Batman Wayne didn’t like the edge in the squadron leader’s voice. The Soviets simply weren’t backing off, and Grant was sounding more and more frustrated with the situation. Would the Russians force the Americans to fire the first shots? Did they want to start a war?
He keyed in his radio. “Redwing Leader, Redwing Leader, this is Ajax Leader. Don’t worry ‘bout a thing, Coyote. We’re coming up fast.”
“One minute thirty,” Malibu chimed in from the backseat, all business. “Screen’s still empty except for our boys and their guests.”
“Keep watching them, Mal,” Batman said. He switched frequencies. “Ajax Flight, let’s show these gate-crashers what we do when we find unwelcome visitors.” He thought back to the intercept he’d done before. “Big D, you and the Loon take the left. Go for weapons locks on the Bear. Make ‘em sweat a little. Tyrone, you and me are gonna play tag with the number-two MiG. Got it?”
“We’re on it, Caped Crusader!” That was Lieutenant Commander Dallas Sheridan, “Big D,” flying Tomcat 212. His aircraft peeled off, followed closely by Lieutenant Adam “Loon” Baird in number 205. “We’ll be all over that guy like ugly on my mother-in-law!”
“Let’s show the Commies what a real aviator can do!” Powers added. “They’ll never know what hit ‘em!”
“Just remember the ROES, children,” Batman said, mostly for the benefit of Powers and Cavanaugh. Even though they’d done a good job in the encounter Monday night he still regarded Powers as a potential troublemaker. The man wanted to score a kill, and Batman was afraid he’d get too eager. He could remember how it had felt when he’d been looking for his first ACM kill. “Do not fire unless fired upon, or until you get the Weapons Free call from the Jeff.”
“Yes, Mother,” Sheridan’s RIO, Lieutenant j.g. Edward “Fast Eddie” Glazowski, replied. “We’ll be good.”
Under the lighthearted banter there was an underlying seriousness. These men knew what was at stake today. After years of training for just this kind of confrontation, it was still hard to believe that they were so close to the brink this time.
“One minute, Batman,” Malibu announced quietly.
He tightened his grip on the stick and swallowed.
“Damn it, why don’t they let us do something?” Koslosky muttered. He was maintaining the Tomcat’s position above the Bear, but so far there was no sign that the Russians were willing to turn back. By now they would know about the four new fighters from Ajax Flight, and that hadn’t seemed to change things either.
“Stay frosty, kid,” Kirshner advised him.
Koslosky fumed. It seemed like everyone from the admiral down to his own RIO was letting the Russians get away with murder just because things were hot in Norway. He knew how the Soviets operated … hell, everybody knew. They would push as hard and as far as they could just to see how much they could get away with, but the first time they faced really determined opposition they caved in. That had been the story of the whole Cold War era. It had led to the end of the Wall and the retreat of the Red Army from Eastern Europe into the Russian heartland.
“The hell with this,” he said aloud. With a quick movement he banked the Tomcat right, standing it on one wing and letting the plane lose altitude. He’d give that Bear pilot the fright of his life. Then they’d see how long the Russians ignored the carrier’s exclusion zone!
“Jesus!” Kirshner swore. “What the hell’re you doing, Kos?”
“Trust me, Wild Card,” he said with a grin. “I’m just raising them another few dollars.”
His hands worked the stick and the throttles deftly, settling the fighter close alongside the huge reconnaissance plane’s starboard wing. It was a tricky maneuver, but nothing he couldn’t handle. Sliding up to a tanker for a midair refueling was no more hazardous than this. Slowly he edged his speed up so the Tomcat would pull forward alongside of the cockpit. Koslosky grinned again, his mind flashing back to the scene from the movie Top Gun where the hero had inverted his Tomcat a few feet over an enemy plane. There was no room for that kind of bravado out here … but you could make your point clearly enough just by crowding the opposition a little. Tomcat and Bear edged closer together.
“New American aircraft have split up,” the electronics officer reported nervously. “Comrade Captain-Lieutenant, if they are serious about exclusion zone we will be easy targets.”
Captain-Lieutenant Viktor Petrovich Kolibernov had been thinking the same thing. It was easy enough for the Boishoi Chirey, the “Big Boys” who gave the orders, to claim that the Americans would never initiate hostilities. Things looked different from the cockpit of an antiquated Tu-95 with a swarm of American fighters closing in.
He realized he was sweating. Kolibemov wiped his forehead with one gloved hand and then reached up to adjust the large fan positioned above the right side of his seat. He darted a glance at the copilot, but if Lieutenant Adriashenko realized how nervous his commanding officer was he gave no sign of it.
Much as Kolibemov wanted to back off before the Americans got any more persistent, his instructions were specific and allowed him no freedom of action. If he deviated from the reconnaissance mission now, he would have to be ready to face the consequences back at Olenegersk. Captain-lieutenants were not supposed to take that kind of decision on themselves without a very good reason.
“Weapons lock! Weapons lock!” The electronics officer’s voice rose an octave. “They have a lock on us!”
Kolibemov hesitated. In ten years of flying maritime reconnaissance patrols Kolibemov had never felt so close to the edge before. He could finally understand how his father had felt when he served as an officer aboard one of the freighters that had tried to run the American blockade of Cuba back in the tense days of the Missile Crisis. Knowing that if both sides persisted on this course the only result could be war, perhaps the total war of nuclear annihilation. And for all the talk of glasnost and perestroika and the end of the age of confrontations, history was repeating itself again.
“Fuck it!” he said suddenly, wrenching the steering yoke to starboard. He wasn’t going to give the Americans an excuse to start something, no matter what the orders said. Next to him Adriashenko was gaping at him in disbelief.
“Look out! Look out!” someone shouted. Too late Kolibemov saw the American F-14 to starboard.
Too late …
Koslosky felt the Bear brush against the Tomcat’s wing, a jarring impact that drove the F-14’s wingtip downward with a screech of crumpled metal. He cursed and jerked his stick hard over, ramming the throttles full forward to afterburner zone five. The fighter shuddered as it turned, bucking like a Wild horse. He fought for control, but the combination of the Bear’s impact and the abrupt acceleration he’d applied to get clear made it that much harder to keep from falling into an uncontrolled spin.
“Shit!” Kirshner yelled. “You idiot!”
He ignored the RIO and wrestled with the stick. “Tomcat Two-oh-eight,” he announced on the radio. “He hit me! I’m hit!” The aircraft plunged toward the angry gray sea.
Powers heard Koslosky’s shout in his headphones. “I’m hit!”
“Goddamn!” he yelled. “They’ve hit Koslosky! The goddamned Russkies have opened fire!”
Don’t fire unless fired upon … Though he hadn’t seen the attack, Koslosky’s plane had been hit. That scrapped all the Rules of Engagement. The American aviators were in a whole new ball game now … one where speed and reaction time counted most. Victory in air-to-air combat went to the pilots who were quickest to acquire their targets and get off their shots.