"Get anything?" asked Griggs.
"Yeah," replied Floyd. "There was some traffic on that S-band freq we were told to watch out for. Hope it makes somebody happy. Let's get outta here."
"You got it. Just keep an eye on the threat board," implored Griggs.
"You got that straight."
Griggs finished out his turn and pushed the throttles up to their stops.
The radar operator watched the blip intensely. It was going back the same way. Almost the exact reciprocal of its original bearing. Maybe they would bag an American Blackbird. "Colonel?"
"Yes, yes. I'm watching it on the plot board." Leonov picked up his other receiver while watching the large white blip approach the string of smaller red blips. Red blips denoted the friendly fighters. "Fox Leader, I see your aircraft are deployed."
"That is correct, Comrade Colonel," replied the pilot in a mocking voice.
I'll deal with this insolent bastard later, thought Leonov while dabbing some perspiration from his forehead with a white handkerchief. "The American spy plane is approaching your position from the south on a bearing of one-five-nine. He will be in range of your southernmost aircraft in approximately twelve minutes. If he stays on this course he will, I believe the nautical term is, 'cross the T' of all your aircraft. Go to afterburner on my command."
"Acknowledged, Comrade Colonel. We will do more than 'cross his T.' "
"Go to afterburners, now! Now!"
Fox Leader winced from the loud transmission in his headphones. Then he keyed his mike and said, "You heard the colonel, Comrades. Go to afterburners but do not, I repeat do not, activate your radars until we pass twenty thousand meters. If we are to catch this Blackbird we must surprise him." He cut in his fighter's afterburners, injecting raw fuel directiy into the Foxhound's tailpipes. The twin-engine aircraft leapt in response, and Fox Leader pointed it straight up in a textbook interceptor climb.
Classic fighter doctrine calls for gaining altitude on your opponent, then pounding on him out of the sun before he knows you're there. A modern-day, high-tech nuance to that doctrine calls for the use of look-down, shoot-down radar in conjunction with a fighter's missiles. In this case, however, the Foxhounds would be looking up and shooting up. And when they topped out at 25,000 meters, Fox Leader wasn't going to waste a single second loitering around looking for a nebulous target. His fuel was rapidly disappearing with the afterburner climb, and a dead-stick landing in the Foxhound was out of the question. Its stubby wings gave it a glide pattern like a lead shot sinker.
They passed through 20,000 meters, and a red light blinked on the Leader's control panel, indicating the target acquisition radar had been activated. "Anything, Koldunov?" he asked.
The backseat weapons system officer scanned his screen. "Nothing yet, Leader."
The altimeter dial spun past 23,000 meters. "We have him!" cried an excited voice over the radio. "Fox Leader, this is Fox Four! We have missile lock!"
"Then shoot! Shoot!" yelled Leader.
"Leader, this is Fox Three! We have him, too! Engaging now!"
Fox Leader's pulse was racing. He'd never fired a missile at a real enemy before.
"Uh-oh."
Griggs didn't like the sound of that.' 'What is it, Pretty Boy?''
"Threat board shows we've been illuminated in the X-ray band. Looks like a bandit with Doppler radar… Yeah, they've got lock-on, and… hey?… What's this? Another illumination. It's got lock-on, too… I count three… four missiles approaching. Christ, they're close! Where'd they come from?
Timing missile sucker on now… Shit! Another illumination! What is goin' on? Catman, I don't like this."
The missile sucker was an electronic countermeasure device that could "bend" the radar signature of the Blackbird, causing the hostile missile to receive a false impression of the aircraft's actual location. Like an electronic ventriloquist, the sucker mechanism could "throw" the Blackbird's radar image up to a mile away.
Most of the Foxhounds' missiles, however, were unable to catch up to the SR-71, or even its false image. The spy plane's speed was simply too great. Only a few of the projectiles reached the periphery of the "sucker ghost,'' triggering their detonation; and Griggs and Floyd were going too fast to see the distant firebursts.
It was the last aircraft in Fox Leader's string that did it. In his youthful zeal the weapons system officer, on only his third mission since flite school, loosed his missiles prematurely — letting them fly off before his fire control radar had acquired the target. His attempts to regain control of the AA-9s only served to confound them and they became, quite literally, unguided missiles. One missile strayed and was caught between the genuine Blackbird, the "sucker ghost," and the Foxhound's own radar sweeps trying to regain control of it. This multitude of electronic signals peppering the AA-9 so confused the missile that its proximity fuse went loco and exploded.
The blast was far enough away from the SR-71 that the aircraft was not hit directly by debris, but the spy plane had to fly through the explosion's shock wave, which kicked it into left yaw. This was sort of like skidding sideways in a car when the left front tire blows out.
As the Blackbird yawed to the left, its fuselage blocked airflow into the port engine, causing it to flame out. Basic physics kept Griggs and Floyd going in a straight line, and like a pair of sunglasses on the dashboard of that skidding car, they were smashed into the right bulkhead of the SR-71 's cockpit. Floyd was knocked unconscious and Griggs was dazed, but the pilot had the presence of mind to reach out and pull the starboard throttle back slightly. Simultaneously he pressed hard on the right rudder pedal and dropped the right wing a little. Griggs figured they were probably dead anyway, but to have any chance at survival he had to get the spy plane back into proper trim.
The reason the Blackbird could operate in rarefied atmospheres, at altitudes in excess of 110,000 feet, was that its incredible speed forced enough thin air into the ramjet intakes for combustion. Without the high-speed ram effect, airflow would be too weak and a flameout would result. Griggs was painfully aware of this as he tried to restart the port engine. He hit the ignition switch but the dead ramjet refused to come alive. The spy plane's speed had dropped too far for a restart, and Griggs knew the Blackbird's remaining power plant would soon become oxygen-starved and die. So instead of letting the starboard engine choke itself off, he carefully eased back on the throttle even farther. Then, using all of his pilot's instincts, he got the aircraft into proper trim, just as the starboard ramjet started going chug… chug, . chug. He then cut the throttle completely as Floyd began to regain consciousness.
"Ca-Catman… what happened?… Damn… my head."
"Never mind that now!" yelled Griggs. "Just hang on!"
The Blackbird was coasting down in an arc at Mach 1.9.
Griggs knew he had no choice but to take the spy plane down to a lower altitude where he could try and restart the SR-71 's turbofans in a thicker atmosphere. But as his aircraft descended, he felt his gut tighten up like a board.
An unpowered supersonic dive into enemy territory was more frightening than anything he'd ever experienced.