Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (30 page)

 
          
With
the
master arm
switch off, Sivarek selected each of his weapons to check
connectivity. He carried a very light combat load on this patrol mission, just
two AIM-7 Sparrow radar- guided missiles and two AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking
missiles, a 30-millimeter cannon with 150 rounds of ammunition, plus a
centerline fuel tank. Sivarek then activated each of his radar's functions one
by one to check them out. His improved F- 16C Block 50 fighter, nicknamed
Ornx
II
in
Turkey
, had most of the latest radar, computer, and weapons technology, and
was one of the most advanced light combat fighters around, but he was already
bored with it. It was agile, sophisticated, and simple to fly and maintain, but
it lacked power, speed, and real load-carrying capability. Sivarek had seen the
F-15 Eagle fighters and had lusted after one for years, but now the new F-22
Raptor fighters were ready for delivery, and he lusted after one of those now.

 
          
“
Yyuz
iki hazirim
, ” Sivarek’s wingman, flying in an identical F-16C, responded
on the interplane frequency.

 
          
“Yyuz
beer hazirim,”
Sivarek responded. “101’s in the green." He expected
nothing else but one-hundred-percent combat-ready aircraft. His squadron was
small, just six aircraft, but he firmly believed they were the best-maintained
FI6s in the world, “Take spacing. Weapons check.”

 
          
“Tamam,
” replied the wingman. Sivarek’s wingman was one of his squadron’s more junior
officers, but an excellent pilot and inspired instructor. Normally, Sivarek
liked to have his junior officers assume flight lead duties, but this mission
was more important than most. They were up against an unknown number of
strategic bombers attacking targets in the Tolicha Airfield. It was Sivarek’s
job to find it and stop it. They might have some fighter protection, type and
number unknown.

           
At that very moment, Sivarek picked
up a single, quick flash on his radar-warning receiver, ahead and to the left.
He immediately turned toward the signal’s bearing and, using hand signals,
ordered his wingman to assume a combat spread formation, slightly high,
slightly behind, and to the leader’s right. Definitely an enemy radar signal.
It was only there for two seconds, but it was long enough, Sivarek had to
chuckle to himself. No matter how high-tech or stealthy a machine is, he
thought, the slightest operator error meant the difference between evasion and
detection, escape or capture, life or death. The bomber crew had obviously
violated procedures by transmitting with their radar—that mistake would cost
them dearly.

 
          
“Control,
101 has music, India-band search radar,” Sivarek reported.

 
          
“Acknowledged,
101,” the ground radar controller responded. “Radar contact, unidentified
aircraft, northeast of your position, low, seventeen miles. Weak radar returns.
Stand by.” Sivarek knew the ground radar controller would be frantically
switching radar modes, trying to refine the intruder’s radar information.
“Still weak radar returns, 101. Fly heading zero-four-five, fly flight level
two-zero-zero, stand by for further data. Clear to intercept”

 
          
“Roger,
Control.” It must be the stealth bomber, Sivarek thought—the ground radar
should be able to see a normal aircraft by now. He turned right a little,
offsetting the target slightly so he could use his radar to scan behind the
enemy aircraft for other attackers, then switched on his attack radar. Two
targets appeared: the closest was at his
ten o’clock
position, fifteen miles, large, low, and
fast; the other was about fifty miles behind the first, high, and outside the
range they were using. Being outside the range didn’t automatically exclude it
from being a player, but because it was so far away, it wasn’t in an effective
cover position—it was still close enough to possibly launch missiles from long
range or join in the fight after a high-speed dash, but the two F-I6s had
plenty of time to engage it after taking out the first. Sivarek highlighted
each target and briefly activated his IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) interrogator,
which scanned for friendly radio codes coming from the targets. No response.
They were enemy aircraft, all right,

 
          
“Control,
101 flight has target lock, negative IFF. Bandit one is currently at my
ten o’clock
position, low. Bandit two is at
twelve o’clock
. Fifty miles. We will take bandit one
First. Requesting permission to engage bandit one, requesting clearance and
advisories on bandit two.”

 
          
“Acknowledged,
101,” the ground controller reported. “Copy negative IFF. You are clear to
engage. Radar contact on bandit two, weak return, range Fifty-three miles
northeast. Will advise on his position. Clear to engage all bandits.”

 
          
“Acknowledged.
Control, we are proceeding with the attack on bandit one,” Sivarek responded.
Calmly and coolly, he selected the AIM-7 radar-guided missile and squeezed the
arming button on his inner throttle.
“Radar launch ready,”
the sensuous
female computerized voice responded. Sivarek called out “
Oldurmek!”
on
the command radio to the ground controller and his wingman and squeezed the
trigger, commanding a missile launch. Sivarek started a stopwatch on his
kneeboard to time the missile’s Bight time, then checked to be sure his w
ingman was still w ith him.

 
          
The
bandit made a few high-bank but not very aggressive turns—it was easy to keep
the radar beam on him. When the missile Bight timer ran out, Sivarek radioed,
“Target down radar, target down radar.”

 
          
“Acknowledged.
101.” the ground controller replied. “Good shooting. Range is clear, players
are ready. Clear to engage at pilot’s discretion.”

 
          
For
at least the hundredth time this Bight. Sivarek checked ,to
be
sure the
master
arm
switch was still
off,
then replied, “Acknowledged, Control. 102,
you have me in sight?”

 
          
“Roger,
lead.”

 
          
“One-oh-two,
maintain visual spacing and take the lead. Check nose is cold,” That was a
command to check that his weapons were safed as well.

 
          
“Acknowledged,
101, I have you in sight, at your
four o’clock
, high. My nose is cold. Leaving high
patrol.”

 
          
“Roger.”
Erdal looked up and to the right and saw his wingman, right where he said he’d
be. “I have you in sight, 102. Do you have the bandit on radar?”

           
“Affirmative, 102,” the wingman
said.

 
          
“You
are clear to engage bandit one, 102. You are clear to close in for a gun kill.
I will take high patrol and keep an eye on bandit two. Good hunting.” Sivarek
removed his oxygen mask as he started a quick climb to get a radar fix on
bandit two. A quick kill, nice and neat. A very impressive showing so far for
the visiting team.

 
          
General
Erdal Sivarek was the fifty-two year-old commander of the
Republic
of
Turkey Air Force
, and was one of the true fast-rising stars
in the Turk Hava Kuvvetleri, the
Republic
of
Turkey Air Force
. Sivarek had been an instructor pilot in
several different foreign-made combat-coded tactical fighters, including the
T-33 jet trainer, F-104 fighter interceptors, F-5E Tiger day interceptor, F-4E
Phantom fighter-bomber, and the F-16 fighter-bomber He’d won the coveted
“Sniper Pilot” wings of a senior experienced attack pilot a full year before
most other pilots his age, and he'd made flight leader, operations officer,
deputy commander, and commander of his
filo
far ahead of his
contemporaries. Three of his five children, including one daughter, were
following in his proud footsteps and joining the Turkish Air Force, a fact that
made him far prouder than all his other achievements.

 
          
Sivarek’s
“visiting team” consisted of the very best pilots of the Second Tactical Air
Force Command, Turkish Air Force, temporarily assigned to the Nineteenth
Aggressor Squadron at Nellis Air Force Base. The Turkish fighter pilots got a
chance to train against advanced Western warplanes, and the American and NATO
participants benefited by getting realistic adversary training against some of
eastern Europe’s best fighter pilots and the world’s most advanced warplanes.
Tolicha Airfield was not in
Turkey
, but was a large simulated airbase complex
built in the high desert wastelands of south central
Nevada
, in the Air Force bombing ranges about two
hundred miles northwest of
Las Vegas
. The “airfield” had three long dirt runways, several plywood structures
vaguely resembling military-looking buildings, a “fuel depot” built of hundreds
of steel fifty-five- gallon drums welded together, antiaircraft missile and artillery
radar emitters to simulate actual airfield defenses, and even plywood or
inflatable aircraft shapes set up here and there to make it look like a real
operating airfield. And although the “enemy” target was real and the F-16s did
indeed carry live weapons, Sivarek never fired any missiles at it, only
electronic signals to the range controllers—he. like his wingman, checked that
the
master arm
switch was off about every twenty seconds. The range
controllers would plot aircraft position and flight parameters at the time the
attack signal was received and compute whether or not Sivarek had actually
“killed” his target.

 
          
“He
killed the leader. Vampire,” Colonel David Luger, the senior mission control
officer on this test flight, reported over the secure satellite commlink. Luger
was in a special classified section of the Nellis range control complex,
watching the exercise unfold before him on several multicolor electronic wall-
size monitors. The Nellis range complex was in use twenty-four hours a day, seven
days a week, by military units from all over the world, so special facilities
were set up to monitor and control classified military weapons tests.

 
          
“Sila
Zero One didn’t make very many hard evasive maneuvers, about half the normal
chaff drops, and didn’t bother going lower than two thousand AGL,” David added,
his
Texas
drawl coming through the scrambled
satellite transmission. “Just not very aggressive threat reaction.” He had seen
every iteration of hotshot fighter and bomber pilots—and the “target” in this
exercise didn’t measure up one bit.

 
          
“Copy,
Dave,” Brigadier-General Patrick McLanahan radioed back He was flying the right
seat on the flight deck of an EB- 1C Megafortress-2 strategic “flying
battleship,” an experimental B-1B Lancer supersonic bomber modified as a mul
tipurpose attack and defensive weapons platform. “We’ll put all that on the
debriefing tape. Where are they now?”

           
“Now, now—if I told you, we’d spoil
the exercise,” Luger responded with a smile. David Luger had spent most of his
Air Force career designing and flying experimental aircraft and was normally a
quiet, reserved, almost nerdy guy. But once one of his warplanes were up in
action, he took complete control, no matter how badly things appeared to be
spinning out of control. “You said you wanted max realism in this test, so you
gotta find them yourself No fair using other sensor links either—remember,
we're simulating you're deep over enemy territory, with no overhead sensor
support.”

 
          
“All
right, all right, no harm in asking,” Patrick said. He signed off with a curt
“Later.”

 
          
Sometimes,
McLanahan thought, it was as if David was working extra hard just to prove to
everyone that he was okay, that the Russian brainwashing or his subsequent CIA
depro- gramming/reprogramming hadn’t affected his mental powers. He had no
hobbies, took no vacations, and had few' relationships outside of the
High-Technology
Aerospace
Weapons
Center
. Patrick was pleased to see a budding
intimate friendship—hardly a romance yet, but promising—between Dave and Annie
Dewey, one of the Air National Guard EB-1 pilots. If only Dave took enough time
to get to know her better, David Luger might actually develop a personal life.