moved over to the corner of the shed, where Bayerly sat on the dirt
floor, a strange expression on his face. “I think it’s a battle,” she
said.
“F-14s,” he said, listening. “Tomcats. They’re ours.”
Pamela felt a sudden thrill which jolted through her. Tombstone! If
there were Tomcats overhead, one of them might be Tombstone!
Bayerly was looking toward the door now. “We’d better get ready,” he
said. “If they’re buzzing the airstrip, ground troops can’t be far
behind.
And I don’t think our new friends are going to want us to get rescued.”
“But what can we do?”
He gave her a tight smile, a mirthless stretching of his lips. “We’ll
manage something,” he said.
0746 hours, 21 January
Near U Feng
Lieutenant Miller peered up through the jungle canopy as the six Tomcats
thundered into the sky. There was a thump, followed by a slithering
hiss, and a line of white smoke scrawled its way across the blue.
Someone on the ground had just loosed a SA-7 Grail … but far too late.
The Navy planes were already nearly out of sight by the time the missile
was loosed.
Miller noted the launcher’s position in his mind. Part of the close-in
perimeter defenses, no doubt.
Lieutenant Miller lay on his belly at the edge of the clearing, studying
the compound through his binoculars, taking care not to turn the lenses
toward the sun and give away their position with a flash. The Marines
had moved silently to this location. staying off the trails, slipping
like shadows among the trees. Security elements were posted, guarding
flanks and rear.
They were directly on the U Feng perimeter now, looking into the camp
across a cleared fire zone a hundred meters wide. Behind barbed wire
and sandbags, the enemy camp was in an uproar. Large groups of armed
men were running among the barracks, apparently deploying along the
perimeter defenses to the south. A pair of tracked SA-6 chassis were
parked by one end of the runway, each mounting three Gainfuls side by
side, probing the sky.
Miller cursed. Those Gainfuls meant big problems. They’d have to be
taken out before the Thais could assault the camp, or they’d play hell
with the That-American grab for air superiority. The leader of that
flock of Tomcats that had just gone over had played it smart, Miller
decided, coming so the Gainfuls couldn’t nail them with their Long Track
radars. As he watched, though, a missile on one of the launchers spat
flame, and a billowing white cloud of smoke engulfed the vehicle. The
missile rose into the air, an ungainly, finned pencil shape balancing
atop a column of fire.
He looked up. The Tomcats were almost out of sight already but the SAM
radars would have them locked in hard.
A second missile slid clear of the launch rail with a hissing roar.
God, Miller thought. This can’t go on much longer. Someone would have
to take out those SAMs, or this whole operation would be blown.
He turned his attention back to the compound. The word was that the
prisoners were being held in a shed or small building close to the fuel
tanks.
He could see the tanks, not far from his present position, but there
were several buildings which could be the one the Karen scouts had
meant.
Damn! Which one?
0747 hours, 21 January
Tomcat 201
“Stand by to break, people,” Tombstone ordered. The Tomcats were
climbing now, the enemy just coming into visual range. He could see the
mingled contrails of dog-fighting aircraft two miles ahead and ten
thousand feet above. “On my mark … break!”
The tight cluster of F-14s opened like the blossoming of a flower, a
maneuver called the bomb burst at Top Gun school. Three pairs of sleek
gray aircraft separated from one another, the pairs themselves slipping
apart as the formation went from welded wing to loose deuce.
“Eagle Leader, Eagle Two!” Batman called. “We’re being painted by
Straight Flush. They’re trying for a lock!”
Tombstone rolled his Tomcat into an inverted position so he could see
the ground. There could be hundreds of SAMs lurking down there. “Keep
your eyes open, Batman,” he said. “I don’t- SAM launch! SAM launch