In his career, Tombstone had flown against a wide variety of aerial weapons, including fighter planes, air-to-air missiles, surface-to-air missiles, and, once, an UAV — an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle that he’d pursued and shot down before it could deliver a nuclear warhead on Cuba. This thing didn’t resemble any of them.
Its intent, however, was unmistakable.
From this angle Tombstone couldn’t begin to judge its speed or trajectory. He had no RIO to feed him radar data, and no countermeasures to dazzle its radar or confuse its heat-seeking head — whatever it was using to track him.
So he used instinct instead, jamming the stick forward and firewalling the throttle. The Pitts dove as if fired straight down out of a cannon, jolting Tombstone into his shoulder harness.
The bogey missed again, but it seemed to Tombstone that it adjusted at the last second, almost clipping the Pitts’ tail. Whatever it was, if it carried a warhead the explosive wasn’t detonated by proximity; that was something. Tombstone hauled back on the stick, pulling the biplane out of its screaming dive. This time he was afraid he’d let it go too long, that he was going to strike the surface of the ocean at a speed that made water every bit as unyielding as concrete.
Then the crests of the waves were whipping past so close he was sure the biplane’s bulbous tires were getting wet. Tombstone kept the stick pulled back, but easier now, lest he lose all his airspeed. Now he really wished he was back in his Tomcat, with enough thrust to yank him quickly up where he could maneuver. The Tomcat might even be able to flat outrun this little bogey, whatever it was.
He swiveled his head back and forth, squinting against the setting sun, wishing he had Tomboy in the backseat to help. If there were a backseat. Meanwhile, the coolest part of his mind debated his options. Found them to be limited. He had no idea what he was up against. He was flying in an unarmed plane. A propeller-driven plane. An unfamiliar propeller-driven plane.
But he was a pilot, damn it — not just a pilot, a naval aviator. No one, and no thing, was better in the air.
He spotted the bogey again, zipping in from the rear, and he executed a left turn so sudden and violent it stalled the inside wings. As he dropped the nose to restore airspeed and circumvent a spin, he heard the whistle of an oncoming jet turbine growing shriller, and pulled his head down into his shoulders instinctively… then the sound faded again. He straightened the Pitts out and let it dive slightly, building up airspeed.
Meanwhile, the cold part of his mind was steadily examining impressions and making decisions. The bogey was obviously not manned; it was much too small and made turns that would black out any human pilot. On the other hand, it was not an ordinary missile. Which left only two choices: a Remotely-Piloted Vehicle, or a UAV like the one he’d shot down over Cuba. If the former, then someone was flying it by joystick from a distant location, using an onboard video or infrared camera for guidance. If the latter, then the bogey was a fire-and-forget weapon, with an onboard navigation computer guiding it to its destination.
He immediately discounted that option; all the UAVs he’d ever heard of, including the one he’d shot down, found their destinations through a combination of ground-mapping radar and Global Positioning Satellite navigation. They were programmed to locate and strike at stationary targets; they couldn’t dogfight. So: This was an RPV.
Not that the information helped him much right now. All it meant was that the pilot of this bogey could turn, accelerate and climb his vehicle at the limits of the plane’s capabilities, not his own.
Limits…
Tombstone suddenly remembered the BD5-J, a stubby homebuilt jet even shorter than the bogey. He’d watched them fly at air shows, and spoken to their pilots. Although fast and agile as hummingbirds, the little jets had strictly limited ranges due to greedy engines and minute fuel tanks. The bogey that was chasing him around had to be subject to the same restrictions. Given enough time, it would simply die of starvation.
But how much time was enough? Trying to drain the bogey meant juking and jiving for as long as it took. But every maneuver would have to be a miracle of timing. Too slow, and the bogey wouldn’t be fooled. Too fast, and the bogey would simply reacquire. Either way, the result would be the same.
All this went through his head in the time it took the bogey to complete a quick half circle and come back at him again. This time Tombstone noticed the round maw of an air intake, mounted in a depression atop the vehicle. If it weren’t for that black circle, the damned thing wouldn’t be visible at all from this angle.
He kept his eyes on the circle, timing its approach, making himself wait… wait…
Too long! He knew it even as he slammed the Pitts through an ugly maneuver that was half barrel roll, half loop. Holding his breath, he thought about Tomboy and waited for the impact.
But then the bogey was past him, slanting off toward the shore. Too startled to recover from his maneuver, he stared through the tunnel formed by his spinning windscreen. The bogey began to turn again, but this time without the relentless certainty he’d come to fear. In seemed to settle into a lazy arc. Perhaps it was running out of fuel.
Tombstone leveled out.
Instantly, the bogey jinked toward him, accelerating.
Without thinking about it, Tombstone put the Pitts into a fresh series of barrel rolls. The bogey flashed past, thirty feet to the rear, as if he’d vanished from its sensors. It didn’t make sense. Snap rolls were hardly an evasive maneuver for missiles, especially one approaching from the side.
The moment he leveled out again, dizzy and ready to retch, the bogey made an abrupt turn back toward him. He glanced around. He was almost to shore, but there was no hope there: nothing but low marshland, without a hill or stand of trees to hide behind.
The bogey grew larger in the corner of his eye. Tombstone held his breath and started another series of rolls, meanwhile letting the Pitts plummet toward the ocean.
The bogey flashed through the space he’d occupied a moment earlier. It kept going, then entered into another of its broad, lazy turns.
“Okay, you,” Tombstone said, still spinning, blood pounding in his head. “I’ve got you now.”
The beach passed by, no more than a hundred yards below. Feet dry, Tombstone thought automatically, trying to keep his stomach from erupting through his teeth. He’d lost track of the bogey. Hoped it had really run out of gas this time. Hoped it had dropped into the water like a shotgunned mallard.
But if not…
Leveling out, he pulled the Pitts into as steep a sustained climb as it would endure. He looked back and forth, up and down, searching the sky, trying to blink the dizziness away. In a moment he knew that the bogey hadn’t run out of gas after all. He saw a triangular flash of red light to the north, then the air intake racing toward him. He watched it, watched it… and jammed the stick forward, diving back toward the marsh as hard as he could. Although he didn’t look back, he sensed the bogey swinging onto his tail.
“Now!” he shouted, and yanked the stick hard right. The swamp began to whirl around the cockpit. Timing it carefully, Tombstone stomped on the left rudder pedal, then hauled back on the stick. The vertical spin abruptly hooked into a flat-out climb. Looking over his shoulder, Tombstone saw a geyser of water shoot out of the marsh and rise so high its tip glowed orange in the last light of the sun.
Whooping, he rolled the Pitts Special one more time… for joy.