large knob on the center aisle control stand and cranked in full right-rudder trim. 'General, check the rudder hydraulics. We might have a problem with the rudder now.'
Elliott checked the warning lights on his left instrument panel. 'All the lights are out.'
'Well, we got rudder problems, too,' Ormack asked. 'I'm retarding engines seven and eight to help keep straight.
Number two engine has to stay in military, ' Ormack started a slow climb to four thousand feet and carefully engaged the low-level autopilot. He waited a few moments to be sure that the autopilot could hold the Megafor tress straight and level. 'All right, we've got control of the aircraft. Pereira, McLanahan, check for fighters before we get too involved in damage assessment.
Angelina and Patrick went to RADIATE on their radars and took careful but fast full hemisphere sweeps of the sky. With both radars operating, they could scan almost three thousand cubic miles of airspace in a few seconds.
'Clear,' McLanahan reported.
'No pursuit,' Angelina said.
'Scope's clear,' from Wendy 'A few extremely low Powered search signals The Power fluctuation put some of my jammers into STANDBY but they should reset in a few minutes.'
'Clear Of terrain for thirty miles,' Luger said.
'All right. 'Ormack relaxed his grip on the control yoke.
'We're level at four thousand feet. 'We've lost number one engine and its enerator. We can't visually confirm it but I 9 think we lost the rest of the left wingtip. There's a slight leak in the number one wing tank supplying the number two engine but I don't think it's fatal.
Something's also gone haywire with the rudder, it's hard to keep her straight I feel a pretty good shudder in the airmine turret-controls,' Angelina asked. 'Need to check out the cannon steering. 'She activated the Stinger airmine rocket cannon controls and began self-test of her system.
'The navigation system went to STANDBY for a few seconds from dumping.
We're reloading the mission data now from the game cartridge.'
In a few moments Angelina was back on the interphone 'Colonel Ormack, I think we lost the whole damn tail. My infrared scanner is dead.
Everything's faulted. We won't have any more automatic I.R detection from the tail anymore.'
'Well,' Luger said, 'can't the threat-receiver-' 'The threat-receiver only detects fighters when they use their radar,' Angelina told him.
'If they get a visual infrared lock-on they can launch missiles at us all day and we can't see them. They can drive in as close as they want and get a point-blank kill.'
'The Scorpions,' Ormack asked. 'What about them?'
'I'm getting a flickering low-pressure warning light on the rotary launcher,' Angelina said, checking a set of gauges on her right control panel. 'Still in the green, but that last attac.
might have done some missile damage.'
'High terrain, thirty miles,' Luger reported.
'Any way around it?' Ormack asked.
'Solid rijge line. No other way.'
Ormack cursed and nudged the Old Dog skyward. They were almost back at their preestablished five thousand for safe-clearance altitude before Luger finally reported clear terrain.
'Goddamn,' Ormack said, 'over four thousand feet above the ground-' 'But we may belly-flop that ridge line when we cross it, McLanahan reminded him. 'We should be able to engage the auto terrain-following computer any second-' 'Airborne interceptors at twelve o'clock,' Wendy interupted. 'At extreme detection range but closing rapidly. Multiple indications.'
'And we're stuck up here,' Ormack asked. 'No other way around it.
Pereira, McLanahan, engage at long range. We' have to blast our way out of here. 'No one offered any alternative. McLanahan reactivated.
'Can't see the nacelle, don't see any fire out there… seconds,' Luger reported, 'but the battery kept everythin Scorpion attack radar and tuned it immediately to fifty-mile range.
Slaved to Wendy Tork's threat receiver, the radar immediately pinpointed the aggressors ahead.
'Locked into one,' McLanahan called out. Just as he designated the first target he heard the whoosh of a Scorpion missile leaving the left pylon.
'Locked onto a second One-' 'Fighter at six o'clock high,' from Angelina. Instantly she activated her own radar and locked onto the fighter. A moment later she gave a look of surprise and reached for the airmine triggers. 'Range decreasing rapidly,' she asked. 'He's diving at us…
'Radar's gone down, ' Wendy asked. 'And we don't have an infrared scanner to pick up-' 'It's an I.R attack,' Angelina announced. 'Pilot, break right.
Ormack threw the Old Dog into a hard — banking turn to the right. The bomber, already without several thousand pounds of thrust from the number one engine, rumbled in protest, hovering just above a stall.
Wendy punched out two flares from the left ejector while Angelina tried to locate the attacker on her radar.
'I got him, I got him on radar,' she said, hit the green TRACK button, watched the circle cursor surround the fighter's radar reflection and squeezed the Stinger airmine rocket triggers.
But the attacking fighter had the advantage. Following a vector to the intruder from his low-patrol mates- both of whom he had lost contact with soon afterward-he had spotted the intruder on radar long enough to point his MiG-25s infrared search-and-track seeker at the penetrator.
Once the seeker had locked onto the target, he had no need for the lookdown radar and turned it off. His AA-7 missile immediately locked onto the two engines on the left inboard nacelle of the Old Dog, and he hit the launch button just as he noticed a short burst of flame from below him.
Angelina's right break had been perfectly timed. The AA-7 missile's I.R seeker lost the engines in the break and locked Onto the flares, but the change was too quick and the proximity and decoy-detection fuse exploded the missile.
Saved from destruction, the Old Dog was nonetheless naked… the missile's high-explosive detonation, together with the one-thousand-degree-Fahrenheit parachute-equipped ares and the low wide burst of an airmine rocket, perfectly fl lined the Old Dog against the snow-covered mountains.
out The MiG pilot attacking from above and behind the Megafortress had watched his missile streak toward the target. Then suddenly he saw a dark silhouette of incredible size. He blinked, not able to believe it as the outline of the massive aircraft materialized below him. A low-attitude warning horn sounded in his helmet, and he managed to pull out of his dive only a few hundred feet above the ground and force his fighter skyward.
Although the sleek nose confused him, there was no misidentifying the rest of the plane. An American B-52 bomber.
He had always thought that if he was called on to defend Kavaznya against attack, it would be against an F- 15 or even the American Navy's F-18 or F-14.Never, never an Straining to keep the antediluvian bomber in view as he aging dinosaur like the B-52.
pulled on his control stick and crawled for altitude, he frantically keyed his microphone.
'Aspana. Danger. American B-52 bomber. Paftariti. American B-52 visually identified.'
Another warning beep sounded in his helmet. He recognize the stall-warning buzzer, applied maximum afterburner and leveled off to wait for his airspeed to increase. He repeated his warning over the radio, including the bomber's direction and estimated speed.
Could the B-52 possibly have destroyed the other fighters?The MiG pilot had seen what he thought were gunblasts from the puny.50 caliber guns in the tail, but none of the pilots at Ossora would be stupid enough to fly that close to the intruder….
Angelina had to haul herself upright by the armrests of her ejection seat to regain her balance. The sudden turn and the abrupt roll-out had her head spinning and she fought to refocuse. She grasped the triggers and fired twice at the almost stationary fighter.
The last thing the MiG pilot saw was the glass around him seeming to melt like cellophane. His canopy disintegrated a twenty pounds of metal chips from both Stinger rockets sheared through the plastic-laminated
