Flight of the Old Dog, page 28
“Good. Get back on long range and get a fix on those fighters. I’ve got a visual on his lights.”
McLanahan switched from thirty to eighty miles range and immediately a large bright return appeared, just passing the thirty-five-mile range mark.
“Thirty-five miles, General. Closing fast.”
“Genesis has visual contact,” Ormack said. He pointed out the cockpit windows into the growing blackness.
“So, General,” Sands said, “last I heard you were in the Looking Glass unit in Omaha. You’re a long way from Nebraska, sir.” He paused, then: “I thought the missile alert stuff was sort of childish, General. You wouldn’t fire a missile at one of our own. Now let’s cut the crap—”
“Not now, Eddie,” Elliott broke in. “Now, I know you have a code-word that sends those F-15s home. We’ll release your fighter frequency so you can tell them they’re not needed.”
“Then you also know, General, that I got a word that’ll have those trigger-happy jocks blow you into atoms.”
Elliott looked at Ormack. “He’s right.”
“Game’s over. If I say nothing—or if you keep jamming and I’m not allowed to say anything—those boys come in hellbent for blood and with itchy trigger fingers on real Sidewinders. It may he too late already, sir, what with their interplane frequency being jammed like that. If this is some sort of exercise, it’s gone way too far—but I’m not yelling uncle. You are. Right now. What’ll it be?”
“I’ll tell you what, Eddie—”
“Go ahead, General, I’ve got plenty of gas—and firepower.”
“I’ve got more than a code-word, Eddie, I’ve got a story. A story about a certain wing commander at a conference in Omaha. About a certain air division commander’s wife. A story about a blond kid in an Italian family …”
“Stop crappin’ around, Elliott—”
“My mission is no crap, Sands. I may not be doing it by the book but I’m Special Ops. We both get to tell our stories to headquarters when we land.” Elliott quickly switched to interphone. “Patrick. Range to the interceptors?”
“Twenty-five miles.”
“Well I’ve got a story about a certain hot-shot one-button in the Philipines that should prove entertaining,” Sands hit back.
“I had dinner with the Secretary two weeks ago, Eddie. While you were chipping ice cubes out of your undies I told him that story. He bought me a martini afterwards. Look, we’re running out of time, I don’t want those fighters any closer.” On interphone he said, “Frequency clear?”
“Yes, sir,” from Wendy. “The interceptors are contacting their command post for engagement authorization.”
“You’re on, Eddie,” Elliott said.
“Cutlass flight, this is Alpha aboard Icepack one-oh-one on channel nine.”
“Copy you loud and clear now, Icepack,” the lead pilot of the F-15 Eagle two-ship formation replied. “We have visual contact on you but not on your receiver. Heavy MIJIing on all frequencies. Permission to join on your receiver’s wing for positive ID.”
“Negative,” Sands told him wearily. “Positive ID already established. Status is Red Aurora. Red Aurora. Alpha out.”
“Patrick?”
“Fighters are turning,” McLanahan reported. “Heading back toward the coast.”
“Shut down UHF again, Wendy,” Elliott said. His order was instantly confirmed by a loud crackle of static on the radio he was monitoring.
“That won’t be necessary, Genesis,” Sands said over the VHF refueling frequency. “We’ll play ball, damn you. But the fighters and my command post will just get nervous if they can’t talk to us.”
“I’m counting on you, Eddie.”
“Open a window and we’ll shake on it, General.”
“Wendy, open up three-eleven again,” Elliott said. “Leave everything else shut down.”
Sands unplugged his interphone and oxygen connections and cleared off to the air refueling pod in the back of the converted DC-10 airliner. He strapped himself into the long wide boom operator’s bench and stared out the window beneath their feet.
“What’s his range?” Sands asked the boom operator.
“Almost two miles. Still can’t see him. And it’s not even completely dark yet.”
“Genesis, this is Icepack. You guys are either very small, very dark, or both. Turn your lights back on or we’ll be up here a long time trying to plug you.”
“Who’s in the pod, Eddie?” Elliott asked.
“Just me and the boomer.”
“No other spectators, Eddie. Deal?”
“I got a feeling I don’t want to see this,” Sands muttered over VHF. “Okay, agreed. Let’s see what’s such a big goddamned deal.”
“Lights are coming on.”
The formation lights revealed the size of the unknown receiver, but nothing else. It appeared like a group of stars flying the formation behind the KC-10 tanker.
“We’re also going to need fuselage lights, Genesis,” the boomer said. “I’ve got your receptacle light okay but no azimuth or elevation references.”
“Give ‘em the fuselage lights, John,” Elliott said. He was busy adjusting his seat down and forward for the best position for refueling.
“Roger,” from Ormack. Just then the Old Dog began to slide to the right. Ormack pressed on the left rudder pedal and looked anxiously at Elliott.
“General? You okay?”
“Sure, I’ve got it.”
“We’re yawing to the right. Straighten her out. Let up on the right rudder.” The Old Dog slowly straightened out.
“You’ve got the refueling, John,” Elliott said, relaxing his grip on the yoke. His head rested on the headrest on the back of the ejection seat, his chest heaved.
“But—”
“I was testing out the rudders,” Elliott told Ormack. “I pushed the right pedal but didn’t feel anything happen so I pressed harder. I still can’t feel anything … I think I’ve lost my right leg.”
“Goddamn,” Ormack said, grabbing the yoke and putting his feet on the rudder pedals. “I’ve got the aircraft.”
“You’ve got the aircraft,” Elliott responded, shaking the yoke. Ormack gave it a shake to confirm he had control. Elliott slid a hand down his right leg and over the calf. A few hours earlier such an exploration would have caused almost excruciating pain. Now, nothing. He could feel his finger pressing on the muscle beneath his knee, but he felt nothing. It was an eerie feeling, like touching a hunk of salami …
Ormack looked anxiously at the huge KC-10 looming before them, its boom extended, waiting.
“General,” Ormack said firmly, “I’m aborting this mission—”
“No.”
“McLanahan had a point, sir. It’s not worth your leg—”
“Refuel this aircraft, Colonel,” Elliott said firmly. “We’re not stopping now.”
“But, General, I—”
“I said refuel this bomber. Two men have already sacrificed their lives for this mission.” He grabbed the yoke, gave it an angry shake and put a gloved hand back on the throttle cluster between them. “And if I have to refuel this plane without your help I will. Understand?”
Ormack slowly nodded. “All right, General, all right … I’ve got the airplane … but I need a pilot, General. A one-hundred percent combat ready pilot. Do I have one?”
“Well, my right calf is about twenty-five percent, John. But your pilot who also happens to be commander of the Old Dog is one hundred percent. Refuel this plane.”
Ormack nodded in surrender, looked at the air-to-air TACAN distance readout. “Icepack, Genesis is approaching one-half mile.”
The boom operator gripped his fly-by-wire digital boom controls and stared into the darkness below. The wingtip position lights of the mysterious receiver were just barely visible, as were some fuselage and upper-position lights. The slipway-door light danced eerily in the gloom before him, and he had to close his eyes to avoid getting the “leans,” a loss of equilibrium caused by the moving light without any horizon references. There were lights out there, but even at a half-mile he couldn’t see any airplane body to go with them.
“Genesis,” the boom operator said, “be advised I have your lights but have insufficient vertical, horizontal, and depth references for a safe call to precontact position.”
“We have a good tally on you,” Ormack told him. “Clear us to precontact and we’ll give you range countdown to contact. If you can’t see us that way …” He looked to Elliott.
“Clear us to precontact,” Elliott said, filling in for Ormack. “Stick the boom out there, booms. We’ll put this plane underneath it and you plug us.”
“Roger, Genesis,” the boomer said uneasily. “You are cleared to precontact position, with caution.”
“Roger. Moving in.”
Sands and the boom operator stared anxiously as the slipway door light moved toward them.
“One hundred feet,” Ormack reported as his own depth perception finally snapped in. Before, he had merely aimed the top of the Old Dog toward the nozzle light ahead; now he could better gauge the actual distance involved.
“Still no—” The boom operator paused. For an instant he could discern an object passing just on the edges of his wide pod window. He tried to piece that glimpse into a whole airplane, but it was impossible.
“Stabilized precontact,” Ormack reported.
“What?” from the boom operator.
Nothing. The boom operator saw nothing below him except a single light. Everything else melted completely into the space around it. The precontact position on most large aircraft was twenty feet behind and ten feet below the nozzle, less than sixty feet from where he and Colonel Santis sat in the boom pod. They were looking directly below the nozzle, in the glow of the small nozzle light, and there was nothing. In the depths of the growing twilight, Mason thought he could see the outline of a large aircraft—but it could just as easily be his imagination playing tricks on him. “Genesis, I’m going to turn on the belly lights.”
“Who’s in the pod?” Elliott asked quickly.
“Colonel Sands and Tech Sergeant Mason,” the boom operator replied.
“Okay. Eddie, make sure that’s all that goes in there.”
“Hell, I’m not sure if I want to be here.”
“Clear on the belly lights,” Ormack said, taking a firm grip on the yoke. The boom operator reached above him and flicked a switch.
And suddenly there it was. The long, pointed nose stretched underneath the boom pod. Just on the edge of the pod window the outline of the eleven missiles were visible on their gray pylons. In the direct glare of the tanker’s light the forward fuselage could now be seen, but the rest of the plane, aft of the training edge wing roots and beyond, was invisible. Through the sleek, sharp, Oriental-like angles of the strong-looking cockpit windows, the pilot and copilot, without helmets or oxygen masks, could barely be made out.
“What the …” The boom operator’s words stuck in his throat.
“You got him, booms?” Reynolds asked over the tanker’s interphone. “What is it?”
“It’s … it’s a B-52 … I think,” Mason stammered over interphone.
“You think? What the hell is it?”
“It’s a damned spaceship. It’s …”
“Acknowledge, Icepack,” Ormack repeated. “Stabilized precontact and ready.”
“Elliott, what the hell are you flying?” Sands demanded.
“Gas first, Eddie. Questions later.”
“Forward ten,” the boomer said. “Cleared to contact position. Icepack is ready.” Ormack expertly slid the Megafortress ahead. His practice and experience made for a steady platform, so all the boomer had to do was extend the nozzle a few feet.
“Genesis showing contact,” Ormack said. “Nice job, boom.”
“Icepack has contact,” Mason reported. He started the fuel pumps. “Taking fuel, no leaks.”
“Taking fuel,” Ormack acknowledged.
“All right, Genesis,” Sands said. “How about some answers?”
“Eddie, you don’t want to know,” Elliott told him, glanced over at John Ormack and managed a smile. The Megafortress was so smooth and steady that it was easy for Ormack to keep the huge bomber in the boom’s refueling envelope—it seemed he was scarcely touching the controls. “You don’t want to know where we’ve been, where we’re going, or what we’re doing.”
“Where you’re going? There’s no question about where, General. You know—hell, you knew about my code words so you must know—that I can only give you enough fuel to make it to Shemya or a suitable alternate. I can’t fill you up.”
“You’ve got to, Colonel. We need as close to full tanks as possible.”
“General, I’ve busted more rules in the past twenty minutes than I’ve done in two years. And that’s a lot, even for me. I can’t give you that much—”
“This isn’t a strip alert refueling any more, Eddie,” Elliott said. “This is now an unscheduled, alternate tactical refueling. We had tanker support from Eielson and Fairchild scheduled but they didn’t launch. Now you’re it.”
“You had two tankers?” Sands said. “Where the hell you going with two—?” And then Sands stopped, looked in disbelief at Mason. They arrived at the answer simultaneously. Missiles on the strange B-52’s wings …
“Elliott,” Sands finally said. “What the hell is going on?” No reply.
“Jesus Christ,” Sands said. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and stared at the bomber below them.
“Ashley?”
“Computing max offload now, Colonel,” the copilot replied, pulling out his performance manuals, charts, and flight plans.
“Give us enough to land at Anchorage with ten thousand over the high fix,” Sands told the copilot. “We may need it if runway conditions at Shemya deteriorate. God damn.”
Under the close eye of Mason on board the KC-10 and Elliot aboard the Old Dog, it was nearly an hour later when Ashley nodded to the flight engineer, who radioed back to the boompod on the tanker’s interphone.
Elliott looked across the cockpit and rechecked the fuel distribution system’s indicators. Ormack had taken it off “automatic” to avoid putting fuel into the left outboard wing tank in case it sustained any damage when the tip ripped off at Dreamland, and now the system required careful monitoring.
“Showing no flow down here,” he radioed to the tanker.
“That’s it, Genesis,” Ashley said. “We’ve got enough to return to Shemya, shoot one approach, go missed approach, and arrive at Anchorage with ten thousand over the fix.”
Elliott totaled up the gauges and checked it against the fuel totalizer. It would have to do.
“I’ll take a disconnect, Icepack,” Ormack said. In the refueling pod Mason gave a short countdown and punched the nozzle out of the Old Dog’s receptacle. Ormack reached up and closed the slipway door.
“Descending to two-seven zero,” Ormack reported.
“Eddie, I want to thank you for your cooperation,” Elliott said as the Old Dog began its descent away from the KC-10 tanker. “I assure you, I’ll take full responsibility for any heat you might take.”
“I’m counting on that, General,” Sands said. “I guess this makes us even.”
“We were always even.”
“Maybe … You know I have to file a report about this. The refueling, the comm jamming, the expended munitions. Everything.”
“Of course. No offense intended, Eddie, but I know you’ll file the report in your usual complete, timely, thorough manner.
“Anything else you need, General?” Sands asked, biting out the words.
“A name, Eddie,” Elliott said. “A tanker, a deployment, a large aircraft from Anchorage that passed by within the past twelve hours.”
“Sure, why not?” Sands turned to the interphone, asked the copilot for the communications kit, then said over the radio, “Might as well set an all-time record for breaking the rules in one glorious day.”
“ ‘Bag’ was a KC-10 fighter drag from Elmendorf to Nellis,” Ashley said, checking his classified call sign booklet. “ ‘Crow’ was an AWACS from Eielson to Sapporo. ‘Lantern’ was a KC-10 from Elmendorf to Kadena.”
“I’m not going to ask why you needed that,” Sands said. “Can we turn around now? How much further toward never-never land do we have to follow you?”
“Clear to turn, Eddie—and thanks.”
“See you …” Sands watched as the descending bomber melted into the darkness.
“Genesis is clear,” Elliott reported to him. Then, silence. The lights on the huge aircraft blinked out, and it disappeared completely.
The boom operator looked wearily at Colonel Sands.
“Reynolds, are the radios clear?”
“Negative,” the pilot told Sands. “Still heavy jamming.”
“Well, he can’t jam SATCOM,” Sands replied angrily. “Transmit a post-refueling report directly to SAC. Label it URGENT Report the receiver’s call sign, direction of flight, onload, everything. As soon as we’re out of range of their jammers, direct command post to make a transcript of the radio transmissions.” Sands stared out the boom window into the inky blackness. “I’ll file it in my ‘usual timely, efficient manner,’ you old bastard,” Sands muttered. “And I’ll be there to watch you roast on a spit.”
“So what’s the news?” Elliott asked Ormack. The copilot had just got off the interphone with McLanahan, coordinating the distances, altitudes, and fuel flows. Elliott had just finished a five-minute stint on the firefighting oxygen mask and had done a station check of the cockpit and left and right load central circuit breaker panels, the two massive walls of circuit breakers and fuses lining the pressure cabin between the pilot’s and defensive operator’s compartments. He had also checked for fuel leaks around the air refueling valve in the upper deck walkway.
“Want the good news or bad news first?” McLanahan asked him.
“Better give me the bad news first.”
“We are some sixty thousand pounds short of fuel,” Ormack said.
Elliott had no answer to that one. The .enormous quantity involved …
