at every other Russian military base with enough concrete to park one, but here
With Yakutsk’s tankers opening an air bridge between the bases in the west and North America, Russia finally had a chance to regain its rightful status as a world superpower. General Gryzlov — most Russian military officers still did not refer to him as “President,” believing strongly that it was more of an honor to be called by his military rank than by any political appellation — had to be one of the most visionary airpower leaders in history.
It appeared that the rest of the fleet had already returned from their missions — the ramp was choked with Il-78 and Tupolev-16 tankers, MiG-29 and MiG-23 fighter jets, and even several Tu-95 and Tu-22M bombers. There was a security vehicle parked right on the hold line at the approach end of the runway — rather unusual, but not unexpected with the heightened security. There didn’t seem to be too much activity elsewhere, except for a few roving security patrols, mostly wheeled armored personnel carriers with a large cannon or machine gun mounted on top.
“Check the runway status, copilot,” the pilot ordered.
“Runway visual range two thousand meters,” the tower operator reported. Then, hesitantly, he continued, “Caution, runway braking action
The Il-78 copilot stared at his pilot with a look of absolute horror. The pilot was concentrating on nailing this landing with the weather conditions worsening outside, so it took a few seconds for the message and the copilot’s stunned expression to register.
But they were low on fuel, and gross weight was very low. Soon the airspeed started to increase as the engines spooled up to full power. Once they had reached best-angle climb speed, he carefully raised the nose, every nerve ending in his body alert to the possibility of an accelerated stall. When the vertical speed, airspeed, and altimeter needles all crept upward together, he ordered, “Gear up, flaps to twenty.”
“Who should I call?” the copilot yelled frantically. He was looking out the windscreen in a panic, trying to see anything that might indicate what the emergency was. “Who should I talk to?”
“Wait until I get the plane cleaned up, damn it!” the pilot shouted. “Flaps full up! Check igniters on and inertial separators deployed!” The copilot checked the switch positions, then nervously scanned out the windscreens for any sign of trouble. As soon as the plane was safely climbing and the gear and flaps retracted, the pilot banked steeply away from the airfield, expecting any moment to feel or hear an explosion.
As relieved as he’d been just moments earlier to break out of the clouds and see the runway, he was even more relieved when he finally
Sorry about that, sir,” Ted Merritt radioed. He was stationed up inside the control tower cab at Yakutsk Air Base, along with a Russian-speaking Marine. Another Marine was tightly binding the Russian noncom’s hands behind him with plastic handcuffs — he was already facedown on the floor, gagged with a rag strapped around his mouth. “Looks like he used a ‘scatter’ code — first time I’ve heard one. I’ve got the tower operator secured now — we can’t trust him on the radios any longer. My corporal will do the radios from now on.”
“Roger that,” Colonel Hal Briggs responded. “That tanker’s not going far.” “Stand by,” he responded. “Break. Briggs to McLanahan. One got away at the last second. You got him, or do you want us to take him?”
Stand by, Dave,” Patrick McLanahan replied from aboard his EB-52 Megafortress, flying just southeast of Yakutsk. He briefly activated the Megafortress’s laser radar, which used laser emitters mounted on all sides of the aircraft to instantly “draw” a detailed picture of every object within three hundred miles of the bomber. He immediately spotted the retreating Il-78 tanker. Although it was not yet out of range of the weapons he carried aboard his bomber, his guys on the ground could do this job much better, and he could save his munitions. “McLanahan to Wohl,” he spoke, using his subcutaneous satellite transceiver to talk directly to his men at Yakutsk. “Sergeant Major, take it down.”
“Roger, sir,” Sergeant Major Chris Wohl responded. He, along with a four-man Marine fire team reinforced by a security team armed with M249 squad automatic weapons, had already set out sensors and mines around the base and were now guarding the main entrance, which was just a few kilometers from a major highway that led to the city of Yakutsk itself, just twenty klicks away. Two more fire teams were spread out around the perimeter of the base, accompanied by Bastian and Angel, while the last team was sent out to help secure the fuel depot and drive vehicles. “Angel, take it.”
“Copy,” Staff Sergeant Emily Angel responded simply. Like Wohl, she was wearing her Tin Man electronic battle armor, standing guard at the north side of the base. She already had her electromagnetic rail gun raised and, using her powered exoskeleton, effortlessly and precisely tracked the Russian aircraft. Moments after she responded, she squeezed the trigger. An eighteen-ounce titanium projectile sped out of the weapon with a muzzle velocity of over eighteen thousand feet per second, leaving a blue-orange trail of vaporized air behind it.
As usual, it appeared as if the projectile missed, and Angel took another shot a few seconds later. But the first shot did not miss. Instead of hitting the outboard engine on the left wing, the projectile pierced the engine’s pylon, severing several fuel, pneumatic, hydraulic, and bleed air lines. The Il-78’s pilot had no choice but to shut the engine down before it tore itself apart.
The second shot also did not miss. It traveled directly up the tailpipe of the inboard engine on the left wing, exactly where Angel had aimed. The projectile had already softened from friction as it traveled through the air, and flying through the nearly two-thousand-degree jet exhaust made it softer still — so when the practically molten titanium hit the engine’s combustion chamber, it completely disintegrated into a fist-size slug of metal that sped through the compressor section of the engine and spattered, shredding the compressor blades and instantly tearing apart the Soloviev D-30KP engine.
The Ilyushin-78 could fly very well on just two engines, especially at its light gross weight, but the pilot had to lower the nose to regain his lost airspeed, and he was hit at just over four hundred meters aboveground — there was no time to try to coax it back to flying speed. The pilot made the decision to pull the right throttles to idle and do a controlled crash landing. The Il-78 flew much better with the right engines pulled back to more closely match the destroyed left engines, so the pilot was able to pancake his tanker into the boggy tundra in an almost perfectly wings-level attitude.
“Splash one big-ass plane,” Angel reported.
“Good shooting, Angel,” Wohl said. “Take your fire team and check for survivors. Bring back the injured and nonresisters — deal with the others. We have enough captives here already.”
“Copy,” Angel said simply — she rarely said much more than that while wearing the Tin Man battle armor. She radioed her Marine fire team to pick her up in a Russian wheeled armored personnel carrier, and they drove quickly out to the crash site.
In thirty minutes she returned with all seven crew members, including one fatality and two injured in the crash. The conscious Russians were shocked to see the U.S. Marines at their air base in the middle of nowhere in Siberia, and even more amazed to see Angel in her Tin Man electronic battle armor.
But not as amazed as they were when they saw a weird-looking B-52 bomber on final approach to their runway. It
The B-52 stopped in less than half the length of the runway and quickly taxied to a designated parking spot, where fuel trucks were waiting. With the engines still running, the belly hatch popped open, and Patrick McLanahan and twelve more men and women stepped out. This EB-52’s crew compartment, which normally carried just two crew members, had been modified with bolt-in seats to accommodate six additional crew members on both the upper and lower decks. After stretching their cramped and aching muscles, the twelve maintenance technicians got
