"Dale Brown - Night Of The Hawk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Dale)

his story is not intended to chronicle or explain actual U.S. government, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Special Operations Command, or military contractors' tactics, doctrines, procedures, equipment, or capabilities. The scenarios, units, equipment, and tactics described in Night of the Hawk are purely products of my imagination. I have made every effort to be accurate, but this is a work of fiction and none of the persons, units, equipment, scenarios, or tactics I describe are intended to accurately depict the real thing. I hope I've done our special operations forces some justice (at least so they won't be out gunning for me!), but my intention was not to tell their story for them. I hope to be qualified to do so someday.
I don't especially care for sequels, but I do like bringing back many of the characters from previous stories-they are like old friends. The plot and settings for this story stand alone, but in general occur after Flight of the Old Dog and Hammerheads, but before the events described in Day of the Cheetah and Sky Masters.
I still refer to the B-lB bomber as "Excalibur," although its official Air Force nickname is ''Lancer.''








Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener
fangs than freedom never endangered.
-CICERO










Prologue


ANADYR FAR EAST FIGHTER-INTERCEPTOR BASE

RUSSIAN SOVIET FEDERATIVE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC

DECEMBER 1988



his was not the way the flight of the Old Dog was supposed to be
ending First Lieutenant David Luger, United States Air Force,
thought grimly.
Not at all.
And yet here they were, in the very northeastern tip of the Soviet Union, forced to land at this snowy, bitterly cold enemy backwater base to steal fuel because their B-52 (I) Megafortress was running on fumes. Holding a gun to the head of the base chiefs custodian, they had commandeered one of his fuel trucks and put whatever they could into the plane. The custodian had escaped and obviously put in a frantic call to the regional militia. Luger shook his head. During the course of this mission-one of the most highly classified in the annals of American military warfare-they'd successfully penetrated restricted Soviet airspace, fought off waves upon waves of surface-to-air missiles, swarms of deadly MiG fighters, and, with a Striker glide-bomb, knocked out the most sophisticated weapon the USSR had ever developed.
The mission should have been a success, but now they were going to be captured by the fucking Red Army. Luger was sure of it. Even in a backwater, the Red Army was going to protect the Motherland-at all costs.
The tall, lean, twenty-six-year-old Texas-born crew navigator was alone in the bitterly cold belowdecks section of the crew compartment aboard the Megafortress, an experimental B-52 "test-bed" aircraft that had been pressed into service on this unusual and dangerous mission. He felt an uncontrollable shiver of fear, frustration, and sheer anger take hold of his body. Maybe it was finally going to be over.
They certainly weren't in any condition to fight-maybe they should
just surrender. The stolen fuel they had pumped into their tanks was


contaminated fuel oil, not jet fuel. One of their eight engines had been destroyed, and another was leaking oil so badly that it was all but useless. The Old Dog's fuselage was full of holes, and their stabilators-the odd-looking V-tail assembly that served both as rudder and horizontal stabilizer-had been shot out. The plane's wheels were frozen in knee-deep snow, and it was doubtful that the plane could even taxi on six engines, let alone attempt a takeoff on the short, snow-covered Soviet runway. The pilot, Lieutenant General Bradley Elliott, had been dragged upstairs by some of the other crew, unconscious and nearly frozen to death.
Now they were surrounded by Russian militia.
Luger had been strapping himself into his ejection seat in the downstairs compartment, but had stopped when he realized how ridiculous the idea of trying to launch the Megafortress seemed right now-not much use in strapping in if there was no way the plane would ever get off the ground-so he laid the straps aside.
There was a gaping hole in the downstairs crew compartment big enough that he could see footprints in the snow outside. Just a few hours earlier his right leg had been in back of that jagged hole. For the first time since arriving at the Russian base, Luger surveyed the damage on his leg-and felt his stomach turn at the sight. Even heavily wrapped in bandages from the first-aid kit, he could feel his kneecap gone, see the limb twisted and his right foot pointing at an unnatural angle. The leg had frozen into an unrecognizable stick, thanks to both the windblast inflight and then spending several hours in freezing temperatures outside. He was probably going to lose the leg or, at best, be crippled for life. Most of the navigation equipment was damaged or in reset, and the weapons were probably shut down. Were they kidding themselves, or what?