Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01 (66 page)

 
          
“Four
. . . three . . . two ... oh God, there’s a snow drift out there, we’re not—”

 
          
With
its nose still pointing downward the Old Dog left the ground less than three
feet above the peak of ice at the end of the runway. Buoyed then by “ground
effect,” the swirl of air generated by the wings that bounced off the ground
and back up at the plane, the Old Dog skittered only twenty feet above the
snowy surface, the air pounding on the bomber’s huge wings adding to the
turbulence.

 
          
Like
a blessing, the pounding began to decrease, and as the airspeed slowly
increased, the Old Dog’s nose lifted skyward, McLanahan at times swinging the
control yoke all the way to its limit to control the swaying as the huge bomber
lifted into the Siberian sky.

 
          
Carefully
now, McLanahan, reached down to the gear-control lever and moved it up, also
checking the main-gear indicator-lights. “Gear up, Colonel, keep an eye on
the—”

 
          
He
was interrupted by a blur of motion outside the cockpit window. Ormack spotted
it first but was too shocked to speak. All he could do was point as the light
gray MiG-29
Fulcrum
fighter flew just
ahead and above the Old Dog, then banked erratically to the left and out of
sight, its twin afterburners lighting up the sky.

 
          
It
was impossible.

 
          
Yuri
Papendreyov had been busy with landing checklists, configuring his MiG-29
Fulcrum
fighter for the penetration and
descent into
Anadyr
and following the navigation beacon and
instrument-land-system beam. He had been taught not to rely on visual cues for
landing until very close to the runway, especially during long winter twilight
conditions.

 
          
The
young fighter pilot was less than two miles from touchdown when he finally had
his
Fulcrum
configured and ready. It
was then that he studied the runway. Since the first pass was going to be a
visual inspection and flyover, he was moving almost twice as fast as usual. The
landing gear was up, but he had flaps and leading-edge slats deployed to make
the relatively slow, low-altitude pass safer. He was flying his advanced
fighter at a high angle-of-attack, which meant keeping the fighter’s nose
higher than normal during the pass.

 
          
In
the dusky conditions Papendreyov didn’t see the massive billows of smoke rising
from the airfield and the sudden huge, black shape against the white
snow-covered runway. When he did look out the cockpit windscreen, the huge
ebony aircraft had left the runway, blending in with the rugged terrain and
dark horizon.

 
          
Yuri
made his pass, looking right toward the tower, the base-operation building and
aircraft-parking ramp. All empty. He was thinking he might be forced to pump
his own gas, when he shifted his attention forward. His windscreen was filled
with dark smoke. He jammed the throttles forward, igniting the twin Turmansky
afterburners as a wave of turbulence shook his
Fulcrum
fighter.

 
          
And
then, he saw it. He was close enough to touch it, close enough to see the pilot
straining to lift his aircraft skyward.

 
          
The
American B-52—lifting off from
Anadyr
!
Yuri reacted instinctively, flicked the arming switch to his GSh-23 twin
twenty-three-millimeter nose cannon, and fired.

 
          
The
shots went wide as another giant wave of turbulence from the B-52 swatted at
his
Fulcrum
fighter, and Yuri was
forced to roll hard left to keep from plowing into the bomber’s tail. As he
passed to its left, he noticed with satisfaction that the huge gun on its tail
did not follow him . . .

 
          
Marveling
at his good fortune, he continued his left turn, retracting flaps and slats and
selecting two AA-8 heat-seeking missiles ... The initial shock of seeing the
elusive American bomber
here,
of all
the possible places to find him, dissolved back into the hard concentration of
the hunt.

 
          
He
had searched eleven thousand square kilometers, risked everything to hunt it
down.

 
          
Now
he had found it.

 
          
The
radar altimeter showed only a few hundred feet above the ground, but he
couldn’t wait . . . McLanahan reached down and began to raise the flaps.

 
          
“Flaps
coming up, Colonel. SST nose retracting. I don’t believe it, but a Russian
fighter just went past us ... do you see him?’’

 
          
Ormack
looked out the right cockpit windows. “No.”

 
          
“Keep
watching for him.” McLanahan watched the flap-indicator as the huge wing
high-lift panels rose out of the slipstream. With the flaps retracting, the Old
Dog’s lift began to erode and she began to sink. McLanahan took the
number-eight throttle and jammed it to full military thrust, then fought the
control yoke like it was a bucking horse as the differential thrust threatened
to flip the bomber over and send it crashing to the mountain below. Using what
was left of the lateral trim controls, he struggled to keep the bomber level .
. .

 
          
“Flaps
up,” he called out. Suddenly a blinking yellow light on the upper-eyebrow
instrument panel caught his attention—the number two engine. Its oil pressure
had dropped below the minimum. He pulled the number-two throttle to CUTOFF,
shutting down the engine before the lack of oil pressure caused it to seize and
explode. Now, because of the two missing engines on the left side, McLanahan
again had no choice but to decrease power on the number-eight engine—without
full rudder he couldn’t hold the nose straight with such a difference in
thrust.

 
          
“Number
two engine shut down,” he said over the interphone. “Number eight pulled back
to compensate. Angelina, try to get your system working—”

 
          
“I’ve
tried, the pylon, bomb bay and
Stinger
airmine missiles are working but I’ve no radar guidance. I can release the
missiles but I can’t guide them.”

 
          
McLanahan
leveled the Old Dog at about a thousand feet, pressed the PAGE ADVANCE button
on the computerized checklist calling up the automatic terrain-avoidance
procedures. “We’re going into auto-terrain- avoidance, everybody. Wendy, go
downstairs and try to reload terrain data into the avoidance computers.”

 
          
Behind
the cockpit in the defense section Wendy Tork quickly unbuckled her parachute
harness straps, gingerly climbed out of the electronic- warfare officer’s
ejection seat, grabbed onto the “firepole” above the ladder, half-slid
half-climbed downstairs, then plugged her headset into the radar navigator’s
station below.

 
          
“Patrick,
I’m downstairs,” she radioed to the cockpit. “Now what?”

           
“Okay, good ... hit the checklist
button and enter TA on the keyboard. The terrain-avoidance checklist will come
up. Page ahead to the data-reload section. That has the steps.”

           
The computerized checklist readout,
and the unpopular Colonel Anderson’s insistence that everyone know about
everyone else’s duties aboard the Old Dog, now paid off. Wendy moved the
terrain-data cartridge reader lever from LOCK to READ. “Reloading terrain data,
Patrick.” McLanahan had quickly read the terrain-avoidance checklist as it
scrolled onto Ormack’s computer screen. He activated the autopilot, and the
computer-drawn terrain-trace zipped across his video monitor. He found the
auto-terrain-avoidance switch and threw it, setting the clearance altitude to
two hundred feet.

           
And the crippled Old Dog began to
respond.

 
 
          
As
Yuri’s
Fulcrum
fighter rolled out
behind the B-52, the huge bomber nosed over and Yuri was positive the American
intruder was going to crash. But at the last possible moment the plane somehow
leveled off, skimming so close to the earth the rocks and jagged peaks seemed
to be scraping the bomber’s black belly as they rushed underneath in a blur . .
.

 
          
McLanahan
kept the engines screaming at full throttle. Using the number eight engine’s
throttle, he made a hard left turn, searching out his cockpit window.

 
          
Ormack,
gripping the glare-shield for support in the tight turn, called to McLanahan
that “we need to head east, we’re heading the wrong way—’’

 
          
“We
also need to get back in the mountains,’’ McLanahan said. He rolled the wings
level on a southwesterly heading back down the Korak- skoje Mountains, aiming
the Old Dog toward a low row of rugged, snow- covered peaks. “If we get over
the water with that fighter on our tail he’ll nail us for sure.’’

 
          
“But
our fuel—’’

 
          
“We
should have enough, but there’s no alternative . . . Angelina, can you steer
your rocket turret at all?’’

 
          
She
activated the double handgrips on the
Stinger
airmine rocket turret. “The radar’s working. I can move my controls. But I
don’t know if the cannon is moving, I’ve lost all my position indicators.’’

 
          
“Will
the rockets still detonate?’’

 
          
“Yes,
I can set the detonation range manually, or they’ll detonate themselves just
before their propellant runs out.”

 
          
“Okay,
if we spot the fighter we’ll call out its position. Set the airmines for
different ranges and—”

 
          
“I see him, he's right behind us—”

           
An explosion rocked the bomber—like
a wrecking ball had crashed into the Old Dog’s midsection. McLanahan felt as if
he were riding an elevator that had just dropped twenty floors in an instant.
The Old Dog seemed to hover in midair, its six working engines straining against
the impact of a Soviet A A-8 missile slamming into its fuselage.

 
          
Yuri
Papendreyov, flying slightly high and to the right of his quarry, clenched a
fist and allowed a smile. One of his heat-seeking missiles had missed, but the
second had hit the American bomber in the mid-body, just forward of the wing’s
leading edge. Clouds of smoke erupted from the hole he’d created. The bomber’s
tail sank down, the nose shot up.

 
          
Yet
somehow it was still flying. Well, those Americans might lead charmed lives,
but their luck had run out. He still had two AA-8 heat-seekers and five hundred
rounds of ammunition, and the bomber was badly crippled.

 
          
In
his tight right-hand turn to set up for another attack, he checked his
navigation instruments and saw he was only forty kilometers from
Anadyr
. . .

 
          
There
was no greater prize than the B-52, he told himself, no greater victory ... He
widened his right turn and smiled broadly, seeing his destiny unfolding.

 
          
Choking
and coughing from the thick clouds of black smoke, Wendy aimed a fire
extinguisher out the open aft bulkhead door leading to the bomb bay catwalk and
squeezed the trigger. She was bleeding from a gash in her forehead sustained
when she was thrown against the forward instrument panel after the missile hit.
A moment later Angelina was beside her, carrying the firefighting mask and
another extinguisher bottle. While Wendy put on the mask and plugged it into
the instructor-nav’s oxygen panel, Angelina moved as far as she could toward
the fire on the catwalk and fired her extinguisher.

 
          
The
flames had intensified the instant Wendy had opened the bulkhead door, but the
blast of air racing from the breaks in the cockpit through the open door sucked
the smoke and flames aft and gave her a clear and effective shot at the fire in
the electronic countermeasures transformers and control boxes.