Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (78 page)

           
“Get the wing up, Henry!” McLanahan
yelled. Cobb took his left hand off the throttles and pushed on his control
stick. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the left wing seemed to rise— and
McLanahan decided right then and there that he wasn’t going to eject. The
bomber could be milliseconds from hitting the ground, there could be a fire
spreading through the bomb bays—but unless Cobb ordered him to eject he was going
to stay. There was enough of a hint of aircraft control left to convince him
they still had a chance . . .

           
Several loud bangs rattled the
three-hundred-thousand- pound bomber as if a giant hand were throwing them
against a mountainside, picking them up, then hurling them again.

           
McLanahan turned away from his pilot
and scanned the engine and flight instruments. “Airspeed one-eighty . . . RPMs
on number-one engine fifty percent, TIT and EGT on redline . . . number-one
engine compressor stall, shut down number one. Number-one throttle.” McLanahan
put his left hand on the center console throttle quadrant, guarding the three
good engines to make sure Cobb didn’t shut off a good engine. The leftmost
throttle snapped back to idle, then to “Cutoff.” A compressor stall was a
common but potentially dangerous engine malfunction in which the airflow
through the engine is disrupted and the engine stops producing thrust—but fuel
continues to flow through the engine and ignite in terrific shuddering
explosions, one after the other, causing a huge fire inside the combustion
chamber.

           
“Off!” Cobb yelled back.

           
“Turbine inlet temperature and
exhaust temps,” McLanahan said.
Hie
checked
the right-side multi-function display, but it had gone dead when the number-one
engine generator popped off-line, so he went to the rows of tiny standby
gauges. “RPMs on number-
one forty percent
, TIT and EGT still redline. All the others
are OK. Gotta shut number one down.” Since the MFDs had shut off, they couldn’t
tell if the computer had already initiated the shutdown procedures, so they
assumed it had not. “Fuel cutoff T-handle, number-one engine, pull.”

           
“You get it!” Cobb yelled—he dared
not take a hand off the control stick. McLanahan released the inertial reel
lock on his shoulder harness and reached across the forward instrument panel to
a row of yellow-and-black-striped handles labeled “Emergency Fuel Cutoff Pull.”
He laid his left hand on the first handle, stopped, double-checked that he had
the right one—again, to avoid shutting down a good engine and killing them for
sure—then pulled the handle.

           
“Number one T-handle, pull. Fire
lights.” McLanahan checked the row of engine fire lights near each T-handle—all
four were out. He hit the “Press to Test” button to doublecheck that the bulbs
were still good—they were. “Fire lights out. Engine instruments.” The pilot’s
right multi-function display was black, so McLanahan ran his fingers across the
standby engine instrument gauges at the bottom center of the forward instrument
panel. “TIT and EGT high but coming down ... EGT below redline. I think we got
it. Number- one primary hydraulic system is out. Electric system is reset—turn
the number-one generator off when you can.”

           
“I can’t.”

           
McLanahan was going to continue
reciting the rest of the emergency checklist, but all of the critical “bold
print” items were done—the rest of the items were double-checks. The Black
Knight bomber apeared to be wings-level, and finally Cobb was able to take his
left hand off the control stick. He spent a few moments shutting off equipment
that ran off the number-one engine, then slowly resumed his usual stony
position—one hand on the throttle, one hand on the sidestick controller, eyes
caged straight ahead, although this time with a few more noticeable glances
around the cockpit.

           
It was hard to believe, but it had
taken only ten seconds from the missile explosion to wings-level—to McLanahan,
it seemed like a slow-motion eternity. He had once again experienced Death
creeping toward him, and it was even more horrifying the second time. The
feeling of utter helplessness was so overwhelming that it often threatened to
shut crews down. Only their long hours of drill, training, and simulator
sessions pulled them through it in time.

           
“Bring us right if you can,”
McLanahan said. He put his SMFD in reset, then reactivated it and found to his
surprise that the navigation system was still running. “
Mount
Apo
is at our
two o’clock
position, eight miles. It’s our last hope.
Heading zero-three-five.”

           
The single bright flash of light was
followed by a long tongue of flame that lasted for several seconds, and part of
that flame seemed to shoot out forwards as well as backwards. “Good hit! Good
hit!” the A-5K pilot cried out. “Strike . . . !”

           
But in his exuberance, the pilot
again forgot he was in formation. When the trail of fire began to arc to the
right he immediately banked right in response, directly into the path of the
JS-7 fighter.

           
With the excitement of the missile
launch, the blood

           
pounding in his head, and the
adrenaline rushing through his brain, the JS-7 pilot immediately broke right
and climbed away.
“Jian
Zero-Nine,
lost wingman,” he cried over the command radio. Suddenly realizing that he
didn’t know where he was—except that he was at three hundred meters altitude,
flying near a 3,200-meter-high mountain—he immediately began a climb to his
area minimum safe altitude, which in this sector was 3,300 meters. “Zero-Nine
climbing to min safe altitude.”

           
“Get back here!” the pilot of the
A-5K shouted furiously on the radio. “I have no more heat-seekers. You have to
engage!”

           
“Zero-Nine is lost-wingman, no
contact with the terrain,” the JS-7 shouted. '7 do not have a TV camera to
watch for terrain. I will re-acquire. Stand by. . . .”

           
“EGT is back below redline,”
McLanahan said. “Try a restart.” Cobb pushed the fuel cutoff T-handle back in
to reopen the fuel lines, selected the “Engine Status” menu on his left MFD,
selected “Restart,” and advanced the number- one throttle when directed by the
computer.

           
It was a mistake. As soon as the
engine began spooling up, the bright-red “Fire” light came on. The computer
immediately began shutdown procedures, and this time Cobb manually activated
the fuel cutoff T-handle himself and hit the number-one engine’s fire
extinguisher system to make sure the fire was out. The “Fire” light extinguished
immediately, and all other systems remained normal.

           
“Must be hydraulic fuel leaking into
the engine or a serious fuel leak,” Cobb said. “Looks like we finish this
mission on three engines.” He put the B-2’s infrared scanner image on his right
MFD and resumed his usual position, staring straight ahead, unmoving. “Where
are those fighters?”

           
“One still on our tail; he’s dropped
back to eight miles, and he hasn’t taken another shot yet,” McLanahan said.
“The other guy broke off to our five o’clock position and went high—he might be
setting up for a high gun pass or a home-on-jam missile shot if they got a
missile that’ll do it. All trackbreakers are still active.” He quickly switched
to the data-link channel for the SLAM missiles, but the screen on the left side
of his SMFD was blank. “Shit, looks like we lost contact with the missiles when
the power dropped out. I’ll try to reacquire it. .

           
“What do we do when we reach Mount
Apo?”

           
“Fly around it... and pray,”
McLanahan said. “It’s our only hope of losing these jokers.” McLanahan expanded
his SMFD display back to its normal God’s-eye display—and then he saw them.
“Henry!” he called over to Cobb. “Turn right to one-two-zero and climb to nine
thousand seven hundred feet. Fly right over the
peak
of
Mount
Apo
.” “Nine
thousand feet!” Cobb said. “We’ll be exposed! Half the Chinese fleet will be
able to see us!”

           
“But we’ll have some help if we make
it on time,” McLanahan said. “Do it.” Cobb pulled back on the control stick and
maintained as steep a climb as the stricken bomber could manage. The Black
Knight barely held two hundred and fifty knots as Cobb put the nose right on
the infrared image of the radar dome atop Mount Apo and headed straight for it.
. . .

           
The B-2 momentarily disappeared from
the narrow field- of-view image on the low-light TV screen, and the pilot of
the Chinese A-5K fighter-bomber hurriedly expanded his screen and searched
frantically for the intruder. He was surprised to see it climbing, not
descending—in fact, it had passed two thousand meters already and was still
climbing. He was also heading right for the radar site on
Mount
Apo
. What was he trying to do? Kamikaze himself
onto the radar site? Launch another missile? Eject? Nothing made sense. But one
thing was certain—high and slow, it was an easy kill now. He pushed up his
throttles to min afterburner—he was getting low on fuel, but that certainly
didn’t matter now— and began to close to cannon range.

           
At about ten kilometers’ range, he
activated his laser rangefinder. Immediately his fire-control computer began
computing lead angles and aimpoints for his two 23-millimeter cannons in each
wing root; unfortunately he had only one hundred rounds in each gun, so he had
time for only two one-second bursts. But that would be all that was needed
here. The B-2 was trailing black smoke from its leftmost engine, and the crew
was obviously trying to trade airspeed for altitude in preparation for ejection
or self-destruction. They were not going to get the chance.

           
The huge B-2 made a sudden right
turn at a very steep angle—possibly a last-ditch effort to evade destruction.
The A-5 pilot simply pulled his nose around tighter, leading the bomber’s turn,
and put his aiming reticle back on the target. The TV camera clearly showed the
Mount
Apo
radar site not twenty meters below the
B-2—he had turned a fraction of a second before plowing into the radar dome.
The pilot was indeed skillful, but that was not going to save him. He closed to
within one kilometer, squeezed his gun trigger, and let the first one-second
burst rake the B-2s ungainly fuselage . . .

           
And at that moment it seemed as if
the entire universe erupted into flames. Two Tomahawk cruise missiles had
actually flown
over
the two aircraft
and had hit the captured
Mount
Apo
radar site, just a few hundred feet away
from the Chinese fighter. The explosion tossed the Chinese fighter- bomber
nearly a half-mile sideways in the air, blinding the pilot and sending him
crashing into the lush green valley below.

           
The explosion on the
Mount
Apo
radar site rattled the B-2, but compared to
the pounding they had taken when the
Chinese PL
-2 missile hit, it was minor. Cobb lowered
the big bomber’s nose once again, trying to build up his waning airspeed and
regain full control . . .

           
And at that instant a horrifying
sight filled his forwardlooking infrared scanner scene on his right MFD—the
sight of a large Chinese vessel, only miles ahead of them. They had turned east
too far, and now they were exposed to the entire southern Chinese invasion
fleet. “Holy shit, we gotta get out of here!” Cobb shouted.

           
“As long as we’re here, let’s start
the party,” McLanahan said dryly. As Cobb continued his tight right descending
turn, McLanahan quickly programmed his last two SLAM missiles on the fleet
ahead of them, ran through the release checklist, and launched the missiles at
the Chinese warships.

           
“Missile one
away
. . . launcher rotating . . .” At that moment, warning lights
illuminated on the forward instrument panel. “Damn, we just lost the primary
hydraulic system—but I think the launcher still moved to launch position . . .
missile two
away.
Closing bomb doors
electrically.”

           
Cobb was busily running through
emergency-procedure menu items on his MFDs. “I switched to the auxiliary
hydraulic system,” he told McLanahan. “Autopilot’s off, flight-control
computers switched to secondary mode. No more automatic terrain following or
jinking for us—a full- scale flight-control deflection will kill our entire
hydraulic system. We’ve got fuel leaks on the left wing as well, and I think
we’re losing cabin pressurization. He shot us up pretty bad.” But at least they
were still flying, Cobb thought, and they were still fighting . . .