“Yes, I’m closing on his four o’clock.”
Delight mentally computed the relative positions of the three Skyhawks. Ostrewski and Vespa would be below and behind him, still offshore. “Okay. Break-break. Santa Cruz, this is Papa One. What dope on Dash Two? Over.”
Moments passed before the watch officer replied. “Ah, Papa One, be advised. Papa Two is aboard with a bent bird. Pilot and backseater are both okay. Your signal is Charlie on arrival.”
“Roger. See you on deck.”
Lieutenant Commander Jennifer Jensen fought to control the palsied trembling of her hands and forearms. For the first time in her naval career she was forced to confront the fact that she was out of her depth, facing a situation that neither seniority nor contacts would alleviate.
That knowledge, combined with the fiery death of her wingman, meant that she was deep-down, bone-chilling scared. Just how scared she might have to admit eventually—how else to explain the switchology error in firing a Sidewinder after designating the suspected Flanker for an AMRAAM shot?
Now, with the range closing at six miles per minute, she was barely one minute from the merge with that supremely arrogant Russian. Belatedly, Jensen realized she had not made the obligatory “Fox Two” call, indicating an AIM-9 shot. She knew that she had been too rattled to follow procedure, but with a little luck she might still retrieve the situation. Which would be fortunate indeed, considering that she had not yet received the “Weapons free” call from Boorda’s strike operations center.
She inhaled deeply, sucking oxygen into her lungs with the faint molded rubber scent of her mask. She willed herself to project the ice princess tone in her voice as she called Strike Ops. “Chainsaw Strike from Bronco Three-Zero-Four. Request weapons free. Repeat, weapons free.”
“Three-Zero-Four, stand by.”
God damn it, I can’t afford to stand by! “Strike, Bronco. I’m looking at multiple bogies on my nose. My wingman is down, and I’m outnumbered!” Immediately, Jen-Jen Jensen regretted the tremor in her voice—the guys would say she choked—but she realized it could work to her advantage. Admiral, I was in reasonable fear of my life. My God, they had just killed Tommy Blyden!
Interminable seconds crawled past. During that infinity of time, Jensen fought a cosmic battle of Ambition against Fear. Ambition whispered in her ear, hinting at glorious rewards that might yet be hers if she succeeded. Fear screamed the banshee wail, the dirge that the only reason that Flanker pilot had not yet destroyed her was his willingness to toy with her until he tired of the game.
“Bronco, Strike. Two Tomcats are launching at this time. You are cleared to fire only in defense of yourself or other aircraft. VID is required. Acknowledge.”
Jensen was appalled. Visual identification? He’ll kill me before I ever see him! Then, like a gambling addict laying her last dollar on the table in hope of beating the house odds, she heard herself say, “Three Zero Four. Acknowledge.”
Gnido sought to sort out the confusing radar picture. Amid the multitude of blips on his screen, one American fighter had gone down, another continued toward him, briefly painting him with fire-control radar. At least three more aircraft were below him to the south. He assumed the latter were A-4s but had no way of knowing which were friendly or hostile. One was climbing out to sea, probably returning to the carrier, and that one likely was an American. Gnido placed his cursor on the blip and toyed with the idea of locking it up. If I had a full loadout …
But he needed to keep his remaining R-73 for the main threat—the fighter pressing inland over the Palos Verdes peninsula. He remained confident that no American officer would allow a BVR engagement over a densely populated area. Therefore, he retained control of the situation, willing and even eager to test his aircraft and close-range weapons against a competent opponent. Whatever the political fallout from the Penang Princess debacle, Igor Gnido felt that he stood to gain exceptional benefits both from his Russian employers and his Chinese patrons. “Yes, it was terrible what happened at Long Beach,” arms merchants would say, “but did you notice what one Su-30 did to three or four U.S. Navy fighters?”
American businessmen talked of “cutthroat competition.” The comfortable, dilettante bastards. How could they compare to Igor Gnido, who was turning into a world-class salesman?
Jennifer Jensen was thinking better now. She had broken lock on the presumed Flanker, lest the pilot get nervous and spear her with another long-range Archer. She was willing to go to visual range, which would probably be under three miles in this murk, and if the bogey—no, make that bandit—made a threatening move, she would would use her remaining AIM-9M.
Following the “bandit box” in her heads-up display, Jensen turned slightly to port, keeping the threat on her nose. It was an eerie feeling, knowing that somewhere within the HUD square superimposed on infinity lay the source of the death of Lieutenant Thomas Blyden.
Elizabeth Vespa craned her neck, trying to glimpse the high-performance jets jousting inland. She approved of Ostrewski’s decision to remain low on the water, relatively safe from radar detection, but it was about time to head for the boat. The temptation to ask Papa Three his intention was powerful, considering that their survival might be at stake, but Scooter Vespa knew that Ozzie Ostrewski would think less of her for it.
And Scooter was like every other tactical aviator. She would much rather die than look bad.
Gnido had had enough of groping through the murk. Since the carrier aircraft approaching him apparently had not fired, nor even continued targeting him, he realized that his premise was correct. The Americans will not engage beyond visual range! But he was under no such stricture. He thumbed his weapon selector to the helmet sight detent, confirmed the symbology, and prepared to fire. As soon as the target emerged from the smog and haze, he would shoot, then decide whether to deal with one of the low-flying targets. A BVR kill, a short-range kill, and then perhaps a low-level overwater kill would look very convincing in the sales brochures.
The Hornet appeared slightly offset to starboard as Gnido’s blue eyes focused on the dark shape. Range four point five kilometers, good enough. He pressed the trigger.
In Bronco 304, Jensen felt her blood surge as she saw the big Sukhoi. She already had her starboard Sidewinder selected, finger on the trigger, ready to fire. There was the tracking tone chirping in her earphones …
And the smoke trail of an AA-11 igniting beneath the Flanker. One four-letter word strobed in her brain as she reacted. Stick hard over, throttles against the stops, and pull.
The Hornet pirouetted about its axis and the nose arced abruptly downward.
Twenty-eight
Two V One V One
Ozzie’s experienced eyes picked the Archer out of the sky. He would not have seen it had it performed normally—that is, if it had killed Jennifer Jensen—but its rocket motor described a swirling, corkscrewing path below the haze.
“Papa Four, heads up. Missile shot five o’clock, way high.” He thought to add, “No threat. Yet.”
Vespa looked over her left shoulder and scanned the upper air. She saw the errant missile a few seconds later. “It’s gone ballistic?”
“I think so.” Ostrewski estimated the geometry of the situation and decided to face the potential threat. He led Vespa into a forty-degree banked turn, climbing back toward the north-northwest.
Jennifer Jensen rolled wings level at four thousand feet and began her pull. She remembered to call the ship. “Chainsaw! Heshotatmeheshotatme! Iwillreturnfire!”
“Bronco, Chainsaw. Say again? Repeat, say again.”
Jensen barely heard the response to her panicked transmission. She fought the oppressive G that she loaded on herself as the Hornet’s nose rose through the horizon, her vision tunneling through a gray mist.
As her vision returned to normal, her adrenaline-drenched brain perceived a dark spot almost straight ahead. Her richly oxygenated blood put her in a survival mind-set—eyes dilated, blood pressure, pulse, and re
spiration elevated. Psych 101, fight or flight. It did not occur to Jensen that the aerodynamic shape approaching her through the HUD symbology was far lower than the threat aircraft that had just launched against her.
She heard the AIM-9 Mike’s seeker head tracking the friction heat generated by the 320-knot airspeed of the target airframe. They said there might be two Flankers! With the range down to two and a half miles she pressed the trigger, remembering to call “Fox two!”
From his perch above and behind the plummeting Hornet, Igor Gnido watched in fascination. The sight presented to him was almost enough to erase the anger he felt at the malfunctioning R-73 that had narrowly missed the F/A-18. The pilot is mad, Gnido told himself. For the life of him, the Russian could not conceive what the Hornet was shooting at. He eased off some power, brought his nose up, and bided his time.
Ostrewski’s combat-experienced mind screamed at him even as his rational side denied what was happening. He heard something garbled on the radio, vaguely imagined it was Vespa, then began dealing with the lethal reality accelerating toward him.
Ozzie shoved up the power and abruptly rolled into a right turn, better to gauge the Sidewinder’s aspect and closure rate. Head-on it was nearly impossible to determine the range until too late.
As the smoky trail corrected slightly to rendezvous on him, he told himself to wait. He punched off four or five flares, none of which seemed to deceive the Mike’s improved logic board. Not yet … not yet … Now!
It is not enough to change vectors in one dimension to defeat a missile. The trick is to alter both heading and altitude simultaneously, forcing more G onto the mindless killer than its small wings can accept.
Ozzie’s stomach was bilious in his mouth, constricting his throat. He did not realize that he stopped breathing.
He snapped the stick back, pitching up abruptly while coordinating aileron and rudder. His high-G barrel roll, executed with less than two seconds leeway, forced the winder to cut the corner at too acute an angle to continue tracking. As its seeker detected that the range was opening, the warhead detonated.
“Knock it off, knock it off! Hornet, knock it off! You just shot at a friendly!” Vespa’s voice was a high-pitched mixture of astonishment and outrage. She had no idea who was listening to her frequency, and at that moment she was not inclined to be charitable. She saw Papa Three reappear beyond the smoke of the Sidewinder’s explosion, apparently unharmed, but Michael Ostrewski had been forced on the defensive. If the Hornet pressed its advantage …
She turned in, savoring the Skyhawk’s superb roll rate. If he turns into Ozzie, I’ll shoot. She remembered Hu in the backseat. “Hu, watch for other planes. We don’t know who these people are.”
In a Topgun “murder board,” the debriefer would have faulted Jensen for turning back to engage. The school solution was to blow through, extend away from the immediate threat, reassess the situation, and set up for another missile shot.
Jennifer Jensen pulled her nose above the horizon, anxious to observe the result of her shot. She needed to know that her opponent had either been destroyed or driven into a vulnerable position for a reattack. As she neared the peak of a chandelle, seeking the target through the top of her canopy, she allowed her airspeed to bleed off more than she intended. By the time she caught sight of the target, which she recognized as an A-4, she was down to 285 knots. She tapped the afterburners, pulling through into a 135-degree slicing turn, ruefully recalling that she had no more Sidewinders. Too close for an AMRAAM, she flicked the selector and her HUD indicator changed from HEAT to GUN.
Something’s wrong, she realized. That’s not a Flanker. She eased off some of the G, retarding throttles slightly to gain more time to evaluate the potential threat.
“Liz, cut him off!” Ostrewski’s evasive roll had depleted much of his energy. He stuffed his nose down, pulling back into the threat, but knew he lacked the “smash” to go vertical.
With 375 knots on the dial, Vespa committed to an all-or-nothing gamble. She gauged the distance by the Hornet’s size in her thirty-mil reticle, waited three vital seconds, then pulled up. Vespa felt oddly calm, almost as she had during adversary training missions with VC-1 in Hawaii. Tracking the F/A-18 from eight o’clock low, she remembered to fly the pipper through the target, allowing a full ring of deflection.
At nine hundred feet range, she pressed the trigger and held it down.
Gnido shook his head in bemused contempt for the American’s folly. How could he allow himself to be sandwiched between two potentially hostile aircraft? And then to compound it by turning back again to repeat the error! The Sukhoi pilot decided to watch the outcome of the Hornet’s clumsy attack. Depending on what happened, he would kill the winner, return to El Toro, and try not to smile too broadly when waving his diplomatic passport on his way out of this amazing country.
Jen-Jen Jensen had no idea what was happening. Something like hailstones on a tin roof hammered the airframe behind her. The canopy shattered two feet aft of her headrest. Her initial emotion was confused disbelief; only after the Hornet lurched abruptly and began an uncommanded roll did she realize she had been hit by an unseen assailant. The other Flanker! she raged.
Jensen shot a wide-eyed glance at her instrument panel. Master caution, fire warning, and system-failure lights strobed at her in red-andyellow hues. Windfed flames waved angrily orange in her rearview mirrors. For an indecisive moment she wondered whether she should risk taking time to point the nose out to sea, away from the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club. Her father’s voice came to her. Honey, don’t ever hesitate in an emergency. The Navy can always buy another airplane.
The crippled strike fighter dropped into a mind-numbing spiral barely a mile over San Pedro Bay.
“Bronco Three Zero-Four! Mayday, mayday!”
Lieutenant Commander Jennifer Jensen pulled the black-and-yellow-striped handle.
As Vespa passed below and behind the doomed Hornet, Ostrewski had an unforgettable view. In a nose-down spiral the canopy separated, the seat fired with its rocket motor glaring white-hot, and the parachute deployed, pulling the pilot violently erect.
“Santa Cruz, this is Papa Three. Be advised, we have an F/A-18 down about one mile off Long Beach Marina. The pilot has a good chute. He’ll splash about two miles south of Pier J.”
“Roger, Three. We’re alerting the …”
Vespa’s voice chopped off the rest of the message. “Ozzie! Above you! Flanker at six o’clock!”
Taking the warning on faith, Ostrewski responded the only way he could. He turned into the threat.
Igor Gnido saw the nearer Skyhawk reverse its turn, hauling around the corner in a ninety-degree bank. The Russian had not intended to shoot yet, but he relished sparring with what was certainly a more competent opponent than that idiot in the Hornet. He added power, pulled up and executed a high yo-yo, keeping the A-4F on the defensive. The TA-4J was still too far off to pose any danger.
Topping out of his four-thousand-foot pitch-up, Gnido half rolled and brought his nose over the top, toward the southern horizon. He looked rearward between his twin tails, found the Skyhawk where he expected, and retarded his throttles.
Ostrewski had padlocked the big Sukhoi, conserving his available energy for the right moment. Like a Topgun free-for-all, he thought: two versus one versus one. When he saw Gnido’s nose pull through, he pitched up, momentarily spoiling the Flanker’s tracking. Both pilots had a chance for a gun snap shot; neither took it.
As they passed one another, offset two hundred yards at twenty-five hundred feet, Ostrewski stomped right rudder, shoved the stick over, and buried his nose. He gained fifteen degrees angle on the Flanker before it rocketed upward again in that awesome climb, this time pulling its vector toward Papa Four. His rapid turn caught Ostrewski by surprise—Papa Three could practically join on his wing, almost too close to shoot.
“All stations, all aircraft over Long Beach Harbor. This is USS Boorda on guard. Be advised, two F-14s are inbound.
They are armed and cleared to fire at any threat. All aircraft: You will comply with any directions from the mission commander. Out.”
Gnido cursed fervently. With most of his weapons gone, he was in no position to tackle two Tomcats. He decided to kill one Skyhawk, disengage, and streak for EI Toro at low level.
He felt he was managing the two Skyhawks nicely. Without missiles, they had to gain a close-range tracking solution on him, and as long as he kept both of them off his nose—or well below him—he could not be hurt.
The A-4s could not say the same thing. Gnido had selected his last R-73M2. With the Archer’s seeker slaved to his helmet-mounted sight, he could kill up to sixty degrees off his nose; he put the reticle on the two-seater running in from ten o’clock. A sideways glance to his right showed the single-seater to be no threat. It was going to pass close aboard and slightly high, too near for more than a fleeting snap shot.
Gnido pressed the trigger and felt his last Archer come off the rail. He was tracking the TA-4J smoothly, knowing that as long as he kept the Skyhawk in his forward hemisphere it was doomed.
Ostrewski saw the smoke plume as the rocket motor ignited, sending the AA-11 toward Papa Four. His heart was raw in his throat; he knew that Liz possessed neither the time nor the countermeasures to defeat the missile. With thrust vectoring, it was perhaps the most agile air-to-air weapon in the world.
Without room for a decent shot, without time to extend away before turning back in—and without conscious thought—Ozzie made his move.
Vespa saw the smoke trail, knew it for what it was, and rolled nearly inverted. She intended to wait until the last possible instant before pulling into her belly and loading maximum positive G on her aircraft. From 135 degrees of bank, her world was a crazy quilt of three-dimensional geometry with the Russian missile eating up the last quarter mile of airspace.
She shut her eyes, saw her mother’s face, and pulled.
Gnido saw the evasive maneuver, admiring the pilot’s last-ditch effort while knowing it was futile, and awaited the explosion.
Combat Page 80
