The explosion had momentarily cut off all power to the instruments, so the pilot couldn’t see his airspeed gauge, but he knew he didn’t have flying speed. Time for a new bold-print emergency checklist — crash landing: “Fire T-handles, pull!” he shouted. There was no time to complete the rest of the bold-print items because the MV-22 hit the ground at that instant.
But the pilot did just as he had hoped. When the MV-22 hit the ground just a few seconds later, he had enough airspeed built up to lift the nose and prevent his aircraft from burrowing the nose, or “augering in.” The MV-22 hit the ground at nearly 40 miles an hour, in a nearly level pancake crash. The extra weight on the left wing threatened to flip the aircraft upside down, but luckily it stayed upright.
On the end of the thirty-foot-long rope, Patrick McLanahan was flung through the sky for several seconds like a leaf fluttering in the wind, until that final snap when the MV-22’s nose came down and he could no longer hold on. But the aircraft was only a few feet above ground, so his ballistic trip through the air was short but spectacular. McLanahan landed several dozen feet away from the MV-22’s impact area, hitting on his left side and cartwheeling along the ground several more yards.
Dazed and confused, McLanahan picked himself up off the ground and checked himself over. His night-vision goggles were history, twisted pieces of the instrument hanging off his helmet, so he unstrapped the helmet and tossed it aside. His left shoulder felt wrenched where he had landed on it, but it did not appear broken or separated. His feet and ankles were working.
The only light nearby was from the slowly burning wreckage of the MV-22’s right wing. McLanahan ran over to check on the crew. He could feel something snapping along the ground near him, digging up patches of asphalt and grass — was it his Marines shooting at him or was it the enemy? He had no way to find out. But he made it safely to the rear cargo hatch of the stricken MV-22 and yelled, “Hey! Marines! Anybody in here …?”
“Patrick!” It was John Ormack. He was bending over another Marine — the jumpmaster, Patrick realized — checking his wounds. “My God, I don’t believe it! I never thought I’d ever see you alive again! Are you all right? Where’s your helmet?”
It’s funny what an excited man will say sometimes, McLanahan thought — John Ormack saw McLanahan flung off into space from the back of an aircraft, and he wanted to know about his helmet! “I trashed it. Are you all right?”
“I’m not sure,” Ormack said. “Hey, nice fastrope job. You made it down safe and sound.”
“Gunny Wohl will be pissed. My one real try at fastroping and I screw it up.”
Ormack laughed, then pulled up in pain. “Dammit, Patrick, don’t make me laugh. I think I cracked a rib.” He motioned toward the front of the aircraft. “The jumpmaster is hurt real bad. He pushed me onto the web seats, then got flipped around the cargo hold. Lieutenant Marx.” He pointed to the soldier lying in the web troop seats along the fuselage, the one that was supposed to jump with Ormack. “Goes in and out — he might have a concussion. I’ll drag these guys out. Check the cockpit!”
The MV-22 had landed slightly nose-low, crumpling the left-front portion of the nose. In the glow of cabin emergency lights, it appeared that the copilot’s harness had failed or he had taken it off to activate a switch, because the copilot was dead, his body smashed against the left forward windscreen.
He had seen to the dead — now to see to the living. His first concern was the stricken V-22. Fortunately, McLanahan had a lot of experience with V-22-series aircraft at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, developing the weapons suite for Air Force and Border Security Force versions, so working in the dark cockpit was easy for him. McLanahan averted his eyes from the corpse, reached over, and made sure that both fire T-handles on the top of the instrument panel had been pulled. He found the battery switches on the overhead console and shut those off as well, then retarded the power control to IDLE, released the idle latch, and moved the power control to CUTOFF. It was easy to retrieve the semiconscious pilot from the right side of the cockpit and drag him out, just as it was awful to drag the dead copilot out.
“The copilot didn’t make it,” McLanahan told Ormack when he reached the cargo hold.
“Dammit,” Ormack muttered. “Let’s get the others out of here.” Ormack tried to drag the jumpmaster out while helping Lieutenant Marx to his feet, but his ribs creaked and he moaned in pain.
“You help Marx to the security building,” McLanahan told him. “I’ll get the jumpmaster and the pilots.”
As Ormack assisted the semi-lucid Marine out, McLanahan grabbed the two unconscious Marines by the backs of their jackets and unceremoniously dragged them across the pavement and bits of frozen lawn to the side of the design-center security building. Ormack had found a side door and had placed Marx beside it.
“Try the door,” McLanahan said.
Ormack did — it was locked.
“I’ll get the copilot. Shoot the lock off if you have to.” McLanahan ran off to the stricken MV-22, which had crashed about fifty meters away from the building, between it and the aircraft hangars.
McLanahan was breathing heavily and had slowed down to a trot when he felt, rather than heard, gunshots hitting the ground near his feet. He didn’t know if it was friendly fire, or the Lithuanians, or the Black Berets, but whoever it was definitely was getting a bead on him. With a surge of adrenaline, he sprinted for the MV-22, dodging every time he heard the pop! of gunfire.
Back in the cargo section, McLanahan was about to grab the dead copilot by the jacket and drag the body to the security building, but the shooting outside gave him a better idea. He went to the forward part of the cargo bay and grabbed two MP5s and two web belts full of ammunition from the crew chiefs gun rack. He clipped one ammo pack to his own ALICE harness. Instinctively McLanahan immediately opened the bolt of one of the rifles, checked it in the dim glare of an emergency light, pulled out a magazine, tapped it, inserted it into the breech, slapped the bottom to seat it properly, then flipped the bolt closed. The actions seemed so natural, so fluid, that McLanahan surprised even himself. McLanahan put the weapon on three-shot semiautomatic and, with the gun in his right hand and dragging the dead copilot with his left, began his dangerous trek back to the security building.
This time he could tell that the shots aimed at him were coming from the aircraft hangars. McLanahan moved as fast as he could, not daring to take a rest, and firing at every muzzle flash he saw. Halfway along he had to stop to reload and rest his left arm. This time the enemy fire seemed closer, and he thought he saw movement near the burning MV-22. No clear targets presented themselves, so he grabbed the dead copilot and began dragging him …
… when suddenly two soldiers appeared around the back of the MV-22’s rear cargo door, aiming what looked like AK-47s with long, banana-shaped magazines at him. Their outlines were clearly seen in the glow of the burning left engine, and Patrick realized that he must be easy to see as well. Shots rang out, and McLanahan instinctively dropped to the ground, using the corpse as a shield in front of him. But the enemy soldiers were only a few dozen yards away — they couldn’t miss.
Teresov had to walk across half the length of the building to reach the 3-by-3-meter concrete-block cells that had been constructed by the KGB many years ago. The guard post here was deserted as well — Luger could have been alone down here ever since the alarm was sounded. No matter. He would—
Another explosion, this one dozens of times more powerful than the first three combined, made Teresov drop the flashlight in terror. Was that the arsenal? Three hundred weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition were undoubtedly gone in that one. Two major explosions in just the time it took Teresov to walk from the door to Luger’s cell. Whoever it was, Marines or devils, they were moving fast.