Flight Of The Old Dog

FIFTY MILES FROM KAVAZNYA

The throttles were at maximum-the right outboard engine had been pulled back to ninety percent to compensate for the destroyed number one engine but all the rest were at full military power.

General Elliott tightened the throttle friction lever on the center throttle quadrant-he wasn't going to move any one of those throttles unless he had to shut down another engine. The number two engine had been restarted for the target run, but the RPMs were erratic and the vibration from the engine threatened to shear what remained of the left wing loose from the fuselage.

"Bomb run checklist," Dave Luger announced.

McLanahan nodded, taking a quick glance at his partner The navigator had one finger on the checklist page ready to read off each step, but his hands were a shade unsteady.

"You all right, buddy?You look a little nervous."

"Me?Nervous?Why should I be nervous?Just because we're about to end the Russians a candygram loaded witf TNT?What's to be nervous about?"

"Think positive, the man said."

"I've been trying-" McLanahan interrupted. "We're going to shove this one down their throats and get out of here quick like a bunny.

Okay?"

"Yeah, right, like a bunny."

McLanahan turned back to his instrument panel.

"Weapons monitor select switch," Luger recited.

"Center forward.

"Low altitude calibrated mode selector."

"Automatic."

"Target coordinates, elevation, and ballistics."

"Set, displayed, checked, locked in. "McLanahan then made a swift check of the coordinates. "Ballistics set for glide mode. "His response was reflexive; he had no master printout to check the coordinates.

"Consent switches, pilot and radar," Luger answered.

General Elliott painfully reached back along his left side instrument panel and checked that the three gang-barred consent switches-the permission switches for the forward and rear-firing Scorpion missiles and the Striker glide-bomb and bomb decoys-were in the full UP position.

"Pilot's switches are-" A warning tone sounded in the crew's headsets, and the Old Dog pitched violently skyward, its pointy nose at a high, unnatural angle.

Ormack hit the AUTOPILOT DISCONNECT button on his ontrol yoke and pushed the nose back toward the ground.

@"Flyup. Nav, clear terrain for me and get us back down. Radar, what happened?"

McLanahan was already investigating. "The terrain-data computer dropped off the line. "He looked over at Luger.

"Dave, clear terrain for him. I'm going to reset the computer and reload the data.

"High terrain, three miles," Luger called out. "I'm starting to paint over it. Don't descend yet. "McLanahan's gloved fingers flew over the switches. "Computer's back on-line. "He flipped the cartridge lever from LOCK to READ."It'll take a few moments more."

"The Kavaznya radar is getting stronger," Wendy reported.

"Well above detection threshold now."

"Clear of terrain for twenty miles," Luger asked. "Start a slight descent. Possible high terrain in ten miles.

"Fighter radars have all gone down," Wendy asked. "The Kava,znya radar has blotted them all out-or the fighters are now getting their vectors from that big radar McLanahan glanced at the radar altimeter readout as the LOADING DATA indication appeared on his screen. The Old Dog's fail-safe flyup maneuver, designed to protect the aircraft in case of a failure of any of the components of the terrainfollowing computer, had zoomed the huge bomber to over two thousand feet above the terrain.

The engines were at full military thrust, holding the bomber in the sky.

"Altitude's still increasing," McLanahan warned.

"Dammit, I know," Ormack said. He leaned on the yoke helping Elliott force the SST nose of the Old Dog toward the protection of the rough Kamchatka hills. The Old Dog crested the flyup at twenty-three hundred feet above the ground before Ormack and Elliott together finally had it descending again "Fighters at seven o'clock," Angelina called out.

"Maneuvering to intercept…"She steered the circle cursor of the airmine rocket tracker over one of the attackers but at electronic quiver in the scope sent a shower of interference waves through the display, sending the tracking cursor spinnin off the radar return.

"Something's screwing up my radar."

"Terrain-data computer is back on-line," McLanahan reported. Ormack immediately reengaged the autopilot to the computer, and the Old Dog nosed earthward.

"First HARM missile programmed and ready," Wend, reported to Angelina.

"Bay door coming open."

Wendy hit the LAUNCH button. The aft bomb-bay door snapped open and the hydraulic launcher rotated to position one of the High-speed Anti-Radar Missiles on the bottom launch position. Wendy had already entered the radar' frequency range into the missile's sensor. Powerful ejector pushed the missile into the slipstream, its rocket motor ignited and the launcher immediately rotated to put another HARN missile into launch position.

Wendy monitored the HARM TRACK light on her missile status panel, indicating that the missile had found the source of the preprogrammed frequency transmissions and was heading straight for it. Suddenly Wendy's entire threat panel and missile status board flickered. The HARM TRACK light illuminates again for a moment, then disappeared.

"It's the Kavaznya radar," Wendy asked. "It's creating the interference in my equipment. The HARM missile won't track Luger held his breath as a stream of ridgelines rushed toward them, their shadows speeding toward the edge of his wedge shaped radar scope. As the Old Dog climbed over them, he stared transfixed "Dave!We got the computer back," McLanahan said as he finished recycling the computer. "Let's finish the checklist."

He reached across to his left instrument panel and flipped a red guarded switch up. "Radar's consent switch on.

Luger had to tear his eyes away from the scope to read the checklist.

"Weapon and decoy power."

I "On and checked," McLanahan said, and moved the tracking handle once more to check that the Striker's seeker head was still activated.

"Bomb-release lights."

Elliott sat forward and pressed-to-test his indicator lights.

"Off and checked."

"Off and checked down here too," McLanahan replied.

"Release configuration check," Luger read. "Special weapons lock.

Suddenly the Old Dog threw itself skyward once more.

Ormack swore, punched off the autopilot once again. Immediately Luger's full attention was riveted on the narrow wedge-radar display.

"High terrain, five miles."

"Reset the computer," Ormack ordered, but McLanahan was already resetting the computer power-switches. He tried the circuit reset-switch. It corrected the fault but only for a few seconds, and then the computer faulted once again. He tried severa more quick resets. "Something's wrong, it's not resetting. I'll have to recycle it. Maintain heading… god damn, the inertial navigation computer died. We've lost navigation information. I'll try to reset "Just do it," Ormack asked. "Nav "Clear to descent," Luger told him. "Slowly.

Small ridge three miles, but we should clear it okay-" "Fighters are closing," from Angelina. "It's hard to keep tracking them, my radar keeps spooking out — " "It's Kavaznya," Wendy told her. "The radar is interfering with all our equipment."

"We'll be flying right over that thing," Elliott said.

"Pilot, turn right!Fighter swinging over to eight o'clock on a left quartering attack-" "McLanahan, can I turn?"

"We'll get shot down if you don't. Do it. "The Old Dog — IMP banked to the right and moments later the muffled puffs of three airmine rockets rumbled through the bomber.

"Can't tell if I got them…"Angelina said.

"I've got nothing to jam," Wendy said, pounding in frustration on her ejection seat armrests. Her threat display was now a solid sheet of white-every frequency band that was possible to be displayed was filled with endless waves of energy. A jamming package put up against the energy transmitted by the nuclear-powered Kavaznya radar was lost in the spillover created by Kavaznya radar's sheer power.

"Clear of terrain for thirty miles. "Luger double-checked his radar.

They had cleared the last of the high coastmountain ranges surrounding Kavaznya. At the edge of the scope was blackness-the Bering Sea, he suddenly realized.

Only a few hundred miles further on was home-friendly, territory.

Right now, though, it seemed like a million miles away.

At the very edge of the sea was a huge, compact blob of radar returns.

He got two sweeps of the radar on the Kavazny complex itself before the ground-map scope blanked out.

"Just lost my radar, Kavaznya's at twelve o'clock, thirty miles.

McLanahan heard the warning and glanced over at Luger's blank five-inch radar scope, but he was concentrated on recovering the navigation and terrain-data computers. The firs computer recycle failed, so he began the second.

"Try recycling your radar, Dave," McLanahan told him Luger furiously switched the radar controls from STBY to TRANSMIT The radar scope would paint a picture for only a few sweeps, then blank out again.

"It's not working, we're blind down here."

"You said we were clear of terrain-the pilots should be able to see enough out the cockpit windows to keep us from hitting the ground.

We'll use the radar as much as we can law on. Keep the radar down until we make our escape turn."

"Two fighters at six o'clock," from Angelir@; then, "M3 radar's failed, I can't see them anymore…

McLanahan shook his head, then slapped his hands excitedly as a green NAV light illuminated on the computer monitor a his workstation. "Nav computer's back on-line. Pilot, center up on the target and try like hell to hold your airspeed steady Dave, get a groundspeed and mileage to the target and start watch. We might have to start the glide-bomb and decoys witf a dead-reckoning position. "Luger immediately wrote down the mileage to the Kavazny target and the groundspeed and started the timer on his wristwatch. When he rechecked it a moment later he found that his electronic LCD watch, like the three radar scopes on the Old Dog, had failed. He started the tiny forty-year-old wind-up ship's clock on his front panel and made a mental note to compensate for the extra twenty seconds lost.

"Reloading terrain data," McLanahan said, but before he could move the cartridge lever from LOCK to LOAD the navigation computer failed again.

"Four minutes to go," Luger announced.

"It's not going to come back up," McLanahan asked. "The Kavaznya radar's interference is just too strong."

Ormack and Elliott had managed to get the Old Dog's nose down after the flyup, but after flying with a terrain-following computer for so long they weren't ready to fly at the same low altitudes. Ormack trimmed the bomber for level flight at about a thousand feet altitude and rechecked his instruments before the actual weapon release, Unfortunately the effect of the change to higher altitude was to make the Old Dog an all-tooeasy target for the two Soviet fighters chasing it.

Taking vectors from interceptor radar operators at Ossora Airfield near the laser complex, the MiG-29 Fulcrum interceptor pilots didn't need their sophisticated look-down shoot-down A equipment to launch their missiles. The controller gave the pilots range and azimuth information to ideal launch positions.

once they visually acquired the huge bomber, they maneuvered around it to stay away from its deadly tail and turn their missiles' seeker-heads away from the glare and heat of the city beyond it.

"We can't drive into the target like this," Wendy said.

"Colonel, I need you to make random maneuvers all the way toward the target-" "We've got to program the weapons in a D.R position," Luger interrupted. "We can't-" "She's right, Dave," McLanahan asked. "We'll get hosed if we drive straight and level all this way. Clear to maneuver."

"Random jinks," Wendy asked. "Not left and right…

left twice, right once, random all the way. I'll eject chaff just before each reversal."

Ormack nodded and began the first j ink to the left. "Now we sound like a fighting-" Suddenly a blinding flash erupted from just beyond OrMack's right cockpit window. Ormack, who was staring out the front windscreen, with the cockpit lights turned down so the pilots could start visually picking out terrain, caught the flasl full intensity.

"I'm blind "Easy, John," Elliott said, took a firm grip on the yoke a trimmed it for level flight about five hundred feet abo ground.

"We just had a missile explode off our right wing," Elliott said over the interphone. "The co-pilot got flashblinded. But the engines look okay "Three minutes to go," Luger said, flicked his radar in TRANSMIT and took a fast range, azimuth and terrain chec before the scope went blank again. "Four degrees right. Cleof terrain, General. You can descend, slowly.

"The radar altimeter should be good for terrain clearan now that we're clear of the mountains," McLanahan saic "How can they still be shooting at us?" Luger said, puzzle "if Kavaznya's radar blotted out our radar-they should', taken out the fighter's radars too.

"Infrared search-and-track system," Wendy told him "They use an airborne I.R tracker for azimuth and elevation data and the Kavaznya radar for range data. They can take shots at us all night like that.

"Well, we're running out of time, Dave," McLanahan said He punched in range, elevation and azimuth data into the Striker glide-bomb's initial vector catalog. "We'll launch the bomb at maximum range-twelve miles, ninety seconds to go I've set the initial steering data for twelve miles at twel-, o'clock. Give me a countdown to the two minute point."

"Roger," Luger said.

"Amplitude shift in the Kavaznya radar signal," Wendy suddenly announced. "Looks like… looks like a targe tracking mode. The laser… it's locked onto us… " McLanahan reacted as if he had been rehearsing the actio although he never had. In one fluid motion he moved Weapons Monitor and Release Switch from the Striker forward center position to forward left, the weapon-rac position of one of the weapon decoys, moved the bay doc control switch to MANUAL, hit the DOOR OPEN switch at reached down to his left knee and hit the recessed black button on the manual release "pickle" switch.

"Bay doors are open," Elliott announced as a large yello, BOMB DOORS OPEN light flared on the forward instrume panel. A moment later a similar light marked WEAPON RELEASE flicked on-then off.

"What the hell?"

"The decoys," McLanahan told Elliott. "We can't jam the laser's radar, but the decoys should draw it away long enough for us to get within range.

A moment later Elliott flinched as an object resembling a huge blue-orange meteor burst to life and flew diagonally away from the Old Dog. The mass of fire spit tiny, blinding balls of light from its flaming body, and streams of gleaming tinselradar-decoy chaff-poured from behind the drone. The glare from the decoy was almost blinding, but Elliott squinted anyway and watched the decoy fly earthward, jinking left and right as it burned away.

The next instant McLanahan moved the weapon-select switch to forward right and punched out the second decoy.

Elliott noticed the WEAPON RELEASE button light once again; then, as the second decoy ignited and flew awa to the right, Elliott's gaze was drawn to the right cockpit window.

The launch of the second decoy, and Elliott's attempt to spot it, saved the general's eyesight-and the life of the crew.

Although the tiny Quail decoy-an improved version of an old bomber defensive drone used on SAC bombers for yearswas many times smaller than its parent B-52 bomber, its design made its radar, infrared and radiation signature more than tentimes larger than the Old Dog. Its refrigerator-size body had dozens of radar-reflecting nodules surrounding it, and even the design of the wings and tail, as well as the fifty pounds of chaff-bundles it ejected in regular intervals, enhanced its radar reflectivity. Its shape alone made it a more appealing target than the quarter-million-pound bomber.

But there was much more packed into the tiny drone. It automatically broadcast a wide spectrum of radio transmissions < to attract anti-radiation and home-on-jam missiles. To heatseeking missiles and infrared trackers the phosphorus flares and burning jelly oozing along its surface made it appear as hot as a nuclear reactor.

The Kavaznya radar, even with its solid nuclear-powered lockon, was drawn off its intended target. The first Quail bloomed like an electromagnetic stain across the target-tracking radar scope of the Russian laser weapons officer. The tracking computer quickly locked onto the larger return, and the tar officer did not override the shift.

There was nothing, he thought, bigger than a B-52 so close to the complex.

insured the new target lock-on, searching and not finding a malfunctions and signaled clear for laser firing. Just as Elliott attention was drawn to the right cockpit window to watch the launch of the second Quail decoy, a thick beam of red-oran light split the darkness and lit up the interior of the Old Dog like a thousand spotlights turned up full-blast. The atmosphere around the huge B-52

Megafortress seem humid, almost tropical.

The vaporized air around the laser blast created a vacuum around itself, sucking thousands of cubic acres of air into the shaft of light.

The turbulence and lower-density superheated air caused the Old Dog to sink, and only Elliot fast reactions and the screaming thrust of the seven remaining turbofan engines kept the Old Dog from crashing into the rugged Kamchatkan shoreline.

The tiny Quail decoy was not merely destroyed by the la blast-it was vaporized. There was no time, no fuel remainir even to form a secondary explosion or a puff of smoke. The tiny drone simply ceased to exist.

Elliott felt as if he had been violently sunburned. He pull on the yoke, fighting to arrest the sudden descent and gale force turbulence.

The MASTER CAUTION light snapped on as did other warning lights, but Elliott had his hands full trying to control the bucking mountain of metal beneath him.

Dave Luger was thrown against his right instrument panel the Old Dog swung sharply left into the vacuum, his outburst lost in the groaning metal of the Megafortress and the protesting roar of its engines.

Still, he and the Old Dog made out better than some others. A MiG-29 had just closed to ideal I.R missile-firing range and had not heard the call to clear the area when the laser beam sliced through the subzero Siberian air.

The gale-force wind-blast created by the mini-nuclear explosion within the krypton-fluoride laser beam, which had thrown the four-hundred-thousand-pound B-52 bomber arou the sky like a paper airplane, reached up and swatted the thirty thousand-pound Fulcrum fighter into the ground like an insec The pilot of a second Russian fighter was too busy fighting for control of his own machine to notice.

"What the hell was that?" Angelina said. All of her equipment went blank-the airmine rocket system, the Scorpion missile system, her radar, all of it. She glanced at Wendy Tork alongside her, switching her equipment into STANDBY in an attempt to reset it.

"The laser," Elliott asked. "They shot the laser at us. Two generators dropped off the line. "He scanned the instruments quickly. "Engines appear okay. John, can you get the number two and three generators back on-line?"

"I can try," Ormack said. He wiped his eyes and felt carefully along his right generator panel for the proper switches… The power interruption had blanked out everyA thing in the downstairs navigator's compartment, but Ormack's practiced fingers were able to reset the generators and get them back on-line. Trouble was, the only things that reactivated after power was applied were the downstairs lights.

"Dave, how much time?" McLanahan asked.

Luger was fumbling around his workdesk with a tiny battery flashlight, shining the weak beam on the few pieces of equipment on the right side.

"We have to get out of here," he asked. "We have to go back "Easy, man, easy," McLanahan shook his partner's shoulders. Luger finally stopped his flailing and stared at McLanahan. "It's over, Pat."

"No it's not. Now give me a time to the twelve-mile point, dammit." McLanahan was just about to push Luger out of the way and check himself, but Luger finally relaxed enough to check his ship's clock.

"Two minutes ten seconds."

"All right. Switch all your stuff to STANDBY It'll come back up by launch time. If it doesn't we'll slick the bomb, fly over that laser and drop it like a regular bomb. "He rechecked the DCU-239 weapon-arming panel. "We might have another problem.

"Such as?" from Elliott.

The generator fluctuation knocked out DC power to the arming panel," McLanahan told him. "I've got no weapon indications at all."

"It should still be good-" "I don't know what the bomb will do," McLanahan said quietly. Everyone on board heard the muted statement, even over the roar of the turbofans.

"You mean it won't explode?" Wendy asked. "We've co all this way, and it won't work?"

"I mean I don't know its status. It may or may not be arm it may be armed but be a dud… I just don't know."

"All this way… all this sacrifice… for nothing "One minute to launch point," Luger said.

"I'll try to rearm the weapon," McLanahan said, and began to run the prearming checklists again. "Nothing," he said finally. "Battery power… recycling… Laser power… nothing. I've still got uplink power, so the thing will fly, but I still don't know what it will do."

The crew of the Old Dog grew very quiet.

"I've got my threat receivers back," Wendy announced "Signal from Kavaznya… beginning to shift again."

"All the decoys are gone," McLanahan asked. "I launched' them just before the laser fired- "Power won't be back on the anti-radiation missiles for two minutes," Angela asked. "That was our last hope."

"Angelina… preparation for ejection checklist," Elliott ordered, face tight.

Luger looked at McLanahan, who stared straight ahead, clenching and unclenching his fists.

"Wendy, try to give us some warning before the laser fire Elliott told her.

Wendy clicked her microphone in response, said nothing She could barely see the subtle frequency shifts through interference, and even if she did spot the radar lock-on she knew they wouldn't be able to eject before the laser beam blew them into atoms.

"I'll trim it for a slight climb," Elliott asked. "Maybe beast will stall right over their heads, the sonsofbitches.our mission was to destroy that laser complex. I'll give the command to eject, wait until everyone is out, then crash plane into the complex. Prepare for-" "Wait," McLanahan asked. "You can't do that. We'll drop the damn bomb-" "You said it wouldn't explode."

"I said I don't know its status. My job is to drop it on target. Your job, sir, is to get us out of here."

"We can't risk it. If the bomb doesn't go off we've failed we'll take the heat for nothing-" "We can't just quit "McLanaban, this is an order. Prepare for ejection."

Luger began to tighten the straps of his parachute harness.

He zipped his jacket up all the way, looked over at his partner.

"Pat, you'd better-" "How much time, Dave?"

"Pat "Dave, how much time?""Thirty seconds. But-" "Close enough."

McLanahan hit the AUTOFIX button on his control keyboard, which entered a present-position update into the Striker glide-bomb's computer. He then opened the bay doors with the mechanical handles on the overhead panel and pulled a yellow-painted handle next to it marked SPECIAL WEAPONS ALTERNATE RELEASE.

"Bomb away, General, now please get us out of here."

Elliott had been adjusting his straps when he saw the BOMB DOORS OPEN and WEAPON RELEASE lights snap on.

"We're too far, we won't have time to-" "We're not bombing that laser with this plane," McLanahan challenged. "Break left, get us out of here After that everything seemed to happen in slow motion.it was like watching a slide show, the frames clicking off one by one, the sound turned off…

Elliott stood the Old Dog on its left wingtip, whipping it to forty-five degrees of bank. The stall-warning horn blared but no one paid attention to it, if they could hear it. The general could feel the Old Dog slipping sideways-which was downward at forty-five degrees of bank-as it changed heading in its rudderless turn. Remarkably, it didn't hit the frozen ground…

Wendy released her grip on her ejection seat's triggers, held her finger on the CHAFF SALVO button, ejecting fifty bundles of chaff in one massive cloud just as the Old Dog began its turn. She would have kept ejecting chaff if the force of the turn hadn't pushed her finger off the button…

Ormack, unable to help out in any other way, tried by "seatof-the-pants" to hold in enough back-pressure on the yoke to keep the turn going without forcing the Megafortress into a stall. To his surprise, he found that his and Elliott's efforts were in almost total coordination…

In spite of the hard break McLanahan managed to stay focused on the flight path of the Striker glide-bomb as it dropped from the Old Dog's bomb bay, saw the Striker's T monitor flare to life as the glide-bomb cleared the weapons. McLanahan's hand-entered position was almost perfect. The center of the Kavaznya laser complex was dead in the center of the low-light TV screen. When a message printed on the monitor stating that a visual low — light sensor lockwas available, he pressed the LOCK switch to insure that the bomb would make it to the target.

Even if the Old Dog did survive the bomb would now fly itself to the target…

"Radar switching to target-tracking mode," from Went.

"Prepare for ejection, crew," from Elliott. "Blinking lig coming on."

He reached down to the center console a flicked on the ejection-warning switch. The large red lig between the two navigators began to blink furiously.

"Steady light is the order to eject-" "No. Continue the break. If you do a complete one-eigh do another one to the right. Don't give up now-" "If they let go with that laser there won't be time to eject" You'll be murdering this crew if you order us to eject McLanahan said.

"But the bomb McLanahan now acted on his own. He switched to the infrared display-the picture was near simulator-perfect. He could make out the "warm" town above the "hot" la complex, and the "cold" Bering Sea beyond. He shifted the tracking handle slightly to the left, centering the aiming reticule onto the hottest infrared return in the complex. The Strike steering uplink system was working perfectly. The strapmini-rocket engine had not yet fired-it was flying over thousand feet higher than programmed, and the extra altitu meant a longer unassisted gliding ability The infrared orange laser site slowly began to enlarge as got closer-the Striker was locked onto a huge power substation. McLanahan was just about to switch to narrc field-of-view and begin precise aiming when he noticed another "hot" object in the upper left corner of the infrar display, far above the main reactor complex in the valley He had only moments to study it before it went out of view but he could make out a huge complex… only the base was "hot," four-fifths of the structure was "cold. "Just before it went out of view he switched back to low-light Visual display In this visual mode there was no mistaking it. The dome, large as a stadium, was clearly visible, with a large rectangular slot open and pointing directly at the Old Dog. McLanahan remembered back to Elliott's first briefing on the Kavaznya site, when he passed around early reconnaissance photographs of the complex.

The mirror building.

McLanahan's reaction was instantaneous. He moved the tracking handle left and aft all the way to the stops to get the dome back on the screen.

Luger was watching his own monitor in shock. "Pat…

what are you-?"

"The mirror," McLanahan asked. "It's the mirror building…

"But the substation McLanahan said nothing as he watched while a yellow SRB IGNITE appeared on the screen, indicating that the glidebomb's strap-on rocket booster had fired in response to new steering commands.

The substation slowly moved out of view.

"The substation Luger said again.

"I'm gonna punch a hole in the mirror building. Even if the bomb doesn't go off it should do enough damage to put this place out of commission. "The visual scene began to grow darker as the rugged hills above the Kavaznya complex and the town rushed just below the visual display. McLanahan had to hold the tracking handle full-back as the rocky ridgelines grew closer and closer.

Luger yelled, "It's going to crash."

But a moment later the last rock-covered ridgeline disappeared from view and the huge mirror-housing dome filled the TV monitor. McLanahan pushed the tracking handle down and Both navigators watched in fascination as the dome rushed centered the aiming reticle on the top of the dome's pedestal.

forward right into the TV screen.

The six-inch glass eye of the Striker somehow stayed intact through the one-inch-thick fiberglass panels of the dome, so the two navigators were able to eavesdrop on the Striker's exact impact point-the steel girders and counterbalances supporting the massive mirror.

The robot eye passed precisely through two support arms, and the bomb came to rest on the very base of the mirror support-structure.

Instantly Russian technicians and security guards could be seen running around the weapon.

"It didn't go off," Luger asked. "It's a dud, it didn't go off-" "Radar locked onto us," Wendy broke through. "Solid lock-on, they've got us McLanahan had tuned out the hubbub of noise inside the Old Dog and was staring, transfixed, at the Striker's TV screer More soldiers surrounded the Striker as it lay inside the mirror building.

"Crew, eject light coming on… get ready Ormack was rigid in his seat, his ejection levers raised, his control column stowed, ready for ejection. Elliott had just reached down to the center console and was about to flick the eject signal from WARNING to EJECT when something exploded off the Old Dog's right wing and a ball of flame hundreds of feet in diameter arched skyward, lighting up the entire coastline, the blast easily heard over the roar of the engines.

"What was that?" Ormack shouted, holding onto his seat a!

the shock wave rolled over the Megafortress. "The reactor?"

"We got the mirror building, Patrick got the mirror. The thing went off. It wasn't a dud," Luger reported, voice rising "The radar's down," Wendy said, "no tracking signals from Kavaznya.

Elliott began to pick out the ridgelines looming toward them, and slowly lifted the Old Dog's nose above the ridgelines, desperately trying to trade some slowly buildin airspeed for life-saving altitude.

He noticed that most of the lights in the town above the laser complex were out "The explosion must have knocked out power to the area Check your equipment are back on-line. "He quickly synchronized the navigation McLanahan quickly scanned his instruments. "Computer satellites to his computers, and the green NAV light snapped on.

Moments later the terrain data was reloaded from the game" cartridges.

"Terrain computers back up," he told Elliott who reengaged the pitch autopilot to the terrain-dat computers, selected COLA on the terrain clearance-plan selector and watched as the long pointed nose again faithfully dipped earthward.

"Jesus," Ormack asked. "We actually did it."

"Threat receivers and all jammers back up," Wendy reported.

— my radar's back up," Angelina said, as though back from the,Sdead.

Instrumentation check, crew," Elliott ordered, switched the ejection arning light off, pulled the firefighter's oxygen mask to his face and breathed deeply "The ride's not over yet," he reminded them after his hit of oxygen. "Those fighters will be after us any minute."

McLanahan lay awkwardly in his seat, supported by his parachute harness straps that he never had time to tighten.

"True, General, but there's no denying that it's Miller time."

"You're cleared to the potty, radar," Elliott said, helping Ormack put on the oxygen mask. "That's all. After that get back on watch. We're coming up on Ossora. Kavaznya may be down, but I repeat, four squadrons of MiGs will be after our butts.

McLanahan looked down at the warm stain between his legs."it seems I don't need the john."

Dave Luger managed an exhausted chuckle. Sorry for falling apart back there, partner. You can count on me from here on out-" "Search radar at two o'clock. It's Ossora Airfield," Wendy announced suddenly.

The two navs exchanged looks. "Back to work," McLanahan said, switching his attack radar to target-tracking mode.

OVER THE SKIES OF KAvAzNYA "Radar contact is lost, Element Seven", Yuri Papendreyo, heard the Soviet radar controller say over his command radic "Report your position immediately. "As if in reply, a large re LOW ALTITUDE WARNING light came onto the contrc panel of Papendreyov's advanced MiG-29

Fulcrum fighter.

He muttered unhappily to no one in particular and started a shallow climb away from the inky blackness around him. Suddenly the earth was his enemy, as much an enemy as the American warplane he was chasing.

He held his headin steady and switched on his pulse-Doppler attack radar and nose infrared sensor pod.

He had been receiving steering signals from the radar site Kavaznya to the attacking American B-52 bomber, signals the fed a stream of missile-launch data to his missile fire control system and provided range and bearing data to intercept the B-52.With the Kavaznya radar operating he didn't need his Fulcrum's radar for hunting, a big advantage of the advance Russian interceptor. Nothing could jam the Kavaznya radar and without the Fulcrum's onboard radar acting like a locatir beacon the fighter could sneak up behind the American B-52 without being detected.

All that was gone now. Somehow the Kavaznya radar was off and he was forced to use his own narrow-beamed radar to search thousands of square miles of sky for the bombe, diverting his attention away from flying his Fulcrum an avoiding the rugged Kamchatka mountains.

The young PVO Strany interceptor pilot activated his command radio and reported in a tight voice, "Element Seven has lost vectors to intruder "Wait, no, still chasing. "A huge radar return appeared at the very left edge of his on-board radar, then disappeared.

He began a thirty-degree bank turn to the left, quickly but futilely scanning for terrain to his left.

"Element Seven has possible radar contact he radioed, but he was too busy to report his position.

"Element Seven, repeat. Element Seven.report your position. "Which was when he saw it out of the corner of his eye-the fire was so big and bright that despite his training and discipline he took several precious seconds to study the destruction. Debris from the massive mirror dome in the hills above the Kavaznya research complex was spread out for at least a kilometer in all directions, and a huge twisted mass of metal sprawled awkwardly in the center of what used to be the mirror building. The blast must also have done some collateral damage, he figured, cut power to the complex…

Papendreyov throttled back to ninety-five percent power on the screaming Tumansky R-33D turbofan engines and divided his attention between the radar and the infrared detector while continuing his shallow turn. He made a quick scan for his wingman-nothing. They had been separated long before when the laser had fired and the incredible turbulence and windblast nearly wrecked him, and he assumed the worst-that either the laser had inadvertently hit him or that the American had gotten him.

This flying at night without radar monitoring was suicide, the pilot thought to himself. The Soviet ground radar controller was usually responsible for everything-terrain clearance, vectoring toward the intruder, closure, firing position-he did everything but pull the trigger. Now Papendreyov was completely blind, relying on an easily jammed nose radar and a range-limited infrared detector that wasn't worth A diamond symbol appeared in the lower right corner of his heads-up display-the infrared detector had found the B-52.

Strange that the radar had not. He tried to get a radar range to the target but it still was not locking onto anything. He swung right, centered the diamond up in azimuth on his display and waited for a radar lock-on. Still nothing. The infrared scanner told him only elevation and azimuth, not range. One of his two AA-8 heat-seeker missiles could lock onto the bastard but they were close-range missiles and worked best under eight kilometers' range.

He hesitated to drop the nose through the horizon until he found where he was and checked terrain elevation. Papendreyov throttled back to ninety percent and waited. No sense in driving blindly into the B-52's guns, he thought. The twentyseven-year-old Soviet PVO-Strany Air Defense pilot then realized he hadn't talked to anyone, hadn't gotten permission to do anything, hadn't received one word of direction. He was still two years from being qualified to perform autonomous intercepts-going out to hunt down enemy planes without direction from ground controllers-but he was performing one now. It was easy, painfully easy-suicidal, but very easy. Easy to kill oneself.

He checked his engine instruments and fuel. If he stayed out of afterburner he could stay and track this intruder for another half-hour. He still had four missiles-two radar-guided missiles and two heat-seekers. Enough to get the job done?

"Airborne radar contact," Wendy Tork announced into the interphone.

"Seven o'clock. Looks like… like… a Fulcrum.

Pulse-Doppler attack radar."

At the same time Wendy sounded her warning the computerdrawn terrain trace zipped across General Elliott's video monitor. He grunted in relieved satisfaction and reached for the clearance plane knob.

"Terrain-avoidance computer back on-line, General," McLanahan said, but Elliott had already selected COLA on the clearance knob-the computer-generated lowest altitude, which meant a harrowing ride no higher than a hundred feet above the now-rapidly rising terrain. His lips were dry, but he felt clammy inside. "Get that strike message out, Angelina?" he asked, rechecking his switch position.

"Repeated it twice, General. "She reset her fire control radar to clear the faults created by the interference of the powerful Kavaznya radar, then switched it to SEARCH and the radar instantly found the fighter behind them.

"My gear's working again. Radar contact, seven o'clock high, twelve miles," Angelina reported. She watched it for a moment. "Holding steady She hit the TRACK button on her console and a green TRACK light illuminated. She lowered the safety handles on the twin turret handgrips, put a finger on the Stinger airmine trigger and watched the range countdown. When it reached five miles she gently squeezed the trigger, and fired once…

The Fulcrum pilot heard a warbling ALERT tone in his headset, quickly jammed his throttles to maximum afterburner and yanked his fighter into a risky ninety-degree, twentydegree climb to evade a possible missile launch. He leveled Off a thousand feet above his initial pursuit altitude and searched the horizon out his left cockpit window for the source of the missile alert.

"A fighter launching a missile at me?" Yuri Papendreyov asked himself, eyes searching the blackness. "An enemy fighter over Russia?"

Luck had followed the young Soviet pilot into that wild evasive snaproll. The tiny Stinger rocket, with its small directional fins, could not keep up with the Soviet fighter and its half-scared, half-genius pilot. The Stinger did a lazy turn trying to follow the steering signals from Angelina's radar, but its turn radius was twice the Fulcrum's. Suddenly it was behind and to the right of the Fulcrum, and there was no way the tiny solid-fuel rocket could catch the fighter. It tracked behind the Fulcrum's wake, its propellant almost exhausted. Not receiving a detonation signal, and realizing its fuel had run out, the tiny rocket issued its own detonation signal.

Papendreyov's attention was immediately directed to his right, where a huge fiery flower blossomed out of the grayness all around him. He could almost feel the sparks, the myriad bits of metal, flying out toward him, seeking him. Instinctively he tried to jam his throttles to maximum afterburner, then realized they were already there and began a shallow climb, watching the flower of death disappear behind him.

His breath was coming out in rapid, shallow heaves. Sweat trickled down his heavy glass faceplates. Thanking the stars and the shades of comrades Mikoyan and Gureyvich, the designers of his beautiful jet, he banked left and began to lop reaquire his quarry.

"Al at five o'clock," Wendy called out again.

Angelina was already shaking her head in disappointment.

"This guy is good," she asked. "He jinked just in time."

"Well, he's coming for us again," Wendy said.

Luger was watching his five-inch terrain scope, now clear and operating normally after their unwieldy three-thousant pound Striker glide-bomb leveled the Kavaznya mirror built ing and, at least temporarily, took the radar site with it. "We" get to the mountains in twelve miles."

"He's staying up high," Angelina said, glancing at the elevation and azimuth readouts on her console. "He's good bL he's not ready to mix it up in the dirt yet.

"Can he still get an I.R shot at us?" Ormack asked.

"He can track us, but unless he's ready to descend to within a few hundred feet of us we have a chance. "Just then, the elevation readouts began to steadily decrease. Angelina swallowed hard.

"He's descending, crew. Get ready."

Yuri Papendreyov had finally gotten a reliable navigation beacon lock-on and found himself on his cardboard chart. He nodded to himself. At his present speed-over eight hundred kilometers per hour-he could descend another thousan meters and spend almost two precious minutes acquiring the B 52 bomber before the threat of the frozen peaks of Koryakskiy Khrebet began to loom outside his cockpit-a completely invisible to him. He nudged his Fulcrum down, set the altimeter reminder bug on three thousand two hundred meters and maneuvered his fighter to center the I.R TRAC diamond in his heads-up display.

That few hundred meters of altitude did the trick. The pulse Doppler attack radar signaled lock-on, and firing information was instantly fed to the AA-7 radar-guided missile.

Yuri smiled. A solid infrared and radar lock-on, with for missiles ready to go. The range continued to click down. The memory of that fiery missile explosion snapped back to him and his decision was made.

He throttled back, holding al range at fourteen kilometers, selected the two AA-7 radar guided missiles, fired.

A MISSILE ALERT warning generated by the pulse-Doppler attack radar focusing on the low-flying Old Dog had put it crew in a state of tense readiness. When Yuri Papendreyc selected the AA-7 missiles for firing his attack-radar switched to missile-guidance mode. The continuous-wave radar sign that guided and steered the AA-7 missiles triggered a MISSILE LAUNCH indication on Wendy Tork's threat panel, which was heard over ship-wide interphone and repeated up in the cockpit.

Wendy immediately ejected eight bundles of chaff from the left ejectors and ordered an immediate right break. Elliott and Ormack, having already accelerated to maximum thrust, threw the Old Dog into a coordinated hard turn to the right.

Simultaneously Wendy found the continuous-wave missile steering signal from the Russian fighter and began to set a jamming package against it.

From directly on the stem the Old Dog's radar signature was minuscule.

When Elliott and Ormack hauled the bomber into forty degrees of bank, however, that radar signature bloomed several times its original size.

.. it was like seeing a book edge-on, then turning it so the whole cover could be seen.

There was no mistaking it for ground clutter now.

The right AA-7 missile was distracted by the chaff, but that distraction added up to scarcely seven feet. The missile passed directly over the center of the Old Dog's fuselage and just in front of the leading edge of the right wing. When the seeker head snapped over to try to follow the steering signal, its eighty-nine-pound warhead detonated.

Dave Luger felt nothing. It was simply as if his entire right side instrument console, his computer keyboard and parts of his radar had freed themselves from their secured places on the aircraft and ended up in his lap and in his face all at once. The concussion would have knocked him clear out of his seat and across the Megafortress' tiny offensive compartment, but his shoulder and lap belts held him securely in his seat and subjected his upper body to the entire force of the blast that penetrated the fibersteel skin.

He felt hands across his shoulders and chest, but still no pain. He fought to focus his eyes and finally gave up on that.

Air sucked out of his chest, debris from everywhere flew around him.

"Dave. "McLanahan reached across the narrow aisle between their two downward ejection seats and propped Luger upright, straining against the weight of the two-G turn that Elliott and Ormack were still executing. "Dave's hit!"

"Yer crazy, radar," Luger muttered, but as McLanahan moved him upright his head dropped against the headrest on his ejection seat and rocked uncontrollably as the pilots fougu for control of the crippled bomber.

Luger could feel his head jolted from side to side but was unable to convince his neck muscles to do anything abot it "I'm fine, I'm fine," he asked. "Hey, my scope is out…""Out" was a considerable understatement-it was as if a giant metal-eating monster had bitten off half the milion-dollar cathode-ray tube. McLanahan reached down and locked Luger's inertial reel on his ejection seat, which helped his partner stay upright in the seat. "How are the computers.

Patrick?"

"Screw the computers for now," McLanahan replier unstrapping himself.

"Stay strapped in, Pat- "Just shut up for a second, Dave," McLanahan said quietly. He reached for the first aid kit secured to the bulkhead behind his seat, glancing at the computer displays as he opened it they were still working, no faults or interruptions.

"The computers are fine, Dave. "He braced himself again the sliding nav's table and examined his partner. "Oh God "I'm fine, I told you," Luger mumbled again. McLanaha held up a large gauze square from the first aid kit but was unsure about what to do first. He had never seen bone before clean, white bone, except on a T-bone steak… the thougl made him gag, but he forced the thought away…

"Put a bandage on whatever's wrong there, Pat," Luger: said, "and let's get back to work. "Luger raised a finger to wipe moisture out of his right eye. When he looked at it his entire hand was covered in glistening red blood.

"Ohhh "Sir still," was all McLanahan could say as he covered the right side of Luger's face with a thick pad of gauze and taped it secure.

Luger sat through it all as if he were getting a haircut McLanahan checked Luger's neck and chest, brushing awa fragments of glass and fibersteel.

The flight jacket an flightsuit had protected Luger's upper body, it seemed.

"I'm all right," Luger said, his voice now muffled slightly through the gauze. "I twisted my leg a little, that's all, forget it… but turn the heat up, will ya?It's getting' cold i here "Let me take a-" "I said forget it."

But McLanahan had already ducked under the table to investigate. He stayed out of view for a few moments, came up to retrieve the first aid kit, then emerged again a few moments later.

Luger had felt nothing but a few tugs on his right leg. "See?

I told you, mom.

McLanahan returned to his seat, his body jerking from side to side from the turbulence as the Old Dog crested another ridgeline in the mountains of the Kamchatka. He stared silently down at his worktable.

"All done playing Florence Nightingale?" Luger said as he reached down to his right thigh, touched, felt nothing. But when he brought his hand up he found it covered with sticky, darkening blood.

He finally met McLanahan's eyes. "Strong like a bull. "He readjusted his headset, lowered the microphone to his lips.

"Nav's up and okay," he said over the interphone.

General Elliott began, "David… T' "Lost my radar, sir," Luger said, forcing iron back into his voice. He tried to punch up a systems-diagnostic routine on his terminal but only a few buttons were left on his keyboard. He strained across the worktable to use McLanahan's terminal.

"Looks like we're still talking to the Scorpion missiles through our controls but I've no search video. All the terrain-following computers look okay, all the weapons controls are out but that's a moot point now… " "All right," Elliott said, trying to steady his voice. "Crew we've lost cabin pressurization. Wendy, Angelina, can you see that guy out there?"

"I've got his search radar shut down," Wendy replied. "I lost him right after he launched… " It was, of course, no longer just "a launch"-the Russian had hit one of their own, hurt him…

"Wendy, I'm okay," Luger said quickly, as though sensing her thoughts.

"You… you ladies nail him…"

"My scope's clear," Angelina asked. "We'll get him."

"Sure… they've taken their best shot and they couldn't flame us.

Sure Yuri Papendreyov angrily switched frequencies on his attack radar. The heavy jamming from the American B-52 attacker had begun precisely when he hit the missile-launch button on his control stick. The missile left the rail with a good steer TRACK indication but he lost it soon afterward. He saw primary or secondary explosions, saw no crash indications the jamming was continuing harder than ever. So he hat assume his AA-7s had missed, and that he had to start all over again-but this time closer to the mountains, at least, two hundred meters above the bomber with no radar and with two thousand kilograms less fuel.

He leveled off at the minimal sector altitude, throttled back to ninety percent and began a slow roll to the left to try to reacquire the B-52.

The auto-frequency shift mode of attack radar, which randomly changed frequencies to try to defeat the B-52's jamming, was all but useless.

The shift was too little, too late, and it always seemed to shift right into jammed band. Yuri changed the frequency all the way to lower end of the scale and swept the area for the bomb Who would have believed it?

he thought. A B-52 in middle of restricted Soviet airspace. A lone B-52, at that.

escort, no wave of cruise missiles preceding it, no multiple defenses, no B1, no FB-111 raid like the one on Libya Syria two years before.

One B-52.

Well, why not, Yuri said to himself as he began to search another twenty-degree quadrant. The plan was working very damn well so far.

The B-52 had obviously flown several thousand kilometers, drove right up the Kamchatka peninsula and dropped a bomb on just about the most important piece of land in the Soviet Union next to Red Square itself.

There… at the very bottom of his radar… j before another wave of interference flooded his scope, a cr with a circle around it appeared, then disappeared. Hos radar emissions. The B-52's own radar, the one that obviously was used to steer whatever weapon they had launched against him, had given them away.

He rolled further left on an intercept course. Switching attack radar to STANDBY to avoid giving himself awaywas useless, anyway, with the heavy jamming-he maneuvered to parallel the B-52's course. The radar emission from the B-52 was sporadic-they were looking for him, he was sure, but being careful not to transmit too long. Not careful enough, though. They transmitted on their radar long enou for him to compute their track.

He set the infrared search-and-track seeker to maximum depression and waited for the supercooled eye of the seeker to find the B-52-there was, he knew, the possibility of the seeker locking onto a warm building with the angle so low, but eight jet engines should be brighter than anything else in the sky or on the ground right now. He was already at the minimum safe altitude for the sector he was in, and without solid visual contact on the terrain, descending any lower would be suicide.

He increased throttle to ninety-five percent and waited. Soon, he was sure, the range would decrease to the point where the seeker would lock-on, and then he'd stay high and pick off the intruder…

When a few minutes later the infrared seeker locked onto a hot target there was no mistaking the size or intensity of the target. The infrared seeker had a longer range than the AA-6 missile, so, he realized, he would need to close in on the B-52 a bit more.

Yuri thought about using the attack radar once more to get a range-only estimate on the B-52, but that would give him away. If he was in range of a surveillance-radar site they could give him a range to the B-52, but for some reason he couldn't hear the station at Korf or Ossora.

Probably too low, too close to the mountains… if he couldn't hear them on the radio they surely couldn't see him on radar.

Yuri's track had been fairly constant for the last few moments, meaning that the B-52 was making no evasive maneuvers. He relaxed his grip on his control stick and throttles… maybe they didn't know he was behind them.

The B-52's tail radar hadn't been activated for several minutes.

He had to launch before they spotted him on that tail radar Suddenly he felt it-a slight shudder through the titanium body of his Fulcrum fighter. He scanned his engine instruments for a malfunction, but already suspected the cause-wake turbulence from the B-52's engines, he was closing quickly. He stared as hard as he could out the canopy of his Fulcrum but couldn't see it.

But that too was unnecessary A moment later a green light spewed on his weapon-control panel… his selected AA-6 heat-seeking missiles were tracking the target.

TMIA He released the safeties on the launch button on his control stick and A scratchy, faded message blared on both of his command radios.

"For all Ossora and Korf units, code yellow. Repe, code yellow.

Acknowledge immediately and comply.

His fingers didn't move from the missile launch button, but neither did it squeeze. A general forces recall…

"All Ossora units, code yellow. Acknowledge and comply.

He tried to force himself to make a decision. He had the B-52 in his sights, but if he transmitted on his radio, so close to the B-52, they might hear or detect his transmission and evade or reattack. The Korf interceptor units had all responded immediately to the recall instructions. All of the Ossora units had probably responded as well-all but him. His career was probably already in jeopardy. A young pilot commanding a long-range fighter, capable of reaching Japan or Alaska, who didn't respond immediately to recall instructions could easily end up attacking vegetables in a warehouse in some isolated Siberian base. Or worse.

"Vawl. "Papendreyov swore aloud, maintained track on the target, activated his command radio and said, "Element seven acknowledges.

Triangulate position immediately. Stand by. Closing on intruder."

"Element seven, comply immediately with instructions, came the voice once again. His number had been called in time-he was indeed the last one to rejoin at the navigation beacon over Ossora. His ticket to Ust-Melechenskiy three hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle was probably already being processed…

Fat harebrained dogs, Yuri let loose, this time to himself. Enraged, he pressed the missile-launch button and began a climbing left turn toward Ossora… before realizing that the green I.R TRACK light had long extinguished. The two hundred thousand ruble missiles vanished into the darkness. Yuri proceeded to curse all his superiors, the flight commander, the ground controllers, the command post officers at everyone else he could think of on his way back to the rendezvous point. He wasn't worried about that icy base Siberia-he was worried about exactly how he'd wring the neck of the first person unlucky enough to get in his way General Elliott and Lieutenant Colonel Ormack, acting unison, forced the Old Dog lower and lower into the mountains.

The terrain-following computer was already set COLA, the lowest setting possible in the automatic mode, but with the threat of a Soviet fighter on their tail, even a hundred feet above the ground was like ten thousand. There were constant warning beeps as the automatic-climb commands were overridden by the two pilots, and the bomber's radar altimeter, measuring the exact distance between the bomber's belly and the ground, occasionally entered the double-digit area.

Dave Luger's one good eye, and both of Patrick McLanahan's, were on the ground-mapping display of McLanahan's ten-inch scope. The two navigators carefully called out even the smallest peaks and ridges that could pose a threat. Elliott and Ormack reacted in sync-one man forcing the bomber lower, the other scanning the instruments and nudging it higher in response to the warnings from the terrain-following computer and what he heard over the interphone.

"He was so close," Wendy said, "his radio signal was so strong I swear I heard him over interphone. "She swallowed, studying her video displays. "His signal is decreasing… I think he's leaving "My scope's clear," Angelina reported, shivering for a moment, "I saw him for a second, but he's gone."

Elliott relaxed his grip on the yoke and let the terrainfollowing computer control the Old Dog again. "Well, that was close. I saw the missiles hit out there… they were so damned close, and we didn't even know he was out there. We didn't even know Ossom AIRFIELD Yuri Papendreyov stood at attention before his squadron-leader's desk in the PVO Strany Interceptor Squadron reads room at Ossora Airfield.

The squadron leader, a thin, age naval commander named Vasholtov, still on active duty from the Great Patriotic War, paced behind his desk.

Not a word had been spoken yet, even though Papendreyov had been standin at attention for two minutes.

He had to chew this young Papendreyov cub out a few minutes longer, the squadron leader thought to himself-although that didn't always mean a verbal tirade. The squadron-and his superiors-expected a good five to ten minutes of closed-door time, perhaps a slammed door, a curse or two then an administrative reprimand. It would go no farther that the squadron records-good pilots who didn't drink on the job were hard to find in the cold, barren Kamchatka-and the reprimand would disappear after a month or two. How he hated these chewing-out sessions. But it had to be done to maintai the discipline and integrity of his unit.

"You have disappointed your entire squadron, Papendrey ov," the old squadron leader finally said, glancing at the youn- Fulcrum pilot.

"Failure immediately to acknowledge a recal instruction is almost as serious as treason. Or desertion. "The youngster didn't blink.

Didn't move a muscle-most youn- pilots would be melting at the mention of the word "treason."

Vasholtov studied the youngster for a moment. Papendreyov could have been from Berlin or even further west-Copenhagen or Britain. He was of average height but broad shouldered with close-shaved blond curls and narrow blue eyes gazed straight ahead. His boots were polished to a high gloss, every zipper was closed and every patch on his flight suit was perfectly aligned. Five years from now this young pilot would probably be a flight commander… The new breed, Vasholtov thought, but just now this "new breed" needed a tongue-lashing. Vasholtov knew how fast unrest, boredom, lack of discipline and insubordination grew in a unit where the men, especially the young ones, thought the commander didn't care. Might as well get it over with…

"I suppose you will now tell me that your radio was malfunctioning.

"There was nothing wrong with my radio, sir."

"Silence, Papendreyov. Silence or I will have your wings here and now. "The squadron leader circled the young pilot few times like a shark circling in for the kill. Papendreyov remained at rigid attention.

"Ice-and-snow-removal detail for forty-eight hours for that outburst, Flight Captain. Perhaps a few nights in the Siberian winds will cool down your hotheadedness. Pray I don't put you on that detail permanently."

Papendreyov blurted out, "I had the intruder, Squadron Leader. I saw the American B-52.I took a missile shot at it."

"You what… T' Papendreyov still stood firmly at attention. "I found the B-52 at three hundred meters above the ground, Squadron Leader. I pursued him down to seventy meters-" "Sevenly meters?You took your interceptor to seventy meters?Without authorization?

Without-" "I found him. I found him on radar but his jamming was too strong. So I locked onto him on the infrared search-and-track system.

I closed to within three kilometers of him."

Vasholtov stifled his annoyance at the interruption. "Go on."

"I was then ordered back to base. I waited as long as I could. I fired just before obeying the order to return but I had lost track by then. They must have detected my radio trans-" You fired on the B-52?"

In forty years he had never heard of any man under his command actually firing on anything or anyone except target drones. "Did you… hit it?"

"My first radar shot… yes, I believe I hit him," Papendreyov said, wishing he hadn't sounded so unsure, so hesitant-now it sounded like he was lying.

radar is not used."

"Not use radar "You could have been killed," Vasholtov asked. "You could have crashed at any time. Flying at seventy meters at night in the mountains with the flight director radar down… you risked too much. This will have to be reported-" " Let me go after him," Papendreyov interrupted once again. "I can find him again. He is using a tail-mounted radar that can be detected for forty kilometers.

He is only traveling five hundred, perhaps six hundred kilometers an hour… I can catch him. I can stay low enough for the infrared system to lock onto him. He cannot detect a fighter closing on him if Vasholtov was almost too flabbergasted to reply. Papendreyov had been down in the Kamchatka mountain range at night-he had only recently been certified for night duty-at seventy meters, about a thousand meters lower than he should have been, without using his radar. He had broken more rules in one hour than the entire squadron had done in months.

The Defense Force Commander would retire him for sure when they saw this report.

"You are lucky, very lucky," Vasholtov said, "to be alive.

Very, very lucky. The rules of engagement exist to protect stupid young hotheads like you. You broke at least four of them-not including the crime of ignoring a unit recall-order.

You are very close to a flight tribunal, Flight Captain. Very close.

" "Punish me, then," Papendreyov said defiantly "Send me to y Ust-Meryna or Gorky. Take my wings. Just let me take one more crack at the Americans-" "Enough. "Vasholtov's tobacco-singed throat throbbed from all his yelling. "You will report to the intelligence branch and give them a complete debriefing on your supposed contact with the American B-52.Then you will immediately report to your barracks. I'll have to decide what to do with you-give you to a flight tribunal or a criminal board."

"Please, tovarisch, " Papendreyov said, his sharp blue eyes now round and soft. "I deserve punishment, Squadron Leader, severe punishment, but I also deserve to shoot down this intruder. I know where to find him and how to take him.

Please… " "Get out," Vasholtov ordered, dropping into his rough wooden chair before he collapsed into it. "Get out before I have your insubordinate hide arrested."

Papendreyov's round eyes hardened and narrowed. He snapped to unbending attention, saluted, spun on a heel and left the office.

Papendreyov quickly returned to his barracks room as ordered-without stopping at the flight intelligence branch. He turned on the light to his desk and fished out a pen and paper.

As he wrote he picked up the telephone and dialed.

"Alert maintenance, crew sergeant speaking."

"Starshiy Serzhant Bloiaki, this is Flight Captain Papendreyov. I am calling from the ready room. Is one-seven-one combat ready?"

"One-seven-one, sir?Your plane?The one you just returned-" "Of course, my plane, sergeant. Is it ready?"

"Sir… we… it has been towed to recovery area B sir, but it hasn't-" "Starshiy Serzhant Bloiaki, this is not like you," Papendreyov asked. "This is the worst time not to get the orders. My plane was to be immediately reconfigured with one four hundred decaliter centerline drop tank and four infrared missiles. It was to be ready on the hour."

He paused, then said quietly, "I'll have to tell squadron leader Vasholtov that my sortie will be delayed- "That won't be necessary," Bloiaki said quickly. "One drop tank and four infrared missiles… they will be ready in fifteen minutes, sir."

Papendreyov checked his watch."it will be ready in ten minutes or we will both have a chat with Squadron Commander Vasholtov. I must refile my flight plan once more," he said.finishing his hurried scribbling.

"I'll be out there right away.

He hung up the phone and went to his bureau, took one last long loving gaze at the photo of his wife and infant daughter then opened the top drawer. As he studied his wife's dark chestnut hair and his daughter's blonde curly locks he began stuffing his pockets with packets of freeze-dried survival food and dried beef. He quickly unzipped his flight suit and put on a second thermal shirt over his flameproof underwear, and replaced his lightweight flight boots with insulated flying boots. He touched the picture of his wife, then put on his flight jacket, gloves and fur hat and hurried toward the flightline.

He had left the hastily written note and last will an testament unsigned; there was no longer time even for that. No matter. His career was over the minute he stepped foot on the flightline. His life-period-would have been over as he taxied onto the main runway except that on account of the emergency declared over the entire eastern air-defense region the air traffic controllers allowed him to take off without a full verified flight plan. In an emergency, better to have the fighter airborne first, question their procedures later.

Papendreyov had known this, of course, and was airborne again within thirty minutes of landing from his first sortie.

It had only been an hour and a half since he had broken off the attack with the American B-52.The B-52, obviously wounded, was flying slow-at the most, he figured, it had gone some seven hundred fifty kilometers from ssora since he had fired his last missiles. His MiG-29

Fulcrum fighter could chase after it easily at three times the B-52's speed with fuel from the drop tank only, then spend two, three hours searching for the intruder.

Papendreyov gave his call sign to Ossora Intercept Contro which questioned him briefly about his absent flight-taskil code but quickly gave him vectors to the bomber's last know position, nearly five hundred kilometers ahead. The young Fulcrum pilot kept the throttles at max afterburner and began ten-degree climb at seven hundred kilometers per hour. With' minutes he was at twenty thousand meters, screaming nord east at seventeen hundred kilometers per hour, almost twice the speed of sound.

Quickly he was handed off to Korf Intercept Control, which had few updates on the bomber's position, but Papendreyc made his own estimate where the American B-52 would be The fuel in his centerline drop tank having exhausted itself lethan ten minutes after his takeoff, he made another calculation then jettisoned the tank, not having the luxury of considerit who or what might be underneath… he was high over the mountains, but they were still sparsely populated. He continued at maximum afterburner for five more minutes, then pulled his throttles to cruise power and set his autopilot.

He had fifty thousand liters of fuel remaining to find the American, and he was wasting two thousand liters per hour-just w hourju hoping to catch up. But Papendreyov wasn't worried. He knew, thanks to his subtle course corrections, that the nose of his Fulcrum was pointed right at the Americans' heart.

"We aren't going to make it," Ormack felt obliged to report.

"We've got thirty minutes of fuel tops."

General Bradley Elliott double-checked the autopilot and flight control annunciators while Ormack went over his fuel calculations. They had been flying for well over an hour at ten thousand feet, forced to that altitude by the damage to the pressurized crew compartment.

"Fuel flow?"

44 "Pretty steady," Ormack said, "but the fuel curve is getting orse.

Looks like a major leak from wing and body tanks. I've jumped all the fuel out of the body tanks but I can't do anything about the mains.

I've got the minimum in them to keep the engines going as it is.

We've had low-pressure lights on for a long time-" "Can we make it to the ocean?" Elliott asked, scanning his engine instruments and checking them by moving the throttles.

"Put it down on an ice floe or punch out near the coastline?"

"Punch out?" Angelina Pereira asked. "You mean eject?"

"We'd have to cross high mountain ridges to get to the coast," Luger said, warming his hands on an overhead air vent. "It would be real close."

"Now's the time to decide," Elliott asked. "Patrick, give me a heading toward the ocean, away from any active Russian fighter bases. Crew, prepare for-" "Hold on," McLanahan broke in. "General, what does WXO near an airfield mean?"

1 — WXO?Warm-weather operations only. They close the place during winter because it's too expensive and too difficult to maintain.

Why?"

"I found one," McLanahan said, putting a finger on his high-altitude navigation chart and checking the satellite navigation system's present-position counters. "Straight ahead, fifteen minutes."

"Fifteen minutes?" Ormack asked. "You're crazy. That's in Russia.

1. They got a long runway at the very least," McLanahan asked. "Maybe they'll have gas and oil for the number two engine. If it's abandoned or vacant we could-" "They're not abandoned," Elliott asked. "At least our Alaskan warm-weather bases aren't. We usually have care takers, mostly locals, that look after the place. Maybe some minimal security, National Guard or Reserve deployment Ormack stared at Elliott.

"General, you're not seriously considering… You're both crazy Maybe you ought to go back on oxygen. "He looked hard at Elliott, expecting him to turn and shrug off McLanahan's notion. Some last-minute humor…

"General "We're armed "We've got your automatic and two lousy thirty-eight revolvers in the survival kits," Ormack asked. "They're more a hazard to us than they'd be to anyone else. They could have been stowed on this plane for years."

Elliott said, "I've done that, lots of times," McLanahan put in, excitement rising in his voice. Luger was staring at McLa han pretty much the way Ormack was looking at Elliottdisbelief. "Global Shield missions. Remember, Dave?Sir lated post-strike recovery at an emergency airfield. Keep number two nacelle running, pump gas into the right outboa right external, or right drop tank, then transfer gas to the rest the plane. I once hand-pumped ten thousand pounds of" The Russians aren't going to just let us take their gas," Luger said.

"It's crazy."

"We'd end up captured," Angelina asked. "I'd rathertake chances in the mountains than be captured by them-especially after this mission."

"No, you don't want to go down in the mountains," Elliott asked. "Even if you come out of the ejection unhurt the chances are at best fifty-fifty even with the global survival kit we've got. And we can't ditch the Old Dog. She wouldn't withstand the impact."

"I still think those odds are better than landing at a Russian airfield-" "Do you, John?" Elliott asked. "How long do you think we could survive out there in those mountains?"

"If we made it to the coast we'd have a chance.

Elliott ignored that, asked his navigators for the distance to the oastline.

"One hundred miles is the closest," Luger asked. "But "We could do the refueling to himself than anyone else.

cross two ranges, each about nine or ten thousand feet, and we're within radar range of Trebleski Airfield the whole way After we cross the mountains we can cut away from Trebleski to the northeast."

"We can stay near the mountains," Wendy offered. "Get as much distance as possible from Trebleski and hide in the ground clutter."

Can we go around Trebleski at MIT' "Not on the coastal side of the mountains," Luger told him, rubbing his one uncovered eye, "unless we turn around."

"So it's unlikely we'd make it to the coast," Elliott said.

"And that means we get out over the mountains in the dead of winter, hundreds of miles from any kind of friendly forces. We could try to evade but I wouldn't give us much of a chance of making it to the coast, much less into Alaska.

"General, are you saying that landing at a Russian military airfield, abandoned or not, is a better option?" Ormack said.

"We'd be surrendering. We'd be handing ourselves and this lane over to them. And I sure as hell wouldn't give us a snowball's chance in hell of making it out of a Soviet prison alive.

Elliott kept silent for a long moment, then: "Distance to that airfield, Patrick.

McLanahan already had the geographic coordinates of the field typed into his navigation computer. "Anadyr is eighty miles, five degrees left."

"Any radar circles around it?"

"Yes. "McLanahan said, studying his civil-aviation chart.

"Can't tell what they are but they've got something there."

"Wendy, any activity?"

Wendy Tork had been carefully studying her threat displays ever since McLanahan had first made his wild suggestion.

"Clear scope ever since Ossora Airfield."

"I've got no terrain on my scope for a hundred miles," McLanahan said, tuning his ten-inch radar scope in onehundred-nautical-mile range. "If there were any threat signals they're not being blocked by terrain. I can't make out the base, though."

"Okay," Elliott said, "you've all heard the arguments.

There's no guarantee that we'll get gas, oil or anything but our asses in a sling if we land at Anadyr. On the other hand it's possible that we could land this beast and walk away from it uninjured, steal a truck and have a better than even chance of evading toward the Bering Strait, where our chances of being rescued significantly increase. If you're a wild dreamer like Patrick you'll actually believe there's an outside chance of pumping this aircraft full of gas, restarting the number two engine and running it enough to lift off again, and, making it back to Alaska."

"Crazy," Ormack muttered. "If the base is occupied, we won't have any chance of taking off again-we'd flame out long before liftoff. If we can't find gas we're stuck a couple hundred miles from friendly territory on a Russian base. The Russians would get the Old Dog and we'd be trying to evade all the way back to Alaska. Fat chanc "Well, I can't have this crew bail out over the mountains," Elliott said.

"Chances of surviving the ejection itself are slim If we did survive we'd be faced with a three-hundred-mile hike across Siberia with the Red Army chasing us. I say we take our chances on solid ground, At least we'll be all in one piece to fight or run."

"I'm for it," Luger asked. "Hell, that base will be the last place on this earth they'd look for us, except down in Moscow.

"All right, General," Wendy said, closing her eyes in silent prayer, "let's try to land it."

Angelina shrugged. "Check. I don't know if I could get myself out of this damn thing anyway."

"I'm giving a crash course, anyway," McLanahan told her. "You may still have to do it. General, I'm clearing off upstairs. Dave, watch my scope for me."

Ormack agreed they really didn't have much choice, out the emergency landing checklists as McLanahan upstairs and knelt between Wendy and Angelina. He put his headset into the defense instructor's station and told the women to switch their interphones to the "private" position which allowed them to talk without bothering the rest of the crew.

"How are you warriors doing?"

Angelina nodded but looked almost as bad as Luger Because of the damage to the downstairs crew compartment McLanahan had been forced to transfer most of the available heat downstairs to keep Luger from going back into shock. Even with Wendy's borrowed jacket and thermal top, there was more protection then the rest of the crew had, Angelina was losing to the cold.

Her lips were purple, her eyelids drooped as if she were struggling to stay awake.

Her hands, in stiff, metallic firefighting gloves, were shoved deep inside her jacket for warmth.

Bomber defense was almost out of the question, McLanahan thought. It would be difficult if not impossible for Angelina to try to operate her equipment under these conditions. Landing was absolutely the only option.

"Hang in, Angie," he said.

"I'll be all right…"

McLanahan turned to Wendy. "How you doing?"

"Holding up. I could use a drink.

"Champagne when we get home… okay, you were taught this months ago, but let's go over it again. If we get attacked while trying to land, or if the pilots can't land this thing, we've got no choice but to eject. Listen carefully, watch the warning light and don't panic-but don't hesitate either.

There's a simple three-step system for using upward seatsjust remember, ready, aim, fire.

"The ready is to pull the safety pin out of the handle on your armrests, trip the handle release lever and rotate the handle upward.

Grab the front of the handle, not the middle or inside.

There's no hurry, do it smooth and easy. This equipment is old and it needs some care. The aim is like align. You shove your fannies deep into the back of your seat, press your back into the seat and push your head back into the headrest. After that lower your chin to your chest.

Think about a nice straight spine the whole time. Put your feet flat on the deck, knees together.

Put your elbows inside the armrests and brace your arms against the back. The fire is easy-grab both triggers inside the ejection handle and squeeze. Next thing you know, you'll be on the ground."

"What happens if it doesn't fire?" Angelina asked between shivers.

"Can you go over the emergency ejection sequence?"

"Don't worry about it. If necessary I'll pop your manual catapult initiator pull-out pins for you."

"You?" Wendy said, looking up at McLanahan. "How?"

"The chances of navigators surviving a downward ejection at less than two thousand feet is fifty percent. If we go below one thousand feet.

.. never mind what the book says…

our chances are about zero."

"But-" "Dave doesn't have an ejection seat," McLanahan them. "After the decision was made to get a second naviga requested that another ejection seat be installed. But there so much pressure to complete the testing that it somehow overlooked. "He tried a smile and flunked.

"I'll make sure crosshairs are on the runway so that the bombing COMPuter will help the pilots land the Dog, get Dave strapped in, then come back upstairs and strap in right here. I'll see to it that you get out if it's necessary to eject-" "Patrick, you can't-" "Can and will. End of discussion-" "Pat, we're fifty miles from Anadyr," Luger reported.

waited a few moments. "Pat?"

Wendy was shaking her head. He figured he should say something else but the words wouldn't come. He groped for the interphone wafer switch.

"What?"

"Fifty miles," Luger asked. "You okay?"

"Great.

"Strap in," Elliott called back. "Everyone back on watch. "McLanahan made his way slowly down the ladder, leaning over Luger's shoulder.

Luger was now in the left-hand navigator's ejection seat, studying the ten-inch radar set. "See it yet, buddy?" McLanahan asked. Luger switched the radar scope to fifty-mile terrain-mapping and was adjusting the video and receiver gain controls near his left knee, tuning the terrain returns on the scope in a search for the runway.

"Nope," he said, moving his uncovered left eye close to the scope.

"Nothing under the crosshairs. I get a blank screen when I tune out terrain."

"Assume the computers are bad. You should be able to break out a runway within thirty miles. Just keep tuning. "He stooped down, checked Luger's straps and harnesses.

snug?"

"I still don't want to do this," Luger said.

"It's my fault you're even on this plane," McLanahan quickly "It's my fault you got hurt. At least I want you to a chance to get out of it if something goes wrong."

"Thanks, buddy, but I'd like to think my so-called profesionalism helped get me a ticket on this ride. I wouldn't missed it for anything.

Well, almost anything."

"Check. I'll buy you a beer back at my place," McLanateha'n asked. "Or a vodka. I guess that would be more appropria McLanahan thumped his long-time partner on the back, grabbed Luger's tactical chart and made his way upstairs, where he strapped himself into a spare parachute and fastened his seatbelt.

"Forty miles," Luger announced. "Clear of terrain for fifty miles.

"We'll have enough gas for one low approach," Ormack asked. "We've got fuel low-pressure lights on all four mains.

One pass clean, then a left turn into a visual overhead for landing.

"Crew, listen up," Elliott asked. "If we pick up ground fire we'll break out of the pattern and climb out as fast as we can.

We'll level off at fifteen thousand and go straight ahead until we flame out. Jump ut on my command, but if you see the red light don't wait for my command. After you land use your survival radios on the discrete channel and we'll try to locate n up.

everyone and fort "Thirty miles," Luger reported. "High terrain at two o'clock. Shouldn't be a factor. Looks reasonably clear for a left-hand traffic pattern."

"We're setting up on a sort of extended base leg, Luger," Ormack said.

"That airfield will be moving off to your left."

" Rog.""Descent and penetration checklist, crew," Ormack called out.

"We've got twenty thousand pounds of fuel, nav.

Approach speed and emergency landing data?"

Luger called up the landing data on a computer terminal in the downstairs compartment. "Two engines out on one sideapproach speed is less than minimum maneuvering speed, so minimum maneuvering speed takes precedence," Luger read. "Minimum maneuvering speed is one-twenty-eight with full flaps-, plus twenty-five with less than full rudder authority. One hundred and sixty-eight knots. Go-around E.P.R setting, three point zero, rnilita6 power on symmetric engines only.

Touchdown speed one-forty-eight. Brake energy limited one-fifty to the bottom of the danger zone, one-thirty to the bottom of the caution zone.

Max drag chute speed one-thirty-five.

"There may not be a go-around," Ormack said, checking the fuel gauges.

He continued the lengthy series of checklists, letting the Old Dog's on-board computer display each checklist on Ormack's display in the cockpit. It seemed the Old Dog one huge emergency procedure. Ormack reviewed check for fuel leaks on landing, double engine-out, engine fire, parachute failure.hydraulic failure, overrunning the rum landing on ice and snow, strange field procedures, ejection emergency aircraft evacuation. When he finished, Li announced that they were less than twenty miles from Anadyr Far East Fighter-Interceptor Airbase.

Elliott and Ormack began a gradual descent to fifteen hundred feet above the field's elevation.

"Clear of terrain for thirty miles," Luger said.

nothing on radar.

McLanahan had already double-checked that Angelina Wendy were secure in their ejection seats. Now he made his way forward to the cockpit and slipped into the steel instructor pilot's jumpseat. "Need an extra set of eyes?" he asked Elliott. "What the hell are you doing up here?"

"Dave's got the left seat downstairs. I'll help you loo I k the runway, then I'll go aft and help Wendy and Angelina their seats in case "Patrick, that's suicide. Get your butt back to your semi "Dave doesn't have an ejection seat, sir," McLanahan said quietly. "One of the details we never got around to.

"I didn't know "Forget it. Dave's as good on the radar as I am. If something goes wrong I'll try to make sure Wendy and Angelina get clear.

Meanwhile I'll help find that runway."

"This whole deal is still crazy…"Ormack mutter "Maintain the element of surprise," McLanahan said, "We've kept the whole Russian air force off our backs confusing 'em. This is just the next step. "And over interphone he asked, "Dave" Anything?"

"It all looks the same," Luger told him, sounding increasingly frustrated.

"Keep tuning, you'll find it, Remember, we're setting Up a base-leg, not a straight-in. Don't just rely on the computers-check shorter ranges."

"Rog," Luger said.retuning the scope once more.

"We'll stay unconfigured at two hundred and fifty kr until we see the runway," Elliott asked. "We'll turn final check the runway and base and make a decision to land. T we'll turn onto the downwind, configure and-" "I've got it," Luger suddenly announced. "Six miles, eleven o'clock.:, "Six milesT Ormack said.

"The navigation computer must be way off," McLanahan told him. All three heads in the cockpit swung to the left.

Elliott found it immediately. "Got it," he asked. "We're right on top of it… we'll never get configured fast enough. Let's go on straight ahead, check out the base from the end of the runway, then make a turn into a right downwind for landing."

"Roger," Ormack asked. "I've got the airplane. You check out the base. "He turned the cockpit lights down to bare AA minimum to make it easier to see the runway.

Elliott muttered unhappily as the runway moved to his left window.

"That runway looks like the rest of the tundra. Some of those snow drifts out there must be ten feet high.

"No signals," Wendy reported. "Still a clear threat-scope.

Not even any radio transmissions."

It was a small, almost obscure base in a mountain valley that reminded McLanahan of Hill Air Force Base in Utah, with snowy mountain peaks peering down from the sky. The most noticeable feature of the base was the "Christmas tree"-alert parking area at the end of the runway-two rows of six parking areas for Russian fighters, staggered on each side so that all twelve fighters could move at once and line up on the runway.

Fortunately the parking areas were empty-more than empty, they appeared not to have been plowed out for quite a while.

Some of the Quonset hut fighter shelters were partially dismantled, with snow piled in deep drifts everywhere.

A big problem was the tiny village nearby, which McLanahan could see out Ormack's right cockpit window. It was about ten miles from the base, but a B-52 made a lot of racket and would attract attention.

What the villagers would do about the noise was another question. Did people in Russia complain about military planes waking them up at night?McLanahan prayed they didn't.

"The base isn't completely deserted," Elliott said as the runway moved out of view. "I saw some trucks parked out in front of a building near the main taxiway. They looked military."

The crew was suddenly quiet. Ormack started a slow, wide turn to the right to parallel the runway.

Wendy said, "If it's not deserted, they could have troc there "Fifteen minutes of fuel left," Ormack asked. "I guess we can make it back above ten thousand feet for ejection, but then-" "If they had a military force there, there'd be more than a couple of trucks," McLanahan said, liking his logic but not altogether believing it.

"Agreed," Elliott said quickly. "Besides, the runway looked closed and the buildings looked deserted. And, we don't have any choice. "He turned to Ormack. "Let's do it. I'll take the airplane. Run the landing checklists."

McLanahan patted Elliott on the shoulder. "Good luck, you guys in Russia."he said, and made his way back to defense instructor's seat and strapped in. "Next stop, Jach beautiful downtown Anadyr.

"Can they land the plane on all that snow?" Angelina ask McLanahan cross-cockpit.

"Not recommended, but this is a tough bird and those are two tough pilots Big brave talk, he told himself.

"Airbrakes zero," Elliott said as Ormack read from the computerized checklist on his screen. "Ready for the gear flaps, here they come."

He lowered the gear handle, and moved the flap switch to its first-stage position, Elliott started a slow right turn to put them perpendicular to the snow-covered runway.

"Left-tip gear shows unsafe," Ormack said, watching gauges. "All other wheels down. Flaps twenty-five percen Elliott moved the throttles forward to regain speed as the huge flaps, large as barn doors.

lowered into the slipstream, allowing the bomber to fly increasingly slower on final approach.

"Fuel danger lights on for all mains," Ormack announced "Okay, crew, this is it," Elliott said, forcing his voice to sound calmer than he felt.

"The fuel's run out. We either land or eject. Dave, I'll make sure you get a few hundred f altitude, but don't delay pulling the trigger."

"Nav… copies Luger was not as successful controlling his voice.

His shoulder harness was already lock his back and neck stiff and straight, his hands rested lightly on the trigger-ring between his legs.

"Patrick he whispered, fighting off the pain in his leg. McLanahan didn't have a chance. He would need several thousand feet to even attempt manual bailout, much less survive it.

Elliott started a slow turn to the right again to align the Old Dog onto the runway.

"Flaps fifty," Ormack asked. "Starters on. Fuel panel is set.

Running on fumes now "Lower the nose," Elliott said. Ormack flipped a switch and the long, pointed SST-style nose slid down beneath the windscreen.

"Landing lights," Elliott ordered, and the four-thousandwatt lights on the landing gear struts snapped on and the Russian runway leapt into view. A massive snowdrift at leas thirty feet high blocked the approach end of the runway. Elliott shoved the power forward.

"Flaps full," he called out.

The howl of the engines obliterated all sound. Luger had his eyes on the bailout warning light on his front console, waiting for the command to eject, his fingers closing around the trigger ring. Wendy and Angelina tensed.

The right-front landing-gear truck plowed into the small mountain of ice, the Old Dog heeled sharply to the right and plummeted down.its nose rushing toward the frozen runway Elliott stomped on the left rudder before realizing that their rudder was useless, shot away long ago. He jammed the yoke full-back and full-left to try to counteract the headlong tumble, but the Old Dog was a freight train out of control.

McLanahan folded his arms across his chest, waited. He felt the impact on the ice, felt the plane lurch to the right at an angle so steep and so sudden he thought the plane had flipped upside down. The right wing stayed down, and he found himself wondering what the crash would look like from outside, a hundred tons of B-52 cartwheeling around on the frozen ground.

He closed his eyes and waited for everything to grow dark and the sound to stop…

For the first time since he began his chase Yuri Papendreyov was beginning to feel he had made a mistake.

Despite stealing his MiG-29 Fulcrum, he had been receiving assistance from ground and air forces in trying to locate the B-52 intruder. But so far he hadn't found it. The climb to twenty-six thousand meters, almost eighty thousand feet, was necessary to receive reports from the elements of the Far East Air Defense Force searching for the B-52.

.

at lower altitudes the mountains would block out reports from coastal or partially terrain-obscured stations. All had reported negative contact…

Yuri had taken his Fulcrum nine hundred kilometers along the Korakskoje Mountains toward Trebleski and Beringovskiy, the main coastal air-defense base and radar installation north of Ossora. He was sure the B-52 would stay along the Korakskoje, hiding in the rugged mountain peaks, then destroy or jam the Beringovskiy radar and head out across the Gulf of Anadyr toward Alaska. With the powerful Beringovskiy radar down, the inferior MiG-23s of the Trebleski Air Reserve Forces, although very heavily armed, would not be able to spot the low-flying B-52 or engage it.

Papendreyov checked his fuel. He would already be in emergency fuel status if he had not taken along the largest external feel tank available, but now he was again very low on fuel. Only his long idle glide from high altitude left him with enough to make some decisions… Trebleski was the most obvious choice for a quick-turn refueling.

but Anadyr, a small limited-operations base, was available and within gliding range. He had been briefed, though, not to use Anadyr or other such warm-weather bases except in an emergency.

He had no choice-Trebleski it had to be. He switched his radios to Trebleski Command Post.requested permission for landing and a "hot" refueling, a battlefield-quick refueling technique where a high-pressure tank truck pumped fuel while the aircraft engines were still running.

"Ossora one-seven-one. Trebleski copies your request.

Stand by."

"Standing by," Papendreyov replied. Then: "Trebleski.

say latest reports on intruder aircraft."

"One-seven-one.intruder last reported by Ossora radar bearing two-eight-two true, range twenty-one kilometers, heading three-four-one true."

"That report is hours old, Control. Any other reports?Has Beringovskiy reported contact?"

"No reports by Beringovskiy radar, one-seven-one. You are cleared for approach to Trebleski Airfield, descend and maintain two thousand meters. Your request for hot refueling has been delayed. Expect cold refueling support in bunker seventeen on landing."

"Control, I am a priority air-defense aircraft. Request k priority hot refueling."

"Copy your request, one-seven-one," the Trebleski controller replied.

"Priority request is being delayed by your headquarters. Stand by for confirmation of your flight-tasking.

Reset transponder to one-one-one-seven for positive identification.

Stand by this frequency" Papendreyov swore into his face mask. So that was the reason for the delay… by requesting priority refueling he'd forced Trebleski to run a check on his flight-tasking order-which, of course, Yuri didn't have. If he'd just accepted a normal bunker refueling he would have gotten a fast turnaround because of the air-defense emergency and Trebleski wouldn't have double-checked. Now Ossora would know exactly where he'd taken his fighter on its unauthorized chase.

No doubt they'd order him arrested after landing.

Yuri checked his chart, saw he was now actually closer to Anadyr than Trebleski. Anadyr would have fuel, might even be set up for a hot refueling. He could wait at Anadyr and monitor the interceptor frequency for any sign of the B-52, then chase it down and destroy it.

If the B-52 didn't show-but that was impossible-he could refuel, cruise back to Ossora and try to talk his way out of a court-martial or a firing squad.

He ignored the request to set a new identification code and pointed his MiG-29 Fulcrum toward Anadyr, switching radio frequencies to Anadyr's command post. He would be in radio range of the base in half an hour, and he would still have almost an hour's worth of fuel once over Anadyr…