miles when the missile left the right pylon rail. It ignited in a bright plume of fire, sped away toward the wide bubble canopy of the MiG.
But the Scorpion that left the Old Dog's rail was an unguided bullet, not a sophisticated air-to-air missile. Without radar tracking and uplink from the Old Dog to guide it, the Scorpion relied on either an infrared signature or an anti-radar jamming signal to home in on. It had neither. The MiG had kept its radar and jammers off, presenting no heat signature at all so long as it was in its right turn.
The Scorpion streaked forward, passing a hundred feet in front of the MiG.Ten seconds after it automatically armed its warhead after launch, the Scorpion's computer asked itself if it was tracking a target. The reply was no, and the Scorpion harmlessly detonate MiG-29.And its warhead almost two miles past the…
Papendreyov saw the American bomber and the missile at the same time.
There was no time to turn, to dive, or accelerate not even time for him to close his eyes and brace for the impact And then, just as quickly, the missile was gone. Yuri watched for a second missile-a B-52 bomber launching missiles? — but there was none.
He continued his wide right-climbing turn, keeping a close watch on the B-52.which now was a serious adversary, not just a helpless whale resigned to its fate.
He watched it far below him.making a left turn, heading east. With his own speed regained, it looked to Papendreyov as if the B -52 was almost hanging suspended in midair. Not dead, but an inviting target.
He maneuvered behind it, stalking it, closing slowly for the kill.
Noting the tail cannon sweeping back and forth in a rectangular pattern, he rolled out high and to the right of the bomber. The cannon continued its erratic box-pattern sweep occasionally seeming to be altogether out of control and useless… yes, it could launch missiles, but it had no way of guiding them.
Yuri armed his GSh-23 cannon and maneuvered behind and slightly above the B-52, slowly closing the distance. He no longer considered trying to force the bomber to land-his gun's cameras would record his victory over the intruder.
He edged closer to the bomber, then began his strafing run…
'We've lost him. 'Ormack was searching his side cockpit windows.
'He's out there,' McLanahan said, reengaging the terrain avoidance autopilot. 'He can find us easy. We've got to find him before he gets a shot off Angelina watched her rocket-turret-position indicators as they oscillated in random sputters and jerks. The radar was Jammed, locking onto ghosts, starting and stopping, breaking lock.
Frustrated, she turned the radar to STANDBY, waited a few moments, then turned it back to TRANSMIT…
A large bright blip appeared on the upper left corner of her radarscope.
She waited for it to disappear, just like all the rest of the electronic ghosts.but this one stayed.
She stomped her foot on the interphone button. 'Bandit five o'clock high, break right!'
McLanahan swung the control yoke hard right.
Ormack's head banged against the right cockpit window bi he pulled himself upright and scanned as far behind the bomber as he could 'Pereira, five o'clock.one and a half miles, twenty degrees high and comin' down. Nail him.
Yuri had the shot lined up perfectly.a textbook gun-pass. He had just squeezed the trigger on his control stick, squeezed off a hundred precious rounds.before realizing that the B-52 wasn't in his sights.
It had moved. He tried to rudder-drag his sight around to the right but it wasn't enough and he was force to yank off power and roll with the B-52 to reacquire it.
He was almost aligned again when a sharp white flash popped off his left side not a hundred meters away. He yanked his MiG into a hard right turn and accelerated away, saw another white flash and a cloud of sparkling shards of metal exploding above him. The B-52 was shooting at him, and that was no machine-gun round-the intruder had tail-firing rockets Yuri expertly rolled out of his turn, perpendicular to the bomber's flight path and out of range of the strange fl.
missiles.
A blinking warning light caught his attention.e was no, on emergency fuel-less than ten minutes time left and with no reserve. He didn't even have the time to set up another gun pass. He rearmed his last two remaining AA-8 missiles rechecked his infrared spotting scope and checked the location of the bomber.
Time for one last pass.and it had to be perfect. At least lAA-8s had to have greater range than those tiny missiles. He would roll back in directly behind the B-52 and fire at maximum range when the AA-8s locked onto the bomber's engine-exhaust.
He made a diving left-turn, staying about twelve kilometers behind the bomber. His infrared target-spotting scope with large supercooled eye locked onto the B-52 immediately and sent aiming information to the AA-8 missiles. The B-52 was making no evasive maneuvers. Slowly.the distance decreased to The American bomber, Yuri noted.had maneuvered itse onto a flat plateau just above Anadyr Airbase, heading east toward the Bering Strait. It had nowhere to hide, nowhere to evade. Yuri hoped it wouldn't smash into Anadyr. On the other hand, what better place to deposit the evidence of his victory?
His vindication?
The range continued to decrease. Yuri could see the B-52's tail now, and the missile-firing cannon, still pointing up and to the right, jammed in position. Yuri put his finger on the launch trigger, ready.
A high-pitched beep sounded in his helmet-the AA-8's seeker heads had locked onto the B-52.Yuri checked his target once more, waited a few more seconds to close the distance fired. The green LOCK light stayed on STEADY as the two Mach-two missiles streaked from their rails..
.
Ormack searched the skies from the cockpit window. 'I can't see him, I lost him.
'Angie, can you see him?'
'No, my radar's jammed. I can't see anything.'
4 The plateau dropped away into a wide frozen plain, Anadyr Airbase centered within the snow-covered valley McLanahan did not wait for the terrain-avoidance system to take the Old Dog down. He grabbed onto the yoke and pushed the Old Dog's nose down, then shoved all six operating engine throttles to full power.
The Old Dog had only dropped about a hundred feet down into the valley when McLanahan suddenly realized the implications of what he was doing and used every ounce of strength left to pull back on the control column.
'Patrick, what the hell are you doing?' Ormack shouted.
'He's behind us,' McLanahan told him. 'He's gotta be behind us. If we dive into that valley we're dead meat.'
Shattered fibersteel from the Old Dog's damaged fuselage screamed in protest but somehow stayed together. The stall warning horn blared, but McLanahan still held the yoke back, forcing the Old Dog's nose skyward at a drastic angle.
The AA-8 missiles, only a few hundred meters from impact, lost their lock-on to the engine's hot exhaust when the Old Dog nosed upward. The missiles then immediately reacquired a warm heat-source and readjusted to a new target-the base operation building and the vehicles parked near it at Anadyr Airbase, which was now manned by several squads of the Anadyr constabulary. Surrounded by a meter of unplowed snow in all directions, the halftracks and jeeps were the only hot objects for miles.
Chief Constable Vjarelskiv, who had run from the hangar area to the flightline to watch the chase unfolding in the skies above Anadyr Airbase, now watched in horror as the missiles screamed directly at him.
Before he could shout a warning, the missiles hitplowing into the wooden base operations building, the one finding an unoccupied truck with its hood open because of an overheated radiator. The twin explosions scattered troops in all directions.
Properly enraged, Vjarelskiv pulled his nine-millimeter pistol from his holster and raised it toward the American B-52, then stopped, realizing how absurd he must look.
Yuri had expected the American bomber to try to duck into the valley.
Well, it would do him no good — actually it would improve the intruder's heat-signature.
What he never expected was a climb… the B-52 appeared out of nowhere from behind the ridge, streaking skyward, its nose pointed straight up in the air.
No missile, not even the new AA-8s, could follow that.
