"Then we've got time to lower the odds a bit more before they get here. Hang on!"
After the first pass, the MiG formation had scattered in every direction. Delta shapes twisted and turned in the cold, blue sky. Contrails crawled like scrawled writing far above the sea as aircraft jockied for position.
Batman heard the sharp, sometimes shrill bursts of the Americans' radio calls. "This is Two-two-one!" That was Tom Hoffner, running name Snake. "I got two on my tail! Two on my tail!"
"Hang on, Snake!" Dragon Ashly was Snake's wingman. "I'm on him!"
"Get him off, Dragon! Get him off!"
"Too close for missiles! Going' for guns!"
"I got one," Batman told Malibu. The F-14 nosed over, picking up speed as it entered the twisting cloud of fighters. "Lining him up!"
"Batman!" Hoffner yelled. "Help get this guy off me!"
"No joy! No joy!" Army's voice threatened to break with excitement or frustration. "Guns jammed! Break left, Snake! Break left!"
The chaos ahead resolved itself as Batman closed. An American F-14, tail number 221, rolled away to the left, a MiG-21 matching him roll for roll. A second Tomcat overshot the MiG, sweeping past both aircraft in an effort to line up for a shot.
Batman dropped into the slot above and behind the MiG just as the MiG fired. A white contrail arced forward from under the MiG's wing, sliding up the F-14's starboard tailpipe and detonating in a fiery blast. Batman saw fragments of the Tomcat's engine spraying in all directions as the aircraft dropped into a hard, spiraling roll.
"I'm hit! I'm hit!"
Mayday! Mayday! Tomcat Two-two-one is hit and going down!"
"Shit, Batman!" Malibu called. They got Snake!"
"And we'll nail the bastard who did it!" He slammed the engines to afterburner and rolled in for the kill.
It took Tombstone less than a minute to reenter the fight, but in aerial combat even thirty seconds was an eternity. He'd just dropped into swept-wing, high-speed configuration and was rocketing back into the battle when he heard the mayday call for Snake.
"This is Shotgun Leader!" he called. "Did our boys get clear?"
"Tomcat Two-oh-three." That was Ron "Mee" Taggart's aircraft. "Affirmative! I see one… correction! I see two chutes! Good chutes! Good chutes!"
"Copy, Two-oh-three! Homeplate, Homeplate, this is Shotgun Leader. We have two men down, good chutes. Request SAR, over."
"Copy, Shotgun Leader. Be advised ready helo has been deployed."
Tombstone banked left and looked down toward the sea. He could see the chutes himself now, a pair of white flecks drifting toward their own shadows on the blue-gray water.
"Ho, Tombstone!" Snowball yelled. "We got a pair of blue bandits, zero-four-five, range one mile!"
He whipped his head around. "I see 'em. How much longer before the gomer cavalry gets here?"
"Range now five-one miles, Tombstone. Maybe four minutes."
Four minutes. Tombstone was genuinely torn. He could take a shot at the MiGs approaching from Wonsan now with his long-ranged Phoenix missile. But lining up the shot and locking on would take time, and his squadron needed help now.
His second decision was harder. Snake and his RIO Zombie were in the drink. Memories of losing Coyote and Mardi Gras surfaced, painful and sharp. Should he rejoin the squadron or circle the downed flyers until the SAR helo arrived?
Rugged as the choice was, he actually had little option. His running mates were outnumbered and needed every weapon they could muster for the fight. As had been the case with Coyote and Mardi Gras, there wasn't much he could do for Snake and Zombie now.
"Okay, Snowy! First things first!" He swung the Tomcat into a broad turn, sweeping in on the tails of the pair of MiGs to the northeast. "C'mon… c'mon." The pipper on his HUD tilted toward the right-hand MiG. Both Korean aircraft were turning now, twisting to starboard in an attempt to cut past Tombstone's line of flight and spoil his shot. "Lock, damn you…"
Batman held the stick hard over, tracking the MiG as it tried to turn away from him. The square of his targeting pipper slowly tracked across the HUD until it closed with the target. There was a flicker as the square became a circle, ringing the fleeing MiG and tagging it with a small "M" for "missile."
"Yeah!" Malibu shouted. "Target lock!"
Batman heard the warble in his headset. "Got him. Surprise, you gomer son of a bitch." He touched the launch trigger. "Fox two!"
The Sidewinder dropped from the Tomcat on a trail of white smoke, hung suspended beneath the wings for a moment, then rocketed ahead with a rush which left Batman's F-14 standing still. Warned, possibly, by his wingman, the North Korean aircraft began pulling up, but too soon, too soon.
"He's jinking, Batman!"
"Yeah, he screwed it. You can run, son, but you cannot hide!"
"Watch it, man. I think you made him mad!"
The MiG pilot kicked in his afterburner. It was exactly the wrong thing to do.
"The Wonsan group is closing, Admiral," CAG said. "At least ten aircraft… probably more if they're using welded wing. Looks like it was a setup."
"I agree. They figured to catch our bombers while our TACCAP was engaged to the south."
"Admiral, I recommend we let the F/A-18s engage."
"The A-6s still need cover."
"We could detach one squadron. VFA-173 can shepherd the Intruders home. VFA-161 can drop their loads and mix it up."
"Approved. Your show, CAG."
Marusko nodded. An aide handed him a microphone, which he held to his mouth. "Marauder Leader, Marauder Leader, this is Homeplate. Do you copy, over?"
Commander Marty "Frenchie" French's voice came over the CIC speakers. "Hornet Three-oh-one copies, Homeplate. Go ahead."
"You've got friends coming in from Wonsan. Javelins are clear to execute ordnance release and engage."
"Copy, Homeplate. We'll show the turkeys how it's done."
CAG and Admiral Magruder exchanged smiles. "Turkey" was a less than complimentary Naval aviator's slang term for the large and heavy F-14 Tomcats.
There was nothing the Hornet pilots would enjoy more than showing up their Tomcat rivals.
"Okay, Javelins," Deputy CAG French said. "Let's declare war on Greenpeace!"
French touched the weapons release switch and felt his Hornet leap into the sky as ten thousand pounds of ordnance dropped away, "bombing whales" as aviators referred to it, which explained the jibe at Greenpeace. The international conservation group had crossed swords and lawyers with the U.S. Navy more than once over issues like Trident missile tests and nuclear weapons aboard ships, and dropping bombs into open ocean was jokingly viewed by Naval aviators as retaliation.
"Damn the whales!" Lieutenant Gary Grabiak misquoted. "Full speed ahead!"
Jettisoning the Hornets' stores was wasteful necessity. The F/A-18s, faster, smaller, and more maneuverable than the Tomcats flying cover, had been loaded down with two-thousand-pound Mark 84 bombs, Maverick missiles, and Rockeye ordnance clusters which made ACM impossible. By dropping all of their air-to-ground weapons into the sea, however, they could now engage in the dogfight that was developing above and behind them. Each Hornet carried only two Sidewinders in wingtip pylons, but those, together with their M61 20-mm cannon, would be more than enough to even the odds against the outnumbered American aircraft. The A-6 Intruders, relatively helpless in a dogfight, would continue flying low and slow on a straight line back toward the Jefferson with the F/A-18s of VFA-173 as escort.