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"No way, we can't-" "Patrick, we've got nowhere to run. He can knock us out of the sky anytime-" The MiG rocked up its left wing once more, very emphatically, as if underscoring Ormack's words. To back up the message the MiG pilot fired a one-second burst from his guns, the bright phosphorous-tipped tracer shells knifing into the twilight like deadly shooting stars.

"If we don't follow he comes back around and tags us Ormack said.

"We've got no chance-" "We can still fight," McLanahan asked. "As long as we got missiles we can't give up."

Ormack grabbed his arm. "If we try to run he'll just come around again and shoot us down. "He lowered his voice. "You did a great job, Pat, but it's over. It's-" McLanahan shrugged his arm free. The MiG had dropp back a few feet, his bubble-canopy now directly beside the Old Dog's narrow, slanted cockpit. The Russian pilot pointed down three times.

McLanahan turned and looked directly at the MiG pilot flying in unison with the fighter at a distance of fifty feet.

To Ormack's surprise, he nodded to the Russian, and the pilot pointed to McLanahan's right, indicating a right turn. Ormack looked away, not wanting to see what he insisted was necessary for their survival. The pain he felt was from more than his blood-soaked shoulder.

McLanahan nodded one more time to the MiG pilot. "Stand by to turn, crew," he said, gripping the wheel tight.

Yuri PapendreYov was flushed with pride. He had done it. The American was surrendering. Of course, he could hardly do anything else.

group the B AA-8 misile blow.

its mangled left wingtip, the destroyed bomber was flying slower and slower, without the bombs Yuri had seen before as it hugged the ground the small-caliber bullet holes all over in the nose to the wings, and figured the the final shot into their fuselage had been The B-52 began its very slow right turn, and Yuri had just begun applying pressure on his control stick to follow suddenly the right side of the canopy was filled with the dark, menacing form of the American bomber…

Instead of turning right toward Anadyr the insane plane had turned into Yuri's MiG-29.

He yanked is control stick hard to the left, rolling up into a hundred degrees of bank.

A moment later his world crunch of metal as the two aircraft, traveling kilometers a minute, collided. With both aircraft the top of the B-52 had plowed into the bottom of Yuri's fighter.

Somehow Yuri managed to continue his hard turn, standing his MiG on its left wingtip and pulling back on the stick to increase the roll rate.

The B-52 seemed to be turning right with him-even pushing him on, dragging him to the earth. The fighter was now at ninety-degrees bank, and the terrifying crushing and grinding sounds underneath him continued.

Yuri could see rocks and trees out of the top of his canopy. His controls refused to respond…

He ignited his twin afterburners, and like a snapping rubber band his MiG was flung away from the B-52.In the process Yuri found himself inverted, then in a wild tumble.

The roar of the B-52 was everywhere, he expected another impact any moment…

But the spin slowed and he managed to level his wings. He was barely at twenty meters. Rocks and trees were all around him-he was staring up at a huge ridgeline encrusted with jagged snow-covered boulders.

But his airspeed at last began to build and he felt the ground rushing away beneath him.

to Quickly he checked around for the B-52… nothing.

Gone. Shaking his head, Yuri started a slow right turn to check behind him…

Numb from the midair collision he had contrived, McLanahan watched transfixed as the gray MiG continued its spin down, heading for the rocks, reaching the point where McLanahan thought the pilot could never recover.

But he did. He must have been close enough to the rocks to get one in his boot, but his spin stopped and the MiG sped away from the earth, gaining breathtaking speed in seconds, and now McLanahan was fighting for control of his own plane.

The stall-warning buzzer sounded, and the Old Dog seemed to be floating straight down instead of flying forward.

"Get the nose down, we're in a stall," Ormack was yelling at him.

McLanahan shoved the yoke forward, fighting the initial-stall buffet that shook the entire hundred-ton bomber.

The buzzer stopped. McLanahan found he had control, leveled the nose until the airspeed came up, but he had to force himself to stop looking at the rugged ground that whizzed so close to the Old Dog's groaning wings.

"There he is, here he comes… Ormack shouted, pointing straight ahead.

He was coming, all right. Directly in front of them.

"I McLanahan called over the interphone. "Pylon "Angie missile… fire.

The MiG was in a thirty-degree right bank directly off the Old Dog's nose at a range of perhaps three to four miles when the missile left the right pylon rail. It ignited in a bright plume of fire, sped away toward the wide bubble canopy of the MiG.

But the Scorpion that left the Old Dog's rail was an unguided bullet, not a sophisticated air-to-air missile. Without radar tracking and uplink from the Old Dog to guide it, the Scorpion relied on either an infrared signature or an anti-radar jamming signal to home in on. It had neither. The MiG had kept its radar and jammers off, presenting no heat signature at all so long as it was in its right turn.

The Scorpion streaked forward, passing a hundred feet in front of the MiG.Ten seconds after it automatically armed its warhead after launch, the Scorpion's computer asked itself if it was tracking a target. The reply was no, and the Scorpion harmlessly detonate MiG-29.And its warhead almost two miles past the…

Papendreyov saw the American bomber and the missile at the same time.

There was no time to turn, to dive, or accelerate not even time for him to close his eyes and brace for the impact And then, just as quickly, the missile was gone. Yuri watched for a second missile-a B-52 bomber launching missiles? — but there was none.

He continued his wide right-climbing turn, keeping a close watch on the B-52.which now was a serious adversary, not just a helpless whale resigned to its fate.

He watched it far below him.making a left turn, heading east. With his own speed regained, it looked to Papendreyov as if the B -52 was almost hanging suspended in midair. Not dead, but an inviting target.

He maneuvered behind it, stalking it, closing slowly for the kill.

Noting the tail cannon sweeping back and forth in a rectangular pattern, he rolled out high and to the right of the bomber. The cannon continued its erratic box-pattern sweep occasionally seeming to be altogether out of control and useless… yes, it could launch missiles, but it had no way of guiding them.

Yuri armed his GSh-23 cannon and maneuvered behind and slightly above the B-52, slowly closing the distance. He no longer considered trying to force the bomber to land-his gun's cameras would record his victory over the intruder.

He edged closer to the bomber, then began his strafing run…

"We've lost him. "Ormack was searching his side cockpit windows.

"He's out there," McLanahan said, reengaging the terrain avoidance autopilot. "He can find us easy. We've got to find him before he gets a shot off Angelina watched her rocket-turret-position indicators as they oscillated in random sputters and jerks. The radar was Jammed, locking onto ghosts, starting and stopping, breaking lock.

Frustrated, she turned the radar to STANDBY, waited a few moments, then turned it back to TRANSMIT…

A large bright blip appeared on the upper left corner of her radarscope.

She waited for it to disappear, just like all the rest of the electronic ghosts.but this one stayed.

She stomped her foot on the interphone button. "Bandit five o'clock high, break right!"

McLanahan swung the control yoke hard right.