Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (36 page)

 
          
He
had never paid much attention to the Megafortress Plus project, thinking of it
as just another one of Elliott’s eccentric boondoggles. Another underestimation
. . .

 
          
A
quick flash of his all-aspect-attack radar showed the B-52 maneuvering hard
right, moving back into attack position, its huge wings pulling it easily
around and behind him. The enormous plane had to be pulling at least four or
five G’s, Maraklov thought. It was enough force to rip the wings off any
conventional bomber and many fighters as well. Ormack obviously meant business,
and he had the hardware to back him up. This was no place for a fight, even
with a supposedly decrepit B-52.

 
          
ANTARES,
however, always favoring the offensive, was begging for a fight and had
recommended a high yo-yo maneuver—a hard vertical pull, zoom over the top, then
an inverted dive to lock-on—to pull behind and above the B-52 to get into
missile-firing position. Maraklov queried about fuel: now he was two thousand
pounds
below
the fuel curve instead
of two thousand pounds above it. He had no time to waste with a missile pass.
Every time ANTARES activated its attack radar, even in small, frequency-agile
bursts, the B-52 would jam it. ANTARES was being forced to use older and older
data to process an attack. Besides, if the B-52 could jam DreamStar’s
phased-array radar, it could easily jam the AIM-i2o’s conventional
pulse-Doppler active radar. It was definitely time to bug out. Maraklov
canceled the right high-G yo-yo and pulled into a sharp left turn, using radar
to clear terrain until he could get established on course again.

 
          
ANTARES
tried to tell him, but Maraklov wasn’t listening— tried to tell him that a
left
turn was precisely the wrong thing
to do.

 
          
He
barely had time to roll wings-level when the missile- launch warning hammered
into his consciousness. This time it wasn’t a head-to-head engagement—the B-52
was in missile- launch position, behind and slightly to the left, the cutoff
angle established, the missile already aiming ahead of its target’s flight
path. Radar, infrared, laser—whatever he had, DreamStar was wide open. The
Scorpion missile was even close enough to be picked up on radar . . .

 
          
But
ANTARES, literally, did not comprehend the meaning of surrender—it would
compute escape and attack options until it ran out of power to energize its
circuitry. And Maraklov, feeling he had no hope of survival, had surrendered
control of DreamStar to ANTARES.

 
          
The
computer took over. Using its high-lift wings and full canard deflection,
DreamStar executed a sharp ninety-degree pitch-up at max afterburner. The
Scorpion missile overshot but turned precisely with DreamStar, arcing nearly up
to twenty-thousand feet before following the guidance signals from the Old Dog
and pitching over hard for the kill. The missile was now aimed straight down,
passing Mach four, locked on, closing in again on DreamStar’s tail.

 
          
With
its canards again in high-lift configuration, DreamStar continued its inverted
roll, screaming below, then back up through the horizon. It was now clawing for
altitude, skimming across the high desert floor by only a few feet. The Scorpion
missile tracked every move, following DreamStar’s high-G loop. The missile
broke Mach five as it closed in on its target ...

           
Which suddenly stopped in mid-air,
then climbed five hundred feet straight up. The missile could make a fourteen-G
turn, far greater than any fighter yet designed, but not even this high-tech
missile could discontinue a Mach-five diving loop and then turned a
ninety-degree corner. The Scorpion missile tracked perfectly, but at such close
range, and moving at almost a mile per second, its turn radius was several
hundred feet greater than its altitude above ground. The missile exploded into
the
Amargosa
Desert
, just a few yards from a truck stop
northwest of
Jackass
Airport
oflF highway 95.

 
          
The
threat gone, the maneuver accomplished, ANTARES switched to offense in less
time than it took for the last of the Old Dog’s missiles to disintegrate into
the hard desert floor. With its attack-radar activated, it quickly searched for
the enemy. At such close range even the Stealth fibersteel skin and radar
energy-absorbing honeycomb arrays couldn’t diminish the huge radar
cross-section of the Megafortress Plus. Lock-on, data transfer, active seeker
lock-on, missile stabilization test, unlock, motor firing, launch.

 
          
The
thing was done before Maraklov really knew it—missile flight time was barely
four seconds . . .

*
 
*
 
*

 
          
“Missile launch
, ” Wendy called over
interphone.
“Break right
”

 
          
Ormack
yanked the control stick hard right, all the way to the stops. Roll-control
jets pushed the right wing down and pulled the left wing up, and nose and tail
thrusters counteracted the adverse left yaw, which increased the roll rate even
more. At fifty degrees of bank the B-52’s right wingtip was no more than two
hundred feet above ground. Ormack pulled back on the stick, letting the Old
Dog’s twin-tails pull the nose around even faster.

 
          
At
the same time, Wendy released five rocket-powered decoys from the left ejector
racks under the tail. The rockets spewed a huge globe of radar-reflecting
tinsel a hundred yards from the B-52, followed by the blinding hot glare of
phosphorous flares. Simultaneously Wendy activated her electronic jammers,
present to the frequency of both DreamStar’s track- while-scan phased-array
radars and the Scorpion missile’s seeker-radar, and pumped over a hundred
thousand watts of energy across that frequency band.

 
          
The
B-52’s decoys flew past the missile’s active radar seeker undetected—it had a
solid lock on the B-52 itself. The seeker radar was blinded by the intense
jamming, but in a millisecond it switched to the most accurate and reliable of
its four backup modes: track on jam. The missile homed in on the center lobe of
the jamming energy from the B-52, following the energy beam the way a hungry
bat follows the echo of its hunting screech, straight to its prey. The missile
flew under the B-52’s tail, past the ECM emitter and under the fuselage to the
right wing, impacting on the number-three engine pod.

 
          
The
right wing, made of composite materials far stronger than any metal, held fast,
but the number five and six engines disintegrated in a cloud of flying metal
and a huge fireball. The fireball lifted the right wing fifty feet into the
air, then dropped it, stalling it out. The left four engines pulled the Old Dog
around in a clockwise spin. None of its huge wings was generating lift now; the
plane was being held aloft only by its forward momentum, like a chewed-up
Frisbee tossed awkwardly into the air.

 
          
Engine-compressor
blades from the number-five engine acted like huge, powerful swords, chopping
through the crew compartment. Jeffrey Khan and Linda Evanston, sitting on the
right side of the plane, were pierced by hundreds of shards of white-hot metal.
Wendy Tork, thrown sideways by the blast, was hit by several pieces of metal.

 
          
Ormack
pulled the control stick to the left and stomped hard on the left rudder pedal.
Fibersteel screamed in protest. The flat spin slowed almost to a stop, but so
did the Megafortress’ airspeed. Ormack knew he had pulled the plane out of its
spin, but the sudden negative G’s told him that the Old Dog was never going to
fly. Wendelstat was screaming, clawing at his lap belt, face distorted. Blood
was coming from places all over his body, his helmeted head tattered from the
impact of flying metal.

 
          
Ormack
reached over to the center console, finding that the centrifugal forces were
gone—it felt as if he was riding a gentle elevator down to the first floor.
Lowering his head caused the cockpit to tilt violently, but he fought off the
sudden vertigo and flipped the
EJECT
warning
switch to
EJECT.

 
          
Downward
ejection for the two navigators in a B-52 bomber was a crap shoot in the best
of circumstances, and Major Edward Frost knew it. Driven by years of
experience, it took him only a few seconds to get his hands on the ejection
ring, get his back straight, chin down, knees and legs braced, elbows tucked
in. He pulled his ejection handle the instant he saw the red
EJECT
warning light illuminate. But
even then it was too late. The zero-point-two-second drogue-parachute ripped
Frost’s ejection seat free, automatically pulling the zero-second ripcord, but
his main parachute barely had time to deploy fully from its backpack before
Frost hit the earth.

 
          
Angelina
Pereira had pushed Wendy back upright in her seat when she saw the bright red
EJECT
light. Still holding Wendy in her
seat with her left hand, she carefully rotated Wendy’s right ejection lever up
and pulled the trigger. The fingers of her left hand broke as Wendy’s armrest
smashed into them, but she didn’t notice the pain as she watched the seat blast
skyward. Then she slammed herself back into her own seat, raised her arming
levers, and pulled both triggers.

 
          
Her
seat malfunctioned. Nothing happened. She reseated her triggers and activated
the backup ballistic actuators, but by then it was too late . . .

 
          
Ormack
heard the loud pops and surges of air as ejection seats left the plane—at least
someone might make it out alive, he thought. Wendelstat had finally collapsed.
There was nothing to do for him—no time to haul him downstairs for manual
bailout. But Khan had a chance. He yanked up on Khan’s left ejection lever and
hit the trigger, watching as his long-time copilot and friend blew clear of the
crippled bomber. Ormack now rotated his own arming levers and pulled the
ejection triggers . . .

 
          
Khan
had promptly been grabbed by the Old Dog’s exhaust and blown several hundred
yards back, away from the impact area, but Ormack had spent precious time
rescuing Khan. He was a hundred feet above ground, his chute filling with wind
and inflating rapidly, when the Old Dog slammed into the
Amargosa
Desert
valley floor. Directly over the aircraft,
face down, in position to watch the end of the B-52 Megafortress Plus, Ormack
was engulfed by the two-mile wide fireball that blossomed over the desert,
consumed by the flames of his beloved aircraft.

 
          
His
last thought was that
somebody
had to
get that son of a bitch James . . .

Over the B-52 crash site,
Amargosa, Nevada

Wednesday, 17 June 1996
, 0712 PDT (1012 EDT)

 
          
IT RESEMBLED
the aftermath of a fire
bombing. Even from five hundred feet in the air, everything within sight was
black—the rocky hills surrounding the crash site had been blackened by fires
and debris. Huge craters in the earth contained burning sections of the mighty
B-52 Megafortress Plus, the heat of the fireball hot enough to melt even the
B-52’s thick carbon and fiberglass skeletal pieces. A mile away the centerwing
junction-box and forward fuselage, the piece that joined the wings to the fuselage
and the largest section of the B-52 still intact, was burning, so hot and so
smoky that firefighters could not get within two hundred yards of it. Debris
was scattered in a ten-square-mile area of devastation, and thick black smoke
obscured half the sky.

 
          
The
helicopter crossed perpendicular to the axis of impact, paralleling route 95
near the evacuated town of
Amargosa
. A large building, a restaurant-and-truck stop complex, was burning
fiercely—one fire truck was spraying surrounding fuel pumps with water to
prevent any massive explosions. Several hundred feet from the edge of the area
a knot of police cars and an ambulance had pulled off the highway and encircled
several dark objects lying in the charred sand.

 
          
“That’s
it,’’ McLanahan shouted, not bothering to use the helicopter’s interphone. “Set
it down there.”

 
          
The
chopper pilot nodded, spoke briefly on the radio, then turned to Brad Elliott.
“Sir, I can’t touch down—I’ve got wheels instead of skids. I’d sink up to the
fuselage in that mess—”

 
          
“Then
hover and drop me off,” McLanahan shouted.

 
          
“The
medevac helicopter is only a few seconds from—”

 
          
“I
don’t give a damn, take me down there.
Now.”
Elliott nodded to the pilot, and the chopper pilot reluctantly circled the area
once, then set the helicopter in a gentle hover, wheels up, only a few inches
from the ground. McLanahan leaped out the side door and ran through the burning
debris and gasoline- fired desert to the patrol cars.

 
          
It
was obvious that Wendy Tork McLanahan had been under her parachute only a few
seconds before hitting ground; the ejection seat was just a few yards away.
Wendy was lying on her side, seemingly buried in the dirt and blackened sand,
her half-burned parachute trailing behind her. Her flight suit, gloves, face
and hair were black from the heat and falling debris—from the air she had
looked like another burnt piece of the dead B-52 bomber. Her helmet and one
boot were nowhere to be seen—they were usually lost during ejection unless
secured uncomfortably tight during the mission. Her left leg was twisted
underneath her body, her left shoulder, half buried in the dirt, appeared to be
broken or at least separated.

 
          
Two
Nevada State Troopers were maneuvering a spine board into place when McLanahan
ran over to them. He dropped to his knees in front of her.

 
          
“You
from the base?” one of the troopers asked McLanahan. Their voices were muffled
by surgical masks.

 
          
“Yes
. . .”

 
          
“What
the hell hit out here? A nuke?”

 
          
“An
aircraft.”

 
          
They
had dug a trench behind Wendy’s back and were moving the board along her back.
Patrick carefully swept bits and pieces of metal off Wendy’s face. A few stuck
fast, and pain shot through his own body, as if he was feeling the pain for
her, with her.

 
          
“Get
with it,” one of the troopers yelled, “grab those straps and pass them over.”
They routed several thick straps under

 
          
Wendy’s
body, and Patrick carefully passed them back through the brackets on the other
side of the board. They tightened the straps until Wendy’s back was tight
against the board. Several wider straps were secured over her forehead and
chin, a cervical collar placed around her neck, her head immobilized on the
board as well. The troopers began working to free and immobilize her legs as
the medevac helicopter touched down a few yards away.

 
          
“Let
the paramedics in there, pal,” the troopers told Patrick, pulling him up and
away from Wendy. Three paramedics rushed over. In moments they had oxygen, a
respirator and electronic vital-sign monitors in operation. They finished
securing thick plastic splints on her legs, placed her on a gurney and carried
her to the helicopter. Patrick ran over with the gurney but was pushed away.

 
          
“No
room. We’ve got more injured to pick up from the truck stop.” The doors closed,
the helicopter jumped skyward and was quickly out of sight.

 
          
Patrick’s
legs felt ready to buckle . . . one survivor out of a crew of seven. He’d seen
the entire crew alive and well not an hour earlier. Wendy ... his last thought
of her was the thumbs- up she’d given him before heading out to the crew bus.
Piece of cake, she had said.

 
          
Another
aircraft appeared out of the smoke-obscured sky, not another helicopter.
Resembling a remodeled C-130 transport, the CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor transport
swooped down out of the sky barely a hundred feet above the ground. Suddenly,
with a roar of turboprop engines, the engine pods on the wingtips began to tilt
upward until the blades were horizontal. The aircraft then began a soft
helicopter-like vertical descent, landing only yards from Patrick.

 
          
The
rear cargo doors on the Osprey popped out, disgorging a dozen heavily armed
security troops in full combat gear and backpacks, along with an M113 armored
combat vehicle. The M113 rolled off toward route 95, and the guards began to
station themselves a hundred yards apart along the perimeter of the
Megafortress’ impact area.

 
          
“Patrick
...” He turned at the sound of his name. Hal Briggs was standing over him, Uzi
submachine gun in hand. He was wearing a Kevlar helmet with a one-piece
communications headset in place. Now he dropped down beside Patrick and moved
his face closer to his so they could talk over the roar of the Osprey’s
rotor-props. “You okay?”

           
“Wendy . .

 
          
“I
heard, I’m glad she made it out,” Briggs shouted. “They’re taking her downtown
to the burn unit. . . she’ll be okay, they think.”

 
          
“Unbelievable
... it was James,” Patrick muttered. “Stole DreamStar, shot down Old Dog ...”

 
          
“We
gotta get you out of here. I’m securing the crash site. The general is
assembling an investigation unit. He wants you to help him set it up.”

 
          
“Investigation
unit? What about DreamStar? James is getting away with DreamStar—”

 
          
“He’s
heading south, right into the F-15 interceptor unit out of
Tucson
. They’ve got a squadron ready to shoot his
ass down. Now let’s get going.”

 
          
He
helped McLanahan to his feet and led him to the open cargo ramp at the rear of
the Osprey. He was strapped in beside Briggs at the flight-engineer’s station.

 
          
“Headquarters
building,” Briggs radioed to the pilot. “Helipad one should be big enough for
the Osprey—”

 
          
“No,”
Patrick said. “I want to go to the hangar ramp. Right now.”

 
          
“General
Elliott is waiting—”

 
          
“I’m
not going to supervise a bunch of guys crawling around in the mud, putting
little flags on chunks of metal and body parts. We know what happened to the
Megafortress—James shot her down, he killed six people, he damn near killed my
wife ... I want to go to the hangar ramp right now. That’s an order.”

 
          
Briggs
shook off his immediate surprise at Patrick calling Wendy his wife. He pushed
his boom microphone away from his lips and bent closer to Patrick. “You know me
better than that. I take orders from Elliott, and sometimes not from him. It’s
how I do my job. Tell me what you want and convince me it’s better than what
the man with the four stars wants.”

 
          
“Hal,
believe me, DreamStar will blow right past the
F-15S
out of Davis-Monthan.”

 
          
“Eight
jockeys in Eagle Squadron won’t buy that.”

 
          
“Listen,
I’ve flown against DreamStar for a year. If DreamStar has any more weapons on
board, a whole air wing of
F-15S
won’t
be able to bring him down. Even if he doesn’t, James has the skill and the
hardware to evade them. Those pilots have never seen DreamStar in action. If
the
F-15S
can’t bring him down
before he enters Mexican airspace, he’ll lose them.”

           
“So what are you going to—?” Briggs
cut himself off. It wasn’t hard to figure out what McLanahan wanted to do—
“you’re gonna take Cheetah . . . ?”

           
“It’s the only fighter that can take
on DreamStar head-to- head. And J. C. Powell is the only pilot that can do it.
I want Powell and Sergeant Butler to meet me at Hangar Four with a fuel truck.
If he can, I want
Butler
to get MMS out there with missiles or at least some twenty-millimeter
cannon shells.” “And then what? Chase him down? He’s got a huge lead on you,
you won’t stand a chance—”

 
          
“He’s
only got two hour’s worth of fuel on board, maybe less,” Patrick said. “He’s
got to land it somewhere.”

 
          
“How
the hell are you supposed to know where?”

 
          
“Those
air defense units will be tracking him. They’ll be able to pinpoint his
location, even three or four hundred miles into
Mexico
. If he tries to land we’ll know about it.
And unless he’s removed or deactivated then, Cheetah has telemetry and tracking
equipment on board that can direct us toward him. But we need to act
now,
Hal. If we wait he could get clean
away. The Mexicans aren’t going to be much help. They don’t exactly love us
anymore.”

 
          
Briggs
paused. McLanahan was obviously beside himself over the crash, and about
Wendy—did he say his
wife
?—but what
he was saying did make sense. If Dreamland’s security forces couldn’t stop
DreamStar, there seemed little chance that a squadron of Air Force reservists
from
Arizona
could do it.

 
          
Hal
looked at Patrick. “You said your wife?”

 
          
“We
were married two days ago. We were going to tell everybody tonight.” They were
both silent for a moment, then Patrick asked: “How about it, Hal?”

 
          
Briggs
thought about it a few moments longer, then nodded. “Hey, you’re a colonel,
Colonel.” He reached over to the flight-engineer’s console, flicked a switch on
the communications panel, dialed in channel eight—the discrete channel for the
flight-line maintenance section. “I was told to deliver you a message from the
general and assist you in complying with those orders.
You
can do anything you want. Talk on the radio, tell Butler to do
something. Look here, this radio was even on
Butler
’s frequency, you can plug in and talk to
him any time you want.”

 
          
Briggs
swiveled his microphone back and hit the interphone button. “Pilot, looks like
I might have miscalculated. This Osprey is too big to land on the Headquarters
helipad.”

 
          
“No,
Major,” the pilot radioed back. “It’s plenty big enough. I can—”