Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01 (53 page)

 
          
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 anticipation 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.

           
“Wendy? Angelina?”

           
Angelina nodded at Wendy, who
reported, “Ready, General.” “Landing and taxi light-switches off. Setting two
thousand feet.” Elliott twisted the clearance plane knob from COLA to 2000, and
the Old Dog’s SST nose angled skyward.

           
The Soviet pilot was busy cursing
himself and his low-powered radar when the American B-52 suddenly appeared from
nowhere just off to the right of his MiG’s nose. The radar range gate
immediately set, azimuth locked on and his last AA-3 radar missile aligned and
reported ready for launch. “He’s right
behind
us,” Angelina called out.

 
          
“Missile
alert,” Wendy followed, and hit the right chaff ejector. “Jink left.”

           
Elliott put the Old Dog in a sharp
turn to the left just as the MISSILE ALERT indication changed to a MISSILE
LAUNCH.

           
“Missile launch, break left!” Wendy
punched out eight bundles of chaff from the right ejector as Elliott threw the
bomber from a twenty to a forty-five degree bank to the left.

 
          
The
MiG pilot watched in frustration as another huge radar target appeared on his
scope. The aiming reticle moved across to the bigger, brighter, unmoving blob
just as he thumbed the LAUNCH button... and watched as his last missile
disappeared into empty space.

 
          
Immediately
he shoved the throttles of his twin Turmansky engines to maximum afterburner
and swerved to the left to get into cannon-firing position . . .

 
          
“Range
decreasing rapidly,” Angelina said. “Still no automatic lock-on. I’m setting
the detonation range for the airmines manually.”

 
          
“Range
decreasing,” Wendy reported. “Stand by for a break to the right.”

           
“If we have our gear and airbrakes
hanging out,” Ormack said, “and then break to evade a missile we’ll stall for
sure. We may not have enough altitude to recover.”

           
“Three miles and closing fast,”
Angelina said.

 
          
“If
he was going to launch one, he’d do it now,” Wendy said. “Two miles.” She was
staring hard at the threat video. The bat-wing interceptor threat symbol
hovered behind them, inching closer and closer. “Approaching one mile . . .
now. Hit
it.”

 
          
“Gear.
Airbrakes six,” Elliott ordered. Ormack dropped the landing- gear handle and
flipped the airbrake lever full up. The Old Dog pitched down, throwing everyone
hard against his shoulder straps. Elliott brought the power back to eighty
percent, then quickly back to full military thrust as the initial buffet to
stall again rumbled through the bomber. He had lost a thousand feet before he
was able to bring the Old Dog under control.

 
          
The
Russian pilot wasn’t caught unaware. He had just throttled back to cut his
closure rate on the B-52 when he noticed the radar range gate rapidly
decreasing.

 
          
He
immediately disregarded the indication. He had no radar-guided missiles to
launch anyway, and the B-52’s jamming probably had broken the range lock.
Catching glimpses of the huge bomber’s outline against the snowy backdrop, he
kept his power in minimum afterburner and rested his finger against the cannon
trigger.

 
          
The
range gate wound past one thousand meters—well inside firing range. He stepped
on the right rudder to completely align himself, and took a deep breath.

 
          
He
saw several bright flashes of flame from the rear of the bomber, instinctively
rolled his fighter left to begin S-turning behind the B-52. The .50-caliber
machine guns could never hit the bomber without reliable radar guidance, he
thought, and his own twenty-millimeter shells had a greater range and
reliability. He started a right roll and pressed the trigger.

 
          
The
flashes of light suddenly grew into huge, pulsing shafts of color. Immediately
he threw his fighter into ninety degrees of bank to the right and pulled on the
stick, breaking hard away. He caught a glimpse of his airspeed indicator—in his
attempt to match speed with the intruder he had allowed his airspeed to
decrease drastically.

 
          
He
rolled until the stall-warning horn came on again, then rolled out. His stick
would not respond to his control. He was sinking fast, in the grip of a
near-stall. His MiG-25 wasn’t made for low-altitude intercepts, it was designed
for fast high-altitude dogfighting. It was with huge relief that he saw his
airspeed increasing steadily.
Ochin.
In a moment, he thought, he’d finish this
Amirikanskaya.

 
          
He
looked out the left side of his canopy just in time to see a colorful line of
fireworks explode less than fifty meters outside his canopy, the blossoms of
light reminding him of starburst fireworks he had once seen—big and bright with
thousands of tiny stars racing out from a red center.

 
          
A
moment later those stars riddled the entire left side of his MiG-25. The canopy
became one giant mass of holes and jagged cuts, yet somehow stayed intact, but
the left engine flamed out immediately, then seized as the engine oil drained
from a hundred punctures in the engine cowling.

 
          
The
radar signature of the MiG blossomed momentarily as the Soviet pilot ejected
from his stricken fighter, but neither Wendy nor Angelina noticed. Angelina was
congratulating her partner, who was busy watching her frequency video display.
One transmitter band at the top of her display began to show low-power,
high-energy activity.

 
          
She
watched it, studied it—and her sweat turned cold.

 
          
“Activity,
Wendy?” Ormack asked amid the quiet jubilation of the Old Dog’s crew.

 
          
“Search
radar . . .
twelve o’clock
.”

 
          
“Identification?”

 
          
Wendy
answered, but the words were uttered too softly to be understood.

 
          
“Say
again?”

 
          
“Kavaznya.”
Wendy’s voice was flat now, emotionless. “Kavaznya. The laser. It’s looking for
us.”

 
          
T
he throttles were at maximum—the right
outboard engines had been pulled back to ninety percent to compensate for the
destroyed number one engine but all the rest were at full military power.

 
          
General
Elliott tightened the throttle friction lever on the center throttle
quadrant—he wasn’t going to move any one of those throttles unless he had to
shut down another engine. The number two engine had been restarted for the
target run, but the RPMs were erratic and the vibration from the engine pod
threatened to shear what remained of the left wing loose from the fuselage.

 
          
“Bomb
run checklist,’’ Dave Luger announced.

 
          
McLanahan
nodded, taking a quick glance at his partner. The navigator had one finger on
the checklist page ready to read off each step, but his hands were a shade
unsteady.

 
          
“You
all right, buddy? You look a little nervous.’’

 
          
“Me?
Nervous? Why should I be nervous? Just because we’re about to send the Russians
a candygram loaded with TNT? What’s to be nervous about?’’

 
          
“Think
positive, the man said.”

 
          
“I’ve
been trying—”

 
          
McLanahan
interrupted. “We’re going to shove this one down their throats and get out of
here quick like a bunny. Okay?”

 
          
“Yeah,
right, like a bunny.”

 
          
McLanahan
turned back to his instrument panel.

 
          
“Weapons
monitor select switch,” Luger recited.

 
          
“Center
forward.”

 
          
“Low
altitude calibrated mode selector.”

 
          
“Automatic.”

           
“Target coordinates, elevation, and
ballistics.”

 
          
“Set,
displayed, checked, locked in,” McLanahan then made a swift check of the
coordinates. “Ballistics set for glide mode.” His response was reflexive; he
had no master printout to check the coordinates.

 
          
“Consent
switches, pilot and radar,” Luger answered.

 
          
General
Elliott painfully reached back along his left side instrument panel and checked
that the three gang-barred consent switches—the permission switches for the
forward and rear-firing
Scorpion
missiles and the
Striker
glide-bomb
and bomb decoys—were in the full UP position.

 
          
“Pilot’s
switches are—”

 
          
A
warning tone sounded in the crew’s headsets, and the Old Dog pitched violently
skyward, its pointy nose at a high, unnatural angle.

 
          
Ormack
hit the AUTOPILOT DISCONNECT button on his control yoke and pushed the nose
back toward the ground. “
Flyup
. Nav,
clear terrain for me and get us back down. Radar, what happened?

 
          
McLanahan
was already investigating. “The terrain-data computer dropped off* the line.”
He looked over at Luger. “Dave, clear terrain for him. I’m going to reset the
computer and reload the data.”

 
          
“High
terrain, three miles,” Luger called out. “I’m starting to paint over it. Don’t
descend yet.”

 
          
McLanahan’s
gloved fingers flew over the switches. “Computer’s back on-line.” He flipped
the cartridge lever from LOCK to READ. “It’ll take a few moments more.”

 
          
“The
Kavaznya radar is getting stronger,” Wendy reported. “Well above detection
threshold now.”

 
          
“Clear
of terrain for twenty miles,” Luger said. “Start a slight descent. Possible
high terrain in ten miles.”

 
          
“Fighter
radars have all gone down,” Wendy said. “The Kavaznya radar has blotted them
all out—or the fighters are now getting their vectors from that big radar . .
.”

 
          
McLanahan
glanced at the radar altimeter readout as the LOADING DATA indication appeared
on his screen. The Old Dog’s fail-safe flyup maneuver, designed to protect the
aircraft in case of a failure of any of the components of the terrain-following
computer, had zoomed the huge bomber to over two thousand feet above the
terrain. The engines were at full military thrust, holding the bomber in the
sky.

 
          
“Altitude’s
still increasing,” McLanahan warned.

 
          
“Dammit,
I know,” Ormack said. He leaned on the yoke, helping Elliott force the SST nose
of the Old Dog toward the protection of the rough
Kamchatka
hills. The Old Dog crested the flyup at
twenty-three hundred feet above the ground before Ormack and Elliott together
finally had it descending again.

           
“Fighters at seven o’clock,”
Angelina called out. “Maneuvering to intercept. . She steered the circle cursor
of the airmine rocket tracker over one of the attackers but an electronic
quiver in the scope sent a shower of interference waves through the display,
sending the tracking cursor spinning off the radar return. “Something’s
screwing up my radar.”

 
          
“Terrain-data
computer is back on-line,” McLanahan reported. Ormack immediately reengaged the
autopilot to the computer, and the Old Dog nosed earthward.

 
          
“First
HARM missile programmed and ready,” Wendy reported to Angelina. “Bay door
coming open.”

 
          
Wendy
hit the LAUNCH button. The aft bomb-bay doors snapped open and the hydraulic
launcher rotated to position one of the High-speed Anti-Radar Missiles on the
bottom launch position. Wendy had already entered the radar’s frequency range
into the missile’s sensor. Powerful ejectors pushed the missile into the
slipstream, its rocket motor ignited and the launcher immediately rotated to
put another HARM missile into launch position.

 
          
Wendy
monitored the HARM TRACK light on her missile status panel, indicating that the
missile had found the source of the preprogrammed frequency transmissions and
was heading straight for it. Suddenly Wendy’s entire threat panel and missile
status board flickered. The HARM TRACK light illuminated again for a moment,
then disappeared.

 
          
“It’s
the Kavaznya radar,” Wendy said. “It’s creating the interference in my
equipment. The HARM missile won’t track ...”

 
          
Luger
held his breath as a stream of ridgelines rushed toward them, their shadows
speeding toward the edge of his wedge-shaped radar scope. As the Old Dog
climbed over them, he stared transfixed—

 
          
“Dave!
We got the computer back,” McLanahan said as he finished recycling the
computer. “Let’s finish the checklist.” He reached across to his left
instrument panel and flipped a red-guarded switch up. “Radar’s consent switch
on.”

 
          
Luger
had to tear his eyes away from the scope to read the checklist. “Weapon and
decoy power.”

 
          
“On
and checked,” McLanahan said, and moved the tracking handle once more to check
that the
Striker's
seeker-head was
still activated.

 
          
“Bomb-release
lights.”

 
          
Elliott
sat forward and pressed-to-test his indicator lights. “Off and checked.

 
          
“Off
and checked down here too,” McLanahan replied.

 
          
“Release
configuration check,” Luger read. “Special weapons lock.”

 
          
Suddenly
the Old Dog threw itself skyward once more. Ormack swore, punched off the
autopilot once again. Immediately Luger’s full attention was riveted on the
narrow wedge-radar display. “High terrain, five miles.”

           
“Reset the computer,” Ormack
ordered, but McLanahan was already resetting the computer power-switches. He
tried the circuit reset-switch. It corrected the fault but only for a few
seconds, and then the computer faulted once again. He tried several more quick
resets. “Something’s wrong, it’s not resetting. I’ll have to recycle it.
Maintain heading . . . goddamn, the inertial navigation computer died. We’ve
lost navigation information. I’ll try to reset . . .”

 
          
“Just
do
it,” Ormack said. “Nav . . .”

 
          
“Clear
to descent,” Luger told him. “
Slowly
.
Small ridge three miles, but we should clear it okay—”

 
          
“Fighters
are closing,” from Angelina. “It’s hard to keep tracking them, my radar keeps
spooking out.”

 
          
“It’s
Kavaznya,” Wendy told her. “The radar is interfering with
all
our equipment.”

 
          
“We’ll
be flying right
over
that thing,”
Elliott said.

 
          
“Pilot,
turn right! Fighter swinging over to
eight o’clock
on a left quartering attack—”

 
          
“McLanahan,
can I turn?”

 
          
“We’ll
get shot down if you don’t.
Do
it.”
The Old Dog banked to the right and moments later the muffled puffs of three
airmine rockets rumbled through the bomber.

 
          
“Can’t
tell if I got them . . .” Angelina said.

 
          
“I’ve
got nothing to jam,” Wendy said, pounding in frustration on her ejection seat
armrests. Her threat display was now a solid sheet of white— every frequency
band that was possible to be displayed was filled with endless waves of energy.
A jamming package put up against the energy transmitted by the nuclear-powered
Kavaznya radar was lost in the spillover created by Kavaznya radar’s sheer
power.

 
          
“Clear
of terrain for thirty miles.” Luger double-checked his radar. They had cleared
the last of the high coastal mountain ranges surrounding Kavaznya. At the edge
of the scope was blackness—the
Bering Sea
,
he suddenly realized. Only a few hundred miles further on was home— friendly
territory. Right now, though, it seemed like a million miles away.

 
          
At
the very edge of the sea was a huge, compact blob of radar returns. He got two
sweeps of the radar on the Kavaznya complex itself before the ground-map scope
blanked out.

 
          
“Just
lost my radar, Kavaznya’s at
twelve o’clock
, thirty miles.”

 
          
McLanahan
heard the warning and glanced over at Luger’s blank five-inch radar scope, but
he was concentrated on recovering the navigation and terrain-data computers.
The first computer recycle failed, so he began the second.

           
“Try recycling your radar, Dave,”
McLanahan told him. Luger furiously switched the radar controls from STBY to
TRANSMIT. The radar scope would paint a picture for only a few sweeps, then
blank out again.

 
          
“It’s
not working, we’re blind down here.”

 
          
“You
said we were clear of terrain—the pilots should be able to see enough out the
cockpit windows to keep us from hitting the ground. We’ll use the radar as much
as we can later on. Keep the radar down until we make our escape turn.”

 
          
“Two
fighters at
six o’clock
,”
from Angelina; then, “My radar’s failed, I can’t see them anymore ...”