He’s coasting now up through eighty-five thousand feet, gravity slowing him rapidly. He feels the F-106 jump slightly and hears the whoosh of the missile’s rocket motor as it releases itself and starts its climb, its silicon brain aware that the launch speed is slower than it should be, the altitude more than five thousand feet shy of the mark.
He’s got worries now beyond the missile’s fate, and he tunnels in on the task of getting down safely. Bailout is always an option, but one he doesn’t want to use.
Owen pushes the stick forward and lets the F-106’s nose fall through the horizon and steeply downward as the speed builds again. He flicks open the speed brakes as he tries to restart the engine, but one glance at the fuel indicators confirms that there won’t be a restart. The engine has sucked down the last drop of fuel in the full afterburner climb, and he’s now flying a delta-wing glider with one solitary chance at a safe landing.
Only a few thin cumulus clouds dot the landscape below as the Delta Dart plunges earthward, the speed stabilizing at just under Mach 1, a small Ram Air Turbine providing the only hydraulic pressure to the flight controls. He punches up Carlsbad Muni as his destination and does a quick calculation.
Okay, the runway is twenty-eight miles east, so plan to enter a high key down the runway at eight thousand feet.
He swings the fighter’s nose to the appropriate heading, watching carefully as the altitude unwinds through forty thousand.
A bit high and fast,he decides, banking the jet into one back and forth S turn, and then resuming the course. He dials in the VHF frequency for Cavern City Unicom, the common radio channel for the airport in the absence of a control tower, and rechecks his energy profile as he triggers his transmitter.
“Pan, pan, pan, Cavern City Unicom, Carlsbad Airport traffic, this is Bluebird Two-Three, I’m a flamed-out Air Force F-106 making an emergency approach to Runway Zero-Three, Carlsbad. All traffic please stay clear. Pan, pan, pan.”
A puzzled voice with a heavy West Texas accent comes back almost instantly.
“Air Force F-106, this is Cavern City Unicom. Sir, your winds are two two zero at eighteen knots, gusting twenty-two, so I suggest you use Runway Two-One.”
“Roger, Cavern City. Thanks. Bluebird Two-Three changing to a high-key left traffic downwind for Runway Two-One, Carlsbad.”
A flurry of quick mental recalculations leads to the sudden realization that he’s no longer too high and too fast.
Okay, enter a high downwind and meter the turn to final at two miles, ah, northeast at four thousand. Gotta turn at four.
He’s dropping under ten thousand now, worrying about pulling the nose up and stretching his flight path as the Delta Dart slows below four hundred knots on the way to three hundred, which he’ll use as his maneuvering speed. But that speed is coming off too fast, and he can’t figure it out. The airport is just ahead by four miles and he turns to parallel Runway Zero-Three on his left, letting the jet slow to two ninety before continuing the descent, dropping through eight thousand as the field passes his left shoulder. At this rate, he thinks, he’ll have to turn inside one mile and delay the landing gear.
What the hell? Why am I slowing this fast?
The answer comes in a flash of embarrassment.
Oh, jeez, the boards!
He flicks the speed brake closed and feels the jet’s aerodynamics improve instantly from those of a boulder to something more resembling a flying machine.
The field is a mile back to his left now, the altitude at five thousand, and he calculates the wind and decides to make an early turn, sliding the F-106 around to the left with his eyes on the end of the runway and lining up, checking his speed before committing the landing gear, which will slow him even more.
The speed is just above target, the end of the runway moving beneath his nose less than a mile out as he aligns with the concrete ribbon and drops the gear. The runway numbers stop moving forward in his windscreen, and he meters the jet over the threshold fifty feet high at a hundred and seventy, using the speed brake to help him settle onto the concrete, which is disappearing fast.
He’s on the wheel brakes, metering the pressure, wondering if he should have used aerobraking, the craft slowing through a hundred with less than two thousand feet of runway left. He presses harder on the pedals, worried about blowing the tires but slowing as the far end of the runway hurtles toward him.
And just as quickly he’s at the end, rolling the jet off on a taxiway at twenty knots and bringing her safely to a complete stop clear of the runway.
Owen powers open the canopy, runs the shutdown checklist, and starts removing his helmet—aware of a flurry of vehicles approaching from the southeast part of the field. He pulls the helmet free just as several Air Force cars pull into view and turns quick attention to scratching the place on the right side of his face that’s been bugging him since takeoff.
A crew chief is placing a ladder now to his left.
“Did we make it?”
“Sir?”
“The shot. Was it successful?”
Chris Risen doesn’t feel like a four-star general at the moment. More like a green lieutenant watching something momentous but completely out of his control as lines and vectors merge on the small screen. Outwardly his image is as secure and professional as ever. Inside he’s on edge, his heart in his throat.
“Status, Chief?” he asks quietly of the chief master sergeant.
“Missile at one hundred seventy-five miles and climbing, sir. It’s… a little off profile, but closing.”
“Show me the intercept solution, please.”
New lines appear on the display, one red, one blue.
“General, the blue line is the missile, the red, as you know, the proton shroud.”
“Am I seeing that right? Are they going to miss?” He hates to believe it, but the computer is projecting the missile to pass behindthe oncoming shroud.
“That dot is the current projection… I mean, without the missile speeding up. That’s where the missile will be along the shroud’s orbital path as it crosses. But the missile should speed up.”
“God, I hope so.”
“The corrections are real time.”
As they speak the display shifts, the intersect point moving closer to the shroud, overtaking it slowly from behind, the digital readout of the missile’s speed indicating a steady acceleration.
“The second stage has a thirty percent reserve boost capacity, sir.”
Another jump in the missile’s speed registers as the altitude continues upward.
Come on, come on!Chris thinks. Less than five hundred miles separate the two objects, the missile racing to close at a forty-eight-degree angle.
Once more the computer updates, moving the intercept dot within a mile of the shroud, still to the rear. The speed of the missile is over seventeen thousand nine hundred miles per hour, and as he watches, the display upgrades it to eighteen thousand.
“Almost, sir.”
“Time to impact?”
“Thirty seconds.”
“Jesus, I’m too old for this.”
“Yes, sir. I am, too.”
“Like waiting to find out if your girlfriend’s pregnant.”
The chief turns with a smile and a puzzled look, unsure how to take this. Just as quickly he returns his gaze to the closing race.
“Twenty seconds.”
The red intersecting projection dot is less than a quarter mile behind the shroud as the two objects close within seventy miles of each other.
“Fifteen.”
The predictor dot moves to a tenth of mile behind the target, the missile’s speed still increasing.
“Ten seconds.”
Goddammit, FLY, you bastard! Come ON!
The gap between dot and shroud closes a bit more, but still not colocated. The speed readout on the missile is now eighteen thousand five hundred.