Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (14 page)

 
          
“Control,
do you want Foxtrot Romeo to attack? The target appears to be evading—do I have
permission to attack?”

           
“Linda, this is Al,” she heard on
the interplane frequency,
“break left!
”

 
          
She
could hear Vincenti’s sudden warning, but she didn’t dare try to look down into
the cockpit to change radios— she was less than three hundred yards from the
L-600. She had a momentary thought about turning—an order to “break” was not
just a turn, it was a command to get the hell out of there. Instead, she stayed
lined up on the left wing of the L-600 and said on the command channel, “I’m staying
on the target! Control, what are your instructions? Do you want me to attack?
Control, respond ..

 
          
McKenzie
caught a glimpse of a bright flash of light off to her right, but it was near
the ground and she assumed it was one of the emergency vehicles’ rotating
lights or a photographer’s flash.

 
          
Then
she saw a huge ripple of lights erupt all around her jet, heard a thunderous
bang!
and felt a gigantic ramming force
smack her F-16’s fuselage.

 
          
The
thirteen grenades shoved between the cases of Stinger missiles exploded well
before the pallet hit the ground, which only served to increase the
devastation. The chain reaction created by the exploding grenades was quick and
furious—the shrapnel from the grenades tore through the battery unit cases,
blowing apart the high-pressure nitrogen-gas canisters, rupturing the battery
cells, cooking off the chemicals and spraying superheated chemicals inside the
missile coffins. The rocket motors went next. Normally they would slowly bum
inside their cases, but the shock and hot chemicals caused them to explode
instead. Some of the missiles did cook off, sending white-hot spears of fire
into nearby buildings and vehicles. The fragmenting pallet erupted into a
blossom of fire when it hit the emergency vehicles on the ground, throwing
petals of fire and explosive Stinger warheads out in all directions. The
Stinger missiles seemed to have eyes, or active seeker heads—it seemed as if
every one of the missiles that cooked off slammed right into a building or
vehicle.

           
“Oh, shit. . was all Jefferson Jones
could say as he and Cazaux watched the maddening scene unfold below them. It
was like watching a fireworks show’s finale from above—the big explosion,
followed by numerous smaller explosions, then ripple after ripple of side
explosions, and then the twinkling of burning debris scattered all across the
airfield.

 
          
“That..
. was . .. magnificent,” Cazaux muttered. “That was ... incredible. Absolutely
incredible ..

 
          
As
the L-600 began to level off, then point earthward to regain speed and begin
evading pursuit, Krull moved aft and began motoring the ramp and upper cargo
doors closed.

 
          
Cazaux
stumbled around on the right side of the cargo bay, leaning against the second
pallet. He then eyed the forward pallet, the one containing the
real
explosives.

 
          
“Move
that second pallet aft to the edge of the ramp,” he told Krull as he located
the microphone, “and help me move that third pallet aft. I am going to deliver
that last pallet on a target that no one will forget for a very long time.” He
clicked open the mike: “Stork, do exactly as I say, and your navigation had
better be dead on.”

 
          
The
large
master caution
light on the
left eyebrow panel came on, along with the
hyd/oil
press
warning light on the right eyebrow panel. It seemed as if the entire
caution-light panel was illuminated
—elec
sys, cadc, stby gains, fuel hot,
those were the biggies—and the oil and
hydraulic pressure gauges were bouncing all over the place.

 
          
It
was time to jump out, she decided.

 
          
She
had never even come close to ejecting out of any aircraft before, not in ten
years of flying the F-16. Air Force training always said, “Don’t hesitate.
Trust your equipment,” and she was perfectly willing and ready to do so.
McKenzie reached for her ejection seat lever and ...

 
          
“Linda!
This is Al! How do you hear? It looks like you’ve been fragged, but there is no
fire, repeat,
negative fire.
How do
you hear? Over?”

           
She was surprised to hear Vincenti
on the radio—she had assumed, incorrectly, that everything in her stricken ship
was out. She moved the throttle—no response, with FTIT and fuel flow in the red
but rpms below idle power. She moved the stick—aha, the controls were stiff but
responding. Emergency power unit had turned on automatically. She raised the
nose, and the jet responded by climbing. If nothing else, she was able to trade
airspeed for altitude and get a little higher before ejecting, but she had a
few seconds to try to work the problem.

 
          
McKenzie
took her hands off the ejection lever and back on the stick and throttle, then
started to work on her caution-light analysis. The engine was stalled from a
massive disruption of airflow through the engine, so she immediately pulled the
throttle to idle, waited a few excruciating seconds as the airspeed bled off below
safe engine-restart speed, then slowly advanced the throttle again. Just as she
was convinced the engine was not going to come back, the rpms eased from 55
percent to 65 percent and the fan-turbine inlet temperatures subsided out of
the red zone. Quickly but carefully she advanced the throttle, and the rpms
responded. Airspeed climbed above 170 knots. She was safely flying again.

 
          
She
set the throttles to 80 percent and, one by one, began working on the other
malfunctions. As soon as she could, she tried to reset the generators with the
elec caution reset
button—no go, it
kept on tripping off. She placed the emergency power unit to ON, and checked
the power-distribution lights. With only the emergency power unit providing
power to the essential bus, she had the barest minimum equipment running—but
she was still flying. Only the UHF radio on the interplane frequency was
operating—that’s how she could still hear Vincenti. “Al, how do you hear me?”

 
          
“Fine,
Linda,” Vincenti said. “Roll out of your turn and get your nose down. I’ve got
you at five thousand feet. How’s your controllability? Check your engines.”

           
“I cleared a stall, and I’ve got
partial generators and EPU on line,” McKenzie said. She straightened her F-16’s
wings and found the controls very sluggish. “Looks like I lost my
hydraulics—the EPU is the only hydraulics and power I got left.” The EPU, or
emergency power unit, used bleed air from the engine or hydrazine to power a
simple power unit that supplied backup hydraulic and electrical power for about
fifteen minutes. “System A pressure is good, and my essential bus is energized.
What the hell happened?”

 
          
“Cazaux,”
Vincenti replied simply. “He dropped something out the back end, a bomb or
something. I can still see explosions. Just hold your heading. I’ll come around
on your left side. Hang tight, we’ll be OK. Let’s start a slow climb to ten
thousand and start working out what we got. What’s your fuel state?”

 
          
“I
can’t tell—gauge is inop,” McKenzie said. “Fuel low and fuel hot lights came on
right away, and I think one of my wing tanks is gone.”

 
          
“That’s
confirmed, you lost one. You still got your right tank, and it’s pretty
beat-up,” Vincenti said as he checked out McKenzie’s fighter with his ID
searchlight. “I don’t think it’ll do a normal jettison because of the damage,
so you’re going to have to land with it.”

 
          
It
took Vincenti a few minutes to fly around McKenzie’s jet and look her over. In
that time, they had climbed up to ten thousand feet over the sparsely settled
ranches and farms south of
Sacramento
. “I see lots of damage to your underside, Linda. You may or may not get
a good landing gear. What do you think, Linda? How does she feel to you?”

 
          
McKenzie
knew what that question meant: did she want to eject or did she want to try for
a landing? “I’m not jumping out of this plane, Al,” McKenzie said. “Lead me
over to McClellan.” McClellan Air Force Base, just north of
Sacramento
, was a large military aircraft maintenance
depot with lots of runways and crash equipment—McKenzie was going to need all
the help she could get.

           
It was only twenty miles across the
top of the city of Sacramento to get to McClellan, but for McKenzie it was the
longest flight of her entire life. Her approach speed when starting her descent
into McClellan’s north-south runway was 220 knots, much faster than normal, and
it was nearly impossible to maintain it without considerable control problems.
Several times the engine did not respond to throttle movements. “Better get
ready for a flameout landing, Linda,” Vincenti told her. “We’re looking for two
hundred knots landing speed—it’s gonna happen fast.”

 
          
“Just
lost the engine, Al,” McKenzie said. Her voice was wooden, as if she were
talking inside a bucket.

 
          
Vincenti
knew that calm wouldn’t last too long. The toughest fighter pilots in the world
get high, squeaky voices when their air machines start to crap out on them.
“Okay, Linda, forget it,” Vincenti said. “We’re committed for a flameout
approach. Check your
jfs
switch on
start
2
.
Turn off your
fuel master
switch.”

 
          
“Got
it... negative
jfs run
light, Al.”

 
          
“Okay,
forget it. Turn the starter off—we’ll try it again in a minute or so. We’re six
miles out.” They were surrounded by the city of
Sacramento
, a vast shimmering expanse of lights below
them. McClellan was dead ahead, its rotating beacon and runway lights plainly
visible. They had it made, but they still had a long way to go. “Check your air
source knob on RAM and your defog lever forward. Keep your touchdown point
eleven to seventeen degrees below the horizon. Stand by on the gear.”

 
          
“I’m
ready, Al.” Her glide path was steady, right on Vincenti’s left wing. Her jet
was a heavy toy glider right now. Actually, “glider” was a misnomer for the
F-16 Fighting Falcon—with its short supercritical wings, the F-16 made a lousy
glider. But as long as you had airspeed and a working EPU, though, a flameout
landing was very doable. Her HUD, or heads-up display, was still operable, and
the flight-path pipper was directly on the end of the runway— all she had to do
was keep the pipper on the touchdown point and maneuver the fighter to keep the
pipper within 11 to 17 of the horizon. So far it was going smoothly.

 
          
“Five
miles, Linda, lower the gear when you’re ready.”

 
          
“Coming
down.” She pressed the gear-permission button and tried to move the gear lever
downward—nothing. “Gear handle won’t move,” she radioed. She hit the
dn lock rel
button, which mechanically
allows the handle to be lowered—and she got no safe gear indications. “No green
lights, Al.”

 
          
“I
see your right gear, and a partial nose gear,” Vincenti said. “Cycle the gear
handle.”

 
          
McKenzie
raised the gear handle, waited a few seconds, pressed the
dn lock rel
button, and lowered the handle. “Did it,” she radioed.
“No red light, no green lights.”

 
          
“Four
miles out. Use alternate extension. Watch your airspeed, Linda, you’re sinking.
Drop your nose a bit.”

 
          
“Copy.”
She made the proper attitude correction. Three miles out—and the left landing
gear came into view. “What’s it look like, Al?”

 
          
“I
got two main gear, no nose gear,” he said. “Your nose gear might come down
below 190. Let’s go to thirteen AO A and get ready for touchdown. Try your
jfs
to
start
2 once more, and secure your throttle. Glide path looks good,
and you’re cleared to land. Nice job, Linda. Little bit more nose up, you’re at
eleven AOA.”

 
          
“She
starts to get squirrelly below two hundred,” McKenzie said. “I want to keep my
speed up until I’m over the threshold.”