in it, barely twitched the Tomcat as it ignited.
Bird Dog watched the missile’s tail flare, quickly kicking the
Sidewinder up to its Mach 2 terminal velocity. It warbled once, then
headed straight for the Bear’s exhaust.
Then the unthinkable happened. The Bear, clearly aware that it was
being targeted with a heat-seeking missile, dipped even lower toward the
water. Bird Dog saw the pilot jerk the nose hard up, risking a stall but
counting on ground effect to substitute for lift. As the nose came up, the
rest of the aircraft teetered back down. The port engine and wing smashed
through a wave, spewing black smoke instead of hot exhaust as it emerged.
The Sidewinder wobbled again, evidently confused by the loss of the
infrared source it’d been homing on. The perturbation increased, and the
flight path of the stark white missile wandered around the dark ocean
below.
“The other engine, the other engine,” Bird Dog screamed. He started
swearing.
“Come on, come on, baby,” he heard Gator crooning.
Neither threats nor encouragement worked. The starboard engine, still
burning hot and bright, was hidden from the missile by the Bear’s wavering
attitude. The Sidewinder fizzled, then wandered off toward the horizon,
intrigued by the one decent heat source it could sense–the sun.
“You’ve got one left,” Gator said.
“Bastard’s too low,” Bird Dog said. “God, who would have thought?
I’ve heard of a COD smashing through waves after a cat shot, but never
anything as big as that Bear.”
“Take the shot,” Gator urged. “He can’t pull that stunt again–both
port engines are out. He’ll never make it back to wherever he came from if
he loses another one.”
“And we won’t make it if we run into something else up here,” Bird Dog
pointed out. “He’s low and slow, Gator. I’m going to take him with guns.”
“And you’re not going to need those? Same principle applies.”
“Less likely to need them than that Sidewinder. Besides, he’s an easy
target on two engines. His airspeed has already fallen off to three
hundred knots.”
“Okay, okay,” Gator said. “I’m getting more and more nervous about
being out here. Just get that bastard before his submarine buddy decides
to have a go at the carrier.”
“Lining it up now.” Bird Dog brought the Tomcat around in a hard port
turn, cutting away from and then back toward the Bear for a beam shot. The
675-round M61A1 20mm Vulcan multibarrel cannon–hell, it might not be as
flashy as a Sidewinder, but one or two rounds into a critical hydraulics
line or a fuel tank would work just as well.
Tomcat 201 bore down on the stricken Bear, and Bird Dog carefully
lined up his shot, leading the Bear by a few hundred feet. Let the
aircraft fly through the pattern, make him part of the firing solution.
Slow and easy, slow and … “Break right, break right,” Gator howled over
ICS. “Now!”
Bird Dog acted immediately, snapping the Tomcat into a hard roll away
from the target before he’d even gotten off one short burst. “What, what?”
he screamed.
“Submarine’s surfacing. Look over to your left. You recognize that
cute little bit of gear on its sail?”
“Like I’ve got eyes on the tailpipes? Listen, I was a little busy up
here-”
“And that’s why I was watching elsewhere. Since you cant see it now,
let me describe it for you. A small radar unfolding from the sail, a black
box just aft of it–sound familiar?”
Bird Dog felt cold. On his last cruise, he and Gator had almost been
shot down by one of the first deployed antiair systems on a submarine.
“And that Bear was leading us right into his kill zone, just like we were
saying.”
“The only thing good in the whole equation is that the Bear is too low
to be holding radar contact on Jefferson. He can talk to that sewer pipe
below him, but all he’s got is old info.”
“But that might be enough–hold on, I’m going back around for that
Sidewinder shot. We don’t have a choice on this now, not a smart one.”
“Get low,” Gator suggested. “He’s not going to Pull that jet-ski