Jamieson kept the right bank in, but now they were no longer turning—they were spinning! With no smooth airflow over the wings to create lift, the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber had stopped flying—it was in a complete stall, and with one wing low, it transitioned immediately into a “death spiral” spin. The bomber’s nose was now pointed almost straight down at the ocean, and they were careening down toward the Gulf of Oman at 20,000 feet per minute.
“Recover!” McLanahan shouted. “Recover, Tiger!” McLanahan couldn’t focus anymore. He had the threat display up on his supercockpit screen, with the flight instruments hidden behind it, and it was completely dark outside the cockpit windows, so he had absolutely no sense of up or down, left or right. McLanahan immediately craned his neck over to the left so he could see the pilot’s artificial horizon, but moving his head like that caused the disorientation to increase a hundredfold. Jesus, they were completely out of control! They were going to hit the ocean any second!
McLanahan hit the BYPASs button on his control stick, then fumbled for the speed brake button on his throttle quadrant—normally they could not deploy speed brakes in comBAT mode because it spoiled the bomber’s stealth characteristics. He felt a rumbling in the airframe as the elevons on the bomber’s wing tips split, acting as speed brakes to slow the bomber’s wild, uncontrolled descent. At the same time, he held the control stick centered and full forward, then stomped on the left rudder to counteract the right spin. No good—no reaction. He tried jamming the control stick hard left, hoping that the increased elevon authority would … “Let go of the controls, MC!” he heard Jamieson shout.
“I got it! I got it!” McLanahan shouted. “Let me know when!”
“I said, I got it, dammit!” Jamieson shouted back.
“No! I can pull us out! I got it! Just let me know when!”
Suddenly he felt a crushing smack! on his face, and the world went dark. McLanahan thought he was dead, but he wasn’t … not yet. In a second the ocean would rush in, he’d swallow, and then …
But they hadn’t hit the water. Jamieson had backhanded McLanahan in the face! “I said, I got it,” Jamieson said calmly. Smoothly, carefully, Jamieson pulled the throttles to idle and stepped on the right rudder pedals.
The spinning was still as intense as ever. “We’re still spinning!” McLanahan shouted. “Get the rudder in! Get-!”
“The plane’s wings-level, Patrick,” Jamieson said. “It’s your damned navigator brain that’s spinning.” Jamieson reached up and hit a button on his top center mission display unit, and a sixteen-color, larger-than-life attitude-direction indicator appeared on McLanahan’s supercockpit display. The ADI showed them slightly nose-low but, sure enough, they were wings-level. “I pulled us out of the spin, but you kept on pushing us right back into another one. That’s why they call those a ‘death spiral,’ you know—every time you try to recover without looking at the instruments, you put yourself in another spin in the other direction. Remember to keep an ADI on your screen all the time from now on, okay?”
It took several moments for McLanahan to get his head to stop spinning and flipping upside down, but after staring at the electronic ADI on his monitor and willing himself to believe it was true, everything finally calmed down. McLanahan checked their status. Jamieson had them down at 100feet above the Gulf of Oman, at max continuous thrust, heading south toward Omani airspace—away from the Khomeini and those Iranian radars as fast as possible. “You all right?” Jamieson asked.
“Yeah … yeah, I’m okay, thanks,” McLanahan said weakly. He checked the Warnings, Cautions, and Alerts page. “Fire extinguishers fired off, so that engine is bye-bye,” he said. “All number one systems down. Fuel pressure is fluctuating … hydraulic pressure OK … electrical system OK … fuel system is … wait, fuel valves three and four are still open. I’m going to MANUAL on the fuel system … ok, fuel shutoff valves to the number one engine are closed. All engines are feeding off the right wing tank. I’ll empty that one first in case we sustained any damage.” Jamieson checked the fuel panel switches, then nodded his agreement.
Iranian fighters were everywhere overhead, and the next twenty minutes was a nightmare come true. Every few minutes they would see fighters beginning to converge on them, so they would change course and edge as low as they dared to the ocean surface—at one point, they were at fifty feet, the absolute lowest they dared go without activating the radar altimeter or SAR. Even after they exited Iranian territorial waters, the Iranian fighters pursued.
They had to fly almost all the way to the Omani coast before the Iranian fighters began to retreat. Finally they were over land, and the fighters were gone.
“Jesus, that was close. It must’ve been that fighter jock’s lucky day, stumbling onto us like that “I don’t think he lucked into us. Look at this,” McLanahan said, motioning to his display. “We’re well within radar range of Omani air defense radars and even Saudi Arabian F-15 fighters, but they’re not coming after us. It’s only the Iranians—they figured out how to track a B-2A bomber.”
“Track us? With what? They didn’t have a lock on us.”
“I know, but they found us,” McLanahan said. “Somehow they figured out a way to detect us well enough to vector a fighter in on us. Remember those fighters suddenly shutting down their radars, even though they didn’t have a lock on us? They did that so we wouldn’t find out we were being watched. It’s gotta have something to do with that cluster of radars they set up.”
“If that’s true, then we’re probably out of this fight,” Jamieson said. “The whole B-2A program could be in jeopardy. The Pentagon won’t risk a B-2A bomber again until they figure out how they were able to track us.”
“I don’t think we’ll have too much time,” McLanahan said. He began composing a report to the National Security Agency via the Air Intelligence Agency to report on the whole incredible, frightening incident. “The Iranians have the upper hand now—they might not rest until they get everything they want.”
RESIDENCE OF THE PRESIDENT, SHAMSOL EMAREH PALACE, TEHRAN, IRAN
A SHORT TIME LATER President of the Islamic Republic Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri was writing, pencil on paper, in a journal—no computer, no television, no radio in his quarters anymore—when suddenly the door to his room burst open, and General Hesarak all-Kan Buzhazi stormed in and strode directly up to him. “Come in, the door is open,” Nateq-Nouri deadpanned.
Buzhazi virtually dragged the President to his feet in anger. “I want the codes,” he demanded.
“I am well, thank you for asking, General,” the President said.
“How are you?”
“I will put a gun in your mouth and blow your addled brain apart and make it appear as if you’ve killed yourself,” Buzhazi shouted.
“I want-“
“How did I get a weapon, General?”
“You took it from a guard and-“
“All of your precious Pasdaran troopers are at least eleven kilos heavier and six centimeters taller than I,” Nateq-Nouri observed.
“How can I possibly overpower one of your precious “Guardians of Allah’ after being virtually starved to death here in my own residence?”
“I want the codes, Mr. President.”