Recovering from the break, he chanced a look back over his right shoulder. The enemy missile should…
He had only a second's glimpse of the missile as it arrowed up toward his plane. Twenty feet long and over a foot thick, the Gainful had an eighty-kilogram warhead which could explode on impact or by proximity fuse.
The missile exploded less than five meters from the Falcon, sending jagged chunks of metal tearing through the fighter's thin skin like rocks through tissue. The concussion slammed Vasti's helmeted head against the left side of his canopy. His instrument panel lit up with warning and failure lights. A harsh buzz and a brightly pulsing red light warned of a fire in his starboard engine. Numbly, he struggled to adjust the Falcon's trim.
No good. He was losing it. "Trapdoor, Trapdoor, this is Trapdoor Leader! I'm hit! I'm hit! Major Kraisri, take command!"
"Eject, Colonel!" He heard Major Kraisri's voice say. "Eject!"
He was reaching for the ejection handle when his stabilizer tore free with a jolt that felt like a second explosion, and Vasti was slammed into the right side of the cockpit. Stunned, he tried to focus on the view forward through his windscreen, a swirl of green rushing up to meet him.
Spinning wildly, the Falcon slammed into the side of a mountain. The explosion tore a fifty-foot gap in the jungle and sent a fireball uncoiling into the morning sky.
Then the sky seemed to catch fire as more SAMs rose from hiding.
"Victor Four Delta, this is Eagle Leader," Tombstone radioed. "From here it looks like Trapdoor is falling apart. Can you confirm the situation, over?"
"Ah, roger, Eagle Leader," the Hawkeye CIC officer replied. "Looks to us like they've stepped in a snake's nest."
It took less than two seconds for Tombstone to arrive at a decision. The revised plan called for all aircraft, That and American, to hold at Point Lima until Victor Four Delta gave them the go-ahead. But Trapdoor had gone in alone, chasing the bogies which had appeared over the captured airfield.
Operation Bright Lightning's whole reason for being was to support the Thais. He couldn't stand back and watch the less experienced That pilots get cut to pieces by whatever it was that Hsiao had waiting for them up there.
"Let's hit it." He keyed the tactical frequency. "Eagle Leader to Eagles. Let's give our That friends some help. Lead in."
"Eagle Two," Batman echoed. "We're in."
One by one the other Eagles called in.
"Eagle Three, in." Army Garrison in Tomcat 204.
"Eagle Four, us too." Price Taggart in 203.
"Five, yo!" Shooter Rostenkowski in 248.
"Eagle Six, count us in." Nightmare Marinaro in 244.
Six pale gray arrowheads, wings swept back against their flanks, streaked toward the north.
As they closed, Tombstone's RIO described the trap's closing as it unfolded on his Tactical Information Display. "Looks like a heavy SAM concentration in the Taeng Valley," Dixie said. "Trapdoor is reporting casualties… at least three planes down. And the bogies are turning."
"How many bogies you got, Dixie?"
"Hard to tell, Tombstone." Distance and friendly jamming would be confusing the picture. "At least twenty… maybe more."
"Okay." He keyed his mike to squadron tactical. "Eagle Leader to Eagles. We'll go in low over the airstrip. If you catch any MiGs, on the ground or taking off, nail them." It would be easier to whittle down the odds if they could hit the enemy planes before they were airborne. Not as sporting, perhaps… but despite the popular concept of winged warriors and man-to-man combat, there was little room for chivalry in war. "Stick together for the fast pass," he continued. "Tight deuce."
While the Navy's loose-deuce tactics provided the greatest flexibility in air combat maneuvers, Tombstone wanted the formation to stay close together until they knew for sure what they were up against. There would be so many planes in the air over U Feng that it would be easy for the American Eagles to bee widely scattered, unable to support one another.
"I'm counting twenty-two bogies now, Tombstone," Dixie reported. "Looks like they just splashed another Trapdoor."
"Rog." The odds were not good. Trapdoor had gone in with sixteen aircraft. Four, so far, had been shot down. Eagle numbered six. The Hornets of VFA-161 numbered eight more, but they were still a long way off and dedicated to SAM suppression, though they would take on the fighter role once again after they'd dropped their ordnance. The Intruders of Thunderbird didn't count since they were strictly ground-attack aircraft and mounted neither machine guns nor air-to-air missiles.
So that made it eighteen friendlies against twenty-two hostiles…
twenty-two known hostiles, Tombstone added to himself.
And a hell of a lot worse than that if the That formation fell apart.
Tombstone didn't like relying on the unknown quality of the That pilots. He didn't know how they would stand up to the killing stress of ACM. He knew how his people would react… but the Thais were untested, hence unreliable.
They might prove themselves yet, but Tombstone couldn't count on them until they did.
So until the Hornets of Chickenhawk arrived on the scene, Tombstone could count on six Tomcats against no less than twenty-two MiGs.
"We're closing, Tombstone," Dixie said. "Closing fast. Bogies now inbound, bearing three-one-zero, range five miles. They're closing on Trapdoor, coming fast."
"This is Eagle Leader," Tombstone said. "Let's go down on the deck." He nosed the Tomcat over, dropping toward the jungle. The tactic was called terrain masking, hiding the aircraft in the ground clutter of ridges and hills. It might give them some precious time before someone started loosing SA-6s at them.
Of course it also put them within range of the small and highly portable SA-7s, like the one that had nailed Batman.
Trees and ground flashed past the cockpit of his aircraft, a green blur.
With startling suddenness, jungle gave way to a broad, open clearing littered with buildings and the dark-gray slash of an airstrip. U Feng! The runway appeared clear. Perhaps all of the MiGs were airborne.
As quickly as it had appeared, U Feng vanished behind the hurtling aircraft. Sunlight flashed from the surface of a river dead ahead… in the Taeng Valley.
"Watch it now, people," Tombstone said. "Watch for snakes in the grass."
"Looks like they're turning and burning with the Thais," Price Taggart said. "We've got some major ACM up there."
"Bandits!" Tombstone's RIO called. "Six… correction, eight bandits, inbound, range three miles! Bearing three-four-zero!"
"Tally ho!" Batman called. "I've got visual on the bandits."
MiG-21s. The sky over the Taeng Valley appeared to be filled with aircraft, That F-5s and MiGs, turning and burning in a twisting, far-flung dogfight.
"Two-four-four confirms," Nightmare added. "We're picking up Jay Bird here."
Jay Bird was the code name for the MiG-21 J-band radar used to illuminate targets for the Atoll AA.M.
"Arm missiles!" Tombstone brought the Tomcat up, turning to meet the new threat. "Here we go!"
Hsiao held the radio microphone to his mouth. Before him on the table was a map, vectors and sighting tracks plotted on it in grease pencil.
"Area four-seven," he said. "Fifteen kilometers southeast of U Feng. A number of enemy radar tracks converge there, and we believe it may be a helicopter staging area for a airmobile assault, almost certainly. Get the Q-5s airborne at once."
"They are armed, fueled, and ready to go, General, the voice on the radio replied. "But what of the enemy fighters?"
"Colonel Wu has them at bay, Group Commander. You should have a clear run to the target."