not notice another soldier sliding into the machine gun mount on the halftrack.
He took aim on the Old Dog, fired.
The twenty-millimeter shells plowed through the Old Dog's left side, showering the cockpit with glass. Ormack was thrown over to the center console, where he tried to shield his face from flying glass. Pain clutched his left shoulder.
'Get down,' McLanahan yelled back to Wendy and Angelina.
7, Another fusillade of bullets erupted inside the Old Dog, sparks flying as the left load central circuit breaker panel was hit. Lights flickered, exploded. One of the engines faltered.
Wendy unfastened her parachute straps and flattened herself on the deck as bullets hit her defensive- systems jammers and threat-receivers.
Abrupt dead silence. Aft, McLanahan saw the two women crawling on the upper deck beside the unconscious General Elliott.
'You two all right?'
'Yes,' Wendy said, 'Oh. God… Colonel Ormack McLanahan turned, saw Ormack slumped against the center console and throttle quadrant, bleeding heavily, hands covered with blood. McLanahan pulled him back into his seat, searched out the window for his partner' And then he understood why they had stopped shooting at the Old Dog. Luger was no longer lying in the snow. Somehow he had managed to crawl back to the fuel truck, had started it up and was now barreling toward the armored halftrack, whose gunner had turned the machine gun muzzle on the cab of the tank truck.
'Dave, noo Damn!The halftrack's gunner had gotten off a half-second burst at the truck, and McLanahan watched what was left of the truck's windshield explode. A moment later the truck smashed into the halftrack.
'Dave…
The tank truck's remaining fifty gallons of unusable fuel an three thousand cubic feet of kerosene fumes ignited and ripped it apart like an overinflated balloon. The halftrack did some lazy cartwheels and landed upside- down eighty yards from the blast, scattering metal and men across the parking ramp.
The noise of the six running engines seemed a purr next to the force of the blast. When McLanahan looked outside where the truck used to be, he saw a blackened crater, a smoking hunk of metal on the other side of the ramp, smoldering mounds of human flesh in the snow.
No sign of Luger.
McLanahan couldn't, wouldn't accept it. 'He can't be dead can't be 'We've got to get out of here,' Ormack said, hauling himself straight in the pilot's seat. 'Patrick, you've got to make the takeoff, I can't do it-' 'But Dave… we can't leave-' 'Patrick. Dave… gave us our chance. We've got to take it… ' McLanahan shook his head.
'I… I can't take off, never done it before Ormack climbed out of the left seat. 'Climb in. You're our buddy. Do it.'
'Anadyr Control, this is Ossora one-seven-one, Elemei Seven.
Requesting landing clearance. Over.'
No answer. Yuri Papiendreyov scanned his navigation instruments.
There was no error; he was only thirty miles from Anadyr Far East Fighter-Interceptor Base. Although the ba was not active someone should still be there.
Papendreyov switched his radio to the Fleet Communications frequency, the backup frequency for all Soviet air defense forces. 'This is Ossora one-seven-one on Fleet Comm Alpha. One-seven-one is making an emergency approach and landing at Anadyr Airfield. Over.
No answer on Fleet Common. He set his transponder to special emergency code, activated it. Any air-defense force!
he hoped, would see his beacon before they started shooting… with an Air Defense Emergency declared for if region he'd be lucky to get near the base without finding himself under attack from his own people.
Yuri flipped his checklist cards over to the approach-andlanding section, began to set up for landing. One more ridge line to cross and Anadyr should be within visual range ' With only a half-hour of fuel left he decided to wait until just a few kilometers from the base before lowering his gear and configuring for landing. He would make one pass over the runway to check it over-and hope to get someone's attention-then pitch out, enter the visual pattern and land. He had to save his fuel in case he had to orbit the field to wait for the runway to be plowed off enough to make it safe to land. Damn the luck, he was positive-still positive-that the American intruder was nearby, still a threat. He checked his chronometer… it had only been an hour and forty minutes since he last saw the B-52 near Ossora.
Flying in the Korakskoje Nagode mountain range at six hundred kilometers an hour maximum, the B-52 could not have gone farther than Uel-Kal or Egvekinot on the Anadyrskij Zaliv, only two hundred kilometers from Anadyr. But none of those coastal bases had picked up the B-52 on radar, so it must still be hiding 41 in the mountains around Anadyr, trying to pick its way around the defenses.
If the intruder had tried to dodge north and west of the Kamchatka peninsula instead of toward Alaska, it would have fallen right into the waiting arms of two squadrons of MiG-29s from the regional defense force headquarters at Magadan. But no one had reported spotting the bomber there either. No. It was nearby. It had to be.
After refueling he was determined to find the B-52.Its tail radar was going to give it away, and its hot engines would, literally, be its downfall. With twilight Yuri figured he wouldn't need his pulse-Doppler radar to find the American plane. Using the infrared spotting scope and passive electronic scanners he could prowl about at will, virtually undetectable, until the B-52 gave itself away or was spotted by Beringovskiy radar.
He thought once, very briefly, about his wife and family, safe and warm in his Kiev apartment while he chased over thousands of kilometers of Siberia looking for an intruder that might have already crashed. He also thought about consequences… His expertise, his zeal might get him through the inquiry that followed his unauthorized chase for the B-52 the old Squadron Commander might give him a year's worth of runway snow removal duty or a demotion. An Air Defense Emergency could forgive a lot of things, he told himself. Anyway, he didn't believe he'd actually face a firing squad or exile.
But only one thing could guarantee him a satisfactory return to his family-a promotion, a full pardon. As Anadyr Airfield popped into view, still thirty-six kilometers away, he knew that the only thing that would earn him that result was gun-camera film of the B-52 going down in flames after being shot apart by his GSh-23 twin-barrel guns or by one of his newer AA-8 heat seeking missiles.
Yes. The B-52 had to be destroyed.
The Old Dog seemed more like a hospital ship than a strategic bomber as it taxied down the narrow, snow- covered taxiway of Anadyr Airbase.
in command as it limped down the taxiway was Patric McLanahan. As the most experienced and now physically able crewman, he had taken the pilot's left seat. Icy wind blasted his face from the dozens of holes on the left side of the cockpit at from a completely blown-out glass panel just behind his ejection seat. He was trying to do too much at once — but most important was to keep the Old Dog roughly in the center of the taxiway.
Ormack, blood all over his left shoulder, barely strong enough to move a switch, had taken his co-pilot's seat again. He continued to read the pre-takeoff checklists and give McLan han a running last-minute lecture on how to accomplish takeoff.
Angelina remained at her gunner's position, checking and rechecking her equipment. She had two Scorpion missiles on the right external pylon, three Scorpions on the bomb-blauncher, two HARM anti-radar missiles on the interior launcher and twenty Stinger air-mine rockets in the target cannon-and no way in the world to guide any of them the target-acquisition radar-scope had been damaged in the attack at the airbase. The Old Dog might be still an adversary to be considered, its Scorpions and HARMs could be self guided to their targets-but their effectiveness was greatly reduced.
Wendy was back in her electronic warfare officer's seat beside Angelina.
Using computer-displayed instructions she had restarted the ring-laser gyro and satellite navigation syston in the freezing cold navigator's station below. There was little else downstairs-McLanahan's ten-inch radar scope had been destroyed by the Russian machine gun attack. The attack had also destroyed or damaged most of Wendy's electronic-warfare gear.
While she had been in the lower compartment she had looked over Dave Luger's notes and doodles, even picked up his headphone… wanting to offer it to him when he emerged from the aft bulkhead door, smiling and
