“Make it quick,” Elliott warned.
“Funny?” Ormack asked. “How funny?”
“Funny as in bad news Real bad news,” McLanahan said. He stared at the magnified scene for a few more sweeps, then quickly put his radar scope to STANDBY.
“General, we gotta turn. Now. At least twenty degrees right.”
Why . . . ?”
“Ships, ” McLanahan said. “One dock full of big mother ships . . .”
“Search radar at twelve o’clock,” Wendy suddenly called out.
Elliott shoved the eight throttles forward and banked the Megafortress hard to the right.
“Give me COLA on the clearance-plane setting, John,” Elliott ordered. Ormack reached across and turned the clearance plane knob down to its lowest setting. COLA—Computer-generated Lowest Altitude. Now the terrain-avoidance computer would select the lowest altitude possible for the Megafortress based on a small error factor of the radar altimeter or terrain-avoidance computer, plus aircraft bank angle and terrain elevation.
The computer, starting at a COLA altitude of about a hundred feet, would then evaluate itself and readjust its minimum COLA altitude, continuously striving for the lowest possible altitude. Since the Old Dog’s terrain-avoidance computer was slaved only to the radar altimeter, the new lowest altitude would equate to the highest error tolerance of the radar altimeter—a scant thirty feet—plus a few feet for the normal rolling oscillations of any autopilot.
The huge bomber plunged its nose toward the inky blackness of the Russian Pacific, then slowly back to level as it quickly reached its commanded altitude. Now, nearly four hundred thousand pounds of man and machine, guided by a single thin radar beam from the bomber’s belly, were skimming only a few dozen yards from the surface of the water at over four hundred miles an hour.
“Still only search radar,” Wendy reported, leaning forward intently toward her TV-like threat display. “High power but still scan mode. They’re ...” A chill worked its way up McLanahan’s spine even before Wendy finished her analysis of the new signals being transmitted.
“New signal coming up,” Wendy said suddenly. “Narrow-scan search . . . height-finder coming up . . . they’ve got us, General. They’ve found us, surface-to-air missile signals coming up . . .”
Jeff Hampton’s voice sounded strained and excited as the President picked up the telephone near his chair.
“Say that again, Jeff?” the President said, rubbing interrupted fitful sleep from his eyes. He massaged a knotted muscle in his neck and forced himself to concentrate.
“An Air Defense alert was called about fifteen minutes ago over the Kamchatka peninsula,” Hampton repeated, gulping for air. “In Russia.”
“I know where the goddamned Kamchatka peninsula is, Jeff. Go on.”
“An unidentified aircraft, presumed to be American, disappeared off their radar. Real close-in. Violated airspace. It... it had a call sign similar to ... to the one General Elliott was using.”
“Elliott? Brad Elliott? My God!”
“Not confirmed sir, but—”
“I’ll be right down. Alert General Curtis. Have him meet me in the Situation Room on the double.”
The President hurried out of the parlor, quickly dressed and went downstairs.
Brad Elliott, you old devil. .. You got in. You son of a bitch—you made it in.
Wendy could only focus on the video threat-display. Millions of watts of energy, directed along specific frequency and power ranges, were at her command, yet she stared transfixed at two erratic waves along one line of the threat display. Her hands were flat on her thighs, palms down, despite the Old Dog’s steep bank turn which usually made her grab onto her ejection seat armrests.
The audio pickup of the two radars was hypnotizing. The first radar emitted a scratchy bleeping sound, like a seal’s bark. It had begun as an intermittent signal but was now coming over twice as fast—India-band narrow-scan search radar, aimed directly at them. The second radar gave off a higher-pitched squeal, like a rusty hinge. It signaled the presence of a Golf-band height-finder, supplying altitude information to a surface-to- air missile’s guidance computer.
The computer-controlled threat analyzer apparently couldn’t make up its mind—it was switching its analysis symbol from “2” to “3,” indicating SA-2 or SA-3 strategic missiles, which were usually designed for high- altitude penetrators. Some SA-2 systems on ships or in remote deployment areas carried nuclear warheads. The missiles . . . they called them “telephone poles” in Vietnam . . . were barely capable against low-altitude penetrators—but the Old Dog was well within the missile’s lethal range.
“All radars in standby,” Luger announced, double-checking both his and McLanahan’s controls. He blinked in surprise at his pressure altimeter—it read minus sixty feet. He checked the radar altimeter readout on McLanahan’s video screen and saw that it was pegged at a hundred feet. One hundred feet! If the COLA computer didn’t compensate properly, at this altitude with only twenty degrees of bank they’d drag a wingtip in the water.
With an unsteady hand he reset the Kollsmann window on his pressure altimeter until it read a hundred feet. He could almost see the water skimming below him at over six hundred feet a second. He could do nothing else but monitor the instruments, watch and wait.
“Wendy?”
“Yes?”
“Wendy,” McLanahan shouted over the intercom. “Wendy. Answer me.”
“Patrick, I . . .” She closed her eyes, focusing on his voice. She opened her eyes, took a deep breath, became aware again of the threat analyzer in front of her.
“Steady tracking and surveillance signals,” she reported, her voice stronger. “Tracking us, but no guidance or uplink.”
Elliott watched the tiny blob of lights in the distance. Suddenly he saw a small shaft of light flare brightly, erupting from the outskirts of the town.
“Missile launch! SA-2!” from Wendy.
“Fve got it, I can see it,” Elliott said.
“Fve got the uplink shut down.” Wendy carefully adjusted the jammer’s frequencies, as if she were adjusting the focus on a microscope. She glanced up at her radar altimeter repeater. “How does it look?”
“It’s heading right for us,” Ormack said.
“Make a hard turn into it,” Wendy ordered.
“Into it? That will—”
“Do it, General,” Wendy said over the interphone. The Old Dog rolled into a steep bank to the left.
“I can still see it . . . wait.” Elliott’s voice was suddenly less strained. “I can see the whole tail of the missile . . . it’s gone. It went behind us . . .”
“Come back to the right, maximum bank, military thrust,” Wendy said. Elliott immediately did it.
“SA-2 signal coming back up,” Wendy said suddenly. Her hands flew over the High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile control panel. “Anti-radar missile one programmed and ready for launch.”
Angelina checked her switches, watching her indicators as a HARM missile on the aft bomb bay’s rotating launcher was pulled into the lower launch position. “Ready.”
Wendy hit the LAUNCH button. The fibersteel bomb-bay doors swung open, and the first HARM missile was ejected into the slipstream. The launcher automatically rotated another HARM into launch position.
“HARM has a good lock-on,” Wendy reported. “SA-2 missile alert . . . HARM still locked on . . . SA-2 solid missile alert.” Suddenly both the MISSILE ALERT threat signal and the HARM missiles’s lock-on status indication blinked off.
“SA-2 radar down,” Wendy said, her breath coming back. Angelina sat back in her seat, her body relaxing. “They’ve switched back to wide-area search,” Wendy said, monitoring the threat audio from her receivers. “No other missile tracking signals. They’ve lost us.”
The town was passing out of view. Elliott watched the distant lights, now almost obscured by the horizon so close beneath them, as it slid past the left cockpit windows.
“Good sho
oting, people.” He didn’t say “ladies.” There were no “ladies” aboard. “Call up the next point,” Elliott told the navigators. “I don’t want to head back to the same point. If they look for us, they’ll plot our track and find us along that path.” McLanahan punched instructions into the computer, the bomber made a slight turn back to the left. A few minutes later Luger announced they were crossing the coast.
“Hey, Tork. What the hell were you doing back there?” Ormack said. Wendy was waiting for him.
“Colonel Ormack,” Wendy said, “the next time I give an evasion command, I don’t want it second-guessed. An SA-2 leaves the rails three times faster than any speed this plane could hope to reach. At our range it gives us only a few seconds to react. Our best defense is to acquire the missile visually. Once we see it, our chances of evading it go way up. If you’re unsure of the right defensive maneuvers it would be best to keep quiet and do as you’re told.”
Ormack closed his mouth. She was right.
“He got the message,” Elliott said. “Crew, that was only the first test. There’ll be a lot more before we’re through with this. Dave, how long until Kavazyna?”
Luger looked at his chart. “I’d say we’ll be overflying it in forty minutes, General.”
Forty minutes. The thought was like a damp chill permeating the pressurized interior of the Old Dog.
19 The White House Situation Room
“Give it to me right now,” the President ordered.
“Yes, sir, ” General Curtis said enthusiastically. The President and the JCS Chairman were alone with the President’s aide Jeff Hampton and several Marine guards and military communications technicians in the White House Situation Room. Curtis looked as spit-shined and polished as always, even in these early-morning hours and in spite of the short notice. The President, in sharp contrast, had pulled on a football warm-up suit after receiving the notification and then ran down to the Situation Room.
Curtis walked rapidly to the rear of the chamber.
Here, Curtis thought, was a President who wanted action. Quite a switch from the political animal he’d always known. He went over to a large projection chart on the rear wall that depicted the State of Alaska and most of Asia. The Kavaznya laser complex was highlighted with a large triangle—a target symbol. Several circles were drawn: large circles around radar sites clustered all along the Russian coastline and near cities; smaller circles representing defensive surface-to-air-missile sites.
A very large circle was centered over the north Pacific, midway between Hawaii and the Aleutians—the kill zone of the Soviet’s new orbiting steerable mirror. The circle encompassed the entire north Pacific, the State of Alaska, all of the arctic and even large parts of Canada.
One black-lined route was depicted—the attack route of the B-1B Excaliburs, which were still orbiting over the Chukchi Sea six hundred miles west of Alaska. “The alert was called because of an unknown aircraft that disappeared from Soviet radar here a hundred and fifty miles south of the Kommandorskiye Islands. It was under radar control from Kommandorskiye Center.”
The President looked at him. “Elliott? General Elliott's plane?”
“We know its call sign,” Curtis said. “Lantern. Lantern Four-Five Fox—”
“Fox. The same as Elliott’s . . .”
“I believe so, sir. It seems he made it.”
“Son of a bitch,” the President said, not knowing whether he should be elated or worried—he was happy that the Old Dog had done what the B-ls had failed to do, but now it too had been discovered. “What about the Lantern part?”
“Lantern was yesterday’s Zulu call sign of SAC’s Sixth Strategic Wing at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage,” Curtis said. “The Sixth has several KC-135 and KC-10 tankers, plus RC-135 reconnaissance planes.”
“So it wasn't Elliott?”
“Well, sir,” Curtis said, hesitating, his Kansas drawl leaking through, “we called the Sixth. They had no Lantern Four-Five Fox at all that day. They had a fighter drag earlier—some tankers escorting F-15s— that flew fairly close to Soviet airspace on its way to Kadena, but no four-five call sign. Right now, we’re checking our some possibilities. Kommandorskiye Center apparently had no flight plan on file for Lantern Four-Five Fox. Kommandorskiye was told by Lantern that they would have Kadena Global Command Control relay their flight plan. That’s standard procedure for military flight plans. Meanwhile Kommandorskiye assigned Lantern an identification code and allowed it to continue southward. A few minutes later Kommandorskiye kicked Lantern out of its airspace because of a malfunctioning identification signal. It was given a heading well clear of Soviet airspace. A half-hour after that Kommandorskiye calls Lantern and says they are seventy miles inside Soviet airspace.”
“Inside their airspace? How did that happen?”
“We’re not sure but I’m operating under the assumption that Lantern Four-Five is Elliott and his crew. I haven’t figured out how he got the fuel—he didn’t have nearly enough to fly all the way across the north Pacific Ocean. I should receive some word soon ...”
“Then our game is on—for real,” the President said. He looked up at Curtis. “Your plan seems to have worked, General.”
“Yes, sir. When that Russian Air Defense emergency was called, those B-ls were tying up three quarters of the Soviet fighters in the area. The intelligence ship Lawrence didn’t report any fighter activity further south. If it is Elliott, and I’m betting it is, he’s got quite a head start.”
The President absorbed that, then: “General, recall the B-ls immediately. If the Russians find Elliott over the Kamchataka peninsula they’ll shoot down the Excaliburs for sure.”
“Yes, sir. And if I know those bomber crews they’ll put the pedal to the metal getting back here.”
“So that shrewd old bastard made it.” The President shook his head, still finding it difficult to believe what had happened. He turned to Hampton. “Eight a.m., Jeff. I want the National Security Advisors, JCS, House Speaker, minority and majority leaders of both houses of Congress and Armed Services Committee chairman of both houses. Request a secure videophone connection with the prime ministers of the NATO countries and the attendance of all available NATO ambassadors. Those who can’t meet in the Oval Office will confer via secure videophone.”
The President nodded his head decisively. “That’s when I will inform them of the strike against the laser complex at Kavaznya.” He turned to Curtis. “General, I want you airborne, right away, to direct Elliott’s sortie and withdrawal.”
Curtis nodded, saluted his Commander-in-Chief, turned and exited the White House Situation Room. As he did so his step was firmer, his eyes brighter than at any time in the past few months.
As the Old Dog streaked across the skies of the Kamchatka peninsula in eastern Russia, one of its electronic eyes looked straight ahead and kept the crew of six from crashing into the rugged mountains of the Kamchatka, while other eyes scanned the skies for electromagnetic signals aimed at it, looking for enemies who were looking for them.
It was Dave Luger who controlled the first “eye”—a beam of radar energy that swept in a forty-five degree cone on either side of the Old Dog’s sleek nose. If there was an obstacle along the beam’s path it would reflect the radar energy directly back to be displayed on Luger’s scope.
The other eyes—the sensors and antennas of the electronic countermeasures system—were mostly computer-controlled. A computer would instantly analyze a signal, identify it, determine its danger level and jam it if necessary. Luger’s “eye” was different. He constantly had to adjust the radar presentation, search the scope for tiny peaks or ridge lines, be able instantly to evaluate the terrain around them and determine a safe altitude. . . .
Luger suppressed a yawn and directed the stream of cool air from a vent right into his face. He had been leaning forward, intently studying the scope, for the past thirty minutes. The parachute he wore felt like a boot resting on each of his kidneys, but he was afrai
d to take his eyes off the scope to readjust it. He knew the pilots upstairs were blind—all they could see were some jagged peaks in the gray starlit horizon, which just made them all the more nervous.
Without the terrain-avoidance computer, it was his radar against the mountains. When the scope was clear he would direct a shallow descent until terrain appeared, then climb again until it disappeared. It was like terrain-avoidance in the G- and H-model B-52s—except there was no TV screen for the pilots to watch, no terrain-avoidance trace that gave the pilots an exact picture of the disasters waiting for them. He was their eyes now.
At the moment Luger was watching one particular reflection on his SITUATION scope. It had a range of thirty miles, but for some reason he hadn’t seen this large ridge line until it was much closer. Quickly he pressed the interphone button under his left boot.
“High terrain, thirteen miles, twelve o’clock.”
Elliott and Ormack both sat up, and Ormack instinctively pushed on the throttles, preparing to pull the Old Dog’s nose skyward. “Thirteen miles,” he said. “How come you didn’t see it before?”
“Climb first, ask questions later, Colonel.”
Ormack gritted his teeth and pulled back on the yoke as soon as he noted a definite increase in airspeed, added five hundred feet to the Old Dog’s altitude and leveled off.
“Clear of terrain for thirty miles,” Luger reported. Ormack reengaged the low-altitude autopilot and Elliott checked the switch positions.
“I repeat, why the hell didn’t you see that terrain earlier, Luger,” Ormack said. “The most critical phase of this mission so far and you’re asleep down there—”
“That’s bullshit, Colonel,” McLanahan said. “There’s a dozen reasons why terrain won’t show until it’s closer in—snow, trees, fog. It sure as hell isn’t because anyone’s sleeping down here. Maybe you ought to come down here for a while, Colonel, and you keep this hunk of metal out of the dirt—”
“Enough. ” Elliott told them. He had been quiet ever since they evaded the SA-2 missile but was furious now. He glared at Ormack. “This is no goddamn time for squabbling.” Cross-cockpit, he said, “John, what the hell is it? Those guys down there sure as hell aren’t sleeping and you know it.”
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