"Okay. Keep us vectored on them. Let me know when you get a solid return."
Minutes crawled by in silence. Then his RIO snapped off an excited "Got 'em! Bogie at three-four-niner, course one-nine-five, speed five-zero-zero, range nine-five miles. They're above us, Boss. Angels thirty."
"Right. Pass that to Batman and Malibu. Let's go in for a look."
Long before he sighted the Bear, he could feel it, a shuddering, deep-throated rumble below the limits of hearing as the Bear's four massive Kuznetsov turboprops hammered at the sky. He looked up through the canopy, scanning the night. The sky was clear, the stars far crisper and more brilliant than they ever were at sea level. There was nothing… no! There! He could just make out the distinctive constellation of red and green navigation lights, the flash of a red anti-collision beacon.
"Tally-ho!" he announced over his radio. "Visual at eleven o'clock high."
"We've got him," Batman's voice replied in his headset.
"Hunt Leader to Homeplate," Tombstone said as he eased into a climb that would take them to thirty thousand feet. His words would be relayed to the Jefferson by the circling Hawkeye. "We have visual on the bandit. Closing." He switched to the aircraft tactical channel. "Hunt Two, Hunt Lead. I'm breaking left and going in for a closer look. You break the other way and take point. You're running interference."
"Rog, Hunt Lead. Count his rivets for us, will ya?"
Tombstone pulled his Tomcat into a shallow turn to port, swinging wide behind the Bear, crossing the bomber's slipstream with a rumbling shudder that reminded him of hitting the rumble strips in the pavement in front of a turnpike tollbooth. Moments later, he drew up alongside the Russian's starboard side.
The vibration was much heavier here, flying behind and below the Bear's two thundering right wing engines. He could still see very little, a blackness against blackness which blotted out the stars, outlined by the pulse of anti-collision lights. He knew the Russians were aware of his presence; they'd have had him on their own radar scopes for some minutes now. But how to get them to- A light winked on, a tiny sun bathing the Tomcat's cockpit in a silvery glare.
"What in the hell-" Snowball yelled, "Tombstone, I can't see!"
Tombstone held the F-14 steady, turning his head aside and blinking hard to clear the momentary blindness. For an instant he'd thought the Russian bomber had blown up, but he knew now that what had stolen his night vision was a powerful searchlight mounted in the observation blister near the Bear's tail. Bastards!
The searchlight moved, shifting a white cone of light back and forth between the two aircraft, briefly illuminating the Tomcat, then swinging up to the Bear's own wing, which materialized out of the darkness ahead like a gleaming fragment of a huge knife. Tombstone could see the silvery arc of one of the Russian's outboard turboprops, could see the markings painted on the backswept wing, a huge red star bordered in white.
Obviously, they wanted him to know who they were.
But what were they thinking? This sort of game had been played between Russians and Americans since the first days of the Cold War, and it seemed that the recent thaw had changed none of the rules. In some ways, in fact, the situation now was worse than it had ever been during the seventies or early eighties; at least then, you knew what the Russians thought of you.
Gently, Tombstone nudged his Tomcat closer to the Bear's hull.
The searchlight snapped back from the wing and washed across the F-14 again, but he was ready for it this time, narrowing his eyes and looking to one side, just like meeting the headlights of an oncoming car while driving at night.
"Hey, Tombstone," Snowball said. His voice sounded a bit shaky, but in control. "You think maybe they're trying to tell us to get lost?"
"Could be. Let's see if they'll talk to us." Sliding the Tomcat closer to the Bear's fuselage, Tombstone faced the light and held up three gloved fingers. Using exaggerated motions, he repeated the gesture three times. The searchlight snapped off.
"There's our answer," Tombstone said. "Switch to 333.3 and let's see what they have to say for themselves."
Tombstone held his mask across his face. "Russian aircraft, Russian aircraft. This is Hunt Leader, flying just off your right wing. Do you copy?"
There was a long silence. There were almost always English-speaking personnel on these Bear flights. "Is flight Four-one-two speaking, Hunt Leader. Go ahead."
"Flight Four-one-two, this is Hunt Leader. You are on an intercept course with the U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson. Please come to course… one-five-zero in order to avoid over-flying our ships. Over."
"Nyet, Hunt Leader. Flight Four-one-two is on routine flight, Vladivostok to Cam Ranh Bay. Is international airspace. As Americans say, 'You go to hell.'"
"That's grade-A bullshit, Stone," Snowball said over the intercom circuit. "He stays on that course, he'll fly smack into South Korea. He's gotta change course sometime soon, and it might as well be now!"
"He just wants to see how far we'll bend, Snowy." Tombstone thought for a moment. There was really very little he could do other than annoy the Bear pilot… and risk the mistake which could trigger an international incident. Chances were, the Russian plane was on a routine flight to the big Soviet naval base in Vietnam, but they'd have orders to see how far they could press the American carrier group along the way.
He opened the channel again. "Russian Flight Four-one-two, this is Hunt Leader. The U.S.S. Jefferson is currently engaged in military exercises in the Sea of Japan and is on full alert. Your aircraft could be in danger if you approach too closely."
"Hunt Leader, are you declaring exclusion zone?" In times of crisis, in times of war, a carrier group commander might declare an exclusion zone around his fleet. Any unknown aircraft approaching to within, say, one hundred miles could be fired upon. But things weren't that hot, not yet. "Negative, Flight Four-one-two. There is no exclusion zone. What we're telling you is just for your own-"
"Nyet! Bereegees!" The burst of sled Russian ended the conversation. Tombstone's thumb hovered above the gun selector switch on his stick. What…?
He looked up and saw a pair of sun-bright flares riding close together and side by side just above the dark shape of the Russian Bear. It took a moment for him to sort out what he was seeing, the twin tailpipes of another Tomcat flying just above the Russian bomber's cockpit. The steady vibration Tombstone had been feeling as his F-14 followed in the wake of the Bear's starboard engines changed. The Russian was throttling down, dropping slightly. Batman's F-14 descended with him.
"Like the man says," Batman's voice said over the channel. "Putting your nose in where it's not wanted could be hazardous to your health!"
"Snowball! Patch me through to that idiot on another frequency!"
"You got it, Skipper."
"Hunt Two, this is Hunt Leader! Break off! Get back out there on point!"
Copy, Hunt Leader," Batman said, his tone light, almost bantering. "Will comply. Looks like we showed this Bear who's boss."
The Bear continued to descend, still visible only as a black shape with red and green lights at nose, tail, and wingtips. After a moment, the Russian bomber raised its starboard wing slightly and ponderously swung onto a new heading.
"Target is coming to one-five-five, Tombstone," Snowball said.
Tombstone took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. His heart was pounding beneath his harness, and he could feel the slickness of sweat inside the palms of his gloves. The Russian's new heading was five degrees short of the course Tombstone had told him to take, an obvious declaration of "You can't tell us what to do." But one-five-five would still take the Bear well clear of the American fleet. American aircraft would continue to pace the Bear for a time, escorting it out of the area. Judging from past incidents of this sort, Tombstone doubted that the Soviets would try to approach the carrier group again.