Thpelov shot out of the clouds in a powered dive, then began pulling up to look for an airstrip. Ground radar would have to help him, no matter what the colonel said. His eyes started scanning the ground when — Saint Kirill! There it was! Right below him! Excitedly he keyed his mike. "Colonel! I have found the second American bomber!"
"Excellent, "Ripelov!" hooted the Colonel. "Shoot it down at once! It may be carrying nuclear weapons!"
Having learned that his missiles were worthless against it, Tupelov again put his Fulcrum into an assault dive and began lining up the black monster in his aiming circle. All he could think about was another American flag painted on the side of his MiG-29.
He pushed the throttle forward slightly, and the batwing started growing in his sights.
"What is it?" yelled Lamborghini, while trying to peer over Monaghan's shoulder.
"Shit! I think it's a Flanker. No. Wait a minute. No. Not a Flanker. It's a Fulcrum… and he's taking a bead on that stealth bomber! Hot Rod, see if you can take him with the Sidewinders!"
Lamborghini began swearing. He'd already tested the spacecraft's infrared sensor during their descent, and he'd been right about the Kestrel's heated exterior screwing up the instrument. The TID display was nothing but garbage. Sweat poured off Lamborghini's forehead like raindrops. "Dammit! The IR sensor is still fucked up!" There was desperation in his voice now. "Mad Dog, drop the nose! Point it jight at the Russian's ass!"
"Roger!" replied Monaghan, and he shoved the hand controller forward.
Lamborghini set the Sidewinders for independent guidance and retracted the silica plates that covered the wing nacelles. All he could think to do was bore-sight the missiles and fire them, hoping their own sensors could lock on to the Fulcrum's tailpipe. He punched the red button on his hand controller, and a Sidewinder jumped out of the left wing and ignited, followed by its partner two seconds later.
The space versions of the Sidewinder were unlike the conventional kind in that they possessed no aerodynamic fins to stabilize them as they traveled through the atmosphere. The effect was much like shooting an arrow with no feathers on the tail of the shaft — the projectile wobbled in flight.
However, the space Sidewinders did have the vectored thrust that helped keep them on track. But as the wobble action of the missiles became greater and greater, the on-board microprocessor had more and more difficulty compensating for the increased jerky motion of the weapons — until finally the vectored-thrust tail nozzle of the first Sidewinder couldn't compensate fast enough and the first missile started to pin-wheel as it closed on the Fulcrum.
"Shit!" yelled Mad Dog. "One of the Sidewinders went wild! And I see tracer rounds!"
Tupelov was just pressing the cannon trigger on his control stick when a swirling pyrotechnic torch flashed by his cockpit. He instinctively flinched, and before he could fix his eyeballs on the object, his Fulcrum bucked violently and began tumbling end over end. He wrestled with the control stick and the rudder pedals, but all he kept seeing was a rapid-fire sequence of earth-clouds-earth-clouds-earth-clouds. Tupelov groped for the eject handles, but the tumbling was so fast now that the centrifugal force kept him pinned against his shoulder harness. "Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!" he cried into his radio. "Seven-seven-echo is going down!" His fingers were finally able to curl around the handle, and he yanked with every fiber of his strength.
"We got him!" screamed Monaghan. "We got him! Just barely, but we nailed him. The second Sidewinder sliced his tail fins clean off. He's tumbling down."
Lamborghini heaved a sigh of relief. "Any more bandits?" Not that we could do anything about it, he thought.
Monaghan did a quick sweep. "Nothing that I can see. That Fulcrum just popped a chute, though." His gaze turned back to the stealth bomber, which was pulling away. "Go get that motherfucker Iceberg!" Mad Dog yelled after the batwing. "Nail him!"
On the belly of the stealth bomber a panel rotated, revealing a washtub-sized pod with a faceplate of zinc sulfide glass. Inside the pod resided an AAQ-9 forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera, and a yttrium-aluminum-garnet (YAG) laser, which were aligned together in precise calibration.
Inside the bomber, the crew was blissfully unaware of the air battle that had taken place in their wake — the Fulcrum's initial rounds had gone wide.
Whizzo shoved his face against the hood covering the FLIR video screen and flipped the camera to 2x power magnification. "I think I've got it," he intoned through the intercom. "Come to port four degrees." He felt the aircraft move, and adjusted the controls to keep the camera aimed on the same spot. "Yeah, that's gotta be it. Jesus, that shuttle is hotter'than a pistol," he said, while inspecting the brilliant infrared image.
Looking at his center video screen, Leader said, "I've got it, too," and asked, "What's the range?"
Whizzo put the cross-hair cursor on the bright object and hit the YAG laser rangefinder. A digital readout flashed on the screen just above the cross-hairs. "Range two-three kilometers. Maintain this speed and altitude. Opening weapons bays and activating fire control now." The major's voice was growing strained. He always wondered what the Real Thing would be like.
The doors on the two weapons bays slapped open while the fire control computer ordered the laser to lock its invisible light onto the Intrepid. Once the beam was locked on, the stealth bomber could jink, climb, or bank to a fare-thee-well, but the belly pod would rotate and keep the laser fixed on the orbiter.
"Range one-five kilometers. Come starboard two degrees," ordered Whizzo. "Speed down to three-five-zero."
"Starboard two degrees," echoed Leader. "Speed three-five-zero. Let me know when you've got control."
Whizzo locked the fire control computer into the digital autopilot. "I've got it," he said tersely, with his face still married to the screen hood.
The fire control computer digested the time, distance, and speed to the target and rapidly calculated the precise point of bomb release. The device then transmitted this information to the autopilot, which flew the aircraft in exact conformance to the fire control instructions. The crew was no longer in the loop. They were now passengers on a flying weapons system.
"Six kilometers to drop… five… four…" The Intrepid grew bigger on the FLIR screen. "Three kilometers… two… one… bombs away!"
Fourteen Mk 83 Paveway bombs dropped cleanly from their racks, causing the aircraft to lurch upward as it became lighter by seven tons.
Each of the Mk 83 projectiles deployed their tail fins as the Texas Instruments Paveway guidance system came alive. On the nose of each Mk 83 was a mushroom-shaped snout, which held a silicon detector array that was tuned to the 1.064-micron wavelength of the YAG laser. As the Mk 83s arced through the air, the detector array sensed the laser light reflecting off the Intrepid and transmitted the information to the bomb's on-board guidance computer. The tail fins were rapidly adjusted so that the trajectory of the projectiles would intersect with the laser reflection on the side of the orbiter.