“Gotcha! I’ve got our boy nailed, compadre. Bearing zero-four-one, range eighty-three miles. He’s down on the deck. A hundred, maybe a hundred fifty feet.”
“Nice going, Malibu,” Batman replied over the ICS. He switched to his radio. “You got him, Tyrone?”
“Affirmative,” Powers replied tersely. The young pilot seemed determined to fly the mission strictly by the book.
“Hey, this dude’s really trying to catch a bodacious wave,” Malibu interjected. “He gets any lower and they’ll be scraping fish off the front of that thing.”
“Trying to duck our radar,” Batman said. “And maybe sucker us into taking a bath if we try to buzz him. Listen up, Tyrone. The Russkies always get a big laugh when they con some capitalist nugget like you into hitting water. You watch your altitude and keep it cool, got it?”
“Roger, Leader,” the other pilot replied.
Tyrone’s RIO, Lieutenant William “Ears” Cavanaugh, spoke up. “I’ve got the bastard too.” He gave a dry chuckle. “Don’t worry, Batman, I’ll keep the kid out of trouble.” True to standard practice, Cavanaugh was an experienced hand teamed with one of the squadron’s rookies. But Batman had seen the RIO in action during the intensive air wing training program at NAS Fallon in Nevada before deploying to the carrier. Ears was a topnotch RIO, but sometimes he was a little too eager.
“Question is, who’ll keep you out of trouble, Ears?” Batman responded. He didn’t give the others a chance to answer him. “Tango Two-fiver, Hound Two-oh-four. We’ve got him on our scopes. Going in to have a look.”
“Roger, Two-oh-four,” came the reply from the Hawkeye. There was a pause. “Mind your ROES, boys. It ain’t a shooting war.”
“Not yet,” Batman muttered. Ever since his first combat experience off North Korea he had mistrusted the limitations set by the Rules of Engagement. They had been designed to keep overeager pilots from precipitating an international incident in the heat of a tense encounter. But they also had the effect of hamstringing those same aviators. Often in modern air combat the first one to lock on and launch was the winner, and when the ROEs said not to fire unless fired upon …
Against the sort of opposition the United States had met in the past — the Libyans in the Gulf of Sidra, for example — it didn’t matter so much. Technological and doctrinal superiority had allowed American pilots to survive enemy attacks and come back swinging. But against first-class Soviet opposition the same might not be true. If the Russians planned on starting something this flight might be Batman’s last.
The dark thoughts flashed through Batman’s mind in an instant, but all he said aloud was, “Roger, Tango Two-fiver.”
He dropped the Tomcat into a sharp bank and started the descent. The Bear was low, but the Russians had underestimated the accuracy of American radar surveillance. Thank God for the Hawkeye, Batman thought. Without the E-2C the Russians might have been able to get much closer before they were spotted.
Bears were archaic by modern standards, but the Bear-D reconnaissance bird was still a deadly threat. That wasn’t so much because of the weaponry it could carry, but rather because it could help more sophisticated Badgers or Blackjacks to get a fix on American ships without exposing themselves to detection. And a Badger armed with stand-off missiles could play havoc with the battle group in a matter of minutes.
Each Bear hunt had to be treated as if it was the real thing. And if the reports from Norway were true, tonight the threat was worse than ever before.
He could feel the huge Soviet aircraft long before he saw it. The low, steady rumble of the plane’s four Kuznetsov turboprops shook the night sky like distant thunder. He strained to see ahead, looking for some sign.
“Tally-ho!” The old aviator’s hunting call came over the radio. Excitement made Tyrone’s voice shrill. “Eleven o’clock, Batman, and right down on the deck!”
Batman spotted it then, the constellation of red and green navigation lights that marked the Soviet plane. A red beacon strobed its anticollision warning. At least the Bear wasn’t coming in blacked out. That counted for something.
“Tango Two-fiver, Hound Two-oh-four. We have visual on the bandit! Closing now.”
“Two-oh-four, this is Domino.” That was CAG’s voice, relayed by the Hawkeye from Jefferson. “Go easy, but let that guy know he’s not welcome here.”
“Roger, Domino,” Batman replied. “Tyrone, hang back and cover me. Stay one mile out.”
“Roger,” came the laconic reply. Powers was shaping up as a steady hand after all.
Batman turned to port and circled lazily around the Bear, crossing the turbulence of the larger aircraft’s slipstream and falling into place alongside. Batman fought to control his heartbeat and breathing. He was in easy range of the Russian’s NR-23 cannons, and all it would take was one slip to turn this from a routine encounter to the first shots of World War III.
“Remember the time off Korea,” Malibu warned. “They’ll probably hit their searchlight.”
The reminder came just in time. A blinding lance of light shot out from the searchlight mounting near the tail section, enveloping the Tomcat’s cockpit. Batman kept his eyes averted and blinked hard.
Often in night encounters the Russians would illuminate their own plane with the searchlight. It helped avoid misjudged distances and accidental collisions. But within seconds Batman knew that wasn’t their intention this time around.
The light held the Tomcat’s cockpit, challenging, probing.
“Picking up emissions from Big Bulge,” Malibu said. That was the NATO code name for the ship-targeting radar system mounted in the oversized teardrop-shaped housing on the belly of the Bear. It was useless for air-to-air work. The only reason to use Big Bulge was to find surface ships … and maybe steer stand-off missiles toward them.
Batman muttered a curse and rolled sideways, increasing speed slightly to clear the searchlight beam. He steadied the Tomcat back on course even closer to the Bear than before, close enough to see dark figures at the windows of the cockpit and the tail section. They could see him as well.
He held up two fingers, then five, eight, and finally a clenched fist, the signal that he wanted to talk on Channel 258.0. That was common enough in a Bear hunt. In times past crews had exchanged comments, questions, even jokes.
But the only response from the Russian was another light show. Were they deliberately trying to blind him, or were they just trying to take pictures? Photographs from encounters like these had helped both sides learn about the planes their opponents flew, but this didn’t feel like a photo session to Batman. They were doing their best to make things tough for him.
Batman pulled his stick over sharply to port and shoved his throttle to afterburner zone five. The Tomcat surged up and to the left, crossing in front of and above the Bear’s cockpit. He could imagine the Soviet pilot scrambling to avoid the danger.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered Tombstone’s admonishment so long ago. He was risking it all.
He cut power and circled again, watching the Bear warily. “Got anything, Malibu?”
“Big Bulge is still on,” the RIO replied tautly, all trace of his California-surfer persona gone.
“Right.” Batman switched to radio. “Tyrone, give this sucker something to think about. Give him a lock-on.
“R-roger.” Powers sounded nervous. He had every right to be. If the Russian decided an attack was imminent there was no telling what he might do.
Batman drifted close alongside again and repeated the 258.0 signal. This time there was a response, a gabble of Russian and broken English over the radio.