“On my mark,” Tai said. He wasn’t referring to a verbal mark, but to the notation that the avionics system would make in the link between the two aircraft data systems when Tai fired his first missile. Tai toggled the weapons selector switch into the proper mode, waited a split second, then pickled it off.
The missile shot out true and straight, descending quickly, its tail fire a bright phoenix in the sky. Seconds later, he heard his wingman cry out in exultation as he, too, fired his first real weapon in anger.
“Climb, climb,” Tai cried, gaining more sky even as he spoke. Altitude was safety, granting the aircraft room to recover from fatal mistakes, forcing the Hornet into a level game.
A harsh warning buzz went off just behind his left ear, and a missile symbol popped into being on his heads up display. An AMRAAM, one of the advanced medium-range missiles that all Hornets carried. Well, soon the Tomcat pilot would soon be too busy worrying about Tai’s missile to be so rash.
Tai put his aircraft into a hard, spine shattering turn, then pivoted about and waited at an angle just behind the Tomcat’s side as the other aircraft climbed. Behind him, he could hear Huan Tan chanting quietly to himself as he chased after the two Hornets.
They waited for what seemed like minutes, but in reality it must have been only a couple of seconds. Tai jinked hard, kicking out countermeasures, flares and chaff, then spinning his MiG away from the burning, noisy metallic cluster that he hoped would suck the AMRAAM in. He turned back to face the Tomcat, and saw empty sky, even though his heads-up display was chattering away that —
Wait. There he was. How the hell had he managed that? He stared at the heads-up display, glancing rapidly between the symbol displayed there and the actual airframe hurtling toward him at over Mach 1 in the sky. Before he could decide what had caused the discrepancy, the Tomcat had wheeled in and over him, the aircraft inverted and then rolling back into level flight to place himself squarely into the position that Tai had hoped to occupy on him.
“No, no, no, nononono — ” His wingman’s voice shattered up the scales, high, frantic and frightened. The heads-up display told him the reason — an AMRAAM missile inbound on him as well. There was the metallic cloud of chaff and flares, but Tai could already see it would not work.
“Brake hard. Descend, descend,” Tai shouted, frantically trying to coach his wingman back into basic sound defensive flying while simultaneously trying to figure out how to avoid the Tomcat now on his own ass.
Another AMRAAM? No, there would be no need at this angle. Better choose the Sidewinder, the potent small missile designed for short-range night fighting. The Sidewinder was infrared guided, and would seek out the bright, hot fire of his tailpipe. No chaff, no flare would be bright enough to distract it from his aircraft exhaust once it saw it. There was only one possibility — they’d tried it so often in practice and — there was the shot. Yes. Wait for it one second, then —
Tai pivoted the aircraft virtually in midair, overriding the automatic trim and anti-stall avionics to throw the MiG into a hard, flat spin. It was one of the most deadly emergencies any pilot could face, particularly in an aircraft such as the MiG. They had spent countless hours in the ready room discussing how to recover from one, had drilled repeatedly in the simulator, and even the most skilled of them had managed to achieve only a fifty percent recovery rate from a flat spin at this speed.
Still, fifty percent was better than the certainty of perishing in a hard white blast of noise and fire. If he could just pull it out, at precisely the right moment, he’d have a chance.
The sky spun dizzily around him, and Tai fought to keep his consciousness from fading away. It was important that he try to maintain some sense of where he was in the air, his orientation to the sun, whether the Tomcat had fired another missile.
Just as he felt his consciousness starting to gray out, he instinctively recognized the correct configuration of sun, Tomcat and MiG.
He snapped down hard, throwing the MiG into a steep descent. An almost deadly maneuver, one that usually resulted in an out-of-control tumble through the sky, ending in an uncontrolled impact with the ground. But it was his only chance.
Would the Tomcat follow him down? No, probably not. He would go help his wingman take on the remaining MiG, certain that no pilot could recover from the deadly tumble through the air.
But Tai could. He’d thought through the problem too many times, and now he felt instinctively that the right moves were his to make. The shudder slipped through the steel frame of his aircraft and passed without attenuation into his bones. He was no longer a separate entity, he was part of the aircraft, an integral whole with the fuselage and wings now in such odd orientation to the ground and sky. He steepened the descent, and felt the spinning motion of the aircraft lessen as the MiG fought for what it was designed to do, maintain an aerodynamic profile with the wind. A little more, a little more… he patted gently on the control surfaces, again overriding the automatic trim controls. The spin started to slow.
Finally, when he felt the nose in the proper orientation with the rest of his direction of movement, he stomped hard on the rudder, brutally countering the remaining spin with his control surfaces. For a moment he felt the MiG shudder, scream protests as G-forces wrenched structural members past any tolerance they were designed to accommodate. Then, as he knew it would, the MiG straightened out.
Altitude. He felt a cold punch in his stomach as he realized how far he’d tumbled trying to regain control of his aircraft. Seven thousand feet, no more. Barely enough time to pull it out.
He jerked back hard, demanding, asking with every atom of his being that the MiG honor this one last request. Pull up, pull up, and we will kill the ones who did this, he prayed silently. Pull up, just pull up.
The water rushed up at him at a dizzying rate of speed.
“Got him,” Bird Dog howled over tactical. “You see that, Kelly? Now that’s the way it’s done.” He heard Gator sigh in the backseat, and ignored him.
“I saw. Just one question, Bird Dog,” Kelly’s voice was cool. “What are you going to do about his playmate that’s trying to climb up your ass?”
Chan watched Tai spiral down toward the ocean, and swore quietly. They were short enough on airframes as it was, and there were no replacements within three thousand miles. All the more necessary that he eliminate the Tomcat that had gotten his wingman.
He saw the Tomcat now, just ahead. It was doing wingovers, dancing around its wingman like a bumblebee. How foolish, to lose one’s grasp of the tactical scenario over just one kill. It would be the last mistake that this particular American pilot would make.
Chan bore in on the American, fixated on his target. A warning beep on his ESM gear was his first hint that all was not well. He broke off, pivoted off of his former course, and searched for the threat.
Without warning, a Hornet descended on him like a hawk swooping down on its prey. It had been hiding high overhead in a cloud bank, watching the action below, waiting for just such a moment. Was it possible that the Tomcats had intentionally feigned inattention in order to entice him into just this sort of position? No, surely not — the Americans were not that subtle, and they were known to have an almost fanatical fear of taking casualties. While Chan would have risked Tai in just such a manner, he knew that the Americans would not.
Chan slipped off some altitude, turning hard to his right at the same moment. He felt a deep sense of satisfaction at his final position. He was between the sun and the Hornet, thus complicating the task of using a heat seeker against him. Additionally, he had slipped behind the foolish Tomcat, and was in decent if not superb firing position. He also had the Tomcats between his MiG and the Hornet, and there was no way that the Hornet would be foolish enough to shoot through his shipmates just to kill one MiG.