Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01 (51 page)

 
          
The
radar reflection of the attacking fighter only a few miles away showed clear as
a mountain on McLanahan’s radar. He typed “TRACK 1” on his keyboard and a small
circle cursor centered itself on the return. The LED azimuth and elevation
readouts flickered as the antennas raced to keep up with the retreating
fighter.

 
          
“Locked
on, Angelina,” McLanahan said. “Take over.”

 
          
Angelina
was ready. With pilot consent already given, she pressed the COMMIT button on
the forward
Scorpion
missile pylons.
In one-twenty- fifth of a second the fire-control computer selected a missile
on the right pylon, gave it the initial elevation, azimuth and distance
computations from the attack radar and ejected the air-to-air missile from the
pylon down into the Old Dog’s slipstream.

 
          
The
advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile’s gyros stabilized the ten-foot-long
missile in the slipstream as if it were a sprinter feeling for a footing in the
starting blocks. In the next three-hundredths of a second static ports on the
missile’s body sensed the slipstream around it and armed the
Scorpion
's one-hundred-pound-high
explosive warhead. The same sensor set the
Scorpion
’s
large thirty-G rear fin to the proper angle, took one last look-around
self-test, and fired its solid propellant motor.

 
          
Elliott
and Ormack saw a blinding flash of light race a few hundred yards ahead of the
Old Dog, then suddenly change direction up and over their heads. An instant
later a huge fireball erupted just behind Elliott’s side window, illuminating
the entire upstairs crew compartment of the Old Dog with a red-yellow glare.

 
          
“A
hit,” Elliott said, shielding his eyes from the glare.

 
          
“I’ve
got the second low-altitude fighter,” Angelina said, confirming the
fire-control computer’s radar lock on the target. She held the safety levers of
the
Stinger
airmine rockets down and
fired twice.

 
          
“Second
fighter decelerating,” Angelina reported. “Sitting stable off our left rear
quarter ... slowing ... we got him. I think we FODed him out.”

           
“What?” Wendy asked.

           
“FODed him out. He sucked in an
engineful of scrap metal.” Upstairs Wendy signaled a gloved okay to Angelina as
the gunnery expert watched the range gate of the fighter rapidly increase as it
fell behind. Wendy noted that her infrared tail-warning seeker had locked
itself onto the disabled fighter, but she ignored the indication—Angelina had
already tagged that one.

 
          
The
Soviet pilot aboard the Mikoyan-Gureyvich E-266M “Foxbat-E” interceptor was
preparing to abandon his aircraft. He was watching two hydraulic system
failure-warning lights and two engine overspeed-warning lights, aware that although
the flash of light was far behind him he had flown through a cloud of
something
... he could almost hear the
flak rattling around in his engine’s turbines, tearing through the hydraulic
lines, ripping the compressor blades apart. The intruder, whatever it was, was
invisible through the glare of the warning lights on his canopy.

 
          
But
he did notice one more set of lights—the lock-on indication of two of his K-13A
Atoll missiles tracking the intruder. Seconds before power drained from his
interceptor, the pilot selected every last one of his remaining missiles, and
with his other hand on his ejection ring, pressed the missile-launch trigger.

 
          
Ormack
was checking his switches and asking General Elliott crosscockpit how he was
feeling. McLanahan had just put his attack radar to STANDBY and was leaning
over to help Luger with terrain calls. Angelina had completed a quick scan of
the rear hemisphere of the Old Dog before putting her radar to STANDBY. Wendy
was readjusting a twisted parachute harness strap, trying to unwind a bit from
her first real fighter engagement.

 
          
But
the supercooled eye of the infrared seeker mounted on top of the short curved
V-tail of the Old Dog wasn’t relaxing. It was tracking the dimming heat
signature of the fighter far behind them when it noticed the sudden increase in
the heat-signature of the target as two heat-seeking missiles streaked toward
the Old Dog’s eight Pratt and Whitney TF33 turbofan engines. The increase
quickly surpassed the delta-pK thermal threshold programmed into it months
earlier by Wendy herself, and an MLD indicator flashed at both Tork’s and
Ormack’s position. Simultaneously with the warning light, the decoy system
ejected one bundle of chaff and one phosphorous flare from both left and right
ejectors.

 
          
The
automatic response to the infrared missile attack would have been
successful—had anyone noticed the MLD warning indicators and initiated evasive
action. The warning tone sounded in everyone’s headsets at the same time the
light illuminated, but both Ormack and Tork had to be watching for the target
on the threat display and expecting the attack to escape the heat-seeking
missiles. By the time Wendy noticed the blinking red Missile Launch Detection
light, the Atoll missiles had accelerated to nearly Mach 2 and had closed the
short distance between them in the blink of an eye.

 
          
Even
so, the automatic system had its saving effect. The flares, shot two hundred
yards away from the bomber’s belly, caught the Atoll missiles’ attention,
providing a momentary distraction. But at less than a mile away the missiles
could not ignore the huge globes of heat emanating from the Old Dog’s turbofan
engines.

 
          
One
missile locked momentarily onto the right flare, then back onto the right
engines. The sudden swing of the IR seeker head from one hot target to
another—a sign that the seeker had picked up a decoy—triggered a proximity
detonation signal to the sixty-pound warheads—the missile exploded less than
twenty yards from the Old Dog’s V-tail vertical stabilizer, blowing off the top
nine feet of the Old Dog’s right stabilator tail and leaving a short jagged
stub of metal where the stabilator used to be.

 
          
The
other missile took a sideways glance at the decoy flare and swung a few
precious feet to the left toward the flare, but it wasn’t enough to divert it.
Driven by a solid propellant engine just approaching full thrust, it plunged
into the exhaust port of the number one engine and detonated. That explosion
immediately turned the number one engine into a blob of molten metal and blew
what remained of the already damaged left wingtip into a shower of fire.

 
          
The
Old Dog, pushed by an exploding missile on one side and pulled by one lost
engine, skidded violently to the left. Ormack was able to keep the bomber a few
knots above the stall only because all eight engines were already at maximum
thrust. Stomping on the right rudder, he turned the control wheel full to the
right. The lights flickered in the crew compartment and the interphone began to
squeal.

 
          
“We’re
hit,” Ormack reported, and pushed the right rudder hard all the way to the
floor. The Old Dog slowly, slowly began to straighten its sideways slide. As it
did, Ormack scanned the caution lights and engine instruments, but it was
Elliott who noticed the engine instruments while Ormack fought for aircraft
control.

 
          
“Fire
on number one,” he called out. Ormack glanced quickly at number one’s engine
instruments to confirm the call, then pulled the number one throttle CLOSED.
Elliott, his handle on the fire-shutoff switch, pulled the T-handle when he saw
Ormack’s hand reaching for it. He then began reciting the emergency checklist:
“Starter switch off.”

 
          
Ormack
checked the switch. “Off.”

 
          
“Electrical
panel.”

 
          
“Checking,”
Ormack said, scanning the a-c and d-c electrical panel on his right instrument
panel. “Crew, we’ve shut down number one engine. Shut off all unnecessary
equipment or we’ll lose another generator.” He checked the generator panel and
confirmed total loss number-one generator. “All other generators are on high
load but they’re okay so far.”

 
          
“Bleed
selector switch, normal left hand inboard,” Elliott continued, now reading from
the emergency checklist displayed on the cockpit computer monitor.

 
          
“Normal.”

 
          
Elliott
painfully hauled himself forward out of his seat and strained to look out the
cockpit window.

 
          
“Can’t
see the nacelle, don’t see any fire out there . . .”

 
          
“Fire
light has gone out,” Ormack confirmed, then began a check of the fuel panel. “I
think we have a leak in the number one wing tank, but it doesn’t look too
serious.” He reached down to a large knob on the center aisle control stand and
cranked in full right-rudder trim. “General, check the rudder hydraulics. We
might have a problem with the rudder now.”

 
          
Elliott
checked the warning lights on his left instrument panel. “All the lights are
out.”

 
          
“Well,
we got rudder problems, too,” Ormack said. “I’m retarding engines seven and
eight to help keep straight. Number two engine has to stay in military.”

 
          
Ormack
started a slow climb to four thousand feet and carefully engaged the low-level
autopilot. He waited a few moments to be sure that the autopilot could hold the
Megafortress
straight and level. “All
right, we’ve got control of the aircraft. Pereira, McLanahan, check for
fighters before we get too involved in damage assessment.”

 
          
Angelina
and Patrick went to RADIATE on their radars and took careful but fast full
hemisphere sweeps of the sky. With both radars operating, they could scan
almost three thousand cubic miles of air-space in a few seconds.

 
          
“Clear,”
McLanahan reported.

 
          
“No
pursuit,” Angelina said.

 
          
“Scope’s
clear,” from Wendy. “A few extremely low-powered search signals. The power
fluctuation put some of my jammers into STANDBY but they should reset in a few
minutes.”

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

 
          
“All
right.” Ormack relaxed his grip on the control yoke. “We’re level at four
thousand feet. We’ve lost number one engine and its generator. We can’t
visually confirm it but I think we lost the rest of the left wingtip. There’s a
slight leak in the number one wing-tank supplying the number two engine but I
don’t think it’s fatal. Something’s also gone haywire with the rudder, it’s
hard to keep her straight ...”

           
“I feel a pretty good shudder in the
airmine turret-controls,” Angelina said. “Need to check out the cannon
steering.” She activated the
Stinger
airmine
rocket cannon controls and began a self-test of her system.

 
          
“The
navigation system went to STANDBY for a few seconds,” Luger reported, “but the
battery kept everything from dumping. We’re reloading the mission data now from
the ‘game’ cartridge.”

 
          
In
a few moments Angelina was back on the interphone. “Colonel Ormack, I think we
lost the whole damn tail. My infrared scanner is dead. Everything’s faulted. We
won’t have any more automatic IR detection from the tail anymore.”

 
          
“Well,”
Luger said, “can’t the threat-receiver—”

 
          
“The
threat-receiver only detects fighters when they use their radar,” Angelina told
him. “If they get a visual or infrared lock-on they can launch missiles at us
all day and we can’t see them. They can drive in as close as they want and get
a point-blank kill.”

 
          
“The
Scorpions,
” Ormack said. “What about
them?”

 
          
“I’m
getting a flickering low-pressure warning light on the rotary launcher,” Angelina
said, checking a set of gauges on her right control panel. “Still in the green,
but that last attack might have done some missile damage.”