Jackson figured that he and Sanchez could handle this, even outnumbered. No Soviet aircraft, least of all the Forger, was equal to the Tomcat — certainly not while I’m flying it, Jackson thought.
“Spade 1, your target is at your twelve o’clock and level, distance now twenty miles,” reported the voice of Hummer 1, the Hawkeye a hundred miles aft. Jackson did not acknowledge.
“Got anything, Chris?” he asked his radar intercept officer, Lieutenant Commander Christiansen.
“An occasional flash, but nothing I can use.” They were tracking the Forgers with passive systems only, in this case an infrared sensor.
Jackson considered illuminating their targets with his powerful fire control radar. The Forgers’ ESM pods would sense this at once, reporting to their pilots that their death warrant had been written but not yet signed. “How about Kiev?”
“Nothing. The Kiev group is under total EMCON.”
“Cute,” Jackson commented. He guessed that the SAC raid on the Kirov-Nikolayev group had taught them to be more careful. It was not generally known that warships often made no use whatever of their radar systems, a protective measure called EMCON, for emission control. The reason was that a radar beam could be detected at several times the distance at which it generated a return signal to its transmitter and could thus tell an enemy more than it told its operators. “You suppose these guys can find their way home without help?”
“If they don’t, you know who’s gonna get blamed.” Chris-tiansen chuckled.
“That’s a roge,” Jackson agreed.
“Okay, I got infrared acquisition. Clouds must be thinning out some.” Christiansen was concentrating on his instruments, oblivious of the view out of the canopy.
“Spade 1, this is Hummer 1, your target is twelve o’clock, at your level, range now ten miles.” The report came over the secure radio circuit.
Not bad, picking up the Forgers’ heat signature through this slop, Jackson thought, especially since they had small, inefficient engines.
“Radar coming on, Skipper,” Christiansen advised. “Kiev has an S-band air search just come on. They have us for sure.”
“Right.” Jackson thumbed his mike switch. “Spade 2, illuminate targets — now.”
“Roger, lead,” Sanchez acknowledged. No point hiding now.
Both fighters activated their powerful AN/AWG-9 radars. It was now two minutes to intercept.
The radar signals, received by the ESM threat-receivers on the Forgers’ tail fins, set off a musical tone in the pilot headsets which had to be turned off manually, and lit up a red warning light on each control panel.
The Kingfisher Flight
“Kingfisher flight, this is Kiev,” called the carrier’s air operations officer. “We show two American fighters closing you at high speed from the rear.”
“Acknowledged.” The Russian flight leader checked his mirror. He’d hoped to avoid this, though he hadn’t expected to. His orders were to take no action unless fired upon. They had just broken into the clear. Too bad, he’d have felt safer in the clouds.
The pilot of Kingfisher 3, Lieutenant Shavrov, reached down to arm his four Atolls. Not this time, Yankee, he thought.
The Tomcats
“One minute, Spade 1, you ought to have visual any time,” Hummer 1 called in.
“Roger… Tallyho!” Jackson and Sanchez broke into the clear. The Forgers were a few miles ahead, and the Tomcats’ 250-knot speed advantage was eating that distance up rapidly. The Russian pilots are keeping a nice, tight formation, Jackson thought, but anybody can drive a bus.
“Spade 2, let’s go to burners on my mark. Three, two, one — mark!”
Both pilots advanced their engine controls and engaged their afterburners, which dumped raw fuel into the tail pipes of their new F-110 engines. The fighters lept forward with a sudden double thrust and went quickly through Mach 1.
The Kingfisher Flight
“Kingfisher, warning, warning, the Amerikantsi have increased speed,” Kiev cautioned.
Kingfisher 4 turned in his seat. He saw the Tomcats a mile aft, twin dart-like shapes racing before trails of black smoke. Sunlight glinted off one canopy, and it almost looked like the flashes of a —
“They’re attacking!”
“What?” The flight leader checked his mirror again. “Negative, negative — hold formation!”
The Tomcats screeched fifty feet overhead, the sonic booms they trailed sounding just like explosions. Shavrov acted entirely on his combat-trained instincts. He jerked back on his stick and triggered his four missiles at the departing American fighters.
“Three, what did you do?” the Russian flight leader demanded.
“They were attacking us, didn’t you hear?” Shavrov protested.
The Tomcats
“Oh shit! Spade Flight, you have four Atolls after you,” the voice of the Hawkeye’s controller said.
“Two, break right,” Jackson ordered. “Chris, activate countermeasures.” Jackson threw his fighter into a violent evasive turn to the left. Sanchez broke the other way.
In the seat behind Jackson’s, the radar intercept officer flipped switches to activate the aircraft’s defense systems. As the Tomcat twisted in midair, a series of flares and balloons was ejected from the tail section, each an infrared or radar lure for the pursuing missiles. All four were targeted on Jackson’s fighter.
“Spade 2 is clear, Spade 2 is clear. Spade 1, you still have four birds in pursuit,” the voice from the Hawkeye said.
“Roger.” Jackson was surprised at how calmly he took it. The Tomcat was doing over eight hundred miles per hour and accelerating. He wondered how much range the Atoll had. His rearward-looking-radar warning light flicked on.
“Two, get after them!” Jackson ordered.
“Roger, lead.” Sanchez swept into a climbing turn, fell off into a hammerhead, and dove at the retreating Soviet fighters.
When Jackson turned, two of the missiles lost lock and kept going straight into open air. A third, decoyed into hitting a flare, exploded harmlessly. The fourth kept its infrared seeker head on Spade 1 ‘s glowing tail pipes and bored right in. The missile struck the Spade 1 at the base of its starboard rudder fin.
The impact tossed the fighter completely out of control. Most of the explosive force was spent as the missile blasted through the boron surface into open air. The fin was blown completely off, along with the right-side stabilizer. The left fin was badly holed by fragments, which smashed through the back of the fighter’s canopy, hitting Christiansen’s helmet. The right engine’s fire warning lights came on at once.
Jackson heard the oomph over his intercom. He killed every engine switch on the right side and activated the in-frame fire extinguisher. Next he chopped power to his port engine, still on afterburner. By this time the Tomcat was in an inverted spin. The variable-geometry wings angled out to low-speed configuration. This gave Jackson aileron control, and he worked quickly to get back to normal attitude. His altitude was four thousand feet. There wasn’t much time.
“Okay, baby,” he coaxed. A quick burst of power gave him back aerodynamic control, and the former test pilot snapped his fighter over — too hard. It went through two complete rolls before he could catch it in level flight. “Gotcha! You with me, Chris?”
Nothing. There was no way he could look around, and there were still four hostile fighters behind him.
“Spade 2, this is lead.”
“Roger, lead.” Sanchez had the four Fighters bore-sighted. They had just fired at his commander.
Hummer 1
On Hummer 1, the controller was thinking fast. The Forgers were holding formation, and there was a lot of Russian chatter on the radio circuit.
“Spade 2, this is Hummer 1, break off, I say again, break off, do not, repeat do not fire. Acknowledge. Spade 2, Spade 1 is at your nine o’clock, two thousand feet below you.” The officer swore and looked at one of the enlisted men he worked with.
“That was too fast, sir, just too fuckin’ fast. We got tapes of the Russkies. I can’t understand it, but it sounds like Kiev is right pissed.”
“They’re not the only ones,” the controller said, wondering if he had done the right thing calling Spade 2 off. It sure as hell didn’t feel that way.
The Tomcats
Sanchez’ head jerked in surprise. “Roger, breaking off.” His thumb came off the switch. “Goddammit!” He pulled his stick back, throwing the Tomcat into a savage loop. “Where are you, lead?”
Sanchez brought his fighter under Jackson’s and did a slow circle to survey the visible damage.
“Fire’s out, Skipper. Right side rudder and stabilizer are gone. Left side fin — shit, I can see through it, but it looks like it oughta hold together. Wait a minute. Chris is slumped over, Skipper. Can you talk to him?”
“Negative, I’ve tried. Let’s go back home.”
Nothing would have pleased Sanchez more than to blast the Forgers right out of the sky, and with his four missiles he could have done this easily. But like most pilots, he was highly disciplined.
“Roger, lead.”
“Spade 1, this is Hummer 1, advise your condition, over.”
“Hummer 1, we’ll make it unless something else falls off. Tell them to have docs standing by. Chris is hurt. I don’t know how bad.”