There was nothing, he thought, bigger than a B-52 so close to the complex.
insured the new target lock-on, searching and not finding a malfunctions and signaled clear for laser firing. Just as Elliott attention was drawn to the right cockpit window to watch the launch of the second Quail decoy, a thick beam of red-oran light split the darkness and lit up the interior of the Old Dog like a thousand spotlights turned up full-blast. The atmosphere around the huge B-52
Megafortress seem humid, almost tropical.
The vaporized air around the laser blast created a vacuum around itself, sucking thousands of cubic acres of air into the shaft of light.
The turbulence and lower-density superheated air caused the Old Dog to sink, and only Elliot fast reactions and the screaming thrust of the seven remaining turbofan engines kept the Old Dog from crashing into the rugged Kamchatkan shoreline.
The tiny Quail decoy was not merely destroyed by the la blast-it was vaporized. There was no time, no fuel remainir even to form a secondary explosion or a puff of smoke. The tiny drone simply ceased to exist.
Elliott felt as if he had been violently sunburned. He pull on the yoke, fighting to arrest the sudden descent and gale force turbulence.
The MASTER CAUTION light snapped on as did other warning lights, but Elliott had his hands full trying to control the bucking mountain of metal beneath him.
Dave Luger was thrown against his right instrument panel the Old Dog swung sharply left into the vacuum, his outburst lost in the groaning metal of the Megafortress and the protesting roar of its engines.
Still, he and the Old Dog made out better than some others. A MiG-29 had just closed to ideal I.R missile-firing range and had not heard the call to clear the area when the laser beam sliced through the subzero Siberian air.
The gale-force wind-blast created by the mini-nuclear explosion within the krypton-fluoride laser beam, which had thrown the four-hundred-thousand-pound B-52 bomber arou the sky like a paper airplane, reached up and swatted the thirty thousand-pound Fulcrum fighter into the ground like an insec The pilot of a second Russian fighter was too busy fighting for control of his own machine to notice.
"What the hell was that?" Angelina said. All of her equipment went blank-the airmine rocket system, the Scorpion missile system, her radar, all of it. She glanced at Wendy Tork alongside her, switching her equipment into STANDBY in an attempt to reset it.
"The laser," Elliott asked. "They shot the laser at us. Two generators dropped off the line. "He scanned the instruments quickly. "Engines appear okay. John, can you get the number two and three generators back on-line?"
"I can try," Ormack said. He wiped his eyes and felt carefully along his right generator panel for the proper switches… The power interruption had blanked out everyA thing in the downstairs navigator's compartment, but Ormack's practiced fingers were able to reset the generators and get them back on-line. Trouble was, the only things that reactivated after power was applied were the downstairs lights.
"Dave, how much time?" McLanahan asked.
Luger was fumbling around his workdesk with a tiny battery flashlight, shining the weak beam on the few pieces of equipment on the right side.
"We have to get out of here," he asked. "We have to go back "Easy, man, easy," McLanahan shook his partner's shoulders. Luger finally stopped his flailing and stared at McLanahan. "It's over, Pat."
"No it's not. Now give me a time to the twelve-mile point, dammit." McLanahan was just about to push Luger out of the way and check himself, but Luger finally relaxed enough to check his ship's clock.
"Two minutes ten seconds."
"All right. Switch all your stuff to STANDBY It'll come back up by launch time. If it doesn't we'll slick the bomb, fly over that laser and drop it like a regular bomb. "He rechecked the DCU-239 weapon-arming panel. "We might have another problem.
"Such as?" from Elliott.
The generator fluctuation knocked out DC power to the arming panel," McLanahan told him. "I've got no weapon indications at all."
"It should still be good-" "I don't know what the bomb will do," McLanahan said quietly. Everyone on board heard the muted statement, even over the roar of the turbofans.
"You mean it won't explode?" Wendy asked. "We've co all this way, and it won't work?"
"I mean I don't know its status. It may or may not be arm it may be armed but be a dud… I just don't know."
"All this way… all this sacrifice… for nothing "One minute to launch point," Luger said.
"I'll try to rearm the weapon," McLanahan said, and began to run the prearming checklists again. "Nothing," he said finally. "Battery power… recycling… Laser power… nothing. I've still got uplink power, so the thing will fly, but I still don't know what it will do."
The crew of the Old Dog grew very quiet.
"I've got my threat receivers back," Wendy announced "Signal from Kavaznya… beginning to shift again."
"All the decoys are gone," McLanahan asked. "I launched' them just before the laser fired- "Power won't be back on the anti-radiation missiles for two minutes," Angela asked. "That was our last hope."
"Angelina… preparation for ejection checklist," Elliott ordered, face tight.
Luger looked at McLanahan, who stared straight ahead, clenching and unclenching his fists.
"Wendy, try to give us some warning before the laser fire Elliott told her.
Wendy clicked her microphone in response, said nothing She could barely see the subtle frequency shifts through interference, and even if she did spot the radar lock-on she knew they wouldn't be able to eject before the laser beam blew them into atoms.
"I'll trim it for a slight climb," Elliott asked. "Maybe beast will stall right over their heads, the sonsofbitches.our mission was to destroy that laser complex. I'll give the command to eject, wait until everyone is out, then crash plane into the complex. Prepare for-" "Wait," McLanahan asked. "You can't do that. We'll drop the damn bomb-" "You said it wouldn't explode."
"I said I don't know its status. My job is to drop it on target. Your job, sir, is to get us out of here."
"We can't risk it. If the bomb doesn't go off we've failed we'll take the heat for nothing-" "We can't just quit "McLanaban, this is an order. Prepare for ejection."
Luger began to tighten the straps of his parachute harness.
He zipped his jacket up all the way, looked over at his partner.
"Pat, you'd better-" "How much time, Dave?"
"Pat "Dave, how much time?""Thirty seconds. But-" "Close enough."
McLanahan hit the AUTOFIX button on his control keyboard, which entered a present-position update into the Striker glide-bomb's computer. He then opened the bay doors with the mechanical handles on the overhead panel and pulled a yellow-painted handle next to it marked SPECIAL WEAPONS ALTERNATE RELEASE.
"Bomb away, General, now please get us out of here."
Elliott had been adjusting his straps when he saw the BOMB DOORS OPEN and WEAPON RELEASE lights snap on.
"We're too far, we won't have time to-" "We're not bombing that laser with this plane," McLanahan challenged. "Break left, get us out of here After that everything seemed to happen in slow motion.it was like watching a slide show, the frames clicking off one by one, the sound turned off…
Elliott stood the Old Dog on its left wingtip, whipping it to forty-five degrees of bank. The stall-warning horn blared but no one paid attention to it, if they could hear it. The general could feel the Old Dog slipping sideways-which was downward at forty-five degrees of bank-as it changed heading in its rudderless turn. Remarkably, it didn't hit the frozen ground…
Wendy released her grip on her ejection seat's triggers, held her finger on the CHAFF SALVO button, ejecting fifty bundles of chaff in one massive cloud just as the Old Dog began its turn. She would have kept ejecting chaff if the force of the turn hadn't pushed her finger off the button…