off!
Shit, they’re going for lock! They’ve got lock!”
“Hold on, Nightmare!” Garrison’s voice called. “I’m on them!”
Still diving, Tombstone plunged back into the aerial melee. Pulling up,
he saw a Tomcat in a hard turn a mile ahead, closely pursued by a MiG,
which in turn was being pursued by another F-14. He was too far to read
the numbers, but he knew the Tomcats were Nightmare Marinaro and Army
Garrison.
“Break right, Nightmare!” Army called. “Break right!”
The lead Tomcat cut hard to the right just as Garrison fired. “Fox two!
Fox two!”
One of the MiGs exploded seconds later, a burst of jagged, flaming
fragments spilling from the sky. Army’s Tomcat overshot the second MiG
before he could get a shot, however, and the enemy plane stuck to
Nightmare’s tail.
Tombstone saw that he was in a good position to cut across the arc of
Nightmare’s turn. He pushed the throttle to full military power, lining
up his target pipper on the second MiG.
“Army!” Nightmare called. “Where are you, man?”
“Steady, Nightmare,” Tombstone said. “I’m on him.”
“He’s still got lock!” Nightmare yelled. “Hurry, Stoney!”
The two planes were leading Tombstone now. The pipper on his HUD
trailed the MiG, but he couldn’t turn hard enough to catch up.
“Nightmare!” he called. “When I tell you, break left. That’ll give me
a clear shot at his six!”
“Rog!”
“On my mark … three … two … one … break!”
Nightmare snapped left in a sharp split-S, and the MiG followed. This
guy is good, Tombstone thought. But he’d known in advance where
Nightmare would be going and had been able to anticipate the MiG’s move
and be ready.
His HUD showed a target lock and a tone growled in his ear. “Lock! Fox
two!
Fox two!”
The missile sped from its rail, slipped up the J-7’s tailpipe and
exploded. The MiG’s wings closed together like folding hands.
0750 hours, 21 January
MiG 612
Colonel Wu pulled his J-7 around in a hard, left-hand turn, following
the F-5 toward the jungle. He watched as his Aphid heat-seeker AAM
slammed into the That Freedom Fighter’s tailpipe. A blossom of orange
flame engulfed the target’s tail, blasting away bits of whirling metal,
and the F-5 began plummeting toward the jungle.
That made five kills scored against the enemy, two of them downed by Wu
himself. The That aircraft were relatively easy targets. The
American-made F-5s were as good as his squadron’s J-7s, but the
superiority of the Chinese pilots’ training was making itself felt.
“Wu t’uan chang! Wu t’uan chang!” an excited voice yelled over his
headset. In Chinese military usage he was “Regimental Commander Wu”
rather than “Colonel.”
“Who calls?” he snapped. The other pilot’s voice betrayed growing
panic, and Wu could not allow that to continue.
“The American planes, Regimental Commander! They are turning the
battle against us!”
Wu looked up through his canopy. Contrails snarled and twisted above
him. He saw the black streak of an aircraft burning as it fell and
realized it was one of his own.
He’d lost track of the numbers on either side. There was no way to
follow the battle in any detail now, not with so many combatants
involved.
But the Thais seemed scattered … and between the onslaught from Wu’s
J-7s and the SAMs at U Feng and along the river, they’d taken heavy
casualties.
There seemed to be six American aircraft … and he still had eighteen
J-7s in his squadron. Discounting the Thais, that made the odds three
to one in his favor.
Wu made a snap decision. “All Dragons,” he called. “This is Dragon
Leader. Ignore the Thais. Concentrate on the Americans! Repeat,
concentrate on the Americans!”
It was the only way to stop the deadly attrition of his own forces.
0751 hours, 21 January
Tomcat 201
Airplanes fell from the sky. Tombstone watched another That F-5
explode, victim of a MiG-launched Aphid. Seconds later, Price Taggart
loosed a radar-guided Sparrow from almost ten miles away, tracking a MiG
which dove for the jungle. The Chinese pilot tried to lose the Mach 4
hunter by weaving in close among the forested ridges … and failed in a