Flame Out

CHAPTER 9

“Still no change in heading. The bandits are still on heading one-nine-five.” The tension in Coyote’s voice was plain even through the distortion and static of the radio channel.

Batman Wayne didn’t like the edge in the squadron leader’s voice. The Soviets simply weren’t backing off, and Grant was sounding more and more frustrated with the situation. Would the Russians force the Americans to fire the first shots? Did they want to start a war?

He keyed in his radio. “Redwing Leader, Redwing Leader, this is Ajax Leader. Don’t worry ‘bout a thing, Coyote. We’re coming up fast.”

“One minute thirty,” Malibu chimed in from the backseat, all business. “Screen’s still empty except for our boys and their guests.”

“Keep watching them, Mal,” Batman said. He switched frequencies. “Ajax Flight, let’s show these gate-crashers what we do when we find unwelcome visitors.” He thought back to the intercept he’d done before. “Big D, you and the Loon take the left. Go for weapons locks on the Bear. Make ‘em sweat a little. Tyrone, you and me are gonna play tag with the number-two MiG. Got it?”

“We’re on it, Caped Crusader!” That was Lieutenant Commander Dallas Sheridan, “Big D,” flying Tomcat 212. His aircraft peeled off, followed closely by Lieutenant Adam “Loon” Baird in number 205. “We’ll be all over that guy like ugly on my mother-in-law!”

“Let’s show the Commies what a real aviator can do!” Powers added. “They’ll never know what hit ‘em!”

“Just remember the ROES, children,” Batman said, mostly for the benefit of Powers and Cavanaugh. Even though they’d done a good job in the encounter Monday night he still regarded Powers as a potential troublemaker. The man wanted to score a kill, and Batman was afraid he’d get too eager. He could remember how it had felt when he’d been looking for his first ACM kill. “Do not fire unless fired upon, or until you get the Weapons Free call from the Jeff.”

“Yes, Mother,” Sheridan’s RIO, Lieutenant j.g. Edward “Fast Eddie” Glazowski, replied. “We’ll be good.”

Under the lighthearted banter there was an underlying seriousness. These men knew what was at stake today. After years of training for just this kind of confrontation, it was still hard to believe that they were so close to the brink this time.

“One minute, Batman,” Malibu announced quietly.

He tightened his grip on the stick and swallowed.

“Damn it, why don’t they let us do something?” Koslosky muttered. He was maintaining the Tomcat’s position above the Bear, but so far there was no sign that the Russians were willing to turn back. By now they would know about the four new fighters from Ajax Flight, and that hadn’t seemed to change things either.

“Stay frosty, kid,” Kirshner advised him.

Koslosky fumed. It seemed like everyone from the admiral down to his own RIO was letting the Russians get away with murder just because things were hot in Norway. He knew how the Soviets operated … hell, everybody knew. They would push as hard and as far as they could just to see how much they could get away with, but the first time they faced really determined opposition they caved in. That had been the story of the whole Cold War era. It had led to the end of the Wall and the retreat of the Red Army from Eastern Europe into the Russian heartland.

“The hell with this,” he said aloud. With a quick movement he banked the Tomcat right, standing it on one wing and letting the plane lose altitude. He’d give that Bear pilot the fright of his life. Then they’d see how long the Russians ignored the carrier’s exclusion zone!

“Jesus!” Kirshner swore. “What the hell’re you doing, Kos?”

“Trust me, Wild Card,” he said with a grin. “I’m just raising them another few dollars.”

His hands worked the stick and the throttles deftly, settling the fighter close alongside the huge reconnaissance plane’s starboard wing. It was a tricky maneuver, but nothing he couldn’t handle. Sliding up to a tanker for a midair refueling was no more hazardous than this. Slowly he edged his speed up so the Tomcat would pull forward alongside of the cockpit. Koslosky grinned again, his mind flashing back to the scene from the movie Top Gun where the hero had inverted his Tomcat a few feet over an enemy plane. There was no room for that kind of bravado out here … but you could make your point clearly enough just by crowding the opposition a little. Tomcat and Bear edged closer together.

“New American aircraft have split up,” the electronics officer reported nervously. “Comrade Captain-Lieutenant, if they are serious about exclusion zone we will be easy targets.”

Captain-Lieutenant Viktor Petrovich Kolibernov had been thinking the same thing. It was easy enough for the Boishoi Chirey, the “Big Boys” who gave the orders, to claim that the Americans would never initiate hostilities. Things looked different from the cockpit of an antiquated Tu-95 with a swarm of American fighters closing in.

He realized he was sweating. Kolibemov wiped his forehead with one gloved hand and then reached up to adjust the large fan positioned above the right side of his seat. He darted a glance at the copilot, but if Lieutenant Adriashenko realized how nervous his commanding officer was he gave no sign of it.

Much as Kolibemov wanted to back off before the Americans got any more persistent, his instructions were specific and allowed him no freedom of action. If he deviated from the reconnaissance mission now, he would have to be ready to face the consequences back at Olenegersk. Captain-lieutenants were not supposed to take that kind of decision on themselves without a very good reason.

“Weapons lock! Weapons lock!” The electronics officer’s voice rose an octave. “They have a lock on us!”

Kolibemov hesitated. In ten years of flying maritime reconnaissance patrols Kolibemov had never felt so close to the edge before. He could finally understand how his father had felt when he served as an officer aboard one of the freighters that had tried to run the American blockade of Cuba back in the tense days of the Missile Crisis. Knowing that if both sides persisted on this course the only result could be war, perhaps the total war of nuclear annihilation. And for all the talk of glasnost and perestroika and the end of the age of confrontations, history was repeating itself again.

“Fuck it!” he said suddenly, wrenching the steering yoke to starboard. He wasn’t going to give the Americans an excuse to start something, no matter what the orders said. Next to him Adriashenko was gaping at him in disbelief.

“Look out! Look out!” someone shouted. Too late Kolibemov saw the American F-14 to starboard.

Too late …

Koslosky felt the Bear brush against the Tomcat’s wing, a jarring impact that drove the F-14’s wingtip downward with a screech of crumpled metal. He cursed and jerked his stick hard over, ramming the throttles full forward to afterburner zone five. The fighter shuddered as it turned, bucking like a Wild horse. He fought for control, but the combination of the Bear’s impact and the abrupt acceleration he’d applied to get clear made it that much harder to keep from falling into an uncontrolled spin.

“Shit!” Kirshner yelled. “You idiot!”

He ignored the RIO and wrestled with the stick. “Tomcat Two-oh-eight,” he announced on the radio. “He hit me! I’m hit!” The aircraft plunged toward the angry gray sea.

Powers heard Koslosky’s shout in his headphones. “I’m hit!”

“Goddamn!” he yelled. “They’ve hit Koslosky! The goddamned Russkies have opened fire!”

Don’t fire unless fired upon … Though he hadn’t seen the attack, Koslosky’s plane had been hit. That scrapped all the Rules of Engagement. The American aviators were in a whole new ball game now … one where speed and reaction time counted most. Victory in air-to-air combat went to the pilots who were quickest to acquire their targets and get off their shots.

He thumbed the selector switch on the stick to choose a Sidewinder. On his HUD the target reticule fixed on the distant bulk of the Bear and flashed red. The hum of a solid lock-on filled his ears.

“Tone … I’ve got good tone.” His thumb jabbed the firing stud. “Fox two! Fox two!”

The AIM-9M ignited and leapt from under the Tomcat’s wing, streaking toward its target. Mouth dry, Powers watched the plume of fire racing across the sky.

The heat-seeker struck the Bear squarely in the outermost engine on the port wing. Powers could see the fireball even from his position, a distant gleam of flame in the sky.

“Yahoo!” he shouted. “That’s a hit!”

He pushed the throttle forward into afterburner, ready to close in and finish the job.

Terekhov’s head came around as the explosion lit up the overcast sky behind the MiG. He hadn’t believed it could happen. But it had … the Americans had fired on the Bear.

His orders covered what he was supposed to do in that case.

“Escort Leader to Escort Two,” he said grimly. “Weapons are free. Fire at discretion.”

They were outnumbered three to one, but the two MiGs of Soviet Naval Aviation would give a good account of themselves regardless of the odds. Senior Lieutenant Nickolaev was one of the squadron’s best pilots, despite his reputation for indulging in the kind of cowboy flying the Americans worshipped.

Terekhov cut in the MiG’s afterburners, feeling the thrust of the powerful Isotov RD-33 turbofans pressing him into his seat. Pulling back on his stick, he aimed for the clouds.

Coyote watched as flame engulfed the wing of the Tu-95, hardly able to believe what he was seeing. Sheered off by the blast, the wing fell away, and the aircraft spun off out of control, plummeting for the ocean below. As the Bear plunged, Coyote saw Koslosky’s Tomcat, its wing visibly damaged, obviously in trouble.

It had all happened too fast … so fast that he hadn’t been able to stop it. The horror of what had happened dulled his reactions. Viper Squadron had just fired the shots that could lead to outright war.

Then Nichols was shouting over the ICS. “Better look sharp, Skipper. Watch the MiGs!”

He jerked his attention away from the tableau of falling Bear and struggling fighter to see the lead MiG climbing fast ahead. “Batman! We’ve got a situation here!”

“On our way!”

“Skipper! Skipper! MiG two’s on my six! I can’t get control to dodge him!” That was Koslosky’s voice, sounding panicky.

Coyote banked and turned in time to see the MiG flash past in pursuit of the stricken Tomcat. With a curse Grant tried to bring his plane around, but he seemed to be moving in slow motion compared to the other planes.

The flare he saw under the MiG’s port wing was a missile launch, probably an AA-8 Aphid heat-seeker. “Break left! Kos, break left!”

“Can’t do it, Skipper!” Koslosky replied. Then his voice rose. “Wild Card! Eject! Ej-“

The missile hit the Tomcat before Koslosky could finish. Coyote turned his head as the explosion ripped the plane apart, feeling sick.

“Oh, God,” he heard Nichols say behind him.

“Save it. I want that bastard!” Teeth clenched, Coyote wrenched his stick over and started after the Fulcrum.

“Lead MiG’s climbing fast, Batman. Looks like he wants to loop in and nail Coyote.”

“Not if we get there first, he won’t.” Batman shoved the throttles all the way forward and thumbed his selector switch. Sidewinders were their best bet for these conditions.

Behind him he heard Malibu on the radio channel back to the Jefferson. “Dragon’s Lair, Dragon’s Lair, this is Ajax Two-oh-four. We are engaging. Repeat, we are engaging.”

Once Batman would have felt satisfaction at those words. Now he knew nothing but a cold gnawing in his guts. They had crossed the line.

“Come on, you bastard,” Coyote muttered. “Come on.” The lock-on tone was loud in his ears. “I’ve got tone!” He hit the firing stud. “Fox two! Fox two!”

“He’s jinking!” John-Boy said.

The MiG banked and dropped fast, and the heat-seeker flashed past. “damn!” Coyote felt his fist tightening around the stick. That MiG driver was good … and he himself had been just a little too quick off the mark.

“Easy, Coyote,” Nichols told him. “What’re you always telling us? Fly with your head …”

Grant gave a short nod and forced himself to cool off. There was little room for the aggressive hot-dogging so beloved by Hollywood in a real ACM situation. It was the cool hand, the technician who knew precisely what his aircraft could do and was willing to take it to the edge of the envelope, but never beyond, who scored.

Ahead the MiG started a tight turn to the left, the kind of nimble maneuver the smaller Soviet fighters were particularly good at. Coyote pulled back on the stick, bringing the Tomcat’s nose up into a steep climb to bleed off airspeed and keep from overshooting the target plane. He rolled left, almost standing the F-14 on its wing so he could keep the MiG in sight, then dropped his nose and started diving. The high yo-yo was one of the classic fighter moves, and this time it went off with textbook precision. The Tomcat settled in squarely on the MiG’s six. The reticule centered on the enemy plane. “Tone! I’ve got tone!” He fired his second Sidewinder. “Fox two! Fox two!” It raced toward its target trailing smoke and fire.

“Goddamn them!” CAG Stramaglia exploded. “What the hell is happening up there?”

He had listened to the radio traffic in disbelieving horror as the situation had unfolded. From that first call of “I’m hit!” it had taken almost no time at all for a full-fledged aerial battle to erupt.

“Sir?” A young crewman was looking up from one of the consoles at him. “Sir … it’s the admiral.”

He picked up a handset. “Admiral. Stramaglia here.”

“What’s the situation, CAG?” Tarrant’s voice was level but strained.

“We don’t know what started it, Admiral,” Stramaglia said carefully. “But the Bear and one of our planes are both out of action, and the rest are in a furball.”

“Goddamn,” the admiral said, echoing Stramaglia’s feelings. There was a pause. “All right, CAG. Pull those Tomcats out of there. Fast. There’s going to be hell to pay for this one.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” he answered slowly.

He replaced the handset and reached for the radio microphone.

The Russian tried to evade again, but this time the Sidewinder got a piece of him. Coyote watched as the MiG started coming apart. Somehow the pilot had time to eject.

“Splash one!” John-Boy said.

“Good chute! I’ve got a good chute from the Soviet!” Coyote added.

His threat warning buzzed. “The other guy’s coming down on us,” Nichols announced. “He’s at five o’clock!”

“Fox two! Fox two!” That was Batman’s voice, announcing another Sidewinder attack. Coyote threw his plane into a sharp right turn, hoping that even if the missile didn’t tag his opponent it would at least keep the Russian busy enough to allow him to turn the tables.

“No good! Missed the bastard!” That was Malibu, sounding distinctly unlike a laid-back surfer now.

“Where is he, John-Boy?” Coyote asked. He scanned the sky through the canopy, searching for the MiG. “I’ve lost him.”

“One o’clock! One o’clock high!” Nichols shot back.

Coyote spotted the MiG. “All right, Ivan, I’m tired of this game.” He pulled back on the stick and went to full afterburner. “Batman, let’s nail this sucker so we can go home!”

“Ninety-nine aircraft! Ninety-nine aircraft!” That was CAG’s voice giving the code that signaled the message was for all planes. “Break off and RTB. Repeat, return to base!”

“Is he kidding?” Lieutenant Baird asked. “Five to one odds and he wants us to run?”

“I think there was an up gripe about my radio in the last maintenance log,” Sheridan added rebelliously. “I’m having a lot of trouble reading them back at home plate.”

“All aircraft return to base. Acknowledge.” Stramaglia sounded insistent … angry. But whether it was at the grumbling or at the orders he was required to give, Coyote couldn’t be sure.

“You heard the man,” Coyote said. “Break off! Break off! Herd them out of here, Batman! I’ll stay on him until you’re clear.”

“Roger, Two-oh-one.” Even Batman, who should have known better, sounded like he was plotting mutiny. But the dots representing Ajax Flight on his VDI were turning away, heading back toward the carrier. That left only the MiG to worry about.

He almost hoped the Russian would give him an excuse to finish the job.

Captain Second Rank Terekhov gaped at his radar display, unable, unwilling to believe what it showed. Why were the Americans breaking off? They’d outnumbered him, out gunned him. Yet at the moment when they could have destroyed his aircraft four of them had turned away, and the fifth was doing nothing to close in for a kill.

“Cossack, this is Misha,” he said on the carrier control frequency. “Enemy has discontinued action. Request instructions. Over.” Part of him was afraid the carrier would order him to attack, another part wished that they would. To return home now would be to face punishment … disgrace. Better, perhaps, to follow Nickolaev.

“Misha, Cossack,” the reply came back quickly. His controller sounded almost as shattered as he felt. Not surprising, in view of what had just happened. For all the smug confidence of the High Command, it seemed the Americans were adopting an aggressive posture after all. “Return to base.”

“Acknowledged, Cossack.” He glanced at his fuel gauge. “I will need in-flight refueling to reach you.”

“Understood. A tanker will rendezvous. Cossack out.”

He watched his radar screen carefully as he turned for home, but the lone American fighter continued to circle as before. Terekhov shook his head in wonder. Why hadn’t the Americans followed through on their advantage? Why was he still alive?