The aircraft looked like a gigantic pterodactyl coming toward him. And the pencil nose of the bomber, tilted down for takeoff, was aimed right at his heart.
Briggs jumped up, his eyes on the monster with wings speeding toward him, and body-tackled the fence. The fence jumped a few feet, but Briggs kept on going, his legs didn't stop pumping until the blast of the eight turbofan jet engines swept him off his feet and into the fence.
"He did it," McLanahan said.
"We aren't out of it yet. "Ormack slowly throttled up to full power, then reached down and hit the flap switch. "After the fence we got three miles of concrete left. It'll take another minute to get the flaps down, another minute to accelerate this pig to rotate speed. We run out of hard surface in less than a minute.
McLanahan finally found the flap indicator. "It's not moving… " "It probably jammed during one of those explosions," Ormack said, holding tight to the wheel."it might take them longer to come down-or the flap motors will burn out. One or the other.
The indicator moved to ten percent. Twenty percent. A pause-then a longer pause. Thirty percent. The bomber began to.rattle.
"Forty percent. "McLanahan scanned the instruments, then looked out the window. Through the dim morning light he saw the glitter of steel on the horizon. He stared harder. Perched directly in front of them was a large, boxy aircraft, with some men scattered around it.
"What the hell is that?" Ormack was staring into the distance.
"It's an airplane on the concrete," McLanahan said "They're blocking our path. "He glanced down at the flap' indicator again. Still forty percent.
"The flaps stopped."
"We can't do it. We need the whole dry lake now. "Ormack reached down and shut off the flap switch, freezing them at forty percent down.
"Can we rotate with the flaps stopped?"
"We'll run out of time before we hit that plane. We'll have to stop.
.. pull the 'chute-" "Wait. "McLanahan searched the control panel near his le it arm, finding a switch marked "DEFENSE CONSENT."He flipped the switch from SAFE to CONSENT "Angelina. "He arched around in his seat. "Angelina. Turn on the missiles. The forward missiles."
"What?"
"The Scorpions. Turn 'em on.
Pereira scrambled forward, clutching onto the pilot's seat.
"Turn them on?We can't. They need to align, lock onto a target-" "I don't need them to align. "McLanahan looked out the sloped windows.
Angelina followed his gaze, finally spotting the aircraft sitting on the runway. They could now see the attackers trying to level a bazooka at them. "Do it," McLanahan ordered.
Angelina hurried back to her station. To McLanahan, the wait was excruciating. He glanced backward a few times, but as the plane rushed forward he focused on the camouflaged attackers. There were four of them-two firing rifles from behind the plane, two others loading the bazooka. "Angelina "Ready," she called behind him.%, "Fire."
McLanahan threw his arms up in front of his face as he said it.
IT He never saw the results-but then, no human could see the advanced AMRAAM air-to-air missile as it fired off the left pylon at Mach two.
The missile leapt forward on a stream of fire. The primary solid-fuel engine had just barely reached full impulse burn when it plowed into the plane less than a half mile in front of the Old Dog.
What McLanahan did see was a blinding flash of light and massive black cloud of smoke and dust. A split second later.
the needlelike nose of the Old Dog plunged through the chaos Nothing happened-no crunch of metal, no explosion of the windscreen in front of him. A moment later the cockpit windows cleared, revealing a barrier infinitely larger than the plane they had just blown away-the seven thousand feet of granite called Groom Mountain.
" Go for it," McLanahan called out to Ormack.
Far behind the Megafortress, Hal Briggs had been pinned to the fence, his face mashed into the chain link by the force of the jet blast. He heard an explosion a few moments later, expecting the crash, the sound of exploding fuel, waiting for the fireball to engulf him. It didn't happen. It was an eternity until he could clear the stinging sand out of his face and eyes and look toward the horizon.
What he saw was the Old Dog lifting off through a cloud of y and black dust over the morning Nevada desert. A lurr of burning metal lay se gra runway, with smoking bodies flung hundreds of feet away several yards from the sand-covered The Old Dog hovered perhaps fifty feet above the desert floor, nearly obscured by the cloud of dust. He could barely see the huge wheels retract into the huge body rocket into the clear morning air.then the aircraft rose like "Jesus H. Christ," Briggs muttered, sitting in a three-foot drift of sand and tumbleweeds. "They did it. They did it.
Ormack flipped a switch on the overhead console beneath the cabin altitude indicator. Slowly the long, black needle moved upward and snapped into position. Half the windscreen was now obscured by the long SST nose, the windoi blending in with its sleek lines.
"Watch the instruments," Ormack said cross-cockpit. E spite the noise inside the bomber, he and McLanahan were s' talking loud enough to be heard without the interphone. "Ge coming up. I hope someone got all the ground locks.
reached across and moved the gear lever up. The red light the handle snapped on, "Instruments are okay," McLanahan said. He found the gear and icators on the front panel beside the gear level. One by one, the little wheel depictions on the indicators changed to crosshatch and then to the word UP, and the bumping and screeching of tires stowing in the wheel wells could be heard.
"Right tip gear up… forward mains up… aft mains up…
the left tip gear is still showing crosshatch."
Ormack cross-checked the indicator with the TIP GEAR NOT IN TRAIL caution light-it was showing unsafe too. "It might be hanging there, or it could be part-way up. We probably ripped out the whole left wingtip. "He did some experimental turns left and right. "Steering feels okay. The spoilers seem like they're still working. "He glanced down and double-checked that he had shut off the fuel valves from the left externals. "We can try emergency retraction later."
He ran a hand over his sweating face and scanned instru ents, left and right, as the Megafortress cleared the snowcovered Groom Mountain ridge line. "Looks like we lost all the eighteen thousand pounds in the left external A tankrobably lost the whole tank. The left external B is still with us p but it's feeding too fast, faster than the right externals. It's probably dumping all that fuel overboard. "He shut off the fuel transfer switch to the left external B tank. "That means we're short about forty thousand pounds."
He looked over at McLanahan, who was still staring at the mountain ridges sliding under the Old Dog's sleek black nose.
"Pat, check the hydraulics."
McLanahan scanned die quarter-sized hydraulic gauges on the left control panel. At first he was diverted by the fancy schematics added on to the panel showing the direction and metering of hydraulic power from the six engine-driven hydraulic pumps.
"Well?"
McLanahan then noticed it. "Pressure on the left outboard spoiler-tip gear is low."
Ormack shook his head. "Well, we're going to lose the left outboard system pretty soon. Make sure the standby pump switch is off."
"It's off."
"We're not going to try to emergency raise the tip gear," Ormack said.
"The entire wingtip is probably smashed. We'd deplete the hydraulic system for nothing. "He checked airspeed and altitude. "Okay. We're airborne. Flaps coming up.
McLanahan watched the gauge closely. A half-minute la they indicated full-up.
"Well, something's finally working okay," Ormack asked. "Good job," General Elliott said above the noise in the cockpit. Ormack and McLanahan turned in surprise. The general was standing between the two ejection seats, nodding approval. McLanahan looked at his leg. There was a large bandage and elastic cloth wrapped around the calf and thigh. "How's your leg, General?"