Flight of the Old Dog, page 34
“Airborne interceptors at twelve o’clock,” Wendy interrupted. “At extreme detection range but closing rapidly. Multiple indications.”
“And we’re stuck up here,” Ormack said. “No other way around it. Pereira, McLanahan, engage at long range. We’ll have to blast our way out of here.”
No one offered any alternative. McLanahan reactivated his Scorpion attack radar and tuned it immediately to fifty-mile range. Slaved to Wendy Tork’s threat receiver, the radar immediately pinpointed the aggressors ahead.
“Locked into one,” McLanahan called out. Just as he designated the first target he heard the whoosh of a Scorpion missile leaving the left pylon.
“Locked onto a second one—”
“Fighter at six o’clock high,” from Angelina. Instantly she activated her own radar and locked onto the fighter. A moment later she gave a look of surprise and reached for the airmine triggers. “Range decreasing rapidly,” she said. “He’s diving at us.
“Radar’s gone down,” Wendy said. “And we don’t have an infrared scanner to pick up—”
“It’s an IR attack,” Angelina announced. “Pilot, break right.”
Ormack threw the Old Dog into a hard-banking turn to the right. The bomber, already without several thousand pounds of thrust from the number one engine, rumbled in protest, hovering just above a stall. Wendy punched out two flares from the left ejector while Angelina tried to locate the attacker on her radar.
“I got him, I got him on radar,” she said, hit the green TRACK button, watched the circle cursor surround the fighter’s radar reflection and squeezed the Stinger airmine rocket triggers.
But the attacking fighter had the advantage. Following a vector to the intruder from his low-patrol mates—both of whom he had lost contact with soon afterward—he had spotted the intruder on radar long enough to point his MiG-25’s infrared search-and-track seeker at the penetrator. Once the seeker had locked onto the target, he had no need for the look-down radar and turned it off. His AA-7 missile immediately locked onto the two engines on the left inboard nacelle of the Old Dog, and he hit the launch button just as he noticed a short burst of flame from below him.
Angelina’s right break had been perfectly timed. The AA-7 missile’s IR seeker lost the engines in the break and locked onto the flares, but the change was too quick and the proximity and decoy-detection fuse exploded the missile.
Saved from destruction, the Old Dog was nonetheless naked … the missile’s high-explosive detonation, together with the one-thousand-degree-Fahrenheit parachute-equipped flares and the low wide burst of an airmine rocket, perfectly outlined the Old Dog against the snow-covered mountains.
The MiG pilot attacking from above and behind the Megafortress had watched his missile streak toward the target. Then suddenly he saw a dark silhouette of incredible size. He blinked, not able to believe it as the outline of the massive aircraft materialized below him. A low-altitude warning horn sounded in his helmet, and he managed to pull out of his dive only a few hundred feet above the ground and force his fighter skyward.
Although the sleek nose confused him, there was no misidentifying the rest of the plane. An American B-52 bomber. He had always thought that if he was called on to defend Kavaznya against attack, it would be against an FB-111, a B-1 or even the American Navy’s F-18 or F-14. Never, never an aging dinosaur like the B-52.
Straining to keep the antediluvian bomber in view as he pulled on his control stick and crawled for altitude, he frantically keyed his microphone.
“Aspana. Danger. American B-52 bomber. Paftariti. American B-52 visually identified.”
Another warning beep sounded in his helmet. He recognized the stall-warning buzzer, applied maximum afterburner and leveled off to wait for his airspeed to increase. He repeated his warning over the radio, including the bomber’s direction and estimated speed.
Could the B-52 possibly have destroyed the other fighters? The MiG pilot had seen what he thought were gunblasts from the puny .50 caliber guns in the tail, but none of the pilots at Ossora would be stupid enough to fly that close to the intruder. …
Angelina had to haul herself upright by the armrests of her ejection seat to regain her balance. The sudden turn and the abrupt roll-out had her head spinning and she fought to refocus her eyes on her scope. When she did she was surprised to see the target still locked within her circle cursor. She grasped the triggers and fired twice at the almost stationary fighter.
The last thing the MiG pilot saw was the glass around him seeming to melt like cellophane. His canopy disintegrated as twenty pounds of metal chips from both Stinger rockets sheared through the plastic-laminated canopy, shredding everything in its path. His fighter flew on for several minutes, its pilot sightless and bleeding, before crashing into the low mountains.
“Angelina! Twelve o’clock high! Another MiG coming in fast …”
Bathed in the bright sunburst of the descending flares, the MiG-25 attacking from the nose had a solid visual contact on the intruder. The Old Dog was approaching a high ridge line, very close to the ridge but well above the snow-covered valley behind, and the attacking MiG was well above the bomber, which was perfectly highlighted. The Russian pilot had to strain, but even after the flare plunged the sky back into darkness the bomber was still visible.
He refocused his eyes on the heads-up display for a few seconds, rapidly checking his instruments to see if he could establish a more reliable shot on the bomber below him. The infrared seeker had not locked on—that would have been difficult unless he was behind the B-52. His tracking radar was randomly locking onto hundreds of targets all over the scope—completely jammed. Useless. A B-52, he knew, carried more jamming power than ten MiG-25s combined. He shut the radar off, banked hard to the left and began to dive at the bomber, fighting to keep it in sight as he approached the ridge …
“He’s closing in fast,” McLanahan called out. “Ten miles.”
Angelina had to take a few precious seconds to select a Scorpion missile and align it with McLanahan’s steering signals, then launched the Mach three missile within six seconds of McLanahan’s second warning. Still, in that time the MiG had halved the distance between them.
The MiG’s warning receivers immediately detected the missile launch and the pilot quickly switched hands on the stick, activated the forward deception jammers with his right hand, switched hands again and hit the chaff-dispenser on his control stick.
A B-52 launching an air-to-air missile! It was worse than he ever imagined. He could easily see the fiery plume behind the missile below him, pointed his fighter directly at the missile, showing the missile only his smallest radar profile.
The glare from the missile spoiled his night vision some, but the bomber was still in sight. The MiG saw a slight shift in the shape of the missile’s plume—instead of a round dot, it was a bit more oblong. He smiled and relaxed his grip on the control stick. The American missile had locked onto one of the false targets his jammers had created. Instantly he released another bundle of chaff and pulled right and up on his stick. The missile’s egg-shaped ball of fire became a long, orange line as it harmlessly passed underneath his MiG.
The pilot, who had his eyes squinted against the explosion he had feared as he watched the missile streak past, now opened his eyes—the huge B-52 was centered in his gunsights.
Even so he felt he was a heartbeat too late—he should have been firing his cannon before the B-52 entered his sights. He shoved the stick down now to lead the target more, but the snow-covered ridge line popped into view ahead of the bomber. He had only an instant left. His finger closed on the trigger and held it until trees began to show on the edge of the ridge, then released the trigger and hauled back on the stick with all his strength …
“The missile missed,” Ormack answered as he watched the Scorpion disappear into the night.
“Break right,” McLanahan told him, watching the radar target grow to horrifying size.
The split-second the Soviet pilot had wasted realizing he was too late for a real kill had saved the Old Dog’s life. Twenty-millimeter shells plowed into the leading edge of the Old Dog’s left wing where Elliott’s cockpit windows had been an instant before. The shells ripped into the left Scorpion missile pylon, destroying half of the remaining missiles. The explosions would have ripped the wing apart, but one ricocheting shell fired a jettison squib in the pylon and the entire burning pylon exploded into space. The pylon missed the remaining fragments of the Old Dog’s V tail and the Stinger airmine rocket cannon.
The MiG’s strafing track continued through the wing and fuselage, piercing the number-two main center wing and forward body-fuel tanks, but the shells created no deadly spark and dissipated most of their heat in the fibersteel skin of the Megafortress.
Elliott could see sparks flying from the hardpoint where the Scorpion pylon used to be. “Angelina, the left missile pylon’s hit.”
McLanahan glanced up and checked the selective jettison board on his weapons-monitoring panel. “We lost the whole damned pylon,” he called out, deselecting jettison power from the pylon circuitry.
Angelina immediately reached to her overhead circuit breaker panel and pulled a group of circuit breakers. “Pylon deactivated.”
“That left wing must be getting awful light.” McLanahan tried for a bit of grim humor.
It was wasted on Wendy, who called out, “Fighter at six o’clock.”
“Here he comes again.”
“1 see him,” Angelina said as she steered the circle-cursor on the radar return and hit the TRACK button, then began aligning a weapons-bay Scorpion for launch.
The Soviet pilot saw the missile lock-on indication on his threat receiver and immediately activated his own electronic countermeasures.
Angelina depressed the TRACK button once again. The green light stayed on but the circle cursor kept on walking away from the return.
“He’s jamming me,” she said, “Switching to manual track.” She deselected radar-track, grabbed the steering handles and carefully tried to position the circle cursor on the fighter.
The Soviet pilot noted the persistent missile-alert signal even though his jammers were breaking the radar lock. He promptly began a series of random S-turns, rapidly closing the distance between them, trying to push his MiG-25 closer to the bomber’s altitude.
The Old Dog cleared the ridge line by a scant forty feet, the wingtip vortices snapping fir trees like straw as it skimmed the ridge. Rooster-tails of snow and dirt were blasted dozens of feet in the air.
Suddenly, a large green TERRAIN DATA PROCESS and TERRAIN DATA GOOD readout flashed across McLanahan’s computer monitor. “Computer terrain-following is active,” McLanahan said. “Clear to engage.”
Elliott and Ormack quickly engaged the terrain-following-pitch autopilot to the navigation computers. Now the computer, which already knew the elevation of all the terrain around them for thousands of square miles and had the accuracy of the satellite navigator for positioning. would put the Old Dog at the lowest possible altitude but climb her in anticipation of terrain ahead.
Through the MiG-25’s windscreen the B-52 could be seen diving sharply toward the rocks below and disappearing. From radar, infrared, visual, everything. The pilot searched. No sign. The huge bomber had disappeared. Swearing into his mask, he throttled back and climbed to begin a search.
“I can’t find him,” Angelina said. “I can’t lock onto him. His jamming is too powerful. We can try a home-on jam launch but we don’t have the missiles to waste.”
“He’s back there, waiting for us to pop up into him,” Luger said, staring at the radar altimeter readout on his computer screen. “He’s not going to drive into our laps.” He sucked in his breath as the readout dipped to thirty feet before climbing again to a hundred feet above the ground.
“We’ve got to suck him in,” McLanahan said. “Draw hin in, then chop the power.”
“He’ll blow us out of the sky,” Ormack said. “We’re staying down here.”
“He’s also vectoring in his buddies,” McLanahan said. “If he doesn’t get us in the next five minutes he’s gonna have lots of help.”
“We’ve got a dozen missiles left,” Ormack said. “Great, but we can’t take on all of them.” McLanahan shook his head.
Ormack was about to answer when Elliott put a hand on his wrist. “We have no choice, John.”
“If we can’t find him, General,” Ormack yelled over the roar of the turbofans, if we lose him … if he shoots first…”
“We’ve got to be the hunter, not the hunted,” Elliott said. The two pilots looked at each other. Then Elliott took the throttles from Ormack, placed a tight grip on the yoke and gave it a shake.
“I’ve got the aircraft.”
Ormack looked at the exhausted general as a wave of turbulence rumbled through the bomber. “We’re taking a big gamble, General.”
“Now’s the time for one, John.”
Ormack nodded. “You’ve got the aircraft, General.”
“Thanks, John. Stand by on airbrakes and gear.”
Ormack reached across the throttle quadrant and put his hand on the gear lever.
“Wendy? Angelina?”
Angelina nodded at Wendy who reported, “Ready, General.”
“Landing and taxi light-switches off. Setting two thousand feet.” Elliott twisted the clearance plane knob from COLA to 2000, and the Old Dog’s SST nose angled skyward.
The Soviet pilot was busy cursing himself and his low-powered radar when the American B-52 suddenly appeared from nowhere just off to the right of his MiG’s nose. The radar range gate immediately set, azimuth locked on and his last AA-3 radar missile aligned and reported ready for launch.
“He’s right behind us,” Angelina called out.
“Missile alert,” Wendy followed, and hit the right chaff ejector. “Jink left.”
Elliott put the Old Dog in a sharp turn to the left just as the MISSILE ALERT indication changed to a MISSILE LAUNCH.
“Missile launch, break left!” Wendy punched out eight bundles of chaff from the right ejector as Elliott threw the bomber from a twenty to a forty-five degree bank to the left.
The MiG pilot watched in frustration as another huge radar target appeared on his scope. The aiming reticle moved across to the bigger, brighter, unmoving blob just as he thumbed the LAUNCH button … and watched as his last missile disappeared into empty space.
Immediately he shoved the throttles of his twin Turmansky engines to maximum afterburner and swerved to the left to get into cannon-firing position …
“Range decreasing rapidly,” Angelina said. “Still no automatic lock-on. I’m setting the detonation range for the airmines manually.”
“Range decreasing,” Wendy reported. “Stand by for a break to the right.”
“If we have our gear and airbrakes hanging out,” Ormack said, “and then break to evade a missile we’ll stall for sure. We may not have enough altitude to recover.”
“Three miles and closing fast,” Angelina said.
“If he was going to launch one, he’d do it now,” Wendy said. “Two miles.” She was staring hard at the threat video. The bat-wing interceptor threat symbol hovered behind them, inching closer and closer. “Approaching one mile … now. Hit it.”
“Gear. Airbrakes six,” Elliott ordered. Ormack dropped the landing-gear handle and flipped the airbrake lever full up. The Old Dog pitched down, throwing everyone hard against his shoulder straps. Elliott brought the power back to eighty percent, then quickly back to full military thrust as the initial buffet to stall again rumbled through the bomber. He had lost a thousand feet before he was able to bring the Old Dog under control.
The Russian pilot wasn’t caught unaware. He had just throttled back to cut his closure rate on the B-52 when he noticed the radar range gate rapidly decreasing.
He immediately disregarded the indication. He had no radar-guided missiles to launch anyway, and the B-52’s jamming probably had broken the range lock. Catching glimpses of the huge bomber’s outline against the snowy backdrop, he kept his power in minimum afterburner and rested his finger against the cannon trigger.
The range gate wound past one thousand meters—well inside firing range. He stepped on the right rudder to completely align himself, and took a deep breath.
He saw several bright flashes of flame from the rear of the bomber, instinctively rolled his fighter left to begin S-turning behind the B-52. The .50-caliber machine gun could never hit the bomber without reliable radar guidance, he thought, and his own twenty-millimeter shells had a greater range and reliability. He started a right roll and pressed the trigger.
The flashes of light suddenly grew into huge, pulsing shafts of color. Immediately he threw his fighter into ninety degrees of bank to the right and pulled on the stick, breaking hard away. He caught a glimpse of his airspeed indicator—in his attempt to match speed with the intruder he had allowed his airspeed to decrease drastically..
He rolled until the stall-warning horn came on again, then rolled out. His stick would not respond to his control. He was sinking fast, in the grip of a near-stall. His MiG-25 wasn’t made for low-altitude intercepts, it was designed for fast high-altitude dogfighting. It was with huge relief that he saw his airspeed increasing steadily. Ochin. In a moment, he thought, he’d finish this Amirikanskaya.
He looked out the left side of his canopy just in time to see a colorful line of fireworks explode less than fifty meters outside his canopy, the blossoms of light reminding him of starburst fireworks he had once seen—big and bright with thousands of tiny stars racing out from a red center.
A moment later those stars riddled the entire left side of his MiG-25. The canopy became one giant mass of holes and jagged cuts, yet somehow stayed intact, but the left engine flamed out immediately, then seized as the engine oil drained from a hundred punctures in the engine cowling.
