There was no greater prize than the B-52, he told himself, no greater victory… He widened his right turn and smiled broadly, seeing his destiny unfolding.
Choking and coughing from the thick clouds of black smoke, Wendy aimed a fire extinguisher out the open aft bulkhead leading to the bomb bay catwalk and squeezed the trigger.
She was bleeding from a gash in her forehead sustained when she was thrown against the forward instrument panel after the missile hit. A moment later Angelina was beside her, carrying the firefighting mask and another extinguisher bottle. W Wendy put on the mask and plugged it into the instructor's oxygen panel, Angelina moved as far as she could toward the fire on the catwalk and fired her extinguisher.
The flames had intensified the instant Wendy had opened the bulkhead door, but the blast of air racing from the breaks in the cockpit through the open door sucked the smoke and flames aft and gave her a clear and effective shot at the fire in the electronic countermeasures transformers and control boxes.
Wendy dropped back into the radar nav's seat, her forehead dripping blood, her arms and legs throbbing. She pulled off the firefighting mask, gasped over the interphone: 'Fire's out, Patrick. Big hole in the fuselage and fire in the ECM boxes, but it looked like it missed the landing gear.'
'We're blind up here,' Ormack asked. 'We can't see him, we can't see when he shoots at us McLanahan had already put the computer-controlled clearance plane setting to COLA so the Old Dog would seek its own lowest possible altitude. But because of the reduction in thrust and the severe damage, the terrain-climbing capability of the jo Old Dog was reduced. And as the terrain became more rugged, the altitude slowly crept higher, exposing the bomber more and more to the Soviet fighter.
'All right, everyone, check your areas for damage,' McLanahan said, his grip on the control wheel so tight his hands began to cramp.
'We've got a leak in the aft fuel tank,' Ormack said, blowing on his hands and scanning the fuel panel. 'I'm opening valve twenty-eight, closing twenty-nine. Also pumping all fuel out of the aft body tank before it leaks out-' A sudden motion out of the left-cockpit windscreen drew his attention outside. 'Patrick, look…'
McLanahan spun around to a sight that made him go rigid… The gray MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter was directly beside the Old Dog, just ahead of the cockpit, slightly above them and no more than a hundred feet away.
McLanahan could clearly see the pilot's right shoulder and head out his bubble canopy, along with a sleek air-to-air missile on its wing hardpoint.
The MiG was amazingly small and compact, resembling a twin-tailed American F-16 fighter. The Russian pilot apparently had little trouble flying beside the B-52, even at its low altitude, perfectly matching each of the Old Dog's computer commanded altitude adjustments.
'Angelina.he's on our left side, ten o'clock, about hundred feet.
Can we get him with the Scorpions on our rig pylon?'
'He's too close. The missile wouldn't have time to lock on.
The MiG pilot glanced over at McLanahan, rocked 1
Fulcrum's wings up and down three times. He stopped, then made one last rock to the right.
'Why is he doing that…?'
Ormack's jaw tightened. 'It's the interception signal. He wants us to follow him.'
'Follow him?' McLanahan said, stomach tightening.'?
'No way, we can't-' 'Patrick, we've got nowhere to run. He can knock us out of the sky anytime-' The MiG rocked up its left wing once more, very emphatically, as if underscoring Ormack's words. To back up the message the MiG pilot fired a one-second burst from his guns, the bright phosphorous-tipped tracer shells knifing into the twilight like deadly shooting stars.
'If we don't follow he comes back around and tags us Ormack said.
'We've got no chance-' 'We can still fight,' McLanahan asked. 'As long as we got missiles we can't give up.'
Ormack grabbed his arm. 'If we try to run he'll just come around again and shoot us down. 'He lowered his voice. 'You did a great job, Pat, but it's over. It's-' McLanahan shrugged his arm free. The MiG had dropp back a few feet, his bubble-canopy now directly beside the Old Dog's narrow, slanted cockpit. The Russian pilot pointed down three times.
McLanahan turned and looked directly at the MiG pilot flying in unison with the fighter at a distance of fifty feet.
To Ormack's surprise, he nodded to the Russian, and the pilot pointed to McLanahan's right, indicating a right turn. Ormack looked away, not wanting to see what he insisted was necessary for their survival. The pain he felt was from more than his blood-soaked shoulder.
McLanahan nodded one more time to the MiG pilot. 'Stand by to turn, crew,' he said, gripping the wheel tight.
Yuri PapendreYov was flushed with pride. He had done it. The American was surrendering. Of course, he could hardly do anything else.
group the B AA-8 misile blow.
its mangled left wingtip, the destroyed bomber was flying slower and slower, without the bombs Yuri had seen before as it hugged the ground the small-caliber bullet holes all over in the nose to the wings, and figured the the final shot into their fuselage had been The B-52 began its very slow right turn, and Yuri had just begun applying pressure on his control stick to follow suddenly the right side of the canopy was filled with the dark, menacing form of the American bomber…
Instead of turning right toward Anadyr the insane plane had turned into Yuri's MiG-29.
He yanked is control stick hard to the left, rolling up into a hundred degrees of bank.
A moment later his world crunch of metal as the two aircraft, traveling kilometers a minute, collided. With both aircraft the top of the B-52 had plowed into the bottom of Yuri's fighter.
Somehow Yuri managed to continue his hard turn, standing his MiG on its left wingtip and pulling back on the stick to increase the roll rate.
The B-52 seemed to be turning right with him-even pushing him on, dragging him to the earth. The fighter was now at ninety-degrees bank, and the terrifying crushing and grinding sounds underneath him continued.
Yuri could see rocks and trees out of the top of his canopy. His controls refused to respond…
He ignited his twin afterburners, and like a snapping rubber band his MiG was flung away from the B-52.In the process Yuri found himself inverted, then in a wild tumble.
The roar of the B-52 was everywhere, he expected another impact any moment…
But the spin slowed and he managed to level his wings. He was barely at twenty meters. Rocks and trees were all around him-he was staring up at a huge ridgeline encrusted with jagged snow-covered boulders.
But his airspeed at last began to build and he felt the ground rushing away beneath him.
to Quickly he checked around for the B-52… nothing.
Gone. Shaking his head, Yuri started a slow right turn to check behind him…
Numb from the midair collision he had contrived, McLanahan watched transfixed as the gray MiG continued its spin down, heading for the rocks, reaching the point where McLanahan thought the pilot could never recover.
But he did. He must have been close enough to the rocks to get one in his boot, but his spin stopped and the MiG sped away from the earth, gaining breathtaking speed in seconds, and now McLanahan was fighting for control of his own plane.
The stall-warning buzzer sounded, and the Old Dog seemed to be floating straight down instead of flying forward.
'Get the nose down, we're in a stall,' Ormack was yelling at him.
McLanahan shoved the yoke forward, fighting the initial-stall buffet that shook the entire hundred-ton bomber.
The buzzer stopped. McLanahan found he had control, leveled the nose until the airspeed came up, but he had to force himself to stop looking at the rugged ground that whizzed so close to the Old Dog's groaning wings.
'There he is, here he comes… Ormack shouted, pointing straight ahead.
He was coming, all right. Directly in front of them.
'I McLanahan called over the interphone. 'Pylon 'Angie missile… fire.
The MiG was in a thirty-degree right bank directly off the Old Dog's nose at a range of perhaps three to four
