Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01 (43 page)

           
“Descending to two-seven zero,”
Ormack reported.

 
          
“Eddie,
I want to thank you for your cooperation,” Elliott said as the Old Dog began
its descent away frm the KC-10 tanker. “I assure you, I’ll take full responsibility
for any heat you might take.”

 
          
“I’m
counting on that, General,” Sands said. “I guess this makes us even.”

 
          
“We
were always even.”

 
          
“Maybe
. . . You know I have to file a report about this. The refueling, the comm
jamming, the expended munitions. Everything.”

 
          
“Of
course. No offense intended, Eddie, but I know you’ll file the report in your
usual complete, timely, thorough manner.”

 
          
“Anything
else
you need, General?” Sands asked,
biting out the words.

 
          
“A
name, Eddie,” Elliott said. “A tanker, a deployment, a large aircraft from
Anchorage
that passed by within the past twelve
hours.”

 
          
“Sure,
why not?” Sands turned to the interphone, asked the copilot for the
communications kit, then said over the radio, “Might as well set an all-time
record for breaking the rules in one glorious day.”

 
          
“
‘Bag’ was a KC-10 fighter drag from Elmendorf to Nellis,” Ashley said, checking
his classified call sign booklet. “ ‘Crow’ was an AWACS from Eielson to
Sapporo
. ‘Lantern’ was a KC-10 from Elmendorf to
Kadena.”

 
          
“I’m
not going to ask why you needed that,” Sands said. “Can we turn around now? How
much further toward never-never land do we have to follow you?”

 
          
“Clear
to turn, Eddie—and thanks.”

 
          
“See
you ...” Sands watched as the descending bomber melted into the darkness.

 
          
“Genesis
is clear,” Elliott reported to him. Then, silence. The lights on the huge
aircraft blinked out, and it disappeared completely.

 
          
The
boom operator looked wearily at Colonel Sands.

 
          
“Reynolds,
are the radios clear?”

 
          
“Negative,”
the pilot told Sands. “Still heavy jamming.”

 
          
“Well,
he can’t jam SATCOM,” Sands replied angrily. “Transmit a post-refueling report
directly to SAC. Label it URGENT. Report the receiver’s call sign, direction of
flight, onload, everything. As soon as we’re out of range of their jammers,
direct command post to make a transcript of the radio transmissions.” Sands
stared out the boom window into the inky blackness. “I’ll file it in my ‘usual
timely, efficient manner,’ you old bastard,” Sands muttered. “And I’ll be there
to watch you roast on a spit.”

 
 
          
***

 
          
“So
what’s the news?” Elliott asked Ormack. The copilot had just got off the
interphone with McLanahan, coordinating the distances, altitudes, and fuel
flows. Elliott had just finished a five-minute stint on the firefighting oxygen
mask and had done a station check of the cockpit and left and right load
central circuit breaker panels, the two massive walls of circuit breakers and
fuses lining the pressure cabin between the pilot’s and defensive operator’s
compartments. He had also checked for fuel leaks around the air refueling valve
in the upper deck walkway.

 
          
“Want
the good news or bad news first?” McLanahan asked him.

 
          
“Better
give me the bad news first.”

 
          
“We
are some sixty thousand pounds short of fuel,” Ormack said.

 
          
Elliott
had no answer to that one. The enormous quantity involved . . .

 
          
“Eighteen
thousand of that, of course, was the left outboard drop tank,” Ormack went on.
“I put some fuel in the left inboard drop and left outboard wing tanks during
refueling, but there’s a serious leak in both those tanks and it’s almost
gone—about fifteen thousand pounds. I transferred the rest into the mains to
keep from losing it all. There might also be a small leak in the right outboard
tank, which happened when we hit the hangar. Our automatic fuel management
system is now out the porthole until the right drop tank and outboards are dry.
That’s why we have so much rudder trim in—the right wing is twenty-one tons
heavier than the left.”

 
          
“Sixty
thousand pounds short,” Elliott muttered. “Two hours fuel. Well, what’s the
good
news?” He looked to Ormack, who
nodded to McLanahan.

 
          
“I’ve
been looking at the aeronautical charts on board,” McLanahan began. “There are
some civil aviation airways from
Alaska
to Japan that cross very close to the
Kamchatka
peninsula.”

 
          
“Sure,”
Elliott said, as Ormack pulled out his copy of the high-altitude navigation
chart from his publications bin. “The Russians can’t completely close off their
airspace, even their air defense identification zone. But we’d need a flight
plan to enter that airway. If we just appear out of nowhere we’ll get
intercepted for sure.”

 
          
“But
they won’t see us,” Wendy Tork said.

 
          
Ormack
asked, “How can they miss us? That airway is only . . .’’he measured the
distance with a pencil “. . . about a hundred and twenty miles from their
radar.”

 
          
“Well,
Seattle
Center
couldn’t see us at that same distance.
Remember, they only had a secondary beacon target on us, on our transponder.
And I’d guess that
Seattle
’s radar is better than a Siberian one. Our fibersteel skin has already
proved itself—
Los Angeles
Center
couldn’t see us after we launched out of
Dreamland, and we were right in the middle of their airspace.”

 
          
“But
we’ve somehow got to jump into their coastline,” Ormack said. “How do we do
that?”

 
          
“Dave
and I have been doing some wagging on the computer down here,” McLanahan said,
“and here’s what we’ve come up with . . . there’s an island off the east coast
of the Kamchatka peninsula, midway between Kavaznya to the north and the sub
pens at Petropavlovsk to the south. It’s pretty big and has an airfield—if I’m
not mistaken they’ve got sub communications gear there.”

 
          
“Beringa,”
Dave said, pointing to his high-altitude map. ‘‘They’ve got a circle around it
that looks like surveillance radar only. No high-altitude coverage.” He went
back to his work on the computer terminal.

 
          
‘‘
Beringa
Island
,” McLanahan took it up, “is right in a gap
in high- altitude radar coverage between Ossora Airfield near Kavaznya and Pe-
tropavlovski. It’s also only a few miles off the high-altitude airway between
Anchorage
and
Japan
. We can head toward that gap, cut just to
the south of surveillance radar coverage at Beringa, and still be at high
altitude all the way. Once we get inside high-altitude radar coverage, we’ll
only be about seventeen minutes from the coast. We duck under high- altitude
radar and then get into the mountains along the spine of the
Kamchatka
peninsula. If we stay away from Beringa
radar, the lowest we’ll have to go is about five thousand feet until we get
into Kavaznya low-altitude surveillance radar coverage.”

 
          
“Did
you work out the fuel for a plan like that?” Elliott asked.

 
          
“Yes,”
Luger told him, “and it’s close. We’d never make it back to Eielson, that’s for
sure. We’d barely make it back across the
Bering Strait
, but we’d do it.” I hope, he added to
himself.

 
          
Ormack
looked at Elliott, who shrugged. “Looks like one of those ice-bound alternates
will have to do,” he said.

 
          
“We
do have another problem,” Luger said, checking the computer display again. “The
computer doesn’t have elevation data for any of the
Kamchatka
peninsula except for about a hundred miles
around Kavaznya. That means that most of the ride up the mountain ranges would
be either at safe-clearance altitudes or manual terrain-avoidance. That’s a
pretty wild ride even for our experienced crew. We’re good, but good enough for
two hours of manual terrain-following? We have no detailed charts, no terrain
elevations. We’d be relying on radar the whole way until the computer could
start driving the boat.”

 
          
“Well,”
Elliott said, “now I know why we brought two navigators along. Do you think you
could have come up with all that so fast, John?”

 
          
Ormack
shook his head. “Not with all the computers in
Japan
, General.”

           
“Well, we’ve got the gas, and now
we’ve got a plan. Patrick, Dave, how long will it take you to reenter your new
flight plan in the computer?”

 
          
In
reply, the steering bug on the pilot’s Attitude-Directional Indicator swung
around until it was pointing about twenty degrees left of their present
heading. “Steering is good to intercept the airway,” Luger said. “The new
flight plan is entered and active.”

 
          
“Are
we clear of
Attu
airspace?” Elliott asked.

 
          
“Affirmative,”
McLanahan said, checking his chart and the satellite navigator’s present
position readout. “
Attu
is off our
four o’clock
, just over a hundred miles. We’re in
international airspace.”

 
          
“Second-station
computer control coming in,” Elliott said. He engaged the autopilot to the
navigation computers, and the Old Dog banked left in response to the new
turning signals. Soon the heading bug was centered at the top of the heading
indicator case.

 
          
“We’ll
be within high radar coverage of Ossora Airfield in about an hour,” Luger
reported.

 
          
“Good,”
Elliott said. He forced himself to relax and found that his grip on the yoke
was that much tighter. “If there are any last-minute equipment checks to do,
now’s the time to do them. If not, try to get some rest.”

 
          
Ormack
looked across at the three-star general beside him, and they exchanged smiles.

 
          
“Well,
at least try to
relax
, ” Elliott
corrected himself.

 
          
Luger
checked the position and heading readouts and marked a fix point on his chart.
“ ‘Relax,’ he says. Better said than done. Less than an hour from low level,
about two hours to the target—a target in goddamned
Russia
—and he wants us to—”

 
          
He
glanced over at McLanahan. His partner had his arms wrapped around his body,
his head awkwardly lying back on the headrest of his ejection seat. His snoring
could be clearly heard over the roar of the Old Dog’s eight turbofan engines.

 
          
“Amazing,”
he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Absolutely fuckin’ amazing.”

 
          
“Ten
minutes from horizon crossing,” Luger announced.