Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01 (54 page)

 
          
McLanahan
shook his head, then slapped his hands excitedly as a green NAV light
illuminated on the computer monitor at his workstation. “Nav computer’s back
on-line. Pilot, center up on the target and try like hell to hold your airspeed
steady. Dave, get a groundspeed and mileage to the target and start a watch. We
might have to start the glide-bomb and decoys with a dead-reckoning position.”

 
          
Luger
immediately wrote down the mileage to the Kavaznya target and the groundspeed
and started the timer on his wristwatch. When he rechecked it a moment later he
found that his electronic LCD watch, like the three radar scopes on the Old
Dog, had failed. He started the tiny forty-year-old wind-up ship’s clock on his
front panel and made a mental note to compensate for the extra twenty seconds
lost.

 
          
“Reloading
terrain data,” McLanahan said, but before he could move the cartridge lever
from LOCK to LOAD the navigation computer failed again.

 
          
“Four
minutes to go,” Luger announced.

 
          
“It’s
not going to come back up,” McLanahan said. “The Kavaznya radar’s interference
is just too strong.”

 
          
Ormack
and Elliott had managed to get the Old Dog’s nose down after the flyup, but
after flying with a terrain-following computer for so long they weren’t ready
to fly at the same low altitudes. Ormack trimmed the bomber for level flight at
about a thousand feet altitude and rechecked his instruments before the actual
weapon release. Unfortunately the effect of the change to higher altitude was
to make the Old Dog an all-too-easy target for the two Soviet fighters chasing
it.

 
          
Taking
vectors from interceptor radar operators at Ossora Airfield near the laser
complex, the MiG-29
Fulcrum
interceptor pilots didn’t need their sophisticated look-down shoot-down
equipment to launch their missiles. The controller gave the pilots range and
azimuth information to ideal launch positions. Once they visually acquired the
huge bomber, they maneuvered around it to stay away from its deadly tail and
turn their missile’s seeker-heads away from the glare and heat of the city
beyond it.

           
“We can’t drive into the target like
this,’’ Wendy said. “Colonel, I need you to make random maneuvers all the way
toward the target—”

 
          
“We’ve
got to program the weapons in a DR position,” Luger interrupted. “We can’t—”

 
          
“She’s
right, Dave,” McLanahan said. “We’ll get hosed if we drive straight and level
all this way. Clear to maneuver.”

 
          
“Random
jinks,” Wendy said. “Not left and right. . . left twice, right once, random all
the way. I’ll eject chaff just before each reversal.”

 
          
Ormack
nodded and began the first jink to the left. “Now we sound like a fighting—”

 
          
Suddenly
a blinding flash erupted from just beyond Ormack’s right cockpit window.
Ormack, who was staring out the front windscreen, with the cockpit lights
turned down so the pilots could start visually picking out terrain, caught the
flash’s full intensity.

 
          
“I’m
blind . . .”

 
          
“Easy,
John,” Elliott said, took a firm grip on the yoke and trimmed it for level
flight about five hundred feet above ground.

 
          
“We
just had a missile explode off our right wing,” Elliott said over the
interphone. “The co-pilot got flashblinded. But the engines look okay . . .”

 
          
“Three
minutes to go,” Luger said, flicked his radar into TRANSMIT and took a fast
range, azimuth and terrain check before the scope went blank again. “Four
degrees right. Clear of terrain, General. You can descend, slowly.”

 
          
“The
radar altimeter should be good for terrain clearance now that we’re clear of
the mountains,” McLanahan said.

 
          
“How
can they still be shooting at us?” Luger said, puzzled. “If Kavaz- nya’s radar
blotted out our radar—they should’ve taken out the figher’s radars too.”

 
          
“Infrared
search-and-track system,” Wendy told him. “They use an airborne IR tracker for
azimuth and elevation data and the Kavaznya radar for range data. They can take
shots at us all night like that.”

 
          
“Well,
we’re running out of time, Dave,” McLanahan said. He punched in range,
elevation and azimuth data into the
Striker
glide-bomb’s initial vector catalog. “We’ll launch the bomb at maximum
range—twelve miles, ninety seconds to go. I’ve set the initial steering data
for twelve miles at
twelve o’clock
. Give me a countdown to the two minute point.”

 
          
“Roger,”
Luger said.

 
          
“Amplitude
shift in the Kavaznya radar signal,” Wendy suddenly announced. “Looks like . .
. looks like a target-tracking mode. The
laser
. . . it’s locked onto us . . .”

 
          
McLanahan
reacted as if he had been rehearsing the action, although he never had. In one
fluid motion he moved the Weapons Monitor and Release Switch from the
Striker's
forward center position to
forward left, the weapon-rack position of one of the weapon decoys; moved the
bay door control switch to MANUAL, hit the DOOR OPEN switch and reached down to
his left knee and hit the recessed black button on the manual release “pickle’
^,
switch.

 
          
“Bay
doors are open,” Elliott announced as a large yellow BOMB DOORS OPEN light
flared on the forward instrument panel. A moment later a similar light marked
WEAPON RELEASE flicked on—then off.

 
          
“What
the hell?”

 
          
“The
decoys,” McLanahan told Elliott. “We can’t jam the laser’s radar, but the
decoys should draw it away long enough for us to get within range.”

 
          
A
moment later Elliott flinched as an object resembling a huge blue- orange
meteor burst to life and flew diagonally away from the Old Dog. The mass of
fire spit tiny, blinding balls of light from its flaming body, and streams of
gleaming tinsel—radar-decoy chaff—poured from behind the drone. The glare from
the decoy was almost blinding, but Elliott squinted anyway and watched the
decoy fly earthward, jinking left and right as it burned away.

 
          
The
next instant McLanahan moved the weapon-select switch to forward right and
punched out the second decoy. Elliott noticed the WEAPON RELEASE button light
once again; then, as the second decoy ignited and flew away to the right,
Elliott’s gaze was drawn to the right cockpit window.

 
          
The
launch of the second decoy, and Elliott’s attempt to spot it, saved the
general’s eyesight—and the life of the crew.

 
          
Although
the tiny
Quail
decoy—an improved
version of an old bomber defensive drone used on SAC bombers for years—was many
times smaller than its parent B-52 bomber, its design made its radar, infrared
and radiation signature more than ten-times larger than the Old Dog. Its
refrigerator-size body had dozens of radar-reflecting nodules surrounding it,
and even the design of the wings and tail, as well as the fifty pounds of
chaff-bundles it ejected in regular intervals, enhanced its radar reflectivity.
Its shape alone made it a more appealing target than the quarter- million pound
bomber.

 
          
But
there was much more packed into the tiny drone. It automatically broadcast a
wide spectrum of radio transmissions to attract anti-radiation and home-on-jam
missiles. To heat-seeking missiles and infrared trackers the phosphorus flares
and burning jelly oozing along its surface made it appear as hot as a nuclear
reactor.

           
The Kavaznya radar, even with its
solid nuclear-powered lock-on, was drawn off its intended target. The first
Quail
bloomed like an electromagnetic
stain across the target-tracking radar scope of the Russian laser weapons
officer. The tracking computer quickly locked onto the larger return, and the
target officer did not override the shift. There was nothing, he thought,
bigger than a B-52 so close to the complex. He insured the new target lock-on,
searching and not finding any malfunctions and signaled clear for laser firing.
Just as Elliott’s attention was drawn to the right cockpit window to watch the
launch of the second
Quail
decoy, a
thick beam of red-orange light split the darkness and lit up the interior of
the Old Dog like a thousand spotlights turned up full-blast. The very
atmosphere around the huge B-52
Megafortress
seemed humid, almost tropical.

 
          
The
vaporized air around the laser blast created a tiny vacuum around itself,
sucking thousands of cubic acres of air into the shaft of light. The turbulence
and lower-density, superheated air caused the Old Dog to sink, and only
Elliott’s fast reactions and the screaming thrust of the seven remaining
turbofan engines kept the Old Dog from crashing into the rugged Kamchatkan
shoreline.

 
          
The
tiny
Quail
decoy was not merely destroyed
by the laser blast—it was vaporized. There was no time, no fuel remaining, even
to form a secondary explosion or a puff of smoke. The tiny drone simply ceased
to exist.

 
          
Elliott
felt as if he had been violently sunburned. He pulled on the yoke, fighting to
arrest the sudden descent and gale-force turbulence. The MASTER CAUTION light
snapped on, as did other warning lights, but Elliott had his hands full trying
to control the bucking mountain of metal beneath him.

 
          
Dave
Luger was thrown against his right instrument panel as the Old Dog swung
sharply left into the vacuum, his outburst lost in the groaning metal of the
Megafortress
and the protesting roar of
its engines. Still, he and the Old Dog made out better than some others. A
MiG-29 had just closed into ideal IR missile-firing range and had not heard the
call to clear the area when the laser beam sliced through the subzero Siberian
air.

 
          
The
gale-force wind-blast created by the mini-nuclear explosion within the
krypton-fluoride laser beam, which had thrown the four-hundred- thousand-pound
B-52 bomber around the sky like a paper airplane, reached up and swatted the
thirty-thousand-pound
Fulcrum
fighter
into the ground like an insect. The pilot of a second Russian fighter was too
busy fighting for control of his own machine to notice.

 
          
“What
the hell was
that?”
Angelina said.
All of her equipment went blank—the airmine rocket system, the
Scorpion
missile system, her radar, all
of it. She glanced at Wendy Tork alongside her, switching her equipment into
STANDBY in an attempt to reset it.

 
          
“The
laser,” Elliott said. “They shot the laser at us. Two generators dropped off
the line.” He scanned the instruments quickly. “Engines appear okay. John, can
you get the number two and three generators back on-line?”

 
          
“I
can try,” Ormack said. He wiped his eyes and felt carefully along his right
generator panel for the proper switches . . . The power interruption had
blanked out everything in the downstairs navigator’s compartment, but Ormack’s
practiced fingers were able to reset the generators and get them back on-line.
Trouble was, the only things that reactivated after power was applied were the
downstairs lights.

 
          
“Dave,
how much time?” McLanahan asked.

 
          
Luger
was fumbling around his workdesk with a tiny battery flashlight, shining the
weak beam on the few pieces of equipment on the right side. “We have to get out
of here,” he said. “We have to go back . . .”

 
          
“Easy,
man, easy,” McLanahan shook his partner’s shoulders. Luger finally stopped his
flailing and stared at McLanahan. “It’s over, Pat.”

 
          
“No
it’s
not.
Now give me a time to the
twelve-mile point, dammit.” McLanahan was just about to push Luger out of the
way and check himself, but Luger finally relaxed enough to check his ship’s
clock.