"Clear the air!" French's voice snapped. His right hand tightened on the stick of his F/A-18 Hornet, feeling the nimble aircraft's responsiveness. Damn it to hell! "All Marauders, cut the chatter! The orders are:, abort mission, return to base, execute immediate!"
He heard the radioed acknowledgments from each squadron leader, some sulky, some puzzled. With a new and swelling anger, Frenchie French pulled his stick left and dropped into a broad, slow turn to port.
The Korean coast receded behind him.
1615 hours
Tomcat 205
"Hey, Skipper? We got company!"
Tombstone's eyes automatically flicked along the horizon. "What do you have, Snowball?"
"Multiple bogies at two-zero-three, range three-two miles. Angels twenty. Closing in excess of five hundred."
"Two-zero-three…?" That bearing put them southeast of Alpha Strike, coming in from the side instead of from behind. Tombstone had halfway expected that MiGs out of Wonsan might come out after the American strike force, but these bogies were coming from a different direction entirely.
"It's Kosong, Tombstone!" Snowball said. The edge of raw excitement was back in the RIO's voice. "They're coming from Kosong!"
"What's the count?"
"I make it… eight bogies, two-zero-three at three-zero!"
Thirty miles. Two and a half minutes at Mach 1.
"Marauder Leader, this is Shotgun Leader-"
"We have them, Shotgun!" Marty French replied. "Homeplate has been informed. Heads up, people, the gomers want to come out and play!"
"Shotgun Leader to Shotguns," Tombstone said. "Form on me for a break to starboard. Ready… break!"
Eight F-14s dipped their starboard wings in unison, swinging off their southeasterly course to align themselves with the distant, oncoming bogies, between the bombers and the oncoming MiGs. "Target lock!" Snowball said.
"Hold on, Snowball. Let's do it by the book. Marauder Leader, this is Shotgun. We have target lock. Request clearance to fire, over."
"Shotgun, Marauder Leader. Wait one."
The ROEs for this mission had been to return fire if fired upon, but that had been assuming that they would be attacked over Korea. Things were suddenly a lot murkier since they'd been called off before entering Korean airspace.
Tombstone listened in on the crackle of radio chatter as the Deputy CAG passed on the request for ROE clarification back to the Jefferson. He heard the answer come through seconds later. "Marauders, this is Homeplate. ROEs stand as given. You are clear to fire if fired upon. Over."
"You heard the man, Marauders," French said. "All units, hold your fire."
"Hey, Tombstone," Snowball said. "This ain't funny! I'm reading twelve bogies now, twelve bogies inbound, one-eight miles, five hundred twelve knots!"
"Tombstone, this is Batman!" He sounded excited. "What gives, Skipper? These guys mean business!"
"Hold position, Batman."
"I'm holding! Like a sitting duck I'm holding!"
"Shotgun, Shotgun Leader." He was surprised at how calm his own voice was. "Let's get into combat spread. Move out!"
The aircraft began drifting apart. In the loose deuce formation favored by American Naval aviators, each pair of F-14s became a team of "shooter" and "eyeball" during a head-on combat approach, flying one and a half miles apart and separated by five thousand feet of altitude.
Tombstone glanced out the right side of his cockpit. Batman's Tomcat, the number 232 prominent on its nose, drifted a few yards off his wingtip.
"Batman? Tombstone."
"The Batman copies, Tombstone."
"You take the eyeball."
There was a moment's silence. "Hey, Stoney! You got your kill-"
"Can it, Two-three-two." Tombstone had wrestled with the question already. Batman was too eager. That all-important first shot couldn't be screwed up by a too-eager shooter. "Take your position."
"Two-three-two, affirmative."
The aircraft slid apart, Tombstone dropping back behind his wingman and drifting off to the left.
"How you want to do this, Tombstone?" his RIO asked.
"Sparrow first," Tombstone replied. It was an almost automatic decision. At five hundred pounds, Sparrows were a lot heavier than the Sidewinders, and the Tomcat picked up a weight bonus each time it loosed one. Phoenix missiles were bigger and heavier still… but expensive, and best saved for targets at longer range.
And like most Tomcat pilots, Tombstone did not fully trust the cranky Sparrows and wanted to hold his more reliable Sidewinders in reserve.
"Target," Snowball said, as Tombstone heard the warble of a target lock tone in his headset. "Lead bogie now at one-three miles."
"Batman, Tombstone. Let's sweep around to the left a bit."
"Two-three-two, affirmative." Batman's Tomcat, visible now as a tiny gray toy against the sky a mile up and almost two miles ahead, began slipping sideways across Tombstone's line of flight. Tombstone matched the maneuver, maintaining the separation between the two aircraft.
So he's in a snit, Tombstone thought. Let him be. He'll have targets enough any moment now. The range closed like lightning.
"I got visual!" said Price Taggart, in the 203 Tomcat. "Blue bandits! Blue bandits! Here they come…!"
"Launch, launch!" Batman said. "Two-three-two has visual on bandit launch."
"Confirmed," Malibu chimed in. "Two missiles inbound. Two-three-two, one-zero miles."
"Shotgun Leader to Homeplate. We have been fired upon. TACCAP engaging."
"Homeplate copies, Shotgun Leader," a voice replied. "You have weapons free-"
"Bandits! Bandits!" someone yelled over the radio. "We got new bandits, closing from three-one-one!"
"What… new bandits?" Tombstone asked.
"He's right, Stoney! I got 'em too! I make it… ten bogies at three-one-one, angels twenty, nine-zero miles. Closing at five hundred plus!"
"Three-one-one? Hell, that's behind us?"
"That's what I mean, Stoney! It's our friends out of Wonsan!"
In one blinding instant of realization, Tombstone saw the trap. Twelve North Korean fighters had vectored northeast out of Kosong to engage the American planes on their way back to the carrier. And while the F-14s were dog-fighting with the Kosong group, those MiGs waiting over Wonsan had followed, coming in from the rear.
The odds had suddenly turned much worse.
CHAPTER 14
1618 hours
Tomcat 205
Only minutes remained before the North Korean reinforcements would arrive. Tombstone listened for the warble of the Sparrow in his headphones. "I have tone."
"Shotgun Leader, Two-three-two!" Batman's voice carried the excitement now. "You have launch clearance. You're clear for launch."
Tombstone's finger came down on the firing button. "Fox one!"
The Sparrow dropped from the Tomcat's belly. To Tombstone it felt as though the aircraft was leaping into the sky. The missile had the appearance of a dazzling flare weaving toward the horizon on the end of a twisting column of white smoke.
"Good luck," Snowball said. "He's breaking right! Stay on him!"
Tombstone moved the stick right. The worst thing about Sparrows was their passive homing system; the firing aircraft had to keep the enemy spot-lit by its AWG-9 radar so that the Sparrow could track the target.
"Shit!" Snowball snapped. "Break left, Stoney. Left!"
The Tomcat rolled to port, right wing clawing the sky. Tombstone glimpsed a pinpoint of light, wavering as it streaked toward him.
"They've got radar lock!" Snowball yelled.
Tombstone held the Tomcat's rolling plunge, trading altitude for speed. The numbers on his HUD's altimeter reading trickled away… fifteen thousand feet… thirteen… eleven…
Firing the chaff dispenser with a vicious one-two-three stab of his thumb, he hauled back on the stick. Blackness closed in on him, narrowing his vision to a tiny blob of light as the 8-G pull-away drained the blood from his head. Something streaked
past his starboard wing, moving too fast to focus on.
"Snowy!" He had to grunt hard to force each word out against the G-force. "Where's… missile?"
There was no answer from his RIO. The maneuver must have put Snowball to sleep. Tombstone rammed the throttles forward to full afterburner and clawed for altitude once more.
"Snowball! Wake the hell up back there!"
"Uh! I'm here! I'm here. What-"
"Where's that missile?"
There was a pause as the RIO worked his controls. "Gone! He missed us! Take bearing… take three-one-zero!"
Tombstone swung onto the new heading, still climbing. Above him the two squadrons, MiGs and Tomcats, were merging, interpenetrating, filling the sky with aircraft and the white crisscross of contrails.
1618 hours
Tomcat 232
Batman swung right, picking up speed in a shallow dive. The MiG he'd been eyeballing for Tombstone jinked hard to the left, falling away in a barrel roll as the Sparrow missile streaked toward it. The Sparrow missed wide and vanished into the blue, its lock broken by Tombstone's maneuver.
Other MiGs exploded past Batman's F-14, each pair locked in a rigid side-by-side formation the Americans called the welded wing. There was no time to line up a shot now, not with the targets so close, moving so fast. The best he could hope for was to slide past the enemy planes and come down behind them. In a dogfight, every pilot's goal was to get on the other guy's six, square in the rear and looking up his tailpipe.
He saw the flash as one of the oncoming MiGs launched a missile, saw the burning pinpoint of the missile's exhaust as it dipped, then began climbing toward him.
At close range, it would be a heat-seeker. Batman triggered a flare, then pulled back on the stick, hauling the F-14 into a vertical, twisting climb straight up.
Where is it, Malibu?"
"it went ballistic! We're clear!"
"All right! Let's rock 'n' roll!"
"Where's Tombstone, man?" Malibu shouted. "I lost him!"
"I don't know! Right now we have other things to worry about!" He brought the F-14 out of its climb, completing the Immelmann with a half-twist that brought them out two thousand feet above the Korean aircraft… and behind them.
"Wheeooo!" Malibu shouted. "This is what I call a target-rich environment!"
"Roger that!"
MiGs were everywhere, twelve of them now against eight American aircraft. The F-14s were swinging around behind the MiGs, locking on with heat-seeker AIM-9L Sidewinders, engaging in earnest now that the Koreans had upped the ante. There was a radioed chorus of "Fox two! Fox two!" from several of the pilots, and white contrails scrawled themselves across blue sky.
"Let's get in the game, Batman!"
"Right, Malibu. Can you see Tombstone?"
"Negative, negative. Was he hit?"
Ahead, there was a flash, and the delta wing shape of a MiG sprouted flame and a writhing coil of black smoke. The left wing crumpled, spilling fragments in a fiery spray. "Splash one MiG!" someone called over the radio. "Two-oh-four, splash one!"
"Watch it, Price. Two on your five!"
"Whatcha waiting for, Batman?" Malibu asked.
"I want to know where our wingie is!" Batman was twisting from side to side in the cockpit, searching the sea below. "Shotgun Leader, this is Tomcat Two-three-two. Where the hell are you, Tombstone?"
"Twelve-K and climbing, Batman," Tombstone's voice replied. Batman felt an inner surge of relief. For a moment he'd wondered if the gomer missile had connected. "Comin' back in."
"Roger that, Tombstone. Do you want assist? Over."
"Negative." The word was a grunt against high-Gs. "Engage… on your own!"
"Music to my ears." Another MiG burst into flame as a Sidewinder connected. "Right, Malibu! Let's goose it!" Batman said.
"We got at least ten more bogies inbound, three-one-oh at seven-zero miles."
"Then we've got time to lower the odds a bit more before they get here. Hang on!"
After the first pass, the MiG formation had scattered in every direction. Delta shapes twisted and turned in the cold, blue sky. Contrails crawled like scrawled writing far above the sea as aircraft jockied for position.
Batman heard the sharp, sometimes shrill bursts of the Americans' radio calls. "This is Two-two-one!" That was Tom Hoffner, running name Snake. "I got two on my tail! Two on my tail!"
"Hang on, Snake!" Dragon Ashly was Snake's wingman. "I'm on him!"
"Get him off, Dragon! Get him off!"
"Too close for missiles! Going' for guns!"
"I got one," Batman told Malibu. The F-14 nosed over, picking up speed as it entered the twisting cloud of fighters. "Lining him up!"
"Batman!" Hoffner yelled. "Help get this guy off me!"
"No joy! No joy!" Army's voice threatened to break with excitement or frustration. "Guns jammed! Break left, Snake! Break left!"
The chaos ahead resolved itself as Batman closed. An American F-14, tail number 221, rolled away to the left, a MiG-21 matching him roll for roll. A second Tomcat overshot the MiG, sweeping past both aircraft in an effort to line up for a shot.
Batman dropped into the slot above and behind the MiG just as the MiG fired. A white contrail arced forward from under the MiG's wing, sliding up the F-14's starboard tailpipe and detonating in a fiery blast. Batman saw fragments of the Tomcat's engine spraying in all directions as the aircraft dropped into a hard, spiraling roll.
"I'm hit! I'm hit!"
Mayday! Mayday! Tomcat Two-two-one is hit and going down!"
"Shit, Batman!" Malibu called. They got Snake!"
"And we'll nail the bastard who did it!" He slammed the engines to afterburner and rolled in for the kill.
1619 hours
Tomcat 205
It took Tombstone less than a minute to reenter the fight, but in aerial combat even thirty seconds was an eternity. He'd just dropped into swept-wing, high-speed configuration and was rocketing back into the battle when he heard the mayday call for Snake.
"This is Shotgun Leader!" he called. "Did our boys get clear?"
"Tomcat Two-oh-three." That was Ron "Mee" Taggart's aircraft. "Affirmative! I see one… correction! I see two chutes! Good chutes! Good chutes!"
"Copy, Two-oh-three! Homeplate, Homeplate, this is Shotgun Leader. We have two men down, good chutes. Request SAR, over."
"Copy, Shotgun Leader. Be advised ready helo has been deployed."
Tombstone banked left and looked down toward the sea. He could see the chutes himself now, a pair of white flecks drifting toward their own shadows on the blue-gray water.
"Ho, Tombstone!" Snowball yelled. "We got a pair of blue bandits, zero-four-five, range one mile!"
He whipped his head around. "I see 'em. How much longer before the gomer cavalry gets here?"
"Range now five-one miles, Tombstone. Maybe four minutes."
Four minutes. Tombstone was genuinely torn. He could take a shot at the MiGs approaching from Wonsan now with his long-ranged Phoenix missile. But lining up the shot and locking on would take time, and his squadron needed help now.
His second decision was harder. Snake and his RIO Zombie were in the drink. Memories of losing Coyote and Mardi Gras surfaced, painful and sharp. Should he rejoin the squadron or circle the downed flyers until the SAR helo arrived?
Rugged as the choice was, he actually had little option. His running mates were outnumbered and needed every weapon they could muster for the fight. As had been the case with Coyote and Mardi Gras, there wasn't much he could do for Snake and Zombie now.
"Okay, Snowy! First things first!" He swung the Tomcat into a broad turn, sweeping in on the tails of the pair of MiGs to the northeast. "C'mon… c'mon." The pipper on his HUD tilted toward the right-hand MiG. Both Korean aircraft were turning now, twisting to starboard in an attempt to cut past Tombstone's line of flight and spoil his shot. "Lock, damn you…"
1620 hours
Tomcat 232
Batman held the st
ick hard over, tracking the MiG as it tried to turn away from him. The square of his targeting pipper slowly tracked across the HUD until it closed with the target. There was a flicker as the square became a circle, ringing the fleeing MiG and tagging it with a small "M" for "missile."
"Yeah!" Malibu shouted. "Target lock!"
Batman heard the warble in his headset. "Got him. Surprise, you gomer son of a bitch." He touched the launch trigger. "Fox two!"
The Sidewinder dropped from the Tomcat on a trail of white smoke, hung suspended beneath the wings for a moment, then rocketed ahead with a rush which left Batman's F-14 standing still. Warned, possibly, by his wingman, the North Korean aircraft began pulling up, but too soon, too soon.
"He's jinking, Batman!"
"Yeah, he screwed it. You can run, son, but you cannot hide!"
"Watch it, man. I think you made him mad!"
The MiG pilot kicked in his afterburner. It was exactly the wrong thing to do.
1620 hours
CIC, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
"The Wonsan group is closing, Admiral," CAG said. "At least ten aircraft… probably more if they're using welded wing. Looks like it was a setup."
"I agree. They figured to catch our bombers while our TACCAP was engaged to the south."
"Admiral, I recommend we let the F/A-18s engage."
"The A-6s still need cover."
"We could detach one squadron. VFA-173 can shepherd the Intruders home. VFA-161 can drop their loads and mix it up."
"Approved. Your show, CAG."
Marusko nodded. An aide handed him a microphone, which he held to his mouth. "Marauder Leader, Marauder Leader, this is Homeplate. Do you copy, over?"
Commander Marty "Frenchie" French's voice came over the CIC speakers. "Hornet Three-oh-one copies, Homeplate. Go ahead."
"You've got friends coming in from Wonsan. Javelins are clear to execute ordnance release and engage."
"Copy, Homeplate. We'll show the turkeys how it's done."
CAG and Admiral Magruder exchanged smiles. "Turkey" was a less than complimentary Naval aviator's slang term for the large and heavy F-14 Tomcats.
There was nothing the Hornet pilots would enjoy more than showing up their Tomcat rivals.
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