or so when they dropped the weapons.
Fireballs tore around them. Something smashed into a wing and the stick wiggled hard in Jake’s fist. He shot a glance at the left wing. All okay. But on the right wing fuel was erupting through two holes and being blasted back into the slipstream.
Oh, Jesus! Sweet Jesus, help us get out of this alive “I’ve got the target and we’re in attack,” Tiger said. The last spurts of the right-wing fuel siphoned away. There was still a ton in the left wing but both wings drained through a common pump, which needed fuel from both wings to be effective. Jake had no choice.
He opened the wing dumps and let the unusable fuel pour into the slipstream.
They still had nine thousand pounds internal, and if they could make it to the tanker in the Gulf they’d have a chance.
“Two miles.” The pilot readied his finger over the emergency jettison button. The release marker was marching down.
“Gimme one second’s warning,” he reminded Tiger The circuit had a safety feature that required the button be held at least a second to prevent inadvertent jettisoning.
“Now!”
Jake depressed the button and held it. Whump! He slammed the stick over and turned left hard. The hydraulic pressure and the airspeed sagged, but he had to escape the impact area or they would be caught in the blast. The bombs exploded. A blinding light flashed in the mirrors, and the concussion buffeted, but did not harm, the plane.
The Intruder was headed south over the city.
Tiger keyed his radio mike and spoke to the Black Eagle controller, safe and snug in his E-2 over the Gulf. “Five Double-nuts is off target and coming out.”
“Roger that. Are you declaring an emergency?”
“Affirmative. We’re going to need a tanker as soon as we’re feet wet.”
Jake selected the main internal tank on the fuel gauge and dodged flak while he waited for the needle to register the correct amount.
My God! Only five thousand pounds left. The tank must be spewing the stuff out. There won’t be enough fuel to make it even to the tanker. We’re going to have to eject! But where? Just to make it out of North Vietnam would be tricky.
Tracers rose ahead in shimmering curtains of fire. Now they were over Hanoi, and the flak was in front and on all sides. The black shapes of rooftops and trees stood out clearly in the starlight and the eerie glow of the tracers. Jake descended until he was skimming the rooftops. Hell, just to make it out of Hanoi would be a trick and a half.
At this height, in this light, they were visible to every man, woman, and child with a weapon. He felt the thumps of small-arms bullets penetrating the side-of the aircraft. The hounds had the fox nearly at bay.
As he pointed out the fuel indicator to Cole a stream of fire came from the right and headed straight for the windshield. Jake porpoised up and over the stream and both men flinched, a useless reflex. They were lucky. Thumps in the tail only.
“What’s your position?” someone asked on the radio.
“Right over Hanoi,” Grafton shouted. Illuminated by tracers, the city looked like an open door into hell. Every building seemed to have a coven of antiaircraft guns mounted on it.
“The radio is dead,” Tiger said.
More thumps from something hitting the plane. The annunciator panel, normally dark, glowed with yellow lights. Left generator gone, left speed drive out, hydraulic pumps, fuel filter…. Why the fuel filter? Jake didn’t have time to think about it. Yellow fireballs wound out at them and something smashed against the wings.
The bird was dying. Jake glanced at Tiger. “You jump ship now if you want-“
“Keep roiling the dice,” Tiger said.
Jake swung into a hard right turn and spoke into the dead radio. “Devil Five Oh Oh’s turning west. We’ going to Laos.”
He concentrated on keeping the nose up and flying just above the buildings.
The gunners could see the plane in this light, so he needed to be as low as possible to make their aiming more difficult. On the chance that the transmissions might be heard, the bombardier continued to report their intentions over the radio.
Ahead, to the left, a gunner opened up with a long continuous burst. The tracers came in a flat arc. Jake pulled up slightly and the shells streaked underneath But the gunner corrected. The pilot retarded the single throttle momentarily and the plane decelerated, causing the stream of tracers to pass ahead of them. Jake shoved the throttle back to the stops and dived as low as he dared. The tracers seemed to correct in slow motion. “You’ll burn the fucking barrel up,” he screamed at the enemy gunner. Ahead loomed building taller than its neighbors. The plane banked around the right side and the shells slammed into the building.
Flashes. White flashes off to the right. Jake narrowed his eyes in that direction. Trip-hammer flashes, a dozen a second, marched across the city.
“B-52 raid,” Tiger whispered in awe.
The city lay naked in the pulsating light of the bombs The Intruder, rocked by concussion waves, hung suspended in the Popping-light universe of flashing bomb and white-hot fireballs. For almost a minute the unseen - 52s scourged the city. The A-6 shot into the darkness over the rice paddies. In the rear-view mirror, Jake saw fires burning and the streaks of flak still rising.
“Sweet Jesus,” Tiger Cole said.
“We’re gonna make it, man,” Jake said, his voice cracking.
The fuel gauge showed four thousand pounds. Occasional flashes of burp guns lit the night-pinpricks after what they’d been through. Grafton floated the plane up to almost 500 feet on the radar altimeter.
The barometric altimeter was frozen.
“Come right five degrees,” Tiger said. “The computer quit a while back but the radar still works. We’re coming into the mouth of a valley, and I’ll steer us up it.” The land was rising. Jake nudged the plane up to hold at 500 feet above the ground. The darkness outside the plane was complete. They flew on, Tiger ordering minor heading changes.
The left fire-warning light came on again. It was distractingly bright, so Jake smashed it with his flashlight. He watched the fuel indicator.
Thirty-two hundred pounds. They topped the crest of the valley and continued to climb. In a moment they went beyond the maximum altitude of the radar altimeter, and it stopped working, as it was designed to do.
“Swing left ten and hold that course.”
Tiger turned the radio transmitter to Guard, an emergency frequency that was always monitored. These calls went out over a separate transmitter, so maybe they were being heard by someone even though the crew’s earphones remained silent. Jake’s eyes were itching.
He loosened his oxygen mask and sniffed the cockpit air. Something burning. He turned off the air- conditioning switch. The smell hung in the cockpit. He replaced his mask and cinched it tight.
Jake could actually see the needle on the fuel indicator dropping.
Where was that fuel going? it had to be spraying into the left engine bay through the hole smashed by the flak shells. If it ignites, we’ll be strumming harps with Corey Ford and the Boxman. Those engine burner cans and the tailpipe have to still be hot enough to ignite that fuel. He rechecked the engine/fuel master switch to ensure that no electric power was reaching the burner-can igniters. The switch was off, but he didn’t remember toggling it, although if he hadn’t they probably would be dead by now.
Twenty-three hundred pounds on the dial. Almost three hundred pounds a minute was disappearing partly into the right engine and partly into the air.
Jake calculated that was eighteen thousand pounds an hour. They had eight more minutes, maybe another few miles.
Every mile they traveled increased their chances of being rescued instead of captured. The Air Force SAR teams could pick them up in Laos, but North Vietnam was too heavily defended for a helicopter to survive Come on, baby! Don’t fail us now.
Eighteen hundred pounds left. His gut was tied in a knot and he had trouble thinking about their dilemma.
