CHAPTER 9

1250 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 232

"Let's split up and see if we can get a better look at these guys," Batman said. He kept the F-14 in a sharp, twisting climb. The jungle fell away beneath the Tomcat as sunlight flooded the interior of the cockpit.

"Roger that," Taggart replied. "Not too far, though. Don't want to lose you."

American aircraft did not generally use tight-knit wingman formations but preferred the system known as "loose deuce." Having one of the two planes well out in front of the other, and a mile higher or lower, improved the chances of spotting the enemy, as well as giving two sets of aircraft radars a better look at the target.

"Range eight miles," Malibu called from the backseat. Batman leveled off at nine thousand feet, already searching the northwestern horizon for some visual sign of the approaching planes. "Still coming, speed six hundred knots."

"Okay. Call up the Jeff and tell them we have a situation here. I think we'd-"

"Shit!" Malibu exploded. "We have four bogies now, repeat, four bogies!"

They must have been flying wingtip to wingtip and hard on the deck to confuse the Tomcats' radars.

"Homeplate, Homeplate, this is Tomcat Two-three-two," Batman radioed.

"Do you copy, over?"

"Two-three-two, Homeplate," a voice answered moments later. Radio communications with the Jefferson were being relayed through a Hawkeye circling near Bangkok. "We COPY."

"Homeplate, we have four, repeat, four bogies closing from three-four-oh at six hundred. They're coming in over the line!"

"Copy, Two-three-two. Break off and RTB."

"Rog," Batman said. "You copy that, Price? Time to get out of Dodge."

"I don't think they're going to let us, Batman," Taggart said. "Tell you what. Get down on the deck while I run interference."

Batman thought about it for a brief moment. Taggart's suggestion made sense. Tomcat 232 was carrying two Sidewinder missiles in addition to the TARPS pod, not enough for a sustained dogfight if it came to that. Taggart was carrying eight missiles, and had greater maneuverability as well.

"Where the hell are our escorts anyway?" he snapped.

"We have six That F-5s at one-five-nine," Malibu replied, "Range thirty miles."

"Great." By the time they arrived, the fight would be over. He made his decision. "Right you are, Price Tag," he said. "Have fun and mind the ROES."

He banked left into a sideslip dive which took the F-14 hurtling toward the jungle canopy. Tree-clad mountains rushed up to meet him, growing larger until he was so close that the ground became a featureless green blur.

Taggart's aircraft dropped astern, taking up a position between the bogies and Batman's plane. The Rules of Engagement still applied. They couldn't fire until they were fired upon, but Taggart's maneuver would give Batman the chance to get clear whatever happened.

Batman leveled off at two thousand feet above the treetops, heading south. He cut back on the throttles, cutting the Tomcat's speed until the wings slid forward. He didn't want to get too far ahead of Taggart. A river flashed into view, winding through a valley between emerald hilltops.

Batman saw the flash in the same instant as Malibu.

"SAM! SAM!" his RIO yelled. "Seven o'clock!"

"Got it!" Batman hauled the stick left instinctively, turning into the missile in an attempt to make it overshoot. He recognized that corkscrewing white trail at once, the signature of a shoulder-launched SA-7, called "Grail" by NATO. Some bastard down there had lobbed it at them as they cleared the treeline along the river.

"It's closing!"

"Hang on, Malibu!" he yelled. "Pop flares!"

But he already knew they weren't going to make it.

1250 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 203

"There they are!" Taggart's RIO called. "They're coming in behind us!"

"Hang on, Zig! I'm goosin' it!" He rammed the throttles full forward, cutting in the Tomcat's afterburners as he stood the aircraft on its tail. He heard Zig-Zag Ziegler grunt over the ICS as the acceleration slammed them into their ejection seats.

"We got two splittin' off!" Zig-Zag reported, his voice crackling over the ICS with excitement and tension. "Two splittin' off! They're coming' after us, man!"

The Tomcat continued to climb, pursued now by a pair of Chinese-copied MiGs, while the two remaining MiGs stayed on the deck, streaking south.

Taggart caught a glimpse of sun flashing from silver wings, of arrowing white contrails in the humid air.

He pulled the stick over sharply, breaking out of his climb and dropping toward the jungle. If the MiGs going after Batman got too far ahead…

"Tone!" Ziegler yelled. "Price! They got lock-on!"

He heard the warble of missile lock over his headphones. Someone was lining him up for a radar-targeted launch.

"Keep cool, Zig," he yelled. "They're messing with our minds. that's all!"

The MiG launched an instant later.

1250 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 232

There was no time to think as the SAM clawed toward the Tomcat. Tactical doctrine claimed that it was easy to shake a Grail's infrared lock; often all that was necessary was to throttle back until its electronic concentration on the plane's engines was broken.

The problem was they were already flying low and slow. He'd have to goose it hard just to get enough speed for maneuver… and he was rapidly running out of sky.

He dropped the Tomcat's left wing, sharpening his turn. He could see the Grail's twisting white tail bending to follow. It was ignoring the flares, homing unerringly on the heat from the F-14's engines, and Batman remembered learning that Grails were fitted with filters which screened out decoy flares.

He had to pick up speed now.

Trading precious altitude for more speed, Batman plunged toward the jungle canopy, watching as the rapidly sweeping hands of his altimeter ticked off the feet. The missile followed.

1250 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 203

Taggart pulled the Tomcat into a seven-G turn, standing on the port wing as he tried to outrace the missile. "Chaff!" he yelled. "Dump chaff!"

Packets of aluminum-coated mylar strips burst one after another from the Tomcat's tail, dispersing in a cloud behind and below the aircraft. Taggart caught a glimpse of the two MiGs following him, a tight-knit pair of specks low on the horizon. The radar-homer twisted toward him.

"Homeplate! Homeplate!" he called. "This is Two-oh-three. We have launch. Repeat, confirm bandit launch!" Switching to the intercom again, he added, "Arm missiles!"

"Hot and armed."

The missile curved through the sky toward them…

1251 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 232

Batman kicked in the Tomcat's afterburners, and six Gs molded him to the hard frame of his ejection seat. "Keep… popping… flares…!" he grunted against the pressure. The treetops clutched at his left wingtip, seemingly only a few yards below as he hauled back on the stick. He glanced back over his shoulder as he pulled out of the dive, estimating the Grail's angle of attack. Adrenaline surged, sharpening every sense, every perception.

The missile flew up the F-14's port engine.

Batman both heard and felt the explosion, a solid whump which transmitted itself through the aircraft's frame. His instrument panel exploded with red warning lights. His left fuel pump was gone… trim control… left rudder… The engine fire warning lit up and Batman hurriedly shut down the fuel flow to the port engine and initiated a shutdown. God! They'd been savaged!

"Malibu! You still with me?"

"I'm okay! I'm not sure the plane is!"

Smoke boiled from the Tomcat's port engine. The left wing dropped low, and the aircraft began shuddering as Batman struggled to bring it under control. "Mayday! Mayday!" He could hear Malibu in the backseat reciting the litany of an aircraft in distress. "This is Tomcat Two-three-two declaring an emergency. We have been hit by hostile ground fire and are going down. Mayday! Mayday…"

1251 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 203

Taggart kept the F-14 turning as the radar homer closed. The missile was visible as a minute flare of light on the end of a growing trail of white smoke as it came closer closer… then plunged through the invisible cloud of chaff and flashed past the Tomcat a hundred yards away.

"We did it!" Zig-Zag yelled. "We're clear!"

The homer's radar lock was broken. "Now let's give 'em one back!"

Taggart said. He brought the Tomcat around smoothly, pulling out of the turn above and behind the pair of MiGs which had fired at him. They were jinking now, aware that the American had escaped them, aware that he was closing in on their six.

In targeting mode now, he selected a target on his HUD display. The square graphic of the targeting pipper turned to a circle and he heard the growl of the Sidewinder in his headphones: lock-on!

He closed in for the kill.

1251 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 232

"Batman!" Malibu called. "I'm getting dead air on the radio. I don't think we're getting through!"

A chunk of shrapnel might have sheared an antenna lead. Batman checked his compass. They were on a bearing of three-four-nine… almost straight north, heading smack for the Burmese border if they hadn't crossed it already.

He tried to turn again and felt the Tomcat buck wildly in response. Damn!

That missile must have torn half the portside stabilizer away!

Using flaps and the aircraft's tendency to sag to the left as it hung from the starboard engine, he began working to bring the Tomcat around in a slow, sweeping turn. There was no way he was going to land this baby back at U Feng, but at least he might make it back over That territory. Batman had no desire to sample the hospitality of the current military regime in the Socialist Union of Burma.

"How bad is it?" Malibu called from the back seat.

"Bad… but we'll manage!" Batman replied. He checked the altimeter.

They were holding their own, anyway, still level at five hundred feet.

"Remember the briefings on the Grail? We still have a good chance of getting back." In the '72 war in the Middle East, something like sixty percent of the Israeli warplanes hit by Grails had still managed to make it back to friendly airfields. The SA-7 was nasty because it was small, portable, cheap, and could be fielded in great numbers, but the warhead together with its fragmentation casing only weighed about four pounds… too small to do serious danger to an aircraft as heavy as the Tomcat.

More red lights came on. That warhead might be small, but it was vicious… and modern jet fighters were relatively fragile things, vulnerable to a high-velocity spray of shrapnel. They were losing hydraulic pressure now.

They still might make it, though, if…

"Batman!" the RIO called. "Bandits, one o'clock! Watch it… watch it!"

1252 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 203

Taggart squeezed the trigger on his stick. "Fox two! Fox two!" The call gave warning to friendly planes that a heat-seeker was in the air. The target MiG broke to the right, wildly trying to lose the Sidewinder which was closing with its engine flare with relentless persistence. Flares broke from the MiG's tail, tumbling away to either side like roman candles at a fireworks display.

The Sidewinder caught up with the fleeing MiG, ignoring the flares for the far hotter and more inviting target of the J-7's tailpipe flare. There was a flash, and black smoke boiled from the plane's engine. Taggart could see the wings flutter as the pilot struggled to regain control.

Aflame now, the J-7 hit the treetops a second later. An orange fireball boiled up through the trees, uncoiling like the head of some gigantic, hooded snake.

"Score…!" Ziegler yelled. "Splash one MiG!"

1252 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 232

The two incoming MiGs flashed past the damaged Tomcat, hurtling toward the south before beginning a broad, sweeping turn which would bring them in behind Batman and Malibu.

"Where's Taggart?" Batman asked. "Malibu! Do you see Taggart?" If Tomcat 203 was close by they had a chance. Unfortunately, the failed attempt to cut the MiGs off from the TARPS plane, followed by a brief dogfight, had separated the two American planes by a number of miles.

"Negative! I've got nothing on the scope! Shit, Batman, I'm dead back here!"

Batman tried again to turn the stricken F-14, to bring the nose up in a bid for altitude, to do anything. Slowly, the Tomcat began to respond. The aircraft was still bucking and kicking, but he managed to drag it into a slow, rising turn to starboard.

Then he heard the telltale warble of a radar lock in his headset.

"Batman!" Malibu yelled. "They're locking on!"

"I hear it! I hear it!" Damn the controls! The Tomcat kept bucking as he coaxed the ship into a tighter turn.

"Launch! We've got launch! Coming in hard on our six!" They were still turning, but it wasn't going to be enough. A moment later something hard slammed into the Tomcat's tail, filling the sky with flames.

1252 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 203

"Price!" Zig-Zag yelled. "I've lost the Batman!"

"What do you mean, lost him!"

"He's dropped off the screen, man! I don't see him!"

"Shit…!" The terrain here was rugged. "Keep watching! He may pop up again!"

"We got two more targets at two-eight-three," Zig-Zag announced. "Range seven miles, heading north at six hundred."

"Where's the green line, Zig-Zag?"

"Shit, man, I don't know! We could be in Burma now for all I know!"

"You'd better hope we're not. If those bastards nailed Batman, I want them!"

"Too late, Price. They're scooting north like nobody's business. I think they've had enough."

The dogfight was over. Taggart forced himself to relax, almost muscle by muscle. It was over, and they were still alive!

But where were Batman and Malibu?

1263 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 232

The Tomcat was coming apart around them as they plummeted toward the rugged terrain. Batman saw jungle rushing past his canopy as they skimmed a towering hill, falling into the valley beyond. "That's all she wrote," he told Malibu. There was nothing else to be done. "We're punching out!"

"Rog!"

Altitude eight hundred. It was now or never. He grabbed the bright, yellow-and-black painted ejection loop between his knees and yanked back.

There was an explosion, and the Tomcat's canopy broke away. Then Malibu's ejection seat slid up the rails and into the sky with a shrill roar, followed an instant later by a slamming kick in the butt as his own escape system fired.

Wind smacked him in the face and chest, clawing at him, snapping and whipping like a living thing, and for a horrible moment, Batman thought he was going to be torn in two, that the force would break his neck, that…

The parachute deployed above him, checking his tumbling fall with a rush that felt as though he were rocketing once more into the sky. Quickly, he looked around, hoping for a glimpse of Malibu, but he couldn't see him. He did spot the F-14, still falling toward the jungle, upside down now with its empty cockpit like a blind eye. Flame boiled from the shattered tail, unfolding in a trail of smoke all the way down.

He looked down, suddenly aware of the jungle. The unbroken green beneath his flight boots was taking on more and more shape and texture as it swept up to meet him from below. At close range, he was aware of folds in the terrain he'd not seen before; he was dropping into a steep-sided valley which had been all but invisible from the sky, but which now was taking on the proportions of the Grand Canyon.

And there was no way he could avoid those trees.

Загрузка...