And the orders had stressed that, if possible, Kreml was to beat the United States to the punch, to deliver the telling blow without the help of the American carrier group.
Dmitriev had not been certain how he was going to manage that part of the orders, though they did give him leeway in situations that allowed no alternatives. Vaughn’s short-sighted insistence on keeping control of the operation had played into Dmitriev’s hands. The Russian admiral now knew the Americans’ plan, the targets for their strike, the time the strike would be launched. By launching three hours ahead of time, the Russians would, as the Americans themselves might say, steal the show.
Washington would be forced either to admit that they themselves had sabotaged any chance of the two squadrons working together … or adopt a face-saving stance which suggested that the Russian carrier had carried out the mission, supported by an American task force.
Yes, his superiors in Moscow would like that. The President could shore up his battered public image by presenting himself as a strong man fully capable of taking charge in an international crisis for the good of his people and the world.
And for Dmitriev, this command would be a magnificent first step toward bigger and better things. The Commonwealth was still changing so quickly. There were opportunities, fantastic opportunities, for a man with the courage to grab them.
Thunder rent the air, and Dmitriev pressed against the flag bridge window, looking forward. Two navalized Mig-29s shrieked against the catapult shuttles that bound them to Kreml’s forward deck, eager to leap into the clean blue sky. Their thunder spoke of the raw power of the Russian naval air arm, of its reach beyond the borders of the Motherland.
The admiral smiled. In one morning, Russian carrier aviation was at last going to catch up with the Americans, ending the superiority they’d enjoyed for forty years!
America and the Commonwealth were no longer face-to-face at the brink of war. The world had changed so much from the old days of confrontation and incident. But the old rivalry, Dmitriev knew, was still there. New world or not, new politics or not, he found he was looking forward to this particular confrontation.
0845 hours, 26 March
Tomcat 200
Tombstone was flying close to the water, ten miles behind the main American Tomcat formation.
“The bad guys are all over the place, Tombstone,” Hitman reported. The Tomcat was vibrating heavily in the dense and bumpy air close to the water. Thick plumes of condensation sprayed off the wings, describing graceful spirals in Tombstone’s jet stream. “Eagle Leader is lining up a shot. He’s called it! That’s fox one!”
“How’s it look in our neck of the woods, Hitman?”
“All clear. There’s nothin’ … holy shit! Bogies! Four bogies at zero-five-niner and coming fast! Range fifteen miles!”
Tombstone shifted the control stick right to meet the threat. He’d expected something like this, an attempt to slip some planes past the main body at extreme low altitude. With the confusion higher up, it was possible they could slip through unseen, lost in the radar clutter of waves and thickly packed airplanes. From behind the American formation, they could strike at the fleet … or circle to take the defenders from the rear.
“Bogies are turning. Tombstone! Range now … twelve miles. Looks like they’re going to swing onto the Eagles’ tail.” Tombstone reviewed his options. With Sparrow he could take all four bogies now … but he’d have to maintain course, illuminating them with his Tomcat’s AWG-9 all the way. No. Better to save the Sparrows and take these guys up close. He pushed the throttles forward to Zone Five.
“Eagle, Eagle, this is Tombstone,” he called. “Watch your six. You have four bogies, repeat, four bogies on your six.”
On the radar, the American planes were turning, aware of the new threat behind them. Tombstone’s F-14 thundered across the water, fifty feet between the waves and the missiles slung from the aircraft’s belly. At Mach 2, the passage of the F-14 raised a wall of spray behind him, a sonic boom made visible in geysering water.
“We got ‘em, Stoney!” Hitman cried, excitement charging his voice.
“We’re sliding right on to their six!”
“We’ll go for Sidewinder,” he said. No sense in warning them that he was coming. The enemy pilots’ attention appeared to be focused on the Eagles in their sights.
“Range … nine miles.”
“Targeting.”
Computer graphic symbols danced on his HUD. Four small shapes marked the enemy aircraft. Using his controller, Tombstone dragged the targeting pipper across one and locked in. The square changed to a circle, with the word “LOCK” beside it. A warble sounded in his headphones as the first Sidewinder saw its target.
“Tone,” Tombstone said. “Fox two!”
He squeezed the trigger and the Sidewinder slid off the launch rail with a whoosh. The instant the heat-seeker was away he was moving the pipper to a new target.
0845 hours, 26 March
Tomcat 216
Batman heard Tombstone’s warning over the tactical channel. The Vipers were east of the Eagles and not threatened by the bogies coming in from the south, but it was a reminder that the American defensive formation was as porous as a sieve. The American response was going to have to be flexible and in-depth, or the individual aircraft was going to be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers.
“Find us a target and let’s dump this last bird,” he told Malibu. The F-14 handled better “clean,” without the added weight and drag of the half-ton missile on its belly.
“Got one. Range two-zero miles, bearing three-five-one. AWG-9 locked in. Tracking.”
“Punch it.”
“Fox three!”
Their last radar-homer streaked into the northern sky. Batman brought the Tomcat hard left, turning into the approaching main body of enemy aircraft.
“Ninety-nine aircraft,” the voice of the Hawkeye controller sounded in his headset. “We are tracking three primary groups of bogies, designated Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.”
More long-ranged missiles lanced out from the American squadrons as the BARCAP planes shot off the last of their AIM-54-Cs and the newcomers began unloading their Sparrows.
The AIM-7 Sparrow was a design that, in various incarnations, went back to the early fifties. Naval aviators tended to distrust it, for the missile had more than once shown a nasty tendency to lock onto the water instead of the target. Just as bad, from the pilot’s point of view, Sparrow had SARH guidance, which meant that once it was fired, the aircraft could not Maneuver without breaking the radar beam that illuminated the target for the missile’s sensors.
The latest F-and M-versions had ranges of up to sixty miles. Aviators preferred to dump them early in a fight, while they still had the luxury of flying straight and level toward the enemy.
“Fox one,” someone called over the tactical frequency.
He was echoed a second later by someone else. “Fox one, fox one.
Missile away.” Then other voices joined in. It was the high-tech equivalent of volley fire, a throwback to the days when armies stood their soldiers shoulder to shoulder and fired en masse.
Batman’s radar display rapidly became a tangle of blips as the sky filled with half-ton chunks of metal, hurtling north at Mach 4.
0847 hours, 26 March
IAF Fulcrum 401
Ramadutta’s radar display was a blotchy, static-covered mess, partly from the sheer number of targets, partly from the American jamming that was turning out to be more effective than the New Delhi planners had anticipated. His tail threat receiver detected one target, however, with terrible clarity.
An air-to-air missile was coming in from behind.
“Enemy missile at one-eight-five!” he shouted, warning the other Migs in his flight. “IR homing! Evasive!”
The formation of Mig-29s blossomed apart, breaking in four directions as the enemy Sidewinder raced in across the kilometers. Several seconds into a high-G turn, Ramadutta saw that the m
issile was not locked on him, but on Lieutenant Pahvi’s Mig, number 404.
“Pahvi!” he snapped. “Use flares!”
Too late. Lieutenant Pahvi’s Mig was angling straight into the sky, a dazzling trail of flares dropping away behind his ship as it rose, but the American missile was rising fast, ignoring the flares and centering on the center of the aircraft.
There was a flash. Ramadutta saw the orange ball of flame, smoke, and debris punch through the airplane squarely between the wings, rupturing the wing tanks.
Pahvi’s Mig was a mass of flame an instant later, still climbing into the sky atop a towering pillar of writhing black smoke.
On the radar, the American pilot was still coming, alone. Gritting his teeth against the G-force, Ramadutta completed his turn, bringing the nose of his Fulcrum around until it was aligned with the American, now five miles distant.
CHAPTER 23
0848 hours, 26 March
Tomcat 200
Tombstone couldn’t see the enemy plane yet, but he saw the symbol that marked it on his HUD shifting to the side as the other pilot positioned himself for the pass.
“Shit!” Hitman called from the backseat. “He’s taking us head-to-head!”
“I’m going for Sidewinder,” Tombstone said, aligning the HUD pipper and locking in. The AIM-9L Sidewinder was an all-aspect heat-seeker, meaning Tombstone did not have to hold his fire until he could give the missile a look at the target’s white-hot exhaust. But Sidewinder head shots were still risky. When the closing speed between target and missile was in the vicinity of Mach 3 or 4, the enemy had a better chance of breaking the lock by maneuvering or launching flares.
“Take him, Stoney! Take him!”
“Fox two!”
0848 hours, 26 March
IAF Fulcrum 401
The American was launching as Munir Ramadutta pulled his nose up, climbing almost vertically as he popped flares. At ten thousand feet he pulled an immelmann, dropping out of the climb inverted, again facing the oncoming enemy.
The range was now four miles. Still inverted, Ramadutta loosed an E-23 AAM.
The missile, called AA-7 “Apex” by the West, actually came in two flavors designated R-23R, a long-ranged SARH version, and E-23T, which used IR homing. Ramadutta carried two of the heat-seekers in his ordnance load. Apex could reach considerably farther than the four AA-8 Aphid missiles he also mounted.
As the missile slid off his wing, Ramadutta rolled his Mig, trading altitude for speed in a long plunge toward the sea.
0848 hours, 26 March
Tomcat 200
“Missed him!” Hitman warned. “We nailed a flare! He’s launching!”
Tombstone held the F-14 steady for a torturously long four seconds. “Pop flares!”
As white-hot decoys spewed into the Tomcat’s wake, Tombstone broke left, careful not to turn his exhaust in the direction of the approaching missile.
Scanning the horizon as it rolled past his cockpit, he caught sight of the other plane for the first time, a tiny speck angling toward the sea.
In the dense, wet air close to the water, the Mig was dragging a contrail, a sharp white streak across the darker sea.
Something flashed past the cockpit, feeling close though it was at least a hundred yards away, then exploded astern. A lone fragment of shrapnel pinged off the canopy as Tombstone rolled toward the other plane.
“One Sidewinder left,” he said. “Let’s see if we can get on this bird’s tail!”
0848 hours, 26 March
Tomcat 216
Explosions flashed and popped among the Indian aircraft. Streaks of black smoke scrawled from sky to sea as burning planes plummeted.
Despite their bad rep, the Sparrows had struck, and struck hard.
Now the aircraft formations were penetrating one another, swirling together in a colossal aerial dogfight that filled the sky with flashing planes and the long, white streaks of air-to-air missiles. The American Tomcats were heavily outnumbered, but the majority of their opponents were older, slower strike aircraft carrying bombs and missiles against the U.S. fleet: Canberras, Su-7 Fitters, and aging Hawker Hunters. Many of the more modern aircraft in the oncoming wave, Jaguars and swing-wing Mig-27 Flogger-Ds, were dedicated strike aircraft, slowed by the bombs and missiles slung from their ordnance hardpoints.
“Going for guns,” Batman called automatically, snapping the selector switch on his stick as the F-14 slid gently onto the six of a Flogger.
“You’d better,” Malibu replied. “That’s all we got left!”
Batman let the HUD reticle drift across the other plane’s fuselage, following as the Flogger began a slow break to the left. His Lead Computing Optical Sight drew a short line on his HUD, showing how much lead to give the Mig as it turned away.
His thumb came down on the firing switch, and the M-61A1 Vulcan cannon thundered. White smoke trailed behind Batman’s Tomcat in puffs as he pumped burst after burst into the fleeing Mig-27.
Chunks of metal sprayed from the Flogger’s back and left wing. The Indian pilot tried to sharpen his break in a desperate attempt to throw himself clear of the deadly volleys but succeeded only in presenting his aircraft plan-view-on to his relentless pursuer. Twenty-millimeter cannon shells smashed through his fuselage. The Mig began coming apart.
The Flogger-D’s hinged, squared-off canopy blew off. There was a flash, and Batman glimpsed the tiny figure of the pilot as his ejection seat rocketed him clear of the crumbling aircraft. Seconds later, there was another, far brighter flash … then another and another as the Flogger’s load of half-ton bombs detonated.
“Splash one Mig,” Batman called.
Around him, the dogfight swirled from just above the sea to over thirty thousand feet, dozens of aircraft circling one another in a melee across hundreds of square miles.
“We’re turnin’ and burnin’ now, Batman!” Malibu called.
“Affirmative!” But the American defenses were already leaking. Indian aircraft were falling from the sky one after another, but plenty of strike aircraft had already made it through, were holding a steady course for the southwest, for Jefferson.
There were just too many of them to stop.
Batman checked the readout on his HUD that registered the number of rounds he had remaining for his Vulcan cannon. The M61 was loaded with 675 rounds, but since it had a rate of fire that burned up seventy to one hundred rounds a second depending on the setting, the F-14’s ammo store did not last for long.
The readout showed 206 rounds remaining. Three seconds’ worth of fire at the 4000 RPM setting … perhaps four or five quick bursts.
And then he would have neither missiles nor guns.
Batman began searching for his next target.
0850 hours, 26 March
Tomcat 200
Tombstone pulled up hard as the Mig-29 in his sights cut in his afterburners and stood on his tail.
“Watch it, Stoney!” Hitman yelled. “He’s goin’ ballistic!”
“I’m on him!” Tombstone rammed his throttles forward to Zone Five to build up speed, then cut back to eighty-percent power, allowing the climbing Mig to drift into his line of fire. The angle was bad with a sharp deflection, but he squeezed off a long burst in hope of getting one or two hits that might, might puncture something vital.
The Fulcrum rolled sharply right, seeming to float just beyond the reach of the line of glowing tracers arcing past his wing.
“Damn,” Tombstone muttered. “This guy can fly!”
The Mig-29 danced away, its pilot using his aircraft’s superb maneuverability to best advantage. Tombstone cut back hard on his throttles as he tried to follow, putting the Tomcat into a hard, skidding turn to the right.
He could see before he was halfway into the turn that the Mig was outperforming him, circling inside the best turn radius he could manage.
Unwilling to finish the maneuver on the other guy’s terms, Tombstone punched in the throttles and pulled the stick hard left, slam
ming the F-14 into a split-S that carried him past the Mig’s tail and off in the other direction.
“What’s … he … doing …?” He had to force each word out explosively through clenched teeth. The G-readout hit seven Gs. He felt his head growing fuzzy, saw blackness closing in at the periphery of his vision.
“Lost … uh! Lost him!” Hitman replied.
The compass reading swung around until Tombstone knew he was heading back toward where his opponent had vanished during the last pass. Damn it, where was he?
“On our six!” Hitman warned as Tombstone broke out of the turn. “Coming fast!”
Tombstone pulled up, twisting the F-14 into a short, fast-spinning Immelmann designed to bring him over the other plane and down on his tail. Looking “up” through his canopy as he went over the top, Tombstone caught a glimpse of the other plane between him and the ocean, already going into a break to counter the maneuver.
Another target loomed ahead as Tombstone righted the plane, a wingtip-to-wingtip pair of Jaguars, steady on course toward the southwest.
The Fulcrum pilot was one of the best Tombstone had ever gone up against. With so many bandits coming through the line, he was better off not wasting time jousting with the Fulcrum driver.
So he dropped on the Jaguars from behind and above, lining up the left-hand aircraft before he’d completed the roll-out, squeezing off a burst from his cannon at a range of less than five hundred yards. It was a snap shot from a difficult angle, but he saw pieces flaking from the target plane as he dropped through its slipstream.
Then the Jaguars were behind him. More aircraft were scattered across the sky ahead and he dropped into position behind yet another strike plane, an ancient BAC Canberra. Lining up on the junction of the broad, almost triangular unswept wings, he opened fire from eight hundred yards and watched as his stream of tracer rounds drifted into the Indian bomber. The port engine began smoking, and the Canberra’s wing dropped sharply. The aircraft slipped into a steeply falling turn, its engine ablaze. Three parachutes appeared in the falling bomber’s wake.
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