Shattered Bone (42 page)

“Your target departed from McConnell approximately thirty minutes ago. It has tracked on a southeastern direction since then. You are the only chance that we have to get him now. You are the only thing between him and the Gulf of Mexico. At the speed he is flying, you're only going to get one shot, so let's keep things good and tight, okay guys?”

As the AWACS controller spoke, Lt Peterson began to slowly shake his head, rocking his helmet against the back of his headrest. He was nearly numb with disbelief. An American B-1! How could that be? Some terrorist group must have stolen one. Probably Hamas. They were always involved. Now, with a bay full of nuclear weapons, who knows what the rag-heads would do?

Peterson looked over at his flight leader. Underneath his mask was a determined frown. He watched as the lead F-16 cut through the moisture-laden air. He scanned his eyes down the wing line, examining his leader's six missiles. Between the two of them, they had twelve missiles and more than eight thousand 20mm shells for their cannons. Two of the world's best fighters, fully armed and ready for combat. Against a single B-1. Piloted by a couple of rag-head terrorists.

They would blow the B-1 into a thousand smoking pieces of fine dust.

Peterson reached down to fine-tune the contrast on his APG-68 radar, then looked at his leader once again.

It was then that he saw the smoke begin to trail from his leader's exhaust.

“Blade lead, this is two,” Dale Peterson said, his voice sounding squeaky and shrill. He swallowed hard before he continued. “Uh, Rick, it appears that you have some smoke coming from your tail.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I've been fighting a light compressor stall for the last couple minutes. Every time I adjust the throttle, it stalls again. Could be one of those new fuel controls we've been testing.”

“How's she doing?” Dale asked as he surveyed his leader's aircraft, looking for telltale signs of a problem. All the while he was silently pleading to himself. “Come on, baby, hang in there.” He coaxed the other aircraft along. “Falcon, heal thyself,” he commanded, while he made a quick sign of a cross. Lt Dale Peterson was finding a sudden deep need for religion.

Then he saw it again. Another thin wisp of smoke. This time he could also see Major Perry's F-16 shudder as its engine sputtered and churned. Peterson started to move forward on the other Falcon, an indication that Perry's F-16 was slowing down. He pulled back on his own throttle so that he could stay in the proper position.

“Blade flight, come up squadron common,” he heard his leader command.

Peterson quickly changed his UHF radio to their squadron's common frequency. This would allow the two falcons to talk without being heard by the AWACS controllers. As soon as he had the frequency dialed in, he heard Major Perry's voice.

“Dale, it looks like you got this one on your own, you lucky dog.”

“What's the deal, Lead?” Surely he must be kidding. Major Perry wasn't going to leave him out here by himself? Dale had only been checked out in the F-16 for three weeks. He wasn't even checked out in dissimilar air combat tactics. This wasn't the time, and he wasn't the pilot, to go chasing a B-1 on his own.

“This baby just ain't gonna make it, my boy,” his leader continued. “I've got my engine set at eighty percent now, and that's all that it will give me. I think I can make it back to Biloxi, but that's as far as I can hope to go.”

Lt Peterson did not reply.

“Now listen, buddy,” his leader said. “This is a piece of cake. No big thing at all. You just let Dragonfly drive you into the target. Then set up for the AMRAAM shot while he's still in your face. Remember, shoot, shoot, look. Fire two missiles and see what they do. That will probably do it. If it doesn't, give him two more. If the guy is really lucky, he might get through your missiles, but then you always have your guns. “Man, I'm telling you, this is going to be great,” Major Perry continued in an effort to buck up his young wingman. “You are one lucky guy. You'll be the youngest lieutenant to ever log a combat kill.

“Now go get her, ol' boy, and I'll get your autograph when you get home. Just take it easy and follow the book. You'll do fine. I know you will.”

Peterson clicked his microphone twice in reply. His mouth was too dry to form any words.

The major took a quick glance back at Lt Peterson to see the lieutenant wipe his glove across his face. The major figured he had about a fifty-fifty chance of getting the bomber. Maybe. If he was lucky. Or a little more experienced. Perry turned back and studied his engine instruments, which had continued to gradually decay. He was starting to lose altitude. The cockpit shuddered and rumbled as the wounded engine roared. He cursed once more at his jet, then jammed down hard on his microphone switch.

Peterson listened as Major Perry coordinated with the AWACS for a clearance and heading to an emergency landing field, then watched in sheer fear and amazement as his flight leader peeled off and turned to the south, heading toward Biloxi, Mississippi.

Blade six-four was now a flight of just one.

“Blade two, you still with me?” It was the AWACS controller. Peterson blinked twice and cleared his throat. He took a deep breath as he mustered his voice.

“That's affirm, Dragonfly. Blade is with you.”

“Blade, target is now one-five-zero miles, straight ahead, heading one-three-zero. He must know that we are tracking him, but so far he has made no attempt to jam our radar. He will be breaking your bubble in the next two minutes.”

Peterson reached down and selected range-while-seareh on his radar, then adjusted the range out to eighty miles. He pulled back his power to begin a descent, then reached down and armed all of his weapons while he waited for the Bone to appear on his radar screen.

REAPER'S SHADOW

Richard Ammon let out a long and weary sigh. His hands trembled. His back knotted into taut strands of muscle. He felt exhausted. Ammon knew he would have to pace himself. He had a very long mission. He shook his shoulders and tried to relax as he studied the terrain up ahead.

After taking off from McConnell, Ammon had initially steered the bomber south toward Texas. After two hundred miles he turned forty-five degrees to the east and took a heading that would steer them toward the Gulf of Mexico. His intention was to get away from the many military installations that dotted the southern States. He was flying at three hundred feet and 550 knots, just under the speed of sound. At this speed and altitude, it would have been impossible to have been tracked by any ground-based radar. They were too low. Virtually invisible to any radar on the ground.

Unfortunately for Richard Ammon, eight minutes after taking off he had flown directly underneath the nose of an AWACS airborne control aircraft.

At the time, the AWACS was on a routine training mission and was completely unaware of the crisis. But soon after the bomber had passed unobserved under its nose, the AWACS began to receive a series of urgent commands. At first, there was total confusion as the airborne command center scrambled to understand the scope of the crisis. It took the controllers several minutes to decipher their codes and authenticate all of the messages that had begun to pour in. Precious time was lost as they scrambled through their checklist. But once they got past the initial confusion, the controllers set about to track the low-flying bomber. They immediately tuned the huge orbiting radar that sat on the aircraft's back and concentrated its electronic energy toward the south. They had little trouble finding the fleeing bomber. It was only sixty miles off its right wing.

So much for Ammon's stealthy escape.

By then, the B-1 was passing through central Arkansas. The Mississippi coast was just four hundred miles to the south. Forty minutes away. Once the fleeing bomber went “feet wet” out over the water, it would simply disappear into the huge expanse of the Gulf of Mexico and its thousands of miles of aqua blue sea.

Inside the B-1, Ammon was busy as he concentrated on making their escape. He knew the fighters were coming. He knew that by now they would already be airborne, their radars tracking in search mode, hunting the sky, snooping along the terrain in an all-out effort to find him.

But there would only be a few of them—thank heaven for Cold War military cutbacks—and they wouldn't know where to look. From Texas to Tennessee, the B-1 could be anywhere. There was simply too much terrain for the fighters to cover. Like a needle in a haystack, the Bone could just slip away.

BLADE 64

Lt Dale Peterson leveled off at twenty thousand feet. He pushed his throttle back up to ninety-two percent to hold his airspeed at four hundred knots and reached down to adjust the tracking file on the target.

The bomber was now seventy-five miles away and closing very quickly. His radar told him that the two aircraft were approaching head on at over one thousand miles an hour. Over eighteen miles every minute. One thousand five hundred feet every second. Either way you looked at it, the distance between them was closing very quickly.

Which was good. Peterson's Doppler radar needed a fast rate of closure in order to pick the low-flying B-1 out from the clutter of the ground and the trees. Speed was the only thing that allowed the Falcon's radar to see the incoming B-1.

Peterson stared through his Head-Up Display (HUD) at the terrain that lay below him. Rolling hills heavily forested with tall pine and birch trees. An occasional lake sped underneath his nose, its surface frothing and white from the twenty-knot wind that was blowing at the surface. The towns were scattered and widely dispersed, but Peterson was also getting a very large return on his ground-mapping radar at forty-six miles. He knew that would be the mass of buildings, highways, and homes of Little Rock. Peterson did some quick calculations and realized that he would encounter the bomber as it passed just south of the city.

“Dragonfly, say bearing and range to the target,” Peterson said to the AWACS controller.

“Bearing three-five-eight. Range six zero miles. Have you lost the target on your radar?” The controller's voice sounded alarmed.

“Negative Dragon. Just checking.” Peterson was tracking the target very easily. It showed up as a solid dark square that was making its way down his screen at a steady and predictable rate.

Which was the reason that he had asked the AWACS to confirm its location. The Bone was flying very low and very fast, but it was holding true to its original heading as it flew across the rolling hills of central Arkansas.

Which caused the Lieutenant to wonder. Why wasn't the bomber maneuvering away from the fighter? Why wasn't it trying to hide behind some of the higher terrain? So far it had made no attempt to jam his radar. It was as if the B-1 didn't even know he was there.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

“We have contact with the bomber,” Chad Wallet said to the President in a whisper. “It is flying southeast, toward the Gulf. We have two ... I mean one ... of our F-16s out of Florida inbound to the target.”

Allen looked up from the huge conference table in the White House situation room with a blank face. The room was cramped and very noisy. Surrounded by the banks of telephones and computer screens, he felt awkward and out of place.

As Wallet strode up to him to give him the news, Milton Blake stood by the President's chair, anxious to hear every word. Weber Coy, the CIA director, was also standing nearby.

“How did they find him?!” the President asked, turning toward Milton Blake. “You told me he would just slip away. So how did they find him so quickly?”

Wallet glanced around the room to make sure that no one could hear them, then answered the question. “Apparently there was an AWACS radar plane that happened to be on a routine training mission near the bomber's planned escape route. When the Shattered Bone message went out, the AWACS was brought into the loop. As luck would have it, they were almost directly on top of the bomber, and they have continued to track him as he's flown to the south.”

“‘As luck would have it,' huh? That is so much B.S.,” Allen replied. “I don't believe in tooth fairies, and I don't believe in simple luck. So, what's the deal with this bomber? This ... the cutting edge of our military technology ... the best warplane that we have, and already, it's being tracked by an airborne radar?”

Allen frowned at his security advisor. “Milton, you told me you had considered every angle. So I'm wondering, what do you plan to do now?”

REAPER'S SHADOW

“Ammon, we've got a small problem,” Morozov broadcast over the intercom. Richard Ammon immediately began searching the sky, expecting Morozov to announce an incoming fighter.

“What do you have?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the sky.

“The airborne threat warning computer seems to have taken a hike. It's giving me all sorts of sporadic and wild indications. I've tried several times to reset it, but so far no luck. I'm not sure if I know how to straighten out its logic.”

Ammon's mind raced. That was the computer that searched the sky, looking for any sign of a hostile fighter's radar. Without it, they were blind. They would never see what hit them. They could have a whole squadron of F-16s flying right on their tail and never even know they were there.

“Come on Morozov, that system is our baby! Do something. Do anything. Just get that thing back up on-line.”

Ammon continued to search the sky up ahead, his eyes darting from cloud to cloud as he searched for American fighters. He racked his brain, trying desperately to think of how to reboot the defensive systems computer. But he had no idea. None at all. That was supposed to be Morozov's area of expertise.

Morozov continued to flip through the operator's manual for the ALQ-161 defensive system computer. He scanned his fingers down the trouble-shooting guide. He read quickly and tried everything he could think of, but nothing seemed to work. The computer continued to bounce around, giving spurious and incorrect information.