Jack glanced at the radar scope in front of him, satisfied to see the bright return of the C-130 sliding down the scope. He noticed that Thunder did not reduce the scope’s range to fifty miles when Grain King moved inside forty-nine miles. Thunder was searching for the bandits, a much more difficult target to break out on the old radar set. Hell, the pilot thought, we need a pulse Doppler radar. But if anyone can make this set work, it’s Thunder.
“Stinger, fly two-six-eight.” Outpost ordered the two fighters to adjust their heading a few degrees. Thunder was working out the mental geometry of the intercept and still letting the controller direct them. He needed an accurate indication of how competent the unknown personality was at directing aircraft. After a short break the controller continued, “I’m bringing Grain King over to this frequency.” Another slight pause was followed by, “Grain King, how read on this frequency?”
For the first time, the F-4 aircrews heard Toni D’Angelo. “Read you five-by, Outpost.”
“Be damned,” Jack spat over the intercom. “Two women!” Two women in the Air Force, caught up in combat. Not the role he had put them in.
Outpost calmly queried the C-130. “Do you have the bandits in sight? They are at your eight o’clock, ten miles.”
“Negative,” Toni groaned.
“Jack, punch off your tanks. Now,” Fairly ordered his wingman. On the word “now,” Jack pushed his jettison button, causing the two empty fuel tanks attached to the underside of his wings to separate in unison with Fairly’s wing tanks. The two men were welded into a tight team. Both fighters had reduced the drag the tanks created and were fully configured for combat.
Toni called over the radio, “They shot a missile, repeat, they’ve fired. Missile went ballistic… ” She turned and dove her plane as hard as she could without tearing the wings off, taking the big cargo plane into a sixty-degree dive. She flew for a small cloud deck lacing the sky eight thousand feet below her as the two MiGs repositioned for another attack.
“Stinger flight, you are cleared to engage. Repeat, cleared to engage,” Outpost told the Phantoms.
Now Thunder’s voice came through. “One-Two has contact on bandits, Judy.” With the code word “Judy,” Bryant told the controller and the flight he was taking over the intercept. He would direct the two fighters into the engagement.
The controller acknowledged and fell silent, continuing to monitor the radar scope in case she could be of more assistance or had to disengage the F-4s if more bandits joined the flight.
Fairly buried his left foot in the rudder pedal and took spacing behind Jack, who was now flight lead, as he had briefed.
“Come right. Roll out.” Thunder was directing Jack into a head-on radar intercept with the bandits.
“Tallyho,” Jack yelled over the radio as he got a visual sighting on one of the bandits. “It’s a Flogger.” Jack had caught sight of the Soviet-built MiG-23 fighter, code-named “Flogger” by NATO. He had read the reports by U.S. pilots who had flown the swing-wing fighter in secret tests and had a healthy respect for its capabilities. If the single-engine fighter was carrying its normal armament, he could expect the MiGs to have two Apex and two Aphid air-to-air missiles along with a twin-barreled twenty-three-millimeter cannon.
“Where’s the C-130?” he shouted at Thunder. The wizzo lifted his head out of the radar scope and twisted his large frame around in the cramped seat.
“Seven o’clock, six miles, twenty degrees low,” he shouted back. Jack would not take his eyes off the MiG, not daring to lose sight of the slightly smaller aircraft. He was “padlocked” onto the MiG-23 Flogger. He jerked the Phantom to the right, dove and jerked back to the left, putting the MiG on a head-on collision course. He intended to shoot the other pilot in the face from a frontal cannon attack. As the Flogger surged into the target ring on the head-up display in front of him, Jack squeezed off a short burst of cannon fire. He had set the gatling gun on high rate of fire when he went through the arming routine. At six thousand rounds per minute, the six hundred forty rounds of twenty-millimeter shells in the ammunition drum would last less than seven seconds. The gun made a short burring sound as he expended one hundred eighty rounds, sending a near-solid stream of high-explosive ammunition toward the Flogger.
It was the first time the lieutenant had fired a shot in combat. He missed. He snap-rolled the fighter to the left, bringing the MiG aboard on his left, passing canopy-to-canopy with less than fifty-feet separation, his reflexes faster than the other pilot’s. Instinctively, he pulled the F-4 up into the vertical, counterturning onto the escaping aircraft. Thunder’s voice came over the radio, telling Jack and Fairly what the MiG was doing. “He’s six o’clock, going away. Hey, they’re both on Fairly—”
“Jack,” Fairly blurted over the radio, “come back left, I’m engaged… ” The command was for Jack to turn hard to his left, returning in the opposite direction of his original flight path.
Jack wrenched the big fighter through the pitch back he had started, pulling five G’s as they came across the top, inverted. Both he and Thunder grunted, fighting the force of the G’s created by the maneuver. Sweat was rolling off their faces. The fighter headed down, rapidly accelerating as they returned to the fight.
At the end of the arc, Jack saw Fairly about four miles in front and below him. The older man was jinking hard, attempting to shake the two Floggers and keep his tail turned away from the MiGs. One was less than three thousand feet behind Fairly and trying to get in a position behind the Phantom where the infrared guidance heads on his Aphid dogfight missiles could pick up the heat-signature of the F-4’s jet exhaust. So far Fairly was denying the Flogger pilot a missile shot and keeping out of the effective range of the MiG’s cannon.
The other bandit was doing a high yo-yo, a vertical roller-coaster maneuver, three miles behind Fairly, trying to kill his high overtake speed and fall in behind the first bandit by trading forward momentum for altitude. He would then pull his aircraft back down after his prey.
“You are dead meat,” Jack swore at the tail-end MiG. “Boss, pitch back left, bandit coming into your twelve o’clock. I’ll clear your six.” And he headed for the MiG directly behind Fairly.
Fairly followed Jack’s command, reefing his Phantom into a vertical turn to the left.
To Jack, it looked like Fairly was executing half a loop toward the Flogger doing the yo-yo. “Get him,” the lieutenant shouted. But the nose of Fairly’s F-4 only crossed the flight path of the Flogger for a fraction of a second, not enough time for a snap shot. The new Sidewinder missiles the wing had would have nailed the Libyan from any angle.
Jack slashed past the Flogger on Fairly’s tail, managing to squeeze off a snap shot as the gatling gun gave off a short burring noise.
“Save it,” Thunder commanded. The wizzo twisted in his seat, his eyes glued onto the Flogger. He quickly told Jack and Fairly what the MiG was doing… “Bandit is six o’clock, going away, disengaging. Going for the deck. Lost him.” The Flogger had disappeared through a break in the clouds, running from the fight.
“Boss, what the hell are you doing?” Jack grunted over the intercom at Fairly, who was in a scissors maneuver with his Flogger, the two aircraft weaving back and forth across each other’s flight path. Jack knew it was a good defensive maneuver, but that it was hard to go on the offensive from that position and harder yet to disengage. Jack was pleased, though, when he realized his own six o’clock was clear and maneuvered to fall in behind the Flogger, sandwiching him for a kill.