Fulcrt, fighter flew just ahead and above the Old Dog, then banked erratically to the left and out of sight, its twin afterburners lighting up the sky.
It was impossible.
Yuri Papendreyov had been busy with landing checklist configuring his MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter for the penetration a, descent into Anadyr and following the navigation beacon and instrument-land-system beam. He had been taught not to rely on visual cues for landing until very close to the runway especially during long winter twilight conditions.
The young fighter pilot was less than two miles from touchdown when he finally had his Fulcrum configured and ready. It was then that he studied the runway. Since the first pass was going to be a visual inspection and flyover, he was moving almost twice as fast as usual.
The landing gear was up, but he had flaps and leading-edge slats deployed to make the relatively slow, low- altitude pass safer. He was flying his advanced fighter at a high angle-of-attack, which meant keeping the fighter's nose higher than normal during the pass.
In the dusky conditions Papendreyov didn't see the massive billows of smoke rising from the airfield and the sudden huge' black shape against the white snow-covered runway. When he did look out the cockpit windscreen, the huge ebony aircraft had left the runway, blending in with the rugged terrain and dark horizon.
Yuri made his pass, looking right toward the tower, the base operation building and aircraft-parking ramp. All empty. He was thinking he might be forced to pump his own gas, when he shifted his attention forward. His windscreen was filled with dark smoke. He jammed the throttles forward, igniting the twin Turmansky afterburners as a wave of turbulence shook his Fulcrum fighter.
And then, he saw it. He was close enough to touch it, close enough to see the pilot straining to lift his aircraft skyward.
The American B-52-lifting off from Anadyr!Yuri reacted instinctively, flicked the arming switch to his GSh-23 twin twenty-three-millimeter nose cannon, and fired.
The shots went wide as another giant wave of turbulence from the B-52 swatted at his Fulcrum fighter, and Yuri was forced to roll hard left to keep from plowing into the bomber's tail. As he passed to its left, he noticed with satisfaction that the huge gun on its tail did not follow him…
Marveling at his good fortune, he continued his left turn, retracting flaps and slats and selecting two AA-8 heat-seeking missiles… The initial shock of seeing the elusive American bomber here, of all the possible places to find him, dissolved back into the hard concentration of the hunt.
He had searched eleven thousand square kilometers, risked everything to hunt it down.
Now he had found it, The radar altimeter showed only a few hundred feet above ground, but he couldn't wait… McLanahan reached do and began to raise the flaps.
'Flaps coming up, Colonel. SST nose retracting. I don't believe it, but a Russian fighter just went past us… do you see him?'
Ormack looked out the right cockpit windows. 'No.'
'Keep watching for him. 'McLanahan watched the fl indicator as the huge wing high-lift panels rose out of slipstream. With the flaps retracting, the Old Dog's lift be to erode and she began to sink.
McLanahan took the number eight throttle and jammed it to full military thrust, then fought the control yoke like it was a bucking horse as the differen thrust threatened to flip the bomber over and send it crashin the mountain below. Using what was left of the lateral controls, he struggled to keep the bomber level…
'Flaps up,' he called out. Suddenly a blinking yellow light on the upper — eyebrow instrument panel caught his attention-the number two engine.
Its oil pressure had dropped below minimum. He pulled the number-two throttle to CUTC shutting down the engine before the lack of oil pressure caused it to seize and explode. Now, because of the two missing engines on the left side, McLanahan again had no choice but to decrease power on the number-eight engine-without rudder he couldn't hold the nose straight with such a difference in thrust.
'Number two engine shut down,' he said over the interphone. 'Number eight pulled back to compensate. Angelina, try to get your system working-' 'I've tried, the pylon, bomb bay and Stinger ainr missiles are working but I've no radar guidance. I can release the missiles but I can't guide them.'
McLanahan leveled the Old Dog at about a thousand feet, pressed the PAGE ADVANCE button on the computer checklist calling up the automatic terrain-avoidance procedures. 'We're going into auto-terrain-avoidance, everybody Wendy, go downstairs and try to reload terrain avoidance data into the computers.'
Behind the cockpit in the defense section Wendy quickly unbuckled her parachute harness straps, climbed out of the electronic-warfare officer's ejection seat, grabbed onto the 'firepole' above the ladder, half-slid climbed downstairs, then plugged her headset into the radar navigator's station below.
'Patrick, I'm downstairs,' she radioed to the cockpit.
'Now what?'
'Okay, good… hit the checklist button and enter TA on the keyboard. The terrain-avoidance checklist will come up.
Page ahead to the data-reload section. That has the steps.'
The computerized checklist readout, and the unpopular Colonel Anderson's insistence that everyone know about everyone else's duties aboard the Old Dog, now paid off.
Wendy moved the terrain-data cartridge reader lever from LOCK to READ.
'Reloading terrain data, Patrick.'
McLanahan had quickly read the terrain-avoidance checklist as it scrolled onto Ormack's computer screen. He activated the autopilot, and the computer-drawn terrain-trace zipped across his video monitor.
He found the auto-terrain-avoidance switch and threw it, setting the clearance altitude to two hundred feet.
And the crippled Old Dog began to respond.
As Yuri's Fulcrum fighter rolled out behind the B-52, the huge bomber nosed over and Yuri was positive the American intruder was going to crash. But at the last possible moment the plane somehow leveled off, skimming so close to the earth the rocks and jagged peaks seemed to be scraping the bomber's black belly as they rushed underneath in a blur…
McLanahan kept the engines screaming at full throttle. Using the number eight engine's throttle, he made a hard left turn, searching out his cockpit window.
Ormack, gripping the glare-shield for support in the tight turn, called to McLanahan that 'we need to head east, we're heading the wrong way-' 'We also need to get back in the mountains,' McLanahan said. He rolled the wings level on a southwesterly heading back down the Korakskoje Mountains, aiming the Old Dog toward a low row of rugged, snow-covered peaks.'if we get over the water with that fighter on our tail he'll nail us for sure.
'But our fuel- 'We should have enough, but there's no alternative…
Angelina, can you steer your rocket turret at all?'
She activated the double handgrips on the Stinger airmine rocket turret. 'The radar's working. I can move my controls But I don't know if the cannon is moving, I've lost all position indicators.'
'Will the rockets still detonate?'
'Yes, I can set the detonation range manually, or the detonate themselves just before their propellant runs out 'Okay, if we spot the fighter we'll call out its position.
the airmines for different ranges and-' 'I see him, he's right behind us-' An explosion rocked the bomber-like a wrecking ball crashed into the Old Dog's midsection. McLanahan felt as if he were riding an elevator that had just dropped twenty floors in an instant. The Old Dog seemed to hover in midair, its working engines straining against the impact of a Soviet A-80 missile slamming into its fuselage.
Yuri Papendreyov, flying slightly high and to the right of his quarry, clenched a fist and allowed a smile. One of his heat seeking missiles had missed, but the second had hit the American bomber in the mid-body, just forward of the wing's leading edge. Clouds of smoke erupted from the hole it created. The bomber's tail sank down, the nose shot up Yet somehow it was still flying. Well, those Americans might lead charmed lives, but their luck had run out. He had two AA-8 heat-seekers and five hundred rounds of ammunition, and the bomber was badly crippled.
In his tight right-hand turn to set up for another attack, he checked his navigation instruments and saw he was only a few kilometers from Anadyr.
