Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01 (45 page)

 
          
“Two-two-one,
you are Soviet military plane?” Elliott asked.

 
          
“Yes!”
came an enthusiastic reply. “
Pay Vay Oh
Strangy.
Far
East
Command.”
Elliott translated to the crew, as he did all the Russian.

 
          
“PVO
Strany,” Elliott said over interphone. “Air Defense unit. Could be a Bear or
Backfire recon plane.”

 
          
“Or
a fighter,” Angelina said.

 
          
“
Gyda vi zhivyoti
—excuse,
pazhaloosta.
Where you from, four-five
Fox?” the Soviet pilot asked. “
New York
?
Los Angeles
? I know
San Francisco
.”

 
          
“
Butte
,
Montana
,” Elliott said. Let him chew on that.

 
          
“Mon-tanya?
My English not very good. They teach English but we do not use much.
Difficult.”

 
          
A
pause, then: “Four-five Fox, contact Kommandorskiye Approach on two-six-five
decimal five. Immediately.” The new voice was clipped, military, authoritative.

 
          
“Da, tovarisch,
” Elliott replied.

 
          
“I
report ... I report you on course okay, commander,” the Russian pilot said in a
low, almost secretive voice. “You correcting back. Not okay to come closer.
Okay, commander?”

 
          
“Balshoya spasiba, tovarisch,
” Elliott
replied. “Thank you.”

           
“Pazhaloosta.
Nice to talk English to you, Montanya.”

           
“Two-six-five decimal five, roger,”
Elliott repeated. Just before he changed channels he asked,
“Atkooda vi?
Where are you from,
two-two- one?”

 
          
“Ya iz
—er, I from Kevitz,” the Soviet
pilot said with hometown pride. “Big fisherman. Nice to talk, Montanya.
Dasfidaniya, mnyabileochin priyatna
/”

 
          
Ormack
shook his head as he changed the radio frequency. “Nice son of a bitch, wasn’t
he?”

 
          
“Kevitz,”
Elliott said. “That’s what Kavaznya was known as before they built the laser
there.”

 
          
“He
gave us a break,” Luger said. “I’ll bet he plotted our position. He must’ve
noticed us because we were so far outside the airway.”

 
          
“He’s
not scanning us on radar anymore,” Wendy reported.

 
          
Elliott
reset the frequency on the number one radio.

 
          
“You’re
not going to contact Kommandorskiye, are you General?” Ormack said.

 
          
“We
don’t have any choice, John. If we don’t contact them, our friendly Bolshevik
back there comes back and blows Montanya and his friends away.”

 
          
Elliott
keyed the microphone. “Kommandorskiye Approach, Lantern four-five Fox is with
you at flight level four-five zero.”

 
          
“Lantern
four-five Fox, roger, at flight level four-five zero,” the Russian air traffic
controller replied in hesitant English. “Say your heading, please.”

 
          
“Sto shizfisyat
. Heading is
one-six-zero, Approach.”

 
          
“Roger,
four-five Fox.
Spasiba.
” There was a
slight pause, then: “I do not have a flight plan for you, Lantern four-five
Fox.”

 
          
“No
shit,” Ormack said over interphone.

 
          
“We
are on a military flight plan from
Alaska
to
Japan
,” Elliott said. “I show no flight plan,”
the controller repeated. “Please relay type of aircraft, departure base,
destination base, time enroute, hours of fuel on board, and persons on board,
please.”

           
“No way,” Ormack said. “I haven’t
done an international flight plan in years, but at least I know it’s never
relayed to a Soviet controller.”

           
“Yes,” Elliott said, “you’re right.
This guy’s just fishing for information.” On the radio Elliott said,
“Kommandorskiye, we will ask Kadena overwater flight following to relay our
flight plan to you.”

 
          
“I
will be happy to take the information, sir,” the controller said ... “as a
convenience.”

 
          
Nice
try, Ivan, Elliott said to himself. Over the radio: “Thank you Kommandorskiye.
We will notify Kadena. Stand by.”

 
          
“Very
well,” the controller replied coldly. “Lantern four-five Fox, squawk
three-seven-seven-one and ident.”

 
          
“Shit,”
Ormack said. “Now he wants us to get a squawk.”

 
          
“Looks
like we’re digging a hole for ourselves,” Elliott said, reached down and set
the four-digit IFF identification and tracking code, leaving the altitude
encoding and modes one, two, and four switches off*. He then switched the IFF
to ON and hit the IDENT button.

 
          
“Four-five
Fox squawking,” Elliott said.

 
          
“Radar
identified, Lantern four-five Fox,” the Soviet controller replied. “I am not
reading your altitude. Please recycle mode C.”

 
          
“Recycling,”
Elliott said. He turned the mode C altitude encoder on. “Iam reading your altitude—”
Elliott switched him off*.

 
          
“I
have lost your altitude again, four-five Fox. Recycle again, please.” Elliott
repeated his “failed” mode C routine.

 
          
“Your
mode C appears to be intermittent, four-five Fox,” the controller at Beringa
finally said.

 
          
“Roger,
we’ll write it up, sir.”

 
          
“I
cannot allow you to cross into
Petropavlovsk
airspace without a fully operable
identification encoder, four-five Fox,” the controller said. “Please turn
twenty degrees left, vectors clear of Soviet airpsace. Maintain heading for
one-five minutes, then resume own navigation.
Ochin zhal.
Sorry.”

 
          
“How
far does that put us off* the airway?” Elliott asked Luger. “We’re almost on
the airway now. We’d end up seventy, eighty miles west.”

           
Elliott turned the Old Dog to the
new heading.

 
          
“How
long are we going to be in Beringa’s radar coverage?”

 
          
“We’re
only on the edge of it now,” Luger said.

 
          
“Their
radar signal is very weak,” Wendy said. “No guarantee—but I don’t think they’ve
got a primary target on us.”

 
          
“Meaning
. . .” Ormack began.

 
          
“If
we shut the IFF off*, we disappear,” Elliott said. “Just like
Seattle
. Patrick, how far are we from your next
planned turn-point inland?”

           
“We’ll never hit it on this
heading.”

           
“Call it up,” Elliott said, taking
manual control of the Old Dog. The computer heading bug swung almost fifty
degrees to the right.

           
“About twenty minutes,” Elliott
estimated. “That puts us between both Beringa and
Petropavlovsk
radars.”

 
          
“And
as close to the coast as we can get between the two radars,” McLanahan added.

 
          
“I
don’t think it’ll take Beringa that long to discover we don’t have a flight
plan,” Elliott said. “Things are going to get hairy pretty soon. Wendy, you’re
sure he can’t see us?”

 
          
“As
sure as I can be.”

 
          
“Can
you jam their radar in case he spots us?”

 
          
“Yes,
I’m positive of
that
”

 
          
Elliott
adjusted his parachute harness. “This means we’re close to the penetration
descent, crew. Wendy, prepare to take the Center radar down. We’ll be making a
power-off* descent in a few seconds. When everyone’s ready to go, we’ll start a
gradual turn toward the gap in the radar coverage. When Beringa notices us
off-course we’ll engage the terrain-avoidance computers, make a rapid descent
to five thousand feet and a quick turn toward the gap. Once we go coast-in
we’ll stay at five thousand unless the navigators tell us differently. We’ll
rely on the shorter-range mapping radar to stay down just low enough to clear
the terrain until the computer enters the altitude-plotted region, then put it
on the deck when we get within range of Kavaznya’s radars—or if we get chased
down beforehand. Questions? Okay, how much time to the
gap?”                                                             
'

 
          
“About
fifteen minutes, General,” Luger said.

 
          
“Anyone
looking at us, Wendy?”

 
          
Wendy
was studying her scope, cross-checking some of the signals present with a
frequency comparison chart in her checklist. “I can see Beringa looking for us,
but I’m sure they can’t get a primary target on us—their signal is very weak.
No airborne radars up. There’s ...”

 
          
“What?”

 
          
“Another
search radar comes up only every few minutes or so,” she said, puzzled. “It’s
not a Soviet radar, at least not one I’ve seen before. It’s extremely weak and
intermittent—like it’s being turned on and off at random.”

 
          
“Can
it see us?” Elliott asked her. “Could it spot us if we were at low altitude?”

 
          
“I
don’t think so. It doesn’t come up long enough for me to analyze, but the
signal is so intermittent that I don’t think they could plot us even if they
could see us. It could be nothing more than a trawler or cargo ship with a
weather radar.”

 
          
“Well,”
Elliott said, unclenching his hands from the yoke, trying to relax, “it seems
we’ve got more than enough to think about.”

           
Gently he eased the wheel to the
right and pointed the sleek nose of the Old Dog toward the Soviet Union.

 
          
“Here
we go . .

 
          
The
Chief of Intellitence aboard the U.S.S.
Lawrence
ran down the metal hallway to the radio room, where a small knot of officers,
enlisted personnel and civilian technicians clustered around one bank of radio
scanners.

 
          
“What
the hell is going on?”
Markham
asked as he pulled off his orange fur-lined jacket.

 
          
“An
American aircraft, Commander Markham,” Lieutenant J.G. Beech, the senior
controller, reported hastily, cocking one earpiece of his headset to the
side—but not enough to keep him from listening to the channels he was
monitoring. A seaman came up to him with a short message. The senior controller
read it quickly, swearing softly to himself.

 
          
“Well,
what the hell is it, Beech?”

 
          
“An
American aircraft, Commander,” Beech said. “Came over UHF GUARD emergency
channel a few minutes ago.” He shook his head. “The aircraft is in Soviet
airspace, being controlled by a Soviet controller—”