yet… what if he missed, after all? What if he reversed positions on the Flanker, took the offensive and then, for whatever reason, blew it? Everyone would know. Everyone would know that Hot Rock wasn’t good enough.
This way, only he knew.
“We got all these weapons here,” Two Tone growled, “and no one to shoot them at.”
Again Hot Rock said nothing. He was giving the Flanker pilot all he could handle just keeping within killing range. Not quite throwing the Chinese plane, but not allowing the Flanker a clear shot, either. Hot Rock knew he could do this all day long, or at least until he ran out of fuel. Or the Flanker did. Or the fighting ended and they could all go home.
“Heads up, boy,” Two Tone said. “Three bogeys straight up; one’s picked us out to bounce.”
Hot Rock glanced up, and saw three flashes of light that winked out abruptly at the place where sunlight gave way to shadow.
“Sparrows,” Two Tone said. “They’ll go where we want no matter what direction they start out in.”
“Can’t keep radar lock like this,” Hot Rock grunted, half-rolling to the right, then abruptly left again.
“Never mind; bogey’s too close now, anyway,” Two Tone snapped. “Hotshot, I suggest you get us off the killing floor here.”
Too late, Tai thought in fury as he watched one of the SU- 27s erupt into flame. The fire ignited Tai’s heart as well, but he coldly shifted his attention to his target: the Tomcat that had fired the killing missile. He snapped directions over the radio, and he and his wingman sheered off and headed in for the kill.
“Lobo, my love,” Handyman said, “we got two Flankers who love the looks of your ass — not that I blame them.”
“It’s our ass, sweetheart,” Lobo said, watching the radar, then looking over her shoulder and pulling the Tomcat into a hard climb. She spared a glance at the fuel indicator as well. Still okay, although that wouldn’t last long if she didn’t get off the afterburners.
“They got lock,” Handyman said, businesslike, although the alarm in Lobo’s helmet told her all she needed to know.
“Chaff,” she said, and felt the small bump as the foil bounced out of the Tomcat, hopefully to confuse the seeker head on the incoming missile. To increase the odds of that happening, Lobo changed the trajectory of her climb as well. A moment later, she felt the violent jolt of the shock wave coming after her.
“Nice job, but they’re closing,” Handyman said. “Good position, too.”
Meaning they were diving in on the Tomcat. “I don’t give a damn, I’m not going fishing anymore,” Lobo snarled.
“Okay by me.”
“Where the hell is my wingman?”
Hot Rock’s voice came over the radio, calm as the surface of the South China Sea. “I’m just a little busy at the moment, ma’am.”
Two Chinese fighters above him and on his tail, water less than a thousand feet below, no place to go, nowhere to run.
This was great.
They couldn’t get him. They scissored him, they bounced him, they tried to herd him into a pincher. He slipped out of everything. Wing-sweep control set to manual, he took precise command of his airframe, adjusting speed and balance with exquisite finesse. Cannon shells whipped all around him, but none touched.
The only problem, the only niggling uncertainty, came from the knowledge that his lead, Lobo, was also confronting multiple bogeys. She was a terrific pilot, of course, but she was also trying to get in a kill of her own. Generations of experience, not to mention the instructors in flight school, taught that the best defense was a good offense. Lobo flew that way.
And she expected her wingman to help, if he could.
But I can’t, he thought. I’m overloaded with bogeys, anybody can see that. I can’t help her at all.
“Thor, break left,” a voice snapped over the headset.
Thor didn’t even think about it. He slammed the aircraft into a hard left turn. A moment later, he glimpsed a fierce explosion from the corner of his eye.
“Splash one Flanker,” Bird Dog said coldly. “You okay for the other, Thor?”