Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (37 page)

 
          
Weston
pulled his copilot’s shredded body off the center throttle quadrant, his
shaking right hand and arm instantly covered in blood up to his shoulder “Oh
shit,” he exclaimed. “Flex! Give me a hand! Help me!” The senior jumpmaster
rushed forward, unstrapped the copilot from his seat, and laid him on the deck.
It seemed as if blood covered every square inch of the cockpit. “Flex, get in
the right seat, help me keep this thing level. We’re all blasted to hell.” He
kept the nose down, but the airspeed was steadily decreasing, and the vibration
coming from the right wing was getting worse. “Check the gauges. Flex. What
else did I lose?”

 
          
“Fluctuating
prop RPMs on the right,” the jumpmaster said. Weston pulled some power back to
try to dampen the vibrations, but it had no effect. “Looks like a bunch of
gauges for the right engine are oscillating. Vibration is getting worse, too.”

           
“Shit. I’m going to shut down number
two.” Weston switched the MV-22’s transmission system so that both rotors were
being powered by the left engine, isolated the right engine’s electrical,
pneumatic, and hydraulic systems, then quickly shut off fuel to the right
engine to shut it down. “Airspeed’s dropped off about forty knots,” he said,
“but I’ve got control. Vibration has decreased a bit.” He knew that was being
very, very optimistic. “Any more damage?”

 
          
“We
got a bunch of c/b’s that won’t reset, and a blown fuse light on the number
three inverter and current limiter,” the jumpmaster reported. “Where’s the
current limiter fuse?”

           
“Not accessible inflight,” Weston
replied. “Let’s start shedding electrical loads and setting up the electrical
panel for single-inverter operation. Crap, what else could go wr—?”

           
Suddenly, it was as if the entire
horizon ahead of them erupted into sheets of blazing gunfire. The plane had
inadvertently drifted right over toward Zhukovsky Air Base, and almost every
antiaircraft artillery piece on the base opened fire on them. Weston
immediately banked hard left to try to get away, but there was gunfire in every
direction. The arcs of glowing tracer rounds got closer and closer every
second. Just then, a searchlight popped on, and in a few seconds it had locked
directly on them.

 
          
Time
to die. Weston thought. No ejection seats, and not enough parachutes for
everyone. His only chance was to try a forced landing, but if those triple-A
units got a clean shot at them, there wouldn’t be enough of the plane left to
land. Weston thought of his family, thought about the service his kids would
have to attend, thought about.. .

 
          
Just
then there were several sharp flashes of light, one after another, illuminating
the cockpit like dozens of flashbulbs popping one after another. So this was
what it was like, Weston thought, to take a direct triple-A hit? This was what
it was like to die. ...

 
          
“God
almighty,” the crew mission commander, Nevada Air National Guard Major Duane
“Dev” Deverill muttered. “That was the
definition
of a wrong turn.
Either Trash Man is lost, or he’s just plain stupid.”

 
          
From
twenty miles east of Zhukovsky, Deverill and his aircraft commander, Nevada Air
National Guard Captain Annie Dewey, orbited above the hellish nightmare aboard
an EB-1C Megafortress II bomber. They had watched the entire episode from high
above, well above antiaircraft artillery range, using the Megafortress’s LADAR,
or Laser Radar, to paint a threedimensional image of the MV-22’s entire
approach and escape. The LADAR also imaged and targeted the positions of some
of the advancing Russian forces.

 
          
“Is
the MV-22 still airborne?” Annie asked.

 
          
“Yep,”
Duane responded. “The Longhorn got to him just in time. Bombers save the day
again.” Deverill had released an AGM-89D Longhorn Maverick precision-guided
missile when they saw the MV-22 drifting over toward Zhukovsky, and it had
scored a direct hit on the antiaircraft artillery site that was about to open
fire on them. The Longhorn missile, an upgrade of the venerable AGM-89 Maverick
missile, was fitted with an imaging-infrared seeker and a millimeter-wave radar
that could detect and home in on vehicles as small as an automobile. It had a
range of over thirty miles and was big enough to destroy a main battle tank or
penetrate five feet of reinforced concrete. Along with a rotary launcher of
eight Longhorn missiles in the center bomb bay and an extended fuel tank in the
aft bomb bay, the Vampire also carried a rotary launcher with eight special
air-to-air missiles in the forward bomb bay.

 
          
“Give
’em a break, Dev,” Annie said. “It looked like they caught some triple-A back
there after they lifted off. Maybe they’re badly damaged.”

 
          
Duane
snorted, politely conceding the point. “You’re right, Heels. I’d hate to think
they just plain screwed up.”

 
          
Annie
looked over at Deverill and studied him for a moment. How, she thought, could a
guy so damned cute be so damned insensitive?

 
          
Annie
couldn’t help being drawn to him. despite his cocky, confident, self-indulgent
attitude. If he wasn’t so popular and highly qualified, he would be the biggest
asshole on base. But he really knew his shit and he contributed a lot to the
111th Bomb Wing “Aces High” and to his fellow crewdogs.

 
          
“I
think he’s in trouble,” Annie said after studying Dev’s large multifunction
display as it plotted the MV-22’s position. “We need to help him.”

 
          
“You
know we’re not allowed to do that,” Deverill said. “We’re not supposed to be
here, remember? We’re ghosts.”

 
          
“Ghosts
who launched cruise missiles against a country that we’re not at war with,”
Annie pointed out.

           
“Hey, Heels, you’re preaching to the
choir,” Duane said. “I’d be just as happy planting a few sticks of cluster
bombs on the Russians any day. But the plan was not to descend below fifteen
thousand feet or risk revealing our position in any way. If the world found out
the
U.S.
had sent us to fly air cover for an extraction of an American spy
inside
Russia
, it could ruin relations with everybody. Longhorns from high altitude,
yes. But if we get ourselves shot down by a lucky Russian gunner with itchy
trigger fingers, we violate orders and the U.S. of A. gets egg all over its
face.”

 
          
“Ask
me if I care,” Annie said. She switched to a prebriefed tactical channel and
keyed her mike switch: “Hammer, Hammer, this is Terminator on red four. How
copy?” No response. She tried several times and thought she heard a scratchy
carrier tone, as if someone was keying a mike switch in response but no voice
was going out. “I think that’s him, but there’s something wrong. He might have serious
battle damage. We’ve got to do a rejoin on him, get a look at him, and if
necessary lead him home.”

 
          
“A
B-l bomber flying formation with a MV-22 tilt-rotor? It’s kinda like the Great
Dane wanting to screw the
Chihuahua
, isn’t it?”

 
          
“Dev,
I’m not going to sit up here and watch that Pave Hammer flight get chewed up by
triple-A with guys I know on board,” Annie said resolutely. She paddled off the
autopilot that was holding them in their cover orbit. “Get ready to do a rejoin
on that MV-22.”

 
          
“Heels,
think about that first for a sec, dammit,” Deverill said earnestly. Annie
glared angrily at her mission commander, but when she did, she realized that he
wasn’t giving her an order, just a suggestion. Annie sensed no fear in his
voice, only concern that her brave efforts weren’t going to do any good. He
nodded toward the God’s-eye display. “He’s at six hundred feet going only two
hundred knots. To match him we’ll have to sweep the wings forward and deploy
flaps and slats, and we won’t be stealthy anymore. That also means we can’t
release weapons and won’t be able to use the electronic countermeasures stuff,
except maybe for the towed decoy, which we might as well not use at that point,
because our radar cross-section will obliterate the decoy. We’ll be just as
vulnerable as the MV-22, maybe even more so. At that speed and altitude, we’ll
be burning fuel like crazy, and we don’t have a tanker scheduled to come in
over the
Black Sea
. We may not make it out of the region. We’d
have to abort to a base in
Turkey
.”

 
          
Annie
looked at her mission commander, anger burning in her eyes—but not anger toward
him. He was right, of course.

           
She hadn't considered any of those
facts, and that made her angrier still—with herself. Annie Dewey prided herself
on developing all the skills and knowledge necessary as an aircraft commander,
and first on the list of skills had to he analyzing facts and proper
decision-making. She wasn’t demonstrating much of that right now.

 
          
“I
hear what you’re saying, Dev,” Annie said, “and I agree with all your concerns.
Every one of them. But it doesn’t matter. I want to go down there anyway.”

 
          
Deverill’s
face looked grim, but he nodded, slowly. She felt that he would go along, but
she didn’t know if he was one hundred percent behind her. and that was
important to her. Annie was quiet for a moment; then, without keying a
microphone button, she spoke: “Genesis, this is Terminator... Terminator to
Genesis.”

 
          
A
moment later, they heard, “Go ahead, Annie. We’re secure.”

 
          
“General,
you been watching our situation?”

           
“Affirmative,” Lieutenant-General
Terrill Samson replied. He was talking to Annie via the satellite-based
microtransceiver “installed” into every member of the
High-Technology
Aerospace
Weapons
Center
. With the tiny beneath-the-skin
transceiver, they could speak with each other anytime, anywhere. “Stand by
one.” They heard Samson say, “Genesis to Tin Man. How do you hear, Hal?”

 
          
“I
hear you now. sir,” Hal Briggs responded. Hal Briggs and Chris Wohl had the
same kind of subcutaneous microtransceivers as everyone else at HAWC. “We’re in
deep shit here. The plane’s pretty shot up and the copilot is dead. Looks like
Trash Man lost all his cockpit displays. We need help right now or Trash Man’s
liable to fly us over another ack-ack site.”

           
“Stand by, Hal, I’ll patch in Annie
and Duane. Patch in Dewey and Deverill... . Annie, Duane, this is Samson. How
copy?”

 
          
“Loud
and clear. General,” Deverill said, his eyes wide with wonder. Deverill had
been one of the first members of the Nevada Air National Guard’s 111th Bomb
Squadron to get the subcutaneous transcei ver, a tribute to his skills as a
bombardier and instructor. But the technology astounded him. It was as if Samson
was talking to him over the ship’s intercom. Deverill knew that they could
patch a hundred others into their conversation; they could track their
location, monitor their physiological status, and exchange data via small
handheld computers.

 
          
“Hammer
has taken casualties and severe battle damage. What do you have in mind?”

 
          
“A
rejoin, using LADAR, and hope we can get within visual range.”

 
          
There
was a long pause, then: “The latest satellite weather observation shows very
poor weather. Definitely not ideal conditions. What’s your visibility? Any
chance you’ll get a visual within a half-mile?”

 
          
“Pretty
unlikely.”

 
          
“Then
a rejoin is not authorized.”

 
          
“Boss,
if we don’t help that flight, they’re liable to get shot down right over the
rebel position,” Annie said. “The Russians might not enjoy the idea of an
American special operations plane crash-landing over them—unless they shoot
them down, of course.”

 
          
“And
they’d be even angrier if they found out the
United States
was flying a stealth warplane over them,”
Samson said. “Operation not approved. Maintain altitude, continue to attempt to
establish radio contact, and interdict any enemy opposition to the maximum
extent possible. Do not attempt a rejoin.”