So when I say the little bastard tripped me, I think that's pretty much the truth. Now, as to why ― that's an entirely different question.
Maybe he wanted me to see him, get some sort of first shot in on me. Or maybe he thought he'd shake my confidence a little, make me think I was more tired than I really was.
So I didn't let him know. Made some little remark about it and let it go at that, but I'd seen him. And that put me in the firing position, asshole.
The rest of the reception went pretty much as planned. I had my backseater, Lieutenant Commander Kennedy, under close control. I guess she had orders from Tombstone to keep an eye on me, make sure I didn't act like a jerk to the Russians. But if truth be known, I ended up keeping an eye on her as much as she did on me. The Russians aren't big on having either blacks or women fly their aircraft, so Sheila and I stood out like ― well, like a black male and a white female. They gathered around us, not saying a whole lot, like they wanted to reach out and touch us to see if we were for real.
Sheila didn't back down, not a bit. She wouldn't ― not her. You've got to fly with somebody to really know them, and Sheila and I had logged enough hours together in work-ups to have a pretty good idea of where each other stood. No, we didn't necessarily like each other much ― but hell, that's not a requirement for a pilot and a RIO. As long as you trust the other guy to do his job and keep some asshole from shooting your aircraft out from under you, that ought to be enough. It was for us.
I thought the Russians were pretty well snowed by Sheila. It's easy to do ― I made that mistake with her from the first. A little short blond-haired, blue-eyed cutie pie, something you might find on your local cheerleading squad if you were real, real lucky. You might ask her out a couple of times, even think about making it serious ― until you found out she had a mean streak about a mile wide and a temper not a whole lot longer than Bird Dog Robinson's. Now that would have been a pair, teaming up those two. They would have killed either a lot of Commies or each other within the first thirty minutes.
And Sheila's not only her real name, it's her call sign as well.
Somebody who thought Australian was the hottest liberty around decided that, since "sheila" down under is slang for female.
Anyway, Sheila and I found that flying together was pretty much all right by us, so the skipper left us teamed up for this exhibition. I suppose we might have been offended, like they were trying to see us as some equal opportunity poster children, but the truth was that we were just so very, very good. The captain knew it ― and we knew it. The way I figure it, there wasn't a single logical choice in the squadron except for the two of us for this mission.
I drew Sheila aside as soon as a hole broke in the Russians around her and said, "You hear what the admiral said? We fly the first mission this afternoon."
Sheila nodded, a slow, strange smile spreading across her face. I'd seen her knocking back the caviar, so I was hoping it wasn't due to indigestion, but she just said, "We're ready."
I nodded. "Bothers me not having a guard on our birds, though."
Sheila finished licking the last bit of fish eggs off a cracker, then said, "So we preflight ― and we check the telltales." She shot a glance at one of the Russians standing nearby, as though wondering whether he understood the slang.
After we'd done our shutdown, Sheila and I had set up a number of carefully prearranged little traps for anyone who wanted to mess with our bird. Nothing fancy, just a piece of tape here, a little scuff and some oil there ― enough so we'd know if somebody was tinkering with anything on the aircraft. Besides, maintenance had fitted some special locks on both the compartments and the engine intake covers. If somebody tried to bypass the key system, there would be a larger splotch of red ink on the inside panel. Not enough to let our guests know that they'd been busted, but enough to alert us to double-check for problems.
An hour and a half later we were both back out on the flight line, checking out our bird. I reminded Sheila to wear her gloves, since the metal had already cooled so much that we'd lose skin if we came in contact with the bare metal. Even in early afternoon, the sun was low in the sky, reminding me of how far north we were. I was almost surprised we had any daylight at all.
Not that it mattered much, not with the Tomcat. I wasn't so sure about the MiG.
We double-checked the Tomcat for any problems. All of our telltales were just where we left them, and I didn't even see anything that gave me a hinky feeling. Finally, satisfied that nobody had been tinkering with her, we climbed back up in. The enlisted technicians double-checked us as efficiently as Americans would have, making me wonder who the hell they'd been practicing on. As far as I know, the MiGs and other fighters in the Russian inventory don't have exactly the same setup for the four-point ejection harness and the ejection-seat safeties.
I kept my distance from the MiG. I like formation flying, especially when it's with somebody who's pretty damned good.
Like Admiral Magruder. There was nothing about the admiral in the air that gave me any reason to worry about him. Oh, his reflexes might be a little bit slower ― even he'd admit that. But he still had what it took.
Surprising, at his age. I had to figure he was nearly forty-five.
I watched the MiG's roll-out carefully, staying behind and to the right of him, and pulled my own Tomcat off the tarmac exactly where he had.
I caught up with him soon enough, slid back into a locked wing position to his right for just long enough to let him know I was hot, then went for altitude.
We'd rebriefed the ground rules in preflight, both in English and in Russian, with both of our admirals listening in gravely. Both of them made the point of saying that this was simply a test of airmanship, not combat; that there was no reason to risk life or equipment, that safety remained a paramount consideration. I wondered how they managed to make the same bullshit sound so much alike in both Russian and English.
I looked over at Kyrrul and saw he wasn't buying it any more than I was. He bore watching, and not just because he was supposed to be some hotshot fighter-jet jock. No, he was a sneaky little bastard. He'd tripped me.
We meandered up to thirteen thousand feet, and I switched buttons to the tactical frequency we'd agreed on. The air traffic controller was switching rapidly between Russian and English, directing us into our starting positions thirty miles apart. On the controller's signal, I put my radar in standby mode, hoping Kyrrul was doing the same thing. That was the deal ― neither of us knew where the other was, and we were both starting from that point with no initial intelligence. The floor was seven thousand feet, the ceiling twenty-nine. I wondered about that number for a moment, whether it said anything about the MiG or not. No matter ― I'd remember to tell the intelligence weenies when we got back to the ship.
I knew Admiral Magruder was up in the tower, keeping an eye on the tactical picture. He didn't speak much Russian, just a few phrases, but a radar scope looks the same in any language. He'd assured me he'd keep them honest, and that I would fulfill the same role when he was in the air.
Finally, the signal came. I heard the admiral's voice come out of the circuit ― "Good luck, Skeeter, Sheila" ― and then we were off. I flipped the AWG-9 radar back into search mode. It took a microsecond to warm up, then it kicked in and started acquiring crap in the sky. A nasty picture for a few moments then, suddenly, clarity. That was one of the advantages of holding this little experiment in Russian airspace. They had no compunctions at all about clearing out the whole area of commercial and private traffic just for their own war games. A pretty big deal from what I could see of the industrial area down below us.