Sky Masters полностью

Cobb and McLanahan started flying for their lives…

“Missiles! Bomber launching missiles!” the A-5K pilot screamed. On his TV sensor he could clearly see the two missiles slowly speed away from the bomber’s belly… and the sight filled him with an almost overwhelming red-hot rage. He selected a PL-2 heat-seeking missile and hit the “Launch” button when the bomber was directly in front of him. He realized after launching the missile that he was still too far out and did not give the missile enough time to lock on, but at this range, he could not miss…

“We’re not going to find anyplace to hide in these hills here,” McLanahan said, checking the computer-generated terrain depiction on the Super Multi Function Display. Without one squeak of radar energy being transmitted, the computer drew all the terrain, rivers, valleys, and cities on the SMFD, updating their position with every turn — but right now it was not giving them any good news. Unless they flew their B-2 below one hundred feet, those hills would not provide enough cover to shake off their pursuers. “We should—”

He was interrupted with a flashing “Missile Launch” indication and the computer-generated words, “Infrared Missile Launch… Break… Infrared Missile Launch.… Break" in the interphone. “Break right!” McLanahan shouted. At the same time, he checked to make sure that the electronic- countermeasures computer had launched decoy flares and had activated their HAVE GLANCE infrared jammers, a device that would use laser beams guided by the ALQ-199 missile warning radar to blind and distort the enemy missile’s seeker heads and make it difficult for a heat-seeking missile to lock onto the B-2’s engine exhausts.

It was the first time Patrick had ever observed a missile launch on the Super Multi Function Display, and it was weirdly fascinating — like watching an arrow speeding to its target in slow motion, except this arrow was speeding at them! The MAWS sensors had tracked the fighters to the rear quadrant, and when the heat-seeking sensors detected the missile launch, it automatically activated the ALQ-199 tracking radars and laser jammers. The fighters were depicted as red triangles with squares around them, highlighting them as the major threat against the B-2, and when the missiles were picked up by the ALQ-199 they appeared as blinking red circles. The SMFD redrew the scene, zooming in on the B-2 icon, the terrain immediately surrounding the bomber, and the pursuing fighters.

The dots initially swerved left to follow the decoy flares as they ejected from the left ejector racks, but they immediately realigned themselves on the B-2. A tiny data block showed time since launch and estimated time to impact — the “time- to-die meter.” It had initially started at twelve seconds, but as the Chinese PL-2 missile accelerated to its top speed of Mach three, the time to impact wound down to five seconds and counted down swiftly.

But the missile had to make a hard left turn to follow the decoy flare, and when it reacquired the bomber’s hot exhausts it began a hard right turn. The missile was “stressed,” losing energy and skidding all over the sky — it was ready to be aced.

“Break left!” McLanahan shouted, and he ejected two flares from the right ejectors.

At the same time, the HAVE GLANCE laser jammer, which had begun tracking the missile via the ALQ-199 warning radar, had locked onto the PL-2 and began bombarding it with high-energy laser light. As the missile swung back to the left to reacquire the bomber, the laser beam shined directly on the seeker head, instantly burning out its sensitive gallium-arsenide “eye” and rendering the missile useless.

But McLanahan couldn’t celebrate yet — the Chinese fighter had launched a second missile, this time from even closer range — McLanahan noticed a 00:04:39 in the time-to- die meter almost immediately. There was no time to turn, no time for a break maneuver. “Climb!” McLanahan shouted, and he began pumping out flares as fast as he could.

The tactic worked. The second missile, the A-5K’s last heat-seeker, lost the hot engine exhausts for a split second. Although the missile started a climb in pursuit, the lock-on was lost, and the PL-2’s twenty-eight-pound warhead automatically detonated — but only thirty feet away from the B-2’s left engine nacelle.

The explosion sawed off twenty feet of the left inboard elevon, the flaplike control surface on the wing’s trailing edge, completely separating it from the bomber. It sliced into hydraulic lines, cut open the left trailing edge fuel tank, and blew out two of the left main gear tires, which ripped open the left fuel tank completely. Raw fuel began streaming out of the bomber; the self-sealing foam fuel tanks kept the fuel from spreading to the engine compartment, but within seconds the left trailing edge fuel tank was empty and the number-one primary hydraulic system was dead.