"Number two engine shut down," he said over the interphone. "Number eight pulled back to compensate. Angelina, try to get your system working-" "I've tried, the pylon, bomb bay and Stinger ainr missiles are working but I've no radar guidance. I can release the missiles but I can't guide them."
McLanahan leveled the Old Dog at about a thousand feet, pressed the PAGE ADVANCE button on the computer checklist calling up the automatic terrain-avoidance procedures. "We're going into auto-terrain-avoidance, everybody Wendy, go downstairs and try to reload terrain avoidance data into the computers."
Behind the cockpit in the defense section Wendy quickly unbuckled her parachute harness straps, climbed out of the electronic-warfare officer's ejection seat, grabbed onto the "firepole" above the ladder, half-slid climbed downstairs, then plugged her headset into the radar navigator's station below.
"Patrick, I'm downstairs," she radioed to the cockpit.
"Now what?"
"Okay, good… hit the checklist button and enter TA on the keyboard. The terrain-avoidance checklist will come up.
Page ahead to the data-reload section. That has the steps."
The computerized checklist readout, and the unpopular Colonel Anderson's insistence that everyone know about everyone else's duties aboard the Old Dog, now paid off.
Wendy moved the terrain-data cartridge reader lever from LOCK to READ.
"Reloading terrain data, Patrick."
McLanahan had quickly read the terrain-avoidance checklist as it scrolled onto Ormack's computer screen. He activated the autopilot, and the computer-drawn terrain-trace zipped across his video monitor.
He found the auto-terrain-avoidance switch and threw it, setting the clearance altitude to two hundred feet.
And the crippled Old Dog began to respond.
As Yuri's Fulcrum fighter rolled out behind the B-52, the huge bomber nosed over and Yuri was positive the American intruder was going to crash. But at the last possible moment the plane somehow leveled off, skimming so close to the earth the rocks and jagged peaks seemed to be scraping the bomber's black belly as they rushed underneath in a blur…
McLanahan kept the engines screaming at full throttle. Using the number eight engine's throttle, he made a hard left turn, searching out his cockpit window.
Ormack, gripping the glare-shield for support in the tight turn, called to McLanahan that "we need to head east, we're heading the wrong way-" "We also need to get back in the mountains," McLanahan said. He rolled the wings level on a southwesterly heading back down the Korakskoje Mountains, aiming the Old Dog toward a low row of rugged, snow-covered peaks."if we get over the water with that fighter on our tail he'll nail us for sure.
"But our fuel- "We should have enough, but there's no alternative…
Angelina, can you steer your rocket turret at all?"
She activated the double handgrips on the Stinger airmine rocket turret. "The radar's working. I can move my controls But I don't know if the cannon is moving, I've lost all position indicators."
"Will the rockets still detonate?"
"Yes, I can set the detonation range manually, or the detonate themselves just before their propellant runs out "Okay, if we spot the fighter we'll call out its position.
the airmines for different ranges and-" "I see him, he's right behind us-" An explosion rocked the bomber-like a wrecking ball crashed into the Old Dog's midsection. McLanahan felt as if he were riding an elevator that had just dropped twenty floors in an instant. The Old Dog seemed to hover in midair, its working engines straining against the impact of a Soviet A-80 missile slamming into its fuselage.
Yuri Papendreyov, flying slightly high and to the right of his quarry, clenched a fist and allowed a smile. One of his heat seeking missiles had missed, but the second had hit the American bomber in the mid-body, just forward of the wing's leading edge. Clouds of smoke erupted from the hole it created. The bomber's tail sank down, the nose shot up Yet somehow it was still flying. Well, those Americans might lead charmed lives, but their luck had run out. He had two AA-8 heat-seekers and five hundred rounds of ammunition, and the bomber was badly crippled.
In his tight right-hand turn to set up for another attack, he checked his navigation instruments and saw he was only a few kilometers from Anadyr.
There was no greater prize than the B-52, he told himself, no greater victory… He widened his right turn and smiled broadly, seeing his destiny unfolding.
Choking and coughing from the thick clouds of black smoke, Wendy aimed a fire extinguisher out the open aft bulkhead leading to the bomb bay catwalk and squeezed the trigger.
She was bleeding from a gash in her forehead sustained when she was thrown against the forward instrument panel after the missile hit. A moment later Angelina was beside her, carrying the firefighting mask and another extinguisher bottle. W Wendy put on the mask and plugged it into the instructor's oxygen panel, Angelina moved as far as she could toward the fire on the catwalk and fired her extinguisher.
The flames had intensified the instant Wendy had opened the bulkhead door, but the blast of air racing from the breaks in the cockpit through the open door sucked the smoke and flames aft and gave her a clear and effective shot at the fire in the electronic countermeasures transformers and control boxes.
Wendy dropped back into the radar nav's seat, her forehead dripping blood, her arms and legs throbbing. She pulled off the firefighting mask, gasped over the interphone: "Fire's out, Patrick. Big hole in the fuselage and fire in the ECM boxes, but it looked like it missed the landing gear."
"We're blind up here," Ormack asked. "We can't see him, we can't see when he shoots at us McLanahan had already put the computer-controlled clearance plane setting to COLA so the Old Dog would seek its own lowest possible altitude. But because of the reduction in thrust and the severe damage, the terrain-climbing capability of the jo Old Dog was reduced. And as the terrain became more rugged, the altitude slowly crept higher, exposing the bomber more and more to the Soviet fighter.
"All right, everyone, check your areas for damage," McLanahan said, his grip on the control wheel so tight his hands began to cramp.
"We've got a leak in the aft fuel tank," Ormack said, blowing on his hands and scanning the fuel panel. "I'm opening valve twenty-eight, closing twenty-nine. Also pumping all fuel out of the aft body tank before it leaks out-" A sudden motion out of the left-cockpit windscreen drew his attention outside. "Patrick, look…"
McLanahan spun around to a sight that made him go rigid… The gray MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter was directly beside the Old Dog, just ahead of the cockpit, slightly above them and no more than a hundred feet away.
McLanahan could clearly see the pilot's right shoulder and head out his bubble canopy, along with a sleek air-to-air missile on its wing hardpoint.
The MiG was amazingly small and compact, resembling a twin-tailed American F-16 fighter. The Russian pilot apparently had little trouble flying beside the B-52, even at its low altitude, perfectly matching each of the Old Dog's computer commanded altitude adjustments.
"Angelina.he's on our left side, ten o'clock, about hundred feet.
Can we get him with the Scorpions on our rig pylon?"
"He's too close. The missile wouldn't have time to lock on.
The MiG pilot glanced over at McLanahan, rocked 1
Fulcrum's wings up and down three times. He stopped, then made one last rock to the right.
"Why is he doing that…?"
Ormack's jaw tightened. "It's the interception signal. He wants us to follow him."
"Follow him?" McLanahan said, stomach tightening."?