Carrier 14 - TYPHOON SEASON

by Keith Douglass

Tomcat 302

  "Viper 304, Viper 302," Lobo said. "Hot Rock, we'd better make things a little rough for that helo before it gets any closer. We're going to need to spread out some."

  "What?"

  "If we're going to keep that chopper off the survivor, we've got to put up a wall. I go past it, then you go past it, then I go, like that. Constant circles. Rip up the air. No gap big enough for him to slip through. You're such a hot stick, you think you can handle that?"

  A pause, then, "You're the boss."

  "Then let's do it."

  Tomcat 304

  "How much farther?" Bird Dog snapped over ICS. "How much farther?"

  "You sound like a little kid in the back of a station wagon," Catwoman said. "Five mikes. Keep your shirt on, Sir. What can happen in the next five minutes?"

  Tomcat 306

  "They didn't teach this in flight school," Hot Rock muttered as he eased back on the throttles, letting the distance between his Tomcat and Lobo's lengthen. At the same time, both planes were descending. Hot Rock rarely saw the ocean this close except during launches and landings--the two most dangerous times to be a Naval aviator.

  But he wasn't worried about the water; he was too busy keeping an eye on the two escorting Flankers. For a few moments they seemed uncertain what to do; then they both rose up and took up new positions, one behind each of the Tomcats. Overall, the formation was odd. Hot Rock had a clear belly-shot at the Flanker following Lobo, but at the same time he was dead in the sights of the Flanker on his own six o'clock. A Mexican standoff.

  "No need to hit the deck." Lobo's voice was flat but intense in his ears. "Use your wingtip vortices. Got that?"

  Hot Rock clicked his mike twice. Lobo was talking about taking advantage of what was usually an annoying feature of fixed-wing aerodynamics--the tilted hurricanes of air that formed at the outer ends of a wing, where compressed air from the underside met low-pressure air from above. The resulting braids of turbulence were a major source of drag, as well as a potential hazard to other air traffic because they could linger for minutes in the air, invisible and tenacious, like horizontal tornadoes.

  In this case, though, Lobo was advocating using the vortices as blunt instruments to make the Chinese helo think twice about approaching the survivor in the water. Painting the air with turbulence that way would require some fine flying, and Hot Rock felt himself relaxing just thinking about it.

  Ahead of him, Lobo was making her first turn toward the helo, which was a slick-looking Z9 with retractable landing gear and a shark-fin fairing around its tail rotor. The helo was flying low enough to create a gray shimmer on the water.

  Lobo increased her angle of bank, slipping down as she crossed the path of the helo. Her Chinese escort, Hot Rock noted, remained at his own higher altitude. Lobo roared past the helo, well above and in front of it, but plainly within the pilot's sight. This was obvious because the helo immediately raised its nose in a hard braking action and swiveled partly to its left as it halted.

  Hot Rock felt an electrical prickle on the back of his neck. What Lobo had just done could, arguably, be interpreted as a highly aggressive act. He waited to hear the sharp warbling tone in his helmet that would indicate a fire-control radar lock on his aircraft ... but it didn't happen. So far, everything was still cool.

  Hot Rock increased his own angle of bank and let the Tomcat slip down along the same path Lobo had taken. He felt the slight bumping of disrupted air where her plane had been, although the harsher turbulence of its wingtip vortices were well below him, hammering down on the water.

  He was beginning to level out for his close pass on the helo when he heard Two Tone shout "Hot Rock! He's going guns! Going guns! Gunfire in the water!"

  Later, Hot Rock would review that moment over and over again in his mind. The helo was dead ahead, its tail pivoted somewhat toward him, but not at such an oblique angle that Hot Rock couldn't see the open side hatch and the machine gun mounted there. He was sure, later, that he'd seen those things. He also plainly saw gouts of orange flame ripping into the air. That wasn't just his imagination, or an illusion caused by sunlight flaring off passing swells. No way.

  In fact, the sight of the flames was so startling he hesitated a moment, as if he wanted to convince himself it wasn't real.

  "Hot Rock!" Two Tone's voice, sharp, so much like an older man's voice. Disappointed, commanding. "Get on it!"

  Hot Rock flicked his weapons selector switch to the Sidewinder position. "Fox Three," he said.

  South China Sea

  From water level, everything that had been happening so dreadfully slowly suddenly accelerated to unbelievable speed. For what seemed like hours, Dr. George had been switching his attention between the circling jets, the approaching Chinese helicopter and the water beneath his feet. The tiger shark kept disappearing and then coming back again, moving with increasing speed on each pass, as if making up its mind about something. Once it came so close George actually kicked it, after which it became more wary. But it was still around, or maybe there were more than one of them. It was hard to tell. The setting sun no longer cut its light into the water, showing him what lurked below. Soon he wouldn't be able to see his legs at all. The sharks would be under no such restrictions.

  So, let the Chinese pick him up. He didn't care anymore. He just wanted to be warm and dry and safe.

  The helicopter was perhaps a hundred yards away when it halted. The jets continued to circle overhead, so low now that George could see the shapes of the pilots' heads through the canopies. Two American jets, and two Chinese, cruising around together in a big, roaring circle. What the hell was going on?

  Just then there was a brilliant flash from one of the American jets, and a sound like high-pressure water shooting from a hose. A rope of white smoke abruptly connected the American jet to the helicopter. The helicopter exploded. It broke in half like an egg, but the bright-yellow yolk rose up and up instead of falling. The shells of the fuselage dropped. Spinning rotor blades hit the water and broke free, skipping across the surface for some distance before vanishing in sheets of spray.

  Where the fuselage vanished into the water, a roiling dome of bubbles and smoke boiled up, hissing and crackling.

  Dr. George felt something nudge his foot, and started to kick.

  Flanker 67

  Tai Ling saw the fireball light up the dark waters below, and heard the radio chatter erupt from the two SU27 pilots down at sea level. Their message was shocked and furious one of the Americans had just taken an unprovoked missile shot at the PLA helicopter arriving to rescue the person in the water. The helo Was down.

  If that wasn't the signal Tai had been waiting for, nothing was.

  "Weapons free!" he cried over the tactical circuit, and reached for his own weapons selector switch. "All aircraft, weapons free!"

  Tomcat 302

  "Holy shit!" Handyman yelled, a vast expression of emotion for him. "What the hell-"

  Lobo had her back to the helo and Hot Rock, but she heard him signal the firing of a Sidewinder, and simultaneously saw the fiery reflection of an explosion reflecting from the inside of her canopy. Her response came long before thought She slammed the throttle quadrant full forward, and as the afterburners gave their mule kick, she hauled back hard on the stick. In a heartbeat of time, the Tomcat went from cruise mode into a neck-snapping climb out.

  Lobo cranked her head around, searching for the Flanker that had been roofing her. Gasped as it flashed past to the left, showing its belly in a hard bank that had to have been initiated simply to avoid a collision.

  "Well," Handyman drawled, his voice back to normal, "that worked."

  Lobo eased the stick forward an inch, putting the Tomcat into a marginally more relaxed, sustainable angle of climb. "Where is he?" she demanded. "Where did he go?"

  "Coming up behind us, babe."

  On her radar, Lobo saw the lozenge-shaped return of the Flanker coming around hard on her tail. A moment after that, she heard the warbling s
ignal that indicated she was being painted with fire-control radar. Radar or not, at this range the bogey was inside missile range; he'd be going to guns. Leaving the stick where it was, Lobo kicked the Tomcat over on one wingtip, rotated over like a gymnast doing a one-handed cartwheel, then dove back toward the deck. At the same time, the white-hot flare Of tracers swept past her inboard wing.

  The Flanker was right below her, from this angle, nothing but a round fuselage, a couple of rectangular air intakes and the blazing flower of its cannon.

  "Recommend guns," Handyman said even as Lobo hit the trigger.

  Her tracers ripped beneath the Flanker, a miss of only a few feet--but there was no room for a pull-up to bring the shells on target, not unless she wanted a certain head-on collision.

  She jammed the stick forward instead, initiating the start of an inverted loop. As her head filled with pressurized blood, she held her breath and grunted loudly, holding off unconsciousness as she mentally tracked the Flanker's likely behavior. He should be rounding out of his vertical climb right about now, gleefully expecting to be right above her, in perfect position for a kill. Lobo snapped the stick to the right, then back, flipping the Tomcat right side up and simultaneously reversing its direction. Now the blood drained out of her head and she was struggling for consciousness against a different enemy. At the same time she found herself staring directly at the boiling patch of water where the helo had gone down ... staring as it grew larger and larger, the Tomcat's weight fighting her attempt to Pull Out, its engines fighting gravity and momentum, Lobo's will fighting the same things ... fighting ...

  And then she felt the wings grab air with authority and the surface of the South China Sea was blurring by beneath her.

  "You just love this low-altitude shit, don't you?" Handyman grunted.

  Hornet 108

  "Man, did you ever screw up," Thor said as he put his Hornet into a tight left turn. His scorn was not directed at the two Flankers left up here to fight him and Reedy; rather, it was aimed at whoever had ordered them to do so. Could anyone really be dipshitty enough to believe that a one-on-one ratio represented good odds for the Chinese pilots? Not that things started out so hot for him and Reedy. The Flankers were a few thousand feet higher than the Hornets when the shooting started, and immediately came hurtling down, missiles streaking off their wings. That took some fancy flying to get out of. And Thor had to admit that at least some of the grim intel on these new birds was true; big as they were, the Flankers turned like plastic models tugged on a wire.

  But Thor and Reedy flew in perfect harmony, using the high-low loose deuce formation, and the damned Chinese were overconfident; when they took the bait and converged on Reedy, Thor swooped over and in, crying "break right!" on his radio. Instantly Reedy's Hornet showed the Flankers its belly. At the same moment Thor triggered a Sidewinder. Since the Flankers were displaying the most tailpipe, real sex to a Sidewinder, the missile selected the brighter of the two and drove itself home. Thor grinned to see a pillow-shaped eruption of smoke and flame. An ejection seat rocketed out of the mess, which pleased him even more. Personally, he loved to shoot down hardware, not software. "Splash one Flanker!" he cried.

  Then he gasped as Reedy's Hornet dissolved into fire and smoke.

  He immediately compartmentalized his fury and did what he'd been trained to do broke into a hard evasive turn and scanned his radar screen. Instantly, he knew what had happened. The descending Flankers had pulled a fast one. One of them split off from its fellows and returned to the high-altitude battle. The bastard had killed Reedy.

  And at the same time, reversed the odds.

  Tomcat 304

  Bird Dog didn't need to hear the radio signals from the Vipers to know that the dogfight had started in earnest. He could see it all over his radar screen as the various blobs and blips began to move In fast, devious directions. And one Marine had been splashed already.

  He forced himself to relax. One advantage of coming in from a distance was that he'd already had the time to tag each bogey's radar image with a targeting marker.

  But that didn't make his fellow aviators any less outnumbered. For a moment he felt unreasoning anger at the admiral and all the other boneheads who'd failed to be prepared for something like this ... then he remembered that he was one of those boneheads.

  He assessed the situation playing out on his radar screen. One Marine F/A-18s was still up high tangling with a pair of bogeys. Down low, Lobo and Hot Rock were engaged with two Flankers--and in between, descending fast, were three more Flankers exchanging the high-altitude furball for the lower one. They were going to bounce Lobo and Hot Rock.

  Not if Bird Dog Robinson could help it. "Phoenix," he snapped, setting his weapons control switch accordingly. The Phoenix had the longest range of any missile in the American inventory. The down-side was that as a radar-guided weapon, it required a nice steady course from the targeting plane to maintain radar lock. Also, it was rather easy to shake and had therefore earned a mediocre rep for successful kills; still, there was nothing like seeing a one-ton missile coming at you from over the horizon to make you rethink your attack strategy.

  But before Bird Dog could hit the trigger, Catwoman said, "Uh, Birdy-boy, you might want to remember how close we are to one of the most populous city in the world."

  Bird Dog started to make a sharp retort, then realized what she was saying The Phoenix had a range of over one hundred miles, and if it missed its target, it would simply fly until it ran out of fuel ... or struck something else. Like a skyscraper. At this angle, that was likely.

  "Oh, hell," Bird Dog said. He considered the range. "Okay, Sparrows." Although the current distance was at the outer limit for the Sparrow, at least the missile wouldn't free-fly into Hong Kong if it got dodged.

  He had two Sparrows on his wings. He assigned one of them a target blip, then triggered it off and felt the pleasant upward bump as their weight left the Tomcat. He watched the Sparrow depart on a strand of white smoke, and felt, as always, a strange sense of empathetic fear for the pilots on the other end. Missiles moved so quickly, they were like a bad dream. Especially if they were sniffing for you.

  "Come on baby," he said. "Come on ...

  Flanker 67

  Tai heard the warning alarm in his helmet, and saw the return image of the incoming missile on his Heads-Up Display. Cursed. Took his focus off the battle raging below, and turned it to the radar. Waited. Waited ...

  He released a bundle of chaff and juked hard to one side without breaking out of his dive. The chaff expanded in the air behind him, creating a metallic cloud designed to fool radar signals. An instant later, the shock wave of an explosion rocked his plane. The missile had taken the bait.

  "Status?" he cried over tactical. All three of the Sukhois reported back. Tai smiled.

  So far, the score was one kill for the PLA fighters, and zero for the Americans. That was about to change--but not in the Americans' favor. As Tai's plane shot through the spot where sunset turned to twilight, he was at last able to visually select a target from the possibilities below.

  Tomcat 302

  As Lobo bottomed out of her dive, she pulled the stick back and then sideways again, once more reversing both the Tomcat's direction and its orientation, so now she was following the top curve of an outside loop back toward the bogey. If what she'd pictured in her head was accurate, the Flanker should now be above and in front of her, still climbing, clawing for precious altitude.

  And so it was. Better still, the reach between them was just about broad enough to-

  "Clear," Handyman said.

  "Fox three!" Lobo triggered a Sidewinder.

  Given enough room, a Sidewinder would attain supersonic velocity in a matter of seconds. In this case, it didn't have the chance. Nor did the Flanker. Lobo saw a flare pop out of the enemy fighter and start to ignite as a lure to the Sidewinder's infrared seeker head, but the move was much too late.

  "Splash one!" Handyman cried as the Flanker tur
ned into a fireball with wings. A moment later the wings were alone, fluttering down toward the water like falling leaves, flipping this way and that, preceded by a shower of miscellaneous smoking debris.

  "Oooh," Handyman said, "that has got to hurt."

  "Where the hell is my wingman?" Lobo said.

  Tomcat 306

  "Come on, Rock, shake him," Two Tone said from the backseat. Hot Rock didn't bother telling him to shut up. If he did that, it would look like he had time to chat.

  The Flanker pilot was good, he'd give him that. No sooner had Hot Rock taken out the helo than the Chinese plane was dropping in on his tail, cannon blazing. Ever since, the Flanker had been right there, trying to get a clean shot. An occasional burst ripped past, tracers stitching the air, first on one side, then the other. Not one hit, though.

  The Chinese pilot was good, but Hot Rock was better. He felt it instantly in his heart, and in the seat of his pants. He knew he could take this guy. He could get on his tail and take him whenever he wanted.

  It would be the first real kill for Hot Rock Stone. You couldn't count the helo, that sitting duck.

  And yet ... what if he missed, after all? What if he reversed positions on the Flanker, took the offensive and then, for whatever reason, blew it? Everyone would know. Every one would know that Hot Rock wasn't good enough. This way, only he knew.

  "We got all these weapons here," Two Tone growled, "and no one to shoot them at."

  Again Hot Rock said nothing. He was giving the Flanker pilot all he could handle just keeping within killing range. Not quite throwing the Chinese plane, but not allowing the Flanker a clear shot, either. Hot Rock knew he could do this all day long, or at least until he ran out of fuel. Or the Flanker did. Or the fighting ended and they could all go home.

  "Heads up, boy," Two Tone said. "Three bogeys straight up one's picked us out to bounce."

  Hot Rock glanced up, and saw three flashes of light that winked out abruptly at the place where sunlight gave way to shadow.

  "Sparrows," Two Tone said. "They'll go where we want no matter what direction they start out in."