by Peter Bryant
"Thanks, Stan." Brown waited for Owens to call the ten miles. He decided five seconds after that he’d begin to go down. He’d have to watch his Mach number very carefully. Normally, the 52 was well behaved right up to point nine six of the speed of sound. But the blast damage might have roughened up the airflow. He’d have to be alert for the first hint of vibration which would indicate compressibility troubles.
"Ten miles," Owens said. "Moving away to starboard."
"Roger." Brown’s hand went to the trim control. He counted off the seconds. With two left he said, "Going down," and thumbed the trim control forward. "Remember we aren’t pressurised. Keep swallowing. I can’t go back up for anyone with ear trouble."
The descent indicator moved round until it showed a rate of fourteen thousand feet per minute. Brown trimmed the bomber into the right position to maintain that rate of descent. He watched the Machmeter carefully as it moved up from point nine. Almost immediately he felt the judder. The Machmeter was indicating only point nine three. He said, "Cut back on revs, Federov."
"Cutting."
Lieutenant Goldsmith reported in from the rear fuselage. "Captain, the hornets are snarled but good. A piece of metal from that missile got the main feed servo. Nothing I can do about it, so I’m coming back up."
Brown acknowledged the message, and concentrated on his speed and rate of descent. He thought maybe the air brakes had been hit too. Something was definitely wrong. Working closely with Federov he cut back the revs to the danger point. They could not bring them down any lower without risking a flame-out. But the speed still built up too fast. Gradually, Brown trimmed back until at a descent rate of ten thousand per minute the plane was holding a steady point nine one. There was little vibration. It was a comparatively slow rate of descent, but it would have to do. Anything faster meant shaking the bomber to pieces.
"Hostile at twelve miles, four o’clock," Owens said. "Turning in."
Brown frowned, glanced at the altimeter. Still at twenty-seven thousand. He hoped the Russian pilot wouldn’t turn too tight, and wasn’t too expert at recovering and straightening out on the attack run.
"Thirteen miles, five o’clock," Owens said. "Straightening out." He paused for a few seconds, watching the scope with a concentration so intense he was oblivious to anything except the menacing brightness of the hostile echo. He saw it move ever more slowly over to six o’clock, with the range going out only slightly. "Six o’clock, now, fourteen miles. Captain, this boy’s turning real fast."
"Yeah," Brown said. "He straight now?"
"Sure, coming in straight. I’ll call him at ten and every mile after."
Brown noted the height. Twenty-three thousand. He quickly calculated the time needed to get the bomber down to ground level against the time the fighter needed to reach firing position. It was a simple problem. The fighter would be closing them at about ten miles a minute. Say he let fly at two miles range. That meant only a little more than seventy seconds before firing point. In seventy seconds the bomber would be down to an altitude of ten thousand feet. It was too high.
Suddenly, Brown was afraid. For the first time in his life he felt the physical impact of naked fear. For the first time he experienced the special refinement of agony which fear can produce in a normally brave man. He recognised it for what it was, rationalised it, and concentrated with all his determination on the job he had in hand. He did not conquer the fear, but he pushed it far enough in the background so he could continue to function efficiently.
"Ten miles," Owen called.
Ten miles. And Alabama Angel still at nineteen thousand. There wasn’t a chance of getting low enough. Desperately he sought for something he had overlooked, something which would enable him to outguess the electronic devices in the fighter behind him. But he knew there was nothing. The anti-missiles brain could swamp the low powered signals from missiles, impose its own will upon them by sheer force. But the Russians had fighters—a new supersonic series, one of which was probably boring in on them now—equipped with radar too powerful for the brain to deceive.
"Eight miles." Owens’ voice was brittle; positive but troubled.
Brown admitted to himself there was nothing he could do to counter the threat except to try and judge the moment when the figher would loose its rockets. With the admission came an immediate release of tension, and a slackening of the tight embrace which fear had locked around him. He heard Owens count the fighter in to seven miles, five, three. He braced himself for quick action.
"Goldsmith," he said urgently. "Shout ‘now’ at any sign of rocket release."
"Roger."
Brown trimmed the bomber neutral, maintained the downward path by pressure on the controls. There was just one chance. The Russian pilot’s automatic predictor sight would have computed the downward progress of the airplane. It would aim his rockets at a point where the bomber should be if it continued downwards. "Give me full power when I start nosing up, Federov," he said.
"Now," Goldsmith screamed down the intercom.
Brown heaved back on the stick, felt the fast build up of centrifugal force press him heavily down in his seat. The plane flattened out of the descent, lifted its nose reluctantly towards the sky, and began to climb. He counted the seconds as the salvo of rockets accelerated towards them, found his brain was working so fast he had time to assess the chances of the rockets carrying nuclear warhead. He put them pretty low.
The main salvo of rockets passed harmlessly beneath the bomber, too far away for the proximity fuses to fire them. Three, flying higher than the rest, detonated as they passed underneath. They did not cause any damage. A fourth, possibly through some defect in its stabilisers, came in higher and slower than the others. It exploded ten yards off the starboard side of the rear end of the pressure cabin, the twenty kilo charge erupting its steel case into a hundred lethal pieces.
The blast gouged out whole sections of the fuselage and starboard wing. Between twenty and thirty jagged lumps of steel tore through the cabin. Mellows, Goldsmith, and Minter died at once, their bodies ripped open by the furious metal. Andersen was untouched, but Garcia was hit in the leg. Federov received only a slight flesh wound. Engelbach and Owens were not hit, but a fragment wrecked Owens’ main radar.
Brown felt a slamming impact in his back, which knocked him forward to slump unconscious against the controls. And Alabama Angel, responsive to the forward movement of the stick, pushed her nose down again, and began the long, sickening slide into the hostile darkness beneath.
It was Federov who recovered first from the shock of the explosion. He stumbled forward to the pilot’s seat, heaved Brown out, and lowered him gently to the floor. Freed of Brown’s weight on the controls, the nose of the bomber began slowly to lift towards the horizontal, in obedience to the urge of the trimmers. Federov, panting with the effort of moving Brown, climbed into the seat. He was vaguely conscious of Andersen bending over the unconscious pilot.
Federov knew he had to act fast. The fighter might be circling for another strike. Or other fighters might be heading in on the target. Federov was no pilot, but like all SAC engineers he had been given a hundred or so hours dual. He could look after the plane in the air if he was not called on to land it, or to perform really tight combat flying. And he knew the safest place was near the ground. O.K., that’s where he’d head for. He eased the stick forward, trimming the aircraft into a nose down position at the same time. Again Alabama Angel tilted down into the darkness.
Next, Federov assessed the damage. Amazingly, all six engines were still functioning normally. He felt the onset of compressibility vibration, and hastily cut back the revs of the engines. The juddering stopped. He made a quick and thorough inspection of the instruments. All the flying instruments were all right. Fuel feeds seemed to be normal.
Temperatures and pressures were about right. Federov sighed with relief. The plane was still flying and still flyable. He settled to the task of holding her steadily on course as she lost height. I
t did not occur to him even to consider turning back.
Andersen, bending over Brown, saw his eyes suddenly blink open. Brown moved his head slowly to one side, looking up past Andersen’s face to where Federov sat in the pilot’s seat. His lips moved soundlessly, the words lost without trace in the roaring noise of the cabin. Then he began to ease himself up. Andersen moved a hand in protest, urging him to stay down. Brown brushed it impatiently away, and motioned Andersen to help him. Andersen hauled him him slowly upright, and Brown tapped Federov to indicate he wanted to resume the seat. It was only as he climbed into the seat that Andersen saw the dark, spreading stains on his torn clothing half way up the right side of his back.
Brown sank into his seat. He was not yet feeling any pain beyond a dull ache. But he knew he was hit hard. He felt as though someone had broken off a spear point in his back. It did not hurt, but he was conscious of a bulk which had intruded itself into his body where it had no place to be. He fumbled for the intercom set which had torn away when Federov removed him a few moments before, and checked it was properly connected. Then he said, "Stan, where are we?"
"We’ve crossed in," Andersen said quickly. "Hold this course a while, unless . . ." he let the sentence tail off.
Brown made no reply. He glanced at the altimeter, then flicked on his radio altimeter. It was working. He remembered that the aerials were out on the port wing tip. Mercifully, they’d not been damaged by the explosion. It made all the difference. Now he could hold an accurate height above ground. Three thousand feet now, and he found he could see quite well. Andersen had been wrong about the cloud. There were a few patches up above, but the stars shone through with the clean, hard brightness of the northern latitudes. The snow on the ground helped too, though it was likely to be deceptive when judging distances.
He said, "Unless nothing, Stan. For the moment we go on. I don’t have to tell you how important it is we get through. Right now, we might be the only people standing between Russia and the destruction of the States. We have to go on, and we have to take that base out. It’s our duty, and by God we’re going to do it."
"Sure," Andersen said. "Sure, Clint. Is there enough light to fly low. Real low, I mean?"
"There’s enough," Brown said shortly. His face twisted in pain as a sudden hot shaft of agony stabbed into his back. Here we go, he thought grimly. It was not the first time he had been wounded. When he was only sixteen his brother had accidentally punched a twenty-two slug through his leg while they were out hunting. The first few minutes had been fine. Just a kind of numbness. He had even laughed and joked. The next six hours, before they finally got back to medical aid, had been unadulterated hell.
He said quickly, before the next shaft of pain should hit, "Let’s round up on the damage and the casualties. See what’s working. I’m going to run in to the target at deck level. Ten miles away, I’ll climb up to bomb, let her go, then turn and come back out on the deck. Flight plan on that, will you Stan?"
"Right away." Andersen’s hand reached out for his computer.
"All right then," Brown said. He paused, gasping as the pain hit him again, then went on, "We’ll make it, men. Believe me, we’ll make it and take that base out. Back home right now, they’re relying on us to get through, because we know just how important they consider that particular base. And they can rely on us. Because we will."
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* * *
Chapter 15
Sonora, Texas
* * *
11.25 G.M.T.
Moscow: 2.25 p.m.
Washington: 6.25 a.m.
When the President had taken the decision to send the Rangers into Sonora, General Keppler had said his men would brush the defence aside without too much trouble. General Franklin had insisted there would be heavy casualties. Both generals had been partly right.
The Rangers had moved fast across terrain unfamiliar to them. Wherever they could, they had bypassed troublesome machine-gun, emplacements and flak towers. Where they could not, they had brushed them aside. They had taken casualties in the process.
The men of Dog Company, in particular, advancing southeast towards the administration building, had run into trouble when they were caught on the smooth, naked concrete of the 839th Wing’s servicing area by the cross fire of two flak towers, each of which mounted two Skysweepers. There was no cover for them on the huge, flat expanse of concrete. They could not dig in, they could not even rely on the earth absorbing some of the hail of shells which ripped into them. The shells exploded instantly on contact with the concrete, and the air became a singing inferno of metal. Dog Company lost sixty per cent of its effective strength in the first minute, and the survivors hastily withdrew under cover of smoke.
The other companies had better luck, but they also took a constant trickle of casualties, which might at any moment become a flood if they were caught on open concrete as Dog Company had been. An airfield by its very nature is usually flat. Sonora was exceptionally flat, and a great part of the flat ground was coated with concrete in the form of runways, servicing areas, fuelling areas, and readiness pens. There was very little cover, and the flak towers mounted as much firepower altogether as would normally be allocated to a division.
The battalion commander, an officer who had seen action in North Africa and Italy, and later in Korea, assessed the casualties reported to him over the walkie-talkie, and decided he must slow up. The only fast line of advance was across the concrete where Dog Company had perished. But advance on that line was impossible while the two flak towers dominated it. He considered how they could be neutralised.
It was a tough problem. The concrete towers had been designed to stand up to a ten kiloton blast at five hundred yards from zero, the kind of blast a tactical atomic weapon might be expected to deliver. They were vulnerable from above, but with the magnificent field of fire they possessed, no mortar crew could hope to live at a range where they could drop their mortar bombs accurately into the circular gun nest. The only answer was smoke. And enough smoke took time to put down. The battalion commander decided it would just have to take time. He gave the orders.
Howard was watching the battle from the window of Quinten’s office. It was perfectly safe to remain there, as Quinten had explained to him. When the main object of an attack is to secure the opposing commander alive, the headquarters of that commander is most certainly not a target. One or two stray bullets had smacked into the wall of the building, but that was all.
Like most infantry battles, the fight at Sonora was quite meaningless to the observer who was not himself an infantryman. By the light of constantly erupting flares, Howard had seen a group of men wither away under the fire of two of the flak towers. He had no real idea of the significance of their withdrawal, or of the strange inactivity which followed it.
He turned as Quinten’s telephone rang, and heard Quinten receive information and give fresh orders. The general looked directly at him. "We’re taking a lot of casualties, Paul," he said. "They’re within five hundred yards of this building now. The Security Officer thinks they’re re-grouping." His voice was quiet, and with the suspicion of a tremor in it. It was the voice of a man who is infinitely weary, and infinitely sad.
Howard felt a sudden, strange compassion for Quinten. It pushed into the background the cold anger which he had been nursing. "Call it off now," he said. "Call it off now, Quint." Without realising it, he used the general’s nickname.
Quinten smiled at him momentarily. "You’re a good boy, Paul," he said. "You’ll go a long way. One day you’ll have to make a decision, and it may be a decision you don’t want to make. When that time comes, remember what’s happening now. Make the decision, no matter what it costs you personally. And once you’ve made it then stick with it.
"A lot of those men out there, whether they’re enlisted men or officers, are my friends. I know them, and their wives, and their families. I’ve helped them get married, been a godparent to their children, chewed them out when they�
�ve tied one on and missed duty. The fact they’re dying hurts me personally. I couldn’t live with what I’ve done to them. But I have to see things whole, and see them clearly. I’ve made my decision and I have to stick with it. Look, I’ll go this far with you. There’s a lull now, and no-one’s getting hurt. It’s coming up to eleven thirty-one. Average bomb time for the 843rd is five after twelve. I don’t figure they’ll be able to locate Bailey or Hudson inside thirty minutes, so I’ll authorise a cease-fire at eleven thirty-five. Does that help?"
Howard turned to look out of the window again. There was a grey wall of smoke where he had seen the two flak towers catch a bunch of men on the concrete plain that was the 839th servicing area. Occasionally the crack of single carbine or M.1 shots was heard from different parts of the base. Airmen shooting at shadows most likely. "It helps," he said shortly. "Let’s hope it stays quiet until then."
He lit a cigarette, and continued to watch the thick grey smoke as it gently stirred in the almost breezeless air. Three flares shone with a dazzling white incandescence, and slowly sank down towards the ground. When they were only fifty or sixty feet up a skirmish line of soldiers suddenly broke out of the smoke, spaced well apart, all moving in different directions, yet purposefully, as if to a well coordinated plan.