CHAPTER 26

0746 hours, 21 January
U Feng

The walls of the shed trembled under the deafening onslaught of noise.

For one moment, Pamela thought that someone had planted a bomb squarely on the fuel pump nearby. As she lowered her hands from her ears and looked up toward the shed's small window, though, she realized that the sound had been caused by jets flying low overhead. She could still hear them, engines shrieking, as they pulled over the airstrip and corkscrewed into the sky.

They'd come! The That army had come… possibly the Navy as well. She moved over to the corner of the shed, where Bayerly sat on the dirt floor, a strange expression on his face. "I think it's a battle," she said.

"F-14s," he said, listening. "Tomcats. They're ours."

Pamela felt a sudden thrill which jolted through her. Tombstone! If there were Tomcats overhead, one of them might be Tombstone!

Bayerly was looking toward the door now. "We'd better get ready," he said. "If they're buzzing the airstrip, ground troops can't be far behind.

And I don't think our new friends are going to want us to get rescued."

"But what can we do?"

He gave her a tight smile, a mirthless stretching of his lips. "We'll manage something," he said.

0746 hours, 21 January
Near U Feng

Lieutenant Miller peered up through the jungle canopy as the six Tomcats thundered into the sky. There was a thump, followed by a slithering hiss, and a line of white smoke scrawled its way across the blue. Someone on the ground had just loosed a SA-7 Grail… but far too late. The Navy planes were already nearly out of sight by the time the missile was loosed.

Miller noted the launcher's position in his mind. Part of the close-in perimeter defenses, no doubt.

Lieutenant Miller lay on his belly at the edge of the clearing, studying the compound through his binoculars, taking care not to turn the lenses toward the sun and give away their position with a flash. The Marines had moved silently to this location. staying off the trails, slipping like shadows among the trees. Security elements were posted, guarding flanks and rear.

They were directly on the U Feng perimeter now, looking into the camp across a cleared fire zone a hundred meters wide. Behind barbed wire and sandbags, the enemy camp was in an uproar. Large groups of armed men were running among the barracks, apparently deploying along the perimeter defenses to the south. A pair of tracked SA-6 chassis were parked by one end of the runway, each mounting three Gainfuls side by side, probing the sky.

Miller cursed. Those Gainfuls meant big problems. They'd have to be taken out before the Thais could assault the camp, or they'd play hell with the That-American grab for air superiority. The leader of that flock of Tomcats that had just gone over had played it smart, Miller decided, coming so the Gainfuls couldn't nail them with their Long Track radars. As he watched, though, a missile on one of the launchers spat flame, and a billowing white cloud of smoke engulfed the vehicle. The missile rose into the air, an ungainly, finned pencil shape balancing atop a column of fire.

He looked up. The Tomcats were almost out of sight already but the SAM radars would have them locked in hard.

A second missile slid clear of the launch rail with a hissing roar.

God, Miller thought. This can't go on much longer. Someone would have to take out those SAMs, or this whole operation would be blown.

He turned his attention back to the compound. The word was that the prisoners were being held in a shed or small building close to the fuel tanks.

He could see the tanks, not far from his present position, but there were several buildings which could be the one the Karen scouts had meant.

Damn! Which one?

0747 hours, 21 January
Tomcat 201

"Stand by to break, people," Tombstone ordered. The Tomcats were climbing now, the enemy just coming into visual range. He could see the mingled contrails of dog-fighting aircraft two miles ahead and ten thousand feet above. "On my mark… break!"

The tight cluster of F-14s opened like the blossoming of a flower, a maneuver called the bomb burst at Top Gun school. Three pairs of sleek gray aircraft separated from one another, the pairs themselves slipping apart as the formation went from welded wing to loose deuce.

"Eagle Leader, Eagle Two!" Batman called. "We're being painted by Straight Flush. They're trying for a lock!"

Tombstone rolled his Tomcat into an inverted position so he could see the ground. There could be hundreds of SAMs lurking down there. "Keep your eyes open, Batman," he said. "I don't- SAM launch! SAM launch on your six!"

0747 hours, 21 January
Tomcat 216

Batman turned in his seat as Tombstone yelled the warning. He searched the jungle behind them, saw the telephone pole shape rising from the direction of U Feng. "Launch! Launch!" he called.

"Oh, shit," Ramrod added from the back seat. "He's locked onto us, Batman! He's got a lock!"

Batman heard the warbling chirp of the Gainful's Straight Flush radar. A warning light labeled SAM flashed red next to his HUD.

The Gainful climbed above the treetops, accelerating at a sky-burning twenty Gs. Then the solid booster burned out. Looking back again, Batman saw the spent booster falling away. The missile was now moving toward him at Mach 1.5. With the booster gone, the rocket converted to a ramjet, gulping air through four ducts as it continued to accelerate. Top speed for the SA-6, Batman knew, was Mach 2.8, well above the best the Tomcat could do.

Batman brought the F-14 into a sharp turn. "I'm breaking, Eagle Leader," he said. "I need some maneuvering room."

Roger that," Tombstone replied. "Get clear."

He held the break, grunting against the increasing G forces. "Keep it coming," he said, more to the aircraft than to Ramrod or anyone else. "Keep it coming. His compass reading dropped as he turned through a full 180 degrees, until he was heading straight toward the oncoming SA.M. He couldn't outrun the thing, but having seen its launch, he had a chance to outsmart it.

He checked his altitude. Six thousand feet… that was going to make it damned tight. The missile was angling over now, flying almost on the same level as Batman's aircraft. Still hurtling toward the SAM, Batman rolled the Tomcat right until he was canopy down, then brought the stick back and headed for the ground.

The Gs built as Batman held the inverted dive. "Good night… Ramrod!"

he grunted against the crushing pressure. There was no answer from the backseat, and Batman knew his RIO was either unconscious, or too busy breathing to reply. He stabbed the chaff release again and again, scattering false targets in the F-14's wake.

Green jungle filled the forward half of his canopy as his altimeter spooled rapidly toward zero. The G-pressure was gone now, replaced by the dropping-elevator sensation of free fall. He chanced a look over his shoulder, saw the SAM arrowing toward the ground now, hard on his tail and getting closer. His first chaff release hadn't fooled it, and it was now a race to see whether the plunging Tomcat would be destroyed first by the missile or the up-rushing ground. Now…!

He pulled back on the stick, watching the ground swoop away beneath the Tomcat. The G-forces returned with a vengeance, crushing his chest, dragging at the skin of his face, on his guts. He slammed the throttles full forward past the detents and into afterburner. The Tomcat's twin engines shrieked fury as he started to climb again, leaving the ground behind. The plane was shuddering with the terrible stress. A number on his HUD showed that he was pushing nine Gs, and he was aware of blackness closing in at the periphery of his vision, a sure sign that he was about to lose consciousness.

Then the F-14 shrieked into clear sky. He looked back and saw a boiling mushroom of white smoke where the SAM had smashed into the jungle.

Made it! Batman let out a long, unsteady breath. That one had been a hell of a lot closer than he really wanted to admit.

0747 hours, 21 January
Tomcat 201

Tombstone kept his heading dead on for the approaching MiGs. "This is Eagle Three!" Garrison called over the radio. "They've locked on to me!"

"Say again, Eagle Three."

"Tracking lock! Tracking lock ― correction, launch! I have missile launch!"

"Eagle Six confirms. Bandit launch."

"Looks like they want to play," Tombstone said. He shifted frequencies.

"Victor Four Delta. Victor Four Delta, this is Eagle Leader. We have SAM and air-to-air launches on American planes. Engaging."

That answered any question about the ROES. The bad guys had fired first, and the Navy was responding with appropriate action.

At least, that was how the official after-action reports would read.

Somehow the follow-up reports never managed to carry the exultation of air-to-air combat. Or the terror. "Break left, Army!" Taggart called.

"Roger. Left."

"Watch out, Tombstone!" Dixie called. "Twelve o'clock! We got two taking us head-to-head!"

Tombstone saw the MiGs streaking toward his plane dead ahead. "Rog! Let 'em come!" In an instant they swelled from specks in the distance to aircraft flashing past. The combined speeds of MiGs and Tomcat amounted to better than Mach 2.

One of the strange effects of combat which Tombstone had noted before was the almost surreal slowing of time. At Mach 2 there was no way for an aviator to see any detail at all in the other aircraft… yet as he turned his head to follow the passing MiGs it felt as though he could count every rivet. He could see the J-7s' mid-fuselage delta wings, could see the arrow-slim heads of their Aphid and Atoll missile loads, could actually see into the cockpits and see two red-helmeted heads with the black sun visors canted up, looking back at him.

Then they were gone, vanishing into the blue distance behind him.

"Eagle Leader," he called. He pulled back on the stick and the Tomcat climbed. "I'm on them. Going for a vertical reverse."

"You want to let me off at the next stop?" Dixie asked.

"Just keep your eye on those MiGs," Tombstone replied. The F-14 was climbing straight up now, but Tombstone kept the afterburners off. The plane was losing speed. "Where are they?"

"Going into a turn, Tombstone. Range one mile."

The vertical reverse was the modern equivalent of the stall turn sometimes employed by fighter pilots in the age of prop planes. The aircraft climbed straight up, losing speed until it threatened to stall out completely, then turned toward the ground. The plane's low speed made it possible to turn in an extremely tight radius, but there was a very large risk that the fighter would lose control.

Tombstone brought the Tomcat's swept-back wings forward and engaged the flaps. The F-14 bucked, stress vibrating through the hull, but the airspeed indicator showed less than one hundred and forty knots as he kicked in the rudder and brought the stick over. For one shuddering moment, the F-14 fought and bucked, and the stall warning light on his caution/ advisory panel flashed once.

Then they were arrowing toward the ground once more. Tombstone cut the flaps and brought the wings back to full sweep, trading altitude for speed in an all-out dive for the deck. Two miles away, the MiGs were halfway into their turn, barely visible as a pair of black specks almost touching one another as they broke left in unison.

He pulled the F-14 out of its dive and hurtled toward the MiGs at almost five hundred knots. He selected the targeting display for his HUD and saw the small box symbols appear over the specks as the plane's computer identified potential targets. "We'll go for a Sidewinder launch," he told his RIO. He brought the targeting pipper on his HUD across one of the specks, saw the square flash into a circle with the computer graphic "M" for missile displayed.

His fingers closed on the firing button, and an AIM-9J Sidewinder slid clear of its rail. "Fox two!" Tombstone called, warning of a heat-seeker launch. "Fox two!"

The MiGs held their turn as the all-aspect heat-seeker arrowed toward the left-hand target. Both J-7s began popping flares, bright orange pinpoints of light which arced away from their hulls like Roman candles, trailing smoke.

"Two more bandits," Dixie warned. "Coming on our six. Range three miles."

"Let 'em come." Tombstone pulled the stick left, turning inside the MiGs ahead, hoping to line up a shot at the second plane. He saw the contrail brush the MiG. There was a flash, and the J-7's wings folded toward one another, the fuselage disintegrating in white flame. Secondary explosions ate their way through the burning wreckage as fuel and munitions exploded.

Burning debris scattered smoking trails into the jungle below.

"Splash one MiG!" Dixie called. "Chalk one for Tombstone!"

Tombstone began lining up for his second shot. The target was weaving and jinking now, aware that the American was closing fast inside his turn.

"Two bandits on our six," Dixie said. "Two miles. They're trying for a shot."

"Almost there," Tombstone said. "Almost there-"

A warbling tone sounded in his ear. "Stoney! They have lock! They have lock!"

"Damn!" Tombstone snapped the stick back to the right, throwing the Tomcat into a sudden split-S. The warble was the tone of an Atoll missile, the radar-guided Soviet and Chinese equivalent of the American Sparrow.

"They're still coming'," Dixie shouted. Tombstone could hear the RIO shifting back and forth in his seat, trying to keep his eyes on the approaching MiGs. "They're breaking right!"

"Hold your stomach, Dixie!"

"Launch! Launch!"

Tombstone hauled the Tomcat's nose up and rammed the throttles forward, past full military power to afterburner. His F-14 shrieked toward heaven.

0748 hours, 21 January
One mile south of U Feng

The That army column had deployed on either side of the trail and was well-hidden. The men were under orders not to fire, but the nearness of the enemy, the ear-piercing low pass by jet aircraft, the hiss and roar of launching SAMs had an unnerving effect. One soldier in particular, a private named Pang Rajathasithuk, found himself trembling as he lay in the jungle, watching a raggedly dressed column of troops walk south along the path.

It was a patrol, one of several sent out by the invaders to search for the leading elements of the Royal That Army, which was known to be in the area. Until this moment, Pang had not seen the enemy, had heard only stories and rumors about the coup, about the attack on U Feng, about pitched battles fought here and in Bangkok.

There were so many of them, some in Burmese uniforms, most in mismatched bits and pieces of uniform which suggested they were members of some private militia rather than an established army. Pang watched the line passing his position and wondered how large this invading army at U Feng really was.

Could General Vinjit match such a force?

One of the ragged-looking soldiers on the path broke away from the rest of the column, his hands fumbling with the buttons of his trousers as he searched for a place to relieve himself. Chance put him squarely in front of Pang, and only a little below the level of the slope on which the That private lay. He looked up…

Pang never knew whether the soldier saw him or not. To the That private, it seemed that the man was looking straight at him through the leaves. His finger closed on the trigger of his M-16, and the roar of the weapon on full auto echoed along the trail.

Burmese and rebel soldiers dove for cover. The other hidden That troops opened up, and the jungle trail became a bloody killing ground at the nexus of a deadly crossfire. Gunshots crashed and boomed among the leaves, and the steady, hammering thunder of an M-60 added to the racket. A Burmese soldier pitched to the ground, shrieking as he clutched his shattered knee. A rebel threw up his arms and toppled forward as bloody guts erupted from his side and back.

Long seconds passed before the ambushed troops recovered from their surprise enough to begin firing back, and by the time they did dozens of their number had crumpled to the ground or were already fleeing north as fast as their legs could carry them. The heavy crump of grenades and 40-mm explosive rounds joined in.

And from the control tower of U Feng, less than a mile to the north, Hsiao heard the gunfire and knew the base was under attack.

0748 hours, 21 January
Near U Feng

Shit! Lieutenant Miller's fist hit the ground in front of him with frustration. He'd heard the sudden eruption of gunfire to the south, knew the element of surprise was gone before the first of the ambush survivors began streaming out of the forest and onto the airstrip. From his hiding place, he could see their wild gestures, hear their shouted warnings as they spread the alarm.

Well, it couldn't have lasted long, not with several thousand men wandering around loose in these woods. He gestured for the radio, took the handset from the commo operator.

"Green Throne, Green Throne," he said. "This is Alligator. Do you read, over?"

"Alligator, Green Throne. We read you. Go ahead."

"No joy on primary," he said. The words hurt as he said them. But there was no way now to find any American prisoners in that camp. "Repeat, no joy.

Crocodile is engaging." Crocodile referred to the That contingent, and he wanted Green Throne to know that it was the locals who'd screwed the pooch.

"Understood, Alligator," the voice on the handset said. "Green Throne" was Colonel John Caruso, monitoring the action from his CIC back on board the Chosin. Communications were being relayed through a circling Navy Hawkeye somewhere over central Thailand. "Revert to original op plan. We will direct Chickenhawk and Thunderbird to move in."

"Roger that, Green Throne. Wilco. Alligator, out." He handed the radio handset back to the commo operator. "Okay, Sciaparelli. Hohum. Break out the GLDs. Move it! Move it! We don't have all day." In fact, he knew, they had very little time now at all.

It was too damned bad about those Western prisoners the Karens had reported seeing. But there was nothing more that could be done for them now.

0748 hours, 21 January
U Feng

Hsiao was gathering his maps and papers when an aide entered his office.

Hua! Get my pilot. Have him ready my helicopter. And send some men to get the Americans and bring them here."

"You are leaving, General?"

Hsiao nodded. "It is perhaps best if I take the Americans to Mong-koi."

"It could be dangerous. The air battle-"

"I shall be traveling at treetop level, and the border is only a few minutes away. The Americans will not pursue me into Burma."

"Yes, sir."

"A precautionary measure only, Hua. I think it best that I and my prisoners stay out of the line of fire until after the Q-5s destroy the That forces."

"As you command, General."

The aide hurried out, and Hsiao began gathering his maps and papers.

This was more than precaution, he admitted to himself. The arrival of the American carrier planes had been a complete surprise. Wu might be holding them at bay, but at last word he'd lost five aircraft doing it, with no American kills reported yet. The Yankees' technology and their skill might yet turn the battle against his forces. If Wu was defeated, Dao's Q-5s, now on the way across the border from Burma, would be easy prey. And if the Q-5 attack was stopped, the That assault would come, possibly within minutes.

He did not wish to be in the area if that happened.

From Burma, Hsiao could retain control of his forces whatever happened, and the American prisoners would give him considerable bargaining power, both with the Thais and the Burmese. He might even be able to make a deal with the Americans, if they thought highly enough of their female news reporter.

He collected the last of his papers and strode unhurriedly from the room.

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