Thor looked back at the Flanker still hanging onto his ass. It was the same plane that had taken Reedy out. “You bet I am,” he said.
Bird Dog turned his attention away from Thor and focused it on the ACM farther down. He knew that his taking a Sparrow shot at one of the bogeys harassing Thor had been chancy from five miles out, but it had been the only assistance he could render from that distance. Fortunately the missile had functioned exactly as intended, and so had Thor.
Now for the real thing.
Bird Dog switched his attention to the low-altitude dogfights, and his weapons selector to “guns.”
Lobo kept trying to climb out, but the Flankers were faster than she was in the vertical mode. When flying one-against-two, the main goal of any fighter pilot was to keep both bogeys on the same side of your plane. To never get caught in the middle.
Easier said than done.
The intel was right about that, dammit. In fact, as she recalled, an SU-30 — cousin to the bogeys on her tail — had been the first jet aircraft to break the sound barrier in a vertical climb.
Still, she found this situation unbelievable. She was used to having the upper hand in any altitude battle; although the Tomcat wasn’t king of the sky in an angles fight, it had always ruled in the vertical plane. Always.
Until now.
Unfortunately, in the horizontal field things were even worse. The Flankers really were as nimble as Falcons. She had all she could do to keep them from boxing her in.
Looking to the left, she saw Hot Rock below her level, a pair of Flankers trying to get position on him. Still no help there.
After what happened the last time she was shot down, Lobo hadn’t been sure she’d be able to strap a Tomcat on again, far less fight. Time and hard work had put that fear to rest. In fact, she’d once again become convinced that she was invulnerable, too damned hot a pilot to be shot out of the sky again, ever.
Now she was beginning to wonder if that was true.
Tai heard the radar-lock alarm in his helmet, but ignored it. Just one second more. One second more and his targeting pipper would close on the American jet. Just —
There was a terrific concussion, the rear of his plane leaping up, making him fight the stick. Hit? Had he been hit? Pivoting his head wildly, he saw the fireball behind him, and the F-14 behind that, and knew his wingman had been destroyed. The Tomcat was stooping on him at tremendous speed, taking full advantage of gravity and momentum.
From hunter to hunted in half a second. Tai jerked the stick left, then hard right, rolling out of the line of fire as tracers flickered past him, deceptively beautiful in the twilight.
“It’s Bird Dog!” Handyman cried. “He splashed one of our bogeys, Lobo!”
“Peachy,” Lobo said, hearing the anger in her voice and wondering at it. So someone had saved her butt, and that someone happened to be the ever-cocky Bird Dog. Was she so petty she’d begrudge him her thanks? Hell, her eternal gratitude?
Looking over her shoulder, she saw that the second Flanker that had been pursuing her was now busy evading Bird Dog. Good luck to him.
She turned her attention to her wingman, who had problems of his own.
“Got you,” Thor said as his targeting pip centered between the Flanker’s vertical stabilizers. He triggered the cannon, and watched the metal spine of the Flanker split open as if torn by a can opener. Flames and debris gouted from the wound, and Thor banked away hard to avoid sucking any of it into his engines. At the same time, he saw the Flanker’s ejection seat shoot up.
“Long way down, bozo,” Thor said, and turned his own jet in that direction. Below, he could see the flicker and flash of jet exhausts against the dark water. Then he glanced at his fuel indicator, and cursed. He had no juice for more fighting. Not even close. Hell, he’d be lucky to reach the Texaco in time to keep from ditching the plane.
He radioed Homeplate, and was reassured by one bit of news: Four more good guys were bustering in, due in as many minutes.
“Godspeed,” he said to the fires below, and turned his tail to the setting sun.
The Flanker was a terrific airplane, no doubt about it. But it was dead meat, and Bird Dog Robinson was going to be the butcher. He had the speed, the trajectory, the weapons, and the experience. The Flanker was racing away at low altitude, undoubtedly fearing to take advantage of a marginal speed advantage for fear of simply moving out of gun range and into the grasp of a Sidewinder. Out of the frying pan, so to speak.
Of course, Bird Dog was more than happy to use the cannon on this guy. That would be just fine, and he matched the Flanker swoop for swoop, not allowing him to pop up, not allowing him to jink free. Cut left. Bird Dog followed. Cut right. Bird dog moved the stick that direction…
… and for once, his Tomcat didn’t turn. No, it turned, but much too slowly. The Flanker vanished off the targeting ring.
What the hell?
A sense of foreboding drenched Bird Dog like ice water. Even as he pulled back to regain altitude, he twitched the stick to the left and got quick response. Back to the right. Very slowly, the plane started to roll in that direction.
“Catwoman?” he said over ICS. “We got systems trouble here or what?”
There was a brief pause, then a cool-voiced response: “Losing hydraulics in the left wing, Bird Dog. Down to forty percent, and falling.”
“Why?”
“How the hell would I know? Maybe the warranty ran out.”
Oh, Christ, mechanical failure. If the plane weren’t fly-by-wire, if the controls were linked directly to the flying surfaces, right now the left rudder pedal would be flapping like the tongue of an untied shoe.
“By the way,” Catwoman said, “that Flanker? I think he’s in love with us, because he’s coming back for more.”
Tai didn’t bother wondering why the American had failed to press his earlier advantage to its conclusion. All that mattered was he’d made a mistake, and it would be his last.
Pulling the SU-37 up and around as hard as he could, squeezing his belly muscles against brown-out, Tai used the Sukhoi’s swiveling exhausts to full advantage. In an instant he was on the F-14’s tail, bringing his cannon to bear.
The Tomcat cut left. Tai cut left. The Tomcat straightened slightly, then cut left again. Tai followed it, patiently trying to join the enemy plane and the gun pipper in the firing ring on his HUD.
Again, the Tomcat cut left; he was practically in a spiraling dive now. No wonder the American had bounced Tai and his wingman from high altitude. Take away that advantage and the man was not much of a pilot. He just kept turning left, turning left, turning left….
Turning into the sights of a better pilot flying a better aircraft.
“We got —!” Catwoman’s voice cut off as the Tomcat began to shake and bounce. A strange whistling roar filled the cockpit, and the few loose parts of Bird Dog’s flight suit began to flap wildly. Bird Dog was filled with fury. Getting taken out by a missile was bad enough, but he wasn’t going to go down to guns. No way was he going to be shot down like some World War One-era biplane pilot; give some PRC hotshot bragging rights for years to come. No way.
He pulled the shuddering Tomcat even farther to the left, skating it on the edge of a spin from which he knew he would never recover, not without right rudder.
“Catwoman?” he cried over ICS. “Catwoman —?”