Vikram experimentally moved the airmine cannon by moving his head — wherever he “looked,” the cannon pointed in that direction. Right now the display was blank, except for the azimuth and elevation readouts, the missiles-remaining counter at 50, and the status readouts, which all read ON with flashing red letters except for the cannon itself, which read ok in green letters. “Looks like the cannon is okay,” he reported. “But the radars and datalink are still down. How can I track them if I can’t see them?”
“They’re coming around!” Elliott shouted. “Three o’clock, same altitude, about five miles.”
“If that’s all the information you got, Emitter, that’s what you use,” McLanahan said. “You’ve got to visualize where the fighters are, then lay the airmines out there and detonate them manually where you think the fighters will be.”
“But I don’t understand how—”
“There’s nothing to understand, Emitter — just do it!” McLanahan shouted. “Now!”
Vikram focused his attention on the virtual gunnery display. He tried to imagine the fighters rolling in hard toward their target, arming missiles or guns, tightening the turn, decreasing the range… and then he pulled the trigger three times. A loud bang bang bang! and a brief, sharp shudder rocked the EB-52. In his virtual display, he saw three large circles moving away from him; the size of the circle represented the range from the bomber and decreased as the rocket got farther away… except the circle size did not decrease. Vikram moved his head to steer the first missile — nothing. He punched the detonate button with his right thumb — again, no indication that the missile had detonated.
“I think the radio link to the missile is down,” Vikram said.
“Then don’t try to manually steer or detonate the missiles,” McLanahan said. “Prearm all the missiles to detonate at two miles — you’ll just have to start pumping them out across the whole rear quadrant.”
“But I won’t know if I hit anything,” Vikram protested as he punched in new arming instructions for all the remaining rockets. “Sounds like a waste of airmines.”
“If you don’t stop those fighters, Emitter, we’ll waste a hell of a lot more than a few airmines,” McLanahan said. “Start pumping them out.” Quickly but methodically, Vikram started laying down lines of airmine rockets, describing a figure-eight pattern centered on the Megafortress’s tail. The crew heard several loud pops! and a sharp, hard rumble through the plane as the cannon fired the rockets into the sky.
“Bandit, nine o'clock!” Elliott shouted on interphone. “He’s firing guns!” The fourth Su-33 fighter had broken off his wingman’s position when the leader had seen the exploding airmines and circled around, both Chinese fighters staying well away from the bomber’s tail. Vikram swung the turret left, and fired. Elliott tried to help by breaking hard right to put the fighter back into the airmine cannon’s lethal envelope, but not in time. Several 23-millimeter cannon shells hit the Megafortress’s number four engine, causing it to disintegrate in the blink of an eye. The engine-monitoring computers immediately sensed the turbine overspeed and shut the engine down before it exploded. But the sudden loss of the right outboard engine, coupled with the steep right turn and full thrust on the left engines, threw the Megafortress into a steeper right break…
… too tight: the turn steepened, the airspeed decreased, the angle of attack increased, and the tight turn quickly wrapped into a 5G accelerated stall. The crew felt the rumble of the stall along the huge wings, felt the rumble deepen as the departed slipstream banged first on the spoilers, then the fuselage, then felt the neck-jarring jolts as the slipstream grabbed the V-tail assembly and rocked the bomber in both pitch and yaw simultaneously. No matter how much the pilots moved the control stick, the bomber would not respond — all of the control surfaces had been immobilized by a 300-knot blast of disrupted air, acting like a huge whirlpool slamming the bomber in every direction at once.
“Wings level! Wings level!” Cheshire shouted. The Megafortress was still in a one-hundred-degree right bank, and it felt as if it was tipping farther right, threatening to roll upside down.
“Controls won’t respond!” Elliott shouted on interphone. “No response!”
“We got it, we got it! ” Cheshire shouted cross-cockpit. She still did not have time to put on her oxygen mask. The fire #4 warning lights came on, but in the Megafortress that was only an advisory — the aircraft had already responded to the fire, shutting down the engine, activating the firefighting system, and rerouting fuel, hydraulic, bleed air, pneumatic, and electrical systems away from the stricken engine. “Damn, we lost number four!” Cheshire shouted. “Number four’s already shut down! General, try airbrakes. Bring the power back to idle. Emitter, nail that fighter, for Christ’s sake! ”
“My gear’s in reset, Nance!” Atkins shouted back on interphone. “I’m blind for the next ninety seconds! ”
“Stand by,” Elliott responded. “Airbrakes six, power coming back…” All of the crew members were thrown forward into their shoulder straps as the airspeed rapidly bled off. Elliott held the control stick full forward, easing it slightly left every few seconds to test if the controls were responding. At first it felt as if the nose was rising, threatening to send them into a tail-first spin right into the sea, but a few long, tense seconds later, the nose tucked under and the artificial horizon attitude indicator stopped its tumble. Elliott applied slight left rudder and left bank, and the left wing came down slightly. In very, very gradual increments, he fed in left bank, being extra careful not to bleed off any of the slowly increasing airspeed. He felt a slight rumble in the wings and fuselage and lowered the airbrakes. The rumble remained — they were still right at the initial buffet, right at the edge of the stall.
“Passing five thousand!” Cheshire shouted.
As the bank decreased below forty degrees, Elliott smoothly began reapplying power, and the airspeed increased faster. Now, with the wings almost level, the nose down below the horizon, and airspeed increasing, he slowly began feeding in back pressure to decrease the rate of descent. At first there was no response — their airspeed had decreased below flying speed, way below — so he held the stick forward and fed in a bit more power.
“Four thousand feet! ”
Another try — this time, Elliott felt pressure on the stick as he pulled, and he kept the back pressure in until he felt it mush again, then released. The nose was ten degrees below the horizon now, and the stall buffeting was all but gone. A bit more back pressure… no, too much, forward again, nose moving down, airspeed increasing, good… a bit more back, wings level, good, no mushing, a bit more back pressure, pitch up to eight degrees, six degrees…
“Three thousand feet!”
Elliott slowly began moving the throttles forward. Power spooling up to one hundred percent, another try for more altitude… good, nose coming up to four degrees, almost level, airspeed still rising, descent rate decreasing… “Two thousand… one thousand… Jesus, Brad, you got it?”
There! Nose on the horizon, airspeed right at takeoff speed, wings level — they were flying again! Elliott looked up from his airspeed indicator and saw how close they got to the ocean… shit, the waves looked close enough to be spraying salt water on them! The radar altimeter read 200 feet, just barely out of the cushion of air known as ground effect. They were flying! “I got it, crew, I got it,” Elliott said triumphantly. Airspeed was above 200 knots, so he lifted the nose above the horizon, and the radar altimeter started up… 250, 300, well out of ground effect now and we’re still flying and airspeed’s still incr—