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
