Both his crew and the lifeboat Russians looked up as my Tomcat screamed by overhead. One Russian lifted a three-foot tube to his shoulder.
Stingers. If he could sight in on me and get it off while I was within two miles, he was no less deadly for being low-tech. Each tube was a one-shot anti-air missile, and I couldn't tell whether they had more than one onboard the raft.
There was only one way to find out, and I wasn't going to wait on the submarine any longer. I pushed on past them maybe three miles, and orbited for a moment while I thought through the plan.
"You fly, I'll spot," Gator suggested.
"I'm trying to think of anything we could do to increase our chances against that Stinger. You saw it, I take it?" I said.
"I did." A sigh then. "There's no way through this except straight through it ― we both know that. You handle the evasive maneuvering, keep them from getting a lock. I'll watch and see what else they're pulling.
You're going in with guns, right?" "The only weapon I've got for this," I said.
"The sooner we get it over with, the sooner we're back on the boat."
I turned back in on the sub and life raft. A puff of black smoke wafted out of the sail. The life raft was now only thirty yards from the sub, fighting the swells and the weather.
"Here we go." I dropped down to barely one hundred feet above the waves and started a series of hard zigzags that I hoped would defeat their targeting solutions. My finger rested on the weapons control switch for a moment, then I selected Guns.
I fired a short test burst ― the life raft was far too close to the sub for my liking and I wanted to make sure of the line of fire. The rounds, every tenth one a tracer, bit into the ocean, stitching a ragged line ahead of me.
"Get the hell up! Altitude, altitude," Gator shouted. "Tombstone, MiG inbound!"
I wrenched the Tomcat around to the left and shoved the throttles forward into afterburner. The sky streaked by my windshield, dull and foreboding. "Where is he?" I asked, scanning the sky around me. No contrails, no glint of sun on metal gave away his position.
"Three o'clock, high." I looked in the direction Gator indicated and found him. He was maybe at ten thousand feet, descending rapidly, nose onto us. I turned into him, still in afterburner, then glanced down at my fuel status. This engagement was going to have to be short and deadly.
"He's got a lock, he's got a lock," Gator chanted, his voice cutting through his ESM receiver beeping. "Break right, Tombstone!" I broke and heard the thump as canisters of chaff and flares spit out of our underbelly.
"Looking good," Gator said. "I think it's ― yes, it's going for it!"
I wasn't going to wait around for the fireball. With fuel getting critical and the MiG fast approaching to within knife-fighting range, there wasn't time. As soon as I got tone, I shot two Sparrows and headed back for the submarine. The Russians had managed to make another ten yards of progress toward the sub. Just as I was starting to descend on them, a shotgun blast boiled the water immediately in front of the raft. Then another, even closer this time as the submariner found his range.
"He's got us," Gator said. "The Stinger's ― hold on, he's going to shoot."
"Just inside minimums." I fired a quick burst from the gun.
Or tried to. An angry buzz came from the gun ― but no rounds.
Something jammed it, whether a misfeed or a faulty round or just the brutal weather I couldn't tell. It didn't matter ― trying to keep firing it would only run the risk of blowing off our own wing.
"Tombstone, we got to get out of here. Let the sub handle it," Gator warned. "You've got nothing that'll hit a surface target that size if you don't have guns."
"I've still got an aircraft." I shoved the throttles into afterburner. The force slammed me back into my seat. The speck of the lifeboat grew larger quickly until I could make out the individual expressions on the man's faces. The sub skipper stared up at us, his face cold and angry as he shouted orders to his crew. "Now!" Gator screamed.
I broke right so hard that my wingtip almost grazed the surface of the ocean. The water was so close it seemed to fill the cockpit. Fighting the temptation to pull up, I pulled the turn tighter until we seemed to pivot on one point. The life raft swung out of my view.
But not out of Gator's. He must have been contorted like a pretzel as he watched the action behind us. "Yes!"
I eased out of the turn, coming full circle to face the submarine alone in the ocean. The life raft was overturned nearby. One head bobbed briefly in the water, bracketed by flailing arms, then sank out of view.
The crew in the sail of the Victor scrambled back down into the safety of their submarine. They must have been standing by to dive, because within a minute the sub slipped back down beneath the surface.
"You fellows need some help out here?" a voice drawled over tactical.
"Jet wash ain't gonna help much after they dive."
Rabies Grill. I recognized the voice. "Sure, come on in now that we've got them running scared for you."
"Running's just fine. Makes them noisier than hell. Maybe these passengers I'm carrying can find them."
I pulled the Tomcat up, relieved to be farther from the ocean. "All yours, Rabies. What are you going to do about the U.S. boat?"
"Gonna tell him to stay surfaced. These here torpedoes are set on deep. They won't even look at anything above one hundred feet."
I was breathing easier now that we were climbing back through five thousand feet. Off to my right, two stubby-nosed S-3s were inbound.
Behind them, a couple of helos were scampering to catch up like kids running after an older brother.
"Funny thing," Rabies continued. "Almost flew through a nasty patch of smoke and metal back there a ways. Looks like you got you a MiG while you were trying to horn in on our business." "You got a union now?" I asked.
"You betcha."
I left the USW aircraft to finish off the Akula and the Victor. From what I heard over tactical, it didn't take them long before they had firing solutions on both boats. Seventy sailors on each submarine would be joining their lifeboat brothers in an icy grave before I reached the ship.
The ship. There'd be more music to face back onboard Jefferson.
Running on fumes only, we took a quick plug and chug from the tanker and headed back to Jefferson. I caught the three wire. I hoped it was an omen.
The moment I walked into Batman's office, I could see that it was coming. It was there in the set of his jaw, the hard, cold look in Batman's eyes. I debated pretending not to notice, then gave it up as a lost cause. You don't treat your old wingman like that, even when you're sporting two more stars on your collar than he is.
The ocean floor around us was littered with the remains of MiGs and MiG pilots. The remains of the Victor and Akula were mixed into the brew, and I hadn't even started to worry about the furor that that was going to cause back in the States.
But at least we'd won. And in the end, that's all that matters.
"It's got to stop, Tombstone." Batman fixed me with a hard glare.
"We shouldn't even have to have this conversation, you know." He stood up from his desk and walked around to confront me. "But it has to stop."
Gone were all traces of the smooth, politically astute pilot that I'd grown up with in the Navy. This was sheer, hard warrior. And a pissed-off one at that.
I turned away from him slightly, and walked across the room to sit down on his ugly couch. Not so long ago it had been mine, just as this whole carrier and air wing had been.
Short of the presidency, there was no more powerful position in the world, I thought.
"Well?" Batman's tone indicated he would not take my silence as an answer. He wanted victory, every last bloody shred of it.