"Sparrow first," Tombstone replied. It was an almost automatic decision. At five hundred pounds, Sparrows were a lot heavier than the Sidewinders, and the Tomcat picked up a weight bonus each time it loosed one. Phoenix missiles were bigger and heavier still… but expensive, and best saved for targets at longer range.
And like most Tomcat pilots, Tombstone did not fully trust the cranky Sparrows and wanted to hold his more reliable Sidewinders in reserve.
"Target," Snowball said, as Tombstone heard the warble of a target lock tone in his headset. "Lead bogie now at one-three miles."
"Batman, Tombstone. Let's sweep around to the left a bit."
"Two-three-two, affirmative." Batman's Tomcat, visible now as a tiny gray toy against the sky a mile up and almost two miles ahead, began slipping sideways across Tombstone's line of flight. Tombstone matched the maneuver, maintaining the separation between the two aircraft.
So he's in a snit, Tombstone thought. Let him be. He'll have targets enough any moment now. The range closed like lightning.
"I got visual!" said Price Taggart, in the 203 Tomcat. "Blue bandits! Blue bandits! Here they come…!"
"Launch, launch!" Batman said. "Two-three-two has visual on bandit launch."
"Confirmed," Malibu chimed in. "Two missiles inbound. Two-three-two, one-zero miles."
"Shotgun Leader to Homeplate. We have been fired upon. TACCAP engaging."
"Homeplate copies, Shotgun Leader," a voice replied. "You have weapons free-"
"Bandits! Bandits!" someone yelled over the radio. "We got new bandits, closing from three-one-one!"
"What… new bandits?" Tombstone asked.
"He's right, Stoney! I got 'em too! I make it… ten bogies at three-one-one, angels twenty, nine-zero miles. Closing at five hundred plus!"
"Three-one-one? Hell, that's behind us?"
"That's what I mean, Stoney! It's our friends out of Wonsan!"
In one blinding instant of realization, Tombstone saw the trap. Twelve North Korean fighters had vectored northeast out of Kosong to engage the American planes on their way back to the carrier. And while the F-14s were dog-fighting with the Kosong group, those MiGs waiting over Wonsan had followed, coming in from the rear.
The odds had suddenly turned much worse.
CHAPTER 14
Only minutes remained before the North Korean reinforcements would arrive. Tombstone listened for the warble of the Sparrow in his headphones. "I have tone."
"Shotgun Leader, Two-three-two!" Batman's voice carried the excitement now. "You have launch clearance. You're clear for launch."
Tombstone's finger came down on the firing button. "Fox one!"
The Sparrow dropped from the Tomcat's belly. To Tombstone it felt as though the aircraft was leaping into the sky. The missile had the appearance of a dazzling flare weaving toward the horizon on the end of a twisting column of white smoke.
"Good luck," Snowball said. "He's breaking right! Stay on him!"
Tombstone moved the stick right. The worst thing about Sparrows was their passive homing system; the firing aircraft had to keep the enemy spot-lit by its AWG-9 radar so that the Sparrow could track the target.
"Shit!" Snowball snapped. "Break left, Stoney. Left!"
The Tomcat rolled to port, right wing clawing the sky. Tombstone glimpsed a pinpoint of light, wavering as it streaked toward him.
"They've got radar lock!" Snowball yelled.
Tombstone held the Tomcat's rolling plunge, trading altitude for speed. The numbers on his HUD's altimeter reading trickled away… fifteen thousand feet… thirteen… eleven…
Firing the chaff dispenser with a vicious one-two-three stab of his thumb, he hauled back on the stick. Blackness closed in on him, narrowing his vision to a tiny blob of light as the 8-G pull-away drained the blood from his head. Something streaked past his starboard wing, moving too fast to focus on.
"Snowy!" He had to grunt hard to force each word out against the G-force. "Where's… missile?"
There was no answer from his RIO. The maneuver must have put Snowball to sleep. Tombstone rammed the throttles forward to full afterburner and clawed for altitude once more.
"Snowball! Wake the hell up back there!"
"Uh! I'm here! I'm here. What-"
"Where's that missile?"
There was a pause as the RIO worked his controls. "Gone! He missed us! Take bearing… take three-one-zero!"
Tombstone swung onto the new heading, still climbing. Above him the two squadrons, MiGs and Tomcats, were merging, interpenetrating, filling the sky with aircraft and the white crisscross of contrails.
Batman swung right, picking up speed in a shallow dive. The MiG he'd been eyeballing for Tombstone jinked hard to the left, falling away in a barrel roll as the Sparrow missile streaked toward it. The Sparrow missed wide and vanished into the blue, its lock broken by Tombstone's maneuver.
Other MiGs exploded past Batman's F-14, each pair locked in a rigid side-by-side formation the Americans called the welded wing. There was no time to line up a shot now, not with the targets so close, moving so fast. The best he could hope for was to slide past the enemy planes and come down behind them. In a dogfight, every pilot's goal was to get on the other guy's six, square in the rear and looking up his tailpipe.
He saw the flash as one of the oncoming MiGs launched a missile, saw the burning pinpoint of the missile's exhaust as it dipped, then began climbing toward him.
At close range, it would be a heat-seeker. Batman triggered a flare, then pulled back on the stick, hauling the F-14 into a vertical, twisting climb straight up.
Where is it, Malibu?"
"it went ballistic! We're clear!"
"All right! Let's rock 'n' roll!"
"Where's Tombstone, man?" Malibu shouted. "I lost him!"
"I don't know! Right now we have other things to worry about!" He brought the F-14 out of its climb, completing the Immelmann with a half-twist that brought them out two thousand feet above the Korean aircraft… and behind them.
"Wheeooo!" Malibu shouted. "This is what I call a target-rich environment!"
"Roger that!"
MiGs were everywhere, twelve of them now against eight American aircraft. The F-14s were swinging around behind the MiGs, locking on with heat-seeker AIM-9L Sidewinders, engaging in earnest now that the Koreans had upped the ante. There was a radioed chorus of "Fox two! Fox two!" from several of the pilots, and white contrails scrawled themselves across blue sky.
"Let's get in the game, Batman!"
"Right, Malibu. Can you see Tombstone?"
"Negative, negative. Was he hit?"
Ahead, there was a flash, and the delta wing shape of a MiG sprouted flame and a writhing coil of black smoke. The left wing crumpled, spilling fragments in a fiery spray. "Splash one MiG!" someone called over the radio. "Two-oh-four, splash one!"
"Watch it, Price. Two on your five!"
"Whatcha waiting for, Batman?" Malibu asked.
"I want to know where our wingie is!" Batman was twisting from side to side in the cockpit, searching the sea below. "Shotgun Leader, this is Tomcat Two-three-two. Where the hell are you, Tombstone?"
"Twelve-K and climbing, Batman," Tombstone's voice replied. Batman felt an inner surge of relief. For a moment he'd wondered if the gomer missile had connected. "Comin' back in."
"Roger that, Tombstone. Do you want assist? Over."
"Negative." The word was a grunt against high-Gs. "Engage… on your own!"
"Music to my ears." Another MiG burst into flame as a Sidewinder connected. "Right, Malibu! Let's goose it!" Batman said.
"We got at least ten more bogies inbound, three-one-oh at seven-zero miles."