McLanahan was out of his seat in a second, leaving the second Striker missile on its own. The second Striker, with no guidance inputs, relied solely on its own GPS satellite updates and its onboard nav computers and flew itself to its preprogrammed target coordinates, hitting sixty-eight feet north of the center of the Anqing fighter base’s headquarters building. The 2,000-pound high-explosive missile leveled half of the three- story concrete building in a blinding flash of fire and a powerful earth-shattering blast.
“This is bull, Muck,” Luger was saying. “How come I always get injured on one of these things? When is it going to be your turn? I always…” But then he looked down and saw that three long, angry red rips like huge tiger’s claws arced across McLanahan’s left shoulder and side across his back. “Jeez, Muck, you got hit too, dammit.” A surge of energy coursed through Luger, and he helped his longtime friend and partner back into his own seat and helped him strap back in. McLanahan was already looking woozy, and Luger helped him reattach his oxygen mask, secured up to his face, and made sure he was on 100-percent oxygen.
“Stay with me, Patrick,” Luger said, cross-cockpit. McLanahan nodded wearily, as Luger strapped himself back in and made sure his oxygen was on and 100 percent too.
“Where are the fighters, guys?” Nancy Cheshire shouted on interphone. The Megafortress was still mushy, right at the edge of the stall. Elliott and Cheshire could do nothing but keep the wings level, the nose below the horizon, and wait for the airspeed to come back — they hoped that would happen before they ran out of altitude. Cheshire shouted, “How are we on the cumulogranite, Muck?” No immediately reply. “You guys okay back there?”
“We’re both hit, dammit,” Luger responded.
“What?” Both Elliott and Cheshire snapped their heads around to look. “You guys okay?”
“Clear of terrain ahead, head westbound only — very high terrain north, south, and east,” McLanahan shouted by way of response, his voice strained. “You’re cleared down to three thousand feet in this area if you need it. When you can, give me a heading of three-four-zero. We’re okay.”
“Turns are a no-no right now,” Cheshire said. “They don’t sound very good. I’ll go check them over. You got it, General?”
“I got the plane, Nance,” Elliott acknowledged. They transferred controls with a positive shake of the control stick. Cheshire stepped out of her seat and crawled under the aft instrument console to check on both navigators.
“You’re both bleeding like stuck pigs,” Cheshire said as she examined their wounds. She looked across and saw small, jagged shrapnel holes in the fuselage. “Pilot, better check the instruments — we might have taken some damage.”
“I got my hands full as it is, co,” Elliott said.
“Dave took a crack in his head and a couple in the leg and arm,” Cheshire reported on interphone. “Muck got a bunch in the back, left side, and left shoulder. You guys are going to have some cool scars to show your grandkids. Your seat-attachment shoulder harness is cut, Patrick— if we get in trouble, and if you get the time, think about using one of the downward-ejecting seats.”
“Thanks, Nance,” McLanahan said. “I’ll keep it in mind. But as long as we’re sucking dirt here, I’ll stay in this seat.”
“Okay.” Cheshire found the first-aid kit and slapped as many large bandages and compresses on the biggest gashes as she could. “You GIBs will live,” she said to the “Guys In Back.” McLanahan’s wounds looked the worst, but the blow to Luger’s head worried her the most — he would have to be checked carefully for signs of a concussion or other head trauma. “Just please advise us before you pass out, okay, Dave?”
“Anything for you, Nancy,” Luger replied. Cheshire gave Luger a wink and went quickly back to her seat and strapped in tightly.
“Where are those fighters?” Elliott asked.
“I’m going to do a radar sweep,” Luger said, fighting off a wave of dizziness and nausea every time he moved his head. “Radar coming on.” He activated the omnidirectional radar for a few seconds, then turned it back to standby. “Fighters are turning right to pursue, at five o’clock high, eight miles.”
“We’re coming to the river floodplain area,” McLanahan said. “Set for COLA altitude again. We’ve got four minutes until we get into any high terrain again.”
“The search radar is down,” Luger announced, “so they’ll have a tougher time finding us. We’ll—” Just then, the threat warning receiver bleeped again: “Fighters at six o’clock, coming inside six miles, I think they got a lock on us! Give me a hard turn to the right.”
“Can’t turn yet!” Cheshire shouted. “We’re still not above three hundred knots!”
“I need a right turn fast! ”
“Where are they?”
“Radar coming on…” Luger activated the attack radar, and immediately the warning tones sounded again: “Bandits, six o’clock, five miles! ” he shouted. He instinctively activated the Stinger tail airmine cannon… before realizing with shock, “Shit! No tail cannon rounds! Activating Scorpion missiles!” But before he could command a AIM-120 launch, the crew heard, “MISSILE LAUNCH, MISSILE LAUNCH!”
“Break right!” Luger shouted.
“We can’t!” Cheshire shouted back. “We got no airspeed! No airspeed!”
Luger ejected flares and decoy gliders again — but it was too late. The missiles were in the air, headed right for them…
… no, not for them! Seconds before they launched from four miles behind the EB-52 Megafortress, the two Chinese J-8 fighters were hit by Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, fired by two Taiwanese F-16 fighters. The F-16s had broken off from the returning bombing pack to escort the EB- 52 Megafortress on its separate strike route. The F-16s could receive datalink information from the EB-52’s radar, so it knew where to look for the Chinese fighters; then, using their Falcon Eye infrared sensors, similar to the Sukhoi-27’s Infrared Search and Track sensor, the F-16s were able to sneak up on the Chinese fighters without being detected themselves.
The Chinese Sukhoi-27 was still alive, however, and now he was fighting mad. He broke off the attack on the Megafortress, wheeled, immediately pounced on the two F-16s, and fired two PL-2 missiles into one of the F-16s. The second F-16 was alone, trapped right in the crosshairs of the faster and equally nimble Su-27…
No, not quite alone. “Attack radar on… commit Scorpion launch on air target X ray,” Luger ordered, and he fired two over-the-shoulder AIM-120 missiles at the Su-27. Moments before the Su-27 closed in for the kill, he was blasted apart by a double hit of Scorpion radar-guided missiles. “Splash one -27,” he announced.
“Thank you, Headbanger,” the Megafortress crew heard over the emergency UHF channel in heavily accented English. “Good luck, good hunting. ”
“The F-16 is heading home,” Luger said, as he studied his threat display. “But he’s three hundred miles off his flight plan. I don’t know if he’ll have the fuel to make it all the way back to Kai-Shan.”
“Yes, he will,” McLanahan said. He quickly composed a satellite transceiver message on his terminal. “I’ll send in Jon Masters’s tanker aircraft. They can do a low-level pickup emergency refueling over the coast.”
“Jon’s tanker ever do an emergency refueling before?” Elliott asked.
“Hell no,” McLanahan said. “I don’t think Jon’s tanker has ever refueled any other plane except a Megafortress and a couple others, and I know for sure that none of the Taiwanese pilots have refueled from Jon’s DC-10. But now’s a damned good time to learn. We don’t need the fuel right now — the Taiwanese F-16 does.”
In less than four minutes, the Megafortress sped across the wide, flat Chang Jiang River valley and across to the protective sanctuary of the Ta- Pieh Mountain range, just as another wave of fighters arrived from the neighboring Changsha fighter base to search for the mysterious attacker. The Megafortress continued northwest bound through the mountains for a few minutes, then cut northeast until they were at the extreme northeast end of the Ta-Pieh Mountains. From there, they launched their next attack: two Wolverine antiair defense cruise missiles against the surface- to-air missiles and antiaircraft artillery units defending the bomber base at Wuhan, followed by two Striker missiles.