Stephen Coonts - Combat

Elizabeth Vespa craned her neck, trying to glimpse the high-performance jets jousting inland. She approved of Ostrewski’s decision to remain low on the water, relatively safe from radar detection, but it was about time to head for the boat. The temptation to ask Papa Three his intention was powerful, considering that their survival might be at stake, but Scooter Vespa knew that Ozzie Ostrewski would think less of her for it.

And Scooter was like every other tactical aviator. She would much rather die than look bad.

Gnido had had enough of groping through the murk. Since the carrier aircraft approaching him apparently had not fired, nor even continued targeting him, he realized that his premise was correct. The Americans will not engage beyond visual range! But he was under no such stricture. He thumbed his weapon selector to the helmet sight detent, confirmed the symbology, and prepared to fire. As soon as the target emerged from the smog and haze, he would shoot, then decide whether to deal with one of the low-flying targets. A BVR kill, a short-range kill, and then perhaps a low-level over-water kill would look very convincing in the sales brochures.

The Hornet appeared slightly offset to starboard as Gnido’s blue eyes focused on the dark shape. Range four point five kilometers, good enough. He pressed the trigger.

In Bronco 304, Jensen felt her blood surge as she saw the big Sukhoi. She already had her starboard Sidewinder selected, finger on the trigger, ready to fire. There was the tracking tone chirping in her earphones …

And the smoke trail of an AA-11 igniting beneath the Flanker. One four-letter word strobed in her brain as she reacted. Stick hard over, throttles against the stops, and pull.

The Hornet pirouetted about its axis and the nose arced abruptly downward.

Ozzie’s experienced eyes picked the Archer out of the sky. He would not have seen it had it performed normally — that is, if it had killed Jennifer Jensen — but its rocket motor described a swirling, corkscrewing path below the haze.

“Papa Four, heads up. Missile shot five o’clock, way high.” He thought to add, “No threat. Yet.”

Vespa looked over her left shoulder and scanned the upper air. She saw the errant missile a few seconds later. “It’s gone ballistic?”

“I think so.” Ostrewski estimated the geometry of the situation and decided to face the potential threat. He led Vespa into a forty-degree banked turn, climbing back toward the north-northwest.

Jennifer Jensen rolled wings level at four thousand feet and began her pull. She remembered to call the ship. “Chainsaw! Heshotatmeheshotatme! Iwillreturnfire!”

“Bronco, Chainsaw. Say again? Repeat, say again.”

Jensen barely heard the response to her panicked transmission. She fought the oppressive G that she loaded on herself as the Hornet’s nose rose through the horizon, her vision tunneling through a gray mist.

As her vision returned to normal, her adrenaline-drenched brain perceived a dark spot almost straight ahead. Her richly oxygenated blood put her in a survival mind-set — eyes dilated, blood pressure, pulse, and respiration elevated. Psych 101, fight or flight. It did not occur to Jensen that the aerodynamic shape approaching her through the HUD symbology was far lower than the threat aircraft that had just launched against her.

She heard the AIM-9 Mike’s seeker head tracking the friction heat generated by the 320-knot airspeed of the target airframe. They said there might be two Flankers! With the range down to two and a half miles she pressed the trigger, remembering to call “Fox two!”

From his perch above and behind the plummeting Hornet, Igor Gnido watched in fascination. The sight presented to him was almost enough to erase the anger he felt at the malfunctioning R-73 that had narrowly missed the F/A-18. The pilot is mad, Gnido told himself. For the life of him, the Russian could not conceive what the Hornet was shooting at. He eased off some power, brought his nose up, and bided his time.

Ostrewski’s combat-experienced mind screamed at him even as his rational side denied what was happening. He heard something garbled on the radio, vaguely imagined it was Vespa, then began dealing with the lethal reality accelerating toward him.

Ozzie shoved up the power and abruptly rolled into a right turn, better to gauge the Sidewinder’s aspect and closure rate. Head-on it was nearly impossible to determine the range until too late.

As the smoky trail corrected slightly to rendezvous on him, he told himself to wait. He punched off four or five flares, none of which seemed to deceive the Mike’s improved logic board. Not yet … not yet … Now!

It is not enough to change vectors in one dimension to defeat a missile. The trick is to alter both heading and altitude simultaneously, forcing more G onto the mindless killer than its small wings can accept.

Ozzie’s stomach was bilious in his mouth, constricting his throat. He did not realize that he stopped breathing.

He snapped the stick back, pitching up abruptly while coordinating aileron and rudder. His high-G barrel roll, executed with less than two seconds leeway, forced the winder to cut the corner at too acute an angle to continue tracking. As its seeker detected that the range was opening, the warhead detonated.

“Knock it off, knock it off! Hornet, knock it off! You just shot at a friendly!” Vespa’s voice was a high-pitched mixture of astonishment and outrage. She had no idea who was listening to her frequency, and at that moment she was not inclined to be charitable. She saw Papa Three reappear beyond the smoke of the Sidewinder’s explosion, apparently unharmed, but Michael Ostrewski had been forced on the defensive. If the Hornet pressed its advantage …

She turned in, savoring the Skyhawk’s superb roll rate. If he turns into Ozzie, I’ll shoot. She remembered Hu in the backseat. “Hu, watch for other planes. We don’t know who these people are.”

In a Topgun “murder board,” the debriefer would have faulted Jensen for turning back to engage. The school solution was to blow through, extend away from the immediate threat, reassess the situation, and set up for another missile shot.

Jennifer Jensen pulled her nose above the horizon, anxious to observe the result of her shot. She needed to know that her opponent had either been destroyed or driven into a vulnerable position for a reattack. As she neared the peak of a chandelle, seeking the target through the top of her canopy, she allowed her airspeed to bleed off more than she intended. By the time she caught sight of the target, which she recognized as an A-4, she was down to 285 knots. She tapped the afterburners, pulling through into a 135-degree slicing turn, ruefully recalling that she had no more Sidewinders. Too close for an AMRAAM, she flicked the selector and her HUD indicator changed from HEAT to GUN.

Something’s wrong, she realized. That’s not a Flanker. She eased off some of the G, retarding throttles slightly to gain more time to evaluate the potential threat.

“Liz, cut him off!” Ostrewski’s evasive roll had depleted much of his energy. He stuffed his nose down, pulling back into the threat, but knew he lacked the “smash” to go vertical.

With 375 knots on the dial, Vespa committed to an all-or-nothing gamble. She gauged the distance by the Hornet’s size in her thirty-mil reticle, waited three vital seconds, then pulled up. Vespa felt oddly calm, almost as she had during adversary training missions with VC-1 in Hawaii. Tracking the F/A-18 from eight o’clock low, she remembered to fly the pipper through the target, allowing a full ring of deflection.