“I don’t need them to align.” McLanahan looked out the sloped windows. Angelina followed his gaze, finally spotting the aircraft sitting on the runway. They could now see the attackers trying to level a bazooka at them. “Do it,” McLanahan ordered.
Angelina hurried back to her station. To McLanahan, the wait was excruciating. He glanced backward a few times, but as the plane rushed forward he focused on the camouflaged attackers. There were four of them—two firing rifles from behind the plane, two others loading the bazooka. “Angelina ...”
“Ready,” she called behind him.
“Fire. ” McLanahan threw his arms up in front of his face as he said it.
He never saw the results—but then, no human could see the advanced AMRAAM air-to-air missile as it fired off the left pylon at Mach two. The missile leapt forward on a stream of fire. The primary solid-fuel engine had just barely reached full impulse burn when it plowed into the plane less than a half-mile in front of the Old Dog.
What McLanahan did see was a blinding flash of light and a massive black cloud of smoke and dust. A split second later, the needlelike nose of the Old Dog plunged through the chaos.
Nothing happened—no crunch of metal, no explosion of the windscreen in front of him. A moment later the cockpit windows cleared, revealing a barrier infinitely larger than the plane they had just blown away—the seven-thousand-feet of granite called Groom Mountain.
“Go for it,” McLanahan called out to Ormack.
Far behind the Megafortress, Hal Briggs had been pinned to the fence, his face mashed into the chain link by the force of the jet blast. He heard an explosion a few moments later, expecting the crash, the sound of exploding fuel, waiting for the fireball to engulf him. It didn’t happen. It was an eternity until he could clear the stinging sand out of his face and eyes and look toward the horizon.
What he saw was the Old Dog lifting off through a cloud of gray and black dust over the morning Nevada desert. A lump of burning metal lay several yards from the sand-covered runway, with smoking bodies flung hundreds of feet away.
The Old Dog hovered perhaps fifty feet above the high desert floor, nearly obscured by the cloud of dust. He could barely see the huge wheels retract into the huge body—and then the aircraft rose like a winged rocket into the clear morning air.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Briggs muttered, sitting in a three-foot drift of sand and tumbleweeds. “They did it. They did it.”
Ormack flipped a switch on the overhead console beneath the cabin altitude indicator. Slowly the long, black needle nose moved upward and snapped into position. Half the windscreen was now obscured by the long SST nose, the windows blending in with its sleek lines.
“Watch the instruments,” Ormack said cross-cockpit. Despite the noise inside the bomber, he and McLanahan were still talking loud enough to be heard without the interphone. “Gear coming up. I hope someone got all the ground locks.” He reached across and moved the gear lever up. The red light in the handle snapped on.
“Instruments are okay,” McLanahan said. He found the gear indicators on the front panel beside the gear level. One by one, the little wheel depictions on the indicators changed to crosshatch and then to the word UP, and the bumping and screeching of tires stowing in the wheel wells could be heard. “Right tip gear up . . . forward mains up . . . aft mains up . . . the left tip gear is still showing crosshatch.”
Ormack cross-checked the indicator with the TIP GEAR NOT IN TRAIL caution light—it was showing unsafe too. “It might be hanging there, or it could be part-way up. We probably ripped out the whole left wingtip.” He did some experimental turns left and right. “Steering feels okay. The spoilers seem like they’re still working.” He glanced down and double-checked that he had shut off* the fuel valves from the left externals. “We can try emergency retraction later.”
He ran a hand over his sweating face and scanned instruments, left and right, as the Megafortress cleared the snow-covered Groom Mountain ridge line. “Looks like we lost all the eighteen thousand pounds in the left external A tank—probably lost the whole tank. The left external B is still with us but it’s feeding too fast, faster than the right externals. It’s probably dumping all that fuel overboard.” He shut off* the fuel transfer switch to the left external B. tank. “That means we’re short about forty thousand pounds.”
He looked over at McLanahan, who was still staring at the mountain ridges sliding under the Old Dog’s sleek black nose. “Pat, check the hydraulics.”
McLanahan scanned the quarter-sized hydraulic gauges on the left control panel. At first he was diverted by the fancy schematics added on to the panel showing the direction and metering of hydraulic power from the six engine-driven hydraulic pumps.
“Well?”
McLanahan then noticed it. “Pressure on the left outboard spoiler-tip gear is low.”
Ormack shook his head. “Well, we’re going to lose the left outboard system pretty soon. Make sure the standby pump switch is off.”
“It’s off.”
“We’re not going to try to emergency raise the tip gear,” Ormack said. “The entire wingtip is probably smashed. We’d deplete the hydraulic system for nothing.” He checked airspeed and altitude. “Okay. We’re airborne. Flaps coming up.”
McLanahan watched the gauge closely. A half-minute later they indicated full-up.
“Well, something’s finally working okay,” Ormack said.
“Good job,” General Elliott said above the noise in the cockpit. Ormack and McLanahan turned in surprise. The general was standing between the two ejection seats, nodding approval. McLanahan looked at his leg. There was a large bandage and elastic cloth wrapped around the calf and thigh.
“How’s your leg, General?”
“Hurts like hell, Patrick. Feels like something took a bite out of it. But Wendy and Angelina did a fine job. Lucky we had so many first aid kits on board.”
“What the hell happened’ General? Who were those guys that attacked us?”
“I’m not sure, Patrick. I was advised by intelligence of certain rumors, but I never thought... It looks like maybe there was a leak somewhere. My hunch is that whoever authorized that attack expected those B-ls to be still at Dreamland.” Elliott cleared his throat. “I’ll take it now, Patrick.”
“You sure you feel up to it, General? Your leg—”
“I’ll let John push on the rudder pedal if I need to. Otherwise I can handle this beast. Get everyone else on helmet and oxygen and stand by for a climb check.” So saying, Elliott moved himself aside and let McLanahan climb out of the seat and pass around him to go downstairs. Then with help from Ormack, he settled himself into the pilot’s ejection seat and fastened the parachute harness.
“All right,” he said, readjusting the headset and placing his hands around the yoke. “I’ve got the aircraft.”
“Roger, you have the aircraft,” Ormack acknowledged, assuring positive transfer of control with a slight shake of the control column.
“Let’s clean up the after takeoff checklist. Landing gear.”
“Gear up, indicating five up,” Ormack replied. “Left tip gear is reading crosshatch. Left outboard hydraulic system is low and will probably fail soon.”
“Confirmed.” Elliott rechecked the hydraulic gauges. “It’ll be okay for the time being. Flaps.”
“Lever up and off, flaps up.”
“Throttles.”
“Set for MRT climb. Nav, you up?”
“Nav’s up,” Luger replied immediately.
“Outside air temp zero, anti-ice off.”
“MRT EPR two point one seven.”
“Throttles set,” Ormack said, checking the gauges.
“Start switches.”
“Off and FLIGHT.”
“Air conditioning master switch.”
“Seven point four-five PSI, radar and defense, normal cooling air available,” Ormack said as conditioned air rushed from the cabin vents.
“Offense copies,” Luge
r replied as McLanahan buckled his parachute harness and rechecked his equipment.
“Defense copies,” Pereira said mechanically, watching as Wendy Tork secured herself into her seat. Angelina scanned her instrument panels, then opened her checklist and began to bring up her array of armament equipment.
“Slipway doors, open then closed.” Ormack reached up and flipped the SLIPWAY DOOR switch to OPEN on the overhead panel. The green CLOSED AND LOCKED light went on. He flipped the switch to NORMAL CLOSED and the indicator came on again.
“Open then closed, check closed.”
“This beast climbs like an angel,” Elliott said. “We’re past twelve thousand already. Crew, oxygen check.” He glanced around his seat. His helmet was nowhere in sight.
“Go ahead and check them in, John,” he said. “I’ll check mine when I get leveled off.” Ormack looked slightly embarrassed. He pulled the boom mike closer and said, “Defense?”
“Uh . . . defense is not complete.”
“Neither is offense.”
Elliott looked in surprise at his copilot. “We don’t . . . ?”
“Nobody,” Ormack said.
“Nobody has an oxygen mask? No helmet?” Elliott said over the interphone.
“We didn’t exactly have time to pack a lunch, General,” McLanahan said.
“Goddamn it,” Elliott said. He checked the cabin altimeter on the eyebrow panel; it held steady at seven thousand feet. “Cabin altitude is steady at seven thousand. How about any masks at all? Emergency masks? Anything?’’
Ormack checked behind his seat. “The firefighter’s mask is in place,’’ he said, pulling the bag around and examining the mask. It was a full-face mask with a bayonet clip for the ship’s oxygen system, designed for a crew member to plug into a portable oxygen “walkaround” bottle and battle a cabin fire.
“One oxygen mask,” Elliott said. “No helmets.”
“We’ll just have to stay below ten thousand feet,” Ormack said. “We can’t risk a higher altitude. A subtle loss of cabin altitude, the entire crew gets hypoxic—we’d be dead before we knew it.”
“We can’t do that,” Elliott said. “This aircraft is top secret. We’ve got to get to a higher altitude and isolate ourselves until my staff or someone comes up with a suitable landing base. Under ten thousand feet, too many air and ground eyes can watch us.”
“Then I’ll just keep this thing on until we land, sir,” Ormack said. “A few hours at best. I can handle it.”
“No,” Elliott said. “The mask restricts your vision too much, and there’s no communications hookup. Okay, ladies and gents, listen up. Until we get back on the ground, we’re all in jeopardy. No one has any oxygen, at least not a safe supply. You can stick your oxygen hose in your face and go to ‘EMER’ to get a shot of oxygen—as a matter of fact, we’ll do that—but it’s a real danger. We’ll do station and compartment checks every fifteen minutes. Check around more often. Keep alert for signs of hypoxia. The copilot and I will take turns with the fire mask. Check around your stations to see what else we’re missing.”
“Does it matter, General?” Wendy asked. “We’re going to land soon, aren’t we?”
“When it gets dark, and when we find a base that can take us. Obviously, Dreamland is out. Tonopah or Indian Springs might be alternates. Angelina, Wendy, get in contact with mission control and—”
“Problem, General,” Angelina interrupted. “No secrets.”
“No communications documents? No encoding tables? IFF?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What do we have on board?”
“The whole world will know about us in no time, General,” Ormack said. “The attack on Dreamland, this plane, the whole thing. They can’t keep all this secret. When this plane lands, the whole world will be on hand to see it.”
Elliott pushed on the yoke to level off at seventeen thousand feet, staring straight ahead over the long, sleek nose of the Megafortress. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “Level-off checks, John. Angelina, get a UHF phone patch through Nellis to Cobalt Control. That’s my section in Washington. Advise them that we’re okay and request a secure radio setup and frequency as soon as possible.”
“Roger.”
Just then a loud voice over all the UHF radios on board interrupted them. “This is Los Angeles Center on guard. Aircraft heading two-eight- five, altitude seventeen thousand feet, squawk five-two-one-nine and ident if you can hear me.”
“That’s us,” Ormack said. Elliott reached down to his side panel, set the IFF frequency, turned the transmitter to ON, and hit the IDENT button.
“Aircraft is radar contact,” the air traffic controller replied. “Change to frequency two-nine-seven point eight.”
Elliott changed the frequency. “Los Angeles Center, this is Genesis on two-nine-seven point eight.”
“Genesis, ident and spell full call sign,” Los Angeles came back. Elliott spelled the name.
“Genesis?” Ormack said. “What’s that?”
“It’s an old classified collective call sign for military experimental aircraft from Edwards,” Elliott told him. “We used it when we wanted to go to the high-altitude structure but didn’t want anyone, even the military airspace controllers, to know who we were. Dreamland has launched a lot of aircraft without flight plans all over this area. I hope the guy asks someone else about it instead of me.”
“Genesis ...” the confusion in the controller’s voice was apparent. “. . . Genesis, we show no flight plan for you. Say your departure point.”
“Unable, Los Angeles.”
There was a longer pause. Then: “Genesis, your primary target is very weak. Say type of aircraft, intentions and destination.”
“This guy is trying to gut it out even if he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Elliott said to Ormack. He switched to the radio. “Los Angeles, Genesis is requesting direct Friant, direct Talon intersection and holding at Talon within fifty nautical miles at flight level three-niner zero.”
“Unable your request through valley traffic without a flight plan, Genesis . . .”
“Request you contact our command post on military AUTO VON or Department of Defense DTS nine-eight-one, one-four-two-four, for our flight plan if it isn’t in your system in the next two minutes. Meanwhile, request direct Friant, direct Talon at the three-niner zero.”
“Genesis ...” the controller, not accustomed to pilots telling him what to do, was clearly agitated. “Unable. Enter standard holding north of the Coaldale two-five-three degree radial between twenty and thirty DME, right hand turns, at one-seven thousand five hundred until we straighten this out.”
“Genesis is proceeding VFR at this time, Los Angeles,” Elliott said. “Maintaining sixteen thousand five hundred feet, proceeding direct Talon. We’ll file a VFR flight plan with Coaldale Flight Service.”
“Genesis, you have your instructions,” the controller called back. “Enter holding as directed.”
“Passing over the Coaldale VORTAC, General,” Ormack said.
“Nuts to that,” Elliott said, and switched the mode 3 IFF to 7600, the radio-out IFF advisory. “Climbing to three-nine zero, crew,” he said over interphone. “John, dial up Friant.”
“He’s gonna be pissed,” Ormack said as he changed the TACAN frequency to steer themselves to the next navigation point.
“If he never gets our flight plan, he’ll never know who we are unless he scrambles interceptors against us,” Elliott said. “If he gets our flight plan, it won’t matter. If he scrambles fighters . . . well, we don’t have a tail number. We don’t even look much like a real B-52.”
“Genesis, this is Los Angeles Center”—the controller’s voice was ragged—“you are violated at this time. Turn left to heading—”
Elliott switched off the radio. “I’ll keep the emergency and radio-out squawks going until we’re out over water,” Elliott said. “He may be pissed but he’ll clear the airspace for us.” .
“Not the
best way to begin,” Luger said to McLanahan in the downstairs compartment.
McLanahan gave a shrug. He opened his checklist and began to activate the radar, satellite navigation system, and the ring-laser gyro. A few minutes later the radar was warmed up and ready for use.
Luger meanwhile was plotting a fix on a high-altitude airways chart he found in a flight publications bag behind his seat.
“Any jet charts in there? GNC charts? Anything?” McLanahan asked.
“No, standard FLIP bag,” Luger told him.
“Great. Just great. Well, we do have a flight plan. There should be Red Flag bomb range training data in here.” McLanahan checked that the correct mission cartridge was inserted into the reader, then flipped the READ lever. Twenty seconds later the flight plan, target coordinates, fixpoints, weapon coefficients, and terrain elevations for the entire southwest United States were resident in the master computer. He then checked the gyro, nav computer, and satellite global positioning systems.
“The ring-laser gyro and satellite systems are ready to go,” McLanahan said. He turned the satellite navigator to SYNCHRONIZE. “We need a present position fix to align the gyro and start the nav computer. After that it’ll take a minute to start navigating on its own.”
As Luger took radar fixes and began a rough DR log on the margins of the enroute charts, McLanahan waited for the satellite to lock on. After two minutes the SYNC ERROR advisory light was still lit.
“Okay,” Luger said, putting his plotter down. “We’re on a pretty good heading to Talon intersection. How’s it going over there?”
“Bad to worse,” McLanahan said. “I just realized why. The satellite GPS needs a synchronizer code.”
“And naturally we don’t have one.”
“Naturally,” McLanahan said. He punched the Scorpion missile radar on to TRANSMIT and switched it to its original navigation radar mode. He looked into the scope, watching the Pacific coastline come into view in one hundred mile range, then in frustration switched it back to STANDBY.
“It’s hard to take a radar fix without a radar chart or description of the fixpoints,” he said. “The ring-laser gyro will probably align with an overfly fix or a DR position, but I don’t know how accurate the heading will be.”
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