The Fourth War (18 page)

Tahif Military Complex
South of Jabal ad Duruz

The pilot settled into the tight cockpit and looked at the controls and displays, which, although familiar, were not comfortable to him. He ran his eyes down the outmoded Soviet cockpit, taking in the haphazard position of the primary flying instruments, engine indicators, and weapon displays. It had been too long since he had flown this jet, and even in the old days when he flew it regularly, acting as an attacker against his fellow pilots to train them in the aerial combat tactics they would see if there was open war, the old fashioned cockpit had never felt comfortable to him. The fighter's dartlike nose canted slightly downward and the Plexiglas cockpit wrapped around his shoulders, limiting his field of view. Worse, the rudder pedals were too small and the control stick too sloppy. But, though the fighter was slow and heavy until it got out the gate, it was incredibly fast and agile once it reached altitude.

As he settled in the cockpit and pulled his ejection seat straps over his shoulders, the pilot realized with frustration that he was finding it difficult to concentrate, his mind continually wondering what he was doing there. What kind of mission was this? It didn't make any sense!

He considered the first rule of combat.
Identify friend from foe.

His gut tightened up. Had they done that tonight?

The pilot paused again, staring at the empty windscreen before him.

He had serious doubts about the wisdom of his orders, but when he had dared question his superior, the response had been stone cold. “Who are you to question?” his commander had said. “You have been given an order. Now go do your job.”

Taking a deep breath, the pilot finished strapping himself in, then pulled out his checklist and strapped it to his leg. Moving his hands slowly through the cockpit he hesitated, careful not to make a mistake as he prepared the aircraft for flight. Looking around him, the cockpit seemed to blur, for he was already fatigued, having spent the last nine hours locked in a secure room. Knowing what he did now, he was a security risk; and even though he was a man of many talents, one of the very few pilots they had, he could not be trusted with such an enormous secret. Quarantined from the others, he had stared at the walls while waiting for his orders to walk to his jet.

And now here he was. It was time to go.

Reaching the point in the checklist when he was ready for engine start, the pilot signaled the ground crew and the hangar lights were turned down to a dim glow, allowing just enough light for the ground crews to work. Then the rear hangar doors rolled open behind his engine exhaust. After starting the two powerful engines, the pilot began checking his weapons and bringing his avionics and navigational systems on line.

Finishing these tasks, he glanced to his right at the other Soviet fighter. The second pilot was stirring his stick to check his flight controls, and the heavy fighter bounced lightly as the hydraulics snapped the elevators on the tail of the jet, then the rear-engine exhaust ports opened slightly as the pilot moved his throttles out of the idle detent.

They were beautiful fighters, these old Soviet machines. Steel and aluminum, they were heavy but capable; and despite the awkward cant of their nose cones and the archaic controls, the pilot had to admire the Soviet design.

Similar in size and performance to the American F-15 Eagle and F-14 Tomcat, the Su-27s were heavier than their American counterparts. With two enormous fuel-sucking engines, the Su-27 could climb like a rocket to sixty thousand feet, accelerating upward at nearly ninety degrees. Though the recent version of the aircraft had been upgraded, the earlier models, like the one this pilot sat in, carried the first-generation AA-10 and AA-11 air-to-air missiles as well as a very reliable cannon. (Soviet fighter pilots loved an old-fashioned, fang-to-fang dogfight, and the cannon was the weapon of choice when two fighters got close.) In addition to the cannon and missiles, the Su-27s were equipped with a Flash Dance radar, RWR IRST and a Balistic bombsight, as well as a highly-sensitive, digitally magnified TV sensor located in the nose of the aircraft. But despite all this equipment, if he was going to find the target, the pilot knew he would have to do it the old-fashioned way. Like his father before him, fighting over Gaza in the Six-Day War, he would have to use his eyeballs. He hoped he might catch a glimpse of the moon shining off the target's wings or a flash of it's windscreen under the light of the stars.

An impossible task to find it? He thought.

Maybe so.

But he had a significant advantage in the game of cat and mouse. For one thing, he knew where the target would be flying tonight, a pretty good idea of the time it would be appearing, and where it would be. He knew the approximate altitude at which it would be flying, as well as the direction it would be coming, and the approximate time.

 

After starting the engines, the pilot worked quickly through his checklist; he had a hard takeoff time and he couldn't be late. Loading his flight coordinates in the INS, he checked his navigational chart, then the coordinates of his refueling airfield—a tiny strip of cracked cement in the western Afghanistan desert—an emergency landing field nestled in a narrow valley that was no longer used. It would take him almost fifty minutes to get to the field (about two-thirds of the time of most any other fighter), then another half hour to refuel and get back in the air.

He glanced at his watch. They were cutting it close.

Turning in his seat, he communicated with his wingman, using hand gestures to signal he was ready to go. The second pilot nodded and the formation leader motioned to his ground crew to pull his chocks, then pushed up the power. The heavy fighters moved forward, kicking up dust and debris and sending a trail of gray smoke and dirt through the open doors of the hangar as they moved into the dark.

The fighters taxied quickly from the hanger and turned to the runway, their landing lights off and their wingtip lights set to dim. Two minutes later they took to the air, shattering the night with a thunderous noise, their twin engines sprouting blue-and-orange tails of flame as the pilots lit their afterburners and turned sharply east.

Kill 31
Over the Mediterranean Sea

The coming day proved to be short, with less than seven hours between sunrise and sunset. The two crew members took turns sleeping briefly in their seats in the midafternoon. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were the same: sandwiches, orange juice, granola bars, and nuts. They drank plenty of water, keeping themselves hydrated to fight the elements of fatigue that were exaggerated by the dry cockpit air. In the late afternoon, with the sun passing behind them, the two B-2s prepared to refuel from a pair of KC-10s from Aviano, a military installation situated near the base of the Italian Alps.

The bombers hadn't talked on the radio since they had taken off from Whiteman AFB. As per the rules of engagement, the second air refueling was also conducted under radio silence.

Tia was at the controls and in the lead. The second B-2 tightened up the spacing, moving in on lead until he was right off the wing.

Two KC-10s were already level at twenty thousand feet. The B-2s descended to nineteen thousand five hundred and the rolling pastures and terraced vineyards of Sicily passed peacefully below as the four aircraft came together in a carefully orchestrated maneuver. With the huge tankers five hundred feet above them and one mile ahead, the B-2s began to climb and move forward. Tia moved into position expertly, fifty feet behind and below the first tanker. She cleared off her wingman, and the second B-2 moved in on the second KC-10. The two bombers would refuel simultaneously to reduce the time.

The lead tanker's air refueling position lights, a double line of green and red lights on the underside of the aircraft, began to blink, the signal for the bomber to move into the contact position. Tia moved the four throttle controllers forward almost imperceptibly and the aircraft began to creep forward and upward. Bradley reached to the console above him and exposed the air refueling receptacle, which was on top of the aircraft and nearly in the center of the body. He felt a quick
clang
as the air refueling receptacle rotated one hundred eighty degrees to reveal itself from underneath the aircraft's skin. A “ready” light illuminated on the center console between the two pilots. Bradley opened the rudder brakes slightly in order that the high performance B-2 might more closely match the flight characteristics of the lumbering KC-10. The B-2 moved forward through two separate downbursts, one from the KC-10's engines and one from its wings. As the bomber moved under the tanker, the bow of compressed air that was pushed out in front of its nose began to fight against the tanker, causing the aircraft to interact with each other. The tanker moved up and the bomber moved down.

Tia held the control stick lightly with her fingers, sensing more than thinking, flying by feel. She moved herself exactly into the proper refueling position.

The tanker's air refueling lights went suddenly off, the signal to halt the maneuver. Tia backed the B-2 away from the tanker, sliding back into the precontact position. The bomber crew waited. Almost a minute passed. Something was wrong. The refueling lights flickered, then illuminated again. Tia moved forward and upward until she was in a position right under the tanker again. She stopped the aircraft and held it steady, matching the tanker perfectly as it flew at three hundred twenty knots. The boom operator extended his boom, careful not to touch the delicate skin of the bomber, knowing even a tiny scratch would expose the Stealth aircraft to radar and cost untold millions to repair. The boom operator finally pushed the air refueling boom toward the bomber's receptacle. Bradley felt a solid thunk, but the two aircraft didn't latch. He felt the boom probe once again, hearing it knock against the refueling plate. The boom seated into the receptacle, but again, the aircraft didn't latch. The boom jabbed a final time, then pulled back, lifting away from the tanker. Tia remained in position, holding the bomber steady. The boom extended again. Bradley felt himself tense. The boom scraped the top of the bomber and Bradley visibly cringed. Tia sucked in her breath. “What's going on up there!” she said angrily. On the third attempt, the two aircraft latched and the air refueling finally began. Bradley let out a breath. Tia slowly shook her head.

“Good job,” Bradley said over the intercom in his mask. Both of the pilots had their combat helmets on now.

“Do you think he got us?” Tia asked.

“I don't know. He pulled the boom across the top, but it felt pretty light.”

“A tiny scratch is all it takes for us to radiate like a 747.

“We'll be okay,” Bradley said, though he wasn't sure. He began to monitor the flow. The fuel was coming on very slowly. “There's a problem with the boom,” he announced.

Tia didn't take her eyes off the tanker. “What's the fuel flow?”

“Two thousand pounds a minute.”

“It should be six thousand.”

“I know, but let's not push it. We could unlatch and have the tanker reset the boom, but I'd rather keep the connection than go through that again. It will take a little longer to get our full offload, but I'd rather have that than give them another chance to ram the boom through our front window.”

Tia nodded agreement, concentrating on flying the jet. The enormous KC-10 bumped lightly as the aircraft passed through a thin stream of clouds, and Tia adjusted the throttles to stay in position. Bradley glanced at the tanker through the top of his windscreen. Tia remained within a few inches of the center position. The minutes passed and, as the bomber became more heavy, Tia slowly increased power to compensate for the increase in drag. She glanced at the fuel readout. Bradley followed her eyes.

“It's slow, but we're getting gas. We've taken on forty thousand pounds. Another fifty-five thousand to go.”

Bradley glanced off to his right. His wingman, the second bomber, had already completed refueling. Bradley watched as the bomber dropped away from its tanker and slid straight back. After clearing the KC-10, the second B-2 slid left and down, moving toward the lead jet, where it would take up a position fifty feet below and a couple hundred feet back. There it would stay until the refueling was complete. Bradley watched the second bomber, the afternoon sun glinting off its black skin, sliding into position until it had disappeared below him.

“Two is complete and in position.”

Tia clicked her microphone in reply. The boom was beginning to wobble and she was fighting to stay connected to the air refueling receptacle. It was a battle. She was winning, but it was hard work, Bradley could tell. He didn't say anything to distract her, letting her concentrate on the boom. His eyes scanned across the cockpit. Everything was in the green.

Suddenly Bradley heard a
crack
and looked up with a start. Another
crack,
this one louder, then a shudder ran through the jet. The refueling boom broke away, sending a jarring vibration throughout the B-2. Bradley stared in amazement as the boom gyrated wildly directly in front of the cockpit, slicing through the air in an uncontrollable dance.

Tia flinched and pulled back as the boom swung inches from her windscreen, thinking it was surely going to smash through the glass. Another
crack
sounded and the left control winglet tore away from the boom. Jet fuel sprayed from the nozzle, washing over the upper fuselage of the B-2. It was impossible to see. Tia gripped the controls.

“Breakaway!” Bradley shouted as he reached for the controls. He jerked the throttles back and Tia dropped the nose. The breakaway lights flashed on the bottom of the tanker as the B-2 dropped away.

The boom suddenly jammed to the extreme right of the tanker, then broke away entirely from the tail of the KC-10. Broken pieces of metal scattered wildly in the wind. The main boom, eleven hundred pounds of metal, dropped toward the bomber, tumbling end over end, like a falling telephone pole. The main section of boom smashed into the side of the Stealth's cockpit and slashed along the top side of the jet. A broken piece of nozzle hit the bomber on the beak then rolled across the wing's leading edge. Pieces of steel and aluminum pattered the aircraft like hail. Tia gripped the control stick fiercely and pushed the jet down. Bradley grabbed the controls, helping her to hold it steady. The windscreen smeared with jet fuel like a dirty, oily rain. The jet fuel rolled back on the windscreen, then began to blow clear.