Flight Of The Old Dog

OVER THE SKIES OF KAVAZNYA, KAMCHATKA PENINSULA, SOVIET UNION

Two thousand miles to the west of where the Strategic Air Command was holding its annual bombing competition, a drama of a different sort-this one carrying consequences far more serious for the crew members involved-was playing itself out. Two types of surveillance machines-one a U.S. Alpha Omega Nine Satellite traveling in a geosynchronous orbit at an altitude of twenty-two thousand three hundred miles, the other a U.S. RC- 135 surveillance aircraft flying at an altitude of forty thousand feet-were following courses that would bring them roughly over the same part of the globe in a matter of minutes. The RC- 1 35, with a crew of twelve men and women, had penetrated the Soviet Air Defense Zone to gather data on a strange radar that had begun tracking the aircraft as it passed within a hundred miles of the Soviet coast on its way home from Japan to Alaska.

Suddenly the world got very bright.

The pilots aboard the RC-135 were bathed in an eerie red-orange glow for several seconds, wiping out their night vision.

They felt as if they had stepped inside the core of a nuclear reactor-every inch of their bodies felt warm and viscous, as if their skin was about to melt away.

When the red-orange illumination disappeared, the cabin went to black.

Several tiny spotlights and some engine gauges operating off the aircraft's batteries could still be seen, but everything else snapped off. The roar of the engines began to subside.

"All of the generators went off-line," the RC-135s co-pilot 3p, said.

"We've lost engines two, three and four," the pilot said "Airstart checklist. Fast.

"Crew, this is the pilot. We are starting engines. Check your oxygen, check your stations, report in by compartment damage and casualties."

All departments reported in with only minor equipment malfunctions.

The pilot gave an order to code a message to SATCOM. Suddenly the aircraft's reconaisance officer came on the interphone. "Radar target-tracking signal strength is increasing."

The pilot pushed on the yoke, forcing the RC-135s nose steeply downward. "That last shot was aimed at something else, now it's us… We're going down to one thousand feet."

"Pilot," the RSO said, "signal strength increasing… blanking out my-" He never finished his report.

An intense beam of orange-red light slashed across the top and sides of the RC-135.Once it had pierced the aluminum skin of the jet, the beam found little resistance. It tracked precisely along the center of the aircraft, instantly superheatin the heavy oxygen atmosphere and creating a huge bubble Of plasma. The resulting explosion turned the two hundred million dollar aircraft into flecks of dust in a fraction of a second. The beam ignited the vaporized fuel that erupted from the disintegrated airplane and added the force of fifty thousand pounds of jet fuel to the detonation.

As fast as it had begun, it was over. The fireball grew to three miles in diameter, then hungrily feeding on itself in the intense plasma field, dissolved into the black Siberian night.