When he was south of them, Winters brought his flight right, west, and down to twenty thousand feet, well below Joe Chink’s cruising altitude, because fighter pilots might look back and up, but rarely back and down, because they’d been taught that height, like speed, was life. And so it was ... most of the time. In another three minutes, they were due south of the enemy, and Winters increased power to maximum dry thrust so as to catch up. His flight of four split on command into two pairs. He went left, and then his eyes spotted them, dark flecks on the brightening blue sky. They were painted the same light gray the Russians liked—and that would be a real problem if Russian Flankers entered the area, because you didn’t often get close enough to see if the wings had red stars or white-blue-red flags painted on them.
The audio tone came next. His Sidewinders could see the heat bloom from the Lyul’ka turbofan engines, and that meant he was just about close enough. His wingman, a clever young lieutenant, was now about five hundred yards to his right, doing his job, which was covering his leader. Okay, Bronco Winters thought. He had a good hundred knots of overtake speed now.
“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