Top Gun (33 page)

“Somebody better call the Automobile Club of Cambodia.” Sweeny chuckled gleefully as he dropped his Snakeyes on the hangar
complex. “Something tells me that truck’s got a flat tire or two.…”

What a wise guy.
Green thought, smiling. Thanks to Sweeny’s precision bombing, the hangar complex had vanished in smoke and fire. It was now
time for Greene to begin his own run. Remarkably, despite all the destruction that had been caused to the airfield, there
was still defensive fire coming up from it, and especially from the surrounding jungle.

A stream of tracers cut across the nose of Greene’s bird: .50 cal, he guessed. When the rounds were coming at you, they looked
like white hot Ping-Pong balls lobbed in rapid succession.

Greene felt his bird shudder and heard a rattling like pebbles being thrown against the A-7’s skin: Several .50-cal rounds
had impacted. Greene didn’t like being hit, but he wasn’t terribly worried. The A-7 was tough as nails. The cockpit and all
vital systems were armored, with critical flight components and systems duplicated or triplicated to make sure a shot-up Mud
Mover had what it took to get its job done and then get on home to its Rubber Duckie.

However, I wouldn’t want to take too many of those,
Greene thought as a flurry of what looked like red golf balls floated up at him from out of the jungle. Those were 37
MM
cannon rounds.

Greene resisted the urge to drop some Snakeyes on the foliage in an effort to silence the more potent gun. Letting the enemy
seduce you into expending your ordnance on defenses instead of the primary target was one of the oldest ruses in the Indochinese
Commies’ bag of tricks.

“Wolf three, Wolf lead,” Rodriguez radioed.

“Rog, lead,” Greene replied.

“Three, drop all your bombs in an extended run, then we’ll get out of here. This field is history, and with all that defensive
fire coming up from the palm trees there’s no point in us repeatedly exposing ourselves to it just to break big pieces of
wreckage into little pieces.”

“Rog lead.”

Greene flew his attack trajectory, doing the best he could to ignore the fiery AA net of death the Cambodians were weaving
to pluck his bird from out of the sky. Fortunately, billowing clouds of oily black smoke were now rising up from the burning
airfield. As Greene entered into it, he felt relieved. He couldn’t see his dick in front of him, but at least now the enemy
gunners couldn’t spot him.

He watched his instruments, letting his navigation/weapon delivery computer select the opportune moment to drop his bomb load.
When he did trigger off his bombs, he felt his bird rise up, unfettered from over three tons of ordnance. Behind Greene, the
roiling smoke cloud cleared just long enough for him to see his bombs going off in a rapid succession of blinking light. From
his vantage point, the dozen Snakeyes exploding looked like an oversize string of Chinese firecrackers. Abruptly the field
was shaken by a tremendous explosion that sent an anvil-shaped orange fire cloud high up into the sky. The shock wave from
the blast buffeted Greene’s bird, and for a moment he thought he was going to lose control, but then he had his A-7 reined
in. He arrowed out of the smoke cloud, up into the clear blue upper reaches of the sky.

“Woo-whee!” Rodriguez yodeled cowboy style. “That’s getting some bang for the buck, Air Force!”

“I must have hit an underground fuel tank,” Greene chortled excitedly. “Back in ’Nam, the POL sites used to go up just like
that!”

Greene’s A-7 was still rising. Now that he’d dropped his bombs, Greene could have flown rings around Wolf lead and Wolf two,
both of which were still burdened with heavy, cumbersome. Walleye TV bombs.

“Okay, Wolf three,” Rodriguez radioed to Greene. He and Wolf two were already winging out over the cove. “Come on down into
formation and let’s get out of here.”

“Roger, lead,” Greene began, but then, as he leveled out at 10,000 feet and prepared to descend, he was distracted by movement
glimpsed out of the corner of his eye. He gasped, thinking he was seeing things, that he was having another Viet flashback.
“Wolf lead. We’ve got bogies.”

“What? Where?” Rodriguez demanded skeptically. “Air Force, check your oxygen level. You sound a little loco to me,
muchacho.”

“I’m telling you I see three of them!” Greene chattered excitedly. “Check it out! They’re at my four o’clock low! You’re ten
o’clock level. See them? They’re skimming the trees, heading out from the jungle—yeah!—they’ve crossed the beach and now they’re
over the water!”

“Got them!” Sweeny said.

“Roger, I see them now,” Rodriguez agreed. “Where the fuck did they come from?”

“Who knows?” Greene replied. “Maybe the Cambodians have underground hangars.…”

Rodriguez said, “I can see plenty of ordnance dangling from their wings. Those bogies are obviously on their way to Tang Island
to lend air support to the Cambodians.”

Greene suffered through a high-G turn in pursuit of the planes. The bogies were painted in a jungle camo pattern: tobacco
brown with wavy green mottling. As Greene got closer to the low-flying, relatively slow-moving enemy jets, he recognized their
teardrop canopies, needle noses, dual jet intakes, and swept wings/swept tail configuration. Then he made out their insignia:
yellow-outlined red stars and bars on their upper wings.

“Holy shit, fellas,” Greene radioed to the rest of the flight. “Those are Chinese aircraft—”

“Bullshit!” Rodriguez exploded. “Now I
know
you’re loco!”

“Listen up, lead!” Greene cut him off. “Before I came aboard the
Sea Bear, I
spent a year testing out flight simulators. I had to study up on just about every kind of non-friendly airplane there is,
because I had to fly against computer-generated versions of them. I’m telling you that these three airplanes are Nanzhang
Q-5 Qianjiji attack aircraft, the Commie Chinese answer to our own fighter bombers like the F- I I I.”

“Lead, he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about,” Sweeny said.

“I guess,” Rodriguez admitted grudgingly. “Damn, first the fall of Saigon, then the
Mayaguez,
and now this. Fucking Commies must all be working together. Stay out of their way, Wolf three. I’m radioing a warning to
our guys over Tang. The Phantoms will take them out.”

Greene was still closing on the Q-5 trio from behind, from six o’clock high. None of the gomer pilots had spotted him, or,
if they had, they were ignoring him. Greene wondered why. Maybe the Q-5s were being distracted and reassured by the sight
of Rodriguez and Sweeny’s bomb-laden A-7s flying so unthreateningly low and slow out over the water…? Or maybe the Q-5s
had
spotted Greene behind them, but they were thinking that he had expended all his ammo on the airfield?

Then the obvious answer occurred to Greene: These Q-5s intended to strafe the Marines landing on Tang Island’s beach. That
was their primary mission, and if they wanted to complete it successfully, they would have to continue to fly skimming the
waves, because they were overloaded with heavy ordnance.

That might be your mission, but you’re not going to complete it if I can help it, gomers,
Greene thought, busily flipping switches on the armament panel of his A-7 to go from air-to-ground bombing mode to air-to-air
gun mode.

“Wolf three, I know what you’re up to!” Rodriguez transmitted. “Don’t do it! Let the Phantoms have them! Do you read. Wolf
three? Over!”

Greene’s mind raced back to all those flight-simulator battles he’d fought and won on the ground at Wright-Patterson. Yeah,
sure, he was an
electronic
ace, a master war gamester, but in real life he’d never shot down an enemy plane. His grandfather Herman Gold had been an
ace in World War I. His uncle Steve had been an ace in World War II and in Korea, and had even scored a couple of MiG kills
during his limited-combat tour in ’Nam, but not Robbie Greene, who’d flown well over a hundred combat missions in his Thud,
but who’d never been in the right place at the right time to score an air kill—

Until now. Here they were, not computer-generated enemy planes but the real thing, looking sleek and sexy and ripe as peaches
ready to be plucked from the branch. They were
his
peaches, and he was going to enjoy every juicy bite out of them that he could possibly take.

No way,
Greene thought.
No way am I going to pass up this chance, even if I am stuck in a Mud Mover.

The irony of it was just too delicious: the Q-5s were fighter bombers. Thanks to their dual 30
MM
cannons and AA-2 Atoll heat-seekers, their dual supersonic turbojets and their rugged, simple mechanical design, these Chinese
aircraft were for midable dogfighters. But these particular Q-5s were presently flying a ground-support mission; they couldn’t
go into an ACM mode unless they jettisoned their ordnance. Greene, meanwhile, was flying a Mud Mover, but he had no ordnance,
and at these low speeds and low altitudes his bird had something approaching fighter-plane capability.

“Wolf three, this is a direct order,” Rodriguez thundered. “Do not bounce those Chinese whatzits!”

If a trick worked once, it might work again, Greene thought. He began clicking his mike on and off as he had with Colonel
Dougan that fateful day he and Buzz Blaisdale had staged their mock dogfight over Dayton. “Something’s wrong with my radio….
You’re breaking up, Wolf lead….”

“Goddammit, Wolf three! Don’t do it! You stupid jerk!” Rodriguez alternately cursed and pleaded. “You’re too stupid to realize
it, but what you’re attempting is impossible.”

Difficult but not impossible,
Greene thought to himself.
I’ve got an idea….

Actually, it was a modification of Sweeny’s idea. It was the image of Sweeny taking out that fast-moving truck with a rocket
salvo that had prodded Greene to formulate the tactic he was about to use against the trio of Q-5s.

Greene was grateful for his superior altitude as he put his A-7 into a dive to coax every ounce of speed out of her. About
a mile ahead and below him, the Q-5s were flying three abreast, like great green-and-brown-mottled sea birds, skimming the
waves.

Greene was now a half-mile away from the Q-5s, dropping down on them like a hawk toward a bevy of quail. The middle fighter
bomber was entering into the red pipper gunsight that floated in the center of the A-7’s ghostly green HUD display. Another
few seconds and the show could begin.

“Wolf three, Wolf lead.” Rodriguez said. “Phantoms are here! Back off and let them handle it.”

Not on your life, pal.
Greene thought savagely.
And not on mine.

“Wolf three, this is Papa lead,” Lieutenant Saunders radioed from his fast-approaching Phantom. “We’re here! Now, get out
of our missile-launch envelope so that we can use our air-to-airs.”

Greene chuckled as he glanced up at the high-flying Phantoms, glinting specks wheeling like vultures in the sky. No way could
the Double Uglies use their missiles as long as he was this close to the Q-5s. AAs did not distinguish between friend and
foe. As long as Greene stayed tucked on the Q-5s’ sixes, the Phantoms could only watch and wait.

The center Q-5 was now framed in Greene’s cherry-red gunsight, but then Greene saw twin bursts of flame coming from the trio
of Q-5s’ dual engines. They were going to full throttle to try and get away.

Greene smiled as he watched great splashes rise up from out of the sea as the Q-5s jettisoned their ordnance. The Chinese
pilots, like Greene’s fellow Navy fliers, had finally come to the realization that Greene was going to go through with his
audacious plan. Also, the Q-5s had likely spotted the Phantoms and realized that their surprise attack mission was scratched.
There was no longer any point to the Chinese planes’ hugging sea level.

Greene’s HUD display told him that the range was a little over a thousand yards; Greene was not as close as he would have
liked for what he had planned, but it would have to do. The Q-5s were supersonic aircraft capable of almost twice the speed
of the A-7. If Greene allowed them to spool up their dual engines, he could kiss them good-bye.

The Q-5s began a three-way defensive split. Their problem was that they were still flying so low that their split was pretty
much two-dimensional. They could only spread apart gradually as they climbed for altitude.

Greene kept the center Q-5 framed in his gunsight and mashed the trigger on his cannon. The M61 Vulcan gun mounted on the
port side of the A-7’s fuselage began snarling like a chain saw, its six revolving barrels spitting 20
MM
slugs at the rate of one hundred a second. The gun volley raised sparks off the center Q-5’s mottled hide and raised plumes
of water on either side of the airplane. Greene, laughing, kicked rudder: The A-7’s nose yawed to left and to right, and the
swinging cannon hosed down the Q-5s on either side of the center Commie bird, setting the ocean to boiling. At the same time,
Greene triggered off a ripple salvo of all twelve of his 100
MM
rockets. His A-7 seemed to shudder in orgasm as the projectiles tore loose from their pods, and then the rockets’ own engines
lit, spitting fire and slashing smoking contrails as they streaked downward. Due to Greene’s yawning maneuver, the rockets’
trajectories spread wide to form individual, smokey talons, a claw meant to scratch the Q-5s into the sea.

The hundreds of rounds of ammo Greene had unleashed upon the enemy planes tore into the Q-5s’ wings and canopies, sending
shards of metal and sparkling Plexiglass flying. Then the rockets struck. The port-side Q-5 was enveloped in flame and hammered
straight into the ocean by a direct hit from a rocket. The center Q-5 was in the process of climbing when either cannon fire
or a rocket sheared off its tail. The fighter bomber, trailing oily black smoke, seemed to hover motionless in the air for
an instant before dropping ass first into the sea.

Fortunately for the gomer in the starboard Q-5, his banking airplane suffered only a few cannon hits and none of Greene’s
rockets had touched it. Unfortunately for the gomer in that bird, he banked his Q-5 too sharply in his attempt to get away.
The Chinese fighter bomber’s wing dipped into the water. It tore himself into fiery wreckage, cartwheeling across waves.