“BREAK! BREAK! BREAK!” He and his wingman yanked their Yaks around to the right, the other pair of Yaks breaking left. The Americans, with their elegant turn of phrase, had once remarked that the Japanese pilots didn't do teamwork. Their fighter pilots looked on themselves as the modern samurai, seeking to engage their enemies in a one-on-one duel to the death. The American and Russian veterans knew teamwork was everything, they fought in pairs and if that meant winning a fight by shooting their opponent in the back, so be it. Winning trumped fairness, life trumped death.
That was happening now; the Yaks had split, opening a gap between them. The Kendras were diving into the formation, each Japanese pilot picking a target. Only, they weren't coordinating properly. Also, the Yak-15 was just a Yak-3 whose piston engine had been replaced by a jet. It still had the thick wings of a piston-engined fighter. That cost it in speed, it was 80 kays slower than the Kendra but those thick, high-lift wings meant it could turn tighter, much tighter.
The Yak was in a clawing turn, standing on its right wingtip, its throttles rammed all the way forward for maximum power, Lazaruski hauling the stick back into his stomach. Despite the power from the jet hanging under its nose, the Yak was shuddering on the edge of a stall, its controls vibrating. Despite his American-supplied g-suit, Lazaruski's eyes were blacking out as centrifugal force drove his blood from his brain.
Only the Kendra was going 80 kays faster and speed translated into centrifugal force and that translated into weight and that meant the loading on the wings was greater and that meant its turning circle, greater than the Yak's to start with, was too large. In his mirror, Lazaruski saw the Kendra drifting off to his left, trying and failing to follow his turn. He slammed the stick over and the Yak, bless its thick, drag-inducing high-lift wings rolled sharply. In his vision black was replaced by red as negative g replaced positive. Lazaruski came hammering around the reverse curve, his nose swinging towards the Kendra a few hundred feet away.
The Japanese pilot had seen what was happening and was trying to reverse his turn but speed and wing-loading were against him. His first turn had bled off too much energy, too much speed, loaded his wings too highly. He was starting to reverse his turn but Lazaruski had started first, he was there first, and being first meant far more than all the aerobatic skills in the world. Because his nose was swinging across, catching the Kendra, pinned like a specimen fly to paper by a needle made of speed and centrifugal force and weight.
Lazaruski's thumb stroked the firing button on his control column, gently, so gently, as gently as dew forming on the morning grass. His twin 23mm cannon roared, spewing a line of invisible shells towards the Kendra. Invisible for no hardened veteran pilot used tracer. The first sign of his burst was the bright flash of hits on the Kendra's nose then along the side of its fuselage. Its bubble canopy exploded from the hits and Lazaruski saw the pilot jerk in his seat.
He knew what would happen next, had seen it so many times. The pilot's hands jerked back, towards his wounded body, yanking the control column with them. The Kendra reared, loading its wings and snapping into a near-vertical climb. As it passed through its critical angle of attack, its left wing stalled out and it snapped over onto its back before dropping into a tight spin. Lazaruski was onto it like a wolf onto prey; bring his twin 23mm guns to bear.
“BREAK LEFT! BREAK LEFT!”
Instinctively he left his kill as his wingman screamed the warning. He was already in a left turn as the bright red tracers started to sweep past his aircraft. The second Kendra was coming at him hard and fast and was hosing him with his paired 20mm and 30mm guns. Lazaruski continued his bank, racking the little Yak around and turning his turn into a barrel roll that took him around the stream of fire. Veteran pilots never used tracer, the Japanese pilots were skilled, in technical terms probably the best in the world, but they weren't veterans.
As his roll bottomed out, Lazaruski slammed the nose down and started to dive away. He could almost read the second Kendra pilot's mind, the prey was getting away. But the Kendra was heavier, more than twice as heavy, and that meant it picked up speed faster in a dive. The Japanese pilot knew that as the Yak accelerated away, the speed difference between the two aircraft would diminish and then be reversed and it would be the Kendra that would close on the Yak. It would just take time.
The Japanese pilots saw themselves as samurai, fighting duels, one on one, honorable victory for one, honorable death for the other. The Russians were killers whose goal was to see they lived and their enemies died. As Lazaruski came out of his roll and extended, the Kendra dived after him. The Japanese pilot never saw Lazaruski's wingman finish his turn and swing onto the tail of the Kendra as it swept past in pursuit of its prey.
The wingman's guns hammered out the finale, a tracerless, invisible finale befitting an assassin. The torrent of 23mm shells slashed into the Kendra's wings, belly, fuel tanks, engines, shredding them, slashing fuel lines and causing a black-red sheet of flame to erupt from the stricken fighter. The Japanese pilot bailed out, his clothes and his parachute already aflame.
Lazaruski pulled out of his dive and swept around, looking at the hurtling fireball that had once been a fighter. No way was the parachute going to save anybody's life now. Below, he saw a mushroom as the fighter's wreck spun into the ground and, he thought, not far away the puff as a burning body hit the ground.
It was over. Of the three Kendras, one was dead, a second limping away streaming black smoke and a third was covering it. The Kendra was as short-legged as the Yak-15 and both aircraft were running dangerously low on fuel. Far too low to continue fighting. Below him, the RF-63 was already running home, its precious film safe in its belly. The four Yaks formed up and followed the Kingcobra.
An easy fight, Lazaruski thought. The Japanese pilots were superb, well trained and their aircraft were excellent. Only they'd spent years fighting Chinese peasants who had only a few hours in their aircraft before being thrown into battle. Today, the Japanese had met the fighter pilots who had survived seven years of war against the Luftwaffe's Experten. It wasn't the same thing, wasn't the same thing at all.
Reconnaissance and Intelligence Center, Khabarovsk
The Air Force lieutenant burst into the center with a broad grin on his face that told Colonel Yvegeni Valerin all he needed to know.
“We have our pictures?”
“Yes, Gospodin Colonel. The Kingcobra got back safely and its pictures were good. I hear the Japanese are already screaming with anger and threatening dire consequences. The escorting Yaks shot down one of their fighters and damaged another, Sir. I understand they will be making a formal complaint and we will, of course be making a full investigation of the regrettable error in navigation. It will, of course, be a thorough inquiry. I understand Chairman Shayvin of the Khabarovsk Military Region will be conducting it himself.”
Everybody in the room laughed. Few of its characteristics had survived the quiet death of Communism after Zhukov had become President but one that had was a remarkable skill for making bureaucratic activity a substitute for achievement. Even amongst the most pettifogging of the bureaucrats. Chairman losef Shayvin was legendary, It was whispered that lie had even left his grandmother behind to be taken away by the Germans because the old lady hadn't filed her travel application in triplicate. The Japanese were about to find out just how bureaucratic an inquiry could get.
The young lieutenant spread the pictures out on the table. “I'm afraid they ask more questions that they answer Sir.”