Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 05 (50 page)

 
          
“And
look,” he went on. “When the threat symbol comes up on the screen? It’s not one
by one—it’s a flash. Look .. .
bam,
they all come up at once.”

 
          
“So?”

 
          
“So,
I’ve never seen that before,” McLanahan explained. “We usually see one guy pop
up, then another, then another, because their radars are different frequencies
and different rpms and different timing and all that. Now, it’s like all their
radars are coming up exactly the same.”

 
          
“That’s
impossible,” Jamieson said. “You can’t match a ground radar and an airborne
radar up so they match everything like that. It’s just the way the signal
processor is displaying the threats, that’s all. No big deal.”

 
          
Yeah,
no big deal. Yes, it was impossible, or at least very highly unlikely, that all
of the Iranians’ radars were synced up that tight...

 
          
...
or maybe it wasn’t. “Let’s take a detour,” McLanahan said. “Let’s overfly
Pakistan on our way out of here.”

 
          
“Say what?”

           
“I know we’re supposed to take
pictures of Chah Bahar and the

 
          
Khomeini,
to find out how many extra
fighters and ground-based air defense systems they’ve deployed—but I’ve got a
bad feeling about this. It’s like the Iranian air defenses are hanging around
right in our flight path, daring us to drive through them. And their waves are
all the same, they’re too . . . similar. I wonder what they’re up to.”

 
          
“Well,
whatever it is, they’re doing it deaf, dumb, and blind,” Jamieson remarked,
with a satisfied smile. “They can’t see us up here, MC—we’ve proven that
without a doubt now. All they’re doing is just microwaving birds and bugs.
Besides, we don’t have clearance to overfly Pakistan yet, and if Mr. Murphy
kicks us in the butt and we’re forced down over the Paks, we’re really screwed.
I say we follow the ‘blue line’ and see what happens.”

 
          
McLanahan
triple-checked that they were in COMBAT mode and that all of their defensive
systems were in full operation. Maybe he was being too cautious, too defensive,
a little paranoid. Was it because Wendy was back on Guam, waiting for him?
Probably. . . “Okay, we continue,” he said. But as they flew south into the
midst of the cluster of Iranian radars, he ordered the defensive systems to
perform a fast self-test—no problems, everything fully functional. McLanahan
then began formulating an escape plan, just in case, a .. .

 
          
But
things were looking worse and worse every second.

 
          
They
had been within Chah Bahar’s long-range radar coverage for several minutes now,
but there was absolutely no hint that they were an item of interest. As they
neared the coast, flying at 50,000 feet fifty miles west of Chah Bahar, they
entered the aircraft carrier
Khomeini
s long-range radar coverage. There was still no sign of detection—both Chah
Bahar and the
Khomeinis,
radars
stayed in twodimensional search mode, blindly sweeping the skies in azimuth and
range. The signal delta-threshold showed that the signal strength was not
enough to create a return—the difference in the signal received by the
threat-detection gear compared to the signal reflected back to the same source
was too great. If they had been detected, one of those radars—probably the
Khomeinis
—would switch to targettracking
mode, introducing a height-finder radar that would show up immediately. Nothing
had changed . . . except.. .

 
          
“The
fighters,” McLanahan muttered. “The fighters disappeared.”

 
          
“Say
again?”

 
          
“Two
fighters were right here, now they’re gone,” McLanahan said. “They stopped
transmitting their attack radars.”

 
          
“What
was their range to us?”

 
          
“About
sixty miles,” McLanahan said. “Too far away for a missile shot...”

 
          
“Damned
right,” Jamieson said. “The AA-11 can fly for over a hundred miles, but it
homes on radar, and we’re not transmitting anything . . . are we ... ?”

 
          
“No,”
McLanahan said—but they both quickly double-checked their switches. They were
in COMBAT mode, all right—all radio transmitters were off, no synthetic aperture
radars on, no Doppler radars on, no missile warning and tracking radars on, and
the “cloaking device” was on—no electronic energy could leave the bomber with
the electronic field activated. They were running silent. “Man, I still have a
bad feeling.”

 
          
“Then
let’s hurry up, take the SAR shot on the carrier, and let’s get the hell outta
Dodge,” Jamieson said.

 
          
They
were within SAR range of the carrier now, just sixty miles off the nose. “Okay,
stand by, SAR coming on.”

 
          
But
just before he activated the system, which would automatically control the
radar exposure as necessary to get a good picture of the carrier, McLanahan
also activated the AN/ALQ-199 HAVE GLANCE system—as soon as the BEADS “cloaking
device” went down, HAVE GLANCE would scan the sky all around the bomber with
radar to search for nearby threats. “What’s that for?”

 
          
“Precautionary,”
McLanahan said. “SAR exposure routine active ... in five .. . four . . . three
. . . two . . . one . . . SAR radiating . ..”

 
          
And
at the same instant, they heard a high-pitched, fast
Deedledeedledeedle!
warning tone, and a “bat-wing” fighter symbol
appeared on the threat scope, just a few miles off their right rear quadrant!
“Fighter,
four o’clock
,
four miles, same altitude!” McLanahan screamed. “Descend! Accelerate! SAR down!
Break, Tiger,
break right!”

 
          
Thankfully,
Jamieson didn’t hesitate. He immediately rolled the big B-2 A stealth bomber to
90, then 100, then 120 degrees of bank— practically
inverted
!—pulled on the control stick until it was at the forward stop,
and jammed the throtdes to full military power. He held the bank in until they
had almost flown a 180-degree turn, facing toward the fighter, turning their
hot engine exhausts away from the fighter and presenting their smallest radar
and thermal crosssection.

 
          
But
he wasn’t fast enough. They heard a loud explosion off to the left, the big
bomber shuddered, and the ENG 1 FIRE warning light on the eyebrow panel came
on. “Fire on number one!” McLanahan shouted. His supercockpit display had
automatically switched over to the WCA and emergency-procedures displays so he
could monitor the automatic engine shutdown, but the shaking was so rough that
he couldn’t read the screen. He had to trust that the computers were still
functioning and they would complete the emergency shutdown checklist before the
fire destroyed the aircraft.

 
          
Jamieson
kept the right bank in, but now they were no longer turning—they were spinning!
With no smooth airflow over the wings to create lift, the B-2A Spirit stealth
bomber had stopped flying—it was in a complete stall, and with one wing low, it
transitioned immediately into a “death spiral” spin. The bomber’s nose was now
pointed almost straight down at the ocean, and they were careening down toward
the
Gulf
of
Oman
at 20,000 feet per minute.

 
          
“Recover!”
McLanahan shouted. “Recover, Tiger!” McLanahan couldn’t focus anymore. He had
the threat display up on his supercockpit screen, with the flight instruments
hidden behind it, and it was completely dark outside the cockpit windows, so he
had absolutely no sense of up or down, left or right. McLanahan immediately
craned his neck over to the left so he could see the pilot’s artificial
horizon, but moving his head like that caused the disorientation to increase a
hundredfold. Jesus, they were completely out of control! They were going to hit
the ocean any second!

 
          
McLanahan
hit the BYPASS button on his control stick, then fumbled for the speed brake
button on his throttle quadrant—normally they could not deploy speed brakes in
COMBAT mode because it spoiled the bomber’s stealth characteristics. He felt a
rumbling in the airframe as the elevons on the bomber’s wing tips split, acting
as speed brakes to slow the bomber’s wild, uncontrolled descent. At the same
time, he held the control stick centered and full forward, then stomped on the
left rudder to counteract the right spin. No good—no reaction. He tried jamming
the control stick hard left, hoping that the increased elevon authority would
.. .

 
          
“Let
go of the controls, MC!” he heard Jamieson shout.

 
          
“I
got it! I got it!” McLanahan shouted. “Let me know when!”

           
“I said, I got it, dammit!”
Jamieson shouted back.

           
“No! I can pull us out! I got it!
Just let me know when!” Suddenly he felt a crushing
smack!
on his face, and the world went dark. McLanahan thought he
was dead, but he wasn’t. . . not yet. In a second the ocean would rush in, he’d
swallow, and then . ..

           
But they hadn’t hit the water.
Jamieson had backhanded McLanahan in the face! “I said, I got it,” Jamieson
said calmly. Smoothly, carefully, Jamieson pulled the throttles to idle and
stepped on the right rudder pedals.

 
          
The
spinning was still as intense as ever. “We’re still spinning!” McLanahan
shouted. “Get the rudder in! Get—!”

 
          
“The
plane’s wings-level, Patrick,” Jamieson said. “It’s your damned navigator brain
that’s spinning.” Jamieson reached up and hit a button on his top center
mission display unit, and a sixteen- color, larger-than-life attitude-direction
indicator appeared on

 
          
McLanahan’s
supercockpit display. The ADI showed them slightly nose-low but, sure enough,
they were wings-level. “I pulled us out of the spin, but you kept on pushing us
right back into another one. That’s why they call those a ‘death spiral,’ you
know—every time you try to recover without looking at the instruments, you put
yourself in another spin in the other direction. Remember to keep an ADI on
your screen all the time from now on, okay?”

 
          
It
took several moments for McLanahan to get his head to stop spinning and
flipping upside down, but after staring at the electronic ADI on his monitor
and
willing
himself to believe it was
true, everything finally calmed down. McLanahan checked their status. Jamieson
had them down at
100 feet
above the
Gulf
of
Oman
, at max continuous thrust, heading south
toward Omani airspace— away from the
Khomeini
and those Iranian radars as fast as possible.

 
          
“You
all right?” Jamieson asked.

 
          
“Yeah
. . . yeah, I’m okay, thanks,” McLanahan said weakly. He checked the Warnings,
Cautions, and Alerts page. “Fire extinguishers fired off, so that engine is
bye-bye,” he said. “All number one systems down. Fuel pressure is
fluctuating... hydraulic pressure OK ... electrical system OK ... fuel system
is . .. wait, fuel valves three and four are still open. I’m going to MANUAL on
the fuel system . .. ok, fuel shutoff valves to the number one engine are
closed. All engines are feeding off the right wing tank. I’ll empty that one
first in case we sustained any damage.” Jamieson checked the fuel panel
switches, then nodded his agreement.

 
          
Iranian
fighters were everywhere overhead, and the next twenty minutes was a nightmare
come true. Every few minutes they would see fighters beginning to converge on
them, so they would change course and edge as low as they dared to the ocean
surface—at one point, they were at fifty feet, the absolute lowest they dared
go without activating the radar altimeter or SAR. Even after they exited
Iranian territorial waters, the Iranian fighters pursued. They had to fly
almost all the way to the Omani coast before the Iranian fighters began to
retreat. Finally they were over land, and the fighters were gone.