The two navs exchanged looks. "Back to work," McLanahan said, switching his attack radar to target-tracking mode.
OVER THE SKIES OF KAvAzNYA "Radar contact is lost, Element Seven", Yuri Papendreyo, heard the Soviet radar controller say over his command radic "Report your position immediately. "As if in reply, a large re LOW ALTITUDE WARNING light came onto the contrc panel of Papendreyov's advanced MiG-29
Fulcrum fighter.
He muttered unhappily to no one in particular and started a shallow climb away from the inky blackness around him. Suddenly the earth was his enemy, as much an enemy as the American warplane he was chasing.
He held his headin steady and switched on his pulse-Doppler attack radar and nose infrared sensor pod.
He had been receiving steering signals from the radar site Kavaznya to the attacking American B-52 bomber, signals the fed a stream of missile-launch data to his missile fire control system and provided range and bearing data to intercept the B-52.With the Kavaznya radar operating he didn't need his Fulcrum's radar for hunting, a big advantage of the advance Russian interceptor. Nothing could jam the Kavaznya radar and without the Fulcrum's onboard radar acting like a locatir beacon the fighter could sneak up behind the American B-52 without being detected.
All that was gone now. Somehow the Kavaznya radar was off and he was forced to use his own narrow-beamed radar to search thousands of square miles of sky for the bombe, diverting his attention away from flying his Fulcrum an avoiding the rugged Kamchatka mountains.
The young PVO Strany interceptor pilot activated his command radio and reported in a tight voice, "Element Seven has lost vectors to intruder "Wait, no, still chasing. "A huge radar return appeared at the very left edge of his on-board radar, then disappeared.
He began a thirty-degree bank turn to the left, quickly but futilely scanning for terrain to his left.
"Element Seven has possible radar contact he radioed, but he was too busy to report his position.
"Element Seven, repeat. Element Seven.report your position. "Which was when he saw it out of the corner of his eye-the fire was so big and bright that despite his training and discipline he took several precious seconds to study the destruction. Debris from the massive mirror dome in the hills above the Kavaznya research complex was spread out for at least a kilometer in all directions, and a huge twisted mass of metal sprawled awkwardly in the center of what used to be the mirror building. The blast must also have done some collateral damage, he figured, cut power to the complex…
Papendreyov throttled back to ninety-five percent power on the screaming Tumansky R-33D turbofan engines and divided his attention between the radar and the infrared detector while continuing his shallow turn. He made a quick scan for his wingman-nothing. They had been separated long before when the laser had fired and the incredible turbulence and windblast nearly wrecked him, and he assumed the worst-that either the laser had inadvertently hit him or that the American had gotten him.
This flying at night without radar monitoring was suicide, the pilot thought to himself. The Soviet ground radar controller was usually responsible for everything-terrain clearance, vectoring toward the intruder, closure, firing position-he did everything but pull the trigger. Now Papendreyov was completely blind, relying on an easily jammed nose radar and a range-limited infrared detector that wasn't worth A diamond symbol appeared in the lower right corner of his heads-up display-the infrared detector had found the B-52.
Strange that the radar had not. He tried to get a radar range to the target but it still was not locking onto anything. He swung right, centered the diamond up in azimuth on his display and waited for a radar lock-on. Still nothing. The infrared scanner told him only elevation and azimuth, not range. One of his two AA-8 heat-seeker missiles could lock onto the bastard but they were close-range missiles and worked best under eight kilometers' range.
He hesitated to drop the nose through the horizon until he found where he was and checked terrain elevation. Papendreyov throttled back to ninety percent and waited. No sense in driving blindly into the B-52's guns, he thought. The twentyseven-year-old Soviet PVO-Strany Air Defense pilot then realized he hadn't talked to anyone, hadn't gotten permission to do anything, hadn't received one word of direction. He was still two years from being qualified to perform autonomous intercepts-going out to hunt down enemy planes without direction from ground controllers-but he was performing one now. It was easy, painfully easy-suicidal, but very easy. Easy to kill oneself.
He checked his engine instruments and fuel. If he stayed out of afterburner he could stay and track this intruder for another half-hour. He still had four missiles-two radar-guided missiles and two heat-seekers. Enough to get the job done?
"Airborne radar contact," Wendy Tork announced into the interphone.
"Seven o'clock. Looks like… like… a Fulcrum.
Pulse-Doppler attack radar."
At the same time Wendy sounded her warning the computerdrawn terrain trace zipped across General Elliott's video monitor. He grunted in relieved satisfaction and reached for the clearance plane knob.
"Terrain-avoidance computer back on-line, General," McLanahan said, but Elliott had already selected COLA on the clearance knob-the computer-generated lowest altitude, which meant a harrowing ride no higher than a hundred feet above the now-rapidly rising terrain. His lips were dry, but he felt clammy inside. "Get that strike message out, Angelina?" he asked, rechecking his switch position.
"Repeated it twice, General. "She reset her fire control radar to clear the faults created by the interference of the powerful Kavaznya radar, then switched it to SEARCH and the radar instantly found the fighter behind them.
"My gear's working again. Radar contact, seven o'clock high, twelve miles," Angelina reported. She watched it for a moment. "Holding steady She hit the TRACK button on her console and a green TRACK light illuminated. She lowered the safety handles on the twin turret handgrips, put a finger on the Stinger airmine trigger and watched the range countdown. When it reached five miles she gently squeezed the trigger, and fired once…
The Fulcrum pilot heard a warbling ALERT tone in his headset, quickly jammed his throttles to maximum afterburner and yanked his fighter into a risky ninety-degree, twentydegree climb to evade a possible missile launch. He leveled Off a thousand feet above his initial pursuit altitude and searched the horizon out his left cockpit window for the source of the missile alert.
"A fighter launching a missile at me?" Yuri Papendreyov asked himself, eyes searching the blackness. "An enemy fighter over Russia?"
Luck had followed the young Soviet pilot into that wild evasive snaproll. The tiny Stinger rocket, with its small directional fins, could not keep up with the Soviet fighter and its half-scared, half-genius pilot. The Stinger did a lazy turn trying to follow the steering signals from Angelina's radar, but its turn radius was twice the Fulcrum's. Suddenly it was behind and to the right of the Fulcrum, and there was no way the tiny solid-fuel rocket could catch the fighter. It tracked behind the Fulcrum's wake, its propellant almost exhausted. Not receiving a detonation signal, and realizing its fuel had run out, the tiny rocket issued its own detonation signal.
Papendreyov's attention was immediately directed to his right, where a huge fiery flower blossomed out of the grayness all around him. He could almost feel the sparks, the myriad bits of metal, flying out toward him, seeking him. Instinctively he tried to jam his throttles to maximum afterburner, then realized they were already there and began a shallow climb, watching the flower of death disappear behind him.
His breath was coming out in rapid, shallow heaves. Sweat trickled down his heavy glass faceplates. Thanking the stars and the shades of comrades Mikoyan and Gureyvich, the designers of his beautiful jet, he banked left and began to lop reaquire his quarry.