“Multiple bogies at zero-eight-five, angels base minus four. Range
fifteen miles. I’ve got five … six … make that eight bogies, repeat,
eight bogies in two groups, now at zero-eight-six.”
“Copy, Two-one-eight. We still need a positive ID.”
“Maybe you want me to go up and introduce myself?”
“I’ve got them,” John-Boy said from the back seat. “Coming out of the
clutter.”
“Okay, John-Boy,” Coyote said. It was strange, he thought, how he
sounded a lot calmer than he felt. His heart was pounding with the promise of
action. Or was it fear? Briefly, just for an instant, his thoughts flashed
to Julie. I don’t want to die! “Relay to Camelot. Tell them we’re closing
with the bogies.”
He pressed the throttles forward, feeling the surge of raw power
thundering astern. The miles flashed past, one every six seconds.
“Coyote, this is Scorpion! They’re breaking for me! I’ve got launch!
That’s multiple launch by two … make that four bandits! Repeat, four
bandits …”
Bandits now, instead of bogies. No longer unknown aircraft, but
hostiles.
“Hang on, Scorp. We’re a mile behind you and coming up buster.”
White vapor curled off his wing tips as he smashed through the sound
barrier.
CHAPTER 2
Wednesday, 18 June
1424 hours Zulu (1524 hours Zone)
Tomcat 201
Near Grotil, Norway
Coyote pulled back hard on the Tomcat’s stick as he throttled into Zone
Five afterburner. Clouds whipped past his aircraft as he climbed.
A village flashed beneath the belly of his aircraft, a collection of huts
and larger buildings, nestled in the green at the head of a meandering fjord.
South sprawled the Jostedalsbre, vastest of mainland Europe’s ice sheets,
sixty miles long and covering hundreds of square miles between up-thrust
mountains. Sunlight flashed from ice fields and frozen rivers like
fire-struck diamond, more intense, more dazzling than sun-dance on the sea,
but Coyote ignored the vista, dividing his attention between the
computer-generated images dancing across the Vertical Display Indicator on his
console and Heads Up Display projected onto the inside surface of his
windscreen.
The VDI showed Scorpion’s aircraft, hard pressed by the four nearest
bandits six thousand feet above Coyote’s Position and almost three miles away.
A second group of four maintained their original heading as they burst from
the mountains of Jotunheim twelve miles to the east, climbing hard, still
thundering toward the Jefferson at Mach 1. “Skywatch, Skywatch,” John-Boy
called over the ICS. “Icewall, Two-oh-one, We have eight bandits, repeat,
eight bandits in two groups, designated Alpha and Bravo. Two-one-eight has
target confirmation on Group Alpha.”
“Icewall, Camelot,” a hard voice said over the radio, and Coyote
recognized the voice of Tombstone Magruder, CAG. “We’re patched in. Priority
target is Group Bravo, Group Bravo. Do you copy?”
Coyote hesitated. His wingman was tangling with the four Russian MiGs of
Alpha, but CIC was ordering him to close with the other four targets, Bravo,
still unidentified and still holding a straight-line course aimed at the
Jefferson.
“Two-oh-one copies,” he said tersely. “Engaging.”
The orders made sense, in a cold and calculating way. Alpha was probably
a fighter escort for something bigger, a quartet of Backfires, possibly,
lumbering aircraft like the ones that had plastered Keflavik with AS-4
air-to-surface missiles a few days before. Those planes could not be allowed
anywhere close to Jefferson, not without risking a devastating air-to-surface
missile strike against the floating airfield.
But chasing Bravo meant leaving Scorpion and Juggler in a one-on-four
scrap for several crucial minutes … an eternity in air-to-air combat.
“Range to Bravo now ten miles,” John-Boy said.
“We’ll go for Phoenix kill,” Coyote decided.
“Roger. Targeting.”
The AIM-54 Phoenix was a long-range killer, able to radar-home on a
target over one hundred miles away. Using the million-dollar missile against
a target a scant ten miles distant seemed a waste … but that was extreme
range for heat-seeking Sidewinders, and his AIM-7M Sparrows, though they had a
range of sixty miles or better, were semiactive radar homers. That meant that
he would have to hold the Tomcat steadily on course, painting the targets with
radar as the SARH missiles homed for a kill … and right now his wingman was
in trouble.
“I have target lock,” John-Boy announced. “Bravo-one at ten miles.”