The explosion erupted above the cliffs, less than two miles from
Jefferson’s side. The puffball explosion cast a long, rippling shadow across
the treetops below.
As Coyote pushed the throttles forward, he realized that the damaged MiG
had gotten away, slipping away from the fjord and off toward the northeast,
skimming the mountains so low that Teejay could no longer track him on radar.
For the first time in long moments, Coyote became aware of the air battle
as a whole, so tightly had he been concentrating first on that one MiG and its
pilot, then on the incoming ship-killer missile.
The battle in the skies above the fjord was fast, furious, and far too
complex for any merely human mind to follow. Turning his head from one side
of the canopy to the other, Coyote saw at least twenty different aircraft
scattered across the sky: a Falcon trailing flame and smoke as it fell toward
the forests north of Romsdalfjord; a pair of Sea Sparrow point-defense
missiles rocketing skyward from Jefferson’s port-side aft launcher like twin
shooting stars; an F/A-18 Hornet in hot pursuit of a Sukhoi Su-21 Flagon; a
missile track and a hurtling MiG colliding with a flash and a cottony puff of
smoke that sent the MiG spinning, one wing torn away, in a dizzying corkscrew
into the side of the fjord cliffs; a Tomcat with the stooping eagle insignia
of VF-97 dropping from the sky, its canopy smashed open and empty, like a
blind, staring eye …
And those were only the closest targets. His radar screen showed an
indecipherable tangle of contacts, concentrated in the air above the fjord,
but extending in all directions for fifty miles. Aircraft turned, maneuvered,
and closed with one another, as missiles took high-speed ballistic paths
through the melee or twisted after wildly jinking victims like dogs on the
heels of a fleeing deer.
Just above the waters of the fjord, Soviet MiGs and Sukhois were trying
wave-top runs against the carrier but did not have enough maneuvering room for
a proper deployment. MiGs caught in the leaden torrent hosed from Jefferson’s
CIWS mounts simply disintegrated.
Only gradually did the pattern of the battle become clear. The Russians
had approached the fjord from several directions, evidently hoping to
overwhelm Jefferson’s defenses. But the mountains had prevented them from
firing their antiship missiles until they were close–at ranges of less than a
few miles–and the air defense around the carrier was far tougher than they’d
been expecting. The Norwegian Falcons too were stiffening the American
resistance, though their casualties were fierce, at least two or three
Norwegian planes falling from the sky for every U.S. plane destroyed.
But the Russian losses were higher still. Whether it was superior
American tactics, poor Soviet training or coordination, or the nature of their
target, the Russians were losing, losing as MiG after MiG, Sukhoi after Sukhoi
exploded in flames or limped from the battlefield, trailing smoke. Voices
buzzed and crackled over Coyote’s headset. “Viper Two-one-one! I’m on him!
I’m on him!”
“Coming around, Trapper! Steady …”
“When I give the word, break left. Three … two … one … break! Fox
two!”
“I’m hit! I’m hit!”
“Eagle Three-zero-two, get this guy off me!
“On him, Mustang! No sweat! Rock and roll!”
“Watch it, Javelin Three-one-five! Break high and right. Go!”
“Incoming at three-five-five, angels base minus three. Viper Two-oh-five
coming right to two-seven-three …”
Coyote found another target and pulled back into the fight. But he could
sense the victory building, sense that the Russians were close to breaking.
“Viper Two-double-oh!” he called over the tactical net. “Tallyho at
Jefferson’s three-one-zero!”
The dogfight continued.
0430 hours Zulu (0530 hours Zone)
U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson
Romsdalfjord
For over half an hour, the air-sea battle of Romsdalfjord had raged above
the deep, still waters of the fjord in a wild melee more appropriate to World
War II than to the annals of modern war.
Modern naval warfare was a cold-blooded exercise of tactics and logic, a
cerebral interplay of computer projections and computer-guided weapons, of
tense men stage-lit by the eerie glow of radar displays and CRT monitors, of
high-technology weapons that made SF spectacles like Star Wars seem somehow