Tom Clancy - The Bear and the Dragon

“Boar, Eagle, be advised these guys are heading directly for us at the moment.”

“Not for long, Eagle,” Colonel Winters responded. They weren’t flecks anymore. Now they were twin-rudder fighter aircraft. Cruising north, tucked in nice and pretty. His left forefinger selected Sidewinder to start, and the tone in his earphones was nice and loud. He’d start with two shots, one at the left-most Flanker, and the other at the right-most … right about …

“Fox-Two, Fox-Two with two birds away,” Bronco reported. The smoke trails diverged, just as he wanted them to, streaking in on their targets. His gunsight camera was operating, and the picture was being recorded on videotape, just as it had been over Saudi the previous year. He needed one kill to make ace-

— he got the first six seconds later, and the next half a second after that. Both Flankers tumbled right. The one on the left nearly collided with his wingman, but missed, and tumbled violently as pieces started coming off the airframe. The other one was rolling and then exploded into a nice white puffball. The first pilot ejected cleanly, but the second didn’t.

Tough luck, Joe, Winters thought. The remaining two Chinese fighters hesitated, but both then split and started maneuvering in diverging directions. Winters switched on his radar and followed the one to the left. He had radar lock and it was well within the launch parameters for his AM-RAAM. His right forefinger squeezed the pickle switch.

“Fox-One, Fox-One, Slammer on guy to the west.” He watched the Slammer, as it was called, race in. Technically a fire-and-forget weapon like the Sidewinder, it accelerated almost instantly to mach-two-plus and rapidly ate up the three miles between them. It only took about ten seconds to close and explode a mere few feet over the fuselage of its target, and that Flanker disintegrated with no chute coming away from it.

Okay, three. This morning was really shaping up, but now the situation went back to World War I. He had to search for targets visually, and searching for jet fighters in a clear sky wasn’t …

… there …

“You with me, Skippy?” he called on the radio.

“Got you covered, Bronco,” his wingman replied. “Bandit at your one o’clock, going left to right.”

“On him,” Winters replied, putting his nose on the distant spot in the sky. His radar spotted it, locked onto it, and the IFF transponder didn’t say friendly. He triggered off his second Slammer: “Fox-One on the south guy! Eagle, Boar Lead, how we doing?”

“We show five kills to this point. Bandits are heading east and diving. Razorback is coming in from your west with four, angels three-five at six hundred, now at your ten o’clock. Check your IFF, Boar Lead.” The controller was being careful, but that was okay.

“Boar, Lead, check IFF now!”

“Two.” “Three.” “Four,” they all chimed in. Before the last of them confirmed his IFF transponder was in the transmit setting, his second Slammer found its target, running his morning’s score to four. Well, damn, Winters thought, this morning is really shaping up nice.

“Bronco, Skippy is on one!” his wingman reported, and Winters took position behind, low, and left of his wingman. “Skippy” was First Lieutenant Mario Acosta, a red-haired infant from Wichita who was coming along nicely for a child with only two hundred hours in type. “Fox-Two with one,” Skippy called. His target had turned south, and was heading almost straight into the streaking missile. Winters saw the Sidewinder go right into his right-side intake, and the resulting explosion was pretty impressive.

“Eagle, Boar Lead, give me a vector, over.”

“Boar Lead, come right at zero-nine-zero. I have a bandit at ten miles and low, angels ten, heading south at six-hundred-plus.”

Winters executed the turn and checked his radar display. “Got him!” And this one also was well within the Slammer envelope. “Fox-One with Slammer.” His fifth missile of the day leaped off the rail and rocketed east, angling down, and again Winters kept his nose on the target, ensuring that he’d get it on tape … yes! “That’s a splash. Bronco has a splash, I think that’s five.”

“Confirm five kills to Bronco,” Eagle Two confirmed. “Nice going, buddy.”

“What else is around?”

“Boar Lead, the bandits are running south on burner, just went through Mach One. We show a total of nine kills plus one damage, with six bandits running back to the barn, over.”

“Roger, copy that, Eagle. Anything else happening at the moment?”

“Ah, that’s a negative, Boar Lead.”

“Where’s the closest tanker?”

“You can tank from Oliver-Six, vector zero-zero-five, distance two hundred, over.”

“Roger that. Flight, this is Bronco. Let’s assemble and head off to tank. Form up on me.”

“Two.” “Three.” “Four.”

“How we doing?”

“Skippy has one,” his wingman reported.

“Ducky has two,” the second element leader chimed in.

“Ghost Man has two and a scratch.”

It didn’t add up, Winters thought. Hell, maybe the AWACS guys got confused. That’s why they had videotape. All in all, not a bad morning. Best of all, they’d put a real dent in the ChiComm Flanker inventory, and probably punched a pinhole in the confidence of their Su-27 drivers. Shaking up a fighter jock’s confidence was almost as good as a kill, especially if they’d bagged the squadron commander. It would make the survivors mad, but it would make them question themselves, their doctrine, and their aircraft. And that was good.

So?”

“The border defenses did about as well as one could reasonably expect,” Colonel Aliyev replied. “The good news is that most of our men escaped with their lives. Total dead is under twenty, with fifteen wounded.”

“What do they have across the river now?”

“Best guess, elements of three mechanized divisions. The Americans say that they now have six bridges completed and operating. So, we can expect that number to increase rapidly. Chinese reconnaissance elements are pushing forward. We’ve ambushed some of them, but no prisoners yet. Their direction of advance is exactly what we anticipated, as is their speed of advance to this point.”

“Is there any good news?” Bondarenko asked.

“Yes, General. Our air force and our American friends have given their air force a very bloody nose. We’ve killed over thirty of their aircraft with only four losses to this point, and two of the pilots have been rescued. We’ve captured six Chinese pilots. They’re being taken west for interrogation. It’s unlikely that they’ll give us any really useful information, though I am sure the air force will want to grill them for technical things. Their plans and objectives are entirely straightforward, and they are probably right on, or even slightly in advance of their plans.”

None of this was a surprise to General Bondarenko, but it was unpleasant even so. His intelligence staff was doing a fine job of telling him what they knew and what they expected, but it was like getting a weather report in winter: Yes, it was cold, and yes, it was snowing, and no, the cold and the snow will probably not stop, and isn’t it a shame you don’t have a warm coat to wear? He had nearly perfect information, but no ability to do anything to change the news. It was all very good that his airmen were killing Chinese airmen, but it was the Chinese tanks and infantry carriers that he had to stop.

“When will we be able to bring air power to bear on their spearheads?”

“We will start air-to-ground operations this afternoon with Su-31 ground-attack aircraft,” Aliyev replied. “But …”