•$£
0$’ .Tombstone was flying close to the water, ten miles behind the
;#: main American Tomcat formation.
1;’; ‘The bad guys are all over the place, Tombstone,” Hitman
‘*;: reported. The Tomcat was vibrating heavily in the dense and ^; bumpy air close to the water. Thick plumes of condensation > Sprayed off the wings, describing graceful spirals in Tomb-
-, ‘stone’s jet stream. “Eagle Leader is lining up a shot. He’s ‘:•! called it! That’s fox one!” ;’ “How’s it look in our neck of the woods, Hitman?”
**A11 clear. There’s nothin’ . . . holy shitl Bogies! Four V bogie’s at zero-five-niner and coming fast! Range fifteen miles!”
Tombstone shifted the control stick right to meet the threat.
; He’d expected something like this, an attempt to slip some
planes past the main body at extreme low altitude. With the
confusion higher up, it was possible they could slip through
, ufi&en, lost in the radar clutter of waves and thickly packed
&rplanes. From behind the American formation, they could
, strike at the fleet … or circle to take the defenders from the
v fear.
S^F “Bogies are turning. Tombstone! Range now . . . twelve /::;Utiles. Looks like they’re going to swing onto the Eagles’ tail.” „:-;•%, Tombstone reviewed his options. With Sparrow he could
240
take all four bogies now … but he’d have to maintain course, illuminating them with his Tomcat’s AWG-9 all the way. No. Better to save the Sparrows and take these guys up close. He pushed the throttles forward to Zone Five.
“Eagle, Eagle, this is Tombstone,” he called. “Watch your six. You have four bogies, repeat, four bogies on your six.”
On the radar, the American planes were turning, aware of the new threat behind them. Tombstone’s F-14 thundered across the water, fifty feet between the waves and the missiles slung from the aircraft’s belly. At Mach 2, the passage of the F-14 raised a wall of spray behind him, a sonic boom made visible in geysering water.
“We got ’em, Stoney!” Hitman cried, excitement charging his voice. “We’re sliding right on to their six!”
“We’ll go for Sidewinder,” he said. No sense in warning them that he was coming. The enemy pilots’ attention appeared to be focused on the Eagles in their sights.
“Range . . . nine miles.”
“Targeting.”
Computer graphic symbols danced on his HUD. Four small shapes marked the enemy aircraft. Using his controller, Tombstone dragged the targeting ptpper across one and locked in. The square changed to a circle, with the word ‘ ‘LOCK” beside it. A warble sounded in his headphones as the first Sidewinder saw its target
“Tone,” Tombstone said. “Fox two!”
He squeezed the trigger and the Sidewinder slid off the launch rail with a whoosh. The instant the heat-seeker was away he was moving the pipper to a new target.
0845 hours, 26 March Tomcat 216
Batman heard Tombstone’s warning over the tactical channel. The Vipers were east of the Eagles and not threatened by the bogies coming in from the south, but it was a reminder that the American defensive formation was as porous as a sieve. The American response was going to have to be flexible and in-depth, or the individual aircraft was going to be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers.
ARMAGEDDON MODE
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“Find us a target and let’s dump this last bird,” he told Malibu. The F-14 handled better “clean,” without the added weight and drag of the half-ton missile on its belly.
“Got one. Range two-zero miles, bearing three-five-one. AWG-9 locked in. Tracking.”
“Punch it.”
“Fox three!”
Their last radar-homer streaked into the northern sky. Batman brought the Tomcat hard left, turning into the approaching main body of enemy aircraft.
“Ninety-nine aircraft,” the voice of the Hawkeye controller sounded in his headset. “We are tracking three primary groups ‘of bogies, designated Alpha, Bravo, Charlie. …”
More long-ranged missiles lanced out from the American ‘squadrons as the BARCAP planes shot off the last of their jUM-54-Cs and the newcomers began unloading their Sparrows.
The AIM-7 Sparrow was a design that, in various incarnations, went back to the early fifties. Naval aviators tended to distrust it, for the missile had more than once shown a nasty tendency to lock onto the water instead of the target. Just as bad, from the pilot’s point of view, Sparrow had SARH .guidance, which meant that once it was fired, the aircraft could not maneuver without breaking the radar beam that illuminated the. target for the missile’s sensors.