Contents ( 55)
- In Memoriam
- Epigraph
- Cast of Characters
- Americans
- Russians
- Canadian
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Weapons and Acronyms
- Weapons
- Acronyms
- About the Author
- Also by Dale Brown
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
Well, this was bad, Petrov thought. But not necessarily lethal. After all, he’d practiced for just such an event in simulators many times. Coolly, he instructed Bunin, “Switch to the backup manual flight controls.”
His copilot opened another panel on the central console and flipped a new series of switches. His eyes darted toward Petrov. “Our manual flight controls are active.”
Gingerly, and then with more force, Petrov tugged his stick to the left and pushed down hard on the rudder pedals. The aircraft responded sluggishly, but finally it came back level. “Christ,” he muttered. “This thing handles like a drunken pig without the computers.” He keyed his radio mike again. “Akhtubinsk Tower, this is Shadow One. We’ve lost both flight control computers. I am declaring a mission abort.”
“Understood, Shadow One,” the control tower replied right away. “We lost your data link at the same time. We’re clearing the field now. Emergency vehicles are on standby.”
Quickly, Petrov shifted his attention to the two Su-34 chase planes. “Opekun Odin i Dva eto Ten’ Odin. Guardian One and Two, this is Shadow One. Close on me. I’ve lost all instrumentation and I’m returning to Akhtubinsk immediately. But I’m going to need your eyes.”
Unable to hide their concern, both chase plane pilots acknowledged. The twin-tailed aircraft rolled in to within fifty meters, one on the bomber’s left side and one on its right. Their red, green, and white position lights glowed brightly in the darkness.
“Give me a reading on my airspeed, altitude, and heading,” Petrov said calmly.
“Shadow One, your airspeed is five hundred kph. Altitude thirty-eight hundred meters. Your heading is now three-two-one degrees,” one of the Su-34 pilots reported.
“Understood,” Petrov replied. “What’s my most direct heading back to the airfield?” That earlier, inadvertent roll to the right had thrown them a little off course. And with the computers down, so was their digitized navigation system.
“Come left to three-one-four degrees.”
Sweating under his helmet, Petrov muscled the stick and rudder pedals to raise control surfaces on the trailing edge of the bomber’s right wing, while simultaneously lowering rudders and elevons along its left wing. Slowly, the big plane banked left a few degrees. Straining, he reversed the process to level off again on the correct heading.
Carefully, the Su-34 pilots and weapons officers coaxed the stricken PAK-DA prototype back toward the test center’s Akhtubinsk field. Their constant commentary on altitude, attitude, airspeed, and the observed positions of the bomber’s wing rudders and elevons blurred through Petrov’s mind as he fought to keep the inherently unstable aircraft in control. Without the fly-by-wire system, even small adjustments required enormous effort.
Under the strain, time seemed to stretch out almost unbearably for most of the return flight. Seconds felt like minutes. Minutes dragged like hours. But then, as they came in on final approach, with the airfield’s bright lights blazing ahead of them through the cockpit canopy, everything sped up. And Petrov’s whole world narrowed down to a tight cone directly ahead of the aircraft.