Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01 (47 page)

 
          
“How
far were we from your start-descent point, McLanahan?” Ormack asked.

 
          
“Still
about six minutes.”

 
          
“I’m
surprised,” Luger said, “that they took that long to catch us. Hell, we were
almost seventy miles off-course before they called us.”

 
          
“Coming
up on fifteen thousand,” McLanahan sang out.

 
          
“Both
radar altimeter channels are ready,” Ormack repeated. “Clearance plane is set
to five thousand feet. Autopilot pitch command mode slaved to radar altimeter.”

 
          
“Good.”
Elliott flipped switches on his left panel beside his ejection seat. “Okay,
crew, listen up. You now have full authorization for all defensive measures.
Angelina, you have
Scorpion
missile
consent.
Scorpion
bay doors are at
your command. Keep your radar transmissions to an absolute minimum. Wendy, you
have full jamming authority. If any tracking or guidance signals come up that
you think are strong enough to paint us, jam the piss out of them. Patrick,
you’re now on interceptor watch. Leave navigation to Dave unless he needs help
in the mountains. If Wendy sees any fighters that look like they’re trying to
track us, you’ve got authority to transmit and lock onto them.”

 
          
“Passing
ten thousand, General,” Luger said. “Five thousand to go.”

 
          
Elliott
slowly began to pull back on the yoke and bring the throttles forward from idle
to cruise thrust. The roller-coaster descent began to subside. As Luger counted
the altitude down, Elliott decreased the descent rate until the Old Dog was
leveled off*.

 
          
“Radar
altimeter lock-on,” Ormack announced. He flipped a switch, double-checking the
readouts. “Both radar altimeter channels are ready.”

 
          
“Autopilot
coming on,” Elliott said. He flipped the autopilot switch on. The Old Dog
remained rock-steady at five thousand feet. Now a pitch computer, slaved to
signals from the radar altimeter, would work to keep the Old Dog at a mere five
thousand feet above the water.

 
          
“Autopilot’s
engaged,” Elliott confirmed. “Setting four thousand for a system check.” He
turned the clearance-plane knob down one notch, and the Old Dog started a
gentle dive, settling to precisely four thousand feet above the water.

 
          
“Resetting
five thousand.” He turned the knob clockwise and the huge bomber started a slow
climb back to five thousand feet.

 
          
“Anybody
looking for us, Wendy?” Elliott asked.

 
          
“Very
low-power radar signals. Much too low to see us. Nothing from Petropavlovsk
radar. Lots of UHF and VHF radio transmissions, though.”

 
          
“But
none of it on GUARD anymore, I’ll bet,” Ormack said. “They know we can monitor
GUARD.”

 
          
“Which
means they’re no longer interested in rescue,” Elliott said. “No more Mister
Nice-Guy.” He thought for a moment. “Time to the coast, Dave?”

 
          
“Twelve
minutes,” Luger said, checking the computer readouts.

 
          
“I
feel exposed down here,” Elliott said. “I feel everyone can see us. I can’t
wait to get back into the dirt.”

 
          
“I’d
expect company long before that,” Ormack said. “I’d expect a fighter sweep of
the area along our projected track line, then a second flight on the landward
side.”

 
          
“What
altitude you figure the fighters will come in?” Elliott asked.

 
          
“If
they have the resources—and I’ll bet they do—it’ll be a high-cap, low-cap
arrangement. The lowest might be five thousand feet. More likely, eight to ten
thousand. High-cap will be up around thirty thousand.”

 
          
“How’s
the fuel situation?”

 
          
“Worse
than I thought,” Ormack told him. “I’ve just put the fuel management system
back to automatic. The early descent had little effect on the curve, but the
tip gear we’re dragging is just sucking our gas up. I have us at least five
thousand below the revised fuel curve.”

 
          
“Every
pound of gas is critical now,” Elliot said. “Patrick, can we cut off any points
on your flight plan? Cut this corner a bit?”

 
          
“Risky,”
McLanahan said, studying his chart. “We can head for the next point on the
flight plan. It’ll save us about five minutes or so, but it’ll put us closer to
a small town on the coastline. I wanted to avoid this town by at least ten
miles. If we cut the corner, we almost overfly it.”

 
          
“At
high altitude, ten minutes worth of fuel is a drop in the bucket,” Ormack said.
“Down here ...”

 
          
“Is
that town defended?” Elliott asked. “Any airfields there? Naval docks?”

 
          
“I
don’t know,” McLanahan said. “There’s no detail like that on the charts I’m
using.”

 
          
“We’ll
have to risk it,” Elliott said. “The faster we get back over land, the better
I’ll feel. Call up the next point, Patrick.”

 
          
McLanahan
punched up the new destination number on his keyboard, verified the coordinates
with his penciled notes on the margin of his makeshift chart and displayed the
destination. The pilot’s heading bug shifted thirty degrees more to the right.
The Old Dog banked right in response.

 
          
“Landfall
in six minutes,” Luger said.

 
          
“Stay
on watch, everyone,” Elliott said. “Stay on watch . . .”

 
          
“They’re
launching the whole goddamned Russian Eastern Air Defense Command,” Beech said.
He was sitting in direct command of the intelligence section; Markham and
Captain Jacobs, captain of the
Lawrence
,
were on the bridge.

 
          
“The
son of a bitch couldn’t have picked a worse place this side of the
Caspian Sea
to disappear off Russian radar,”
Markham
told Jacobs. “Directly between
Petropavlovsk
and seven nuclear submarines in the pens to
the south, and Kavaznya to the north.”

 
          
“But
how did he go off their radar?” Jacobs asked, studying the slides
Markham
’s group had prepared of the situation. “I
thought a mosquito couldn’t get through their radar coverage.”

 
          
“We’re
not sure, Captain. More than likely, the guy crashed or ditched. Right from the
beginning it sounded like the guy was having navigation problems.”

 
          
“Navigation
problems don’t make planes ditch,” Jacobs said. “If he had a catastrophic
emergency, enough to cause navigation or flight control problems, why the hell
didn’t he declare an emergency? The Russians would’ve helped him—I’ve seen them
do it before.”

           
“I don’t know, sir. He may have
panicked.”
Markham
got up and pointed at the chart. “Radar
coverage is sort of skimpy around here, too,” he said, as much to himself as to
Jacobs. “
Petropavlovsk
radar coverage doesn’t quite extend this
far north, but Beringa’s radar does cover this entire gap.”

 
          
Jacobs
was about to say something but was interrupted by Beech on the intercom.

 
          
“Captain,
message from PVO Strany, Far East Command headquarters, to all units. In the
clear. Uncoded.”

 
          
“I’m
surprised they didn’t read part of it in English,” Jacobs said. “What are they
saying?”

 
          
“Air
Defense Emergency declared for the area. General orders for deploying searching
fighters in the area. Complete closing of Soviet airspace.”

 
          
“Send
it,”
Markham
said. “Direct CINCPAC via JCS. Priority
One.”

           
“Yes, sir.”

           
Jacobs studied the chart closer,
finally picked up a pair of dividers lying on the console near his seat. “We
use two hundred and fifty nautical miles for Center radars, right?”

 
          
“Yes,
sir,”
Markham
said. “Standard line-of-sight-ranging. A
bit more, depending on altitude.”

 
          
“But
you don’t have a big circle around Beringa,” Jacobs noted, measuring the lines
around the islands that composed the Russian members of the Aleutian chain.

 
          
“They
don’t have a Center radar,”
Markham
said, his excitement rising. “They have shorter-range, low-altitude
capable radar. Approach control radar.”

 
          
Jacobs
measured a two hundred and fifty mile circle from
Petropavlovsk
. The circle barely intersected the radar
circle from Beringa.

 
          
“They
overlap . . .”

 
          
“But
there’s a gap,”
Markham
said, pointing at the chart. “They overlap, but there’s still
incomplete coverage. If you avoid this circle—”

 
          
“—he’s
out of range.” Jacobs stabbed the chart excitedly and looked at
Markham
. “And
Petropavlovsk
won’t see him if—”

 
          
“If
he’s low level. Below five or six thousand feet, he gets lost in the background
radar clutter, even over water.”

 
          
“Wait
a minute.” Jacobs held up a hand. “You said this guy was a tanker.’’

 
          
“He
had a tanker call sign,”
Markham
said, checking his notes. “Lantern four-five Fox. Out of Elmendorf. But
he had no flight plan, and Elmendorf reports no four-five Fox.”

 
          
“So
he’s not a tanker. Then what?”

 
          
“A
low-altitude penetrator?”
Markham
muttered. “A ... a
bomber?”

           
“It seems he knew exactly where to
go. Exactly. How else would he know about the gaps in radar coverage?”

 
          
Markham
nodded. “But ... he surprised that recon
jet.”

 
          
“Got
his fingers caught in the cookie jar, maybe?”

 
          
Markham
shook his head. “Spotted by a recon plane,
he ... he turns around before they figure out he’s headed inland—”

 
          
“Toward Kavaznya, ” Jacobs said.

           
“And he’s disappeared again, going
in the back way.”

 
          
“Goddamn,”
Jacobs muttered. “Why me? Why now?”

 
          
“None
of our communications on this entire boat are completely secure, sir,”
Markham
reminded the captain, second-guessing him.
“If we blow the whistle—”

 
          
“Why
the hell doesn’t anybody tell us what’s going on? Well, it’s too late now
anyway. The whole Far East Command is after him. He won’t get far.”