Air Battle Force (6 page)

“General . . .” But the Vampire bomber had already responded—it activated its radar trackbreakers and unreeled the ALE-55 fiber-optic towed decoy from a fairing in the tail. The ALE-55 was a small, bullet-shaped device that transmitted jamming and deception signals to hide the bomber and deflect any incoming threats away from it. It was a very effective but definitely last-ditch device to help the bomber escape if it was under direct attack. “We will
never
launch on a mission ever again without having defensive weapons on board, I promise you that,” Rebecca went on. The Vampire could carry a wide array of defensive air-to-air missiles, from short-range Stingers to extremely long-range Anaconda missiles—but this wasn't supposed to be an attack mission.

“Pakistani search radar, three o'clock, forty miles,” Patrick reported. “Well below detection levels.”

“Warning, MiG-29 tracking mode, nine o'clock, twenty-five miles.”

“Trackbreakers active,” Patrick reported, punctuating the report with a curse. The trackbreakers could spoof and interfere with the fighter's tracking radar but would also tell anyone around them that a warplane was in the area—and enemy fighters might be able to track the origin of the jamming signal or fire a missile with the ability to home in on the signal.

“Puppeteer, this is Control,” Luger radioed. “Step it on down to COLA and head northeast. He doesn't have a solid lock on you yet.”

Patrick studied the large supercockpit display on his forward instrument panel. The terrain to the northeast near the Pakistan-Afghan border was completely flat, with several dry lake beds farther north. A bomber the size of a B-1, even as stealthy as it was, would be easy to track against a flat desert from a MiG-29 chasing it from above. The MiG-29 also had an advanced infrared sensor that could spot the B-1's red-hot engines over twenty miles away—it wouldn't need its radar to attack.

“Hard left ninety-degree turn,” Patrick said.

“What?
You want me to
turn toward Iran?”

“If we get caught in the open, we'll be a sitting duck,” Patrick said. “We'll stay in the higher terrain to the west.” Rebecca did not argue further but turned sharply left. The tactic worked. Once they turned ninety degrees from the MiG-29's course, the MiG's pulse-Doppler radar detected no relative speed difference and squelched out the radar return. “The MiG broke lock,” Patrick reported. “He's moving to seven o'clock, twenty-five miles. We're out of his radar cone.”

They weren't out of the woods yet, but soon they left the fighters from Zahedan behind them. There were still several short- and long-range surface-to-air missile sites along the border, but as they flew along the Mighand Highlands northbound, they were actually flying
behind
them. As soon as they were clear of the dry lake beds, Patrick steered the EB-1C back across the Afghan border. They were able to climb up to fifteen thousand feet, high enough to escape visual detection and stay away from any antiaircraft artillery units that might pop up unexpectedly.

“Puppeteer, this is Control,” David Luger radioed. “I show you going across the Turkmen border. The Turkmen army uses lots of Russian antiaircraft systems, and a lot of that stuff is right in front of you.”

“I'm going to make one try at linking up with the StealthHawk, and then I'll bug out,” Patrick responded.

Minutes later Patrick had locked the StealthHawk's encrypted beacon up with his laser radar, and they began a tail chase with the StealthHawk drone, which had already crossed the border into Turkmenistan. Rebecca turned the bomber to the northeast, closing the distance rapidly on full military power. “We're sucking gas like crazy,” she mused. “How much longer before you're in direct datalink range?”

“About five minutes,” Patrick said, “if our range calculations are . . .” As soon as they did close to within ten miles, Patrick was able to reestablish the uplink to the StealthHawk. “Got it!” Patrick crowed. “It's responding!”

At the same instant their threat-warning receiver came to life.
“Caution, SA-4 surveillance radar, twelve o'clock, thirty-eight miles, well below detection threshold,”
the threat-warning computer announced. The SA-4 was a high-performance mobile antiaircraft missile—even launched from so far away, it could reach them in less than two minutes.

“For Christ's sake, General, we're flying right for that SA-4 . . . !”

“Keep going, Rebecca. We've almost got it.”

“Warning, SA-4 target-acquisition mode, twelve o'clock, twenty miles.”
The system activated their countermeasures system, including the towed countermeasures array—they were an item of interest again. But there was nothing they could do until they got the StealthHawk turned around.

“Damn . . . the Turkmen might be picking up our datalink signals,” Patrick said. Although the signals between the bomber and the StealthHawk drone were encrypted, the transmissions themselves could be detected. Soon, the Turkmen could pinpoint their location, no matter how stealthy they were.

“Let's get out of here, McLanahan!”

“Almost got it. . . .” He quickly entered in instructions for the StealthHawk to turn around, and it responded. “StealthHawk responding!” Patrick said. Rebecca immediately started a hard left turn. “
Wings level,
pilot . . .”

“I can't—we're going to get shot right in the face by that SA-4!”

“Closer, Rebecca,” Patrick urged. “It's turning away from that SA-4. We'll be okay. Head back toward it and at least give me a chance of nudging it back.”

“No way.”

“Then descend,” Patrick said. “It'll keep us clear of that SA-4. If we go below two thousand feet, it'll lose us.”

“Two thousand feet! You expect me to descend
below
two thousand feet?”

“If we lose that StealthHawk, it'll be the military and diplomatic embarrassment of the decade,” Patrick said. “A few more minutes, that's all, Rebecca.”

Furness looked at Patrick with an expression of fear and anger—but she made the turn and pushed on the control stick. “Damn it, General, this better work—and
fast
.”

It did. As soon as they cruised back within the ten-mile arc of the StealthHawk, they were able to get it turned back toward them. They were fifteen miles inside the Turkmen border, but at least they were headed away from the long-range SA-4 missile site. The warning of the SA-4's “Long Track” surveillance radar still blared in their ears—they were still being detected, possibly tracked. Patrick entered commands into the UCAV's control computer, and the StealthHawk performed a rejoin on the EB-1C Vampire bomber.

Suddenly they heard a fast, high-pitched
deedledeedledeedle!
warning, followed by a computerized female voice that calmly said,
“Warning, SA-4 missile launch, four o'clock, twenty-eight miles. Time to impact, fifty seconds. . . . Warning, second SA-4 missile launch, four o'clock, twenty-eight miles, time to impact, fifty-eight seconds.”
The voice was so calm and pleasant that one almost expected it to sign off with “Have a nice day.”

“Damn you, General . . . !”

“We've got time,” Patrick said. “Once we get the StealthHawk turned around, we'll be okay.”

“Puppeteer,
what is going on up there?
” David Luger radioed. “You just got fired on by an SA-4!”

“Thirty seconds and we're out of here.”

“You don't
have
thirty seconds!”

“We've got the ‘Hawk, Dave. Twenty-five seconds and we'll be cleaned up.”

“You're crazy, man,” Luger said seriously. “You won't have enough time to accelerate out of there in time.”

“Countermeasures ready . . . trackbreakers active . . . towed array deployed,” Patrick said.

“Forty seconds to impact.”

“We're going to get nailed if we don't get out of here, General!”

“We'll make it. Fifteen seconds.”

“Thirty seconds to impact.”

Suddenly Patrick said into the computer, “Let's get out of here, Rebecca! I'm setting COLA. Go to zone five,
now!
”

“General . . . ?”

“The SA-4s are speeding up—they're diving on us,” Patrick said. “We ran out of time. Zone-five afterburners,
now!
Flight-control system to terrain-following, set clearance-plane COLA, ninety left!” Rebecca responded instantly—she shoved all the throttles forward to the stops as the EB-1C nosed over into a steep twenty-degree nose-low dive for the flat, moonlike desert floor below. Patrick's order set their altitude for COLA—and with very little high terrain below them, they were heading to less than a wingspan's distance above the earth. Patrick ordered the StealthHawk to activate all its radar sensors and open all its weapons bays—anything he could think of to increase the UCAV's radar cross-section and make it look larger than the Vampire's to the SA-4 missile-guidance radar tracking them. . . .

Seconds later Patrick reported, “Lost contact with the StealthHawk! The SA-4 got it. Ninety left again, up and down jinks!
Hurry!
” Rebecca hauled the bomber into a steep bank, turning the EB-1C so they were directly nose-on to the SA-4's radar, presenting the smallest possible radar cross-section, then furiously started yanking the control stick forward and back in sharp, fast cycles. They hoped the SA-4 would try to match their fast altitude changes and eventually crank itself off a smooth intercept track. “Trackbreakers on . . . chaff . . . chaff . . . Oh, shit,
hang on!
”

The SA-4 missile missed—but when it was only a few hundred feet away from the left side of the Vampire bomber's nose, the missile's three-hundred-pound warhead detonated. The cockpit was filled with a blinding yellow-red burst of light from the fireball. Patrick closed his eyes in time, but Rebecca was looking directly at it when the warhead went off. She screamed just as a giant invisible fist slammed into the bomber's nose. It felt as if they were tumbling upside down out of control. . . .

But when Patrick was able to get his bearings again, he discovered with surprise that they were still upright. One multifunction display on the pilot's side was out, and two generators on the left side were offline, but everything else seemed all right.

All except Rebecca.
“Shit!”
she cried. “I can't fucking see! You got the aircraft, MC!”

“I've got the aircraft,” Patrick responded. He issued voice commands to the autopilot and got the plane leveled off at five hundred feet above the ground, turned away from the SA-4 site, and heading for the Afghan border—in three minutes they were across. Between the city of Andkhvoy and the Turkmen border, Patrick started a climb, and in ten minutes they were at a safe cruising altitude, heading south across Afghanistan for a perilous Pakistani frontier crossing.

“Patrick, I've got the generators back online,” David Luger reported as he and several technicians studied the real-time reports datalinked from the stricken Vampire bomber. “Engines, hydraulics, pneumatics, and electrical are all in the green. We've got the aircraft. How's Rebecca?”

“I'll be all right,” she muttered. Patrick examined her eyes carefully and found no apparent damage. “I'm just flash-blinded, that's all. It's coming back. Give me a couple aspirins out of the medical kit and see if there's any eyewash or salve in there.” She stared out her windscreen. “Hey, there's something wrong here. I can't see out my windscreen. Is it me or something else?”

Patrick looked, too. “The windscreen is all blackened and crazed—the blast from the SA-4 might have instantly delaminated it.” He shone his flashlight outside toward the nose. “I think we might have some problems out there. Do a check of the refueling system, Dave.”

“Stand by.” It took only a few seconds. “Yep, looks like we got a problem—self-test of the refueling system failed. Looks like your slipway doors are damaged.”

Patrick got out the high-power floodlight and looked. “I see all kinds of sheet metal loose out there,” he reported. “Looks like the slipway doors might have been blown loose and are jammed or hanging halfway inside the slipway.”

“We're in deep shit if we can't refuel, guys,” Rebecca said.

With the help of the technicians back at Battle Mountain, Patrick began reading the flight-manual checklist for the refueling system. The checklist eventually directed him to pull the circuit breaker that actuated the slipway doors. “Last item—manual slipway door-retract handle, pull,” he read.

“Give it a try, Muck,” Luger said. “You got nothing else you can do.”

Patrick firmly and positively pulled the small T-handle on the upper instrument console, then shone the big spotlight outside again. “Well?” Rebecca asked.

“Still looks the same. Looks like the slipway door ripped off its supports and is jammed inside the slipway. Dave . . .”

“We're running the best range numbers now,” Luger responded.

Patrick switched seats with Rebecca—she couldn't see quite clearly yet, so it was better for her not to be in the pilot's seat—then immediately set the Vampire's flight-control system to max-range profile. The Vampire used mission-adaptive technology, tiny actuators in the fuselage that subtly changed almost the entire surface of the bomber's fuselage and wings to optimize the aerodynamics. The system could be set to increase airspeed, improve slow-flight characteristics, help land in crosswinds, or reduce the effects of turbulence.

Patrick told the flight-control system to conserve as much fuel as possible. When he did so, the airspeed dropped off considerably, and they started a very slow climb. The mission-adaptive technology flattened out the flight controls as much as possible, reducing drag—they could barely maneuver, but they would be saving as much fuel as possible. As they climbed, their airspeed increased in the thinner air, so they traveled farther on the same amount of fuel. But their four-hour return flight became five, then soon settled into a five-and-a-half-hour endurance run.