Batman saw the SAM from the destroyer detonate alongside the Intruder, but there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. He'd plunged into the furball and taken down two MiGs in quick succession, but then a Fulcrum had dropped out of the sky like a hawk with talons extended. Tracers drifted past the left side of his canopy and he jinked right, then jinked left again, unable to break the MiG's lock on his tail.
"Two-one" sounded in his headset. "This is Two-three!"
"Brewer! Where are you? I can't shake this guy!"
"I'm on him! When I tell you, break right!"
Batman winced at the thud-thud-thud of a trio of shells slamming into his fuselage. "Do it! Do it!"
"Three… two… one… break!"
Brewer had been angling for a clear shot with her last Sidewinder missile, but the MiG had been riding so hard on Batman's tail she couldn't get a clear shot, one that would nail the Russian without accidentally locking onto Batman's engines. When he broke hard right, however, he slipped clear of her targeting pipper and the AIM-9M system signaled a lock on the MiG.
"Fox two!"
The Fulcrum was already into its starboard turn, still dogging Batman, when the missile slammed into its right engine and detonated. Flame spilled from the MiG's tail… and then the Russian's fuel tanks detonated into blossoming orange flame.
"Great shot, Brewer!" Batman called.
"That makes the score six-to-six, dead even, Batman!"
"Listen, babe! After that shot, we concede. Right, Malibu?"
"That's affirmative," Malibu agreed. "Beer and dinner're on us!"
She laughed. "Who're you calling 'babe,' fella?"
"Anyone who handles a Tomcat like that is one hot babe. Where's Stoney?"
"I got him," Pogie said. "One-eight-five at angels one. He's got troubles."
"Let's help him! Two-one's in!"
"Two-three," Brewer added. "We're in!"
A Fulcrum had dropped in behind Tombstone for a high, plunging attack.
He'd countered by pulling into a steep climb, rolling left. Inverted now, he looked down through the top of his canopy at the Russian plane passing beneath. Damn! Now it was climbing, rolling into a maneuver identical to his.
Rolling out over the top of his climb, Tombstone tried to line up a hasty shot with his guns, but the MiG pilot had already broken into his own climb, forcing Tombstone to overshoot and pass cockpit-to-cockpit beneath the rolling Fulcrum.
The two aircraft were now locked in a deadly maneuver called a rolling vertical scissors, each plane in turn trying to line up on the other, only to have the target evade its diving approach with an inverted roll. Each repeat of the maneuver cost both fighters airspeed and altitude. The altitude ladder on Tombstone's HUD showed seven hundred feet now, and still the two aircraft were rolling around one another, each trying for the upper ― and final ― hand, neither able to disengage without giving the other an immediate advantage.
"Stoney!" Tomboy warned. "Watch your altitude!"
"I see it!"
They'd just plain run out of sky. A mountain, black rock patched with ice and snow, loomed ahead and Tombstone cut left and high to clear it. The MiG-29 tried to copy the maneuver, pulling nose high…
… and slammed into the cliff.
"Way to go, CAG!" Tomboy yelled.
Tombstone rolled out, afterburners thundering, fighting for altitude…
… and then the Tomcat's left wing disintegrated in a blaze of fire.
The shock was so sudden, so unexpected, that it took a moment for Tombstone to realize what had happened. Another MiG had been hanging back throughout those repeated vertical scissors, waiting for a chance to fire, and when Tombstone had broken left, he'd given the guy a perfect shot with a heatseeking AA-8 Aphid.
The crippled Tomcat, still climbing, went into a gentle roll, streaming flame. "That's it, Tomboy!" he called to his RIO. "We're punching out!"
"Go! Go!"
"Eject!" He yanked on the ring. The canopy blew away, filling his universe with roaring, thundering wind. Then the thunder of his ejection seat rocket drowned even that, and he was hurtling out into chill, empty sky.
The snow-patched Russian tundra spun crazily about Tombstone's head.
CHAPTER 30
"Tombstone's been hit!" Coyote called. "I see him," Cat said. "Two chutes! Two good chutes!"
"Thank God. Batman! Brewer! Where are you?"
"We're on the guy that flamed CAG," Brewer replied. "Shit, too close!
Goin' for guns!"
"Two-three, Two-one! I've got the shot! Clear!"
"You've got it. Breaking left!"
"I'm on him! Splash one MiG!"
"Look at that sucker burn!"
Coyote circled right, scanning the ground below. The sudden appearance of the three Tomcats seemed to have scattered the Russian MiGs. "Cat! Where are the bad guys?"
"On the run, Coyote. I think they've had enough!"
"Okay. Did you see where Tombstone landed?"
"Negative. Negative. There's too much smoke."
"Okay. We'll circle back. Hang on."
"Don't die on me, Sunshine!" Willis yelled, his voice raw. "Damn it, don't die on me!"
A hole the size of his fist had been punched through the starboard side of the aircraft, just below the canopy and just behind Sunshine's ejection seat. Air screamed past the hole, and the Intruder shuddered heavily.
Something was wrong with his starboard control surfaces too. He couldn't see through the smashed canopy at Sunshine's side, but he suspected he'd taken some pretty bad damage to his right wing.
Bracing the stick between his knees, he turned in his seat, trying to find out where all the blood was coming from.
There. The front of Sunshine's flight suit and undergarment had been torn open just over her right breast. He could see the thumb-sized, ragged hole in her chest, centered in a patch of blood-smeared skin. The blood was frothing with bubbles.
The Intruder thumped hard and Willis had to turn away, concentrating for the moment on his flying. He was at a thousand feet now, well above the hills, on a roughly northeastern course, back toward the coast. With the aircraft stable again, he returned to his clumsy examination of his bombardier/navigator.
That hole in her chest was an exit wound. Something must have spit through her ejection seat and up into her right side. Pulling off his left glove, he reached around in front of her, probing her side. There it was, a hole as big around as his finger three inches below her right armpit. He felt broken ribs grate as he pushed against it. She groaned, then choked. He reached up and pulled her mask off. The oxygen would do her no good if she drowned in her own blood, and there was a lot of it on her face, leaking from her nose and mouth.
That bubbling blood in her chest wound meant her lung had been shot through ― which was obvious enough from the trajectory of the shrapnel. A sucking chest wound would collapse her lung in seconds, would kill her in minutes if he didn't plug it tight.
With a blood-slicked hand, he unzipped his flight suit's shoulder pocket, then fumbled for the pack of cigarettes inside. Quickly, he stripped off the cellophane wrapper, discarded the cigarettes, and tore the now-slippery cellophane in half. One half he pressed down across Sunshine's chest wound.