“We got ’em all the way,” Penrose’s wingman, Lieutenant Commander Paul “Cowboy” Bowman, replied. “Ready when you are.”
“Stand by.” On interphone Penrose asked, “Got ’em yet, Lion Tamer?”
“Hold on… tally-ho, finally got ’em… IR track. Compiling data… got a good data feed. Wish we had a laser ranger right now — their guys would be dog meat. Be advised, Razor, my radar’s coming on three seconds after missile launch. We won’t be invisible no more… okay. I got a firing solution. Clear to launch.”
“Good. Lock up the rest as soon as the radar’s on.” On the interplane frequency, he called out, “Seven, give it to ’em. Bullet Six, fox one.”
“Seven, fox one.”
Penrose squeezed the launch button on his radar, and the light-gray outline of his Tomcat fighter lit up again as the big Sparrow missile leaped into the dark sky. He could see a missile from his wingman slash through the sky just a few hundred feet away — the two missiles appeared to be flying in formation as they streaked toward their targets. The missiles seemed to track perfectly…
But suddenly Penrose’s missile seemed to diverge away faster and faster — his wingman’s missile curved to the right, tracking all the way, but Penrose’s Sparrow was going off in the weeds. “Lion Tamer, what’s going on…?”
“Damn! Radar’s not coming up!” Watson shouted. “Shit, it cooled down too much!” A status light to the right of the RIO’s tactical information display read ENV STBY, meaning that the system would stay in nonradiating mode until the electronics fully warmed up.
“Two! Take the lead! Six is gadget-bent!”
“Seven’s taking the lead.” Penrose began searching to his right, hoping he could see his wingman, but he made it easy for him: Bullet Seven had his left engine in min afterburner, both to help Penrose find him and start closing in on the Chinese fighters faster.
“Cowboy, got a tally on you, kill your burner,” Penrose said. The burner flicked off. They continued their right turn to put themselves right on the four Chinese fighters’ tails.
Lion Tamer’s APR-45 radar threat scope suddenly came to life. It showed first a friendly search radar directly ahead — Bullet Seven — and, seconds later, several bat-wing symbols appeared off to the right as the Chinese fighters, after detecting the Tomcat’s radars, activated their own search radars to find their ambushers. All four bat-wings were superimposed, with a diamond around the closest one.
As Penrose searched out his canopy bubble to see if he could see any of the enemy fighters, he saw a tiny puff of fire in the distance — Bullet Seven’s Sparrow missile had exploded.
One of the bat-wings promptly disappeared.
“Bullet flight, splash one bandit,” the AWACS controller reported. “Dead bandit descending rapidly, turning right, decelerating. Two bandits breaking left, same altitude, nine miles. One bandit looks like he’s descending, heading straight ahead… lone bandit is thirty miles from Flashlight, appears to be closing on him.”
“Six, go after the solo. I’ll take these two.”
“Negative. I’m bent. I’m staying with you.”
“I can take these two. Use your IR and the AWACS. Get the solo.”
“Dammit, Cowboy, if those two are bugging out, let ’em. Don’t get sucked into a one-vee-two. Let’s go get the solo together.”
“We got these two locked up, no sweat. Take the solo. I’ll be back in a flash.” He punctuated his sentence by banking hard left in pursuit. Penrose and Watson were suddenly right between two enemy cells.
“You gotta protect the recon plane, Razor,” Watson told him.
“Fuck the recon plane. My wingman might be in trouble…”
“So what happens when that bandit smokes that RC-135? There’s eighteen guys on that thing.”
He was right — he had no choice. “Shit. We’re going after the solo. Basket, Bullet Six, vector to the solo inbound.”
“Bullet Six, bandit at your twelve to one o’clock, eleven miles, five thousand below you, airspeed six hundred thirty.” Penrose shoved his throttles to full military power, anxious to get within missile-firing range but not enough to risk using afterburners and getting himself in a low-fuel situation — he fully intended to go back and see to Cowboy after dealing with the lone bandit. “Lion Tamer, what’s with the radar? Can’t you get it going?”
“Keeps resetting. I’m recycling it…”
This is going from bad to worse, Penrose thought. On interplane, he asked, “Cowboy, how goes it?”
“We got one in the kill zone,” Penrose and Watson heard on the interplane frequency. “Looks like the other guy’s bugging out — he’s out of it. Thirty seconds and I’m back with you.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Penrose said. “Shoot and clear. Basket, dammit, keep an eye out for Seven’s trailer.”
“Basket copies. Second bandit on Bullet Seven is two o’clock, eleven miles, accelerating, descending. Bullet Six, your bandit is twelve o’clock, ten miles. Your bandit is twenty-five miles from Flashlight and closing…”
