Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01 (50 page)

 
          
Ormack
shouted the general’s name, began to breathe again when he saw Elliott’s eyes
flutter open. Eyes that looked at the instrument panel and somehow found the
radar altimeter indicator . . . “We’re . . . we’re too high, John . . .”

 
          
“Never
mind that, General,” Angelina crawled forward with some web straps cut from her
walkaround oxygen bottle harness. “Lie back,” she said, and turned to Ormack.
“We’re going to have to tie a tourniquet around that leg.”

 
          
Ormack
nodded. “General, lie still. We’re going to lift your leg up so we can tie this
around your knee.”

 
          
“Won’t
hurt a bit, Angelina,” Elliott said, smiling weakly at his gunnery specialist.
“I haven’t felt anything in this damn leg for three hours.”

 
          
Ormack
and Pereira carefully pulled Elliott’s leg up and across the throttle quadrant.
Angelina then wrapped the web strap around Elliott’s leg beneath the knee and
pulled it tight as she could. When she had finished Elliott’s leg looked less
than half its normal diameter.

 
          
“I
should have been more realistic about the leg—”

 
          
“Don’t
apologize,” Angelina said. “Sometime the pain just takes over, no matter how
hard you try to fight it.”

 
          
“You
sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

 
          
“I’m
no spring chicken either, General. I know there’s some things you can’t do a
damn thing about.”

 
          
The
two looked at each other a moment, then Elliott struggled back into his seat.
By the time he refastened his harness buckle, he was near total exhaustion.

 
          
Abruptly
Ormack ordered Angelina back to her seat as he took a firm grip on the yoke and
pushed the Old Dog down once again.

 
          
“On
the double. We’re under attack.”

           
Angelina half-crawled, half-ran back
down the narrow aisle to her seat and began strapping herself in. Wendy was
studying her video-threat display. Every few moments she glanced at the
counter-measures receiver set, waiting for the computer positively to identify
the new signals and plot their direction from the
Megafortress
.

 
          
As
Angelina plugged in her headset she heard Wendy report: “Golf- band search
only.”

 
          
“Position?”

 
          
“No
clock position yet.”

 
          
“High
terrain, ten miles,” from Luger. “Slight climb to clear it.”

           
“Take fifteen degrees right,”
McLanahan directed, leaning over in his seat and studying Luger’s tiny
five-inch display. “Looks clear in that direction at this altitude. We can’t
afford to do any more climbs.” Ormack turned the control yoke in a
ten-degree-bank turn to the right.

           
“Clear of terrain for twenty miles,”
Luger said. “We can turn back to track at this altitude in five miles.”

 
          
“Tork?”

 
          
“Signal
strength increasing slightly but not as fast as I thought. Rough guess would be
the MiG-25s or 31s out of Ossora Airfield. Probably converging on our tail at
high altitude.”

 
          
“It’ll
be the Foxbat-Es,” Angelina said. “The 31s are their front-line fighters.
They’ll send the 25s with external tanks out to find us—or draw us out—then
report our position and let the Foxhounds have us—”

           
“Wendy,” McLanahan broke in, “can
you tell if they find us?”

           
“I should be able to see a change in
their—” She stopped abruptly, staring at the large video screen. The signals
rapidly began to change.
“Missile alert.
One of the signals just went to tracking mode.”

 
          
“But
I thought you said—”

 
          
“They’re
too far away,” Wendy said. “They
can't
be locked on. Their signal isn’t strong enough.” Confused by the sudden threat
signals and the responding increase in thrust as Ormack pushed up the power,
Wendy hurriedly rechecked her receivers and indicators. All self-tested normal.

 
          
“I
don’t understand ...” A red MISSILE LAUNCH indicator blinked on her panel. At
the same time a repeater warning light blinked on the front instrument panel in
the cockpit.

 
          
“Missile
launch,
” Ormack announced. “Clear
for evasive maneuvers?” “Clear left and right, ten miles,” Luger called out.

 
          
“C’mon,
Tork, get with it,” Ormack said. “Which way?”

 
          
“It
can’t be, they’re . . . they’re bluffing, wait . .

 
          
“
Pereira
.” Ormack was over the edge. “Find those
damn fighters.” Before Wendy could answer, Angelina had turned her tail
Scorpion
tracking radar to RADIATE.
Since there was no azimuth information from Wendy’s receiver Angelina began a
complete rear-hemisphere sweep behind the
Megafortress.

 
          
“Nothing,”
Angelina reported after several sweeps. “No targets for thirty miles.”

 
          
“They’re
bluffing,” Wendy repeated, sounding surer of herself now. She reached across
the defensive compartment and grabbed Angelina’s denim jacket. Angelina was
still searching her rectangular scope for the fighters.

 
          
“They
wanted
us to turn on our radars,”
Wendy said. “They couldn’t find us down here so they’re faking a lock-on.
Stop.
”

 
          
“Angelina,
shut down,” McLanahan said. “If you haven’t seen them by now, shut down.”
Angelina put her radar to STANDBY.

 
          
“Damn
...” Wendy whispered as she studied the video threat receiver. “Back to search
radar . . . signal strength increasing—”

 
          
An
inverted “V” airplane symbol appeared at the bottom of Wendy’s countermeasure
receiver scope. “Fighter at
six o’clock
!” A second “V” appeared. “Second fighter,
both at
six o’clock
.”

 
          
With
Ormack having already throttled to military power, the roar of the eight
turbofan engines was deafening . . . the sound was amplified as it vibrated off
the mountains barely three hundred feet beneath them.

 
          
“He’s
still at extreme detection range,” Wendy reported. “He can’t shoot at us down
here.”

 
          
“Scorpions
are ready,” Angelina said.

 
          
“How
far until the computer can start driving the autopilot?” Ormack asked.

 
          
“Still
a hundred miles,” McLanahan told him.

 
          
“We
might not make it that long—”

 
          
“VHF
transmissions,” Wendy called out.

 
          
“Shut
them down,” Ormack told her. “They’ll report our position.” But Wendy was
already adjusting her jammers, matching the frequency marker of the jammers
with the wavy oscilioscope-like radio transmissions.

 
          
“Narrow-scan
tracking signals,” she said. “Sweeping around us . . . his computer can’t find
us so it looks like he’s searching manually ...”

 
          
“High
terrain,
twelve o’clock
,
seven miles,” Luger reported.

 
          
“Pretty
deep canyon on all sides,” McLanahan added quickly. “Better climb over this
one. Slow climb.”

 
          
Ormack
slowly pulled back on the yoke and began a gentle two hundred foot-per-minute
climb.

 
          
“Clearing
terrain on either side,” Luger said. “Five degrees left.”

           
Ormack nudged the Old Dog to the
left. “Looks like we’ll be clear of terrain for thirty miles after this last
ridge. Level off. This is a good altitude, ridge crossing in ten seconds.”

           
“Signal strength decreasing,” Wendy
said. “He’s still trying manual track but he’s falling behind.”

 
          
“Coming
up on the ridge . . .”

 
          
“Looks
like the fighter behind us lost us . . .”

 
          
“Cresting
the ridge now . . .”

 
          
In
the dim cockpit Ormack could just make out the snow-covered ridge line they had
just crossed, the mountains dropping off sharply to a white- covered valley
below. “Hey,” he said, “it looks pretty flat out—”

 
          
A
thunderous explosion echoed just outside Elliott’s canopy. Ormack caught a
glimpse of two dark streaks against the hazy stars. The shock wave hit the Old
Dog’s nose like a giant invisible hand.

 
          
“We
nearly had a mid-air with two of them,” Ormack said, and pushed the Old Dog’s
nose down to the snow-covered plain below, watching the radar altimeter and the
canopy windows. He leveled the aircraft at two hundred feet. “Terrain-following
autopilot reengaged, slaved to the radar altimeter. Set to two hundred feet.”

 
          
“Clear
of terrain for thirty miles,” Luger reported.

 
          
“The
two fighters are turning,” Wendy said. “Infrared tracker has one of them . . .
going high . . . stabilizing—”

 
          
A
large red MLD light blinked rapidly on Ormack’s threat repeater lights.

 
          
“Missile
launch detection, infrared missile launch,” Wendy broke in. “Break right . . .”

 
          
Ormach
lurched the Old Dog into a furious dodge to the right, steered the huge bomber
past the maximum thirty degrees of bank. The autopilot, slaved to the now
failed radar altimeter, immediately commanded a two-G max climb. That climb
command, with the Old Dog now in a forty degree bank to the right, increased
the G load on the bomber and tightened the turn.

 
          
Simultaneously
with the “break” call, Wendy popped two high-intensity flares from the
Megafortress'
left ejectors. The flares
were shot a hundred yards from the bomber and burned hotter and moved slower
than the Old Dog. They lowered themselves slowly to the snow-packed ground with
tiny streamers as the
Megafortress
turned hard in the opposite direction.

 
          
The
fury of the turn shook up Elliott, but he had the presence of mind to watch the
altimeters before reaching for the ejection trigger in each armrest. He was
scanning the engine instruments, making sure the roar echoing in his confused
head was coming from all eight turbofans. Out of the front cockpit window he
spotted two fiery streaks of light flashing past the windscreen and exploding
in the valley below.

 
          
“Engine
instruments okay, John,” Elliott reported to Ormack who looked in amazement at
the man, barely able to support his head upright, scanning the eight rows of
instruments crowded on the forward panel.

 
          
“Fighters
passing overhead,” Wendy said, her report confirmed by the roar of turbojets in
full afterburner skimming over the jet-black bomber. “But coming around for
another pass.”

 
          
“Like
hell,” McLanahan said, pressed the RADIATE button on his attack radar and
slaved the azimuth-elevation controls to Wendy’s threat receiver. The
attack-radar’s antenna immediately swung to the azimuth of the fighter and
began a height-finding scan of the sky.