Flight Of The Old Dog pm-1

by Dale Brown

  Papendreyov throttled back to ninety-five percent power on the screaming Tumansky R-33D turbofan engines and divided his attention between the radar and the infrared detector while continuing his shallow turn. He made a quick scan for his wingman-nothing. They had been separated long before when the laser had fired and the incredible turbulence and windblast nearly wrecked him, and he assumed the worst-that either the laser had inadvertently hit him or that the American had gotten him.

  This flying at night without radar monitoring was suicide, the pilot thought to himself. The Soviet ground radar controller was usually responsible for everything-terrain clearance, vectoring toward the intruder, closure, firing position-he did everything but pull the trigger. Now Papendreyov was completely blind, relying on an easily jammed nose radar and a range-limited infrared detector that wasn't worth A diamond symbol appeared in the lower right corner of his heads-up display-the infrared detector had found the B-52.

  Strange that the radar had not. He tried to get a radar range to the target but it still was not locking onto anything. He swung right, centered the diamond up in azimuth on his display and waited for a radar lock-on. Still nothing. The infrared scanner told him only elevation and azimuth, not range. One of his two AA-8 heat-seeker missiles could lock onto the bastard but they were close-range missiles and worked best under eight kilometers' range.

  He hesitated to drop the nose through the horizon until he found where he was and checked terrain elevation. Papendreyov throttled back to ninety percent and waited. No sense in driving blindly into the B-52's guns, he thought. The twentyseven-year-old Soviet PVO-Strany Air Defense pilot then realized he hadn't talked to anyone, hadn't gotten permission to do anything, hadn't received one word of direction. He was still two years from being qualified to perform autonomous intercepts-going out to hunt down enemy planes without direction from ground controllers-but he was performing one now. It was easy, painfully easy-suicidal, but very easy. Easy to kill oneself.

  He checked his engine instruments and fuel. If he stayed out of afterburner he could stay and track this intruder for another half-hour. He still had four missiles-two radar-guided missiles and two heat-seekers. Enough to get the job done?

  "Airborne radar contact," Wendy Tork announced into the interphone.

  "Seven o'clock. Looks like… like… a Fulcrum.

  Pulse-Doppler attack radar."

  At the same time Wendy sounded her warning the computerdrawn terrain trace zipped across General Elliott's video monitor. He grunted in relieved satisfaction and reached for the clearance plane knob.

  "Terrain-avoidance computer back on-line, General," McLanahan said, but Elliott had already selected COLA on the clearance knob-the computer-generated lowest altitude, which meant a harrowing ride no higher than a hundred feet above the now-rapidly rising terrain. His lips were dry, but he felt clammy inside. "Get that strike message out, Angelina?" he asked, rechecking his switch position.

  "Repeated it twice, General. "She reset her fire control radar to clear the faults created by the interference of the powerful Kavaznya radar, then switched it to SEARCH and the radar instantly found the fighter behind them.

  "My gear's working again. Radar contact, seven o'clock high, twelve miles," Angelina reported. She watched it for a moment. "Holding steady She hit the TRACK button on her console and a green TRACK light illuminated. She lowered the safety handles on the twin turret handgrips, put a finger on the Stinger airmine trigger and watched the range countdown. When it reached five miles she gently squeezed the trigger, and fired once…

  The Fulcrum pilot heard a warbling ALERT tone in his headset, quickly jammed his throttles to maximum afterburner and yanked his fighter into a risky ninety-degree, twentydegree climb to evade a possible missile launch. He leveled Off a thousand feet above his initial pursuit altitude and searched the horizon out his left cockpit window for the source of the missile alert.

  "A fighter launching a missile at me?" Yuri Papendreyov asked himself, eyes searching the blackness. "An enemy fighter over Russia?"

  Luck had followed the young Soviet pilot into that wild evasive snaproll. The tiny Stinger rocket, with its small directional fins, could not keep up with the Soviet fighter and its half-scared, half-genius pilot. The Stinger did a lazy turn trying to follow the steering signals from Angelina's radar, but its turn radius was twice the Fulcrum's. Suddenly it was behind and to the right of the Fulcrum, and there was no way the tiny solid-fuel rocket could catch the fighter. It tracked behind the Fulcrum's wake, its propellant almost exhausted. Not receiving a detonation signal, and realizing its fuel had run out, the tiny rocket issued its own detonation signal.

  Papendreyov's attention was immediately directed to his right, where a huge fiery flower blossomed out of the grayness all around him. He could almost feel the sparks, the myriad bits of metal, flying out toward him, seeking him. Instinctively he tried to jam his throttles to maximum afterburner, then realized they were already there and began a shallow climb, watching the flower of death disappear behind him.

  His breath was coming out in rapid, shallow heaves. Sweat trickled down his heavy glass faceplates. Thanking the stars and the shades of comrades Mikoyan and Gureyvich, the designers of his beautiful jet, he banked left and began to lop reaquire his quarry.

  "Al at five o'clock," Wendy called out again.

  Angelina was already shaking her head in disappointment.

  "This guy is good," she asked. "He jinked just in time."

  "Well, he's coming for us again," Wendy said.

  Luger was watching his five-inch terrain scope, now clear and operating normally after their unwieldy three-thousant pound Striker glide-bomb leveled the Kavaznya mirror built ing and, at least temporarily, took the radar site with it. "We" get to the mountains in twelve miles."

  "He's staying up high," Angelina said, glancing at the elevation and azimuth readouts on her console. "He's good bL he's not ready to mix it up in the dirt yet.

  "Can he still get an I.R shot at us?" Ormack asked.

  "He can track us, but unless he's ready to descend to within a few hundred feet of us we have a chance. "Just then, the elevation readouts began to steadily decrease. Angelina swallowed hard.

  "He's descending, crew. Get ready."

  Yuri Papendreyov had finally gotten a reliable navigation beacon lock-on and found himself on his cardboard chart. He nodded to himself. At his present speed-over eight hundred kilometers per hour-he could descend another thousan meters and spend almost two precious minutes acquiring the B 52 bomber before the threat of the frozen peaks of Koryakskiy Khrebet began to loom outside his cockpit-a completely invisible to him. He nudged his Fulcrum down, set the altimeter reminder bug on three thousand two hundred meters and maneuvered his fighter to center the I.R TRAC diamond in his heads-up display.

  That few hundred meters of altitude did the trick. The pulse Doppler attack radar signaled lock-on, and firing information was instantly fed to the AA-7 radar-guided missile.

  Yuri smiled. A solid infrared and radar lock-on, with for missiles ready to go. The range continued to click down. The memory of that fiery missile explosion snapped back to him and his decision was made.

  He throttled back, holding al range at fourteen kilometers, selected the two AA-7 radar guided missiles, fired.

  A MISSILE ALERT warning generated by the pulse-Doppler attack radar focusing on the low-flying Old Dog had put it crew in a state of tense readiness. When Yuri Papendreyc selected the AA-7 missiles for firing his attack-radar switched to missile-guidance mode. The continuous-wave radar sign that guided and steered the AA-7 missiles triggered a MISSILE LAUNCH indication on Wendy Tork's threat panel, which was heard over ship-wide interphone and repeated up in the cockpit.

  Wendy immediately ejected eight bundles of chaff from the left ejectors and ordered an immediate right break. Elliott and Ormack, having already accelerated to maximum thrust, threw the Old Dog into a coordinated hard turn to the right.

  Si
multaneously Wendy found the continuous-wave missile steering signal from the Russian fighter and began to set a jamming package against it.

  From directly on the stem the Old Dog's radar signature was minuscule.

  When Elliott and Ormack hauled the bomber into forty degrees of bank, however, that radar signature bloomed several times its original size.

  .. it was like seeing a book edge-on, then turning it so the whole cover could be seen.

  There was no mistaking it for ground clutter now.

  The right AA-7 missile was distracted by the chaff, but that distraction added up to scarcely seven feet. The missile passed directly over the center of the Old Dog's fuselage and just in front of the leading edge of the right wing. When the seeker head snapped over to try to follow the steering signal, its eighty-nine-pound warhead detonated.

  Dave Luger felt nothing. It was simply as if his entire right side instrument console, his computer keyboard and parts of his radar had freed themselves from their secured places on the aircraft and ended up in his lap and in his face all at once. The concussion would have knocked him clear out of his seat and across the Megafortress' tiny offensive compartment, but his shoulder and lap belts held him securely in his seat and subjected his upper body to the entire force of the blast that penetrated the fibersteel skin.

  He felt hands across his shoulders and chest, but still no pain. He fought to focus his eyes and finally gave up on that.

  Air sucked out of his chest, debris from everywhere flew around him.

  "Dave. "McLanahan reached across the narrow aisle between their two downward ejection seats and propped Luger upright, straining against the weight of the two-G turn that Elliott and Ormack were still executing. "Dave's hit!"

  "Yer crazy, radar," Luger muttered, but as McLanahan moved him upright his head dropped against the headrest on his ejection seat and rocked uncontrollably as the pilots fougu for control of the crippled bomber.

  Luger could feel his head jolted from side to side but was unable to convince his neck muscles to do anything abot it "I'm fine, I'm fine," he asked. "Hey, my scope is out…""Out" was a considerable understatement-it was as if a giant metal-eating monster had bitten off half the milion-dollar cathode-ray tube. McLanahan reached down and locked Luger's inertial reel on his ejection seat, which helped his partner stay upright in the seat. "How are the computers.

  Patrick?"

  "Screw the computers for now," McLanahan replier unstrapping himself.

  "Stay strapped in, Pat- "Just shut up for a second, Dave," McLanahan said quietly. He reached for the first aid kit secured to the bulkhead behind his seat, glancing at the computer displays as he opened it they were still working, no faults or interruptions.

  "The computers are fine, Dave. "He braced himself again the sliding nav's table and examined his partner. "Oh God "I'm fine, I told you," Luger mumbled again. McLanaha held up a large gauze square from the first aid kit but was unsure about what to do first. He had never seen bone before clean, white bone, except on a T-bone steak… the thougl made him gag, but he forced the thought away…

  "Put a bandage on whatever's wrong there, Pat," Luger: said, "and let's get back to work. "Luger raised a finger to wipe moisture out of his right eye. When he looked at it his entire hand was covered in glistening red blood.

  "Ohhh "Sir still," was all McLanahan could say as he covered the right side of Luger's face with a thick pad of gauze and taped it secure.

  Luger sat through it all as if he were getting a haircut McLanahan checked Luger's neck and chest, brushing awa fragments of glass and fibersteel.

  The flight jacket an flightsuit had protected Luger's upper body, it seemed.

  "I'm all right," Luger said, his voice now muffled slightly through the gauze. "I twisted my leg a little, that's all, forget it… but turn the heat up, will ya?It's getting' cold i here "Let me take a-" "I said forget it."

  But McLanahan had already ducked under the table to investigate. He stayed out of view for a few moments, came up to retrieve the first aid kit, then emerged again a few moments later.

  Luger had felt nothing but a few tugs on his right leg. "See?

  I told you, mom.

  McLanahan returned to his seat, his body jerking from side to side from the turbulence as the Old Dog crested another ridgeline in the mountains of the Kamchatka. He stared silently down at his worktable.

  "All done playing Florence Nightingale?" Luger said as he reached down to his right thigh, touched, felt nothing. But when he brought his hand up he found it covered with sticky, darkening blood.

  He finally met McLanahan's eyes. "Strong like a bull. "He readjusted his headset, lowered the microphone to his lips.

  "Nav's up and okay," he said over the interphone.

  General Elliott began, "David… T' "Lost my radar, sir," Luger said, forcing iron back into his voice. He tried to punch up a systems-diagnostic routine on his terminal but only a few buttons were left on his keyboard. He strained across the worktable to use McLanahan's terminal.

  "Looks like we're still talking to the Scorpion missiles through our controls but I've no search video. All the terrain-following computers look okay, all the weapons controls are out but that's a moot point now… " "All right," Elliott said, trying to steady his voice. "Crew we've lost cabin pressurization. Wendy, Angelina, can you see that guy out there?"

  "I've got his search radar shut down," Wendy replied. "I lost him right after he launched… " It was, of course, no longer just "a launch"-the Russian had hit one of their own, hurt him…

  "Wendy, I'm okay," Luger said quickly, as though sensing her thoughts.

  "You… you ladies nail him…"

  "My scope's clear," Angelina asked. "We'll get him."

  "Sure… they've taken their best shot and they couldn't flame us.

  Sure Yuri Papendreyov angrily switched frequencies on his attack radar. The heavy jamming from the American B-52 attacker had begun precisely when he hit the missile-launch button on his control stick. The missile left the rail with a good steer TRACK indication but he lost it soon afterward. He saw primary or secondary explosions, saw no crash indications the jamming was continuing harder than ever. So he hat assume his AA-7s had missed, and that he had to start all over again-but this time closer to the mountains, at least, two hundred meters above the bomber with no radar and with two thousand kilograms less fuel.

  He leveled off at the minimal sector altitude, throttled back to ninety percent and began a slow roll to the left to try to reacquire the B-52.

  The auto-frequency shift mode of attack radar, which randomly changed frequencies to try to defeat the B-52's jamming, was all but useless.

  The shift was too little, too late, and it always seemed to shift right into jammed band. Yuri changed the frequency all the way to lower end of the scale and swept the area for the bomb Who would have believed it?

  he thought. A B-52 in middle of restricted Soviet airspace. A lone B-52, at that.

  escort, no wave of cruise missiles preceding it, no multiple defenses, no B1, no FB-111 raid like the one on Libya Syria two years before.

  One B-52.

  Well, why not, Yuri said to himself as he began to search another twenty-degree quadrant. The plan was working very damn well so far.

  The B-52 had obviously flown several thousand kilometers, drove right up the Kamchatka peninsula and dropped a bomb on just about the most important piece of land in the Soviet Union next to Red Square itself.

  There… at the very bottom of his radar… j before another wave of interference flooded his scope, a cr with a circle around it appeared, then disappeared. Hos radar emissions. The B-52's own radar, the one that obviously was used to steer whatever weapon they had launched against him, had given them away.

  He rolled further left on an intercept course. Switching attack radar to STANDBY to avoid giving himself awaywas useless, anyway, with the heavy jamming-he maneuvered to parallel the B-52's course. The radar emission from the B-52 was sporad
ic-they were looking for him, he was sure, but being careful not to transmit too long. Not careful enough, though. They transmitted on their radar long enou for him to compute their track.

  He set the infrared search-and-track seeker to maximum depression and waited for the supercooled eye of the seeker to find the B-52-there was, he knew, the possibility of the seeker locking onto a warm building with the angle so low, but eight jet engines should be brighter than anything else in the sky or on the ground right now. He was already at the minimum safe altitude for the sector he was in, and without solid visual contact on the terrain, descending any lower would be suicide.

  He increased throttle to ninety-five percent and waited. Soon, he was sure, the range would decrease to the point where the seeker would lock-on, and then he'd stay high and pick off the intruder…

  When a few minutes later the infrared seeker locked onto a hot target there was no mistaking the size or intensity of the target. The infrared seeker had a longer range than the AA-6 missile, so, he realized, he would need to close in on the B-52 a bit more.

  Yuri thought about using the attack radar once more to get a range-only estimate on the B-52, but that would give him away. If he was in range of a surveillance-radar site they could give him a range to the B-52, but for some reason he couldn't hear the station at Korf or Ossora.

  Probably too low, too close to the mountains… if he couldn't hear them on the radio they surely couldn't see him on radar.

  Yuri's track had been fairly constant for the last few moments, meaning that the B-52 was making no evasive maneuvers. He relaxed his grip on his control stick and throttles… maybe they didn't know he was behind them.

  The B-52's tail radar hadn't been activated for several minutes.

  He had to launch before they spotted him on that tail radar Suddenly he felt it-a slight shudder through the titanium body of his Fulcrum fighter. He scanned his engine instruments for a malfunction, but already suspected the cause-wake turbulence from the B-52's engines, he was closing quickly. He stared as hard as he could out the canopy of his Fulcrum but couldn't see it.