Then all hell broke lose. The plane jerked suddenly to the side: a dozen warning buzzers went off. Cheshire shouted something at him.
He had no lateral control. The computer had begun to compensate. Stick dead.
No, he had stick. No rudder.
No tail?
He forced the plane down, felt a jolt as the wheels on the right undercarriage hit the ground. He could feel himself sliding to the right.
“Steer! You still have steering!” shouted Cheshire over the interphone.
“Okay,” he managed. “Okay.”
The plane straightened out. Their speed knocked down to twenty, then fifteen, then ten knots. Firmly in control now, Dog permitted his eyes to move to the left-hand multi-use display, which was slaved to the emergency status nodes.
Clean.
Clean?
“What the hell happened?” asked Bastian.
“You were doing such a good job I decided to complicate things,” said Cheshire. “You just landed without a tail.”
“Jesus.”
“Well, he would have done a better job,” said Cheshire, clearly enjoying herself. “Still, you did okay. I didn’t take off the entire tail, just one of the stabilizers.”
Actually, Cheshire had directed the plane’s advanced flight computer to simulate the loss of one of the stabilizers. The flight profile was among several the major had preprogrammed into the flight computer as part of the advanced training Bastian had persuaded her to give him.
“You’re worse than Rap,” Dog told her.
“Thank you, Colonel.”
“What would you have done if I crashed?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t have crashed,” she said. “We were always within specs. The computer has tested the profile on its own.”
“You can’t really fly without a tail,” said Dog, who didn’t trust the simulator modules in the flight computer, no matter how sophisticated they actually were. He turned back to the windshield. The SUV designated to shepherd them toward the maintenance area was just now approaching from his left, a little behind schedule.
“Sure, you can. If you’re good. You could.”
“Ha.”
“You’re better than you think, Colonel.”
“I mean, the plane would auger in without a stabilizer.”
“Over my desk there’s a photograph of a B-52 that landed without a tail in Vietnam,” said Cheshire. “And another that was shot nearly in half through the fuselage. Then there’s the one with three quarters of its wing missing.”
Dog grunted. He finally realized he’d been suckered into a sales job.
“Colonel, you might want to relax your grip on the yoke,” said Cheshire. “You look like you’re going to snap it off.”
“Right.” He trundled the plane to the edge of the runway, where three support vehicles had joined the SUV.
Missouri—better known as “Mo”—was testing a modified version of the PW4074 turbofan, and carried one apiece on the inside engine pylons. The PW4074 turbofans, highly efficient engines originally developed by Pratt & Whitney for Boeing’s 777, were to be quickly checked by the ground crew. Assuming they were okay, the bomber would take off for a second tier of tests, then repeat the process for a third.
Dreamland’s specialists had tweaked the systems to achieve somewhat more thrust; nowhere near as thirsty as the J57’s that came stock on early B-52’s, the jets were considerably more powerful. The Megafortress engineers were still diddling with the computer models and specs to determine what exactly their optimum arrangement might be. While the conventional wisdom was that one new engine could sit in place of two old ones on each pylon, the Dreamland whiz kids were fond of defying common wisdom. The vast airframe of the B-52 gave flight to all manner of fantasies. Computer models had been devised showing the plane with six and eight power plants. One odd design even called for two of the engines to be mounted at the rear, somewhat like a 727.
The goal was to improve low-level speed without decreasing overall unrefueled range. Stock, a B-52 could clock roughly 365 knots at sea level with the old power plants. The Megafortress, with its much cleaner airframe, notched roughly 425 nautical miles an hour. The engineers wanted 475, which was well beyond the venerable and trusty J57’s.
Fifty knots didn’t seem like much, but it would exponentially reduce the detection envelope for a Megafortress on a low-level attack mission. In practical terms, it would allow an EB-52 to evade all but the most sophisticated defense radars, and to get close enough to air-launch torpedoes against a surface ship, one of the design goals remaining to be achieved.
Do that and even the Navy might order up a few dozen. Missouri indeed.
Dog powered back, preparing to turn the plane around at the edge of the ramp. In some ways it was more difficult to guide the big plane on the ground than in the air, since the flight computer didn’t help. Bastian found it nearly impossible to judge the clearance distance accurately, and twice twitched the control column, afraid he was about to clip one of the chase vehicles with his wings. But Bastian handled the turn expertly, stopping precisely parallel to the techies’ yellow and black pickup.
“You have time for the second flight?” Cheshire asked.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” said Dog. Then he realized she had a funny expression on her face. “Did I do that bad?” he asked.
“No, I told you, you did fine,” she said. “I was hoping to talk to you a minute.”
“Fire away,” Dog told her.
“I have to quick run over some of the numbers with Peter first, though,” she said, referring to the engineer in charge of the engine testing. “A quick check and we’re good to go.”
“All right,” said Dog. It wasn’t like he wanted to go back to his office and the mounds of paperwork waiting for him. Truth was, he would greatly prefer taking off again, even if it meant listening to Cheshire’s pitch for more resources. “Thanks, Colonel. I’ll be right back. I appreciate it.”
Dog undid his restraints and stretched his arms, watching out the cockpit windows as the ground crew gave the plane the once-over.
It wasn’t just that he preferred flying to paperwork. He wanted to master the Megafortress, just as he had every other plane on the base.
Not every plane. He hadn’t flown the two 767’s or the 777 they were testing as tankers. But he had flown every combat plane. The F-22, the modified F-16, the Joint-Service Strike Fighter, even the SR-71D spy plane with its hypersonic hydrogen engines. Flown them all, and damn well.
But something about the Megafortress kept him at bay. He could fly it, but he wanted to fly it—to master it, twist it over and around and in and out of knots. He wanted to get out on the edge of the envelope with it. The flying battleship was the future of the Air Force.
He wanted to prove he was a great pilot. He wanted to prove…
That he was better than his daughter?
The idea shot into his head like the snap vector from an AWACS controller. Dog pushed up out of his seat, squeezing out of the Megafortress’s cockpit. He didn’t have to prove anything to anyone, especially himself, and definitely not Breanna. He had other things to do than fiddle around in the sky.
Cheshire met him on the ladder down to the lower deck. “Colonel,” she said. “You’re leaving?”
“Sergeant Gibbs will be waiting. What did you want to say?”
Cheshire leaned against the bulkhead and began talking about the Megafortress project, saying that the engine tests were taking much longer than anticipated. The mechanical delays were only part of the problem. She needed more engineers—a common and justified complaint. The decision to develop the Megafortress as a mother ship for the Flighthawks was also stretching her people and the planes to the max.
“We only have the three planes,” said Cheshire. “Raven, Bear Two, and Mo. Galatica, the AWACS tester, won’t be on board until at least next week.”
Bastian nodded.
“We need at least two planes to complete the engine tests. Bear Two is needed for static tests, and Galatica still has to go through the usual flight trials. We won’t have the others for at least three weeks. The tanker program is already on hold, and the backlog on the avionics tests is thicker than a phone book.”