"Sir… we… it has been towed to recovery area B sir, but it hasn't-" "Starshiy Serzhant Bloiaki, this is not like you," Papendreyov asked. "This is the worst time not to get the orders. My plane was to be immediately reconfigured with one four hundred decaliter centerline drop tank and four infrared missiles. It was to be ready on the hour."
He paused, then said quietly, "I'll have to tell squadron leader Vasholtov that my sortie will be delayed- "That won't be necessary," Bloiaki said quickly. "One drop tank and four infrared missiles… they will be ready in fifteen minutes, sir."
Papendreyov checked his watch."it will be ready in ten minutes or we will both have a chat with Squadron Commander Vasholtov. I must refile my flight plan once more," he said.finishing his hurried scribbling.
"I'll be out there right away.
He hung up the phone and went to his bureau, took one last long loving gaze at the photo of his wife and infant daughter then opened the top drawer. As he studied his wife's dark chestnut hair and his daughter's blonde curly locks he began stuffing his pockets with packets of freeze-dried survival food and dried beef. He quickly unzipped his flight suit and put on a second thermal shirt over his flameproof underwear, and replaced his lightweight flight boots with insulated flying boots. He touched the picture of his wife, then put on his flight jacket, gloves and fur hat and hurried toward the flightline.
He had left the hastily written note and last will an testament unsigned; there was no longer time even for that. No matter. His career was over the minute he stepped foot on the flightline. His life-period-would have been over as he taxied onto the main runway except that on account of the emergency declared over the entire eastern air-defense region the air traffic controllers allowed him to take off without a full verified flight plan. In an emergency, better to have the fighter airborne first, question their procedures later.
Papendreyov had known this, of course, and was airborne again within thirty minutes of landing from his first sortie.
It had only been an hour and a half since he had broken off the attack with the American B-52.The B-52, obviously wounded, was flying slow-at the most, he figured, it had gone some seven hundred fifty kilometers from ssora since he had fired his last missiles. His MiG-29
Fulcrum fighter could chase after it easily at three times the B-52's speed with fuel from the drop tank only, then spend two, three hours searching for the intruder.
Papendreyov gave his call sign to Ossora Intercept Contro which questioned him briefly about his absent flight-taskil code but quickly gave him vectors to the bomber's last know position, nearly five hundred kilometers ahead. The young Fulcrum pilot kept the throttles at max afterburner and began ten-degree climb at seven hundred kilometers per hour. With' minutes he was at twenty thousand meters, screaming nord east at seventeen hundred kilometers per hour, almost twice the speed of sound.
Quickly he was handed off to Korf Intercept Control, which had few updates on the bomber's position, but Papendreyc made his own estimate where the American B-52 would be The fuel in his centerline drop tank having exhausted itself lethan ten minutes after his takeoff, he made another calculation then jettisoned the tank, not having the luxury of considerit who or what might be underneath… he was high over the mountains, but they were still sparsely populated. He continued at maximum afterburner for five more minutes, then pulled his throttles to cruise power and set his autopilot.
He had fifty thousand liters of fuel remaining to find the American, and he was wasting two thousand liters per hour-just w hourju hoping to catch up. But Papendreyov wasn't worried. He knew, thanks to his subtle course corrections, that the nose of his Fulcrum was pointed right at the Americans' heart.
"We aren't going to make it," Ormack felt obliged to report.
"We've got thirty minutes of fuel tops."
General Bradley Elliott double-checked the autopilot and flight control annunciators while Ormack went over his fuel calculations. They had been flying for well over an hour at ten thousand feet, forced to that altitude by the damage to the pressurized crew compartment.
"Fuel flow?"
44 "Pretty steady," Ormack said, "but the fuel curve is getting orse.
Looks like a major leak from wing and body tanks. I've jumped all the fuel out of the body tanks but I can't do anything about the mains.
I've got the minimum in them to keep the engines going as it is.
We've had low-pressure lights on for a long time-" "Can we make it to the ocean?" Elliott asked, scanning his engine instruments and checking them by moving the throttles.
"Put it down on an ice floe or punch out near the coastline?"
"Punch out?" Angelina Pereira asked. "You mean eject?"
"We'd have to cross high mountain ridges to get to the coast," Luger said, warming his hands on an overhead air vent. "It would be real close."
"Now's the time to decide," Elliott asked. "Patrick, give me a heading toward the ocean, away from any active Russian fighter bases. Crew, prepare for-" "Hold on," McLanahan broke in. "General, what does WXO near an airfield mean?"
1 — WXO?Warm-weather operations only. They close the place during winter because it's too expensive and too difficult to maintain.
Why?"
"I found one," McLanahan said, putting a finger on his high-altitude navigation chart and checking the satellite navigation system's present-position counters. "Straight ahead, fifteen minutes."
"Fifteen minutes?" Ormack asked. "You're crazy. That's in Russia.
1. They got a long runway at the very least," McLanahan asked. "Maybe they'll have gas and oil for the number two engine. If it's abandoned or vacant we could-" "They're not abandoned," Elliott asked. "At least our Alaskan warm-weather bases aren't. We usually have care takers, mostly locals, that look after the place. Maybe some minimal security, National Guard or Reserve deployment Ormack stared at Elliott.
"General, you're not seriously considering… You're both crazy Maybe you ought to go back on oxygen. "He looked hard at Elliott, expecting him to turn and shrug off McLanahan's notion. Some last-minute humor…
"General "We're armed "We've got your automatic and two lousy thirty-eight revolvers in the survival kits," Ormack asked. "They're more a hazard to us than they'd be to anyone else. They could have been stowed on this plane for years."
Elliott said, "I've done that, lots of times," McLanahan put in, excitement rising in his voice. Luger was staring at McLa han pretty much the way Ormack was looking at Elliottdisbelief. "Global Shield missions. Remember, Dave?Sir lated post-strike recovery at an emergency airfield. Keep number two nacelle running, pump gas into the right outboa right external, or right drop tank, then transfer gas to the rest the plane. I once hand-pumped ten thousand pounds of" The Russians aren't going to just let us take their gas," Luger said.
"It's crazy."
"We'd end up captured," Angelina asked. "I'd rathertake chances in the mountains than be captured by them-especially after this mission."
"No, you don't want to go down in the mountains," Elliott asked. "Even if you come out of the ejection unhurt the chances are at best fifty-fifty even with the global survival kit we've got. And we can't ditch the Old Dog. She wouldn't withstand the impact."
"I still think those odds are better than landing at a Russian airfield-" "Do you, John?" Elliott asked. "How long do you think we could survive out there in those mountains?"
"If we made it to the coast we'd have a chance.
Elliott ignored that, asked his navigators for the distance to the oastline.
"One hundred miles is the closest," Luger asked. "But "We could do the refueling to himself than anyone else.
cross two ranges, each about nine or ten thousand feet, and we're within radar range of Trebleski Airfield the whole way After we cross the mountains we can cut away from Trebleski to the northeast."