Joint Operations

EIGHTEEN

Jefferson set a new personal best record for launching the most fighters in the least amount of time. For Bird Dog and Gator, the minutes seemed like hours. Bird Dog kept worrying about his new wingman, Lieutenant Junior Grade Kelly Green, and her backseater, Tits.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Kelly Green — the name had been her parent’s doing, and the squadron hadn’t looked beyond that for a call sign — was the squadron’s newest nugget. As the most inexperienced pilot on the flight schedule, she was paired with Bird Dog, on the theory that he’d be able to teach her the ropes and keep her out of trouble. Gator had loudly expressed the opinion in public that in this particular instance, there was little hope of the latter.

“She’ll be okay,” Gator said reassuringly over ICS. “So will Tits. I trained him myself, and you’ve been watching Kelly in action for the last three months.”

“Don’t remind me.” Bird Dog snuck a quick glance aft through the canopy and spotted Kelly immediately in position, two thousand yards aft and two thousand yards above him. The tall lanky brunette — and yes, she did have green eyes to go with her nickname — had been a source of contention between he and Lobo ever since the new pilot had joined the squadron.

But what was he supposed to do? Just pretend she knew everything she was supposed to? If she were going to fly as his wingman, he had to be damned certain he could count on her. Certain enough that he didn’t have to look back and check to make sure that she was in position visually, even though his heads-up display fed the information to him automatically.

In the last three months, they’d spent endless hours talking about tactics. She’d started out slightly in awe of him. Evidently word of his combat experience in every theater around the world had already traveled throughout the Tomcat community, and she appeared slightly in awe of him. She’d gotten over her awe a little too easily for his taste, but that’s the way women were, weren’t they?

And at least she was flying with a guy who had a sense of humor, Tits. Not like Gator, that old sourpuss.

“Okay, just like we practiced,” he said over tactical. “Another round of AMRAAMS — I’ll take the lead, you take the guy behind him.”

“Roger.” From the calm, collected tone of voice, no one could have guessed that Kelly was about to take her first live shot.

“Then we close in with the Sidewinders. Remember, these guys have maneuverability on us. We have to exploit our greater power, get them into the vertical game, you remember?” Bird Dog asked.

“I remember,” Kelly answered.

“Okay, on my mark — now!” Bird Dog said.

The Tomcat jolted slightly as the heavier missile leapt off of its wing, white smoke gouting off the stern as it traced an unerring path toward the lead aircraft.

Bird Dog’s MiG broke right hard, and curved down below the two Tomcats, clearly intending to come up behind and position himself for a tail shot.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Bird Dog said softly. “Not if I’ve got anything to say about it.”

He pulled the Tomcat into a hard right-hand turn, ascending and rolling as he did, coaxing the MiG into the vertical game. Once he’d grabbed five thousand feet of altitude, he rolled back into a nose-down position, and found that it worked just as he’d planned — he had a perfect, slightly trailing side shot on the other MiG.

He flipped the weapons selector switch from AMRAAM to Sidewinder and blasted the lighter IR-seeking missile off the wing. Without waiting to see how it did, he grabbed for altitude again, fully expecting the MiG with being preoccupied with trying to shake the Sidewinder for at least ten seconds.

The heads-up display clobbered immediately with radar returns, indicating that the other aircraft had ejected flares and chaff. He rolled easily out of range of them, coming back into level flight at nineteen thousand feet, and turning back toward his quarry.

The MiG was nose up, screaming through the sky in an almost vertical climb. A few more seconds and its soft underbelly would be directly in his line of fire. Bird Dog goosed the Tomcat with a touch of afterburner, closing the distance. For a brief moment, he considered going to guns, then dismissed the idea. Not a perfect angle for a Sidewinder shot, but it was worth a try. Save the guns for when he really needed them, when they were up close and personal instead of almost at the edge of the guns’ maximum range.

“Got ’im, got ’im,” a howl came over tactical.

“Good kill, good kill,” he heard Tits cry in response. “Nailed him with the first AMRAAM.”

“Some guys get all the luck,” Bird Dog muttered. “I had to give them the stupid bastard, and now Kelly’s going to have to help me out with this one.” For indeed, the MiG was proving to have a far more capable pilot than he’d counted on. Everything in the intelligence reports indicated that the Chinese fighter pilots got significantly less training than American ones did, and that their equipment was often poorly maintained. But the bloke in front of him, dancing that MiG through the sky, clearly had not been reading the same intelligence reports.

The MiG shot up past him, sunlight gleaming off the undercarriage, glaring in his eyes, momentarily blinding him. The symbols on his heads-up display were blanked out by the glare.

“Joining on you now, Bird Dog,” Kelly’s voice said over tactical, a deep tone of satisfaction in her normally sensual alto voice. “On your high six.”

“She’s got the shot, Bird Dog,” Gator pointed out. “By the time we get nose up to nail his tailpipes, she’ll be there.”

“It’s my MiG,” Bird Dog insisted. “Mine.”

He yanked the Tomcat around again into a hard turn, and felt the gray creeping in at the edges of his vision. Too many G-forces, too many — sure, he’d pulled more before, but it was always a risk. Behind him, he heard a muttered protest from Gator, then silence as the RIO blacked out.

The Tomcat responded beautifully, turning harder and tighter than he’d ever thought possible for her to do. He lost some speed in the maneuver, and drained off even more as he pitched the Tomcat nose high to track the MiG down. He punched the afterburners, felt the surge slam him back into his ejection seat, and again felt his consciousness start to fade. “Not now, dammit. Not now,” he muttered, fighting off the darkness. He eased the afterburner back, and felt the gray start to recede. But by then the MiG had already topped out, and was heading back down toward him.

“Fox two, fox two,” Kelly howled. “Bird Dog, break right!”

“Fuck you, Kelly,” Bird Dog howled. At the same time, he cut the Tomcat to the right as directed. No pilot in his right mind ever ignored a break command from a wingman.

But his forward momentum was just too great. Had she been more experienced, Kelly would have seen it. She would have known that Bird Dog could not get his aircraft out of the line of fire in time.

Bird Dog saw it happen as if in slow motion. The AMRAAM seemed to creep through the air, a long, white cylinder with stubby fins hurtling toward him, yet seeming to creep along at a snail’s pace. The MiG was still descending, picking up speed, and was now almost parallel with him. His Tomcat felt sluggish, and was just starting to come right in response to his order as the MiG passed by.

The AMRAAM seemed to gently caress the MiG, and then started disintegrating. Bird Dog howled, aware that they were close, too close, too damned close. He could see the other pilot’s face through the canopy, the Chinese’s expression masked by the oxygen mask and helmet.

Just as the MiG exploded into flames, his canopy popped off and he and Gator were spit out like watermelon seeds. He felt a moment of sheer, raw fear, hanging suspended in the air, his parachute not yet deployed, the ejection seat separating from its pan with almost painful slowness. He tried to twist his head around to see Gator, but couldn’t stop his motion tumbling through the sky.

The combination of excessive G-forces, ejection, proved to be too much. He felt his gorge rise, hot, foul liquid crowding the back of his throat. Bird Dog puked, then passed out.

Kelly watched in horror as the burning MiG airframe reached out tendrils of flame to stroke the Tomcat carcass. Shrapnel peppered the fatally wounded American aircraft, and thin spews of JP8 fuel sparkled in the air for a microsecond before the entire mass exploded into an incandescent fireball.

She stared down at the water below, ignoring the repeated calls from Jefferson asking if she saw any chutes.

“I’ve got ’em!” Tits said. “There, just forward of our nose. Two of ’em. Ain’t that the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”

It was, except for the MiG exploding into flames. In that brief millisecond when it had been her kill and her kill alone before disaster reached out to stroke her lead.

Finally, the incessant queries from Jefferson could no longer be denied. As she descended through ten thousand feet, keeping her eyes fixed on the chutes below, she answered their repeated inquiries with, “Tomcat 203 bought it. I have two chutes, repeat, two chutes. I’ll be orbiting overhead, awaiting SAR aircraft.” She flipped her transponder beacon to indicate the emergency distress code.

“What happened up there?” a new voice asked.

Kelly recognized it immediately as Batman. “I took a shot at a MiG, nailed him, Admiral. But Bird Dog was too close. He punched out just before the fireball got to him.”

“Are they okay?” Batman’s voice asked.

She shook her head, knowing he couldn’t see the gesture. “I have chutes. I’ll know more in a little bit.”

“How did you manage to get too close?”

“I don’t know exactly, sir. I called for a break right and took the shot. Maybe I called too late, maybe he didn’t break fast enough. I don’t know, sir.”

There was a long silence, then Batman said, “How are you for fuel?”

She glanced down at the fuel indicator and grimaced. “Five thousand pounds. Enough for a pass at the boat.”

“You want a tank before you take a shot at the deck?” he asked. What he really meant was, was she so shook up that she needed a couple of passes to get on board.

“No, I’m fine.”

“Well. Just concentrate on getting on board, now. We’ll sort this out later.” Batman’s voice was grave, but not unkind.

The Air Intercept Controller was on the circuit immediately, giving her a vector around the starboard marshal and into an immediate approach on the carrier. She followed his instructions carefully, precisely, forcing her mind to concentrate on the second most dangerous evolution any carrier pilot undertakes, right after tanking. Tits, unusually quiet behind her, simply murmured a few reassuring, “Looking good, looking good,” from time to time.

She rolled in on the deck on a perfect flight path and handily snagged the three wire. She waited, the Tomcat throbbing at full military power, until a yellow shirt stepped in front of her and indicated it was safe to reduce power. Then she eased the tailhook up, dropping the three wire, and taxied carefully across the deck and into her spot. She and Tits ran through the shutdown checklist quickly, and popped the canopy while the plane captain mounted to safe their ejection seats and help them out.

Finally, she swung a leg over the aircraft and started down the boarding ladder, the footholds that popped out from the side of the aircraft. She jumped off the last one, felt a slight jar run through her as she landed heavily on the flight deck. She heard Tits hit the deck behind her.

As she headed for the island, she noticed the hatch pop open and a rangy female figure step out. Short clipped blonde hair framed an iron mask of a face.

Lobo. Shit, I don’t need this right now. Everything that’s gone on over the last three months, all the crap she’s given me, and now I shoot her guy down.

Kelly halted in front of Lobo and regarded her gravely. The older woman stood there, her face unreadable, her arms crossed in front of her. Finally, Lobo spoke. “You saw chutes, right?”

Kelly nodded.

Lobo closed the distance between them and slung one arm around her shoulders. “Well, then, he’ll be okay. He’s got Gator keeping an eye on him, you know.”

Kelly felt the first shiver of weakness go through her, and the carefully maintained fighter jock facade start to crumble. She tried to speak, found her voice was too gravelly, and stopped.

Lobo swung around to face her again. “Do not do this,” Lobo said, her voice low and dangerous. “Everything we’ve fought for — I’ve fought for — do not lose it now. I swear to God, I’ll kill you if you cry.”

Cold fury flooded back into Kelly. The tears that had started in her eyes dried and the lump in her throat vanished. She nodded tightly, then said, “Let’s go.”

Lobo shook her head. “No, not yet. I want you to understand this — shit happens up there, you know? I know, and Bird Dog sure as hell does. We all take our chances, knowing what can happen every time we strap a Tomcat to our ass. But that’s naval aviation, and you either learn to live with it or you get out. So that’s what you get to decide now, lady. Can you handle it? If you can’t, you might as well put those pretty little gold wings on the admiral’s desk as soon as you walk into his stateroom. Because if you can’t handle it, then you don’t have what it takes to be out here. You read me?”

Kelly lifted her chin and glared at the other woman. “I read you. Now, if you’ll excuse me — I’m quite certain that there are a number of people I need to talk to.” She marched off with Tits trailing close behind her. Tits shot Lobo an oddly grateful look as they entered the skin of the ship.

Lobo shook her head as she watched them go. The younger pilot didn’t understand now, but maybe she would someday. And whenever she did, she’d thank Lobo for what she’d just done.

Bird Dog — by God, you make it out of this alive or I’ll kill you. Lobo shook her head, remembering her own days as a POW, the torture she’d endured, the rape, the beatings. Yet, she’d made it out, and even back into flight status. And if she had anything to say about it, so would Kelly Green.

Just then, the 1MC announced, “Attention all hands. SAR mission successful — two souls recovered. Alive. Well done.”

It was Lobo’s turn to fight back tears.