McLanahan returned to his seat, his body jerking from side to side from the turbulence as the Old Dog crested another ridgeline in the mountains of the Kamchatka. He stared silently down at his worktable.
“All done playing Florence Nightingale?” Luger said as he reached down to his right thigh, touched, felt nothing. But when he brought his hand up he found it covered with sticky, darkening blood.
He finally met McLanahan’s eyes. “Strong like a bull.” He readjusted his headset, lowered the microphone to his lips. “Nav’s up and okay,” he said over the interphone.
General Elliott began, “David . . . ?”
“Lost my radar, sir,” Luger said, forcing iron back into his voice. He tried to punch up a systems-diagnostic routine on his terminal but only a few buttons were left on his keyboard. He strained across the worktable to use McLanahan’s terminal. “Looks like we’re still talking to the Scorpion missiles through our controls but I’ve no search video. All the terrain-following computers look okay, all the weapons controls are out but that’s a moot point now ...”
“All right,” Elliott said, trying to steady his voice. “Crew we’ve lost cabin pressurization. Wendy, Angelina, can you see that guy out there?”
“I’ve got his search radar shut down,” Wendy replied. “I lost him right after he launched . . .” It was, of course, no longer just “a launch”—the Russian had hit one of their own, hurt him . . .
“Wendy, I’m okay,” Luger said quickly, as though sensing her thoughts. “You . . . you ladies nail him ...”
“My scope’s clear,” Angelina said. “We’ll get him.”
“Sure . . . they’ve taken their best shot and they couldn’t flame us. Sure . . .”
* * *
Yuri Papendreyov angrily switched frequencies on his attack radar. The heavy jamming from the American B-52 attacker had begun precisely when he hit the missile-launch button on his control stick. The missile left the rail with a good steady TRACK indication but he lost it soon afterward. He saw no primary or secondary explosions, saw no crash indications and the jamming was continuing harder than ever. So he had to assume his AA-7s had missed, and that he had to start all over again—but this time closer to the mountains, at least three hundred meters above the bomber with no radar and with three thousand kilograms less fuel.
He leveled off at the minimal sector altitude, throttled back to ninety percent and began a slow roll to the left to try to reacquire the B-52. The auto-frequency shift mode of his attack radar, which randomly changed frequencies to try to defeat the B-52,s jamming, was all but useless. The shift was too little, too late, and it always seemed to shift right into a jammed band. Yuri changed the frequency all the way to the lower end of the scale and swept the area for the bomber.
Who would have believed it? he thought. A B-52 in the middle of restricted Soviet airspace. A lone B-52, at that. No escort, no wave of cruise missiles preceding it, no mutual defenses, no B-l, no FB-111 raid like the one on Libya and Syria two years before. One B-52.
Well, why not, Yuri said to himself as he began to search another twenty-degree quadrant. The plan was working very damn well so far. The B-52 had obviously flown several thousand kilometers, drove right up the Kamchatka, and dropped a bomb on just about the most important piece of land in the Soviet Union next to Red Square itself.
There ... at the very bottom of his radar . . . just before another wave of interference flooded his scope, a cross with a circle around it appeared, then disappeared. Hostile radar emissions. The B-52,s own radar, the one that obviously was used to steer whatever weapon they had launched against him, had given them away.
He rolled further left on an intercept course. Switching the attack radar to STANDBY to avoid giving himself away—it was useless, anyway, with the heavy jamming—he maneuvered to parallel the B-52’s course. The radar emission from the B-52 was sporadic—they were looking for him, he was sure, but being careful not to transmit too long. Not careful enough, though. They transmitted on their radar long enough for him to compute their track.
He set the infrared search-and-track seeker to maximum depression and waited for the supercooled eye of the seeker to find the B-52—there was, he knew, the possibility of the seeker locking onto a warm building with the angle so low, but eight jet engines should be brighter than anything else in the sky or on the ground right now. He was already at the minimum safe altitude for the sector he was in, and without solid visual contact on the terrain, descending any lower would be suicide. He increased throttle to ninety-five percent and waited. Soon, he was sure, the range would decrease to the point where the seeker would lock-on, and then he’d stay high and pick off the intruder . . .
When a few minutes later the infrared seeker locked onto a hot target there was no mistaking the size or intensity of the target. The infrared seeker had a longer range than the AA-6 missile, so, he realized, he would need to close in on the B-52 a bit more.
Yuri thought about using the attack radar once more to get a range-only estimate on the B-52, but that would give him away. If he was in range of a surveillance-radar site they could give him a range to the B-52, but for some reason he couldn’t hear the station at Korf or Ossora. Probably too low, too close to the mountains ... if he couldn’t hear them on the radio they surely couldn’t see him on radar.
Yuri’s track had been fairly constant for the last few moments, meaning that the B-52 was making no evasive maneuvers. He relaxed his grip on his control stick and throttles . . . maybe they didn’t know he was behind them. The B-52’s tail radar hadn’t been activated for several minutes. He had to launch before they spotted him on that tail radar—
Suddenly he felt it—a slight shudder through the titanium body of his Fulcrum fighter. He scanned his engine instruments for a malfunction, but already suspected the cause—wake turbulence from the B-52’s engines, he was closing quickly. He stared as hard as he could out the canopy of his Fulcrum but couldn’t see it.
But that too was unnecessary. A moment later a green light spewed on his weapon-control panel... his selected AA-6 heat-seeking missiles were tracking the target.
He released the safeties on the launch button on his control stick and—
A scratchy, faded message blared on both of his command radios. “For all Ossora and Korf units, code yellow. Repeat, code yellow. Acknowledge immediately and comply.”
His fingers didn’t move from the missile launch button, but neither did it squeeze. A general forces recall . . .
“All Ossora units, code yellow. Acknowledge and comply.”
He tried to force himself to make a decision. He had the B-52 in his sights, but if he transmitted on his radio, so close to the B-52, they might hear or detect his transmission and evade or reattack. The Korf interceptor units had all responded immediately to the recall instructions. All of the Ossora units had probably responded as well—all but him. His career was probably already in jeopardy. A young pilot commanding a long-range fighter, capable of reaching Japan or Alaska, who didn’t respond immediately to recall instructions could easily end up attacking vegetables in a warehouse in some isolated Siberian base. Or worse.
“Vawl. ” Papendreyov swore aloud, maintained track on the target, activated his command radio and said, “Element seven acknowledges. Triangulate position immediately. Stand by. Closing on intruder.”
“Element seven, comply immediately with instructions,” came the voice once again. His number had been called this time—he was indeed the last one to rejoin at the navigation beacon over Ossora. His ticket to Ust-Melechenskiy three hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle was probably already being processed . . .
Fat hare-brained dogs, Yuri let loose, this time to himself. Enraged, he pressed the missile-launch button and began a climbing left turn toward Ossora . . . before realizing that the green IR TRACK light had long extinguished. The two hundred thousand ruble missiles vanished into the darkness.
Yuri proceeded to curse all his superiors, t
he flight commander, the ground controllers, the command post officers and everyone else he could think of on his way back to the rendezvous point. He wasn’t worried about that icy base in Siberia—he was worried about exactly how he’d wring the neck of the first person unlucky enough to get in his way.
General Elliott and Lt. Col. Ormack, acting in unison, forced the Old Dog lower and lower into the mountains. The terrain-following computer was already set to COLA, the lowest setting possible in the automatic mode, but with the threat of a Soviet fighter on their tail, even a hundred feet above the ground was like ten thousand. There were constant warning beeps as the automatic-climb commands were overridden by the two pilots, and the bomber’s radar altimeter, measuring the exact distance between the bomber’s belly and the ground, occasionally entered the double-digit area.
Dave Luger’s one good eye, and both of Patrick McLanahan’s, were on the ground-mapping display of McLanahan’s ten-inch scope. The two navigators carefully called out even the smallest peaks and ridges that could pose a threat. Elliott and Ormack reacted in sync—one man forcing the bomber lower, the other scanning the instruments and nudging it higher in response to the warnings from the terrain-following computer and what he heard over the interphone.
“He was so close,” Wendy said, “his radio signal was so strong I swear I heard him over interphone.” She swallowed, studying her video displays. “His signal is decreasing ... I think he’s leaving ...”
“My scope’s clear,’’ Angelina reported, shivering for a moment. “I saw him for a second, but he’s gone.”
Elliott relaxed his grip on the yoke and let the terrain-following computer control the Old Dog again. “Well, that was close. I saw the missiles hit out there . . . they were so damned close, and we didn’t even know he was out there. We didn’t even know . . .”
22 Ossora Airfield
Yuri Papendreyov stood at attention before his squadron leader’s desk in the PVO-Strany Interceptor Squadron ready-room at Ossora Airfield. The squadron leader, a thin, aged naval commander named Vasholtov, still on active duty from the Great Patriotic War, paced behind his desk. Not a word had been spoken yet, even though Papendreyov had been standing at attention for two minutes.
He had to chew this young Papendreyov cub out a few minutes longer, the squadron leader thought to himself—although that didn’t always mean a verbal tirade. The squadron—and his superiors—expected a good five to ten minutes of closed-door time, perhaps a slammed door, a curse or two, then an administrative reprimand. It would go no farther than the squadron records—good pilots who didn’t drink on the job were hard to find in the cold, barren Kamchatka—and the reprimand would disappear after a month or two. How he hated these chewing-out sessions. But it had to be done to maintain the discipline and integrity of his unit.
“You have disappointed your entire squadron, Papendreyov,” the old squadron leader finally said, glancing at the young Fulcrum pilot. “Failure immediately to acknowledge a recall instruction is almost as serious as treason. Or desertion.” The youngster didn’t blink. Didn’t move a muscle—most young pilots would be melting at the mention of the word “treason.”
Vashaltov studied the youngster for a moment. Papendreyov could have been from Berlin or even further west—Copenhagen or Britain. He was of average height but broad-shouldered with close-shaved blond curls and narrow blue eyes caged straight ahead. His boots were polished to a high gloss, every zipper was closed and every patch on his flight suit was perfectly aligned. Five years from now this young pilot would probably be a flight commander . . . The new breed, Valshaltov thought, but just now this “new breed” needed a tongue-lashing. Valsholtov knew how fast unrest, boredom, lack of discipline and insubordination grew in a unit where the men, especially the young ones, thought the commander didn’t care. Might as well get it over with . . .
“I suppose you will now tell me that your radio was malfunctioning.” “There was nothing wrong with my radio, sir.”
“Silence, Papendreyov. Silence or I will have your wings here and now.” The squadron leader circled the young pilot a few times like a shark circling in for the kill. Papendreyov remained at rigid attention.
“Ice-and-snow-removal detail for forty-eight hours for that outburst, Flight Captain. Perhaps a few nights in the Siberian winds will cool down your hot-headedness. Pray I don’t put you on that detail permanently.”
Papendreyov blurted out, “I had the intruder, Squadron Leader. I saw the American B-52. I took a missile shot at it.”
“You what . . . ?”
Papendreyov still stood firmly at attention. “I found the B-52 at three hundred meters above the ground, squadron leader. I pursued him down to seventy meters—”
“Seventy meters? You took your interceptor to seventy meters? Without authorization? Without—”
“I found him. I found him on radar but his jamming was too strong. So I locked onto him on the infrared search-and-track system. I closed to within three kilometers of him.”
Vasholtov stifled his annoyance at the interruption. “Go on.”
“I was then ordered back to base. I waited as long as I could. I fired just before obeying the order to return but I had lost track by then. They must have detected my radio trans—”
“You fired on the B-52?” In forty years he had never heard of any man under his command actually firing on anything or anyone except target drones. “Did you ... hit it?”
“My first radar shot . . . yes, I believe I hit him,” Papendreyov said, wishing he hadn’t sounded so unsure, so hesitant—now it sounded like he was lying.
“You could have been killed,” Vasholtov said. “You could have crashed at any time. Flying at seventy meters at night in the mountains with the flight director radar down . . . you risked too much. This will have to be reported—”
“Let me go after him,” Papendreyov interrupted once again. “I can find him again. He is using a tail-mounted radar that can be detected for forty kilometers. He is only traveling five hundred, perhaps six hundred kilometers an hour ... I can catch him. I can stay low enough for the infrared system to lock onto him. He cannot detect a fighter closing on him if radar is not used.”
“Not use radar ... ?” Valsholtov was almost too flabbergasted to reply. Papendreyov had been down in the Kamchatka mountain range at night—he had only recently been certified for night duty—at seventy meters, about a thousand meters lower than he should have been, without using his radar. He had broken more rules in one hour than the entire squadron had done in months. The Defense Force Commander would retire him for sure when they saw this report.
“You are lucky, very lucky,” Vasholtov said, “to be alive. Very, very lucky. The rules of engagement exist to protect stupid young hotheads like you. You broke at least four of them—not including the crime of ignoring a unit recall-order. You are very close to a flight tribunal, flight captain. Very close.”
“Punish me, then,” Papendreyov said defiantly. “Send me to Ust- Meryna or Gorky. Take my wings. Just let me take one more crack at the Americans—”
“Enough.” Vasholtov’s tobacco-singed throat throbbed from all his yelling. “You will report to the intelligence branch and give them a complete debriefing on your supposed contact with the American B-52. Then you will immediately report to your barracks. I’ll have to decide what to do with you—give you to a flight tribunal or a criminal board.”
“Please, tovarisch, ” Papendreyov said, his sharp blue eyes now round and soft. “I deserve punishment, squadron leader, severe punishment, but I also deserve to shoot down this intruder. I know where to find him and how to take him. Please ...”
“Get out,” Vasholtov ordered, dropping into his rough wooden chair before he collapsed into it. “Get out before I have your insubordinate hide arrested.”
Papendreyov’s round eyes hardened and narrowed. He snapped to unbending attention, saluted, spun on a heel and left the office.
Papendreyov quickly return
ed to his barracks room as ordered—without stopping at the flight intelligence branch. He turned on the light to his desk and fished out a pen and paper. As he wrote he picked up the telephone and dialed.
“Alert maintenance, crew sergeant speaking.”
“Starshiy Serzhant Bloiaki, this is Flight Captain Papendreyov. I am calling from the ready room. Is one-seven-one combat ready?”
“One-seven-one, sir? Your plane? The one you just returned—”
“Of course, my plane, sergeant. Is it ready?”
“Sir... we... it has been towed to recovery area B, sir, but it hasn’t—”
“Starshiy Serzhant Bloiaki, this is not like you,” Papendreyov said. “This is the worst time not to get the orders. My plane was to be immediately reconfigured with one four hundred decaliter centerline drop tank and four infrared missiles. It was to be ready on the hour.” He paused, then said quietly, ‘Til have to tell squadron leader Vasholtov that my sortie will be delayed—”
“That won’t be necessary,” Bloiaki said quickly. “One drop tank and four infrared missiles . . . they will be ready in fifteen minutes, sir.”
Papendreyov checked his watch. “It will be ready in ten minutes or we will both have a chat with Squadron Commander Vasholtov. I must refile my flight plan once more,” he said, finishing his hurried scribbling. “I’ll be out there right away.”
He hung up the phone and went to his bureau, took one last long loving gaze at the photo of his wife and infant daughter, then opened the top drawer. As he studied his wife’s dark chestnut hair and his daughter’s blonde curly locks he began stuffing his pockets with packets of freeze- dried survival food and dried beef. He quickly unzipped his flight suit and put on a second thermal shirt over his flame-proof underwear, and replaced his lightweight flight boots with insulated flying boots. He touched the picture of his wife, then put on his flight jacket, gloves and fur hat and hurried toward the flightline.
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