Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01 (56 page)

 
          
“Crew,
eject light coming on . . . get ready . . .”

 
          
Ormack
was rigid in his seat, his ejection levers raised, his control column stowed,
ready for ejection. Elliott had just reached down to the center console and was
about to flick the eject signal from WARNING to EJECT when something exploded
off the Old Dog’s right wing and a ball of flame hundreds of feet in diameter
arched skyward, lighting up the entire coastline, the blast easily heard over
the roar of the engines.

 
          
“What
was
that?"
Ormack shouted,
holding onto his seat as the shock wave rolled over the
Megafortress.
“The reactor?”

 
          
“We
got the mirror building, Patrick got the mirror. The thing went off. It
wasn't
a dud,” Luger reported, voice
rising.

 
          
“The
radar’s down,” Wendy said, “no tracking signals from Kavaznya.”

 
          
Elliott
began to pick out the ridgelines looming toward them, and slowly lifted the Old
Dog’s nose above the ridgelines, desperately trying to trade some slowly
building airspeed for life-saving altitude. He noticed that most of the lights
in the town above the laser complex were out ... “The explosion must have
knocked out power to the area. Check your equipment ...”

 
          
McLanahan
quickly scanned his instruments. “Computers are back on-line.” He quickly
synchronized the navigation satellites to his computers, and the green NAV
light snapped on. Moments later the terrain data was reloaded from the “game”
cartridges. “Terrain computers back up,” he told Elliott who reengaged the
pitch autopilot to the terrain-data computers, selected COLA on the terrain
clearance-plane selector and watched as the long pointed nose again faithfully
dipped earthward. “Jesus,” Ormack said. “We actually did it.”

 
          
“Threat
receivers and all jammers back up,” Wendy reported.

           
“My radar’s back up,” Angelina said,
as though back from the dead. “Station check, crew,” Elliott ordered, switched
the ejection warning light olf, pulled the firefighter’s oxygen mask to his
face and breathed deeply. “The ride’s not over yet,” he reminded them after his
hit of oxygen. “Those fighters will be after us any minute.”

           
McLanahan lay awkwardly in his seat,
supported by his parachute harness straps that he never had time to tighten.
“True, General, but there’s no denying that it’s Miller time.”

 
          
“You’re
cleared to the potty, radar,” Elliott said, helping Ormack put on the oxygen
mask. “That’s all. After that get back on watch. We’re coming up on Ossora.
Kavaznya may be down, but I repeat, four squadrons of MiGs will be after our
butts.”

 
          
McLanahan
looked down at the warm stain between his legs. “It seems I don’t need the
john.”

           
Dave Luger managed an exhausted
chuckle. “Sorry for falling apart back there, partner. You can count on me from
here on out—”

           
“Search radar at
two o’clock
. It’s Ossora airfield,” Wendy announced
suddenly.

           
The two navs exchanged looks. “Back
to work,” McLanahan said, switching his attack radar to target-tracking mode.

 
 
          
"Radar
contact is lost, Element Seven,” Yuri Papendreyov heard the Soviet radar
controller say over his command radio. “Report your position immediately.” As
if in reply, a large red LOW ALTITUDE WARNING light came onto the control panel
of Papendreyov’s advanced MiG-29
Fulcrum
fighter.

 
          
He
muttered unhappily to no one in particular and started a shallow climb away
from the inky blackness around him. Suddenly the earth was his enemy, as much
an enemy as the American warplane he was chasing. He held his heading steady
and switched on his pulse-Doppler attack radar and nose infrared sensor pod.

 
          
He
had been receiving steering signals from the radar site at Kavaznya to the
attacking American B-52 bomber, signals that fed a stream of missile-launch
data to his missile fire control system and provided range and bearing data to
intercept the B-52. With the Kavaznya radar operating he didn’t need his
Fulcrum
’s radar for hunting, a big
advantage of the advanced Russian interceptor. Nothing could jam the Kavaznya
radar, and without the
Fulcrum
’s
onboard radar acting like a locating beacon the fighter could sneak up behind
the American B-52 without being detected.

 
          
All
that was gone now. Somehow the Kavaznya radar was off and he was forced to use
his own narrow-beamed radar to search thousands of square miles of sky for the
bomber, diverting his attention away from flying his
Fulcrum
and avoiding the rugged
Kamchatka
mountains.

 
          
The
young PVO-Strany interceptor pilot activated his command radio and reported in
a tight voice, “Element Seven has lost vectors to intruder—

           
“Wait, no,
still
chasing.” A huge radar return appeared at the very left edge
of his on-board radar, then disappeared. He began a thirty-degree bank turn to
the left, quickly but futilely scanning for terrain to his left.

 
          
“Element
Seven has possible radar contact. . .” he radioed, but he was too busy to
report his position.

 
          
“Element
Seven, repeat. Element Seven, report your position.”

 
          
Which
was when he saw it out of the corner of his eye—the fire was so big and bright
that despite his training and discipline he took several precious seconds to
study the destruction. Debris from the massive mirror dome in the hills above
the Kavaznya research complex was spread out for at least a kilometer in all
directions, and a huge twisted mass of metal sprawled awkwardly in the center
of what used to be the mirror building. The blast must also have done some
collateral damage, he figured, cut power to the complex . . .

 
          
Papendreyov
throttled back to ninety-five percent power on the screaming Tumansky R-33D
turbofan engines and divided his attention between the radar and the infrared
detector while continuing his shallow turn. He made a quick scan for his
wingman—nothing. They had been separated long before when the laser had fired
and the incredible turbulence and windblast nearly wrecked him, and he assumed
the worst—that either the laser had inadvertently hit him or that the American
had gotten him.

 
          
This
flying at night without radar monitoring was suicide, the pilot thought to
himself. The Soviet ground radar controller was usually responsible for
everything—terrain clearance, vectoring toward the intruder, closure, firing
position—he did everything but pull the trigger. Now Papendreyov was completely
blind, relying on an easily jammed nose radar and a range-limited infrared
detector that wasn’t worth—

 
          
A
diamond symbol appeared in the lower right corner of his heads-up display—the
infrared detector had found the B-52. Strange that the radar had not. He tried
to get a radar range to the target but it still was not locking onto anything.
He swung right, centered the diamond up in azimuth on his display and waited
for a radar lock-on. Still nothing. The infrared scanner told him only
elevation and azimuth, not range. One of his two A A-8 heat-seeker missiles
could lock onto the bastard but they were close-range missiles and worked best
under eight kilometers range.

 
          
He
hesitated to drop the nose through the horizon until he found where he was and
checked terrain elevation. Papendreyov throttled back to ninety percent and
waited. No sense in driving blindly into the B-52’s guns, he thought. The
twenty-seven-year-old Soviet PVO-Strany Air Defense pilot then realized he
hadn’t talked to anyone, hadn’t gotten permission to do anything, hadn’t
received one word of direction. He was still two years from being qualified to
perform autonomous intercepts—going out to hunt down enemy planes without
direction from ground controllers—but he was performing one now. It was easy,
painfully easy—suicidal, but very easy. Easy to kill oneself.

 
          
He
checked his engine instruments and fuel. If he stayed out of afterburner he
could stay and track this intruder for another half-hour. He still had four
missiles—two radar-guided missiles and two heat-seekers. Enough to get the job
done?

 
          
“Airborne
radar contact,” Wendy Tork announced into the interphone. “
Seven o’clock
. Looks like . . . like ... a
Fulcrum.
Pulse-Doppler attack radar.”

 
          
At
the same time Wendy sounded her warning the computer-drawn terrain trace zipped
across General Elliott’s video monitor. He grunted in relieved satisfaction and
reached for the clearance plane knob.

 
          
“Terrain-avoidance
computer back on-line, General,” McLanahan said, but Elliott had already
selected COLA on the clearance knob—the computer-generated lowest altitude,
which meant a harrowing ride no higher than a hundred feet above the
now-rapidly rising terrain. His lips were dry, but he felt clammy inside. “Get
that strike message out, Angelina?” he asked, rechecking his switch position.

 
          
“Repeated
it twice, General.” She reset her fire control radar to clear the faults
created by the interference of the powerful Kavaznya radar, then switched it to
SEARCH and the radar instantly found the fighter behind them.

 
          
“My
gear’s working again. Radar contact,
seven o’clock
high, twelve miles,” Angelina reported. She
watched it for a moment. “Holding steady . . .”

 
          
She
hit the TRACK button on her console and a green TRACK light illuminated. She
lowered the safety handles on the twin turret handgrips, put a finger on the
Stinger
airmine trigger and watched the
range countdown. When it reached five miles she gently squeezed the trigger,
and fired once . . .

 
          
The
Fulcrum
pilot heard a warbling ALERT
tone in his headset, quickly jammed his throttles to maximum afterburner and
yanked his fighter into a risky ninety-degree, twenty-degree climb to evade a
possible missile launch. He leveled off a thousand feet above his initial
pursuit altitude and searched the horizon out his left cockpit window for the
source of the missile alert.

 
          
“A
fighter launching a missile at me?” Yuri Papendreyov asked himself, eyes
searching the blackness.
“An enemy
fighter over
Russia
?”

 
          
Luck
had followed the young Soviet pilot into that wild evasive snap-roll. The tiny
Stinger
rocket, with its small
directional fins, could not keep up with the Soviet fighter and its
half-scared, half-genius pilot. The
Stinger
did a lazy turn, trying to follow the steering signals from Angelina’s radar,
but its turn radius was twice the
Fulcrum's.
Suddenly it was behind and to the right of the
Fulcrum
, and there was no way the tiny solid-fuel rocket could
catch the fighter. It tracked behind the
Fulcrum's
wake, its propellant almost exhausted. Not receiving a detonation signal, and
realizing its fuel had run out, the tiny rocket issued its own detonation
signal.

 
          
Papendreyov’s
attention was immediately directed to his right, where a huge fiery flower
blossomed out of the grayness all around him. He could almost feel the sparks,
the myriad bits of metal, flying out toward him, seeking him. Instinctively he
tried to jam his throttles to maximum afterburner, then realized they were
already there and began a shallow climb, watching the flower of death disappear
behind him.

 
          
His
breath was coming out in rapid, shallow heaves. Sweat trickled down his heavy
glass faceplates. Thanking the stars and the shades of comrades Mikoyan and
Gureyvich, the designers of his beautiful jet, he banked left and began to
reaquire his quarry.

 
          
“AI
at
five o’clock
,”
Wendy called out again.

 
          
Angelina
was already shaking her head in disappointment. “This guy is good,” she said.
“He jinked just in time.”

 
          
“Well,
he’s coming for us again,” Wendy said.

 
          
Luger
was watching his five-inch terrain scope, now clear and operating normally
after their unwieldly three-thousand-pound
Striker
glide-bomb leveled the Kavaznya mirror building and, at least temporarily, took
the radar site with it. “We’ll get to the mountains in twelve miles.”

 
          
“He’s
staying up high,” Angelina said, glancing at the elevation and azimuth readouts
on her console. “He’s good but he’s not ready to mix it up in the dirt yet.”

 
          
“Can
he still get an IR shot at us?” Ormack asked.

 
          
“He
can track us, but unless he’s ready to descend to within a few hundred feet of
us we have a chance.” Just then, the elevation readouts began to steadily decrease.
Angelina swallowed hard.

 
          
“He’s
descending, crew. Get ready.”

 
          
Yuri
Papendreyov had finally gotten a reliable navigation beacon lock-on and found
himself on his cardboard chart. He nodded to himself. At this present
speed—over eight hundred kilometers per hour—he could descend another thousand
meters and spend almost two precious minutes acquiring the B-52 bomber before
the threat of the frozen peaks of the Koryakskiy Khrebet began to loom outside
his cockpit—all completely invisible to him. He nudged his
Fulcrum
down, set the altimeter reminder bug on three thousand two
hundred meters and maneuvered his fighter to center the IR TRACK diamond in his
heads-up display.

 
          
That
few hundred meters of altitude did the trick. The pulse-Doppler attack radar signaled
lock-on, and firing information was instantly fed to the AA-7 radar-guided
missile.

 
          
Yuri
smiled. A solid infrared and radar lock-on, with four missiles ready to go. The
range continued to click down. The memory of that fiery missile explosion snapped
back to him, and his decision was made. He throttled back, holding the range at
fourteen kilometers, selected the two AA-7 radar-guided missiles, fired.

 
          
A
MISSILE ALERT warning generated by the pulse-Doppler attack radar focusing on
the low-flying Old Dog had put the crew in a state of tense readiness. When
Yuri Papendreyov selected the AA-7 missiles for firing his attack-radar
switched to missile-guidance mode. The continuous-wave radar signal that guided
and steered the AA-7 missiles triggered a MISSILE LAUNCH indication on Wendy
Tork’s threat panel, which was heard over ship-wide interphone and repeated up
in the cockpit.

 
          
Wendy
immediately ejected eight bundles of chaff from the left ejectors and ordered
an immediate right break. Elliott and Ormack, having already accelerated to
maximum thrust, threw the Old Dog into a coordinated hard turn to the right.
Simultaneously Wendy found the continuous-wave missile steering signal from the
Russian fighter and began to set a jamming package against it.