“No, sir. Not at all.” She stood, and started to leave.
Gator held out his hand. “Welcome aboard again, Ensign. It’s good to see you again, and I’m extremely impressed with what you’ve accomplished. I’ve looked at your transcripts from the Naval Academy — outstanding, simply outstanding. If you’ve got half the smarts in the air that you’ve got on the ground, you’re going to be a real asset.”
“Count on it, sir,” she shot back. A grin broke out on her face. “And it’s a real treat to be back here, especially with you and the XO.”
After that introduction and her first meeting with Bird Dog in the ready room, she expected a casual approach to check flight. But from the moment they commenced a preflight brief in the ready room, quizzing her on the rules for avoiding incidents with the Russian task force to the north, through the preflight checklist and the start-up checklist, then right on through the cat shot, both men have been… well, cold wouldn’t be exactly the right word, but there was certainly none of the easiness she’d expected. She was acutely aware of both Bird Dog and Gator watching every move. Even Bird Dog’s RIO seemed to be taking notes, and he was only four months ahead of her.
But that was four months of experience that she didn’t have. Yet.
The preflight had gone well, as had her taxi to the catapult. Once on the catapult, she felt the butterflies start. After all, it wasn’t like she had all that many launches under her belt.
The flight deck technician gave her the final hand signal to check her control surfaces. When he saw everything cycle as required, he snapped off a sharp salute. Already full power, she returned the salute. The catapult officer dropped to the deck and pointed forward.
A hammer slammed her in the back. The Tomcat raced down the catapult and seconds later she was airborne.
Behind her, she heard Gator give a sigh of relief. She didn’t take it personally — RIOs were like that. The most common fatal error on a cat shot wasn’t anything she had control over — it was a soft cat, insufficient steam power at the shuttle that would result in the aircraft failing to attain takeoff speed and dribbling off the end of the deck. If they were to launch under insufficient steam pressure, she would have only microseconds to punch them out, and even that was fraught with dangers. In a low altitude ejection, there was a serious risk that their chutes would fail to open, that they would be ejected onto the flight deck, or that the chute would open, drag her under the ship, and become entangled in one of the ship’s four propellers.
Elf put the Tomcat into a hard turn, banking away from the Jefferson. As she came around the ship, sun glinted off her superstructure and off the gentle swells. The cruiser and frigates were standing well off, more than 10,000 yards away.
As she ascended, Elf’s radar picked up a close formation of ships to the north. At this range, the radar blips were so close together that it was almost impossible to make out individual contacts. It was the Russian task force, still staying well clear of the Jefferson but now only one hundred miles to the north. She noted they were steaming southwest.
For the next twenty minutes after launch, it was as though Gator was conducting an accelerated review of everything she had learned in the last eighteen months. They went from basic flight maneuvers to formation flying, then aerobatics. Finally, when he was satisfied that she knew the performance characteristics of the aircraft, he said, “Bird Dog, you’re now a MiG. Get lost.” With that, he flipped off the input to her heads-up display, or HUD.
Bird Dog peeled off. She tried to watch where he went, but he wheeled around behind her, and Gator ordered her to maintain straight and level flight. Twenty seconds later, her HUD snapped back on and Gator said, “Okay, kid. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
She quickly surveyed the contacts on her screen, and immediately pinpointed the one that was likely to be Bird Dog. It was outside commercial air patterns and routes, and it was behind and above her.
“Talk to me, Elf,” Gator ordered. “I want to hear what you’re thinking as well as see what you’re doing.”
“That’s probably him,” she said, designating the radar lozenge she believed was Bird Dog’s aircraft as a possible hostile contact. The symbol changed, indicating her assignment. “He’s breaking for a mode four, although that could be a Brit in the area as well.” Mode four was the classified, encrypted portion of IFF, or international friend or foe. If aircraft or a surface ship radiated mode four, it was proof positive that it had the correct friendly gear loaded with the correct daily crypto codes.
“And mode three?” Gator prompted.
“Can’t use it, sir. In a real situation, they’d have it turned off anyway.” Mode three indicated the type and nationality of a contact, but mode three could be changed inside the cockpit.
“Okay. So what are your plans, assuming you’re right?” Gator asked.
The answer rolled out of her mouth easily, although both knew that translating knowledge into the actual practice was a horse of a different color. “The MiG’s performance characteristics make it tighter on turns, so I’ll want to avoid overshooting him. The Tomcat has a superior power-to-wing ratio, making me better in climbs. Right now, he’s above me, so I’m going to want to break out and climb, and then try to come into position behind him?”
“But he can turn tighter than you can,” Gator said. “What makes you think you can get in behind him?”
“I probably can’t in two dimensions — or, at least, it’s difficult to do in a one-on-one. If I had a wingman, that would be a different story. So, I can’t work in two dimensions, I have to work in three. That means I either have to break behind him, going head-on while I climb, or try to gain altitude quickly before he can turn in behind me.”
“Let’s see you do it.”
Elf slammed the throttles forward into afterburner, clicking past the detente. The Tomcat responded immediately, slamming her back against her ejection seat. She heard a grunt of protest from Gator in the back.
“Damn pilots. You’re all alike,” Gator said, forcing the words out against the G forces.
Both she and Bird Dog had been heading in a general southerly direction. As the afterburner kicked in, she started climbing, banking around in an eastern direction as she did so. She rolled the Tomcat slightly to keep him in visual range. “Watch him, RIO,” she said calmly. “Tell me the second he starts turning.”
“Turning now,” Gator answered.
The acceleration was building now, and Elf eased off slightly on her rate of ascent. The powerful Tomcat would put more vertical distance between the two of them, and she needed the time to move to position. In an out-and-out run for the money, the MiG could keep up.
At the same time, she had to trade some horizontal distance to increase her vertical distance. She watched her heads-up display, noting that Bird Dog was descending slightly, intending to slip in behind her at exactly the right moment.
“He’s got a lock on you,” Gator said. He then favored her with his own imitation of the ESM warning buzzer.
“Chaff, flares” she said. She rolled the Tomcat hard to the right, clearing the area as chaff and flares spit out from the belly of the fuselage.
She heard Gator swearing behind her again. “Damn, it’s bad enough I have to put up with it from Bird Dog. Could you give me a little warning at least, the next time you try to pull a maneuver like that?”
“Warning,” she said calmly, and snapped the Tomcat back into a hard turn. She’d seen on her heads-up display that Bird Dog was now boring straight in on her, intending to take a second shot. She hit the afterburners again, accelerating their rate of closure to well over 1,000 miles an hour. And increasing.