CARRIER 3: ARMAGEDDON MODE

But it wouldn’t pay to ignore the strike aircraft’s fighter escorts, not when those escorts outnumbered the F-14s by at least three to one, and probably more.

He put his Tomcat into a hard left break, dumping speed

ARMAGEDDON MODE

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with flaps and spoilers in order to turn in the tightest possible radius. “Where are they?” he called to his RIO.

Radar Mendoza was one of Jefferson’s latest crop of it-placements, a young j.g. with black eyes and mustache and a Hispanic’s cocksure machismo.

“Tryin* to cut us out, Coyote,’ * Mendoza replied ‘ ‘Breakin’ left, man. Comin’ past our seven o’clock!” . “Hang onto your stomach.”

Coyote slammed the Tomcat into a right-hand turn with a snapping half-twist, then brought the stick back as he cut in his afterburners. The Tomcat’s nose came up … up … and over as be slid from a split-S into an Immelmann turn that left them flying inverted toward the two Mirages, now two miles to the south and still turning.

“Surprise, guys,” Coyote said. The Mirages were prcsent-iag themselves in a perfect plan view as they crossed his line of sight from right to left He let (he Tomcat barrel-roll out of its inverted position and dropped the targeting pipper squarely across the lead Indian fighter. The target lock warble sounded in his headphones.

“Fox two!” he called, and a Sidewinder slid off his port wing. The Mirages, aware that they’d been outmaneuvered, Split. The one he’d targeted changed his left turn into a split-S to the right, and the other one climbed sharply.

Coyote eased the stick back and started after the second Mirage. It had continued climbing, inserting itself into a twisting blur of aircraft dogfighting through a five-mile expanse of air thirty-five thousand feet above the sea.

The targeted Mirage continued holding its turn . . .

. . . then shattered as the Sidewinder rose to meet it. Flame boiled into the sky, and the delta-wing shape, its stabilizer missing now, began spinning in a wild, fiery plunge toward the sea.

“Bull’s eye!” Mendoza yelled. “Splash one Mirage for Two-oh-four!”

“Where’d me other one get to. Radar?”

“Lost him. I mink he—”

“He’s on me! He’s on me!” Coyote could hear the frantic cry of one of the American pilots. “This is Two-oh-eight. Bandit on my tail! I can’t shake him!”

Coyote scanned the dogfight in front of him. Where . . .

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K0W) Dougfass

there! The unmistakable profile of a Tomcat plunging toward the sea, wings folded back. A MiG-23 with Indian roundels on its camo-splotched wings followed.

Forgetting the second Mirage, Coyote nosed over, letting the Tomcat fall to pick up speed. “Two-oh-eight, this is Two-oh-four!” he called. “When I give the word, pull up!” When the F-14 pulled up, the MiG should follow. Coyote was positioning his Tomcat so that he could drop onto the MiG’s tail as he tried to hold his position on 208’s six.

“Two-oh-eight! Pull up!”

There was no response. What was the handle of 208’s pilot? It was one of the replacements who’d flown out to the CBG on the COD from Masirah, he thought. Maverick, that was it. How could he forget the name Maverick?

“Pull up, Maverick! Pull up!”

An Apex missile whipped from the MiG on the tip of a streaming white contrail.

“Maverick! Pop flares and pull up!”

Flares arced from the Tomcat’s tail, but the aircraft continued to plunge toward the sea. “Two-oh-four, this is Scout! Maverick’s in trouble!”

Scout was Maverick’s RIO. He must be launching the flares … but if the pilot had frozen at the stick . . .

“Maverick! Pull up!”

The Apex caught up with the Tomcat and plunged into its starboard engine. The explosion blew out part of the belly and skewed the aircraft into a flaming tumble.

“Eject! Scout, eject! Punch out!”

There was no answer, and the stricken Tomcat continued its plunge toward the sea. Coyote watched them fall, willing the canopy to blow, willing the chutes to appear.

Nothing. It happened, sometimes, the first time a man went into combat. Hours of simulators, of training, and men still lost it when they realized that this was real. Scout might have ejected the two of them after they were hit … but the explosion could easily have killed him or knocked him out.

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