Аннотация: Peter the Great lived twenty-five years longer than in real history and even got the chance to become a boy again.
A NEW CHANCE FOR PETER THE GREAT
ANNOTATION
Peter the Great lived twenty-five years longer than in real history and even got the chance to become a boy again.
CHAPTER No 1.
Peter the Great didn't die in 1725; indeed, he enjoyed the health and strength of a hero, despite his bad habits. Continuing to wage war in the south, the great tsar conquered all of Iran and reached the Indian Ocean. There, on its coast, the city of Port began to be built. Then, in 1730, there was a major war with Turkey. It dragged on for five years. But Tsarist Russia conquered Iraq, Kuwait, Asia Minor and the Caucasus, and Crimea and its border towns.
Peter the Great, as they say, consolidated his position in the south. In 1740, a new war with Turkey erupted. This time, Istanbul fell, and Tsarist Russia conquered the Balkans and reached Egypt. Vast territories came under Tsarist rule.
In 1745, the tsarist army marched on India and incorporated it into the great empire. Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan were also captured. And in 1748, Tsarist Russia captured Sweden and Finland.
True, the Tsar had grown decrepit-still, he was quite old. And he desperately wanted to find the apple of youth, so he could conquer the world in time. Or the water of life. Or any other potion. Like Genghis Khan, Peter the Great wanted to become immortal. Or rather, Genghis Khan was also mortal, but he sought immortality, though he failed.
Peter promised the title of duke and a dukedom to the physician, scientist, or sorcerer who could make him immortal. And so the search for the elixir of immortality, or eternal youth, began across the world.
Of course, there were a whole bunch of charlatans who offered their potions, but they were tested on elderly guinea pigs and, in case of failure, executed.
But then a boy of about ten came to Peter the Great and secretly entered the palace. He told the tall old man that there was a way to restore his youth. In exchange, Peter the Great would have to renounce his throne and power. He would become a boy of ten and be given the opportunity to live his life anew. Was the Tsar ready for this?
Peter the Great asked the boy in a hoarse voice:
- What kind of family will I be in?
The barefoot boy in shorts replied:
- None! You'll be a homeless boy, and you'll have to find your own way in life!
Peter the Great scratched his bald forehead and replied:
"Yes, you've given me a difficult task. A new life, anew, but at what cost? What if I become a boy for three days to think about it?"
The boy in shorts replied:
- No, three days - only three hours for a trial!
Peter the Great nodded:
- It's coming! And three hours will be enough to figure it out!
The boy stamped his bare foot.
And then Peter felt an extraordinary lightness in his body and jumped up. He was a boy now. True, he was barefoot and in rags, but he was a healthy, cheerful young man.
And next to him was a familiar, fair-haired boy. He extended his hand. And they found themselves on a rocky road. It was snowing wetly, and Pyotr was almost naked and barefoot. And it was dreary.
The boy nodded:
- Yes, Your Majesty! Such is the fate of a poor boy!
Petka then asked him:
- What's your name?
The boy replied:
- I'm Oleg, what?
The former king stated:
- It's okay! Let's go faster!
And the boy began to pad along with his bare, rough feet. Besides the cold and dampness, he was also plagued by hunger. It wasn't very comfortable. The boy-king asked with a trembling voice:
- Where can we spend the night?
Oleg answered with a smile:
- You'll see!
And indeed, a village appeared ahead. Oleg had disappeared somewhere. Peter the Great, now a boy, was left completely alone. But he headed for the nearest house. He jumped to the door and pounded on it with his fists.
The owner's gloomy face appeared:
- Where do you need to go, degenerate?
Petka exclaimed:
- Let me spend the night and give me something to eat!
The master snatched up a whip and lashed the boy across his nearly naked body. He suddenly began to scream. The master lashed him again, and Peter took off running, his heels glistening.
But that wasn't enough. They unleashed an enraged dog on him. And how it pounced on the boy.
Petka ran as fast as he could, but his dog bit him a couple of times and tore off pieces of meat.
How desperately the boy-tsar screamed in pain and humiliation. How stupid and vile it was.
And then he crashed head-on into a cart full of manure. A shower of excrement rained down on him, covering him from head to toe. And the manure-slurry stung his wounds.
Peter screamed:
- Oh, my God, why is this happening to me!
And then he came to. Oleg stood next to him; he looked a little older, about twelve years old, and the boy sorcerer asked the king:
- Well, your majesty, do you agree to this option?
Peter the Great exclaimed:
- No! And get out of here before I order your execution!
Oleg took a few steps, passed through the wall like a ghost and disappeared.
Peter the Great crossed himself and answered:
- What a demonic obsession!
The great Tsar and first Emperor of All Rus' and the Russian Empire died in 1750. He died after living a rather long life, especially for those times when they didn't even know how to measure blood pressure, during a glorious and successful reign. He was succeeded by his grandson, Peter II, but that's another story. His grandson had his own kingdom and wars.
AMERICA STRIKES BACK
ANNOTATION
The spies' games continue, and the politicians weave cunning intrigues, and everything gets even more complicated. An Air Force colonel finds himself in a crazy situation, risking his life.
CHAPTER 1
The alarm clock rings at 6 a.m., the clock radio tuned to soothing, easy-listening music. Air Force Colonel Norman Weir puts on his new Nike warm-up suit and runs a couple of miles around the base, returns to his room, then listens to the news on the radio while he shaves, showers, and puts on a fresh uniform. He walks to the Officers' Club four blocks away and eats breakfast-eggs, sausage, whole wheat toast, orange juice, and coffee-while reading the morning newspaper. Since his divorce three years earlier, Norman has started every workday exactly the same way.
Air Force Major Patrick S. McLanahan was awakened by the clicking of his SATCOM transceiver printer, spitting a long stream of messages onto a strip of thermal printer paper like a bad grocery receipt. He sat at his bombardier's station, head resting on the console, taking a nap. After ten years of flying long-range bombers, Patrick had developed the ability to ignore his body's demands for the sake of mission accomplishment: staying awake for long periods; sitting for long hours without relief; and falling asleep quickly and deeply enough to feel refreshed, even if the nap lasted only a few minutes. It was part of the survival technique most combat airmen developed in the face of operational exigencies.
While the printer spewed instructions, Patrick ate breakfast-a cup of protein milkshake from a stainless steel thermos and a couple of pieces of beef jerky with a leathery filling. All his meals during this long flight over water were high-protein and low-residue-no sandwiches, vegetables, or fruit. The reason was simple: no matter how high-tech his bomber, a toilet was still a toilet. Using it meant unzipping all his survival gear, shedding his flight suit, and sitting downstairs nearly naked in a dark, cold, noisy, smelly, drafty compartment. He would rather eat tasteless food and risk constipation than suffer the humiliation. He was grateful to serve in a weapons system that allowed crew members to use a toilet-all his fellow fighter pilots had to use pacifiers, wear adult diapers, or simply hold one in their hands. It was the greatest humiliation.
When the printer finally stopped, he tore off the message strip and reread it. It was a status report request-the second one in the last hour. Patrick composed, coded, and transmitted a new response message, then decided he'd better speak to the aircraft commander about all these requests. He secured his ejection seat, unbuckled his seatbelt, and stood up for the first time in days.
His partner, defense systems specialist Wendy Tork, Ph.D., was fast asleep in the right seat. She tucked her arms under her shoulder harnesses to avoid accidentally pressing the ejection handles-there were many cases of sleeping crew members dreaming of disaster and punching themselves out of perfectly good aircraft-and wore flight gloves, the visor of her dark helmet down, and an oxygen mask in case an emergency arose and she had to eject without warning. Over her flight suit, she wore a summer flight jacket, with a swim harness over it, and the bulges of the inflatable bags under her arms caused her arms to rise and fall with each deep, sleepy breath.
Patrick examined Wendy's defense console before moving forward, but he had to force himself to admit he'd paused there to look at Wendy, not the instruments. There was something about her that intrigued him-and then he stopped himself again. Face it, Muk, Patrick told himself: you're not intrigued-you're passionately in love with her. Beneath that baggy flight suit and survival gear lies a beautiful, toned, luscious body, and it seemed strange, unruly, almost wrong to think about such things while flying forty-one thousand feet over the Gulf of Oman in a high-tech warbird. Strange, but exciting.
At that moment, Wendy lifted her dark helmet visor, lowered her oxygen mask, and smiled at him. Damn it, Patrick thought, quickly turning his attention to the defense console, those eyes could melt titanium.
"Hello," she said. Even though she had to raise her voice to speak to the other end of the cabin, it was still a friendly, pleasant, disarming sound. Wendy Tork, Ph.D., was one of the world's most renowned experts in electromagnetic engineering and systems design, a pioneer in using computers to analyze energy waves and perform specific responses. They had worked together for nearly two years at their home base, the High-Advanced Aerospace Weapons Center (HAWC) at Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada, known as Dreamland.
"Hello," he said back. "I was just... checking your systems. We'll be over the horizon of Bandar Abbas in a few minutes, and I wanted to see if you noticed anything."
"The system would alert me if it detected any signals within fifteen percent of the detection threshold," Wendy noted. She spoke in her usual high-tech voice, feminine but not effeminate. This allowed Patrick to relax and stop thinking about things that were so out of place on a military aircraft. Then she leaned forward in her chair, closer to him, and asked, "You were looking at me, weren't you?"
The sudden change in her voice made his heart skip a beat and his mouth go dry as the Arctic air. "You're crazy," he heard himself say. God, that sounded insane!
"I saw you through the visor, Major, hot stuff," she said. "I saw the way you looked at me." She leaned back, still looking at him. "Why were you looking at me?"
"Wendy, I wasn't..."
"Are you sure you weren't?"
"I... I wasn't..." What's going on? Patrick thought. Why am I so tongue-tied? I feel like a schoolboy who's just been caught doodling in the notebook of the girl he had a crush on.
Well, he really was in love with her. They'd first met about three years ago, when they'd both been recruited to the team developing the flying battleship Megafortress. They'd had a brief, intense sexual encounter, but events, circumstances, and responsibilities always prevented anything more from happening. It was the last time and place he'd imagined their relationship could take a new, exciting step forward.
"It's all right, Major," Wendy said. She kept her eyes on him, and he felt the urge to duck back behind the weapons bay bulkhead and stay there until they landed. "You're cleared."
Patrick found he could breathe again. He relaxed, trying to appear calm and casual, though he could feel the sweat seeping from every pore. He picked up the satellite TV tape. "I have... we received a message... orders... instructions," he murmured, and she smiled, simultaneously chiding and enjoying him. "From the Eighth Air Force. I was going to talk to the general, then everyone else. On the interphone. Before we go over the horizon. The Iranian horizon."
"You can do it, Major," Wendy said, amusement in her eyes. Patrick nodded, relieved to be done with it, and headed for the cockpit. She stopped him. "Oh, Major?"
Patrick turned to her again. "Yes, Doctor?"
"You never told me."
"What did I tell you?"
"Are all my systems in order, in your opinion?"
Thank goodness she smiled after that, Patrick thought. Maybe she doesn't think I'm some kind of pervert. Having regained some of his composure, but still afraid to let his gaze wander to her "systems," he replied, "I think they look great, Doc."
"Okay," she said. "Thank you." She smiled a little warmer, looked him up and down, and added, "I'll be sure to keep an eye on your systems, too."
Patrick had never felt such relief and yet such nakedness as he bent to crawl through the connecting tunnel to the cockpit.
But just before he declared himself moving forward and disconnected the intercom cord, he heard the slow electronic "DIDDLE...DIDDLE...DIDDLE..." warning signal of the ship's threat detection system. They had just been picked up by enemy radar.
Patrick practically flew back into his ejection seat, buckled himself in, and released the safety catch. He was in the aft crew compartment of an EB-52C Megafortress bomber, the next generation of "flying battleships" that Patrick's secret research unit hoped to build for the Air Force. This had once been a production B-52H Stratofortress bomber, the workhorse of the U.S. Navy's long-range heavy bombardment force, designed for long range and heavy nuclear and non-nuclear payloads. The original B-52 had been designed in the 1950s; the last one had rolled off the assembly line twenty years earlier. But this plane was different. The original airframe had been rebuilt from the ground up using state-of-the-art technology, not just to modernize it, but to make it the most advanced combat aircraft...that no one had ever heard of.
"Wendy?" he called over the intercom. "What do we have?"
"That's weird," Wendy replied. "I've got a variable X-band PRF target there. Switching between anti-ship and anti-aircraft search systems is accelerating. Estimated range... Hell, thirty-five miles, twelve o'clock. He's right above us. Within range of radar-guided missiles."
"Any idea what this is?"
"It's probably an AWACS," Wendy replied. "It looks like it's scanning both ground and airborne targets. No fast PRFS-just scanning. Faster than the APY scan on, say, an E-2 Hawkeye or E-3 Sentry, but the profile is the same."
"Iranian AWACS aircraft?" Patrick asked. The EB-52 Megafortress was flying in international airspace over the Gulf of Oman, west of the Iranian coast and south of the Strait of Hormuz, outside the Persian Gulf. Lt. Gen. Brad Elliott, director of the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Center, ordered three of his experimental Megafortress bombers to patrol the skies near the Persian Gulf, carrying out a covert, stealthy strike in case one of the supposedly neutral countries in the region decided to intervene in the conflict raging between Coalition forces and the Republic of Iraq.
"Could be a 'support' or a 'candidate,'" Patrick suggested. "One of the aircraft Iraq allegedly transferred to Iran was an IL-76MD airborne early warning aircraft. Perhaps the Iranians are trying out their new toy. Can it see us?"
"I think he can," Wendy said. "He's not tracking us, just scanning the area, but he's close, and we're approaching the detection threshold." The B-52 Stratofortress was not designed, nor was it ever considered, to be stealthy, but the EB-52 Megafortress was very different. It retained much of the new anti-radar technology it had been equipped with as an experimental testbed: non-metallic "fibersteel" skin, stronger and lighter than steel but not radar-reflective; beveled control surfaces instead of straight edges; no external antennas; radar-absorbent material used in the engine intakes and windows; and a unique radar-absorbing energy system that retransmits radar energy along the aircraft's body and diverts it back along the wing's trailing edges, reducing the amount of radar energy reflected back to the enemy. It also carried a wide range of weapons and could provide the same firepower as Air Force or Navy tactical fighters.
"It looks like he's guarding the Strait of Hormuz, watching for incoming aircraft," Patrick suggested. "Course two-three-zero to avoid it. If he spots us, it might arouse the Iranians."
But he spoke too late: "He can see us," Wendy interjected. "He's at thirty-five miles, one o'clock, at high speed, heading straight for us. Speed increasing to five hundred knots."
"That's not an AWACS," Patrick said. "It looks like we've spotted some kind of fast-moving patrol aircraft."
"Shit," the aircraft's commander, Lieutenant General Brad Elliott, cursed over the intercom. Elliott was the commander of the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Center, also known as Dreamland, and the designer of the EB-52 Megafortress flying battleship. "Turn off his radar, Wendy, and let's hope he thinks his radar is faulty and decides to call it a day."
"Let's get out of here, Brad," Patrick interjected. "There's no point in risking a dogfight here."
"We're in international airspace," Elliott protested indignantly. "We have as much right to be here as Turkey does."
"Sir, this is a combat zone," Patrick emphasized. "Crew, let's get ready to get the hell out of here."
With a single touch, Wendy commanded the Megafortress's powerful jamming devices to disable the Iranian fighter's search radar. "Trackbreakers activated," Wendy announced. "Give me ninety to the left." Brad Elliott banked the Megafortress sharply to the right and turned perpendicular to the fighter's flight path. The jet's pulse-Doppler radar might not detect a target with zero relative closing velocity. "Bandit at three o'clock, thirty-five miles, and at constant altitude. We're heading for four o'clock. I think he's lost us."
"Not so fast," interjected the crew chief and co-pilot, Colonel John Ormack. Ormack was the HAWC's deputy commander and chief engineer-a wizard, a command pilot with several thousand hours on various tactical aircraft. But his first love was computers, avionics, and gadgets. Brad Elliott had ideas, but he relied on Ormack to make them reality. If techies were given badges or wings, John Ormack would wear them with pride. "He might be being passive. We need to put more distance between us and him. He might not need radar to intercept us."
"I get that," Wendy said. "But I think his IRSTS is out of reach. He..."
At that moment, they all heard a loud, accelerating "DIDDLE-DIDDLE-DIDDLE!" warning over the intercom. "Aerial interceptor locked, range thirty miles, closing fast! Its radar is enormous-it's burning through my jammers. Radar lock secure, closing speed... closing speed reaching six hundred knots!"
"Well," said John Ormack, "at least the water down there is warm even at this time of year."
Jokes were the only thing any of them could think of at that moment - because being spotted by a supersonic interceptor alone over the Gulf of Oman was just about the most fatal thing a bomber crew could ever face.
For Norman Weir, this morning was a little different. Today and for the next two weeks, Weir and several dozen of his fellow Air Force full colonels were at Randolph Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas, for a promotion board. Their task: select the best, brightest, and most highly qualified of the roughly 3,000 Air Force majors for promotion to lieutenant colonel.
Colonel Norman Weir knew a lot about making decisions using complex, objective criteria-promoting careers was right up his alley. Norman was the commander of the Air Force Budget Review Agency at the Pentagon. His job was to do exactly what he was being asked to do: sift through mountains of information about weapons and information systems and determine the future costs and benefits over the life cycle of each. Essentially, he and his staff of sixty-five military and civilian analysts, accountants, and technical experts decided the future of the United States Air Force every day. Every aircraft, missile, satellite, computer, black box, and bomb, as well as every man and woman in the Air Force, was under his watchful eye. Every item in every unit's budget had to pass his team's rigorous review. If it didn't, it would cease to exist by the end of the fiscal year with a single memo to someone in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. He had power and responsibility for billions of dollars every week, and he wielded that power with skill and enthusiasm.
Thanks to his father, Norman decided to pursue a military career in high school. Norman's father was drafted into the Army in the mid-1960s but thought it might be safer to serve at sea in the Navy, so he enlisted and served as a jet propulsion technician aboard various aircraft carriers. He returned from long cruises in the Pacific and Indian Oceans with incredible stories of aviation heroism and triumph, and Norman was hooked. Norman's father also returned home missing half his left arm as a result of a deck ordnance explosion on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and with a Purple Heart. This paved the way for Norman to be accepted to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.
But life at the academy was hard. To say Norman was simply an introvert would be putting it mildly. Norman lived in his head, existing in a sterile, protected world of knowledge and thought. Problem-solving was an academic exercise, not a physical one or even a leadership one. The more they forced him to run, do push-ups, march, and drill, the more he hated it. He failed the physical fitness test, was discharged with prejudice, and returned to Iowa.
His father's near-constant nagging about him wasting his commission and dropping out of the Naval Academy-as if his father had sacrificed his arm so his son could go to Annapolis-weighed heavily on his soul. His father practically disowned his son, declaring he couldn't afford college and urging him to drop out and find a job. Desperate to make his father happy, Norman applied to and was accepted into the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps, where he earned a degree in finance and an Air Force commission, became an accounting and finance specialist, and a few months later earned his CPA certification.
Norman loved the Air Force. It was the best of all worlds: he had the respect of people who respected and admired accountants, and he could command the respect of most others because he outranked and outsmarted them. He earned his major's gold oak leaf in time and soon after assumed command of his own accounting service center on the base.
Even his wife seemed to be enjoying life after her initial hesitation. Most women accepted their husband's rank, but Norman's wife shone and flaunted this invisible but tangible rank at every opportunity. Wives of higher-ranking officers "volunteered" her to serve on committees, which initially resented her. But she soon learned that she had the authority to "volunteer" the wives of lower-ranking officers to serve on her committee, so only the wives of lower-ranking officers and non-commissioned officers had to do the heavy lifting. It was a very neat and uncomplicated system.
For Norman, the job was rewarding but not challenging. Except for standing watch on several mobility lines during unit deployments and a few late nights preparing for snap and annual base inspections, he had a forty-hour workweek and very little stress. He accepted several unusual assignments: conducting an audit at a radar post in Greenland; serving on the advisory staff of several congressional staffers conducting research for legislation. Important, low-risk assignments, full-time work. Norman enjoyed them.
But that's when the conflicts began closer to home. Both he and his wife were born and raised in Iowa, but there were no Air Force bases in Iowa, so it was guaranteed they would only go home for visits. Norman's one unaccompanied overseas PC assignment to Korea gave her time to return home, but it was small consolation without her husband. Frequent layoffs took a toll on the couple, with varying degrees of severity. Norman promised his wife they would start a family when the assignment cycle slowed, but after fifteen years, it became clear Norman had no real intention of starting a family.
The final straw came with Norman's final Pentagon assignment-he became the first director of a brand-new agency overseeing the Air Force budget. They told him the assignment was guaranteed for four years-no more moves. He could even quit if he wanted. His wife's biological clock, which had been ringing loudly for the past five years, had become deafening by then. But Norman said wait. This was a new store. Lots of late nights, lots of weekends. What kind of life would that be for a family? Besides, one morning, after yet another discussion about children, he hinted that she was too old to try to raise a newborn.
By the time he returned home the next evening, she was gone. That had been over three years ago, and Norman hadn't seen or spoken to her since. Her signature on the divorce papers was the last thing he ever saw of hers.
Well, he often told himself, he'd be better off without her. He could take better, more exotic assignments; travel the world without worrying about constantly commuting to either Iowa in the summer or Florida in the winter, where his in-laws were staying; and he didn't have to listen to his ex-wife insisting that two smart people should have a better, more fulfilling-that is, "civilian"-life. Besides, as the old saying went, "If the Air Force wanted you to have a wife, they would have given you one." Norman was beginning to believe that was true.
The first day of the promotion board meeting at the Air Force Selection Board Secretariat at the Air Force Military Personnel Center in Randolph was filled with organizational details and several briefings on how the board operates, the criteria to be used in the selection process, how to use checklists and evaluation sheets, and a review of the standard candidate file. The briefings were conducted by Colonel Ted Fellows, Chief of the Air Force Selection Board Secretariat. The fellows received a briefing on the candidates' profiles-average length of service, geographic distribution, specialty distribution, and other useful information intended to explain how these candidates were selected.
Then, the promotion board president, Major General Larry Dean Ingemanson, commander of the Tenth Air Division, addressed the board members and assigned assignments to each board member, along with a Secretary of the Air Force (SAM) Memorandum of Instruction. The SAM was a set of orders issued by the Secretary of the Air Force to board members, informing them of who would be promoted and the quotas for each, along with general guidelines on how to select candidates eligible for promotion.
There were three main categories of officers eligible for promotion: candidates in the primary zone, above it, and below it. Within each category, specialties were considered: line officers, including airmen or rated officers; unrated operational officers, such as security police and maintenance officers; and mission support officers, such as finance, administration, and base services; along with critical mission support specialties, such as the Chaplain Corps, Medical Service Corps, Nurse Corps, Biomedical Sciences Corps, Dental Corps, and Judge Advocate General Corps. General Ingemanson also announced that expert panels could be convened on any other personnel matters the Secretary of the Air Force might require.
The board members were randomly divided into eight groups of seven members each, adjusted by the president to ensure that each group was not overly tied to a single specialty or command. All major Air Force commands, direct reporting units, field operating agencies, and specialties seemed to be represented: logistics, maintenance, personnel, finance, information technology, chaplains, security police, and dozens of others, including flight specialties. Norman immediately noticed that flight specialties, or "rated" specialties, were particularly well represented. At least half of all board members were enlisted officers, mostly unit commanders or staff officers assigned to high-ranking positions in the Pentagon or at major command headquarters.
It was the biggest problem Norman saw in the Air Force, the one factor that dominated the service to the exclusion of everything else, the one specialty that made life miserable for everyone else-the pilots.
Of course, this was the United States Air Force, not the United States Accounting Force-the service existed to wage battles for national defense by establishing control over the skies and near space, and airmen obviously had a major role to play. But they had the biggest egos and the biggest mouths. The service made concessions to its airmen far more than they supported any other profession, no matter how vital. Airmen received every perk. Unit commanders treated them like firstborn-in fact, most unit commanders were airmen, even if the unit had no direct flying responsibilities.
Norman wasn't entirely sure where his dislike for those who wore wings came from. It likely stemmed from his father. Pilots treated naval aviation mechanics like hired servants, even if the mechanic was a seasoned veteran and the pilot a clueless rookie on his first flight. Norman's father complained loudly and at length about officers in general and aviators in particular. He always wanted his son to be an officer, but he was determined to teach him how to become one that enlisted men and noncommissioned officers admired and respected-and that meant putting up flyers at every opportunity.
Of course, this was an officer, a pilot, who disregarded safety precautions and the advice of his plane's captain and fired a Zuni rocket into a line of aircraft waiting to refuel, resulting in one of the worst non-combat naval disasters the Navy had ever seen, killing over two hundred people and injuring several hundred, including Norman's father. A brash, arrogant, know-it-all pilot who disregarded the rules, this officer was quickly and quietly discharged from the service. Norman's unit commanders repeatedly threw the book at unrated officers and enlisted personnel for the slightest infractions, but the leaflets were usually given two, three, or even four chances before finally being offered discharge rather than court-martial. They always received full benefits.
Well, this time things were going to be different. If I got the promotional pilot's jacket, Norman thought, he'd have to prove himself worthy of a promotion. And he vowed it wouldn't be easy.
"Let's get down to business," Patrick said.
"Damn good idea," Brad said. He dropped the Megafortress's throttles to idle, rolled the plane onto its left wing, and put the big bomber into a relatively gentle dive at six thousand feet per minute. "Wendy, squeeze every last drop out of them. Full spectrum. No radio transmissions. We don't want the entire Iranian Air Force chasing us."
"Copy," Wendy said weakly. She scrambled to catch scattered pencils and checklists as the negative GS sent anything unsafe scattering across the cabin. Turning her oxygen regulator to "100%" helped when her stomach and most of its contents threatened to float around the cabin. "I'm seizing up. It's-" Suddenly, they all heard the rapid warning "DEEDLEDEEDLEDEEDLE!" and red emergency lights flashed in every compartment. "Radar missile launch, seven o'clock, twenty-five miles!" Wendy shouted. "Turn right!"
Elliott banked the Megafortress hard to the right and dropped the throttles to idle, lowering the nose to make the missile more difficult to intercept and to shield the bomber's engine exhaust as much as possible from the attacker. As the bomber slowed, it turned faster. Patrick felt as if he had flipped upside down-the sudden braking, steep dive, and sharp turn only served to derail him and everyone else.
"Chaff! Chaff!" Wendy screamed, ejecting chaff from the left ejectors. The chaff, packets of tinsel-like metal strips, formed large radar-reflecting clouds that created attractive false targets for enemy missiles.
"The missiles are still coming!" Wendy shouted. "Load the Stingers!" As the enemy missiles closed in, Wendy fired small radar- and heat-seeking missiles from the Megafortress's guided cannon. The Stinger missiles collided head-on with the incoming missiles, then detonated a few dozen feet in the missile's path, shredding its fuselage and guidance system. It worked. The last enemy missile detonated less than five thousand feet away.
It took them just four minutes to descend to just two hundred feet above the Gulf of Oman, guided by a navigation computer's terrain database, a satellite navigation system, and a pencil-thin energy beam that measured the distance between the bomber's belly and the water. They headed southwest at full military power, as far from the Iranian coast as possible. Brad Elliott knew what fighter pilots dreaded-low-altitude flight, darkness, and flying over water far from friendly shores. Every engine cough intensified, every drop in the fuel gauge needles seemed critical-even the slightest crackle in the headphones or a tremor in the flight controls seemed to signal disaster. The presence of a potential enemy jamming radar and radio transmissions further heightened the tension. Few fighter pilots had the nerve for night chases over water.
But as Wendy studied her threat displays, it soon became apparent that the MiG, or whatever it was, wasn't going to disappear that easily. "Tough luck, guys-we didn't lose it. It's within twenty miles of us and right on our tail, staying high, but still keeping a good radar lock on us."
"I bet there are messages being sent back to headquarters too," Elliot said.
"Six o'clock, altitude fifteen miles. Approaching heater range." Because the attacking enemy's radar was jammed, he couldn't use a radar-guided missile, but with IRSTS, he could easily close in and fire a heat-seeking missile.
"Wendy, get ready to launch the Scorpions," Brad said.
"Roger that." Wendy's fingers were already on the keyboard, typing out launch instructions for the Megafortress's surprise weapon-the AIM-120 Scorpion AMRAAM, or Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile. The EB-52 carried six Scorpion missiles on each underwing pylon. The Scorpions were radar-guided missiles, controlled by the Megafortress's attack radar or by an onboard radar in the missile's nose-the missiles could even engage targets in the bomber's rear quadrant under the guidance of a tail-mounted radar, allowing for over-the-shoulder launches against pursuing enemies. Only a few aircraft worldwide carried AMRAAMs, but the EB-52 Megafortress carried one for three years, including one combat mission. The enemy aircraft were within the Scorpion's maximum twenty-mile range.
"Twelve miles."
"When he gets eight miles, lock him up and start shooting at them," Brad said. "We have to shoot first."
"Brad, we have to end this," Patrick said urgently.
Wendy looked at him in complete surprise, but Brad Elliott exclaimed, "What was that, Patrick?"
"I said we have to stop this," Patrick repeated. "Look, we're in international airspace. We just dropped to low altitude, we're jamming his radar. He knows we're the bad guys. Forcing a fight isn't going to solve anything."
"He attacked us first, Patrick."
"Look, we're acting like enemies, and he's doing his job-throwing us out of his zone and his airspace," Patrick countered. "We tried to get in, and we got caught. Nobody wants a fight here."
"So what the hell are you suggesting, Nav?" Brad asked sarcastically.
Patrick hesitated, then leaned toward Wendy and said, "Turn off the interference on the UHF GUARD."
Wendy looked at him with concern. "Are you sure, Patrick?"
"Yes. Do it." Wendy reluctantly entered instructions into her ECM computer to prevent jamming signals from interfering with 243.0 megahertz, the universal ultra-high frequency (UHF) emergency communications channel. Patrick flipped the intercom panel dial to COM 2, which he knew was set to the UHF emergency communications channel. "Attention, Iranian aircraft at our six o'clock position, one hundred and seventy-six kilometers southeast of Bandar Abbas. This is the American aircraft you're pursuing. Can you read me?"
"Patrick, what the hell are you doing?" Elliott yelled over the intercom. "Defense, have you stopped jamming the UHF? What the hell is going on?"
"That's a bad idea, Patrick," John suggested sternly, but not as forcefully as Elliot. "You just told him we're Americans. He'll probably want to take a look right now."
"He'd be crazy to answer," Brad said. "Now don't turn on the radio and..."
But just at that moment they heard on the radio: "What is this? We feel a little sorry."