dogfight, had separated the two American planes by a number of miles.
“Negative! I’ve got nothing on the scope! Shit, Batman, I’m dead
back here!”
Batman tried again to turn the stricken F-14, to bring the nose up in a
bid for altitude, to do anything. Slowly, the Tomcat began to respond.
The aircraft was still bucking and kicking, but he managed to drag it
into a slow, rising turn to starboard.
Then he heard the telltale warble of a radar lock in his headset.
“Batman!” Malibu yelled. “They’re locking on!”
“I hear it! I hear it!” Damn the controls! The Tomcat kept bucking
as he coaxed the ship into a tighter turn.
“Launch! We’ve got launch! Coming in hard on our six!” They were
still turning, but it wasn’t going to be enough. A moment later
something hard slammed into the Tomcat’s tail, filling the sky with
flames.
1252 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 203
“Price!” Zig-Zag yelled. “I’ve lost the Batman!”
“What do you mean, lost him!”
“He’s dropped off the screen, man! I don’t see him!”
“Shit …!” The terrain here was rugged. “Keep watching! He may pop
up again!”
“We got two more targets at two-eight-three,” Zig-Zag announced. “Range
seven miles, heading north at six hundred.”
“Where’s the green line, Zig-Zag?”
“Shit, man, I don’t know! We could be in Burma now for all I know!”
“You’d better hope we’re not. If those bastards nailed Batman, I want
them!”
“Too late, Price. They’re scooting north like nobody’s business. I
think they’ve had enough.”
The dogfight was over. Taggart forced himself to relax, almost muscle
by muscle. It was over, and they were still alive!
But where were Batman and Malibu?
1263 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 232
The Tomcat was coming apart around them as they plummeted toward the
rugged terrain. Batman saw jungle rushing past his canopy as they
skimmed a towering hill, falling into the valley beyond. “That’s all
she wrote,” he told Malibu. There was nothing else to be done. “We’re
punching out!”
“Rog!”
Altitude eight hundred. It was now or never. He grabbed the bright,
yellow-and-black painted ejection loop between his knees and yanked
back.
There was an explosion, and the Tomcat’s canopy broke away. Then
Malibu’s ejection seat slid up the rails and into the sky with a shrill
roar, followed an instant later by a slamming kick in the butt as his
own escape system fired.
Wind smacked him in the face and chest, clawing at him, snapping and
whipping like a living thing, and for a horrible moment, Batman thought
he was going to be torn in two, that the force would break his neck,
that …
The parachute deployed above him, checking his tumbling fall with a rush
that felt as though he were rocketing once more into the sky. Quickly,
he looked around, hoping for a glimpse of Malibu, but he couldn’t see
him. He did spot the F-14, still falling toward the jungle, upside down
now with its empty cockpit like a blind eye. Flame boiled from the
shattered tail, unfolding in a trail of smoke all the way down.
He looked down, suddenly aware of the jungle. The unbroken green
beneath his flight boots was taking on more and more shape and texture
as it swept up to meet him from below. At close range, he was aware of
folds in the terrain he’d not seen before; he was dropping into a
steep-sided valley which had been all but invisible from the sky, but
which now was taking on the proportions of the Grand Canyon.
And there was no way he could avoid those trees.
CHAPTER 10
1252 hours, 17 January
Tomcat 203
“Homeplate, Homeplate, this is Tomcat Two-oh-three.”
“Go ahead, Two-oh-three.”
“Homeplate, we are declaring an emergency,” Taggart said. He continued
to scan the hills and jungle below as he sent in the message. “Tomcat
Two-three-two is down, repeat, down.”
“Copy, Two-oh-three. Do you have chutes in sight? Over.”
“Negative chutes, Homeplate. We didn’t even see where they went down.
They were out of visual when they were hit. Over.”
There was a long, static-filled silence. Finally, the voice of
Jefferson’s Air Ops controller came on the air again. “Tomcat