Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01 (49 page)

 
          
“Fve
got the uplink shut down.” Wendy carefully adjusted the jammer’s frequencies,
as if she were adjusting the focus on a microscope. She glanced up at her radar
altimeter repeater. “How does it look?”

 
          
“It’s
heading right for us,” Ormack said.

 
          
“Make
a hard turn into it,” Wendy ordered.

 
          
“Into
it? That will—”

 
          
“Do
it, General,” Wendy said over the
interphone. The Old Dog rolled into a steep bank to the left.

 
          
“I
can still see it . . . wait.” Elliott’s voice was suddenly less strained. “I
can see the whole tail of the missile . . . it’s gone. It went behind us . . .”

 
          
“Come
back to the right, maximum bank, military thrust,” Wendy said. Elliott
immediately did it.

 
          
“SA-2
signal coming back up,” Wendy said suddenly. Her hands flew over the High-speed
Anti-Radiation Missile control panel. “Anti-radar missile one programmed and
ready for launch.”

 
          
Angelina
checked her switches, watching her indicators as a HARM missile on the aft bomb
bay’s rotating launcher was pulled into the lower launch position. “Ready.”

 
          
Wendy
hit the LAUNCH button. The fibersteel bomb-bay doors swung open, and the first
HARM missile was ejected into the slipstream. The launcher automatically
rotated another HARM into launch position.

 
          
“HARM
has a good lock-on,” Wendy reported. “SA-2 missile alert . . . HARM still
locked on . . . SA-2 solid missile alert.” Suddenly both the MISSILE ALERT
threat signal and the HARM missiles’s lock-on status indication blinked off.

           
“SA-2 radar down,” Wendy said, her
breath coming back. Angelina sat back in her seat, her body relaxing. “They’ve
switched back to wide-area search,” Wendy said, monitoring the threat audio
from her receivers. “No other missile tracking signals. They’ve lost us.”

 
          
The
town was passing out of view. Elliott watched the distant lights, now almost
obscured by the horizon so close beneath them, as it slid past the left cockpit
windows.

 
          
“Good
shooting, people.” He didn’t say “ladies.” There were no “ladies” aboard. “Call
up the next point,” Elliott told the navigators. “I don’t want to head back to
the same point. If they look for us, they’ll plot our track and find us along
that path.” McLanahan punched instructions into the computer, the bomber made a
slight turn back to the left. A few minutes later Luger announced they were
crossing the coast.

 
          
“Hey,
Tork. What the hell were you doing back there?” Ormack said. Wendy was waiting
for him.

 
          
“Colonel
Ormack,” Wendy said, “the next time I give an evasion command, I don’t want it
second-guessed. An SA-2 leaves the rails three times faster than any speed this
plane could hope to reach. At our range it gives us only a few seconds to
react. Our best defense is to acquire the missile visually. Once we see it, our
chances of evading it go way up. If you’re unsure of the right defensive
maneuvers it would be best to keep quiet and do as you’re told.”

 
          
Ormack
closed his mouth. She was right.

 
          
“He
got the message,” Elliott said. “Crew, that was only the first test. There’ll
be a lot more before we’re through with this. Dave, how long until Kavazyna?”

 
          
Luger
looked at his chart. “I’d say we’ll be overflying it in forty minutes,
General.”

 
          
Forty minutes.
The thought was like a
damp chill permeating the pressurized interior of the Old Dog.

 
          
“Give
it to me right now,” the President ordered.

           
“Yes,
sir,
” General Curtis said enthusiastically. The President and the
JCS Chairman were alone with the President’s aide Jeff Hampton and several
Marine guards and military communications technicians in the White House
Situation Room. Curtis looked as spit-shined and polished as always, even in these
early-morning hours and in spite of the short notice. The President, in sharp
contrast, had pulled on a football warm-up suit after receiving the
notification and then ran down to the Situation Room.

 
          
Curtis
walked rapidly to the rear of the chamber.

 
          
Here,
Curtis thought, was a President who wanted
action.
Quite a switch from the political animal he’d always known. He went over to a
large projection chart on the rear wall that depicted the State of
Alaska
and most of
Asia
. The Kavaznya laser complex was highlighted
with a large triangle—a target symbol. Several circles were drawn: large
circles around radar sites clustered all along the Russian coastline and near
cities; smaller circles representing defensive surface-to-air-missile sites.

 
          
A
very large circle was centered over the north Pacific, midway between
Hawaii
and the
Aleutians
—the kill zone of the Soviet’s new orbiting
steerable mirror. The circle encompassed the entire north Pacific, the State of
Alaska
, all of the arctic and even large parts of
Canada
.

 
          
One
black-lined route was depicted—the attack route of the B-1B
Excaliburs,
which were still orbiting
over the
Chukchi
Sea
six hundred miles west of
Alaska
. “The alert was called because of an
unknown aircraft that disappeared from Soviet radar here a hundred and fifty
miles south of the
Kommandorskiye
Islands
. It was under radar control from
Kommandorskiye
Center
.”

           
The President looked at him.
“Elliott? General
Elliott's
plane?”

           
“We know its call sign,” Curtis
said. “Lantern. Lantern Four-Five Fox—”

 
          
“Fox.
The same as Elliott’s . . .”

 
          
“I
believe so, sir. It seems he made it.”

 
          
“Son
of a bitch,” the President said, not knowing whether he should be elated or
worried—he was happy that the Old Dog had done what the B-ls had failed to do,
but now it too had been discovered. “What about the Lantern part?”

 
          
“Lantern
was yesterday’s Zulu call sign of SAC’s Sixth Strategic Wing at Elmendorf Air
Force Base in
Anchorage
,” Curtis said. “The Sixth has several KC-135 and KC-10 tankers, plus
RC-135 reconnaissance planes.”

           
“So it
wasn't
Elliott?”

           
“Well, sir,” Curtis said,
hesitating, his Kansas drawl leaking through, “we called the Sixth. They had no
Lantern Four-Five Fox at all that day. They had a fighter drag earlier—some
tankers escorting F-15s— that flew fairly close to Soviet airspace on its way
to Kadena, but no four-five call sign. Right now, we’re checking our some
possibilities.
Kommandorskiye
Center
apparently had no flight plan on file for
Lantern Four-Five Fox. Kommandorskiye was told by Lantern that they would have
Kadena Global Command Control relay their flight plan. That’s standard
procedure for military flight plans. Meanwhile Kommandorskiye assigned Lantern
an identification code and allowed it to continue southward. A few minutes
later Kommandorskiye kicked Lantern out of its airspace because of a
malfunctioning identification signal. It was given a heading well clear of
Soviet airspace. A half-hour after that Kommandorskiye calls Lantern and says
they are seventy miles
inside
Soviet
airspace.”

 
          
“Inside
their airspace? How did that
happen?”

 
          
“We’re
not sure but I’m operating under the assumption that Lantern Four-Five
is
Elliott and his crew. I haven’t
figured out how he got the fuel—he didn’t have nearly enough to fly all the way
across the north Pacific Ocean. I should receive some word soon ...”

 
          
“Then
our game is on—for real,” the President said. He looked up at Curtis. “Your
plan seems to have worked, General.”

           
“Yes, sir. When that Russian Air
Defense emergency was called, those B-ls were tying up three quarters of the
Soviet fighters in the area. The intelligence ship
Lawrence
didn’t report any fighter activity further
south. If it is Elliott, and I’m betting it is, he’s got quite a head start.”

 
          
The
President absorbed that, then: “General, recall the B-ls immediately. If the
Russians find Elliott over the Kamchataka peninsula they’ll shoot down the
Excaliburs
for sure.”

           
“Yes, sir. And if I know those
bomber crews they’ll put the pedal to the metal getting back here.”

 
          
“So
that shrewd old bastard
made
it.” The
President shook his head, still finding it difficult to believe what had
happened. He turned to
Hampton
. “
Eight
a.m.
,
Jeff. I want the National Security Advisors,
JCS, House Speaker, minority and majority leaders of both houses of Congress
and Armed Services Committee chairman of both houses. Request a secure
videophone connection with the prime ministers of the NATO countries and the
attendance of all available NATO ambassadors. Those who can’t meet in the Oval
Office will confer via secure videophone.”

 
          
The
President nodded his head decisively. “That’s when I will inform them of the
strike against the laser complex at Kavaznya.” He turned to Curtis. “General, I
want you airborne, right away, to direct Elliott’s sortie and withdrawal.”

 
          
Curtis
nodded, saluted his Commander-in-Chief, turned and exited the White House
Situation Room. As he did so his step was firmer, his eyes brighter than at any
time in the past few months.

 
          
As
the Old Dog streaked across the skies of the Kamchatka peninsula in eastern
Russia, one of its electronic eyes looked straight ahead and kept the crew of
six from crashing into the rugged mountains of the Kamchatka, while other eyes
scanned the skies for electromagnetic signals aimed at it, looking for enemies
who were looking for them.

 
          
It
was Dave Luger who controlled the first “eye”—a beam of radar energy that swept
in a forty-five degree cone on either side of the Old Dog’s sleek nose. If
there was an obstacle along the beam’s path it would reflect the radar energy
directly back to be displayed on Luger’s scope.

 
          
The
other eyes—the sensors and antennas of the electronic countermeasures
system—were mostly computer-controlled. A computer would instantly analyze a
signal, identify it, determine its danger level and jam it if necessary.
Luger’s “eye” was different. He constantly had to adjust the radar
presentation, search the scope for tiny peaks or ridge lines, be able instantly
to evaluate the terrain around them and determine a safe altitude. . . .

 
          
Luger
suppressed a yawn and directed the stream of cool air from a vent right into
his face. He had been leaning forward, intently studying the scope, for the
past thirty minutes. The parachute he wore felt like a boot resting on each of his
kidneys, but he was afraid to take his eyes off the scope to readjust it. He
knew the pilots upstairs were blind—all they could see were some jagged peaks
in the gray starlit horizon, which just made them all the more nervous.

 
          
Without
the terrain-avoidance computer, it was his radar against the mountains. When
the scope was clear he would direct a shallow descent until terrain appeared,
then climb again until it disappeared. It was like terrain-avoidance in the G-
and H-model B-52s—except there was no TV screen for the pilots to watch, no
terrain-avoidance trace that gave the pilots an exact picture of the disasters
waiting for them.
He
was their eyes
now.

 
          
At
the moment Luger was watching one particular reflection on his SITUATION scope.
It had a range of thirty miles, but for some reason he hadn’t seen this large
ridge line until it was much closer. Quickly he pressed the interphone button
under his left boot.

 
          
“High
terrain, thirteen miles,
twelve o’clock
.”

 
          
Elliott
and Ormack both sat up, and Ormack instinctively pushed on the throttles,
preparing to pull the Old Dog’s nose skyward. “Thirteen miles,” he said. “How
come you didn’t see it before?”

 
          
“Climb
first, ask questions later, Colonel.”

 
          
Ormack
gritted his teeth and pulled back on the yoke as soon as he noted a definite
increase in airspeed, added five hundred feet to the Old Dog’s altitude and
leveled off.

 
          
“Clear
of terrain for thirty miles,” Luger reported. Ormack reengaged the low-altitude
autopilot and Elliott checked the switch positions.

 
          
“I
repeat, why the hell didn’t you see that terrain earlier, Luger,” Ormack said.
“The most critical phase of this mission so far and you’re asleep down there—”

 
          
“That’s
bullshit, Colonel,” McLanahan said. “There’s a dozen reasons why terrain won’t show
until it’s closer in—snow, trees, fog. It
sure
as hell isn’t because anyone’s sleeping down here. Maybe you ought to come down
here for a while, Colonel, and you keep this hunk of metal out of the dirt—”

 
          
“
Enough
. ” Elliott told them. He had been
quiet ever since they evaded the SA-2 missile but was furious now. He glared at
Ormack. “This is no goddamn time for squabbling.” Cross-cockpit, he said,
“John, what the hell is it? Those guys down there sure as hell aren’t sleeping
and you know it.”

 
          
“Ah
. . .” Ormack rubbed his eyes, stared straight ahead into the inky blackness
all around them. “I’m sorry, I guess I’m just beat.” He took a deep breath and
tried to rub a kink out of his left shoulder. “I guess I’ve been on the edge
ever since—”

 
          
He
glanced over at Elliott. The General was slumped forward in his seat, his hands
looped over the control yoke, his head awkwardly dangling to one side.

 
          
“
General
. ” He reached across and shook
Elliott’s right shoulder. No response.

           
“Pereira. Get up here.” Angelina
looked forward around her seat and saw Elliott’s limp body. She began to
unfasten the buckles around her chest and crotch.

 
          
“What
happened?”

 
          
“The
general. He’s out cold, Pat.” Ormack disengaged the low-level autopilot and
started a slow climb, leveling off at five thousand feet, reengaged the
autopilot, unfastened his straps and leaned across to help Elliott.

 
          
Not
until he was far enough over to Elliott to unfasten his chest straps did he
smell it—the thick, cloying stench of dried blood. The overpowering scent
forced his eyes down to Elliott’s right leg. The general’s fatigue pants from
the knee down oozed a crusty red film. His boots stuck to the floor when Ormack
tried to move the leg. The general’s face made pale look healthy.