One by one, the Hornets of VFA-161 reported their ordnance cleared.
"Right, Javelins," Marty said. "Time to turn and burn!"
The nimble, twin-tailed single-seater vaulted skyward under his touch, afterburner flaring.
Tombstone was concentrating so hard on the MiG symbol crawling just ahead of the targeting pipper on his HUD that he almost didn't see the second MiG, barreling in at him head to head. In a flash, a dot hovering at the edge of visibility to his left suddenly swelled into the delta-winged angles of a North Korean MiG.
"Yow!" Snowball yelled into the intercom as Tombstone broke hard to the right. The two aircraft passed each other a scant hundred feet apart with a combined speed of better than Mach 2. Though the encounter lasted but a fraction of a second, Tombstone had the feeling that time was dragging out in a surreal slow motion. He had time to observe every detail of the other plane as it passed, wing down and cockpit dipped toward him, the twisting patterns of the green and brown camouflage paint scheme, the red star on a red-and-blue-bordered white disk on wings and tail. Tombstone could see the other pilot, head twisted around to look back at him. For that frozen instant, two pilots stared at each other across a narrow gulf, the shock of recognition, of unreality almost palpable.
"Tally-ho!" Tombstone yelled. "I'm on him!"
He'd lost his chance at the first MiG, so now he went for the second, holding the Tomcat in its hard-right twist, dropping his right wing sharply until he was in a hard six-G inverted turn. Snowball's breath rasped at him over the intercom in short, hard puffs. He lost sight of the enemy MiG for a moment, then reacquired it as he came out of the turn. The North Korean plane was a tiny speck over a mile away, turning hard from right to left across Tombstone's nose.
He let the F-14 drop, hauling the stick back to the left as he slipped into a split-S to bring him around and onto the MiG's tail. He concentrated on his heads-up display, watching the pipper close with the HUD's target symbol. The enemy MiG was trying to duck inside Tombstone's turn. The guy had almost made it too, but he'd put just a bit too much space between Tombstone's aircraft and his own before he made his move.
"Bad move, pal." Tombstone thumbed the firing switch and a Sidewinder streaked from under his port wing. "Fox two! Fox two!"
"Aw, for cryin' out loud, Tombstone! You didn't have a lock…!"
Tombstone realized the mistake the instant his finger closed on the firing switch. Too eager, he'd triggered the Sidewinder just an instant before its sensors had locked on the target. The heat seeker streaked into the cold air now, passing well behind the MiG and into emptiness.
For Batman, it seemed to take forever for the burning contrail of his Sidewinder to crawl the distance between his Tomcat and the targeted MiG. When the enemy pilot cut in his afterburners, though, Batman knew he had him.
Twisting as he climbed, the MiG pilot was attempting to break contact with the missile with an immelmann, flipping onto his back and then righting with a half roll. The missile followed with grim and inhumanly precise determination.
The Korean pilot must have known that death was stalking him. At the last possible moment, a dazzling pinpoint of light dropped away from the fleeing MiG, trailing behind on a streamer of smoke and falling. The Sidewinder, racing up from below, wavered for an instant as though trying to make up its tiny electronic mind. But the MiG's afterburners decided the matter. The Sidewinder ignored the flare and slid smoothly up the MiG's tailpipe.
There was a flash, and then flames were boiling from the rear half of the stricken Korean jet. The tail vanished in a fireball of exploding fuel. The remnants of the aircraft were transformed into a tumbling mass of flaming wreckage, arcing out of the sky on the end of a billowing pillar of black smoke. There was no parachute, no sign that the pilot had been able to eject.
"Splash one MiG!" Batman yelled, the excitement welling up from inside as sharp, as intense as a sexual release. "Splash one MiG!"
Malibu screeched a rebel yell on the tactical frequency. "Way to go, compadre! You hear that, everybody? Chalk one for Two-three-two! Batman got his kill!"
Batman spun his Tomcat into a tight roll, a victory roll, and watched sun, sea, and sky whip around him.
The MiG was breaking left, slipping clear of Tombstone's targeting pipper and circling inside the F-14's turning radius. Tombstone still couldn't believe he'd missed.
"Tombstone!" Snowball called. "What's the matter? Tombstone!"
"Nothing!" He pulled the F-14 left. The MiG was trying to get on his six, and Tombstone went into a tight turn to counter the move.
"Shotgun Leader, this is Homeplate," CAG's voice called over the radio. "Be advised that the Javelins have dropped their stores and are joining the party."
"Roger that," Tombstone replied. Where was that MiG? Damn, that guy could turn! "Listen up, Shotguns," he said. "We've got friendlies inbound. Don't get trigger happy and mistake them for MiGs."
"Shotgun Lead, this is Two-five-one."
Tomcat 251 was Lieutenant Gary "Dragon" Ashly's aircraft. Snake had been his wingman. "Go ahead, Two-five-one."
"Leader, I have Snake and Zombie spotted. Request permission to drop to the deck and cover them."
Tombstone checked with Snowball before replying. The radar picture was confused, and made more so by the Americans' own jamming efforts, but it appeared that the Tomcats were holding the Kosong squadron and could continue to do so until the Hornets arrived.
And the Hornets and Tomcats together would be able to take the Wonsan squadron once they arrived. "Roger, Two-five-one." It was what he'd wanted to do himself as soon as Hoffner had been shot down. His own guilt over Coyote was still riding him. "You're CAP for Snake and Zombie until SAR gets here."
"Much obliged, Tombstone. Two-five-one is going on the deck."
Tombstone checked his clock. It would be another twenty minutes before the SAR helo arrived, and 251 could refuel off a Texaco if he started to run dry…
If he could keep from screwing up again, Tombstone thought, they might just pull out of this thing in one piece.
Major Pak Dae-Lee scowled through his visor at the smeared, green-on-black hash on his radar screen. The MiG's radar, what the Americans called Jay Bird, was rugged and reliable but not particularly powerful. There were American electronic warfare aircraft in the area, the EA-6B aircraft called Prowlers, which could lay down a blanket of electronic interference that was almost impossible to see through unless you were right on top of the target.
Getting right on top of the target was precisely what Pak planned to do.
Major Pak represented the elite of his country's air force. Two years at Dushanbe and Moscow as a student, two years more with a training cadre instructing Libyan pilot trainees, and thousands of hours flying with his own countrymen had made him the very best of his country's air warriors.
He had proven that two days earlier, when his flight had jumped the American Tomcats off Wonsan. It was his missile which had opened the dogfight, his missile which had downed a Yankee interceptor. The memory of that victory drove him forward now, as Star Attack Group rocketed across the Yonghung Man in pursuit of the American planes.
As much as anything else, Pak craved recognition. He pictured the smug self-assurance, the patronizing smiles, the condescending attitudes of his Soviet instructors during his tour at Dushanbe. The unspoken, often the spoken, assumption of his Russian instructors had been that "foreign slant-eyes" like Pak were adequate as pilots… but nothing more.