Quinten shook his head. "They’re unlucky, Paul, but they’re honoured too. They’re dying to save our world. They’re dying for peace on earth."
Howard turned away from the desk and went back to the window. Out on the base the fire fight was noisier, more vivid. Both sides were fully committed now. Hot lines of shells stabbed through the air, clawing at their targets, exploding in vicious red flashes as they hit. Howard felt empty and cold. He knew it was no use arguing further. Quinten’s resolve was inflexible.
Quinten lit a cigarette. His mental anguish was greater than Howard could suspect. He loved the base, and he loved the men under his command. Each explosion, each rattling burst of automatic fire, stabbed painfully into his mind. Peace on earth, he thought. That’s what they’re dying for. It’s worth it; it has to be. On earth peace, goodwill to all men. A few will suffer, but millions will live. He picked up his pencil. He knew what he was doing was right.
Chapter 12
Alabama Angel reeled under the force of the explosion, her port wing flipping up almost to the vertical as the blast bucked it. The huge aircraft shuddered, shaking with a vibration heavier than any Clint Brown had ever experienced. The cabin was filling with acrid smoke as he brought the plane level, trimmed it for rapid descent, and shouted to Federov for air brakes and reduced revs.
The bomber tilted forward, shuddered again for a few seconds as the air brakes bit into the thin air and disrupted the airflow to slow the plane during rapid descent. Within seconds Brown saw that the inboard portside engine pod had received a lot of the blast. The counters for numbers three and four engines were showing rapidly falling revs, and the fire warning lights were glowing red in the little ports above each counter.
"Shutting down three and four," Federov said calmly. "Fire system operated on three and four."
"Kay." Brown watched the two counters as they wound down to zero. Five seconds later the two red lights winked out. "Seems to be under control, Federov. Everyone on emergency oxygen. Check in as I call you." He listened while the crew members answered in turn. Then he went on, "All right, we’re hit. But she’s flying. I’m going down to thirty-five. I’ll call for damage assessments as soon as we level out. Get working."
He adjusted the trim to give a constant rate of descent of eight thousand feet per minute. The smoke in the cabin did not seem any worse. But the fact it was there at all indicated a failure in the pressure system, probably punctures of the walls of the pressurised section. A glance at the pressure equivalence gauges confirmed the failure. Before the explosion they had indicated an equivalent of a comfortable ten thousand feet. Now they showed a fifteen thousand equivalent, and were climbing rapidly. Brown judged they would reach thirty-five about the same time the bomber got down to that level.
He felt momentarily grateful they had survived the first hazard. The breaks in the pressure walls hadn’t been serious enough for explosive decompression to occur. A lucky break there. Explosive decompression at a height of twelve miles, with the cabin pressurised to maintain an apparent height of only two, would have ripped the plane apart. They would all have died instantly. The feeling of gratitude lasted perhaps a tenth of a second. Then it was pushed into the background by the imminent presence of other dangers.
The altimeter needles wound down past forty-five thousand. Whatever happened now, they could breathe. About another minute to go to thirty-five. He glanced quickly round his instruments. Except for the two still needles of the dead engines they appeared normal. He began to feel a small degree of optimism. If the damage was just to the pressure walls and two engines, that wasn’t too bad. They could fly a long way on six engines. To the target certainly. And back to the States afterwards? Well, maybe not at thirty thousand feet, but for the moment that wasn’t important.
Lieutenant Owens on radar said, "Captain, I’ve tracked two more missiles. They broke away like the first four."
"Yeah," Brown said. "Keep watching, Bill." He saw the altimeter needle flick down past forty thousand, then grasped the significance of Owens’ report. "So your radar’s still working? And the brain?"
"Good as new, Captain."
"Fine." Brown pushed another two factors into their slots in the framework plan he was constructing. He thought quickly of the missile which had hit them. The prime fact was the electronic brain had worked. He started from that. He coupled with it the way they had come under fire long before he’d thought they would, way out further to sea than the Intelligence boys had estimated. Also, that Owens was picking up the missiles at a range of only sixty miles, on radar which had an easy pick-up range of a hundred, while they were still about a hundred and fifty miles from the coast.
It added up to the missiles coming from a ship. Maybe the Russians had stationed a screen of picket ships to extend the range of their coastal defences? Brown didn’t think so. The routine reconnaissance missions would have reported them, the same way the Russian reconnaissances had no doubt fixed every Texas Tower and every picket ship in NORAD’s organisation.
His mind worked fast on the various possibilities. Now the pay-off was being made for the hours of compulsory study he had put in at SAC intelligence rooms, assimilating the carefully gleaned information about the enemy’s weapons; actual, future, and potential. His mind selected, from the mass of information it had stored, a few items which helped to give shape to the problem, and assist in its solution.
Thus. Four cruisers of the Zherdlov class had been converted to anti-aircraft missile ships. The Russians were thought to have in hand a missile which combined infra-red with radar homing. But the date for that missile’s operational debut was still a year away. Two of the cruisers converted were based on Archangel. One of them was actively operational, the other carried experimental missiles. Finally, the Russians had been known to use icebreakers to cut a channel to a spot in the middle of a frozen sea; slip a big ship through the channel, and leave it as an artificial island until they decided to cut it out of the thick ice which would reform around it.
It took less than thirty seconds for Brown to decide about the missile which had hit them. Obviously, it had had only a small, high-explosive warhead. An operational missile would have used a nuclear head. Only one had been fired, against six radar-guided missiles. There could be little doubt it was an experimental infra-red missile — the way it had circled and homed in on the radiations from the engines helped establish that — and had been fired from a ship temporarily marooned in the ice-locked Barents Sea for trials.
The altimeter was showing thirty-six thousand as he said to Federov, "Brakes in. Get me the revs for maximum speed at this altitude." He watched the needle approach the thirty-five thousand and trimmed the aircraft into level flight.
"Captain, you know the fuel consumption if we use maximum speed this height?" Federov’s voice was anxious.
"I know it. But with the drop in height and two engines out we’re going to need every mile not to miss out too badly on our bomb time. Any ideas about the wind at this level, Stan?"
Lieutenant Stan Andersen glanced briefly at the sector graphs of the vertical air mass structure. "Shouldn’t hurt us," he said briefly. "May help. There wasn’t much going our way at sixty."
"O.K., I’ll take damage reports. Normal crew rotation." He listened to the reports from the crew, carefully weighing each report, asking questions to clear any point he wanted checked.