Range eight miles and closing fast.”
“Trapper,” Coyote called. “You got that?”
“Affirmative, Coyote. I think they mistrust our intentions.”
“Damn straight they do. Let’s see what the gentlemen want. Breaking
left.” He pulled the F-14 into a hard, wings-back turn.
“I’m with you. Breaking left.”
d symbols drifted across Coyote’s HUD. Switching his AXX-1 to
telescopic, he could pick out the targets visibly. The bogies were close
together, apparently heading straight toward him.
He dragged the targeting pipper across one of the targets on his HUD.
“Going for a radar lock, Teejay.” Contact! A tone sounded in his ear and the
targeting pipper flashed from its diamond shape to a circle. “I’ve got tone.
Sparrow lock.” His finger closed on the trigger. “Fox one!”
A threat warning chirped. The Tomcat was being painted by an enemy
missile’s guidance radar. “Trouble, Boss!” Teejay warned. “Launch! Launch!
I’ve got enemy missiles, two … no, three missiles in the air. SARH-active.
They’re targeting us.”
“Damn it, Teejay, we’re stuck on the straight and narrow here.” As long
as they were painting the enemy aircraft for their own AIM7, evasive maneuvers
were impossible.
“Understood, buddy. I’m tracking the incoming missiles at six miles …
five-point-five … five miles …”
Coyote felt the skin of his face growing slick beneath the padding of
helmet and mask. He was locked in a game of high-tech chicken, his Sparrow
hurtling toward the enemy at Mach 2, as three enemy missiles approached him at
the same speed. To break away was to lose the target, with no certainty that
he’d be able to dodge three Soviet missiles.
He held the Tomcat on a steady course, still aiming at the pair of Soviet
fighters.
“I’ve got Sidewinder lock,” Trapper called. “Fox two! Fox two!”
“Incoming missiles now at two miles,” Teejay called. Coyote thought he
heard the slightest crack in his RIO’s voice. “One-five. One mile …”
There was a distant flash against the sky, and Coyote hauled the Tomcat
into a gut-wrenching left turn. Sea and sky swung past the canopy, a dizzying
blur of blue and white as acceleration crushed him down into his ejection
seat. They were falling now. The ladder up the side of his HUD that showed
altitude was flicking past too fast to read. “Chaff!” he yelled as he fought
to control the Tomcat, both hands on the stick, hoping that Teejay could still
hear him and handle the countermeasures.
Something flashed past his canopy … followed closely by another
something, closer, a streak of white. Miss! Coyote exalted, bringing back the
stick, bucking the Tomcat out of its two-mile plummet toward the sea.
G-forces built, clamping down on his chest and making breathing difficult.
The natural high of adrenaline roaring through his system banished fear,
banished doubt as he tensed arms and shoulders and neck, forcing blood from
where it was pooling in his extremities and back into his brain. Still
hauling back on the stick, he started to bring the Tomcat out of its dive …
The shock kicked Coyote in the back so hard that stars flashed and spun
in front of his eyes, and the tunnel vision of the high-G pullout closed down
completely, plunging him into blackness. The stick flopped loose in his
hands, offering no resistance at all, as sea and sky were whirling past his
windscreen so quickly now that he could not separate one from the other.
Something was terribly wrong. He was no longer being crushed down in his
seat, but pressed hard to the right side of the cockpit. Dimly, he realized
that the Tomcat was spinning, that centrifugal force had slammed him against
the side of the cockpit, that only his harness kept him from being plastered
against the canopy, as helpless as a bug pinned to the bottom of a cigar box.
His hands fumbled for the yellow-and-black-striped ejection handle.
Where was it? He couldn’t reach it … couldn’t reach … there!
He yanked, and his universe exploded in a coruscating blaze of fireworks,
of blackness shot through with lightning and a red haze of pain. The canopy
was gone and the wind was raging at his helmet and mask and body like an angry