Armageddon Mode

CHAPTER 23

Tombstone couldn’t see the enemy plane yet, but he saw the symbol that marked it on his HUD shifting to the side as the other pilot positioned himself for the pass.

“Shit!” Hitman called from the backseat. “He’s taking us head-to-head!”

“I’m going for Sidewinder,” Tombstone said, aligning the HUD pipper and locking in. The AIM-9L Sidewinder was an all-aspect heat-seeker, meaning Tombstone did not have to hold his fire until he could give the missile a look at the target’s white-hot exhaust. But Sidewinder head shots were still risky. When the closing speed between target and missile was in the vicinity of Mach 3 or 4, the enemy had a better chance of breaking the lock by maneuvering or launching flares.

“Take him, Stoney! Take him!”

“Fox two!”

The American was launching as Munir Ramadutta pulled his nose up, climbing almost vertically as he popped flares. At ten thousand feet he pulled an immelmann, dropping out of the climb inverted, again facing the oncoming enemy.

The range was now four miles. Still inverted, Ramadutta loosed an E-23 AAM.

The missile, called AA-7 “Apex” by the West, actually came in two flavors designated R-23R, a long-ranged SARH version, and E-23T, which used IR homing. Ramadutta carried two of the heat-seekers in his ordnance load. Apex could reach considerably farther than the four AA-8 Aphid missiles he also mounted.

As the missile slid off his wing, Ramadutta rolled his Mig, trading altitude for speed in a long plunge toward the sea.

“Missed him!” Hitman warned. “We nailed a flare! He’s launching!”

Tombstone held the F-14 steady for a torturously long four seconds. “Pop flares!”

As white-hot decoys spewed into the Tomcat’s wake, Tombstone broke left, careful not to turn his exhaust in the direction of the approaching missile.

Scanning the horizon as it rolled past his cockpit, he caught sight of the other plane for the first time, a tiny speck angling toward the sea.

In the dense, wet air close to the water, the Mig was dragging a contrail, a sharp white streak across the darker sea.

Something flashed past the cockpit, feeling close though it was at least a hundred yards away, then exploded astern. A lone fragment of shrapnel pinged off the canopy as Tombstone rolled toward the other plane.

“One Sidewinder left,” he said. “Let’s see if we can get on this bird’s tail!”

Explosions flashed and popped among the Indian aircraft. Streaks of black smoke scrawled from sky to sea as burning planes plummeted.

Despite their bad rep, the Sparrows had struck, and struck hard.

Now the aircraft formations were penetrating one another, swirling together in a colossal aerial dogfight that filled the sky with flashing planes and the long, white streaks of air-to-air missiles. The American Tomcats were heavily outnumbered, but the majority of their opponents were older, slower strike aircraft carrying bombs and missiles against the U.S. fleet: Canberras, Su-7 Fitters, and aging Hawker Hunters. Many of the more modern aircraft in the oncoming wave, Jaguars and swing-wing Mig-27 Flogger-Ds, were dedicated strike aircraft, slowed by the bombs and missiles slung from their ordnance hardpoints.

“Going for guns,” Batman called automatically, snapping the selector switch on his stick as the F-14 slid gently onto the six of a Flogger.

“You’d better,” Malibu replied. “That’s all we got left!”

Batman let the HUD reticle drift across the other plane’s fuselage, following as the Flogger began a slow break to the left. His Lead Computing Optical Sight drew a short line on his HUD, showing how much lead to give the Mig as it turned away.

His thumb came down on the firing switch, and the M-61A1 Vulcan cannon thundered. White smoke trailed behind Batman’s Tomcat in puffs as he pumped burst after burst into the fleeing Mig-27.

Chunks of metal sprayed from the Flogger’s back and left wing. The Indian pilot tried to sharpen his break in a desperate attempt to throw himself clear of the deadly volleys but succeeded only in presenting his aircraft plan-view-on to his relentless pursuer. Twenty-millimeter cannon shells smashed through his fuselage. The Mig began coming apart.

The Flogger-D’s hinged, squared-off canopy blew off. There was a flash, and Batman glimpsed the tiny figure of the pilot as his ejection seat rocketed him clear of the crumbling aircraft. Seconds later, there was another, far brighter flash … then another and another as the Flogger’s load of half-ton bombs detonated.

“Splash one Mig,” Batman called.

Around him, the dogfight swirled from just above the sea to over thirty thousand feet, dozens of aircraft circling one another in a melee across hundreds of square miles.

“We’re turnin’ and burnin’ now, Batman!” Malibu called.

“Affirmative!” But the American defenses were already leaking. Indian aircraft were falling from the sky one after another, but plenty of strike aircraft had already made it through, were holding a steady course for the southwest, for Jefferson.

There were just too many of them to stop.

Batman checked the readout on his HUD that registered the number of rounds he had remaining for his Vulcan cannon. The M61 was loaded with 675 rounds, but since it had a rate of fire that burned up seventy to one hundred rounds a second depending on the setting, the F-14’s ammo store did not last for long.

The readout showed 206 rounds remaining. Three seconds’ worth of fire at the 4000 RPM setting … perhaps four or five quick bursts.

And then he would have neither missiles nor guns.

Batman began searching for his next target.

Tombstone pulled up hard as the Mig-29 in his sights cut in his afterburners and stood on his tail.

“Watch it, Stoney!” Hitman yelled. “He’s goin’ ballistic!”

“I’m on him!” Tombstone rammed his throttles forward to Zone Five to build up speed, then cut back to eighty-percent power, allowing the climbing Mig to drift into his line of fire. The angle was bad with a sharp deflection, but he squeezed off a long burst in hope of getting one or two hits that might, might puncture something vital.

The Fulcrum rolled sharply right, seeming to float just beyond the reach of the line of glowing tracers arcing past his wing.

“Damn,” Tombstone muttered. “This guy can fly!”

The Mig-29 danced away, its pilot using his aircraft’s superb maneuverability to best advantage. Tombstone cut back hard on his throttles as he tried to follow, putting the Tomcat into a hard, skidding turn to the right.

He could see before he was halfway into the turn that the Mig was outperforming him, circling inside the best turn radius he could manage.

Unwilling to finish the maneuver on the other guy’s terms, Tombstone punched in the throttles and pulled the stick hard left, slamming the F-14 into a split-S that carried him past the Mig’s tail and off in the other direction.

“What’s … he … doing …?” He had to force each word out explosively through clenched teeth. The G-readout hit seven Gs. He felt his head growing fuzzy, saw blackness closing in at the periphery of his vision.

“Lost … uh! Lost him!” Hitman replied.

The compass reading swung around until Tombstone knew he was heading back toward where his opponent had vanished during the last pass. Damn it, where was he?

“On our six!” Hitman warned as Tombstone broke out of the turn. “Coming fast!”

Tombstone pulled up, twisting the F-14 into a short, fast-spinning Immelmann designed to bring him over the other plane and down on his tail. Looking “up” through his canopy as he went over the top, Tombstone caught a glimpse of the other plane between him and the ocean, already going into a break to counter the maneuver.

Another target loomed ahead as Tombstone righted the plane, a wingtip-to-wingtip pair of Jaguars, steady on course toward the southwest.

The Fulcrum pilot was one of the best Tombstone had ever gone up against. With so many bandits coming through the line, he was better off not wasting time jousting with the Fulcrum driver.

So he dropped on the Jaguars from behind and above, lining up the left-hand aircraft before he’d completed the roll-out, squeezing off a burst from his cannon at a range of less than five hundred yards. It was a snap shot from a difficult angle, but he saw pieces flaking from the target plane as he dropped through its slipstream.

Then the Jaguars were behind him. More aircraft were scattered across the sky ahead and he dropped into position behind yet another strike plane, an ancient BAC Canberra. Lining up on the junction of the broad, almost triangular unswept wings, he opened fire from eight hundred yards and watched as his stream of tracer rounds drifted into the Indian bomber. The port engine began smoking, and the Canberra’s wing dropped sharply. The aircraft slipped into a steeply falling turn, its engine ablaze. Three parachutes appeared in the falling bomber’s wake.

“Hey! Just like fish in a barrel, Tombstone,” Hitman said.

Tombstone didn’t answer. Canberras had been hailed as a match for any fighter in the air when they’d first made their appearance with the RAF in 1951, but they were virtually helpless in a match with a modern F-14.

But there was no other way. The Indian attack planes were breaking through toward the American ships.

Coyote had launched all four of his Sparrows within the first few minutes of the approach. Now he was switching to Sidewinders as a pair of Indian interceptors streaked toward him from the north. From two black specks in the sky, side by side, they grew with astonishing swiftness into sleek, delta-winged jets that flashed past his F-14 to port at a range of less than half a mile. In the instant’s glimpse he had, he recognized them: Dassault-Breguet Mirage-2000Hs, a French design, though these particular aircraft were probably built in India under license. They were excellent aircraft, capable of bettering Mach 2 and mounting Magic AAMS for close-in fighting.

“Tally-ho!” he called over the tactical frequency. “Two Mirage two-triple-ohs. Two-oh-four is on them!”

“Roger, Two-oh-four,” the Hawkeye controller said. “Stay on the strikers, over.”

Stay on the strikers. The 2000H was an interceptor, a jet designed to kill jets. The people watching this fight from the bird farm would be concerned about strike aircraft, planes carrying antiship missiles and bombs. Obviously, it was better to shoot down a plane carrying several Exocets before it had a chance to release its payload … and complicate the electronic musings of Jefferson’s point defense system.

But it wouldn’t pay to ignore the strike aircraft’s fighter escorts, not when those escorts outnumbered the F-14s by at least three to one, and probably more.

He put his Tomcat into a hard left break, dumping speed with flaps and spoilers in order to turn in the tightest possible radius. “Where are they?” he called to his RIO.

Radar Mendoza was one of Jefferson’s latest crop of replacements, a young j.g. with black eyes and mustache and a Hispanic’s cocksure machismo.

“Tryin’ to cut us out, Coyote,” Mendoza replied. “Breakin’ left, man.

Comin’ past our seven o’clock!”

“Hang onto your stomach.”

Coyote slammed the Tomcat into a right-hand turn with a snapping half-twist, then brought the stick back as he cut in his afterburners.

The Tomcat’s nose came up … up … and over as he slid from a split-S into an Immelmann turn that left them flying inverted toward the two Mirages, now two miles to the south and still turning.

“Surprise, guys,” Coyote said. The Mirages were presenting themselves in a perfect plan view as they crossed his line of sight from right to left. He let the Tomcat barrel-roll out of its inverted position and dropped the targeting pipper squarely across the lead Indian fighter.

The target lock warble sounded in his headphones.

“Fox two!” he called, and a Sidewinder slid off his port wing. The Mirages, aware that they’d been outmaneuvered, split. The one he’d targeted changed his left turn into a split-S to the right, and the other one climbed sharply.

Coyote eased the stick back and started after the second Mirage. It had continued climbing, inserting itself into a twisting blur of aircraft dogfighting through a five-mile expanse of air thirty-five thousand feet above the sea.

The targeted Mirage continued holding its turn … … then shattered as the Sidewinder rose to meet it. Flame boiled into the sky, and the delta-wing shape, its stabilizer missing now, began spinning in a wild, fiery plunge toward the sea.

“Bull’s eye!” Mendoza yelled. “Splash one Mirage for Two-oh-four!”

“Where’d the other one get to, Radar?”

“Lost him. I think he-“

“He’s on me! He’s on me!” Coyote could hear the frantic cry of one of the American pilots. “This is Two-oh-eight. Bandit on my tail! I can’t shake him!”

Coyote scanned the dogfight in front of him. Where … there! The unmistakable profile of a Tomcat plunging toward the sea, wings folded back. A Mig-23 with Indian rounders on its camo-splotched wings followed.

Forgetting the second Mirage, Coyote nosed over, letting the Tomcat fall to pick up speed. “Two-oh-eight, this is Two-oh-four!” he called. “When I give the word, pull up!” When the F-14 pulled up, the Mig should follow. Coyote was positioning his Tomcat so that he could drop onto the Mig’s tail as he tried to hold his position on 208’s six.

“Two-oh-eight! Pull up!”

There was no response. What was the handle of 208’s pilot? It was one of the replacements who’d flown out to the CBG on the COD from Masirah, he thought. Maverick, that was it. How could he forget the name Maverick?

“Pull up, Maverick! Pull up!”

An Apex missile whipped from the Mig on the tip of a streaming white contrail.

“Maverick! Pop flares and pull up!”

Flares arced from the Tomcat’s tail, but the aircraft continued to plunge toward the sea. “Two-oh-four, this is Scout! Maverick’s in trouble!”

Scout was Maverick’s RIO. He must be launching the flares … but if the pilot had frozen at the stick … “Maverick! Pull up!”

The Apex caught up with the Tomcat and plunged into its starboard engine. The explosion blew out part of the belly and skewed the aircraft into a flaming tumble.

“Eject! Scout, eject! Punch out!”

There was no answer, and the stricken Tomcat continued its plunge toward the sea. Coyote watched them fall, willing the canopy to blow, willing the chutes to appear.

Nothing. It happened, sometimes, the first time a man went into combat.

Hours of simulators, of training, and men still lost it when they realized that this was real. Scout might have ejected the two of them after they were hit … but the explosion could easily have killed him or knocked him out.

A momentary paralysis gripped Coyote as he watched the other Tomcat vanish into the sea. Experienced pilots could become casualties too.

He’d been shot down, over the Sea of Japan … and the memory of that experience, of holding his skull-crushed RIO in his arms in an icy sea, would be with him forever. Unexpectedly, the image of Coyote’s wife flashed into his mind. She’d not wanted him to go back on active flight duty, and he’d come close to turning in his wings. No one would have blamed him … Then the Mig pulled its nose up. Julie’s face was banished as training took over, and Coyote rolled onto the Indian fighter’s tail just as he’d planned. He got the tone and triggered a Sidewinder. “Fox two!”

In the end, though, it was Julie who’d told him he had to come back. Not until this moment had he been certain she was right.

Admiral Vaughn stood in the ship’s CIC, watching the flood of information coming across the LSDS and ASTABS.

Once during his tenure at the Pentagon, he’d had a long conversation with the admiral who had commanded a battle group with the first Aegis cruiser, the U.S.S. Ticonderoga, off Beirut in the early 1980s. That man had preferred commanding from the Tico rather than from his carrier and claimed that the Aegis defenses had let him significantly reduce the group’s CAP, despite the hazards of the operation.

Vaughn could understand that admiral’s preference. From the Vicksburg’s CIC, he felt as though the entire battle zone was under his personal observation and control. Through the Aegis system, data from every one of the battle group’s ships and aircraft was constantly relayed through the Vicksburg’s computers and displayed in her CIC. Through the Hawkeye’s — if need be through a Navy comsat — he could talk to any of his ship captains, any aircraft … or to the Joint Chiefs themselves back in Washington.

Not that he was particularly eager to exercise that option. The Battle of the Arabian Sea was proving to be quite enough for him to handle. He would face the Battle of Washington later.

“Admiral,” Captain Sharov said, standing stiffly at Vaughn’s side.

“Admiral Dmitriev reports that he has one squadron airborne as CAP. As there appears to be no immediate threat to Kreml, he wishes to inform you that some of those aircraft can be made available to your command.”

Vaughn turned on the Russian Chief of Staff with a cold stare. “Your commanding officer is so kind,” he said. “We would, of course, appreciate any help he condescends to make available!”

Sharov did not seem to hear the sarcasm … or perhaps he simply ignored it. “Squadron leader is Kurasov. I will inform him of your need.”

Vaughn snorted with disgust as the Russian returned to the bank of communications gear that had been reserved for their use. He’d expected no more from the Russians … and perhaps he’d expected less.

At this point, he knew he’d be grateful for any help. On the LSD designated as the Primary Battle Board, the computer graphic symbols identifying the American Tomcats were becoming lost in the flood of Indian aircraft pouring south. They were holding their own individually — the reports coming through from both squadrons indicated large numbers of enemy planes already downed — but collectively there just weren’t enough to stop the waves of Canberras, Migs, and other planes descending on Turban Station. The range on the board had already been shifted from one hundred twenty-eight miles from the Vicksburg to sixty-four.

It was nearly time to bring the battle group’s second line of defenses into play.

“Multiple bogies inbound,” Vicksburg’s Tactical Officer reported formally from a console nearby. “Range now three-five miles, bearing zero-zero-five to zero-four-zero.”

“Point defense on automatic!” Cunningham snapped.

That was just a double check on Cunningham’s part, Vaughn knew. Every Navy captain remembered the tragedy of Stark, and the Phalanx system that had been switched off at the beginning of the attack.

“Defenses activated, Captain. On automatic.”

“Lock on with VLS!”

“Tracking, Captain. Vertical Launch Systems locked.”

Cunningham looked at Admiral Vaughn. His eyes were bleak, but steady.

Vaughn nodded, and the ship’s captain turned back to the TO. “Fire!”

A closed-circuit television monitor displayed a view of Vicksburg’s forward deck. Between the bridge tower and the number-one five-inch turret, the twin arms of the ship’s forward Mark 26 Mod I missile launcher slewed about and elevated, until the twin darts of the Standard missiles slung from its launch rails were pointed straight up.

At Cunningham’s command, there was a burst of smoke and flame that engulfed the launcher and washed across the forward deck, blotting out the TV image. When the smoke cleared, the missile was gone, arrowing vertically into the sky. Almost immediately, the second Standard missile flashed skyward after its brother.

On the deck, the launcher swiveled again, realigning itself. Two hatches slid open automatically, one beneath each launch rail. Out of the deck, another pair of Standard SM-2(MR) missiles slid up the rails, reloading the empty launcher.

Seconds later these missiles followed the first two, shrieking into the wet morning air. Spray lashed across Vicksburg’s bow as the VLS reloaded once again.

Vicksburg’s weapon systems were so highly automated that it was theoretically possible for a single well-trained man to handle the ship in combat. Forward, she carried twenty-nine Standard SM-2(MR)s. Aft were sixty-one more, each with a range of thirty-five miles at Mach 2.

When combined with her two Mark 15 Phalanx CIWS mounts, one port, one starboard, Vicksburg’s weaponry made her arguably the deadliest AAW vessel afloat, as well as one of the most complex.

As Vaughn watched the Indian aircraft approach the heart of the battle group, he wondered which would count for more in the coming fight, deadliness … or the complexity that more than once in the past had lead to errors, and disaster.