had only an instant to aim, more by instinct than by skill, and squeeze the
trigger.
The GE M-61AI Vulcan cannon recessed into the port side of his Tomcat’s
fuselage screamed … and then Coyote was past the MiG, climbing hard. He
didn’t know if his brief burst had hurt the target or not. Probably not, he
decided. The shot had been rushed, but it might have taken the guy’s mind off
the carrier for a moment.
“You missed him, man!” Teejay yelled. “You missed–oof.”
The hard grunt was blasted from Teejay as Coyote snap-rolled the F-14 in
a savage 9-G turn. He hoped to drop onto the MiG’s tail, but by the time he’d
swung around 180 degrees, the Russian was gone … gone! “Where’s the
bastard, Teejay?” he called. Sunlight exploded into the cockpit as they
climbed above the mountains. “Where’d he go?”
“Eleven o’clock, and high!”
Coyote snapped his head back. There he was, twisting into the morning
light in a perfect Immelmann, sun-glint flashing from cockpit and wings.
Coyote was about to follow when Teejay interrupted. “Watch it, Coyote! We
got two more comin’ in hard, seven o’clock, angels two!”
“I see ’em!” Two MiG-29s seemed to be sliding off the cliff tops and out
over the open waters of the fjord. From half a mile away, Coyote could see
the stubby, finned deadliness slung beneath their wings; ship-killer missiles,
though he didn’t recognize what they were.
His Tomcat was still sluggish, low on energy after the extremely tight
turn, and the wings had slid to their full open position. Coyote slapped the
override, sliding the wings back. The loss of extra lift sent the slow-moving
Tomcat dropping, plunging like a spear point into the shadow-darkened valley.
Snapping the weapons-selector switch to engage with his Sidewinders, he
watched the targeting diamond appear on his HUD, drifting across the nearer of
the two MiGs. He let the Tomcat’s plunge carry the pipper across the Fulcrum,
heard the Sidewinder’s growl as its heat-seeker eye found the target. Lock!
“Target lock!” he called. “Fox two!”
The Sidewinder whooshed from the launch rail and sprinted across the
dwindling gap between the two planes. The MiGs must have become aware of
Coyote’s approach at the last second, for they suddenly rolled right, showing
their light gray bellies and the neatly grouped, pencil-slender missiles slung
from pylons. The Sidewinder’s contrail followed the maneuver with electronic
deadliness, closing … closing …
Slamming into the MiG’s tail, the missile detonated with a flash that
engulfed the aircraft. The Fulcrum emerged from the fireball an instant
later, its twin stabilizers gone, fire streaming from one engine. The cockpit
flew away, and with a tiny puff of smoke the pilot rocketed into the air, his
chute deploying a moment later. “That’s a hit, that’s a hit!” Teejay was
calling. “Two-double-nuts, splash one MiG!”
“Pilot ejected,” Coyote added. “Good chute. I’m on number two.”
But when he found the second Fulcrum he saw that it was already being
closely pursued by another interceptor, one of the tiny, almost toy-like
Falcons, with Norwegian rounders on wings and tail. The nimble little
interceptor seemed too close for a missile launch, but Coyote saw a flash and
a streak of white, and then the second MiG was swallowed by a fireball that
spewed, an instant later, a blazing pinwheel of wreckage that tumbled wildly
into shadow, impacting in the fjord with a violent splash and a scattering of
smoking debris.
“We’ve got new players in the game,” Coyote called. “Norwegian Falcon
just splashed one.”
“Roger,” an air controller called back. Was he someone aboard Jefferson,
or in a circling Hawkeye? “Be advised we have twelve F-16s in the air,
designated White King. Watch who you’re shooting, people …” The battle was
rapidly becoming a confused melee in the skies above the fjord, a furball of
tightly woven contrails as the aircraft of three nations tangled, closed, and
evaded. Coyote saw a Falcon fall to pieces as a MiG pounced on it from above
and behind, its 30-mm Gatling cannon savaging the lightweight aircraft in less
than a second. At almost the same moment, Coyote locked and fired, sending a
second Sidewinder streaking into the Soviet plane and blasting it apart in a