Typhoon Season

SEVEN

Tai Ling gazed down through the golden haze of sun on water, searching for his prey. He couldn’t visually pick out the four fighters circling far below. His look-down radar showed they were there, and their relative positions, but he wished he could see them with his own eyes. It would make it much easier to recognize the signal when it came. He didn’t know what the signal would be, exactly, but he’d been told that it would be unmistakable.

He’d also been told that the Americans, unbeknownst to themselves, would be the ones to give it.

Speaking of Americans… Tai’s radar also showed the approach of four more fighter aircraft from the direction of the aircraft carrier.

The sight of those blips filled him with a strange emotion: half eager anticipation, half sick hope. The anticipation was the natural sensibility of any trained fighter pilot facing his possible first real dogfight. The hope was inspired by the unremitting memory of Hua Shih’s SU-37 exploding into a burning comet in front of him, its beautiful skin punched full of 20mm cannon holes. From Tai Ling’s cannon.

Although Tai knew that what he had done was essential in the long run, that didn’t make accepting the fact any easier: He had shot down one of his own men. His own section leader, in fact. And he’d done it from the trusted position of wingman.

The fact that he had himself been promoted to section leader following Hua’s “flame-out and crash” only made the memory of that day more bitter.

Perhaps making a true, man-to-man kill on an American plane would clean the slate, would erase the shame of what he’d done. Had to do. Perhaps even Hua would understand and applaud.

Focused again, Tai returned his attention to the radar and willed the Americans to come closer.

“Scimitar Leader to Viper Leader,” Bird Dog said over tactical. “We’re fifty mikes out. Copy?”

“Copy, Scimitar Leader. Don’t hurry on our account. I’ve always wanted to get a nice, long, close-up look at a Flanker. Or two.”

“We’re buster, Lobo. Just hang in there.”

“Copy.” Her damned voice was all business. “By the way, the inbound PLA helo is going to get here in less than a mike. You’re the War College brain; what do you advise if it makes a play for the survivor?”

“Just do what you did the other night,” he said. “Those are our orders: Just let the helo know you’re there. Make life uncomfortable for it. Shiloh advises two Seahawks are en route, ETA fifteen mikes.”

“Um, Mr. Dog, it seems to me that if I run interference on this helo like you say, the Chinese could make a pretty good case that the USA is interfering in a benevolent SAR attempt.”

“Not after what happened to Lady of Leisure,” Bird Dog said.

Two sharp clicks indicated acknowledgment of the message. Then the ICS came on. “I don’t think she liked your advice, boss,” Catwoman said.

I didn’t either, Bird Dog thought, but didn’t say. How could anyone justify risking the lives of American pilots, not to mention a damned expensive aircraft costing, in order to guard a chunk of water in which a person might or might not be floating around alive?

But then he remembered how he’d felt as he drifted helplessly in the warm Atlantic, waiting to see who was going to pick him up first — the Cubans or his own people. Remembered that, and was glad he’d kept his lip zipped for a change.

But his imagination was a different matter. When he visualized Lobo flying around out there at suicidally low altitudes, doing a job better suited to prop planes or helos, his anger and frustration surged up again, and he thought, Hang on, Lobo, just hang on….

There was nothing worse than flying this low in a fighter plane. Lobo ached for altitude, for the superior speed and maneuverability that altitude conferred.

Right now the two SU-27s were living up to their NATO nickname, flanking her and Hot Rock throughout their long, constant turn, as if escorting the American planes. The Flankers were large craft, with twin vertical stabilizers and graceful, recurved fuselages… in fact, they looked disturbingly like Tomcats. She mentally reviewed what she knew about their capabilities: Twin afterburning Lyul’ka AL-21 turbofans each providing almost thirty thousand pounds of thrust — compared to the 27,000 pounds available to the Tomcats — which gave the Chinese planes a top speed of Mach 2.35 as compared to Mach 1.88 for the Tomcat. The SU-27 had a better ceiling, too.

According to the latest intel, the Flankers also turned tighter than Tomcats, and had radar equipped with look-down, shoot-down capability.

And these were the old models. The SU-35s and SU-37 up above had, reportedly, even higher performance numbers.

In other words, for the first time since early in the Vietnam war, it was possible the American aircraft in any given air battle were not intrinsically superior. It was actually possible that the Tomcat was outmatched, not only in turn radius but in pure, brute power.

On top of that, Homeplate had warned them to be on the lookout for an “unidentified fighter aircraft of unknown abilities.” Whatever that meant.

Not that Lobo was frightened by either the known statistics or the unknown variables of the situation. Regardless of how swell a pilot’s hardware was, the plane was no better than the pilot. And that was where nobody could touch the United States Navy.

Still… there was no denying that this situation sucked.

She looked over her right shoulder, gazing down at the water on the inside of her steady turn. There was a small red-and-white dot floating on the water. The survivor, presumably, although there had been no more flares. She wondered what the poor schmuck thought about this private air show. Assuming he or she was still alive.

“Lobo,” Handyman said, “I’ve got a visual on that Chinese helo. I hate to ask awkward questions, but what are we supposed to do if it ignores us? Shoot it down?”

“I wish,” Lobo said.

“Let’s get horizontal,” Thor said into his oxygen mask. Toggling the radio, he reported to Homeplate that he and Reedy had arrived on site, at an altitude of fifty-two thousand feet — all they could manage, but still below the ceiling of the Russian planes. He and Reedy started circling well outside the orbit of the six bogeys, trying to look innocent.

But Thor could see the enemy, the dying light of day flaring silver-gold off the lower surfaces of wings and canards as the Flankers circled. Six of them, not to mention the two older models far down below, dancing with Lobo and Hot Rock just above the water.

Bad position. And a bad fuel situation for him and Reedy.

Who cares?

Thor ran his thumb over the weapons selector switch and waited for something to happen.

“Viper 304, Viper 302,” Lobo said. “Hot Rock, we’d better make things a little rough for that helo before it gets any closer. We’re going to need to spread out some.”

“What?”

“If we’re going to keep that chopper off the survivor, we’ve got to put up a wall. I go past it, then you go past it, then I go, like that. Constant circles. Rip up the air. No gap big enough for him to slip through. You’re such a hot stick, you think you can handle that?”

A pause, then, “You’re the boss.”

“Then let’s do it.”

“How much farther?” Bird Dog snapped over ICS. “How much farther?”

“You sound like a little kid in the back of a station wagon,” Catwoman said. “Five mikes. Keep your shirt on — sir. What can happen in the next five minutes?”

“They didn’t teach this in flight school,” Hot Rock muttered as he eased back on the throttles, letting the distance between his Tomcat and Lobo’s lengthen. At the same time, both planes were descending. Hot Rock rarely saw the ocean this close except during launches and landings — the two most dangerous times to be a Naval aviator.

But he wasn’t worried about the water; he was too busy keeping an eye on the two escorting Flankers. For a few moments they seemed uncertain what to do; then they both rose up and took up new position, one behind each of the Tomcats. Overall, the formation was odd. Hot Rock had a clear belly-shot at the Flanker following Lobo, but at the same time he was dead in the sights of the Flanker on his own six o’clock. A Mexican standoff.

“No need to hit the deck.” Lobo’s voice was flat but intense in his hears. “Use your wingtip vortices. Got that?”

Hot Rock clicked his mike twice. Lobo was talking about taking advantage of what was usually an annoying feature of fixed-wing aerodynamics — the tilted hurricanes of air that formed at the outer ends of a wing, where compressed air from the underside met low-pressure air from above. The resulting braids of turbulence were a major source of drag, as well as a potential hazard to other air traffic because they could linger for minutes in the air, invisible and tenacious, like horizontal tornadoes.

In this case, though, Lobo was advocating using the vortices as blunt instruments to make the Chinese helo think twice about approaching the survivor in the water. Painting the air with turbulence that way would require some fine flying, and Hot Rock felt himself relaxing just thinking about it.

Ahead of him, Lobo was making her first turn toward the helo, which was a slick-looking Z-9 with retractable landing gear and a shark-fin fairing around its tail rotor. The helo was flying low enough to create a gray shimmer on the water.

Lobo increased her angle of bank, slipping down as she crossed the path of the helo. Her Chinese escort, Hot Rock noted, remained at his own higher altitude. Lobo roared past the helo, well above and in front of it, but plainly within the pilot’s sight. This was obvious because the helo immediately raised its nose in a hard braking action and swiveled partly to its left as it halted.

Hot Rock felt an electrical prickle on the back of his neck. What Lobo had just done could, arguably, be interpreted as a highly aggressive act. He waited to hear the sharp warbling tone in his helmet that would indicate a fire-control radar lock on his aircraft… but it didn’t happen. So far, everything was still cool.

Hot Rock increased his own angle of bank and let the Tomcat slip down along the same path Lobo had taken. He felt the slight bumping of disrupted air where her plane had been, although the harsher turbulence of its wingtip vortices were well below him, hammering down on the water.

He was beginning to level out for his close pass on the helo when he heard Two Tone shout: “Hot Rock! He’s going guns! Going guns! Gunfire in the water!”

Later, Hot Rock would review that moment over and over again in his mind. The helo was dead ahead, its tail pivoted somewhat toward him, but not at such an oblique angle that Hot Rock couldn’t see the open side hatch and the machine gun mounted there. He was sure, later, that he’d seen those things. He also plainly saw gouts of orange flame ripping into the air. That wasn’t just his imagination, or an illusion caused by sunlight flaring off passing swells. No way.

In fact, the sight of the flames was so startling he hesitated a moment, as if he wanted to convince himself it wasn’t real.

“Hot Rock!” Two Tone’s voice, sharp, so much like an older man’s voice. Disappointed, commanding. “Get on it!”

Hot Rock flicked his weapons selector switch to the Sidewinder position. “Fox Three,” he said.

From water level, everything that had been happening so dreadfully slowly suddenly accelerated to unbelievable speed. For what seemed like hours, Dr. George had been switching his attention between the circling jets, the approaching Chinese helicopter — and the water beneath his feet. The tiger shark kept disappearing and then coming back again, moving with increasing speed on each pass, as if making up its mind about something. Once it came so close George actually kicked it, after which it became more wary. But it was still around, or maybe there were more than one of them. It was hard to tell. The setting sun no longer cut its light into the water, showing him what lurked below. Soon he wouldn’t be able to see his legs at all.

The sharks would be under no such restrictions.

So, let the Chinese pick him up. He didn’t care anymore. He just wanted to be warm and dry and safe.

The helicopter was perhaps a hundred yards away when it halted. The jets continued to circle overhead, so low now that George could see the shapes of the pilots’ heads through the canopies. Two American jets, and two Chinese, cruising around together in a big, roaring circle. What the hell was going on?

Just then there was a brilliant flash from one of the American jets, and a sound like high-pressure water shooting from a hose. A rope of white smoke abruptly connected the American jet to the helicopter. The helicopter exploded. It broke in half like an egg, but the bright-yellow yolk rose up and up instead of falling. The shells of the fuselage dropped. Spinning rotor blades hit the water and broke free, skipping across the surface for some distance before vanishing in sheets of spray.

Where the fuselage vanished into the water, a roiling dome of bubbles and smoke boiled up, hissing and crackling.

Dr. George felt something nudge his foot, and started to kick.

Tai Ling saw the fireball light up the dark waters below, and heard the radio chatter erupt from the two SU-27 pilots down at sea level. Their message was shocked and furious: One of the Americans had just taken an unprovoked missile shot at the PLA helicopter arriving to rescue the person in the water. The helo was down.

If that wasn’t the signal Tai had been waiting for, nothing was.

“Weapons free!” he cried over the tactical circuit, and reached for his own weapons selector switch. “All aircraft, weapons free!”

“Holy shit!” Handyman yelled, a vast expression of emotion for him. “What the hell — ”

Lobo had her back to the helo and Hot Rock, but she heard him signal the firing of a Sidewinder, and simultaneously saw the fiery reflection of an explosion reflecting from the inside of her canopy. Her response came long before thought: She slammed the throttle quadrant full forward, and as the afterburners gave their mule kick, she hauled back hard on the stick. In a heartbeat of time, the Tomcat went from cruise mode into a neck-snapping climb out.

Lobo cranked her head around, searching for the Flanker that had been roofing her. Gasped as it flashed past to the left, showing its belly in a hard bank that had to have been initiated simply to avoid a collision.

“Well,” Handyman drawled, his voice back to normal, “that worked.”

Lobo eased the stick forward an inch, putting the Tomcat into a marginally more relaxed, sustainable angle of climb. “Where is he?” she demanded. “Where did he go?”

“Coming up behind us, babe.”

On her radar, Lobo saw the lozenge-shaped return of the Flanker coming around hard on her tail. A moment after that, she heard the warbling signal that indicated she was being painted with fire-control radar.

Radar or not, at this range the bogey was inside missile range; he’d be going to guns. Leaving the stick where it was, Lobo kicked the Tomcat over on one wingtip, rotated over like a gymnast doing a one-handed cartwheel, then dove back toward the deck. At the same time, the white-hot flare of tracers swept past her inboard wing.

The Flanker was right below her, from this angle nothing but a round fuselage, a couple of rectangular air intakes and the blazing flower of its cannon.

“Recommend guns,” Handyman said even as Lobo hit the trigger.

Her tracers ripped beneath the Flanker, a miss of only a few feet — but there was no room for a pull-up to bring the shells on target, not unless she wanted a certain head-on collision.

She jammed the stick forward instead, initiating the start of an inverted loop.

As her head filled with pressurized blood, she held her breath and grunted loudly, holding off unconsciousness as she mentally tracked the Flanker’s likely behavior. He should be rounding out of his vertical climb right about now, gleefully expecting to be right above her, in perfect position for a kill. Lobo snapped the stick to the right, then back, flipping the Tomcat right side up and simultaneously reversing its direction. Now the blood drained out of her head and she was struggling for consciousness against a different enemy. At the same time she found herself staring directly at the boiling patch of water where the helo had gone down… staring as it grew larger and larger, the Tomcat’s weight fighting her attempt to pull out, its engines fighting gravity and momentum, Lobo’s will fighting the same things… fighting…

And then she felt the wings grab air with authority and the surface of the South China Sea was blurring by beneath her.

“You just love this low-altitude shit, don’t you?” Handyman grunted.

“Man, did you ever screw up,” Thor said as he put his Hornet into a tight left turn. His scorn was not directed at the two Flankers left up here to fight him and Reedy; rather, it was aimed at whoever had ordered them to do so. Could anyone really be dipshitty enough to believe that a one-on-one ratio represented good odds for the Chinese pilots?

Not that things started out so hot for him and Reedy. The Flankers were a few thousand feet higher than the Hornets when the shooting started, and immediately came hurtling down, missiles streaking off their wings. That took some fancy flying to get out of. And Thor had to admit that at least some of the grim intel on these new birds was true; big as they were, the Flankers turned like plastic models tugged on a wire.

But Thor and Reedy flew in perfect harmony, using the high-low loose deuce formation, and the damned Chinese were overconfident; when they took the bait and converged on Reedy, Thor swooped over and in, crying “break right!” on his radio. Instantly Reedy’s Hornet showed the Flankers its belly. At the same moment Thor triggered a Sidewinder. Since the Flankers were displaying the most tailpipe, real sex to a Sidewinder, the missile selected the brighter of the two and drove itself home. Thor grinned to see a pillow-shaped eruption of smoke and flame. An ejection seat rocketed out of the mess, which pleased him even more. Personally, he loved to shoot down hardware, not software. “Splash one Flanker!” he cried.

Then he gasped as Reedy’s Hornet dissolved into fire and smoke.

He immediately compartmentalized his fury and did what he’d been trained to do: broke into a hard evasive turn and scanned his radar screen. Instantly, he knew what had happened. The descending Flankers had pulled a fast one. One of them split off from its fellows and returned to the high-altitude battle. The bastard had killed Reedy.

And at the same time, reversed the odds.

Bird Dog didn’t need to hear the radio signals from the Vipers to know that the dogfight had started in earnest. He could see it all over his radar screen as the various blobs and blips began to move in fast, devious directions. And one Marine had been splashed already.

He forced himself to relax. One advantage of coming in from a distance was that he’d already had the time to tag each bogey’s radar image with a targeting marker.

But that didn’t make his fellow aviators any less outnumbered. For a moment he felt unreasoning anger at the admiral and all the other boneheads who’d failed to be prepared for something like this… then he remembered that he was one of those boneheads.

He assessed the situation playing out over his radar screen. One Marine F/A-18s was still up high, tangling with a pair of bogeys. Down low, Lobo and Hot Rock were engaged with two Flankers — and in between, descending fast, were three more Flankers exchanging the high-altitude furball for the lower one. They were going to bounce Lobo and Hot Rock.

Not if Bird Dog Robinson could help it. “Phoenix,” he snapped, setting his weapons control switch accordingly. The Phoenix had the longest range of any missile in the American inventory. The downside was that as a radar-guided weapon, it required a nice steady course from the targeting plane to maintain radar lock. Also, it was rather easy to shake and had therefore earned a mediocre rep for successful kills; still, there was nothing like seeing a one-ton missile coming at you from over the horizon to make you rethink your attack strategy.

But before Bird Dog could hit the trigger, Catwoman said, “Uh, Birdy-boy, you might want to remember how close we are to one of the most populous city in the world.”

Bird Dog started to make a sharp retort, then realized what she was saying: The Phoenix had a range of over one hundred miles, and if it missed its target, it would simply fly until it ran out of fuel… or struck something else. Like a skyscraper. At this angle, that was likely.

“Oh, hell,” Bird Dog said. He considered the range. “Okay, Sparrows.” Although the current distance was at the outer limit for the Sparrow, at least the missile wouldn’t free-fly into Hong Kong if it got dodged.

He had two Sparrows on his wings. He assigned one of them a target blip, then triggered it off and felt the pleasant upward bump as their weight left the Tomcat. He watched the Sparrow depart on a strand of white smoke, and felt, as always, a strange sense of empathetic fear for the pilots on the other end. Missiles moved so quickly, they were like a bad dream. Especially if they were sniffing for you.

“Come on, baby,” he said. “Come on…”

Tai heard the warning alarm in his helmet, and saw the return image of the incoming missile on his Heads-Up Display. Cursed. Took his focus off the battle raging below, and turned it to the radar. Waited. Waited…

He released a bundle of chaff and juked hard to one side without breaking out of his dive. The chaff expanded in the air behind him, creating a metallic cloud designed to fool radar signals. An instant later, the shock wave of an explosion rocked his plane. The missile had taken the bait.

“Status?” he cried over tactical. All three of Sukhois reported back. Tai smiled.

So far, the score was one kill for the PLA fighters, and zero for the Americans. That was about to change — but not in the Americans’ favor. As Tai’s plane shot through the spot where sunset turned to twilight, he was at last able to visually select a target from the possibilities below.

As Lobo bottomed out of her dive, she pulled the stick back and then sideways again, once more reversing both the Tomcat’s direction and its orientation, so now she was following the top curve of an outside loop back toward the bogey. If what she’d pictured in her head was accurate, the Flanker should now be above and in front of her, still climbing, clawing for precious altitude.

And so it was. Better still, the reach between them was just about broad enough to —

“Clear,” Handyman said.

“Fox three!” Lobo triggered a Sidewinder.

Given enough room, a Sidewinder would attain supersonic velocity in a matter of seconds. In this case, it didn’t have the chance. Nor did the Flanker. Lobo saw a flare pop out of the enemy fighter and start to ignite as a lure to the Sidewinder’s infrared seeker head, but the move was much too late.

“Splash one!” Handyman cried as the Flanker turned into a fireball with wings. A moment later the wings were alone, fluttering down toward the water like falling leaves, flipping this way and that, preceded by a shower of miscellaneous smoking debris.

“Oooh,” Handyman said, “that has got to hurt.”

“Where the hell is my wingman?” Lobo said.

“Come on, Rock, shake him,” Two Tone said from the backseat.

Hot Rock didn’t bother telling him to shut up. If he did that, it would look like he had time to chat.

The Flanker pilot was good, he’d give him that. No sooner had Hot Rock taken out the helo than the Chinese plane was dropping in on his tail, cannon blazing. Ever since, the Flanker had been right there, trying to get a clean shot. An occasional burst ripped past, tracers stitching the air first on one side, then the other. Not one hit, though.

The Chinese pilot was good, but Hot Rock was better. He felt it instantly in his heart, and in the seat of his pants. He knew he could take this guy. He could get on his tail and take him whenever he wanted.

It would be the first real kill for Hot Rock Stone. You couldn’t count the helo, that sitting duck.

And yet… what if he missed, after all? What if he reversed positions on the Flanker, took the offensive and then, for whatever reason, blew it? Everyone would know. Everyone would know that Hot Rock wasn’t good enough.

This way, only he knew.

“We got all these weapons here,” Two Tone growled, “and no one to shoot them at.”

Again Hot Rock said nothing. He was giving the Flanker pilot all he could handle just keeping within killing range. Not quite throwing the Chinese plane, but not allowing the Flanker a clear shot, either. Hot Rock knew he could do this all day long, or at least until he ran out of fuel. Or the Flanker did. Or the fighting ended and they could all go home.

“Heads up, boy,” Two Tone said. “Three bogeys straight up; one’s picked us out to bounce.”

Hot Rock glanced up, and saw three flashes of light that winked out abruptly at the place where sunlight gave way to shadow.

“Sparrows,” Two Tone said. “They’ll go where we want no matter what direction they start out in.”

“Can’t keep radar lock like this,” Hot Rock grunted, half-rolling to the right, then abruptly left again.

“Never mind; bogey’s too close now, anyway,” Two Tone snapped. “Hotshot, I suggest you get us off the killing floor here.”

Too late, Tai thought in fury as he watched one of the SU- 27s erupt into flame. The fire ignited Tai’s heart as well, but he coldly shifted his attention to his target: the Tomcat that had fired the killing missile. He snapped directions over the radio, and he and his wingman sheered off and headed in for the kill.

“Lobo, my love,” Handyman said, “we got two Flankers who love the looks of your ass — not that I blame them.”

“It’s our ass, sweetheart,” Lobo said, watching the radar, then looking over her shoulder and pulling the Tomcat into a hard climb. She spared a glance at the fuel indicator as well. Still okay, although that wouldn’t last long if she didn’t get off the afterburners.

“They got lock,” Handyman said, businesslike, although the alarm in Lobo’s helmet told her all she needed to know.

“Chaff,” she said, and felt the small bump as the foil bounced out of the Tomcat, hopefully to confuse the seeker head on the incoming missile. To increase the odds of that happening, Lobo changed the trajectory of her climb as well. A moment later, she felt the violent jolt of the shock wave coming after her.

“Nice job, but they’re closing,” Handyman said. “Good position, too.”

Meaning they were diving in on the Tomcat. “I don’t give a damn, I’m not going fishing anymore,” Lobo snarled.

“Okay by me.”

“Where the hell is my wingman?”

Hot Rock’s voice came over the radio, calm as the surface of the South China Sea. “I’m just a little busy at the moment, ma’am.”

Two Chinese fighters above him and on his tail, water less than a thousand feet below, no place to go, nowhere to run.

This was great.

They couldn’t get him. They scissored him, they bounced him, they tried to herd him into a pincher. He slipped out of everything. Wing-sweep control set to manual, he took precise command of his airframe, adjusting speed and balance with exquisite finesse. Cannon shells whipped all around him, but none touched.

The only problem, the only niggling uncertainty, came from the knowledge that his lead, Lobo, was also confronting multiple bogeys. She was a terrific pilot, of course, but she was also trying to get in a kill of her own. Generations of experience, not to mention the instructors in flight school, taught that the best defense was a good offense. Lobo flew that way.

And she expected her wingman to help, if he could.

But I can’t, he thought. I’m overloaded with bogeys, anybody can see that. I can’t help her at all.

“Thor, break left,” a voice snapped over the headset.

Thor didn’t even think about it. He slammed the aircraft into a hard left turn. A moment later, he glimpsed a fierce explosion from the corner of his eye.

“Splash one Flanker,” Bird Dog said coldly. “You okay for the other, Thor?”

Thor looked back at the Flanker still hanging onto his ass. It was the same plane that had taken Reedy out. “You bet I am,” he said.

Bird Dog turned his attention away from Thor and focused it on the ACM farther down. He knew that his taking a Sparrow shot at one of the bogeys harassing Thor had been chancy from five miles out, but it had been the only assistance he could render from that distance. Fortunately the missile had functioned exactly as intended, and so had Thor.

Now for the real thing.

Bird Dog switched his attention to the low-altitude dogfights, and his weapons selector to “guns.”

Lobo kept trying to climb out, but the Flankers were faster than she was in the vertical mode. When flying one-against-two, the main goal of any fighter pilot was to keep both bogeys on the same side of your plane. To never get caught in the middle.

Easier said than done.

The intel was right about that, dammit. In fact, as she recalled, an SU-30 — cousin to the bogeys on her tail — had been the first jet aircraft to break the sound barrier in a vertical climb.

Still, she found this situation unbelievable. She was used to having the upper hand in any altitude battle; although the Tomcat wasn’t king of the sky in an angles fight, it had always ruled in the vertical plane. Always.

Until now.

Unfortunately, in the horizontal field things were even worse. The Flankers really were as nimble as Falcons. She had all she could do to keep them from boxing her in.

Looking to the left, she saw Hot Rock below her level, a pair of Flankers trying to get position on him. Still no help there.

After what happened the last time she was shot down, Lobo hadn’t been sure she’d be able to strap a Tomcat on again, far less fight. Time and hard work had put that fear to rest. In fact, she’d once again become convinced that she was invulnerable, too damned hot a pilot to be shot out of the sky again, ever.

Now she was beginning to wonder if that was true.

Tai heard the radar-lock alarm in his helmet, but ignored it. Just one second more. One second more and his targeting pipper would close on the American jet. Just —

There was a terrific concussion, the rear of his plane leaping up, making him fight the stick. Hit? Had he been hit? Pivoting his head wildly, he saw the fireball behind him, and the F-14 behind that, and knew his wingman had been destroyed. The Tomcat was stooping on him at tremendous speed, taking full advantage of gravity and momentum.

From hunter to hunted in half a second. Tai jerked the stick left, then hard right, rolling out of the line of fire as tracers flickered past him, deceptively beautiful in the twilight.

“It’s Bird Dog!” Handyman cried. “He splashed one of our bogeys, Lobo!”

“Peachy,” Lobo said, hearing the anger in her voice and wondering at it. So someone had saved her butt, and that someone happened to be the ever-cocky Bird Dog. Was she so petty she’d begrudge him her thanks? Hell, her eternal gratitude?

Looking over her shoulder, she saw that the second Flanker that had been pursuing her was now busy evading Bird Dog. Good luck to him.

She turned her attention to her wingman, who had problems of his own.

“Got you,” Thor said as his targeting pip centered between the Flanker’s vertical stabilizers. He triggered the cannon, and watched the metal spine of the Flanker split open as if torn by a can opener. Flames and debris gouted from the wound, and Thor banked away hard to avoid sucking any of it into his engines. At the same time, he saw the Flanker’s ejection seat shoot up.

“Long way down, bozo,” Thor said, and turned his own jet in that direction. Below, he could see the flicker and flash of jet exhausts against the dark water. Then he glanced at his fuel indicator, and cursed. He had no juice for more fighting. Not even close. Hell, he’d be lucky to reach the Texaco in time to keep from ditching the plane.

He radioed Homeplate, and was reassured by one bit of news: Four more good guys were bustering in, due in as many minutes.

“Godspeed,” he said to the fires below, and turned his tail to the setting sun.

The Flanker was a terrific airplane, no doubt about it. But it was dead meat, and Bird Dog Robinson was going to be the butcher. He had the speed, the trajectory, the weapons, and the experience. The Flanker was racing away at low altitude, undoubtedly fearing to take advantage of a marginal speed advantage for fear of simply moving out of gun range and into the grasp of a Sidewinder. Out of the frying pan, so to speak.

Of course, Bird Dog was more than happy to use the cannon on this guy. That would be just fine, and he matched the Flanker swoop for swoop, not allowing him to pop up, not allowing him to jink free. Cut left. Bird Dog followed. Cut right. Bird dog moved the stick that direction…

… and for once, his Tomcat didn’t turn. No, it turned, but much too slowly. The Flanker vanished off the targeting ring.

What the hell?

A sense of foreboding drenched Bird Dog like ice water. Even as he pulled back to regain altitude, he twitched the stick to the left and got quick response. Back to the right. Very slowly, the plane started to roll in that direction.

“Catwoman?” he said over ICS. “We got systems trouble here or what?”

There was a brief pause, then a cool-voiced response: “Losing hydraulics in the left wing, Bird Dog. Down to forty percent, and falling.”

“Why?”

“How the hell would I know? Maybe the warranty ran out.”

Oh, Christ, mechanical failure. If the plane weren’t fly-by-wire, if the controls were linked directly to the flying surfaces, right now the left rudder pedal would be flapping like the tongue of an untied shoe.

“By the way,” Catwoman said, “that Flanker? I think he’s in love with us, because he’s coming back for more.”

Tai didn’t bother wondering why the American had failed to press his earlier advantage to its conclusion. All that mattered was he’d made a mistake, and it would be his last.

Pulling the SU-37 up and around as hard as he could, squeezing his belly muscles against brown-out, Tai used the Sukhoi’s swiveling exhausts to full advantage. In an instant he was on the F-14’s tail, bringing his cannon to bear.

The Tomcat cut left. Tai cut left. The Tomcat straightened slightly, then cut left again. Tai followed it, patiently trying to join the enemy plane and the gun pipper in the firing ring on his HUD.

Again, the Tomcat cut left; he was practically in a spiraling dive now. No wonder the American had bounced Tai and his wingman from high altitude. Take away that advantage and the man was not much of a pilot. He just kept turning left, turning left, turning left….

Turning into the sights of a better pilot flying a better aircraft.

“We got —!” Catwoman’s voice cut off as the Tomcat began to shake and bounce. A strange whistling roar filled the cockpit, and the few loose parts of Bird Dog’s flight suit began to flap wildly. Bird Dog was filled with fury. Getting taken out by a missile was bad enough, but he wasn’t going to go down to guns. No way was he going to be shot down like some World War One-era biplane pilot; give some PRC hotshot bragging rights for years to come. No way.

He pulled the shuddering Tomcat even farther to the left, skating it on the edge of a spin from which he knew he would never recover, not without right rudder.

“Catwoman?” he cried over ICS. “Catwoman —?”

Tai’s glee turned to shock when he saw a piece of the Tomcat, a service panel or chunk of wing, come hurtling back at him. It looked as big as a hangar door, and if it got sucked into the greedy intake of one of his AL-35s…

He broke off hard, cursing the fates, yet certain that it didn’t matter, the Tomcat was dead anyway….

Lobo was ten seconds from closing on Hot Rock and his pursuers when she glanced over her shoulder and saw something stunning: Somehow, in only the last half minute, circumstances there had reversed themselves. The bogey was hurtling past Bird Dog’s F-14, which was itself dropping in a messy half turn, its aspect loose and wobbly. Pieces of metal were floating up off it.

“Shit!” Lobo cried, making her decision instantly. Hot Rock was still being hunted by the other two bogeys, but at least his goddamned plane was intact. She knew where her services were required.

Yanking her Tomcat into a hard left turn, she reversed direction and started to climb out. To her relief, Bird Dog’s plane had steadied and was now flying along straight and level, about five hundred feet above her. To her left, the Flanker was also turning, but for some reason he didn’t appear to be in much of a hurry. Perhaps his plane was also damaged.

“Bird Dog!” she cried over the radio. “You okay?”

“Hydraulic damage; can’t turn right. Took some hits. Think Catwoman’s hurt. Am I in one piece here?”

“I’ll know in a second. Coming up on your six.”

She glanced to her left again. The bogey had completed its turn, far out over the ocean. Lobo realized why and shouted, “Bird Dog! Break! Break!”

He did so instantly, dipping hard left, evidently the only direction he could go, the perfect direction. Lobo blasted straight over his Tomcat, holding steady on course.

“Incoming!” Handyman cried. Lobo glanced back just long enough to see an incandescent white dot swooping toward her.

Then she did the only thing left to do.

Tai was shocked to see his missile take out the wrong aircraft — then he was delighted, because the victim was the Tomcat he’d intended to destroy in the first place. The fool had flown right into the line of fire, and presented the heat-seeker with a better home in which to nest.

Afterimages of the explosion floated in his vision. Evening was deepening toward night. A night he would remember for a long —

His gaze, automatically conducting its scan of instruments, halted on the radar screen. Four new returns had appeared, approaching from the east. Four more American fighters, fresh and fully loaded with fuel and weapons, versus his SU-37 and the two planes wasting their energy on the other Tomcat. Even if the odds were evened up, the Americans had more fuel and weapons.

The radar showed nothing coming in from his own country. Anger swelled up inside him, darkening his vision before he pushed it back. Some of his officers were weaklings and cowards, no doubt about that. But there were others who had vision, and will. They would prevail.

Tai spoke briskly into his radio. The time had come to break off and return home, wait until they had numerical superiority. Return, rest, and prepare to fight another day. Prepare to push the arrogant Americans back out of Asia, and destroy their ill-gotten power. It was inevitable.

For as Sun Tzu taught, Of the four seasons, none lasts forever….