A few moments later the radar-warning receiver bleeped again. “Bandit at six o’clock again,” McLanahan called out. “I think that fighter’s back. Why is he tracking us so well?”
“That nose gear stuck down wipes out our stealth characteristics,” Luger said. “He can track us around all day just locked on to our nose gear.
“Let’s launch another one of those rear-firing missiles at him,~~ McLanahan suggested. “We can’t let him hang on our butts too long or he’ll eventually close the distance and gun us down. Chop the power, suck the guy in, then fire a missile at him.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Ormack said. “Dave, get ready to give me a hand with the instruments if I get bollixed up.”
“Gotcha,” Luger said. He turned to McLanahan and smiled. “Hey, Patrick, just like Bomb Comp, huh?”
“Yeah,” McLanahan agreed, “except we’re playing for real marbles now.”
Ormack tightened his shoulder harness, trying to get comfortable in the narrow, stiff ejection seat. “Ready, Patrick?”
McLanahan put a finger on the missile-launch switch. “Ready.”
“Power coming back … now.” Ormack pulled the throttles back to idle power and raised the nose slightly. The airspeed bled off rapidly. As he pushed the throttles back up, he shouted, “Now!”
McLanahan hit the LAUNCH button — and suddenly the bomber shuddered, the tail flipped up as if caught in a huge tidal wave, and lights in the cockpit flickered and died. “Jesus!” Ormack screamed. “Lights! Dave, check my airspeed!”
Luger punched a button in the overhead instrument panel, turning on a bright-red, battery-powered emergency light. “We lost the number three and four engines,” he shouted. “One and two are good. The missile must’ve detonated when it left the launcher. Get your nose down! You’re still flying, but you need airspeed. You’ve got a compressor stall on three and four-the decoy exploding right on the tail must have stalled the engines. Throttles three and four to CUTOFF.”
Ormack yanked the two right throttles to IDLE, removed a safety bar, and moved the throttles to CUTOFF.
“Good. Patrick, watch the EGT gauges.” He pointed out their position on the instrument panel. “Ten seconds, if the temp doesn’t come down out of the yellow range, we’ll have to pop the fire extinguishers. I’ll dial in your elevon trim for you, General. Watch your airspeed. Shallower banks — remember, the wings are supercritical. She flies like a pig on two engines, but she flies. Be careful.”
“Sage advice,” said Ormack.
“That fighter’s got himself a nice bright target now,” McLanahan said. He looked at the EGT, or exhaust gas temperature, gauges once again. “No luck — temp’s still up. We’ve got a fire back there. Fire extinguishers, three and four.” Luger guarded the one- and two-engine fire handles so Ormack wouldn’t accidentally activate them, and watched as McLanahan pulled the fire extinguisher handles. “Pulled.” All of the instruments — navigation, threat warning, bombing, weapons control — were dark. “How do I get my stuff back? Where’s the generator-reset switches?”
“On two engines you won’t get them back,” Luger said. “The generator will stay in TIE, and all available power will go to the flight controls, radios, emergency equipment, and stuff like that. We’re out of the bomber business. Our MEA is four hundred meters, General — we’d better get up there.”
“That fighter is probably moving back in,” McLanahan said. “If we climb, we’re sitting ducks.”
“I can’t see a thing out there, Patrick,” Ormack said. They were out of the clouds, but the ground was dark, the horizon was obscured by fog and drizzle, and the rain was pelting the bomber’s windscreen hard, completely blotting out the view outside. “I’ve got no choice — we’ll smack into the ground if we don’t climb.” Ormack pulled back on the control column and climbed to four hundred meters, the lowest they could fly safely without seeing the ground.
Luger was busy tightening up the straps of his parachute. “Well, this is one thing I’ve never tried in this thing,” he said. “Manual bailout from a stealth bomber. Reminds me of training in the simulator with Major White, doesn’t it, Patrick?”
“Jesus, Dave, I’m sorry we got you into this,” McLanahan said, worried about Luger’s physical condition. “We should have let you go back with the Marines. You’d be safe by now.”
“Vi nyee ahshiblyees—uh, sorry — don’t be crazy, Patrick,” Luger said. “I wanted to go. I had to go. This was my way of getting back at those fuckers Gabovich and Teresov and all the sons of bitches who kept me locked up in Fisikous all this time, building this piece of shit. Maybe if I had built a better bomber, we’d be safe by now.
“Can you bail out of the bomb bay in this thing?”
“No access to the bomb bay from the cockpit,” Luger said. “I guess they didn’t want … holy shit, look!”
They looked out the right-side windows.
A MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter was flying close formation just forward of the Fi- 170’s right wing. It had a fighter-intercept identification light on its left side, which shined a bright light into the cockpit. “Man, this is just great. It’s like déjà vu all over again. Wasn’t it a MiG-29 that was chasing us around after the bomb run on Kavaznya? The one that blew my leg to shit?”
“That’s the one,” McLanahan said. As they watched, the MiG-29 let out a burst of cannon fire from its portside 30-millimeter cannon. The identification light blinked-once, pause, twice, pause, once, pause, then five times. “One-two-one-five. He’s telling us to go to VHF GUARD channel.”
“Maybe we can talk our way out of this one,” Ormack said. “I don’t think we can fly out of it.” He switched over to the international VHF emergency channel, 121.5, and keyed the mike: “Attention MiG-29 fighter aircraft, this is Tuman. We are an authorized flight over sovereign Lithuanian airspace. State your intentions. Over.”
The voice that responded was in Russian, with no English attempted. “He is from Byelorussia,” Luger translated. “He says he has authorization to shoot us down if we do not follow him. He is ordering us to fly a heading of one-five-zero at an altitude of three thousand meters and lower our landing gear. He will pursue. If we do not comply, he will shoot us down.”
The MiG-29 wagged its wings once, then disappeared from sight.
“I guess we don’t have any choice,” Ormack said. “We can’t see him, and we’re barely flying already as it is. What do you guys think?”
“I think we should make a run for it,” Luger said. “Try to descend and try to outlast him. If he fires on us, you guys eject. They don’t get the bomber, and you at least make it out.”
“But you won’t make it,” McLanahan said. “Forget it, Dave. Let’s put it down on the ground and—”
Suddenly there was a terrific explosion and a blinding burst of light. McLanahan and Luger strained to look out the right-side cockpit windows and saw a blazing ball of fire careening through the sky. “It’s the MiG!” Patrick shouted. “It blew up! What’s going on?”
“I think I found out,” Ormack said. “Look over here.”
A few moments later a huge object appeared out the left-side window, overtaking the Fi-1 70 and flying a few hundred feet above it. It was a dark, massive shape, flying close enough and with enough power to vibrate the crippled Soviet bomber.