Instantly Toomey was hollering for Hunter to begin evasive maneuvers.
“It’s not falling for it,” Toomey reported grimly as his instruments told him that the heat-seeking missile was ignoring the glittering chaff deviating only slightly toward the super-hot light of the white phosphorous flares.
Hunter was already reacting to his own warning light. He took a quick look at the threat display on his CRT screen; he would have only one glimpse to tell him where the missile was coming from, and he would have to decide in the next two seconds how he was going to escape it. As if time were moving in slow motion, Hunter stared at the tiny screen, waiting for the refresh of its blinking scope trace.
There it was—as he had guessed, launched from low and to the left.
Hunter quickly yanked the bomber’s control stick back all the way as he floored all four throttles to full afterburner. The big bomber protested with groans from the battered wings and roars from the engines as it attempted to respond to Hunter’s commands that literally attempted to stand the huge plane up on its tail in midair, momentarily past the maximum safe angle of flight programmed into the bomber’s flight envelope.
It was a maneuver Hunter had perfected in his F-16, and it served him well in the larger bomber. The B-1 reared up like a bucking bronco, its wings flexing dangerously at the high-g stress. Multiple stall warnings sounded in the cramped cockpit as the plane strove to remain in the air, struggling against the principles of aeronautics to meet Hunter’s demands.
Just as the B-1’s forward motion had almost stopped, the sixty-pound warhead of the streaking Atoll missile detonated, confused by the sudden shift in its selected infrared heat source—the B-1’s right outboard engine. The powerful explosion rocked the upright bomber like a paper airplane, and although the deadly cloud of spreading shrapnel and debris was mostly directed away from the plane, several large flaming pieces impacted on the bomber’s starboard wing. At the same time a ragged hailstorm of metal pellets, some of them searing white-hot, struck the exposed topside of the B-1’s fuselage as it was buffeted by the explosion.
All at once, lights flicked off and on in the tilted cabin. Console displays and computer screens flickered out as power supplies failed in the complex systems. The explosion-rocked bomber shook like it was being electrocuted as it began to tumble, out of control, toward the hard earth below.
It was only by the quick combination of Hunter in the bucking cockpit and Jones at his remote-control console that prevented a massive flameout from stalling all four engines. Wrestling the uncooperative stick forward again, Hunter once again rapidly slammed the four-throttle handle down to full military to give the fluttering bomber some forward airspeed to restore control.
Jones pushed a button that cranked out the tapered wings to their full extension to prevent a fatal spin, and slowly the green heavily smoking bomber regained altitude and settled its nose into a more horizontal track.
Already Toomey and Wa were pushing buttons and twisting dials, trying to bring the wounded bomber’s systems back on line. Wa particularly continued to struggle with both the MAPS display and the bombing computer, both of which had failed during the attack.
At last, Jones asked the critical question: “Can you still hold her, Hawk?”
“Affirmative,” Hunter yelled into his radio, the noise inside the battered airplane being so loud he could barely hear the straining engines. “Where the hell are those two bandits right now?”
“They’ve circled out a mile or two after launching the missile,” Toomey answered, adjusting his sunglasses. “My guess is they didn’t want to pick up bits and pieces of your remains if that missile had gone where it was supposed to have gone.”
“Can you jam him up?” Hunter asked, “Prevent him from popping us again?”
“Not unless the system comes back up on line,” Toomey said in a flat tone, “It may not be for another four minutes.”
“By that time, we’ll be on target,” Jones said grimly. “And there’s not a Goddamn thing we can do about it.”
As if to confirm Jones’s pessimism, the menacing shapes of the two delta-winged MiG-21s flashed in front of the bomber’s cockpit just a few hundred yards ahead, as if they were inspecting their prize. Hunter quickly noticed that neither airplane was carrying any more air-to-air missiles.
But it didn’t really matter. He knew that while the B-1 still had close to full engine power, the speedy MiGs could easy keep pace with him, blasting him out of the sky with their podmounted GSh-23 twin-barrel gun, slung between the forward airbrakes.
“JT!” Hunter called out. “What’s our defensive status?”
“Jamming system is gone. It’s busted,” Toomey responded, glancing at the blinking console lights.
“You’re twelve miles from target,” Jones told him, through his flickering TV screens.
“Ben!” Hunter called out sharply, his voice shaky from the incredibly rough ride. “What’s our weapons delivery status?”
“Bad, Hawk,” Ben replied firmly. “The bomb computer is completely greased. Ditto our back-up here. As of this moment, I can’t even launch the bombs on Krashnoyarsk.”
“Keep trying to reset, Ben,” Hunter ordered, as he scanned the width of the horizon, searching for the MiGs.
As if on cue, a stream of tracers suddenly poured across the B-1’s green nose—a deadly cascading rainbow arcing right in front of Hunter’s face ripping up the first few feet of the bomber’s nose.
“Jesus Christ!” he yelled. “They’ve got the range now. What’s the distance to target?”
“You are at eight and a half,” Jones told him quickly.
Hunter stared up through the B-1’s cockpit and saw that the MiGs were flying directly above him, like cowboys riding herd on an unruly steer. He knew that another strafing pass was inevitable.
Suddenly, Hunter deliberately reached down on his center console and activated the B-1’s landing gear doors, opening them to lower the bomber’s wheels. Back on the sub, Jones, Wa, and Toomey immediately recognized what Hunter was doing: lowering one’s wheels during an engagement was considered the universal signal of pilot surrender.
“Hawk, you can’t be—” Wa said incredulously. “You’re not going to—”
Suddenly, Wa’s TV screen blinked out. He turned to Jones and Toomey and saw their screens too had instantly been flooded with static.
All three men desperately punched their back-up TV transmission buttons but to no avail. From that point on, all communication with the bomber was lost.
Chapter 50
AIR MARSHAL POROGARKOV CHECKED his console screen for the last time.
The six amber lights on the control board had now turned a dullish orange. This told him that the warheads atop the SS-19 JCBMs were fully linked and locked on with the orbiting targeting satellites.
With one long, slow deep breath, he punched six more buttons. One by one the orange lights began to glow red.
That confirmed it—the six ICBMs, each carrying a small 1.5-kiloton nuclear warhead, were on the way to independently selected targets on the East Coast of America.
Porogarkov felt a chill, even though the control room was now very, very hot. He was past thinking about how many lives he had just condemned to death. He was past thinking about what this would do to the ultimate goals of Red Star. His own goal was that if the American bomber attack was successful, he wanted to be sure that Red Star massive retaliation was on the way before the intricate satellite-to-warhead system was destroyed.
His act done, Porogarkov quickly walked to the main hall of the now-deserted radar station.
Once there, he switched on a nearby security radio and quickly dialed in the frequency he knew was used by the fighter planes charged with protecting the region.
Within thirty seconds he had learned that the American bomber—the trainee pilots claimed it was a B-1—had been severely damaged and had lowered its landing gear and flaps in an apparent attempt at surrender.
&nb
sp; Porogarkov’s spirits suddenly were soaring. If the American bomber wanted to surrender, then perhaps Red Star would survive this incident after all!
He instantly began doing calculations in his head. He was very familiar with the little-used airstrip right next to the radar station—he had landed in his own airplane there many times. Its runway was extra long, due to the needs of the huge An-22 and IL-76 cargo jets that had flown in the majority of the materials used to upgrade the Krasnoyarsk station.
He knew the B-1 didn’t need a very long runway to land. Could it be possible that not only would the valuable station be spared but this his forces would also capture an American bomber?
Manipulating the bank of switches near the station entrance, he was able to lift one of the protective shutters that covered the huge, six-inch-thick plate glass windows of the station’s main building.
Now he had a perfect view of the airstrip.
A quick shudder ran through him as he heard the base’s SAM group leader order his crews to lock on to the approaching American airplane.
“No!” he screamed involuntarily, quickly yanking the microphone from the radio set. The last thing he wanted now was for his missile crews to shoot down the surrendering bomber. The airplane would be much more valuable to Red Star intact—both technologically and propaganda-wise.
A quick call to the base defense commander and the SAM crews were quickly put on stand-by.
Another minute passed. Now Porogarkov could just barely make out the outline of the approaching American bomber, its smoking dark silhouette casting a ghostly image in the twilight sky, the two MiG-21s, their exhausts flaming, riding on either side.
He reached for the phone again. In a matter of seconds he was talking with one of the trainee pilots.
“Is he still intending to surrender?” he asked the young man.
“Yes, sir,” came the nervous reply. “He has no choice, sir. His airplane has sustained damage to both wings, its tail and its midsection. His engines are smoking heavily and we can see he is having trouble just controlling his level.”
Of course Porogarkov knew that there was a chance the American would simply dive into the radar station. In fact the airstrip defense commander was quickly on line expressing the same concern.
“Not to worry, Comrade,” the air marshal said, knowing the Americans’ long-standing policy against “one-way” bombing runs. In fact, he knew that a great amount of their bomber technology ever since World War II—durable engines, high fuel capacity, inflight refueling exercises—had been geared around bringing the crews back from long-range bombing missions.
“These Americans never go on suicide missions,” he said confidently. “They feel that life is much too valuable.”
In a strange way, Porogarkov felt a little envious of the American behind the controls of the slowly approaching airplane. He knew that if the positions were reversed, Porogarkov would have been expected by his superiors to give up his life to destroy the target.
“He is starting a turn for landing …” one of the MiG pilots called out.
“Stay with him!” Porogarkov immediately called back. “Stay right beside him and make sure he lands.”
The air marshal could clearly see the American bomber now. It was a B-1, probably one of the last ones left, he thought. He was looking forward to finally getting to see the insides of one.
The airstrip landing lights began to blink on, giving the American a clear view of the strip. Briefly, Porogarkov’s mind flashed back to the six ICBMs he knew were at that moment streaking through the upper atmosphere, heading for their targets. All the better, he thought.
With this last gasp, the Americans would finally be finished.
Chapter 51
THE B-1’S WHEELS HIT the Soviet airstrip hard, violently bouncing the airplane once, then a second time. Tortured screeches of metal and rubber filled the air. Finally, after the third contact, the battered, smoking American bomber was down for good.
Porogarkov was running now. Out of the radar station’s main entrance and toward the end of the runway about two hundred feet away. Already a dozen jeeps and troop trucks were tearing out onto the landing strip, racing madly in an effort to keep up with the fast rolling bomber.
The two escorting MiGs, their pilots now certain that the bomber was down, pulled up and streaked over the base, one of them brazenly performing a celebratory barrel roll.
The B-1’s engines quickly reversed and a shredded parachute was released from his rear end—both acts in effort to slow the big plane’s roll. Porogarkov reached the end of the runway at this point, out of breath but jubilant. The B-1 was slowing down and soon enough it ground to a halt right in front of him, not 150 feet from the main entrance to the radar station.
He cautiously approached the airplane, opting to wait for the security troop trucks to arrive. He was amazed at how much damage the bomber had sustained—both its wings were in tatters, its portside tailplane was hanging by only a few bolts and wires, and its mid-section looked as if some gigantic fist had battered it several times.
Each of the bomber’s four engines were smoking heavily and small fires had broken out on two of the afterburning nozzles. Still Porogarkov knew the chance of an explosion caused by ignited fuel was remote. Even as he was running toward the airstrip he had seen two long plumes of vented fuel burst out from the back of the airplane, its pilot obviously not wanting the battered aircraft to explode on landing.
In fact, he had seen more than a dozen pieces of the airplane fall off during its approach, leading all the more to his amazement that the airplane had actually landed in relatively one piece.
The security forces were now on the scene and the bomber was quickly surrounded.
Once Porogarkov was certain the area was secure, he motioned for a dozen of the soldiers to follow him.
Reaching the bomber’s rear compartment entrance, the air marshal sent in two soldiers ahead before climbing into the aircraft himself.
If anything the interior of the airplane looked worse than its outside. The compartment was filled with acrid smoke, many small fires were blazing away and it seemed like every electrical wire was sparking brilliantly.
He and the soldiers slowly made their way up to the airplane’s forward compartment, the air marshal taking his own pistol out just in case the Americans gave a struggle.
The two soldiers were the first to reach the cockpit. Instantly they turned back toward him, two identical expressions of mixed confusion and horror written across their faces.
Porogarkov brusquely stormed into the cockpit, his head filled with wild ideas of how the Red Star would honor him for this moment.
But an instant later, he understood the look of haunted disconcertion in his soldiers’ eyes.
The cockpit was empty.
“Search the airplane!”
Porogarkov heard the words, but it was as if someone else had yelled the order.
That’s when everything started to happen at once. His eyes had fallen into a LED display which was ticking off in seconds. When it finally reached 001, he was startled to hear the bomber’s engines suddenly come to life again.
At the same instant, another more pungent odor filled the cabin. The astounded soldiers, not knowing the origin of the smell, instinctively held their noses.
But as an old weapons officer, Porogarkov knew the aroma well—it was the result of two fusing agents being ignited.
In other words, bombs on board the airplane were, at that second, being armed.
A moment later, the B-1 suddenly lurched forward in a bizarre, bumpy taxiing motion. A multitude of lights came to life on the bomber’s control panel. Bells, buzzers, and shrill warning signals all started blaring at once. Shocked and unable to move, the air marshal and his dozen soldiers were thrown against the cabin wall as the B-1 crawled forward, its engines screaming in low-acceleration pain.
Then, in his last living moment, Porogarkov heard the distinct loud sizzling of two wea
pons just micro-seconds before detonation.
Three seconds later, the B-1, its speed up to 25 mph, slammed right through the main entrance of the radar station, the pair of high-explosive glide bombs in its mid-section detonating at the same instant.
There was a quick flash of flame, followed by a tremendous explosion—so powerful it knocked down the remaining airstrip security troops who had watched in horror as the B-1 suddenly pitched forward into the building.
A series of devastating secondary explosions followed, their combined violence producing an enormous mushroom cloud that rivaled the detonation of a small nuclear device.
When those Soviet security troops lucky to survive the blast came to, they saw that absolutely nothing was left of the bomber or the Krasnoyarsk radar station….
Chapter 52
NO MORE THAN A hundred people saw the six streaks of light flash across the sky high above the American northeastern seaboard.
The small number of witnesses was due to the fact that most of the New England coastal areas had been evacuated shortly after the Big War, when the murderous Mid-Aks briefly held the area.
However one person, a Down Mainer fisherman named Frank Dow, got a fairly close look at two of the Soviet ICBMs. He was twenty miles off the coast of southern Maine when the objects crashed side-by-side into the ocean no more than one thousand yards from his fishing boat, their violent re-entry creating such a tidal disturbance his craft was very nearly swamped.
Neither exploded.
Dow had no idea what the missiles were or where they had come from. In fact, when he first saw the streaks approaching him as he was beginning to haul in his daily catch, he thought he was about to be abducted by UFOs.
Once he was certain that his boat was out of danger of sinking, he quickly marked the approximate location of the crash on his sea chart and then hastily left the area, leaving his catch and his nets behind.
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