The defence system was in good shape. The brain was working, and so was the search radar. Goldsmith’s two hornets were still ready to go, with all their circuits in order. The remaining eight weapons seemed to be all right.
Mellows reported the radio working satisfactorily. Lieutenant Engelbach was a little unhappy about his target radar. The bombsight mechanisms seemed unaffected, but the radarscope wasn’t functioning well. He said he’d be able to tell better when they had crossed in over land.
Andersen was satisfied with his navigation equipment, and Federov confirmed the plane was flying fine except for the two dead engines. "They know how to build these things at Boeing," he said. "Take a lot more than that to kill a fifty-two."
"Yeah," Brown said. "Sure, a lot more." He thought for a long moment about his girl at Seattle. He remembered the way she would say, "Clint honey, I’ll never be jealous of the airplane, or the eight forty-third, or any other old wing they assign you to. I grew up with airplanes here. I guess I can live with them when we’re married."
When we’re married. How did Seattle look now? High shattered buildings poking a few ferro-concrete fingers at a sky loaded with strontium dust? Tarmac of roads, stone and wood of houses, bone and sinew of human flesh, fused into a smooth, dead amalgam? Glowing black hair and tall graceful body, brain and voice and generous, loving heart, charred into black nothing? Brown said tightly, "Garcia?"
"They’re O.K., Captain," Garcia said quietly.
"All right. Thanks, Garcia." Brown glanced round the instruments again, waiting for the important words from Andersen and Federov. A minute went by while he tried not to think about Seattle. For all but five seconds of the minute he failed.
Andersen came in first. "We can’t make it before ten after twelve. Even with the boost in speed the loss of height has cut us down. It would be more, but the wind seems pretty good at this level."
"O.K., Stan." Brown fitted the last but one factor into his framework. Now he was only waiting on Federov. He waited another half minute before he got the news he had been fearing, about as he expected it from his own rough calculations.
"Two thousand eight hundred from target," Federov said. "I’ve made allowance we drop speed once we leave the target. Add eight hundred from A point to target, still leaves us way over a thousand under minimum."
Over a thousand under minimum. That ruled out return to any base south of the fiftieth parallel. And the bases north of it would probably be out already. Well, if it came to the worst, they could always drop altitude and hit the silk once they got back over land. The airplane wouldn’t matter then, it would have done its job. He looked at his count-down clock. Fifty-one to run. He found it difficult to work back from that, to translate the minutes to target into actual time. He could quite easily have glanced at his watch. But it simply did not occur to him. He said, "Stan, time check. And how many minutes before we cross in?"
Stan Andersen broke off his work, checked his wristwatch against the small chronometer located in the bottom right hand corner of the ground position indicator. "Coming up to 11.15. Ten seconds… Five… Now. Set the countdown to fifty-five. And we cross in at 11.24. Couple of minutes later than I estimated. There’ll be a small change of course shortly but not very much. Two or three degrees."
"Right, Stan. O.K., men, this is how it goes. We’re still capable of hitting our primary target, maybe the secondary too, but certainly the primary. That’s got to be hit. Here’s how I see it.
"I’m pretty goddam sure we were hit by an experimental missile, and I don’t figure on running up against any more like that. I’m confident we can divert their ordinary missiles, and we know Goldsmith’s little stingers can blot out the fighters they’ll send up. Everything else is working fine, so we’ll hit our primary.
"All right, that looks good, so what are the snags? First, we got hit and we got holed in the pressure cabin. We’re twenty-five thousand under our best operating altitude, but that’s the way it has to be. That won’t stop us geting to the primary.
"We’ll get there, but — an’ I’m not going to mince words about this — we may not make a useable base afterwards. You know what a drop in altitude does to the fuel consumption of a jet engine. If we can’t make a base, I’m planning on dropping height and letting everyone bale out once we get over friendly land.
"That’s the aeronautical side, now here’s the tactical. There’s no reason they can hit us any better at this height than at sixty thousand. Only reason we flew up there was to stretch fuel. Tactically, we’re as safe down here. Maybe safer, because they won’t expect us in at this altitude."
Brown paused, then went on slowly, "So I’m going right on in to the primary. We could turn back now, and with good reason, but I’m not going to. Our target is the I.C.B.M. site at Kotlass. We don’t hit it, we’ll maybe help to kill an awful lot of our own people. So we’re going on."
Lieutenant Bill Owens broke in on him. Urgently. "Captain, I have two blips, must be fighters. They’re well apart, coming head on. Speed high, about Mach Two. Range fifty."
"Roger," Brown said. "Your hornets ready to go, Goldsmith?"
"Ready, Captain." Goldsmith checked over his instruments for the twentieth time. Everything functioning right. He flicked down the fire switches of one and six to the on position. It only needed a stab of the button now.
"They’re in to twenty five," Owens said. "Moving further apart. Guess they must be under close control, going to pass and come in from port and starboard together."
"Right," Brown said.
"Call them at ten." Goldsmith’s voice was lifting, eager.
"Twelve now, going further out. You have them, Herman?"
"Sure," Goldsmith said happily. "I have them." He watched the two bright dots on his fire control scope. They were following the classic attack pattern of the supersonic missile-carrying fighter. Break off from ahead of target, start to turn hard in when you got abeam, come in with six hundred miles of overtake speed, launch your rockets, get out fast.
Goldsmith watched them almost lovingly as they turned in, one from port, one from starboard. That tactic wouldn’t confuse the missiles. They had a preference system built into them which would incline them towards targets on their own side of the bomber. The fighters were at six miles now. Goldsmith put his two thumbs on the firing buttons. Five and a half miles. Five. He said, "Firing," and pressed the two buttons.
Electricity raced along the circuit wires which connected the missiles with the bomber. From the firing ports of each motor twelve white flames licked hungrily back into the air stream. The slim rockets slid neatly out of their embracing tubes, and roared away on their destructive task.
Goldsmith peered closely at his scope. He saw the two small blobs of light march across the screen towards the bigger blobs, hesitate for a moment, then dart firmly in to mingle with them.
Behind Alabama Angel two red bails of fire expanded slowly in the cold wastes of the air. Two rockets went into the self immolation which was their destined end. With them they took two Soviet all-weather fighters. The pilots of the fighters, Goldsmith thought, as he watched the sudden violent reaction on his scope, would never have known what hit them. He said, "Fighters destroyed. I’ll line up the next two."
Goldsmith selected two and seven on the row of switches half way down his panel. The red lights glowed steadily beneath each of them. He waited the twenty seconds necessary to prime and place the missiles in firing positions. The red lights continued to glow. He switched in to emergency circuits. No effect. He cancelled the selection of two and seven, tried three and eight. Four and nine. Five and ten. The red lights glowed.