Stephen Coonts - Combat

At nine hundred feet range, she pressed the trigger and held it down.

Gnido shook his head in bemused contempt for the American’s folly. How could he allow himself to be sandwiched between two potentially hostile aircraft? And then to compound it by turning back again to repeat the error! The Sukhoi pilot decided to watch the outcome of the Hornet’s clumsy attack. Depending on what happened, he would kill the winner, return to El Toro, and try not to smile too broadly when waving his diplomatic passport on his way out of this amazing country.

Jen-Jen Jensen had no idea what was happening. Something like hailstones on a tin roof hammered the airframe behind her. The canopy shattered two feet aft of her headrest. Her initial emotion was confused disbelief; only after the Hornet lurched abruptly and began an uncommanded roll did she realize she had been hit by an unseen assailant. The other Flanker! she raged.

Jensen shot a wide-eyed glance at her instrument panel. Master caution, fire warning, and system-failure lights strobed at her in red-andyellow hues. Wind-fed flames waved angrily orange in her rearview mirrors. For an indecisive moment she wondered whether she should risk taking time to point the nose out to sea, away from the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club. Her father’s voice came to her. Honey, don’t ever hesitate in an emergency. The Navy can always buy another airplane.

The crippled strike fighter dropped into a mind-numbing spiral barely a mile over San Pedro Bay.

“Bronco Three Zero-Four! Mayday, mayday!”

Lieutenant Commander Jennifer Jensen pulled the black-and-yellow-striped handle.

As Vespa passed below and behind the doomed Hornet, Ostrewski had an unforgettable view. In a nose-down spiral the canopy separated, the seat fired with its rocket motor glaring white-hot, and the parachute deployed, pulling the pilot violently erect.

“Santa Cruz , this is Papa Three. Be advised, we have an F/A-18 down about one mile off Long Beach Marina. The pilot has a good chute. He’ll splash about two miles south of Pier J.”

“Roger, Three. We’re alerting the …”

Vespa’s voice chopped off the rest of the message. “Ozzie! Above you! Flanker at six o’clock!”

Taking the warning on faith, Ostrewski responded the only way he could. He turned into the threat.

Igor Gnido saw the nearer Skyhawk reverse its turn, hauling around the corner in a ninety-degree bank. The Russian had not intended to shoot yet, but he relished sparring with what was certainly a more competent opponent than that idiot in the Hornet. He added power, pulled up and executed a high yo-yo, keeping the A-4F on the defensive. The TA-4J was still too far off to pose any danger.

Topping out of his four-thousand-foot pitch-up, Gnido half rolled and brought his nose over the top, toward the southern horizon. He looked rearward between his twin tails, found the Skyhawk where he expected, and retarded his throttles.

Ostrewski had padlocked the big Sukhoi, conserving his available energy for the right moment. Like a Topgun free-for-all, he thought: two versus one versus one. When he saw Gnido’s nose pull through, he pitched up, momentarily spoiling the Flanker’s tracking. Both pilots had a chance for a gun snap shot; neither took it.

As they passed one another, offset two hundred yards at twenty-five hundred feet, Ostrewski stomped right rudder, shoved the stick over, and buried his nose. He gained fifteen degrees angle on the Flanker before it rocketed upward again in that awesome climb, this time pulling its vector toward Papa Four. His rapid turn caught Ostrewski by surprise — Papa Three could practically join on his wing, almost too close to shoot.

“All stations, all aircraft over Long Beach Harbor. This is USS Boorda on guard. Be advised, two F-14s are inbound. They are armed and cleared to fire at any threat. All aircraft: You will comply with any directions from the mission commander. Out.”

Gnido cursed fervently. With most of his weapons gone, he was in no position to tackle two Tomcats. He decided to kill one Skyhawk, disengage, and streak for EI Toro at low level.

He felt he was managing the two Skyhawks nicely. Without missiles, they had to gain a close-range tracking solution on him, and as long as he kept both of them off his nose — or well below him — he could not be hurt.

The A-4s could not say the same thing. Gnido had selected his last R-73M2. With the Archer’s seeker slaved to his helmet-mounted sight, he could kill up to sixty degrees off his nose; he put the reticle on the two-seater running in from ten o’clock. A sideways glance to his right showed the single-seater to be no threat. It was going to pass close aboard and slightly high, too near for more than a fleeting snap shot.

Gnido pressed the trigger and felt his last Archer come off the rail. He was tracking the TA-4J smoothly, knowing that as long as he kept the Skyhawk in his forward hemisphere it was doomed.

Ostrewski saw the smoke plume as the rocket motor ignited, sending the AA-11 toward Papa Four. His heart was raw in his throat; he knew that Liz possessed neither the time nor the countermeasures to defeat the missile. With thrust vectoring, it was perhaps the most agile air-to-air weapon in the world.

Without room for a decent shot, without time to extend away before turning back in — and without conscious thought — Ozzie made his move.

Vespa saw the smoke trail, knew it for what it was, and rolled nearly inverted. She intended to wait until the last possible instant before pulling into her belly and loading maximum positive G on her aircraft. From 135 degrees of bank, her world was a crazy quilt of three-dimensional geometry with the Russian missile eating up the last quarter mile of airspace.

She shut her eyes, saw her mother’s face, and pulled.

Gnido saw the evasive maneuver, admiring the pilot’s last-ditch effort while knowing it was futile, and awaited the explosion.

Michael Ostrewski’s last view was a windscreen full of Flanker. The twotone gray paint scheme loomed at him, and his final willful effort was to clamp down on the trigger.

His cannon had hardly begun to fire when the little Douglas speared the big Sukhoi squarely behind the cockpit.

Liz fought the G, realizing that she had bottomed out of her desperate split-ess, knowing that the very realization meant life. I’m alive. How? She craned her head, seeking the Flanker that had to be above and behind her, positioned to shoot again.

The first thing she noticed was a corkscrewing smoky spiral as the Archer, devoid of guidance, followed its ballistic path to destruction. Vespa reversed into the threat that now was nonexistent. The visual footprint led to a dissipating fireball suspended in space, shedding fuel, flares, and aircraft parts.

Her pulse spiked at the knowledge that Michael Ostrewski somehow— somehow —had gained enough room to pull lead on the Flanker. A warm deluge of adrenaline-rich adoration flooded her veins. Ozzie, you are one superb fighter pilot! She pressed the mike button. “Three, this is Four. Climbing through four thousand.”

She waited several seconds for the reply, believing that the Only Polish-American Tomcat Ace must be savoring his triumph. When no response came, she tried again. And again. Finally, she said, “Hu, look around. Do you see Ozzie?”

The Chinese pilot turned in his seat, swiveling his head across the horizon. “No, miss.”