Her eyes were wet with tears-obvious even in the dim red glow of the EB-52's cockpit. "I… I don't know," she said weakly. "I'm…"
"I need you, Linds. I can't do this without you."
"I'm so scared," she cried. "My stomach… I don't know if I can do this."
"Lindsey…" He waited a few moments while she retched in her bag again; her trembling fingers dropped the bag somewhere on the center console. She was so rattled that she couldn't refasten her oxygen mask. "Lindsey, listen to me-"
"Warning, airborne search radar in acquisition, three o'clock, forty-seven miles, MiG-25," the threat computer reported.
"I… I can't do this," Lindsey sobbed. "I'm sorry, I can't-"
"Listen to me, Lindsey-listen to me!" Franken shouted. "If we turn around, the Libyans will chase us all the way across the Mediterranean Sea. When we run out of missiles, they'll shoot us down. We might make it out-but our guys on the ground probably won't. We have to keep going. Do you understand?"
"I don't know if I can."
"You have to!" Franken said. "There are three guys on the ground who won't stand a chance unless we help. But I can't do this alone, not even with the computers." He grasped her shoulder tightly and shook it. "You've got to hang in there, Linds. Just think of this as a simulator ridea very, very intense simulator ride. Okay?"
It didn't look good at all. Lindsey's head lolled back and forth, slowly at first, then faster, as if she was looking for something. She started to pull off her left flying glove. "Here," Franken said. "Go to town-and then let's get to work." He pulled off his right glove and passed it to her. She barely got it up to her face before the torrent quickly filled the black Nomex glove. Franken couldn't believe that tiny little stomach of hers still had anything left in it to regurgitate.
Reeves was hunched down, her head almost between her knees, her hands holding on to the eyebrow panel for support, as if she was going to puke right on the deckFranken thought she might pass out. But to his relief, Lindsey pulled her oxygen mask up to her face, fumbled and finally snapped the bayonet clip in place, then took several deep breaths of pure oxygen. Her right hand disappeared onto the right console, and soon her supercockpit display started dancing as the displays changed with everincreasing speed.
"Scorpions are ready," Lindsey reported weakly.
"How about you, kiddo?"
"I'm hungry," she said. "Let's do our thing so we can go home and get a couple burgers."
"Warning, airborne search radar tracking, three o'clock, thirty miles, MiG-25," the computer reported.
"The weapons pylons are making our radar crosssection as big as a friggin' barn," Franken said. "Looks like we're going to pop some Scorpions after all." The AIM-12 °C Scorpion air-to-air missile was the Megafortress's main defensive weapon-a radar-guided supersonic missile capable of hitting enemy fighters as far as thirty miles away. The EB-52 carried four on each wing, mounted on launch rails attached to the sides of the weapon pylons.
"Let's step it down to COLA," Lindsey suggested. "Maybe he won't want to come down that low."
"Roger. He we go. Hold on to your lunch."
"My lunch is long gone," Lindsey shot back. Franken shoved the throttles to full military power and ordered the computer to COLA mode. COLA, or computer-generated lowest altitude, used both the terrain and cultural data in the terrain-following computer and combined it with occasional bursts from the laser radar and air data information to compute the absolute lowest altitude the EB-52 bomber could fly, depending on airspeed, terrain, obstructions, and flight performance. The faster the bomber flew, the more aggressively the autopilot would hug the ground-literally flying at treetop level if it could. Over water, the computer could take the bomber right down to fifty feet above the surface of the water-only a very tall sailboat mast could stop them.
"Threat report," Lindsey asked.
"MiG-25 tracking four o'clock, twenty miles, altitude ten thousand feet," the computer reported.
"They're trying to get on our tail," Franken said. "Let's do it, Linds. Ready?"
Reeves froze for a few long moments, then looked over at Franken. "Let's do it," she repeated. She pressed the voice command button. "Attack MiG-25," she spoke.
"Attack MiG-25, stop attack," the computer responded, offering her the command that would stop the attack. When she did not respond within three seconds, the computer said, "Launch commit Scorpion right pylon." There was a slight rumble from the right wing and then a streak of light from Lindsey's windscreen. The ATM-120 Scorpion missile flew an "over-the-shoulder" launch profile, arcing over the EB-52, then back toward the Libyan MiGs. The laser radar array automatically activated for two seconds, updating the Scorpion's autopilot with the fighters' flight path. The missile climbed above the MiGs, then descended rapidly toward the spot where the missile predicted the MiGs would be at impact. Ten seconds before impact, the LADAR flashed on again, updating the missile's autopilot for the last time. Five seconds before impact, the Scorpion's own radar activated and locked onto the lead MiG-25 fighter.
That was the first indication-an immediate "MISSILE LOCK" warning-the Libyan pilots got that they were under attack.
The wingmen did exactly what they were supposed to do, executing a textbook formation breakaway, climbing and turning away from each other and giving their leader room to maneuver. But the lead pilot-concentrating on the attack, just moments away from firing his first radarguided missiles-didn't react fast enough, or didn't believe the indication, or chose to ignore it, hoping for a lucky break, the two-in-three chance that the attack was against one of his wingmen.
The thirty-seven-pound shaped warhead detonated like a shotgun blast a fraction of a second before the missile hit the MiG right above and to the left of the starboard engine nacelle. The MiG-25's heavy steel hull, reinforced with titanium-the MiG-25 was designed to fly at nearly three times the speed of sound-deflected most of the energy of the blast. But the missile still had enough punch to crack the fuselage, rip open the fuselage fuel tank, and smack the starboard engine. Running at one hundred percent power, the engines didn't need much of a hit. The engine's turbine blades, knocked out of their precisely engineered highspeed orbits, shot through the engine case like atomic particles flying into space after a nuclear explosion; the extreme heat from the engines ignited the fuel from the ruptured fuel tank, causing a fire. The MiG-25 pilot had only seconds to react-but again, he was concentrating too hard on his quarry to pay attention to the warning lights, telling him he had only a few heartbeats to punch out-before the MiG blew itself into a ball of fire and spun into the Mediterranean Sea.
"Good going, kiddo," Franken said flatly-killing someone was never cause for celebration, even if it meant saving your own skin. "You got him."
"Thanks," Lindsey said-then promptly whipped off her oxygen mask, lowered her head between her knees, and vomited on the deck.
The two remaining MiGs spent several minutes rejoining-they were obviously spooked by the unexpected threat warning and having to do an evasive maneuver so low to the ground at night-and then several more minutes trying to locate their leader. By the time they resumed the search for the EB-52, it had changed headings and proceeded on course to its target area.
Within a few minutes, the picture had changed considerably. Where before it was relatively quiet, now it seemed every air defense radar in both Libya and Egypt was up and operating. Lindsey kept busy steering the Megafortress around a variety of antiaircraft weapon systems, and every few minutes a fighter radar would sweep past them. They were forced to stay at low altitude to avoid all the threats.