Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01

by Flight of the Old Dog (v1. 1)

  “You’re sure he’s tracking us, Wendy?” Elliott asked.

  “He can see us, all right, but I don’t think he’s tracking us. Just following us with his radar. There’s no guidance-type tracking signal.”

  “How far are we from the Alaska-Japan airway?”

  Luger checked his chart against the computer’s present-position readout. “Just a few minutes ahead—”

  “Unknown aircraft, please respond. Pazhaloosta. ”

  “Please?” General Elliott smiled. “Sounds like a kid. A polite kid.”

  Ormack looked at his pilot with surprise. “I didn’t know you understood Russian.”

  “I learned just enough to get my head blown off,” Elliott said. He thought for a moment. “If we tried to duck down to low-level now—”

  “He might lose us if we pushed it over hard enough,” Ormack said. “We might make it.”

  “I don’t think he could follow us with his radar,” Wendy added. “It doesn’t seem to be a sophisticated system, but he’d report losing us. He’s also in contact with someone out there. It might be Ossora ...”

  “Or it might be a wingman,” Lanahan put in. “Maybe an escort.”

  “Can you jam his transmissions, Wendy?” Elliott asked.

  “Yes, but that would be a dead giveaway.”

  “All right. Let’s get on the airway and see what this guy does.” He turned the wheel, and the bomber banked steeply to the left. “If he intercepts us, we’ll have to—try to down him. No other choice. Copy, Angelina?”

  “I’m ready, General,” she said, checking her weapon-status indications.

  “We’ll be just outside radar range of Beringa on this heading,” Luger reported as the Old Dog completed its steep turn.

  “Permission to use the tail radar to pick him up, General,” Angelina called.

  “Not yet.” Elliott took a deep breath, pulled the microphone closer to his lips, then switched his radio switch to GUARD.

  “Calling unknown aircraft, this is Lantern four-five Fox on GUARD. Say your call sign. Over.”

  “Lantern four-five Fox, this is Besarina two-two-one on GUARD. I read you loud and clear.” The Soviet pilot then said something in Russian.

  “Besarina two-two-one, I read you, but I don’t understand Russian.” Elliott paused, then said, “Fa in gavaryoo na vashim yizikye kharasho. Say again.”

  “Prastiti. I am sorry, four-five Fox. You . . . you are United States aircraft?”

  “Da. ”

  “Amirikanskaya, ” the Soviet pilot said excitedly. Then, more officially, reported, “Four-five Fox, you are at our twelve o’clock position, seven-six kilometers.” A slight pause. “I ... I never talk to United States before.”

  Ormack let out a long breath of air. “Looks like you may have made a friend, General.”

  “Two-two-one, you are Soviet military plane?” Elliott asked.

  “Yes!” came an enthusiastic reply. “Pay Vay Oh Strangy. Far East Command.” Elliott translated to the crew, as he did all the Russian.

  “PVO Strany,” Elliott said over interphone. “Air Defense unit. Could be a Bear or Backfire recon plane.”

  “Or a fighter,” Angelina said.

  “Gyda vi zhivyoti—excuse, pazhaloosta. Where you from, four-five Fox?” the Soviet pilot asked. “New York? Los Angeles? I know San Francisco.”

  “Butte, Montana,” Elliott said. Let him chew on that.

  “Mon-tanya? My English not very good. They teach English but we do not use much. Difficult.”

  A pause, then: “Four-five Fox, contact Kommandorskiye Approach on two-six-five decimal five. Immediately.” The new voice was clipped, military, authoritative.

  “Da, tovarisch, ” Elliott replied.

  “I report ... I report you on course okay, commander,” the Russian pilot said in a low, almost secretive voice. “You correcting back. Not okay to come closer. Okay, commander?”

  “Balshoya spasiba, tovarisch, ” Elliott replied. “Thank you.”

  “Pazhaloosta. Nice to talk English to you, Montanya.”

  “Two-six-five decimal five, roger,” Elliott repeated. Just before he changed channels he asked, “Atkooda vi? Where are you from, two-two- one?”

  “Ya iz—er, I from Kevitz,” the Soviet pilot said with hometown pride. “Big fisherman. Nice to talk, Montanya. Dasfidaniya, mnyabileochin priyatna/”

  Ormack shook his head as he changed the radio frequency. “Nice son of a bitch, wasn’t he?”

  “Kevitz,” Elliott said. “That’s what Kavaznya was known as before they built the laser there.”

  “He gave us a break,” Luger said. “I’ll bet he plotted our position. He must’ve noticed us because we were so far outside the airway.”

  “He’s not scanning us on radar anymore,” Wendy reported.

  Elliott reset the frequency on the number one radio.

  “You’re not going to contact Kommandorskiye, are you General?” Ormack said.

  “We don’t have any choice, John. If we don’t contact them, our friendly Bolshevik back there comes back and blows Montanya and his friends away.”

  Elliott keyed the microphone. “Kommandorskiye Approach, Lantern four-five Fox is with you at flight level four-five zero.”

  “Lantern four-five Fox, roger, at flight level four-five zero,” the Russian air traffic controller replied in hesitant English. “Say your heading, please.”

  “Sto shizfisyat. Heading is one-six-zero, Approach.”

  “Roger, four-five Fox. Spasiba. ” There was a slight pause, then: “I do not have a flight plan for you, Lantern four-five Fox.”

  “No shit,” Ormack said over interphone.

  “We are on a military flight plan from Alaska to Japan,” Elliott said. “I show no flight plan,” the controller repeated. “Please relay type of aircraft, departure base, destination base, time enroute, hours of fuel on board, and persons on board, please.”

  “No way,” Ormack said. “I haven’t done an international flight plan in years, but at least I know it’s never relayed to a Soviet controller.”

  “Yes,” Elliott said, “you’re right. This guy’s just fishing for information.” On the radio Elliott said, “Kommandorskiye, we will ask Kadena overwater flight following to relay our flight plan to you.”

  “I will be happy to take the information, sir,” the controller said ... “as a convenience.”

  Nice try, Ivan, Elliott said to himself. Over the radio: “Thank you Kommandorskiye. We will notify Kadena. Stand by.”

  “Very well,” the controller replied coldly. “Lantern four-five Fox, squawk three-seven-seven-one and ident.”

  “Shit,” Ormack said. “Now he wants us to get a squawk.”

  “Looks like we’re digging a hole for ourselves,” Elliott said, reached down and set the four-digit IFF identification and tracking code, leaving the altitude encoding and modes one, two, and four switches off*. He then switched the IFF to ON and hit the IDENT button.

  “Four-five Fox squawking,” Elliott said.

  “Radar identified, Lantern four-five Fox,” the Soviet controller replied. “I am not reading your altitude. Please recycle mode C.”

  “Recycling,” Elliott said. He turned the mode C altitude encoder on. “Iam reading your altitude—” Elliott switched him off*.

  “I have lost your altitude again, four-five Fox. Recycle again, please.” Elliott repeated his “failed” mode C routine.

  “Your mode C appears to be intermittent, four-five Fox,” the controller at Beringa finally said.

  “Roger, we’ll write it up, sir.”

  “I cannot allow you to cross into Petropavlovsk airspace without a fully operable identification encoder, four-five Fox,” the controller said. “Please turn twenty degrees left, vectors clear of Soviet airpsace. Maintain heading for one-five minutes, then resume own navigation. Ochin zhal. Sorry.”

  “How far does that put us off* the airway?” Elliott asked Luger. “We’re almost on the airway no
w. We’d end up seventy, eighty miles west.”

  Elliott turned the Old Dog to the new heading.

  “How long are we going to be in Beringa’s radar coverage?”

  “We’re only on the edge of it now,” Luger said.

  “Their radar signal is very weak,” Wendy said. “No guarantee—but I don’t think they’ve got a primary target on us.”

  “Meaning . . .” Ormack began.

  “If we shut the IFF off*, we disappear,” Elliott said. “Just like Seattle. Patrick, how far are we from your next planned turn-point inland?”

  “We’ll never hit it on this heading.”

  “Call it up,” Elliott said, taking manual control of the Old Dog. The computer heading bug swung almost fifty degrees to the right.

  “About twenty minutes,” Elliott estimated. “That puts us between both Beringa and Petropavlovsk radars.”

  “And as close to the coast as we can get between the two radars,” McLanahan added.

  “I don’t think it’ll take Beringa that long to discover we don’t have a flight plan,” Elliott said. “Things are going to get hairy pretty soon. Wendy, you’re sure he can’t see us?”

  “As sure as I can be.”

  “Can you jam their radar in case he spots us?”

  “Yes, I’m positive of that ”

  Elliott adjusted his parachute harness. “This means we’re close to the penetration descent, crew. Wendy, prepare to take the Center radar down. We’ll be making a power-off* descent in a few seconds. When everyone’s ready to go, we’ll start a gradual turn toward the gap in the radar coverage. When Beringa notices us off-course we’ll engage the terrain-avoidance computers, make a rapid descent to five thousand feet and a quick turn toward the gap. Once we go coast-in we’ll stay at five thousand unless the navigators tell us differently. We’ll rely on the shorter-range mapping radar to stay down just low enough to clear the terrain until the computer enters the altitude-plotted region, then put it on the deck when we get within range of Kavaznya’s radars—or if we get chased down beforehand. Questions? Okay, how much time to the gap?” '

  “About fifteen minutes, General,” Luger said.

  “Anyone looking at us, Wendy?”

  Wendy was studying her scope, cross-checking some of the signals present with a frequency comparison chart in her checklist. “I can see Beringa looking for us, but I’m sure they can’t get a primary target on us—their signal is very weak. No airborne radars up. There’s ...”

  “What?”

  “Another search radar comes up only every few minutes or so,” she said, puzzled. “It’s not a Soviet radar, at least not one I’ve seen before. It’s extremely weak and intermittent—like it’s being turned on and off at random.”

  “Can it see us?” Elliott asked her. “Could it spot us if we were at low altitude?”

  “I don’t think so. It doesn’t come up long enough for me to analyze, but the signal is so intermittent that I don’t think they could plot us even if they could see us. It could be nothing more than a trawler or cargo ship with a weather radar.”

  “Well,” Elliott said, unclenching his hands from the yoke, trying to relax, “it seems we’ve got more than enough to think about.”

  Gently he eased the wheel to the right and pointed the sleek nose of the Old Dog toward the Soviet Union.

  “Here we go . .

  The Chief of Intellitence aboard the U.S.S. Lawrence ran down the metal hallway to the radio room, where a small knot of officers, enlisted personnel and civilian technicians clustered around one bank of radio scanners.

  “What the hell is going on?” Markham asked as he pulled off his orange fur-lined jacket.

  “An American aircraft, Commander Markham,” Lieutenant J.G. Beech, the senior controller, reported hastily, cocking one earpiece of his headset to the side—but not enough to keep him from listening to the channels he was monitoring. A seaman came up to him with a short message. The senior controller read it quickly, swearing softly to himself.

  “Well, what the hell is it, Beech?”

  “An American aircraft, Commander,” Beech said. “Came over UHF GUARD emergency channel a few minutes ago.” He shook his head. “The aircraft is in Soviet airspace, being controlled by a Soviet controller—”

  “An American aircraft?” Markham grabbed the note out of Beech’s hand.

  “Lantern four-five Fox,” Markham read. “Lantern. That sounds familiar.”

  “It should,” Beech said. “We monitored four Lanterns from Elmendorf dragging a bunch of F-4s to Japan yesterday. Those were KC-lOs with an international flight plan—coordinated days in advance. Lantern two-one through two-four.”

  “Did you get this guy’s flight plan?”

  “There’s no Lantern four-five Fox,” Beech said. “Never was. It didn’t come out of Elmendorf.”

  “Where, then?”

  “We’re double-checking,” Beech said. “But this guy has no flight plan. We’re trying to get confirmation from Elmendorf but so far we have nothing.”

  “Did you get anything?” Markham asked. “Type aircraft? Anything?”

  “Nothing. I’ll get the tape for the staff meeting, but there was nothing. A Soviet controller on Beringa Island in the Kommandorskiyes asked him all that when he looked up his flight plan, but he didn’t tell him anything . . . Here’s how it went, sir ... a PVO Strany jet out of Petropavlosk picks up a Lantern four-five Fox on airborne radar and calls for him in the blind on GUARD. When he started to call we got on the radar and looked for him, too. We had the PVO jet all the way but we couldn’t find the other guy until the PVO jet called out his range and bearing. We plotted him forty miles east of the airway—and then we got a track on him. This four-five Fox plane looked like he was heading toward Russia—”

  “Toward Russia?” Markham swiveled in the navy-gray seat. “From where? Didn’t we see him before?”

  “He just sort of appeared out of nowhere. We weren’t really scanning for aircraft but we should have spotted him before the PVO-Strany surveillance plane did. I don’t know how we—”

  “Where is he now?”

  “We lost contact with four-five Fox right after he crossed back onto the airway,” Beech said. “Apparently he was crossing south of the Komman- dorskiyes, and that’s just about the limit of our coverage.

  “But get this—when we picked him up on radar he wasn’t squawking anything. When he contacted Beringa they assigned him a mode three squawk, but his mode C altitude readout was out. Then Beringa kicks him out of their airspace and gives him a vector out around Petropavlovsk airspace.”

  “Jesus,” Markhan said, wiping his forehead. “Someone’s screwing up but bad here.” He thought for a moment. “No mode one? Mode two? Four?” Those were U.S. military-only identification codes.

  “Nothing—not even after Beringa talked to him.”

  “An aircraft with a military call sign,” Markham said, “but with nothing but mode 3—and that assigned by a Soviet controller.”

  “He was speaking Russian to him, too, sir,” a technician said from a nearby radio console.

  “Russian?” Markham said. “What the hell was he saying?”

  “Conversational. Please, thank you, that sort of thing. Asked the PVO Strany recon jet pilot where he was from.”

  “Did the Lantern pilot sound Russian?”

  “No, sounded like maybe he used to speak it in the past, but he was definitely American. Even said he was from Butte, Montana.”

  “We have no further contact with this guy?”

  “Radio contact only,” Beech said, “but he hasn’t talked to Beringa for some time so we couldn’t get an updated DF steer on him.” He motioned over to a large glass plotting board near the communications center, which he and Markham walked over to.

  “Here’s our position,” Beech told the intelligence chief, pointing to a tiny ship sticker, “a hundred and fifty miles west northeast of the Kom- mandorskiyes. Here’s the airway—we’re sitt
ing almost directly under it. We first plotted the unknown aircraft here, northwest of us and forty miles east of the airway, heading southeast. He intersected the airway here and flew along it for a few minutes until Beringa chased him further away from Petropavlosk airspace, which he’d run into in about twenty to thirty minutes. Our last DF steer put him south of the Kommandorskiyes, a little bit west of the airway. But Beringa control had confirmed him on a mag heading of one-four-zero, which would put him well outside Petropavlosk airspace. Even if he went direct to Sapporo or Tokyo he’d never get close enough to worry anyone.”

  “Is there any chance this could be a Soviet aircraft?” Markham asked. “How do we know it’s American?”

  Beech looked puzzled. “Well. . . except for his call sign, we don’t, sir.” “But you’ve said there’s no Lantern four-five Fox from anywhere.” “We haven’t received confirmation from Elmendorf,” Beech said. “They won’t talk about their aircraft on unsecure radios. All we know is that no flight plan has been filed on a Lantern four-five Fox. It could’ve been dropped, or filed late . . . It’s unusual but it can happen. And . . . well, he sounded American, sounded military.”

  “Enlightened speculation goes down okay here, Beech,” Markham said, trying to smile but not managing it. “But how do we account for this?” Markham pointed to the projected trackline of the unknown aircraft. “What’s he doing way the hell over here?”

  Beech shrugged. “Maybe he got lost. Really lost. Maybe he’s sightseeing. Joyriding. Some jet jockey with a fake call sign playing fucking Red Rover with the Russians?”

  “Well, we’ll leave that one to the CIA or the Air Force,” Markham said. He stood and stretched. “Send a report to headquarters about this guy. Advise to obtain positive identification before allowing him into Japanese airspace. Suggest a navy or DIA investigation on him when he lands.” He ran his hands over his expanding belly. “I’m going to see if they’ve dreamed up anything new to do with hamburger in the mess. I’ll be upstairs.”

  “Lieutenant Beech,” one of the radio operators suddenly called out, “Channel seventeen, sir.”

  Beech replaced his headset. After a moment he said urgently, “Jonesy, put it on speakers. Sir, listen to this.”