“You are clear to take down the Blackjack. Repeat, kill the Blackjack.”
“Copy.” To Tombstone’s ear, it sounded as though Coyote was pulling
eight Gs. He must be turning and burning with the Soviet escort. “Icewall
… copies.”
1432 hours Zulu (1532 hours Zone)
Tomcat 201
200 miles east of Viking Station
Coyote felt his Tomcat shudder as he held the impossibly tight turn,
fighting to prevent the aircraft from losing so much speed that it stalled or
flamed out, fighting to maintain control. The Fulcrums had separated widely,
two to the north, one to the south, then had closed on him from either side.
“Launch!” John-Boy called. “Missile launch, three o’clock!”
Coyote saw the white contrail corkscrewing toward his canopy, heard the
radar-threat warning chirrup in his headset. “Going down, John-Boy!” he
warned, and then he threw the right wing over, sending the inverted F-14
plummeting toward the sea.
“It’s an Alamo,” John-Boy called, identifying the approaching missile.
“AA-10.”
“Stand ready with the chaff!”
As the Tomcat picked up speed, the radar-homer nosed over, plunging after
them. “Hit it!”
Packets of chaff–clouds of hair-fine threads of aluminized mylar cut to
the specific lengths that blocked the radar frequencies used in homers like
the Alamo–exploded astern of the diving Tomcat, creating tempting decoys.
Seconds later, when Coyote was sure the Alamo was committed to its dive, he
pulled back on the stick and hurtled skyward again. The missile continued its
plunge toward the sea.
“Suckered ’em!” John-Boy exulted. “God, that’s great!”
Coyote didn’t answer. As he brought the F-14 into a half roll to the
left, the southern Fulcrum drifted across his HUD, closely pursued by his
targeting cursor. “Come to Papa,” he murmured. The diamond touched the
moving speck of the MiG; the ACQ display blinked on. “AIM-9 lock!” he called,
as the Sidewinder registered the heat of the other plane’s engines. He
stabbed the firing button. “Fox two!”
The Sidewinder hissed off the launch rail, its contrail knifing through
the sky. Coyote held the twisting Fulcrum centered in his HUD as the missile
closed … then struck the Russian plane in the port engine. There was a
flash and a puff of smoke, and then the MiG was falling toward the sea. The
pilot’s chute blossomed a moment later, white, almost motionless against the
dark blue of the sea.
“Splash one MiG,” John-Boy announced. “I see a chute. Good chute.”
With luck, the pilot might be picked up by an American or Norwegian ship.
But Coyote remembered the suddenness of Scorpion’s and Juggler’s flaming
end in the mountains, the emptiness of the sky as he’d searched for their
chutes.
The other Fulcrums were out of sight, still circling in an attempt to get
into firing position. Ahead, less than two miles away, the enormous gray
arrowhead, the Blackjack, continued on course. Coyote was out of Sidewinders,
but he still had Phoenix and one Sparrow. The Phoenix warhead was larger. He
would go for a Phoenix kill.
“We’ll take him with a fox three,” he told John-Boy. “Lock him in!”
“Working … got it!”
But something was happening to the Soviet bomber. From a pair of bays
between massive engine nacelles, first one … then another, then four more
long, torpedo shapes plunged toward the sea. As he watched, they seemed to
steady in their flight, to pick up speed. He was too far away to see wings
unfold, but he knew what was happening.
Cruise missiles, each carrying several hundred pounds of high explosive
or–the unthinkable!–a small nuclear warhead.
“Fox three!” he yelled, and he felt the Tomcat’s skyward lunge as
John-Boy mashed the firing button and a Phoenix rocketed from beneath the
aircraft’s belly.
But it was already too late. Winged death was racing toward the
Jefferson at several times the speed of sound.
1435 hours Zulu (1535 hours Zone)
CIC, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
Viking Station, the Norwegian Sea
“We have missile launch,” the second class at the CIC console announced,
his voice professionally calm. “Tracking six contacts, probably Soviet cruise
missiles, bearing zero-eight-five true, range one-six-three nautical miles,
and closing.”
“God damn,” Tarrant said quietly, almost reverently. He looked at Brandt
and gave a pale smile. “I hope this boat’s as good as you keep telling me it