It wasn't the first Russian town he'd seen, but this one seemed different. Innocent. Peaceful. Moscow, the last time he was there as an Embassy adviser back in the seventies, was enacing. Even during the newlywed years of detente, he felt its choking, suffocating presence.
Here, over the cold rough pioneer-like badlands of eastern Siberia, it seemed different…
Elliott unconsciously gripped the yoke tighter. The sight of the long SST nose of the Old Dog reminded him where he was, what they were doing. He readjusted his microphone.
"Wendy?"
"Nothing, General," Wendy replied, nervously anticipating his query.
"Random, low-power VHE" Her voice was a clipped monotone.
"Distance to the coastal mountains, Dave?"
"General, I don't know for sure. My enroute chart doesn't show any detail of the Kamchatka peninsula. I'll need a few radar sweeps to range them out."ew Elliott considered that. He couldn't wait to get within the safety of the mountains, but still. — "All right-authorized But no more than a few seconds."
"Better let me take a look," McLanahan said, readjusting his attack radar controls. "I can look out eighty miles in fullscan, Dave's limited to thirty in a small cone."
"Do it," Elliott told him. "Dave, can you draw a picture of the terrain?Give yourself a little topographic map?"
Luger blocked out a section of his high-altitude chart and measured out a rough eighty-mile-range radar-scope diagram, then loosened his parachute and ejection seat straps and leaned over as far as possible to look at McLanahan's ten-inch display.
"Ready."
"Here we go. "McLanahan finished reconfiguring and pretuning his scope, then pressed the RADIATE button. The radar image of the eastern shore of the Kamchatka peninsula appeared-the first radar picture, McLanahan thought, from an American bomber about to make an attack on an installation of the Soviet Union.
Don't dwell on it, he told himself…
"Gently rising terrain in the next forty miles."
— graphing the scope presentation Luger was furiously shadow on his chart. "Navigation looks good-we're about thirty miles from the coast on radar, our heading looks good to avoid overflying that town. It should pass about two miles to our left.
High terrain starts in about thirty-seven miles, but so far nothing is above us. Some high stuff at sixty miles but still no big shadows." d, "that five thousand feet "Which means," Ormack said might be a safe altitude for us.
"Got all you need, Dave?" McLanahan asked.
Luger shook his head as he added some detail of some longrange peaks to his bastardized terrain chart. "Few more seconds he muttered.
McLanahan nodded and continued studying the scope.
"That town looks pretty big," he said over interphone as he studied the display, adjusting the video and receiver gain controls to eliminate the terrain returns, then turned to his partner. "Done with the long range, Dave?" Luger nodded.
"I'm checking that town in thirty-mile range. It looks funny."
He moved the range selector to thirty-mile range. The small town was now magnified in good detail at the top of his scope.
"Make it quick," Elliott warned.
"Funny?" Ormack asked. "How funny?"
"Funny as in bad news. Real bad news," McLanahan said.
He stared at the magnified scene for a few more sweeps, then quickly put his radar scope to STANDBY "General, we gotta turn. Now. At least twenty degrees right."
"Why… T' "Ships," McLanahan asked. "One dock full of big mother ships…"
"Search radar at twelve o'clock," Wendy sang out.
ddenly called Elliott shoved the eight throttles forward and banked the Megafortress hard to the right.
"Give me COLA on the clearance-plane setting, John," Elliott ordered.
Ormack reached across and turned the clearance plane knob down to its lowest setting. COLA-computer generated Lowest Altitude. Now the terrain-avoidance computer would select the lowest altitude possible for the Alegafortress based on a small error factor of the radar altimeter or terrain-avoidance computer, plus aircraft bank angle and terrain elevation.
The computer, starting at a COLA altitude of about a hundred feet, would then evaluate itself and readjust its minimum COLA altitude, continuously striving for the lowest Possible altitude. Since the Old Dog's terrain-avoidance computer was slaved only to the radar altimeter, the new lowest altitude would equate to the highest error tolerance of the radar altimeters scant thirty feet-plus a few feet for the normal rolling oscillations of any autopilot.
The huge bomber plunged its nose toward the inky blackness of the Russian Pacific, then slowly back to level as it quickly reached its commanded altitude. Now.nearly four hundred thousand pounds of man and machine, guided by a single thin radar beam from the bomber's belly, were skimming only a few dozen yards from the surface of the water at over four hundred miles an hour.
"Still only search radar," Wendy reported, leaning forward intently toward her TV-like threat display. "High power but still scan mode.
They're A chill worked its way up McLanahan's spine even before Wendy finished her analysis of the new signals being transmitted.
"New signal coming up," Wendy said suddenly. "Narrowcan search..
.
height-finder coming up… they've got us, General. They've found us, surface-to-air missile signals coming up Jeff Hampton's voice sounded strained and excited as the President picked up the telephone near his chair. "Say that again, Jeff?" the President said, rubbing interupted fitful sleep from his eyes. He massaged a knotted muscle in his neck and forced himself to concentrate.
"An Air Defense alert was called about fifteen minutes ago over the Kamchatka peninsula," Hampton repeated, gulping for air."in Russia."
"I know where the goddamned Kamchatka peninsula is, Jeff — Go on.
peared off their "An unidentified aircraft, Presumed to be American, disap radar. Real close-in. Violated airspace.
It… it had a call sign similar to… to the one General Elliott was using."
"Elliott?Brad Elliott?My God!"
"Not confirmed, sir, but-" "I'll be right down. Alert General Curtis.
Have him meet me in the Situation Room on the double."
The President hurried out of the parlor, quickly dressed and went downstairs.
Brad Elliott, you old devil… You got in. You son of a bitch-you made' it in.
Wendy could only focus on the video threat display. Millions of watts of energy, directed along specific frequency and power ranges, were at her command, yet she stared transfixed at two erratic waves along one line of that threat display. Her hands were flat on her thighs, palms down, despite the Old Dog's steep bank turn which usually made her grab onto her ejection seat armrests.
The audio pickup of the two radars was hypnotizing. The first radar emitted a scratchy bleeping sound, like a seal's bark.
It had begun as an intermittent signal but was now coming over twice as fast-India-band narrow- scan search radar, aimed directly at them. The second radar gave off a higher-pitched squeal, like a rusty hinge. It signaled the presence of a Golfband height-finder, supplying altitude information to a surface to-air missile's guidance computer.
The computer-controlled threat analyzer apparently couldn't make up its mind-it was switching its analysis symbol from "2" to " 3, " indicating S.A-2 or S.A-3 strategic missiles, which were usually designed for high-altitude penetrators. The missiles….. they called them "telephone poles" in Vietnam….. were barely capable against low-altitude penetrators-but the Old Dog was well within the missile's lethal range.
"All radars in standby," Luger announced, double-checking both his and McLanahan's controls. He blinked in surprise at his pressure altimeter-it read minus sixty feet. He checked the radar altimeter readout on McLanahan's video screen and saw that it was pegged at a hundred feet. One hundred fee0 If the COLA computer didn't compensate property, at this altitude with only twenty degrees of bank they'd drag a wingtip in the water.