Eagle Leader. Do you read me, over?”
“Eagle, Snow White. Loud and clear. Go ahead.”
“Snow White, we have a Long Track paint. Time to sing them your song.”
“Copy that, Eagle Leader. You guys prefer blues or the hard stuff?”
“Sing ’em the blues, Snow White.”
“Snow White’s jamming, Tombstone,” Dixie said. Somewhere miles to the
south, an EA-6B Prowler of VAQ-143 designated Snow White circled at
altitude, transmitting on frequencies designed to jam enemy radar. The
jamming would break down at close range, but it would shield the alpha
strike from long-ranged attacks and keep the enemy guessing about That
and American numbers and intentions.
“Chickenhawk, Chickenhawk, this is Eagle Leader,” Tombstone called.
“Where are you, Smiley?”
“Eagle, Chickenhawk Lead,” Lieutenant Commander John ‘Smilin’ Jack” Van
Dore replied. The former XO of VFA-161 had moved into the skipper’s
slot after the tragic death of Marty French at Wonsan. “We’re one
hundred fifty miles out and catching up.”
“Chickenhawk, Gainfuls are confirmed. You guys are going to be busy.”
“Roger that, Eagle. Warm ’em up a little for us, will you?”
“We’ll see what we can do.”
“Tombstone!” Dixie shouted. “Trapdoor is under fire!”
“Right,” Tombstone snapped. “What’s going down?”
“I’m getting missile indicators.” Dixie paused, reading his scope. “SAM
launch, Tombstone! SAMs!”
And Tombstone knew that Hsiao had sprung his trap.
0742 hours, 21 January
Falcon 992, over the Nam Mae Taeng Valley
Lieutenant Colonel Vasti Nithanivituk pulled back on his Falcon’s stick
and kicked in the afterburner. Green-clad mountains wheeled past his
canopy as he stood the nimble aircraft on its tail and boosted for
altitude. A veteran of six months in the United States training on
F-16s at Nevis AFB, he was proud of his aircraft, fiercely proud of what
he could make it do. The Falcon shrieked into the sky, inverting as it
twisted out to an Immelmann.
The red warning light for a SAM lock still flashed on his console, next
to the glowing computer symbols of his HUD. Upside down now, pressed
into his ejection seat by the G-force of his loop, he looked “up”
through the canopy, searching the greenery and valley folds overhead.
There!
He’d seen films at Nevis, but never the real thing. Just as the
American pilots always described the thing, the SAM did look like a
telephone pole as it rose from the jungle, balanced on a tongue of white
flame. “Trapdoor!
Trapdoor!” he shouted in That. “Launch! I have a launch! Nam Mae
Taeng Valley, sector three!” The missile was accelerating rapidly,
arrowing toward him.
Lieutenant Colonel Vasti was the leader of Trapdoor, the That force
assigned to secure air superiority over U Feng. He’d flown over twelve
hundred hours in modern interceptors and was widely regarded as the best
of Thailand’s elite fighter pilot corps.
He was scared now. The SAM was less than a mile off now, still
accelerating as its radar held its lock on his ship. This was the worst
part of evading a SAM launch, as his American instructors had warned
him, those long, long seconds when he had to keep his aircraft flying
straight and level until the SAM was committed. He kept his eye on the
missile, now visible only as a bright pinpoint of light, a flare in the
sky rapidly growing brighter.
Now! Vasti stabbed at the chaff button and rolled his aircraft into a
hard right turn. The idea was to twist out of the way before the
missile could react and change course. Once its solid fuel motor burned
out, it would pursue a ballistic trajectory into the ground and explode.
The skin on his face stretched back from his eyes and mouths with the
force of his 7-G turn. He kept hitting the chaff dispenser, spewing
packets of metallic foil along the Falcon’s path in a cloud which would
distract the SAM’s radar and let him slip away.
Recovering from the break, he chanced a look back over his right
shoulder. The enemy missile should …
He had only a second’s glimpse of the missile as it arrowed up toward
his plane. Twenty feet long and over a foot thick, the Gainful had an
eighty-kilogram warhead which could explode on impact or by proximity