"Al at five o'clock," Wendy called out again.
Angelina was already shaking her head in disappointment.
"This guy is good," she asked. "He jinked just in time."
"Well, he's coming for us again," Wendy said.
Luger was watching his five-inch terrain scope, now clear and operating normally after their unwieldy three-thousant pound Striker glide-bomb leveled the Kavaznya mirror built ing and, at least temporarily, took the radar site with it. "We" get to the mountains in twelve miles."
"He's staying up high," Angelina said, glancing at the elevation and azimuth readouts on her console. "He's good bL he's not ready to mix it up in the dirt yet.
"Can he still get an I.R shot at us?" Ormack asked.
"He can track us, but unless he's ready to descend to within a few hundred feet of us we have a chance. "Just then, the elevation readouts began to steadily decrease. Angelina swallowed hard.
"He's descending, crew. Get ready."
Yuri Papendreyov had finally gotten a reliable navigation beacon lock-on and found himself on his cardboard chart. He nodded to himself. At his present speed-over eight hundred kilometers per hour-he could descend another thousan meters and spend almost two precious minutes acquiring the B 52 bomber before the threat of the frozen peaks of Koryakskiy Khrebet began to loom outside his cockpit-a completely invisible to him. He nudged his Fulcrum down, set the altimeter reminder bug on three thousand two hundred meters and maneuvered his fighter to center the I.R TRAC diamond in his heads-up display.
That few hundred meters of altitude did the trick. The pulse Doppler attack radar signaled lock-on, and firing information was instantly fed to the AA-7 radar-guided missile.
Yuri smiled. A solid infrared and radar lock-on, with for missiles ready to go. The range continued to click down. The memory of that fiery missile explosion snapped back to him and his decision was made.
He throttled back, holding al range at fourteen kilometers, selected the two AA-7 radar guided missiles, fired.
A MISSILE ALERT warning generated by the pulse-Doppler attack radar focusing on the low-flying Old Dog had put it crew in a state of tense readiness. When Yuri Papendreyc selected the AA-7 missiles for firing his attack-radar switched to missile-guidance mode. The continuous-wave radar sign that guided and steered the AA-7 missiles triggered a MISSILE LAUNCH indication on Wendy Tork's threat panel, which was heard over ship-wide interphone and repeated up in the cockpit.
Wendy immediately ejected eight bundles of chaff from the left ejectors and ordered an immediate right break. Elliott and Ormack, having already accelerated to maximum thrust, threw the Old Dog into a coordinated hard turn to the right.
Simultaneously Wendy found the continuous-wave missile steering signal from the Russian fighter and began to set a jamming package against it.
From directly on the stem the Old Dog's radar signature was minuscule.
When Elliott and Ormack hauled the bomber into forty degrees of bank, however, that radar signature bloomed several times its original size.
.. it was like seeing a book edge-on, then turning it so the whole cover could be seen.
There was no mistaking it for ground clutter now.
The right AA-7 missile was distracted by the chaff, but that distraction added up to scarcely seven feet. The missile passed directly over the center of the Old Dog's fuselage and just in front of the leading edge of the right wing. When the seeker head snapped over to try to follow the steering signal, its eighty-nine-pound warhead detonated.
Dave Luger felt nothing. It was simply as if his entire right side instrument console, his computer keyboard and parts of his radar had freed themselves from their secured places on the aircraft and ended up in his lap and in his face all at once. The concussion would have knocked him clear out of his seat and across the Megafortress' tiny offensive compartment, but his shoulder and lap belts held him securely in his seat and subjected his upper body to the entire force of the blast that penetrated the fibersteel skin.
He felt hands across his shoulders and chest, but still no pain. He fought to focus his eyes and finally gave up on that.
Air sucked out of his chest, debris from everywhere flew around him.
"Dave. "McLanahan reached across the narrow aisle between their two downward ejection seats and propped Luger upright, straining against the weight of the two-G turn that Elliott and Ormack were still executing. "Dave's hit!"
"Yer crazy, radar," Luger muttered, but as McLanahan moved him upright his head dropped against the headrest on his ejection seat and rocked uncontrollably as the pilots fougu for control of the crippled bomber.
Luger could feel his head jolted from side to side but was unable to convince his neck muscles to do anything abot it "I'm fine, I'm fine," he asked. "Hey, my scope is out…""Out" was a considerable understatement-it was as if a giant metal-eating monster had bitten off half the milion-dollar cathode-ray tube. McLanahan reached down and locked Luger's inertial reel on his ejection seat, which helped his partner stay upright in the seat. "How are the computers.
Patrick?"
"Screw the computers for now," McLanahan replier unstrapping himself.
"Stay strapped in, Pat- "Just shut up for a second, Dave," McLanahan said quietly. He reached for the first aid kit secured to the bulkhead behind his seat, glancing at the computer displays as he opened it they were still working, no faults or interruptions.
"The computers are fine, Dave. "He braced himself again the sliding nav's table and examined his partner. "Oh God "I'm fine, I told you," Luger mumbled again. McLanaha held up a large gauze square from the first aid kit but was unsure about what to do first. He had never seen bone before clean, white bone, except on a T-bone steak… the thougl made him gag, but he forced the thought away…
"Put a bandage on whatever's wrong there, Pat," Luger: said, "and let's get back to work. "Luger raised a finger to wipe moisture out of his right eye. When he looked at it his entire hand was covered in glistening red blood.
"Ohhh "Sir still," was all McLanahan could say as he covered the right side of Luger's face with a thick pad of gauze and taped it secure.
Luger sat through it all as if he were getting a haircut McLanahan checked Luger's neck and chest, brushing awa fragments of glass and fibersteel.
The flight jacket an flightsuit had protected Luger's upper body, it seemed.
"I'm all right," Luger said, his voice now muffled slightly through the gauze. "I twisted my leg a little, that's all, forget it… but turn the heat up, will ya?It's getting' cold i here "Let me take a-" "I said forget it."
But McLanahan had already ducked under the table to investigate. He stayed out of view for a few moments, came up to retrieve the first aid kit, then emerged again a few moments later.
Luger had felt nothing but a few tugs on his right leg. "See?
I told you, mom.
McLanahan returned to his seat, his body jerking from side to side from the turbulence as the Old Dog crested another ridgeline in the mountains of the Kamchatka. He stared silently down at his worktable.
"All done playing Florence Nightingale?" Luger said as he reached down to his right thigh, touched, felt nothing. But when he brought his hand up he found it covered with sticky, darkening blood.
He finally met McLanahan's eyes. "Strong like a bull. "He readjusted his headset, lowered the microphone to his lips.
"Nav's up and okay," he said over the interphone.
General Elliott began, "David… T' "Lost my radar, sir," Luger said, forcing iron back into his voice. He tried to punch up a systems-diagnostic routine on his terminal but only a few buttons were left on his keyboard. He strained across the worktable to use McLanahan's terminal.