"We've got to suck him in," McLanahan asked. "Draw him in, then chop the power."
"He'll blow us out of the sky," Ormack asked. "We're staying down here."
"He's also vectoring in his buddies," McLanahan asked. "If he doesn't get us in the next five minutes he's gonna have lots of help."
"We've got a dozen missiles left," Ormack said.
"Great, but we can't take on all of them. "McLanahan shook his head.
Ormack was about to answer when Elliott put a hand on his wrist. "We have no choice, John."
"If we can't find him, General," Ormack yelled over the roar of the turbofans, "if we lose him… if he shoots first "We've got to be the hunter, not the hunted," Elliott said.
The two pilots looked at each other. Then Elliott took the throttles from Ormack, placed a tight grip on the yoke and gave it a shake.
"I've got the aircraft."ormack looked at the exhausted general as a wave of turbulence rumbled through the bomber. "We're taking a big gamble, General.
"Now's the time for one, John."
Orinack nodded. "You've got the aircraft, General."
"Thanks, John. Stand by on airbrakes and gear."rmack reached across the throttle quadrant and put his hand on the gear lever.
"Wendy?Angelina?"
Angelina nodded at Wendy who reported, "Ready, General. "Landing and taxi light-switches off. Setting two thousand feet. "Elliott twisted the clearance plane knob from COLA to 2000, and the Old Dog's SST nose angled skyward.
powered The Soviet pilot was busy cursing himself and his low radar when the American B-52 suddenly appeared from here just off to the right of his MiG's nose. The radar range now gate immediately set, azimuth locked on and his last AA-3 radar missile aligned and reported ready for launch.
"He's right behind us," Angelina called out.
:"Missile alert," Wendy followed, and hit the right chaff ejector.
"Jink left."
Elliott put the Old Dog in a sharp turn to the left just as the MISSILE ALERT indication changed to a MISSILE LAUNCH.
"Missile launch, break left!" Wendy punched out eight bundles of chaff from the right ejector as Elliott threw the bomber from a twenty to a forty-five degree bank to the left.
The MiG pilot watched in frustration as another huge radar target appeared on his scope. The aiming reticle moved across to the bigger, brighter, unmoving blob just as he thumbed the LAUNCH button… and watched as his last missile disappeared into empty space.
Immediately he shoved the throttles of his twin Tunnansky engines to maximum afterburner and swerved to the left to get into cannon-firing position…
"Range decreasing rapidly," Angelina asked. "Still no automatic lock-on. I'm setting the detonation range for the airmines manually.
"Range decreasing," Wendy reported. "Stand by for a break to the right."
"If we have our gear and airbrakes hanging out," Ormack said, "and then break to evade a missile we'll stall for sure. We may not have enough altitude to recover.
Three miles and closing fast," Angelina said.
"if he was going to launch one, he'd do it now," Wendy asked. "Two miles. "She was staring hard at the threat video.
The bat-wing interceptor threat symbol hovered behind them, inching closer and closer. "Approaching one mile… now.
Hit it.
"Gear. Airbrakes six," Elliott ordered. Ormack dropped the landing-gear handle and flipped the airbrake lever full up. The Old Dog pitched down, throwing everyone hard against his shoulder straps.
Elliott brought the power back to eighty percent, then quickly back to full military thrust as the initial buffet to stall again rumbled through the bomber. He had lost a thousand feet before he was able to bring the Old Dog under control.
The Russian pilot wasn't caught unaware. He had just throttled back to cut his closure rate on the B-52 when he noticed the radar range gate rapidly decreasing.
He immediately disregarded the indication. He had no radar guided missiles to launch anyway, and the B-52's jamming probably had broken the range lock. Catching glimpses of the huge bomber's outline against the snowy backdrop, he kept his power in minimum afterburner and rested his finger against the cannon trigger: The range gate wound past one thousand meters-well inside firing range. He stepped on the right rudder to completely align himself, and took a deep breath.
He saw several bright flashes of flame from the rear of the bomber, instinctively rolled his fighter left to begin S-turning behind the B-52.The.50-caliber machine gun could never hit the bomber without reliable radar guidance, he thought, and his own twenty-millimeter shells had a greater range and reliability. He started a right roll and pressed the trigger.
The flashes of light suddenly grew into huge, pulsing shafts of color.
Immediately he threw his fighter into ninety degrees of bank to the right and pulled on the stick, breaking hard away. He caught a glimpse of his airspeed indicator-in his attempt to match speed with the intruder he had allowed his airspeed to decrease drastically..
He rolled until the stall-warning horn came on again, then rolled out.
His stick would not respond to his control. He was A inking fast, in the grip of a near-stall. His MiG-25 wasn't s made for low-altitude intercepts, it was designed for fast high altitude dog-fighting. It was with huge relief that he saw his airspeed increasing steadily. Ochin. In a moment, he thought, he'd finish this Amirikanskaya.
He looked out the left side of his canopy just in time to see a colorful line of fireworks explode less than fifty meters outside his canopy, the blossoms of light reminding him of starburst fireworks he had once seen-big and bright with thousands of tiny stars racing out from a red center.
A moment later those stars riddled the entire left side of his MiG-25.
The canopy became one giant mass of holes and jagged cuts, yet somehow stayed intact, but the left engine flamed out immediately, then seized as the engine oil drained from a hundred punctures in the engine cowling.
The radar signature of the MiG blossomed momentarily as the Soviet pilot ejected from his stricken fighter, but neither Wendy nor Angelina noticed. Angelina was congratulating her partner, who was busy watching her frequency video display. One transmitter band at the top of her display began to show low power, high-energy activity.
She watched it, studied it-and her sweat turned cold.
"Activity, Wendy?" Ormack asked amid the quiet jubilation of the Old Dog's crew.
"Search radar… twelve o'clock."
"Identification?"
Wendy answered, but the words were uttered too softly to be understood.
"Say again?"
"Kavaznya. "Wendy's voice was flat now, emotionless.
"Kavaznya. The laser. It's looking for us."
FIFTY MILES FROM KAVAZNYA
The throttles were at maximum-the right outboard engine had been pulled back to ninety percent to compensate for the destroyed number one engine but all the rest were at full military power.
General Elliott tightened the throttle friction lever on the center throttle quadrant-he wasn't going to move any one of those throttles unless he had to shut down another engine. The number two engine had been restarted for the target run, but the RPMs were erratic and the vibration from the engine threatened to shear what remained of the left wing loose from the fuselage.
"Bomb run checklist," Dave Luger announced.
McLanahan nodded, taking a quick glance at his partner The navigator had one finger on the checklist page ready to read off each step, but his hands were a shade unsteady.
"You all right, buddy?You look a little nervous."
"Me?Nervous?Why should I be nervous?Just because we're about to end the Russians a candygram loaded witf TNT?What's to be nervous about?"