“Home Base, Home Base, missile hit on Red Tomboy Leader. I repeat, Red Tomboy Leader is splashed, no wreckage, no survivors. One big fireball. Request weapons free.”
“Affirmative, Red Tomboy,” the CAG said. “He vanished off our screens. Weapons free.”
Even as he hit the tactical radio, Lieutenant Phillips had powered up, and slanted upward to where his RIO told him the offending Flanker circled the smoke.
The pilot of the third plane in the flight of Red Tomboy, Lieutenant Pace Turlow, had monitored the radio exchange, and also gunned upward from his ten-thousand-foot beat. He switched to plane-to-plane frequency and called.
“Phillips, there are three of them stacked. You taking the top one?”
“Right, Pace. I’ve got him gloating over his kill. We have weapons free. Get one of the bastards.”
Then Phillips was breaking through 25,000 feet, and his RIO gave him a vector to the running Flanker. “He’s heading down and toward the island. What the hell is he doing?” Lieutenant Patsy Fralic called into the ICS.
“He’s still got three or four missiles left,” Phillips said as he powered down toward the Flanker. “He might have orders to take out the Japs down there.”
Phillips followed the Russian fighter down. It was faster than his Tomcat, not by much but a little, so he couldn’t overtake him. He had no chance for a lock-on with his radar with the Flanker banking, turning, looping, doing maneuvers all over the sky.
“All we can do now is follow the bastard and watch him,” Phillips said.
A minute later they saw the Russian jet level out and start a run at the small village of Golovnino on Kunashir island.
“Now’s our chance to get a lock-on with him while he’s on a bombing or strafing run. That’s where the Japs’ headquarters are,” Phillips said.
“He just launched a missile,” Patsy said from the backseat. “Is he trying to start World War Three down there?”
Phillips turned to tactical frequency, and called Home Base. But before he could transmit, another voice came on the speaker.
“American Tomcat. This is Russian Flanker. Not the one that shot down your plane. My English not good. Sorry about your friend. Sergei has gone crazy. My orders are to shoot him down before he launches more missiles. Can you help?”
“Be glad to,” Phillips said. “Keep your two Flankers out of the area so we don’t mistake you for him.
“Let’s go get him,” Phillips said in the ICS. He slanted the F-14 to the left, picking up the Flanker as he started another missile run against the town.
“He knows we’re here,” Phillips said. “He’s breaking off his run.
Must have felt our radar. Here we go.”
The Flanker pulled up in a steep climb, rolled over, and slanted away from them. Phillips matched his movements, but couldn’t get into position to lock on with his radar. They swept around again, each fighting for an advantage.
Patsy had a Sidewinder AIM-9 infrared-homing air-to-air missile ready to fire when the lock-on was firm.
They were somewhere west of the island now, over the sea, The Flanker-33 had dropped down to wave-top altitude no more than thirty feet off the water. Phillips tried to lift up for a top shot, but the other plane pulled away and raced upwards in a vertical climb that left Phillips sweating to follow.
Then it was all but over. The Russian jet slowed, flying straight and level. They were at fifteen thousand feet, and Phillips raced in behind him, and he heard Patsy shout in the ics.
“I have a lock. Fox three.” She had fired the Sidewinder missile at the Flanker.
Phillips pulled the F-14 to the left to escape any blast particles, and followed the trail of the nine-and-a-half-foot-long missile as it homed in on the Russian Flanker. In its thousand-yard flight it never got up to its Mach Two speed as it smashed into the jet, detonating, exploding the fighter’s fuel system in a fireball that sent half of the plane slashing through the sky toward the water below.
“Splash one SU-33 Flanker,” Phillips said on his tactical frequency.
“That’s a Roger. Red Tomboy Flight, come home,” Home Base said.
It was CAG, and he sounded tired. “Contact Pri-Fly for instructions.
We’ve got a hell of a lot of paperwork to do, and messages to send.
Nice shooting, Phillips.”
“Sorry, CAG, it wasn’t. He slowed down and waited for me to shoot.
It was like he gave up and committed suicide.”
“Get back on deck, Phillips. We’ll talk it through here.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
There was silence on the ICS.
“Patsy, you still there? You all right?”
“I’m here. It’s just that-..”
“Yeah, Fralic, I know. Don’t let it get to you. It’s our job.
What we trained for.”
“I know. Still … “
“Yeah. I know too. Hasn’t hit me yet. That was my first splash too. We suck it up, we tell the CAG exactly how it went, what that Russian Sergei did, what we did, the whole schmeer.”
“That won’t change a thing, Phillips. We killed a man.”
“Yes, that’s our job. He just killed Vanhorst and Mugger, remember that. It’s still just one for our two.”
“There is that.”
The intercom went silent. Phillips contacted Pri-Fly for his rotation back. They didn’t stack him up, bringing him right in.
“Hey, Fralic, are you still with me?”
“I’m here. I’m all right. I’ll fly again this afternoon if we’re on the sked. I’m not crying. There ain’t no crying in baseball.”
Phillips grinned. “Yeah, I saw that movie too.”
On the way in, Phillips tried to figure out how he felt. He had been outraged when Vanhorst was shot down. He had done his best to out-fly the Russian, and his Flanker, but never had. Then Sergei had pulled up and waited to be shot down. Why? The Russian pilot who spoke English said Sergei was crazy, and that he had been ordered to shoot down his wingman. Now what the hell?
Phillips tested his hand, holding it rigid in front of him. Dead solid, not the hint of a waver. He felt calm, in control. He had just killed a man. They had just killed a Russian pilot and destroyed a twenty-million-dollar aircraft.
True. Their job.
Phillips brought the Tomcat in on the approach precisely, took the landing signal, and dropped down on the three wire. He edged the plane into the assigned spot, and powered down.
“You still okay, Fralic?” he asked in the ICS.
“Yeah, I’m kicking ass if anyone asks. I just got my first kill.
Now let’s get the hell out of here and go see the CAG.”
Five minutes later, CAG led them into a small debriefing room. He sat them down, gave them both cups of coffee, and took one himself.
Irving Olson was a full captain, a former F-14 pilot himself, and had the respect of his pilots and RIOs.
“I’m sorry about the two good men we lost. Congratulations on the splash. We know how it happened, we’re just not sure why. We’ve contacted Admiral Rostow on the Russian carrier with our questions.
“First a report to you. The missile Sergei fired at Golovnino wiped out three houses, two stores, and a small dock. We estimate no more than a dozen deaths resulted. He missed the military headquarters building by two hundred yards.
“We have monitored Russian air traffic to its planes. It’s not coded just as ours isn’t. We haven’t translated the tapes yet to be sure, but it sounds like the remaining two Migs were ordered to shoot down this Sergei.”
The captain switched on a small tape recorder and put it on the table between them. “Phillips, will you go through what happened, step by step? No hurry. I know this is your first combat … kill. But I want a complete report.”
Fifteen minutes later, they came out of the room and headed for their quarters. At a turn in a companionway, Lieutenant Patsy Fralic touched Phillips’s shoulder.