“Fire on number one,” he called out. Ormack glanced quickly at number one’s engine instruments to confirm the call, then pulled the number one throttle CLOSED. Elliott, his handle on the fire-shutoff switch, pulled the T-handle when he saw Ormack’s hand reaching for it. He then began reciting the emergency checklist: “Starter switch off.”
Ormack checked the switch. “Off.”
“Electrical panel.”
“Checking,” Ormack said, scanning the a-c and d-c electrical panel on his right instrument panel. “Crew, we’ve shut down number one engine. Shut off all unnecessary equipment or we’ll lose another generator.” He checked the generator panel and confirmed total loss number-one generator. “All other generators are on high load but they’re okay so far.”
“Bleed selector switch, normal left hand inboard,” Elliott continued, now reading from the emergency checklist displayed on the cockpit computer monitor.
“Normal.”
Elliott painfully hauled himself forward out of his seat and strained to look out the cockpit window.
“Can’t see the nacelle, don’t see any fire out there . . .”
“Fire light has gone out,” Ormack confirmed, then began a check of the fuel panel. “I think we have a leak in the number one wing tank, but it doesn’t look too serious.” He reached down to a large knob on the center aisle control stand and cranked in full right-rudder trim. “General, check the rudder hydraulics. We might have a problem with the rudder now.”
Elliott checked the warning lights on his left instrument panel. “All the lights are out.”
“Well, we got rudder problems, too,” Ormack said. “I’m retarding engines seven and eight to help keep straight. Number two engine has to stay in military.”
Ormack started a slow climb to four thousand feet and carefully engaged the low-level autopilot. He waited a few moments to be sure that the autopilot could hold the Megafortress straight and level. “All right, we’ve got control of the aircraft. Pereira, McLanahan, check for fighters before we get too involved in damage assessment.”
Angelina and Patrick went to RADIATE on their radars and took careful but fast full hemisphere sweeps of the sky. With both radars operating, they could scan almost three thousand cubic miles of air-space in a few seconds.
“Clear,” McLanahan reported.
“No pursuit,” Angelina said.
“Scope’s clear,” from Wendy. “A few extremely low-powered search signals. The power fluctuation put some of my jammers into STANDBY but they should reset in a few minutes.”
“Clear of terrain for thirty miles,” Luger said.
“All right.” Ormack relaxed his grip on the control yoke. “We’re level at four thousand feet. We’ve lost number one engine and its generator. We can’t visually confirm it but I think we lost the rest of the left wingtip. There’s a slight leak in the number one wing-tank supplying the number two engine but I don’t think it’s fatal. Something’s also gone haywire with the rudder, it’s hard to keep her straight ...”
“I feel a pretty good shudder in the airmine turret-controls,” Angelina said. “Need to check out the cannon steering.” She activated the Stinger airmine rocket cannon controls and began a self-test of her system.
“The navigation system went to STANDBY for a few seconds,” Luger reported, “but the battery kept everything from dumping. We’re reloading the mission data now from the ‘game’ cartridge.”
In a few moments Angelina was back on the interphone. “Colonel Ormack, I think we lost the whole damn tail. My infrared scanner is dead. Everything’s faulted. We won’t have any more automatic IR detection from the tail anymore.”
“Well,” Luger said, “can’t the threat-receiver—”
“The threat-receiver only detects fighters when they use their radar,” Angelina told him. “If they get a visual or infrared lock-on they can launch missiles at us all day and we can’t see them. They can drive in as close as they want and get a point-blank kill.”
“The Scorpions, ” Ormack said. “What about them?”
“I’m getting a flickering low-pressure warning light on the rotary launcher,” Angelina said, checking a set of gauges on her right control panel. “Still in the green, but that last attack might have done some missile damage.”
“High terrain, thirty miles,” Luger reported.
“Any way around it?” Ormack asked.
“Solid ridge line. No other way.”
Ormack cursed and nudged the Old Dog skyward. They were almost back at their pre-established five thousand foot safe-clearance altitude before Luger finally reported clear of terrain.
“Goddamn,” Ormack said, “over four thousand feet above the ground—”
“But we may belly-flop that ridge line when we cross it,” McLanahan reminded him. “We should be able to engage the auto terrain-following computer any second—”
“Airborne interceptors at twelve o’clock,” Wendy interrupted. “At extreme detection range but closing rapidly. Multiple indications.”
“And we’re stuck up here,” Ormack said. “No other way around it. Pereira, McLanahan, engage at long range. We’ll have to blast our way out of here.”
No one offered any alternative. McLanahan reactivated his Scorpion attack radar and tuned it immediately to fifty-mile range. Slaved to Wendy Tork’s threat receiver, the radar immediately pinpointed the aggressors ahead.
“Locked onto one,” McLanahan called out. Just as he designated the first target he heard the whoosh of a Scorpion missile leaving the left pylon.
“Locked onto a second one—”
'Tighter at six o'clock high, ” from Angelina. Instantly she activated her own radar and locked onto the fighter. A moment later she gave a look of surprise and reached for the airmine triggers. “Range decreasing rapidly,” she said. “He’s diving at us . . .”
“Radar’s gone down,” Wendy said. “And we don’t have an infrared scanner to pick up—”
“It’s an IR attack,” Angelina announced. “Pilot, break right.”
Ormack threw the Old Dog into a hard-banking turn to the right. The bomber, already without several thousand pounds of thrust from the number one engine, rumbled in protest, hovering just above a stall. Wendy punched out two flares from the left ejector while Angelina tried to locate the attacker on her radar.
“I got him, I got him on radar,” she said, hit the green TRACK button, watched the circle cursor surround the fighter’s radar reflection and squeezed the Stinger airmine rocket triggers.
But the attacking fighter had the advantage. Following a vector to the intruder from his low-patrol mates—both of whom he had lost contact with soon afterward—he had spotted the intruder on radar long enough to point his MiG-25’s infrared search-and-track seeker at the penetrator. Once the seeker had locked onto the target, he had no need for the look-down radar and turned it off. His AA-7 missile immediately locked onto the two engines on the left inboard nacelle of the Old Dog, and he hit the launch button just as he noticed a short burst of flame from below him.
Angelina’s right break had been perfectly timed. The AA-7 missile’s IR seeker lost the engines in the break and locked onto the flares, but the change was too quick and the proximity and decoy-detection fuse exploded the missile.
Saved from destruction, the Old Dog was nonetheless naked . . . the missile’s high-explosive detonation, together with the one-thousand-de- gree-Fahrenheit parachute-equipped flares and the low wide burst of an airmine rocket, perfectly outlined the Old Dog against the snow-covered mountains.
The MiG pilot attacking from above and behind the Megafortress had watched his missile streak toward the target. Then suddenly he saw a dark silhouette of incredible size. He blinked, not able to believe it as the outline of the massive aircraft materialized below him. A low-altitude warning horn sounded in his helmet, and he managed to pull out of his dive only a few hundred feet above the ground and force his fighter skyward.
Although th
e long sleek nose confused him, there was no misidentifying the rest of the plane. An American B-52 bomber. He had always thought that if he was called on to defend Kavaznya against attack, it would be against an FB-111, a B-l or even the American Navy’s F-18 or F-14. Never, never an aging dinosaur like the B-52.
Straining to keep the antediluvian bomber in view as he pulled on his control stick and crawled for altitude, he frantically keyed his microphone.
“Aspana. Danger. American B-52 bomber. Paftariti. American B-52 visually identified.”
Another warning beep sounded in his helmet. He recognized the stallwarning buzzer, applied maximum afterburner and leveled off to wait for his airspeed to increase. He repeated his warning over the radio, including the bomber’s direction and estimated speed.
Could the B-52 possibly have destroyed the other fighters? The MiG pilot had seen what he thought were gunblasts from the puny .50 caliber guns in the tail, but none of the pilots at Ossora would be stupid enough to fly that close to the intruder. . . .
Angelina had to haul herself upright by the armrests of her ejection seat to regain her balance. The sudden turn and the abrupt roll-out had her head spinning and she fought to refocus her eyes on her scope. When she did she was surprised to see the target still locked within her circle cursor. She grasped the triggers and fired twice at the almost stationary fighter.
The last thing the MiG pilot saw was the glass around him seeming to melt like cellophane. His canopy disintegrated as twenty pounds of metal chips from both Stinger rockets sheared through the plastic-laminated canopy, shredding everything in its path. His fighter flew on for several minutes, its pilot sightless and bleeding, before crashing into the low mountains.
“Angelina! Twelve o’clock high! Another MiG coming in fast ...”
Bathed in the bright sunburst of the descending flares, the MiG-25 attacking from the nose had a solid visual contact on the intruder. The Old Dog was approaching a high ridge line, very close to the ridge but well above the snow-covered valley behind, and the attacking MiG was well above the bomber, which was perfectly highlighted. The Russian pilot had to strain, but even after the flare plunged the sky back into darkness the bomber was still visible.
He refocused his eyes on the heads-up display for a few seconds, rapidly checking his instruments to see if he could establish a more reliable shot on the bomber below him. The infrared seeker had not locked on—that would have been difficult unless he was behind the B-52. His tracking radar was randomly locking onto hundreds of targets all over the scope— completely jammed. Useless. A B-52, he knew, carried more jamming power than ten MiG-25s combined. He shut the radar off, banked hard to the left and began to dive at the bomber, fighting to keep it in sight as he approached the ridge . . .
“He’s closing fast,” McLanahan called out. “Ten miles.”
Angelina had to take a few precious seconds to select a Scorpion missile and align it with McLanahan’s steering signals, then launched the Mach three missile within six seconds of McLanahan’s second warning. Still, in that time the MiG had halved the distance between them.
The MiG’s warning receivers immediately detected the missile launch and the pilot quickly switched hands on the stick, activated the forward deception jammers with his right hand, switched hands again and hit the chaff-dispenser on his control stick.
A B-52 launching an air-to-air missile! It was worse than he ever imagined. He could easily see the fiery plume behind the missile below him, pointed his fighter directly at the missile, showing the missile only his smallest radar profile.
The glare from the missile spoiled his night vision some, but the bomber was still in sight. The MiG pilot saw a slight shift in the shape of the missile’s plume—instead of a round dot, it was a bit more oblong. He smiled and relaxed his grip on the control stick. The American missile had locked onto one of the false targets his jammers had created. Instantly he released another bundle of chaff and pulled right and up on his stick. The missile’s egg-shaped ball of fire became a long, orange line as it harmlessly passed underneath his MiG.
The pilot, who had his eyes squinted against the explosion he had feared as he watched the missile streak past, now opened his eyes—the huge B-52 was centered in his gunsights.
Even so he felt he was a heartbeat too late—he should have been firing his cannon before the B-52 entered his sights. He shoved the stick down now to lead the target more, but the snow-covered ridge line popped into view ahead of the bomber. He had only an instant left. His finger closed on the trigger and held it until trees began to show on the edge of the ridge, then released the trigger and hauled back on the stick with all his strength . . .
“The missile missed,” Ormack answered as he watched the Scorpion disappear into the night.
“Break right, ” McLanahan told him, watching the radar target grow to horrifying size.
The split-second the Soviet pilot had wasted realizing he was too late for a real kill had saved the Old Dog’s life. Twenty-millimeter shells plowed into the leading edge of the Old Dog’s left wing where Elliott’s cockpit windows had been an instant before. The shells ripped into the left Scorpion missile pylon, destroying half of the remaining missiles. The explosions would have ripped the wing apart, but one ricocheting shell fired a jettison squib in the pylon and the entire burning pylon exploded into space. The pylon missed the remaining fragments of the Old Dog’s V-tail and the Stinger airmine rocket cannon.
The MiG’s strafing track continued through the wing and fuselage, piercing the number-two main center wing and forward body-fuel tanks, but the shells created no deadly spark and dissipated most of their heat in the fibersteel skin of the Megafortress.
Elliott could see sparks flying from the hardpoint where the Scorpion pylon used to be. “Angelina, the left missile pylon’s hit.’’
McLanahan glanced up and checked the selective jettison board on his weapons-monitoring panel. “We lost the whole damned pylon,’’ he called out, deselecting jettison power from the pylon circuitry.
Angelina immediately reached to her overhead circuit breaker panel and pulled a group of circuit breakers. “Pylon deactivated.”
“That left wing must be getting awful light.” McLanahan tried for a bit of grim humor.
It was wasted on Wendy, who called out, “Fighter at six o’clock.”
“Here he comes again.”
“I see him,’’ Angelina said as she steered the circle-cursor on the radar return and hit the TRACK button, then began aligning a weapons-bay Scorpion for launch.
The Soviet pilot saw the missile lock-on indication on his threat receiver and immediately activated his own electronic countermeasures.
Angelina depressed the TRACK button once again. The green light stayed on but the circle-cursor kept on walking away from the return.
“He’s jamming me,’’ she said. “Switching to manual track.” She deselected radar-track, grabbed the steering handles and carefully tried to position the circle-cursor on the fighter.
The Soviet pilot noted the persistent missile-alert signal even though his jammers were breaking the radar lock. He promptly began a series of random S-turns, rapidly closing the distance between them, trying to push his MiG-25 closer to the bomber’s altitude.
The Old Dog cleared the ridge line by a scant forty feet, the wingtip vortices snapping fir trees like straw as it skimmed the ridge. Rooster-tails of snow and dirt were blasted dozens of feet in the air.
Suddenly, a large green TERRAIN DATA PROCESS and TERRAIN DATA GOOD readout flashed across McLanahan’s computer monitor. “Computer terrain-following is active,” McLanahan said. “Clear to engage.”
Elliott and Ormack quickly engaged the terrain-following-pitch autopilot to the navigation computers. Now the computer, which already knew the elevation of all the terrain around them for thousands of square miles and had the accuracy of the satellite navigator for positioning, would put the Old Dog at the lowest possible altitude but climb her in an
ticipation of terrain ahead.
Through the MiG-25’s windscreen the B-52 could be seen diving sharply toward the rocks below and disappearing. From radar, infrared, visual, everything. The pilot searched. No sign. The huge bomber had disappeared. Swearing into his mask, he throttled back and climbed to begin a search.
“I can’t find him,’’ Angelina said. “I can’t lock onto him. His jamming is too powerful. We can try a home-on jam launch but we don’t have the missiles to waste.’’
“He’s back there, waiting for us to pop up into him,” Luger said, staring at the radar altimeter readout on his computer screen. “He’s not going to drive into our laps.” He sucked in his breath as the readout dipped to thirty feet before climbing again to a hundred feet above the ground.
“We’ve got to suck him in,” McLanahan said. “Draw him in, then chop the power.”
“He’ll blow us out of the sky,” Ormack said. “We’re staying down here.”
“He’s also vectoring in his buddies,” McLanahan said. “If he doesn’t get us in the next few minutes he’s gonna have lots of help.”
“We’ve got a dozen missiles left,” Ormack said.
“Great, but we can’t take on all of them.” McLanahan shook his head.
Ormack was about to answer when Elliott put a hand on his wrist. “We have no choice, John.”
“If we can’t find him, General,” Ormack yelled over the roar of the turbofans, “if we lose him ... if he shoots first . . .”
“We’ve got to be the hunter, not the hunted,” Elliott said. The two pilots looked at each other. Then Elliott took the throttles from Ormack, placed a tight grip on the yoke and gave it a shake.
“I’ve got the aircraft.”
Ormack looked at the exhausted general as a wave of turbulence rumbled through the bomber. “We’re taking a big gamble, General.”
“Now’s the time for one, John.”
Ormack nodded. “You’ve got the aircraft, General.”
“Thanks, John. Stand by on airbrakes and gear.”
Ormack reached across the throttle quadrant and put his hand on the gear lever.
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