Shattered Bone (16 page)

As Ammon and Morozov busied themselves in the cockpit, the B-1 continued to speed across the flat terrain, skimming above every obstacle while cruising just below the speed of sound.

This was the B-l's domain. For this purpose was it created. It could cruise at this speed for hours, never tiring, never deviating from its desired course, and always exactly on altitude. With its banks of computers, phased-array radar, low-level terrain following systems, and multiple weapons capability, the B-1 was the most sophisticated aircraft in the world.

But designing and building the aircraft had not been an easy task. For fifteen years the aircraft's designers had wrestled with one engineering problem after another. Many times they had been tempted to quit, for it seemed that they had been given an impossible job. The pieces just didn't fit together. There were simply too many mutually exclusive criteria to bring together in one single aircraft.

To begin with, they had been told to design an aircraft that could penetrate the world's most advanced air defenses to attack a heavily defended target. The aircraft would be required to go against the best surface and airborne threats that the enemy had to offer.

“Okay,” the engineers said. “We can do that. We'll build a small and nimble fighter. We'll make it capable of pulling twelve Gs. We'll make it light and extremely maneuverable. And very small. If we are going to send this aircraft far behind enemy lines, we want it to be as tiny as possible. That will give the enemy a much smaller target to shoot at.”

But then the engineers were told that the B-1 had to be able to carry up to 50,000 pounds of weapons. In addition to that, it had to have an intercontinental range, which meant it had to carry enormous amounts of jet fuel.

So much for developing a small and nimble fighter. The B-1 would have to be huge—maybe half as big as a football field—to carry such a load of weapons and fuel.

The engineers also discovered that the new aircraft had to be an accurate bomber. Very accurate. It couldn't just scatter a cluster of bombs in any random pattern, hoping a bomb or two would hit the target. Surgical strikes required much more than that. Even dropping a bomb within a few yards of its target wasn't good enough. It had to fall within a few feet. In some cases even inches.

“Okay, we can do that,” the engineers muttered as sweat started to bead on their brows.

Then the designers were given the bombshell.

“We want the aircraft to be nearly invisible,” they were told. “We want its radar cross section to be one thousandth of the aircraft's actual size. Make this aircraft look like nothing more than a flock of birds that are cluttering up the enemies' radar.”

The engineers spent many nights pondering how to make a 400,000 pound aircraft look like nothing but a bunch of speedy sea gulls.

Hey, this will be easy, they used to joke. We can make an aircraft that will do all that. The only problem is, when we are finished, the sucker certainly will never fly.

As the designers wrestled with the problems, they began to realize two important facts that were core to the design of the new aircraft.

First, the new bomber would have to be able to fly incredibly low in order to avoid being detected by the enemy's radar. To do this it would need a terrain-following system that was better than anything yet developed. It would have to enable the aircraft to fly up the steepest mountains and down the deepest, winding valleys, all at treetop level. And it would have to do it automatically, without the pilot even touching the controls. Because the safest time to go into battle would be at night, when it was more difficult to be detected by enemy fighters and missiles. But at night, the pilot couldn't see. So the low-level, terrain-following system had to be completely automatic.

In addition to a low-level penetration capability, the aircraft needed speed. A blinding, shattering, screaming speed. A speed so great that it would leave any attacking aircraft sucking up hot exhaust gases as it watched the B-1 screeching by. The aircraft was too big to play with the fighters. It needed speed so it could run away.

For fifteen years, the engineers worked on the bomber. And when they were finished, not only had they produced the most sophisticated aircraft in the world, but also the most deadly. Rockwell and the Air Force called the bomber the “Lancer”. The pilots who flew it called it the “Bone”.

Ammon was using the B-1' s computers to fly at 200 feet above the trees and telephone wires, hugging the earth like a blanket. This was where the B-1 belonged. This was usually the safest place to be. Usually ....

But right now Ammon didn't feel very safe. He was about to be jumped by two Russian Mig-31s. And they were very angry. Their orders were clear. Shoot down the hostile bomber. Kill it before it got away. Although the Mig-31 pilots were never told it was so, it didn't take them long to figure out that the B-1 was after their nuclear assets, and as they realized that their missiles were in imminent danger, their determination increased even more. They would blow the B-1 out of the sky.

It was Morozov's job to keep them alive. It was his job to search the radio spectrum for any hostile aircraft or missiles, then jam their radar if they started tracking the B-1. As such, he should have detected the Mig-31s early, while they still had their radar in search mode.

However, Ammon wasn't the kind of pilot who liked to sit around and hope the other guy would be able to save him. He was looking for the fighters himself, searching the sky ahead and above him as the B-1 skimmed over the ground. He jammed his neck and scanned the horizon, searching for the deadly little fighters.

The Mig-31 pilots detected the bomber on their Hot Light radars at 63 miles. They were approaching the bomber from its four o'clock. They were nearly guaranteed the element of surprise.

Ammon jumped in his seat when the earphones in his helmet came alive. Threat tones cried in his ear, howling and beating like some kind of crazy synthesizer music. The bomber's ALQ-161 defensive system had been designed with a certain degree of artificial intelligence, enough to recognize the fact that it was presently being operated by the hands of a novice. As a result, the automatic features of the system took over, at least to a sufficient degree to advise the crew of the presence of the Mig-31s. The insistent, screeching tone in Ammon's ears was designed to warn him that he soon was going to die. At least he would if he didn't do something. And he had only a few seconds in which to act. Any hesitation would guarantee a tragic result.

“What have you got?!” Ammon screamed, as he slammed all four throttles into afterburner.

“Two Mig-31s!” Morozov yelled back. “One is at three o'clock. Looks like twelve miles. His playmate is right behind him. Okay! Okay! Hang on! Lead is moving in. Now! Break right! Get down in the dirt!”

Ammon threw his stick to the right. The aircraft immediately rolled up on its side. He pushed the aircraft even lower, dishing it toward the fields and trees, searching desperately for somewhere to hide. “Oh, give me a mountain or canyon,” he pleaded, as he scanned the landscape surrounding him. But there was nowhere to hide. No valleys or hills to run for. No mountains in which to seek an escape. Only this flat open nothingness.

It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. The Mig-31 pilots could pluck at him at their leisure. He could roll and jam and throw his throttles into afterburner, but they were too dose now, and he could not hide.

Still the lower he could get, the better. If nothing else, flying very low would help to clutter up the Mig-31 s' radar. Ammon pushed the nose of the aircraft even lower. He sucked in his breath as the B-1 barely skimmed over a tall windbreak of poplar trees. With all four of his engines still in full afterburner, he quickly accelerated through the speed of sound. Behind him, the shock wave and sonic boom blew out the windows of every farmhouse within three miles.

Ammon's eyes never stopped moving. He continued to search the sky around him as he rolled his wings back to level.

“Where are they?” he called to Morozov, searching frantically for the Mig-31s. Instead of turning and running away, Ammon had turned into the oncoming fighters and was now heading straight toward them. Once the fighters had him on their radar, it wouldn't do any good to try and run, and by turning toward them, Ammon had increased the closure rate between the three aircraft to well over 1,000 miles an hour. That would give the Mig-31 pilots only a few seconds to analyze and run their intercept. If Ammon could survive their first pass, they would have to turn around and chase him down. And that was a race they couldn't win. The fighters didn't have the speed or fuel to stay with the B-1 once they got in a high-speed, tail chase down low.

“Where are they?” Ammon muttered again, more to himself than Morozov. The threat tones in his headset told him the fighters were still in search mode. Neither of them had locked him up on radar yet. The Mig-31 s' computers were still trying to pick the B-1 out from the ground clutter that dirtied up their radar.

Suddenly the threat tone in Ammon's headset increased in pitch and intensity and became an insistent warble.

“Lead's got us locked up!” Morozov screamed over the interphone. “Break left! I'm trying to jam him!”

Ammon immediately yanked the aircraft into a hard left turn. He felt himself settle into his ejection seat from the G forces that pulled at his body. In the seat behind him, Morozov was constantly hitting his chaff and flare buttons. Chaff, chaff, flares! Chaff, chaff, flares! He punched the buttons as fast he could, spitting them out like a mad man. Bundles of aluminum foil strips were spit out into the slip-stream where they were spread by the wind into a blanket of radar reflecting material. A single flare followed every two bundles of chaff, its phosphorous burning white heat as it tumbled through the sky. In theory, any radar-guided missile would be thrown off by the wall of chaff, while a heat-seeking missile would be drawn away from the bomber by the hot-burning flares. Between the jamming, the chaff, and the flares, no missile should have been able to maintain its lock on the aircraft.

At least that was the theory.

Up front, Ammon was still searching for the fighters. He was focusing all of his attention on finding his attackers, allowing the computers to fly the aircraft.

Because even in a world of radar and missiles and silent death from miles away, one axiom from the aces of the First World War still held true. “Lose sight, lose fight.” No one knew that better than Ammon. He had killed many aircraft in simulated dogfights because they lost sight and couldn't see him.

Suddenly a tiny flash of light caught his eye. There they were. Or at least one of them. The lead Mig-31 had followed the B-1 as it made its last break to the left. Now he was abeam them and only a mile out. The fighter began to slide back, moving into position behind them. Once he was behind the B-1 it would all be over. Even if Morozov could jam him, the fighter was close enough now to take a gun shot with his cannon. Ammon jinked the bomber left, then right. No good. The fighter was staying with him and was now nearly in position. Ammon lost sight of the fighter as it slid back behind his tail. He unknowingly tensed his stomach muscles as he waited for the cannon plugs to start shattering their way through his aircraft.

Then Ammon got an idea. It was desperate and risky, but at the time it was all that he had.

With a sudden jerk, he pulled back hard on the stick while simultaneously slamming all four throttles back into full afterburner. Within three seconds, the aircraft was pointed nearly straight up, climbing skyward at forty thousand feet pcr minute. The aircraft's speed and momentum carried the bomber skyward. Up into the sky it climbed. Straight up. Up into the sun.

The Mig-31 pilot easily followed them as they shot skyward. But then the unthinkable happened. He lost sight of them in the glare of the sun. He stared and squinted and cursed. He jerked his head from one side of the cockpit to the other as he desperately searched for the bomber. He rolled his fighter inverted in an effort to shade his eyes from the glare. But it didn't make any difference. The B-1 was gone.

The Mig-31 pilot pulled the nose of his fighter back down to the horizon, rolled himself upright, and stared down at his radar. Nothing. He couldn't even find them on radar.

“Lead's blind,” he announced in a disgusted tone over the radio, cursing himself as he spoke. He had blown it. He had just lost a year's worth of cool points. His name would be muttered with shame at the bar.

But hopefully his wing man knew where the bomber had stolen off to. The Mig-31 pilot silently prayed that his number two had done a better job of keeping the target in sight.

He swore once again in frustration when he heard two reply, “Two is blind as well.”

Fifteen thousand feet below them, the B-1 sped to the east. It was back at treetop level, skimming once again over the fields and trees.

After pulling the bomber up into the sky, Ammon had immediately rolled inverted and pulled back into a steep dive. His evasive maneuver turned out to be nothing more than a modified yo-yo. Kind of a screwed up outside loop. But whatever he called the maneuver, it had worked. The threat tones in his helmet told him the fighters didn't know where he was. Their radars were back in search mode. And even if they found him now, it wouldn't matter. They could never catch him. For now at least, he was safe.

“That was close, fly-boy,” Morozov mumbled. “I think you got lucky.” His breathing was heavy and hard.

“No, Morozov,” Ammon shot back. “I'm not lucky. I'm good. There's a difference. And don't you forget it.”

Morozov grunted. “Ok, Carl. Whatever you say.”

They pressed on to the target.

“Time to arm the missile?” Ammon asked.

“Four minutes,” Morozov replied. “You should start to see the target environment soon after the missile is armed.”