He could see from the speed leader that the Tomcat was accelerating as well, quickly moving to match his speed. Their combined closure speed was now in excess of 1800 miles per hour, and the powerful Tomcat had a slight advantage. The Falcon, while lighter and more maneuverable, simply could not keep up with the sustained speed of bursts of the Tomcat if it involved an altitude change. “This time, we will fight my game.”
0928 Local
Tomcat 308
“Steady, steady,” the XO murmured from the backseat. “He hasn’t done anything yet, Skeeter. Don’t toggle one off until I tell you.”
Skeeter clicked the mike twice in acknowledgment. His earlier burst of ebullience was fading. This was his second time under attack this week, and he was determined to acquit himself more honorably than he had aboard La Salle. Despite the XO’s warning, he moved the weapons-selector switch to the Phoenix position. When the XO deemed it necessaryhe would be ready.
0928 Local
Falcon 101
“You have not targeted me yet,” the pilot said softly. “Are you afraid? Do you know what vengeance I am about to extract from you?”
He adjusted the Falcon’s course minutely to bring it directly head-on to the Tomcat. “Be careful, you may get more than you bargained for.”
0929 Local
Tomcat 308
“Sir, he’s within Phoenix range.” Skeeter heard his voice skid slightly up at the end of the sentence. “Recommend we-“
“No. Not yet.” The XO’s voice was firm. “It’s bad, we’re not making it worse. They may not be out here for us.”
“Not here for us?” Skeeter asked. “Sir, it’s a Falcon.”
“I’m aware of that. After all, I’ve got the ESM gear back here. But you’re not paying attentiondidn’t you hear that last contact report? The submarine?”
“Yes, butoh. Targeting profile.”
“Exactly. These bad boys may not be here for us. They may simply be providing position updates to that submarine, vectoring it in closer to the ship. And the submarine’s not our problemthe Viking’s turned it over to the helos. They’ve got him pinned down right now, bouncing him from sonar dome to sonar dome like he’s a badmitton bird. Until he shakes them, he’s not going to feel comfortable coming up to data-link with those fighters. Besides, we’re still inside the inner missile engagement envelope.”
“Sir, this is going too fast,” Skeeter warned. “It was like this last timeaircraft inbound, nobody willing to take them with missiles. Look what happened then.”
“Wait for the Hawkeye, Skeeter. We’ve got to make sure the Aegis doesn’t need us to clear the area, and there’s no point in wasting missiles on him yet.”
I waited last time. I ended up with a dead ship. What happens this time?
0929 Local
TFCC
USS Jefferson
“You can’t shoot.”
Bradley Tiltfelt’s voice was insistent. “Admiral, you risk everything we’ve worked to achieve if your men take a shot now.”
Tombstone wheeled around and glared at the civilian. “I can and I will if I have the slightest indication that this ship is in danger. This is not a game, Mr. Tiltfelt. People die. Ships die. And I’m not losing another one in this sea, not based on your in-depth analysis of a tactical scenario.”
“They’re doing freedom-of-navigation operations,” Tiltfelt insisted. “You saw their message yourself.”
“I know what it said.” Tombstone pointed at the large screen display. “But that is not an unthreatening profile as briefed. Those bastards are inbound at Mach 1.5, and in five minutes they’ll be within missile range of this ship. Unless they break off within four minutes, I’m firing.”
“Admiral,” Tiltfelt wailed, “they told us they were going to do this. You can’t-“
“Watch me.”
Tombstone settled back in his brown leatherette chair to watch the battle unfolding on the screen.
0930 Local
Falcon 101
The fighter bore down on the incoming American aircraft, eking out another few tenths of Mach and accelerating again. The engine settled into a steady, screaming roar.
A little closer now, a little closerthat’s it. Commit yourself to this profile. In level flight, you have no chance. Not one. He kept his hands away from the radar switch, careful not to toggle it into fire-control mode. At the first sniff of the tightly focused radar beam beating down on the skin of their aircraft, the Tomcat crew would be justified in retaliating with a missile. At this distance, it was not the Falcon’s preferred fight. No, in close knife-fighting, his instructors in the United States had called it. The Falcon was a knife-fighter, the Tomcat a heavyweight boxer. In close, it was no contest.
0930 Local
Tomcat 308
“Remember, he’s an angles fighter,” Garber said rapidly, back-briefing his young pilot as quickly as he could. “His first priority is going to be to keep you at the same altitude. You’ll see him start to cut in on you, to turn inside your own turn, get position on you from behind. Skeeter, pay attentionit comes with experience, and you’ve gotta get that fast.”
An angles fighterGod, how he’d studied the maneuvers at the RAG.
Back then, there’d been pilots who’d flown against MiGs in Vietnam, and they were more than willing to share their experience bought at the price of their squadron mates’ lives with the incoming generation of fighter pilots.
Altitudeyou have to use altitude to your advantage. The Tomcat, with its higher thrust-to-weight ratio and higher wing loading, could easily outstrip and turn inside the Falcon on the vertical plane. On the horizontal, it was a turkey trying to evade a chicken hawk. A beached whale trying to writhe away from pecking seagulls. Altitude is safetyaltitude and maneuverability.
“I’m taking us up to twenty-five thousand,” Skeeter said firmly. “Energy fightstandard tactic while he’s down this low.”
“Concur.” The XO’s voice was slightly muffled. “I’m getting a fixthere. Solid data link with the Hawkeye. Good data, good solution. If we need to shoot-“
Skeeter’s burst of acceleration turned the XO’s last words into a grunt. The Tomcat accelerated rapidly, afterburners spitting unholy fire out the tailpipes, speed over ground decreasing to almost zero. The Tomcat was in a pure vertical climb, gaining altitude and, with it, kinetic energy. When the time came for forcing the Falcon into an energy fight instead of an angles one, Skeeter would be ready.
“Fuel,” the XO warned. “It kills more pilots than missiles. Skeeter, easy on the afterburners. Save it for when you need it.”
Cursing his impulsiveness, Skeeter eased back out of the afterburners and decreased his angle of attack. There was still enough separation between the two aircraft that afterburners had not been necessary. But his increasing sense of urgency not to be vulnerable to this second attack had overridden his professional good sense.
“I’ve got himat five o’clock,” the XO said.
Skeeter leaned over and gazed down outside the right side of the cockpit. He could see the flash of light on metal that had caught the XO’s attention. “I’ve got him too.”
“Something odd about this guy,” the XO said tersely. “He’s climbing to meet us. Skeeter, watch your asshe’s not much off your six.”
“Got it. I’m going to nose over here in just a second.”
Skeeter rolled over to the side opposite of the Falcon, preventing him from closing to within guns range on his tail. For just a moment, he thought he’d out-flown him. Over-confidence replaced his fear.
He pulled down, pressing in for a favorable angle of attack. To his surprise, the Falcon pulled up under him, again in excellent guns position.
“Skeeter,” the XO snapped, “you’re getting into a rolling scissors. You can’t play this game with him.”
“I know, I knowbut he’s climbing with me. Every time I try to outrun him, I put him in guns position on me.”
�
�At least he hasn’t shot yetSkeeter, we need to break out of thisnow.”
The Tomcat was descending now, bleeding off energy advantage as it lost altitude. Skeeter searched his memory, tried to remember if any of his instructors talked about an angles fighter that didn’t mind fighting in the vertical. They weren’t supposed tomost of the MiGs in encounters that his instructors had discussed had either kept the fight strictly to the horizontal or turned to run if they didn’t have the advantage.
At eight thousand feet, with the Falcon still high above him, Skeeter put the Tomcat nose up and grabbed for altitude. The Falcon zoomed down not five hundred feet away, canopy to canopy. Skeeter resisted the impulse to job the afterburners again, lessen his angle of climb. “Watch him for me,” he said to the XO. “Keep an eye on him-“
“Got it. Skeeter, he’s at the bottom of his arc right now. He’ll be back up on our tail again.”
The XO’s voice was cold, professional, but Skeeter could hear the undertone of worry in it.
What was it, what was it, something he’d read somewhere, the story of a MiG and aa Phantomthat was it. The details came flooding back. It had been Duke Cunningham, now a U.S. Representative from California.
Flying his F-4 Phantom against a MiG-17, the Duke, as he was known, had run into a MiG fighter who didn’t mind the vertical. They’d done the same maneuver, up and down, rolling scissors, with the MiG consistently turning inside the vertical and stitching the Duke’s ass with his nose gun. And the solution was“Where is he now?” he asked the XO sharply. “Give me a range.”
“Just bottoming out at three thousand feet. We’ve got ten thousand feet of separation, Skeeter. Let’s turn and wait for him.”
“No. I think I know whatis he climbing now?”
“On afterburners,” the XO confirmed. “Skeeter, he’s just going to move back into perfect position on your ass. Let’s get out of herewhile we can.”
“Hold onI thought you wanted to see what this Tomcat could do.”
The note of cold glee in his voice surprised even him.
Five thousand feetfour thousand feetSkeeter asked the XO to sing out the altitudes as the Falcon gained on them. Skeeter eased slowly back on the throttle, decreasing his speed of ascent while avoiding even the edge of the stall envelope. It was a tightrope calculation, walking the thin line between appearing to maintain a continual ascent and stalling.
“Five hundred feetSkeeter, let’s-“
Skeeter pulled hard toward the Falcon and yanked the throttle back to idle. At the same time, he disengaged the automatic control that configured the Tomcat’s wings for the most efficient airspeed, driving the wings forward into their low-speed configuration. As he felt the aircraft start to turn, he kicked in the afterburners to avoid stalling.
Like a gray streak, the Falcon shot by him. Skeeter thought he saw the pilot’s face, hoped there was as much fear and confusion in it as Skeeter had experienced on La Salle.
“Take that, you bastard,” the pilot muttered. No, it wasn’t a kill, but if he had been free to shoot it would have been. He held position on the Falcon, in perfect guns position. If he hadn’t been so close, a Sidewinder up the tailpipe would also have been an ideal shot.
“Skeeterhe’s turning out of it.”
The lighter, more maneuverable aircraft turned sharply to the right, intentionally stalling as the pilot repeated Skeeter’s maneuver. It swung over to point down at him, nose first.
“Lockup,” the XO screamed. “There’s no time for-“
Skeeter was just closing his thumb over the weapons-selector switch to select guns when his world exploded.
He woke up when he tried to breathe. The metallic tang of salt water filled his mouth, his nose, and jolted his survival instincts into action.
Skeeter coughed violently, spewing out seawater before his eyes were even open. He flailed his arms, the motion driving him the last few feet up to the surface.
The paroxysm of coughing occupied his entire world for a few seconds.
His eyes were open, but they were misted with tears and stinging from water. He choked, coughing up a last cup of water, then finally drawing a deep, shaky breath.
His eyes focused. Water, waveshe looked up into the blue sky. For another few minutes, his mind refused to focus, simply satisfied with the fact that he was alive.
It came back to him slowly, in bits and pieces. An explosionthe canopy bolts firing, he realized. The Falconit had been inbound. The rest of the encounter flooded his mind.
The XO must have gotten them out. Suddenly, he was frantic. He scanned the ocean around him, praying for a glimpse of a flotation device or a rubber raft. He started screaming, his voice raw and hoarse from the water. He tried to propel himself higher up on the waves by flailing his arms, and found new sources of pain. His groinanother throb awoke to join the growing chorus.
Finally, his training kicked in. He fumbled open the flotation device pocket, extracted the dye marker, and broke it open. A sickly yellow stain flooded the water around him, gradually spreading out. He then took out the shark repellent packet, prayed that all the studies he’d heard on its effectiveness were true, and broke it open.
The pain in his face was now a throbbing, insistent beat. He let his flotation device buoy him for a moment, leaned back in the water, and started running his hands over his body. Wetnesshe held his hand out in front of him. Not just water. Blood. Evidently shards of the canopy or the sheer force of the ejection had cut his face. He looked again at the growing yellow stain and prayed that the shark repellent was just as effective.
One by one, he ran his hands over his arms, his torso, then finally his legs. Everything seemed to work, although movement was accompanied by a dull ache that promised to blossom into something fiercer later on.
So where was SAR?
Dammit, the helo guysjust then the distinctive whop-whop of an SH-60 reached his ears.
Minutes later, a rescue diver plunged into the water a few feet away.
He swam over to Skeeter, quickly ascertained that he was conscious and not seriously injured, and helped the pilot struggle into the horse collar.
Satisfied finally, the diver lifted his hand in a thumbs-up to the crewman leaning out the open hatch of the helicopter. The downdraft from the SH-60 was explosive, generating wind speeds of up to sixty knots directly down on the water. It spread waves out in odd, flat ripples that beat a counterpart to the normal progression of waves. Skeeter fixed on that, staring at the concentric disturbances that looked like water washing out from a stone thrown in a pond, the diver situated in the middle.
Except this wasn’t a pond. It was the Mediterranean, and as soon as he was hauled aboard, he asked, “Did you find my backseater?”
One look at the aircrew’s faces gave him the answer. Skeeter exploded. “Dammit, he’s out here somewhere. We’ve got to find him. We have to-“
“Just take it easy, sir,” the corpsman said, gently trying to muscle him to the aft part of the helicopter. “We’ve done this beforejust let us do our job for now. We’ll find him.”
“He was there,” Skeeter said mindlessly. “In the backseathe must have punched us out.”
He shot the corpsman an anguished look. “Just before the Falcon got ushe punched us out. How could he-?”
“Just lean back, Lieutenant.” The corpsman’s voice was gentle but insistent. “Need to take a look at you, sir. Your backseater’s gonna be just fine.”
“Where is he?”
Skeeter struggled to his feet and tried to walk toward the open hatch. The rescue swimmer was just being hauled aboard. “I have to-“
A sharp prick in the left arm. Skeeter spun around, unsteady on his bruised and battered legs. “What did you…”
The rest of the sentence faded away as a cool fog settled over his mind.
6
Thursday, 6 September
0300 Local
Medical Department
USS Jefferson
“How is he?” Batman asked the doctor, his voice pitched low to avoid disturbing the unconscious pilot. “The facejust normal ejection injuries, right?”
The doctor nodded. “Some bruises, a couple of lacerations. None of them even required stitches. The only reason he’s still here instead of in his own rack was that he got a bit agitated with the helo crew when they pulled him out of the water. The corpsman had to jam him with some morphine to get him to calm down.”
Batman let out a long, troubled sigh. “His backseater.”
It wasn’t a question, more a statement of fact. It was the first thing you worried about, the last thing you thought of as you departed controlled flight on the rocket-powered ejection seat and headed for the deck. Your backseater, the other part of your team, who helped keep you both alive.
“Have they found him yet?” the doctor asked.
Batman shook his head. “No one saw his chute. The more time passes, the more difficult it will be to find him.”
The doctor nodded, understanding the unspoken implication. No chute, no sighting, and no emergency beacon from either the sea or the portable radio each aviator carried. It didn’t look good.
“Butthere’s always a chance.”
Batman straightened, then looked back at the pilot sprawled out on the bed. “How long before he’s conscious?”
“That’s just normal sleep,” the doctor answered. “The morphine’s worn off. If you need to talk to him, you can wake him up.”
“I guess I should let him sleep,” Batman fretted. “But I need to know what actually happened up there. We’ve got the radar picture, the cat-and-mouse game they were playing up there. What I don’t have is a firsthand report, what the pilot on scene did and saw and thought.”
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