I’ll never get this chance again, he realized. A pure guts and gunfight; no radar or missiles. “Two, I’m engaging. ID the target and attack.” Delight quickly unlocked the drum on his gunsight, dialed in thirty mils, and locked the lever. At one thousand feet range his sight reticle now subtended thirty feet, slightly more than the wingspan of an A-4. He double-checked his armament switches even as Thaler acknowledged, “Dash Two is in.”
Two and a half miles below, riding at anchor off Island Chaffee, was a dark-hulled freighter with light-colored deck and upper surfaces. But Delight’s attention was focused on the two Skyhawks slanting toward him from his right front. He resolved to keep his bombs as long as possible, hoping that Psycho could drop, rejoin, and even the odds.
The lead bandit tripped off a short burst of 20mm rounds, accurate in elevation but wide to the right. Delight two-blocked the throttle, resisting the temptation to squeeze off a burst in reply, and wrapped the little Douglas into a shuddering, high-G turn as the aggressor pulled off high and left.
Delight felt an emotional shiver when his opponent zoom-climbed for the perch. It was an unwelcome message: This guy wants an energy fight; I can’t match him with my current airspeed. He glimpsed the Chinese wingman rolling over and diving after Papa Two. Well, I can’t go vertical with my guy; I’ll go down.
Delight retarded the throttle and rolled over. Through the top of his canopy he caught a view of Thaler’s TA-4J diving toward the ship. As Delight pulled his nose through, aligning his illuminated sight with the target, he saw one, then two lights streak upward, corkscrewing awkwardly. “Yeah!” he exulted. It’s gotta be the Princess all right!
The SA-7s shot almost vertically from the stern. One wobbled, perhaps uncertain which heat source to home on, and belatedly tried to correct back toward Papa Two. By then, Thaler was down the chute, tracking for the five seconds he needed. Both bombs came off the hardpoints, stabilized, and accelerated toward the ship.
The second man-portable SAM passed twenty feet beneath Psycho Thaler’s aircraft before detonating.
Delight saw the white smoke of detonation, noted Papa Two wobble in its dive and begin a shallow pullout. A human noise chirped in Delight’s earphones—something unintelligible. The Chinese A-4- “Gomer Two”—had veered away from the two SAMs, giving Thaler some maneuvering room. However, Gomer One—the intelligent bastard somewhere above and behind Delight—was positioned to kill one or both Americans.
Delight knew he was poorly placed to get hits. His roll-in after avoiding the Chinese leader was too far astern for a high-angle attack, and his sight was calibrated for air-to-air. He quickly reset 112 mils with Stations Two and Four selected. Recognizing he was shallow in his dive, he held half a diameter high, hit the red “pickle,” felt the Mark 83s leave the racks, then punched the flare button four times. Beneath Station Five, outboard on his starboard wing, four magnesium flares arced downward, silent sirens competing for the attention of the next SA-7s.
Two blows rocked the A-4, then another. Without needing to look, Delight knew that Gomer One was in range and gunning. The Marine kicked right rudder, slewed to starboard, and pulled the stick into his lap. His left hand shoved up the power and began accelerating through 430 knots.
Now long-forgotten, Thaler’s two half-ton bombs smashed into Penang Princess just aft of amidships. One punched through the deck, exploding two compartments down. The other hit slightly to port, dishing in three-eighths-inch steel plates and destroying a speedboat lashed alongside. The splintered Chris Craft, minus four feet of its bow, flooded and sank as far as its lines permitted.
Delight’s bombs struck thirty feet aft of the stern. One was a dud, victim of fuze failure. The other strewed water and steel splinters in a wide radius, adding to the confusion aboard the Malaysian vessel.
Zack pulled off target, coming nose level at three thousand feet, and looked left. Gomer Two was turning in behind Thaler, whose TA-4J was streaming something white—smoke or fuel. Briefly Delight wondered what Mr. Wei must be thinking in the rear cockpit. Then the former Marine was coordinating his controls, feeling some slack in the rudder, cutting the corner on Gomer Two and rotating his sight drum back to thirty. He knew that Gomer One was still back there, but Papa Two needed help.
“Papa One, this is Three. We’re rolling in hot.”
Thank you, God! Delight forced himself to keep the hostile TA-4 padlocked as Island Freeman careened into view. With Ozzie and Liz now attacking, Gomer One probably would let Delight go, trying to disrupt the greatest threat to the Princess.
Probably.
Delight keyed his mike. “Psycho, come right and drag ’im for me.”
There was no reply, but Papa Two reversed from left to right, turning northerly toward Island White and the Belmont Pier. Gomer Two fired and missed astern, big 20mm slugs churning the water into tall geysers as the fight descended through one thousand feet. He underdeflected! Delight exulted.
The Chinese pilot, either unaware of his peril or boldly ignoring it, followed the turn. Delight, twelve hundred feet back and three hundred feet higher, knew the Gomer would pull deflection on Thaler and Wei after another thirty degrees of turn. But as the hostile Skyhawk crossed his nose and the deflection angle narrowed to nearly zero, Delight nudged back his stick, set the pipper one mil over the canopy, and pressed the trigger.
Beneath his feet, Delight felt the twin Colts pounding out three-quarter-inch-diameter shells at a combined rate of thirty-two per second. He kept the trigger depressed for two seconds, expending one-third of his ammunition.
Gomer Two absorbed fifteen rounds across the top of the fuselage and wings. Delight saw shattered canopy glass glinting briefly in the sun, followed by gouges of aluminum, streams of fuel, and just plain junk whipping in the slipstream. The little jet rolled right, dropped its nose, and went straight in.
Zachary Delight pulled up, savoring the dirty brown-white geyser marking his kill, and screamed an atavistic shout of warrior joy that pealed off Valhalla’s golden dome.
At least that was how he felt at that exact moment.
A microsecond later he was back in control of himself. He rolled hard right, turning into Gomer One, who had vanished. Leaving the throttle against the stop, he began climbing back toward the likely roll-in point. Delight could do nothing more for Thaler, but still felt an obligation. “Eric, Zack. You better plant that thing.”
“Roger, Zack. Ah … I’m losin’ fuel, but I think I can make the boat.”
“Good luck, pard.”
Climbing back to the east, Delight rolled his port wingtip down for a better view. He was just in time to see two more bombs explode amidships of Penang Princess.
Three seconds later, missile tracks arced out of the haze, passing well above him on a reciprocal course. Then his friend and coauthor was back on the radio. “Papa Flight, be advised. We have Flankers inbound from the east and Hornets from the west.”
Twenty-six
Gomer One
“Four, you bomb the ship. I’ll block for you.”
With that, Ozzie Ostrewski rolled over and slanted down from thirteen thousand feet. He already had spotted the hostile TA-4 trying to cut off the bomber’s roll-in point. Confident that Vespa would hit the target, he intended to tie up the Chinese long enough to afford her a clear shot.
Scooter Vespa flipped MASTER ARM, confirmed her sight setting, and nosed over. She forced herself to concentrate on the fundamentals rather than all that had gone wrong. We were going to make a coordinated attack on a moving target miles from here, without enemy interceptors. She came back on the throttle, recalling Zack Delight’s combat motto: No plan survives contact.
The ship was listing slightly to port, with smoke partly obscuring the stern. From a twelve-thousand foot roll-in, Vespa stabilized her TA-4 at 450 knots. She remembered to tell Hu in the rear seat, “Keep the camera going.” She received a grunt of acknowledgment.
Elizabeth Vespa had all the time in the world—ten second
s of time in which to trim out her dive, align the sight with the aim point, and track smoothly to the release point. This is good, she told herself. This is very … very … good. She marveled at how … ordinary … it seemed.
At forty-five hundred feet she thumbed the button.
Ostrewski met Gomer One head on—Ozzie going downhill, Gomer headed up. At six thousand feet they passed, slightly offset, and Ozzie pressed the bomb release. With the fuzing switch on SAFE, both Mark 83s slanted toward the water, ridding Papa Three of unwanted weight and drag.
Ozzie honked back on the stick, using his greater momentum to zoom-climb for the perch. He knew that he had the fight in the bag. His opponent, nose-high with energy bled off from the climb, had nowhere to go. The Chinese pilot’s only move was to bury the nose, accelerate away, and try to evade.
That was exactly what Deng Yaobang decided to do.
Gomer One rolled into a diving port reversal, looking for the best cover available. He saw it less than three miles ahead.
Barely a mile away, Zack Delight saw the developing fight. He keyed his mike. “Papa Three or Four, this is Zack. I’ll take the Gomer. You guys finish the ship.”
Without his bombs, Ostrewski could do no more than shoot holes in Penang Princess’s hull. Frustrated at giving up a gun kill—the universal fighter pilot’s wet dream—he recognized the wisdom of Delight’s call. At least I might split the defenses for Liz’s attack. He reversed course, expending some of his excess energy in a high-speed descent back toward the target.
Delight came hard aport, cutting the corner on Gomer One, who was leaving a 350-knot wake on the water. The hostile Skyhawk flashed across the bow of the Catalina Island cruise ship, drawing appreciative responses and Kodak Moments from the passengers. Delight was six seconds back.
Deng banked fifteen degrees left to thread his way through the channel between the Downtown Marina to starboard and Queen Mary to port. Leaving a rooster tail behind him, he flew under Queensway Bridge, popped up long enough to clear the 710 exit, Anaheim Street and Pacific Coast Highway bridges, then bunted his nose down toward the Los Angeles River.
Delight, with his teeth into his former tormenter, followed Deng beneath the Queensway Bridge without thinking about it. Only when the hostile Skyhawk popped up to clear the next three spans did it really occur to him what he had done. Willow Street, Wardlow, and the 405 all disappeared below their white bellies at six and a half miles per minute.
Delight tried to put the TA-4’s tailpipe in his reticle. Down low, with the river channel providing a natural barrier, he thought it might be safe to shoot, but Gomer One’s jet wash made steady aiming almost impossible. Even within the confines of the flood-control channel, Delight knew there would be misses and ricochets. Besides, he told himself, if I do hose the sumbitch, he’s likely to crash on the Long Beach Freeway. Route 710 North lay an eighth of a mile off their port wingtips.
As if reading Delight’s mind, Deng abruptly laid a hard right at the 710/91 interchange. Scooting along the Artesia Freeway, he quickly departed North Long Beach, entered Bellflower at fifty feet altitude, and felt safer in a residential area. Delight followed.
Liz Vespa felt the thousand-pounders fall away, counted One potato, then began a steady, hard pull. She tensed her abdominal and thigh muscles, straining as six times the force of gravity forced her deep onto the unyielding ejection seat. While her vision narrowed, somehow her hearing improved; she heard Hu’s grunts over the hot mike.
With the horizon seemingly descending to meet her jet’s nose, Vespa extended her left arm, locking the elbow. The J52 spooled up from 80 to 100 percent. She regained full vision and scanned the panel. All in the green. Now, where’s the ship?
Vespa kept three G on the aircraft, turning back toward the target so Hu could resume videotaping. Coming parallel to the burning, smoking vessel, the TA-4J was rocked as a white shock wave radiated outward from the hull. One second later the aft sixty feet jackknifed, paused an ephemeral moment, then dropped back in a cascading eruption of smoke, flames, and spray.
Scooter Vespa’s eyes widened behind her visor. “Secondary explosions, Hu! Are you getting this?”
“Yes, miss! Hold this angle.” She thought she heard him laugh. “This is wonderful!” He depressed the zoom button to get a closer view of the conflagration.
Liz shared the laugh. She felt almost giddy. “We have a saying in this country, Mr. Hu.”
“Yes, miss?”
“Film at eleven.”
Delight scanned his instruments. RPM, fuel flow, and tailpipe temperature were in the green, but he felt himself losing ground on Gomer One. He reasoned that the battle damage had torn gouges in his jet’s aluminum skin, imposing a drag penalty. He was down to nine hundred pounds of fuel, and Gomer seemed headed back to El Toro. Nothing I can do there, he thought. Reluctantly, Delight pulled up, briefly wagging his wings in tacit tribute to a bravura low-level performance. As he climbed to a more fuel-efficient altitude, the last he saw of the Juliet was a fast white dart making 400 mph in a 65 zone.
Ozzie called for a joinup; he wanted mutual support in case more bandits arrived. “Papa Four, this is Three. I’ll meet you over Freeman. Angels eight.”
Liz hedged for a moment. “Ah, Four, we’re getting BDA. Please wait one.”
Ostrewski fidgeted on his seat. He understood Vespa’s wish for bomb damage assessment, but the Princess was beyond help. For a moment he wondered about the heat-resistant qualities of bootleg backpack nukes.
From long habit, he turned his head through almost two hundred degrees. Looking upward to his left, he froze for two heartbeats. Coming from seaward was the track of an air-to-air missile streaking inland.
Twenty-seven
Light to Moderate
“Missile inbound! Left eleven o’clock!”
“My God! It’s …”
“Tommy, break! Break left!”
The voices on the VHF circuit overlapped in rising octaves and decibels as twelve miles from the burning, sinking Penang Princess, a female section leader screamed at her male wingman. Liz Vespa, hearing the garbled transmissions, fought to make sense of it amid her elation at putting both bombs square amidships.
“Tommy, eject!” The female voice was nearly hysterical now. “My God, oh my God …” The hoarse contralto descended into an audible sob before the thumb slid off the mike button.
Five heartbeats later, the voice was back. “This is Bronco Three-Zero-Four broadcasting on guard. Three Oh Six … exploded. I’m off Palos Verdes. Send a helo!”
Elizabeth Vespa felt a shiver between her shoulder blades. My God … Jen-Jen!
Flying alone in Flanker One at sixteen thousand feet, Igor Gnido had an idea that he was too late. That black smoke roiling off Long Beach looked ominous for the prospects of Penang Princess, and he could only hope that her cargo had been off-loaded. In truth, there had been little chance of making a timely interception.
Furthermore, the R-73M2s and R-77s had necessarily been in deep storage, and it took time to upload the missiles, especially with the Sukhoi factory crew unaccustomed to handling ordnance. Furthermore, Deng and Li obviously had failed to prevent the carrier-based A-4s from attacking.
Gnido glanced again to the south, where the freighter seemed to be burning itself out. He sucked in more oxygen, mentally tipping his hardhat to Miss Scooter. Not long ago he had plans of bedding her; now he might have to kill her. Or maybe it will not be necessary, and I will kill her anyway.
Igor Gnido literally possessed a license to kill. He chuckled at the thought of his diplomatic passport from the Russian government, plus his credentials as a trade representative of the People’s Republic of China. The mirth he felt at his present situation—controlling the airspace over Los Angeles, California—was mixed with contempt for politicians and diplomats who made such a condition possible.
The first American fighter had been ridiculously easy to destroy. The R-77—what NATO called the AAM-AE “Amraamski”—ha
d been fired well within range and performed as advertised. The haze made it difficult to discern the fireball fifteen nautical miles away, but the big Sukhoi’s sophisticated radar clearly showed the southerly target destroyed. Gnido knew that it had to be a Tomcat or Hornet, and from the its unvarying course he wondered if the pilot had been using his radar-warning receiver. Not that it would have mattered very much; R-77 was a fire-and-forget weapon like the U.S. AMRAAM.
Gnido banked into a tight orbit above Terminal Island, awaiting events. He felt confident that the Americans would not return fire as long as he was over land, where aircraft wreckage or missiles would cause casualties and damage on the ground. However, with his lookdown, shoot-down radar, he could easily track anything over water.
To the northwest the radar picture was a cluttered mess. Gnido laughed again at the thought of the panic he must have caused at LAX, where a flock of jetliners was scrambling like a covey of quail. Ladies and gentlemen, we regret to announce the cancellation of Flight 123 owing to occasional Flankers and light-to-moderate missiles in the area. It occurred to him that he could hide in the LAX traffic pattern, essentially holding hostage any commercial traffic still there.
A pity I only have three missiles left, he gloomed. There had been no time to load more.
“Papa Three or Four, this is Lead.”
Ozzie heard the call and replied first. “Zack, this is Oz. Where are you?”
“Ah, I’m halfway to home plate on the zero three five radial. Getting skosh on fuel. How ’bout you?”
“Dash Four and I have seen missile plumes, Zack, and there’s a splash on guard channel. You hear it?”
“Negative. I been kinda busy.” There was a pause while Delight sorted priorities. “Four, you copy?”
“Four here. Go!” Vespa sounded calm, even eager.
“You have a visual on Three?”
Combat Page 79
