Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 Read online

  Once the transponder was turned off, the aircraft became invisible—because it was not really a DC-10, but a modified U.S. Air Force B-52H Stratofortress bomber nicknamed the EB-52 Megafortress, owned and operated by Sky Masters Inc. as a government research and testing aircraft, designed as a stealth technologies demonstration aircraft. Its skin and major structural components were made of composite fibersteel, not metal, covered with radar-absorbent materials; instead of a large cruciform radar-hungry tail, its control surfaces were smaller, swept backward, and radically tilted in a low V-shape to minimize radar reflections. Even though the aircraft weighed nearly half a million pounds and its wingspan was longer than the Wright Brothers’ first airplane flight, it had the radar cross-section of a bird.

  A few hours later, the Megafortress rendezvoused with a real Sky Masters Inc. DC-10 aircraft that was modified for aerial refueling. Within half an hour, the B-52 was fully topped off with fuel. With the DC-10 in loose formation, the B-52 made its way across the north Atlantic, using bursts of its Laser Radar system to be sure it was well out of visual range of other aircraft. The DC-10 was on a standard over-water flight plan, en route to Glasgow, Scotland. About an hour prior to landing, the B-52 again hooked up and filled its tanks from the DC-10. The big converted airliner headed immediately for landing in Scotland—it was now dangerously low on fuel, even though a conventional DC-10 can make the trip across to Europe easily with plenty of fuel reserves. Its stealth wingman had nearly sucked it dry.

  The EB-52 continued right across Europe, overflying countries without clearance. The reason was simple: No conventional radars could see it, so no one knew it was up there. It flew across a dozen western and central European nations without a hint of its presence. Even in crowded airspace, it was able to keep its distance so no other aircraft could see it, changing altitudes or maneuvering far enough away to keep out of sight.

  John “Bud” Franken, Commander, U.S. Navy, Retired, thoroughly enjoyed the danger of what they were doing. As the aircraft commander aboard the Sky Masters test bed aircraft, he had seen his company’s planes do some amazing things—but even when the EB-52 was doing nothing but flying straight and level nearly seven miles above the Earth, it was still amazing. Franken was a former U.S. Navy test pilot and test squadron commander, and he had flown in every Navy aircraft design, both operational and ones that never made it past “black” status, over the past twenty years—but he was truly awestruck by the EB-52.

  In his soul he would always be a Navy fighter pilot, but his heart now belonged to the experimental EB-52 Megafortress.

  His mission commander, sitting in the right seat across the wide cockpit, was as young as Franken was old, as operationally inexperienced as the pilot was combat-tested. Twenty-five-year-old Lindsey Reeves was simply a natural-bom systems wizard. It didn’t matter if the system was a complex, high-tech flying battleship like the EB-52 Megafortress or her pride and joy—a 1956 Aston-Martin DB4 GT Sanction I convertible, which she restored herself, including rebuilding the engine—she could look at it, experiment with it for a few minutes, and instantly figure out how it worked. Sky Masters Inc.’s worldwide team of headhunters had recruited her at the age of sixteen at a county science fair in her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, where she had won the competition by modifying a radio receiver to pick up Global Positioning Satellite navigation signals—at a time when GPS was still a classified military program.

  Franken was a systems guy too—you had to be to fly the Megafortress. It was so different from all other aircraft that it was best to let the computers do the flying, watch the computers like a hawk, and be ready to take over if they rolled over and died. But Lindsey was from another dimension when it came to machines. She wasn’t much of a flier—she got airsick at the slightest hint of turbulence and used almost every non-narcotic airsickness remedy known, from wristbands to ginger tablets, to help her get through it. But when it was time to go into action, she was ready—usually.

  “Three minutes to low-level entry point,” Lindsey reported. She had two overhead air vents blowing cold air on her face, plus she was breathing pure oxygen to try to settle her stomach. “All birds reporting ready.”

  “Then try to relax a little, Lindsey,” Franken suggested. “Take off the gloves and loosen your fingers.” Lindsey always wore gloves—she said it was easier to find them that way in case she needed something to throw up in. “You’re too tense.”

  “I’ve never flown into ... into combat before,” she murmured.

  “The exercises we do back in the ranges are much more intense than we’ll see here,” Franken assured her. “You’re a good crew dog, Linds. Relax and take it easy.”

  “Okay,” Lindsey said. But it was no use—a few moments later, she was holding a barf bag at the ready. She was nervous, Franken thought—usually within three minutes time-to-go, she was fine.

  “Give me the leg brief, Linds,” Franken said.

  “I don’t feel so good....”

  “The leg brief, MC,” he ordered sternly. “Right now.”

  The voice got her attention, and the discipline and routine got her mind off her churning stomach. “First heading one-nine-five, leg time twelve minutes fifteen seconds, auto TF descent,” Lindsey recited. “Level-off altitude two thousand feet... set and verified. The SA-10 site at SAM is our first threat. I’ve got only air traffic control search radars up now.”

  At the initial point, Franken issued voice commands to the EB-52 Megafortress’s flight computer, and the big aircraft responded—it started a ten-thousand-foot-per-minute descent, automatically retarding the throttles to keep the airspeed under the red line. All he had to do was monitor the computers, keep up with his ears as the cabin pressurization changed, and watch out for floating objects as the fast descent created some negative Gs, almost like being weightless. Franken kept an eye on Lindsey—if she was going to hurl, it would be now. But she was wearing her combat face now, and nothing would interfere with it—he hoped.

  The pilot’s side of the instrument panel had three sixteen-color multifunction displays (MFDs) that showed the route of flight, flight instruments, engine instruments, and system status readouts; Franken could switch between the displays with simple voice commands. Three more MFDs in the center instrument panel had fuel, electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, threat, and weapon status readouts, with conventional backup instruments and gauges underneath. The mission commander’s instrument panel was dominated by a supercockpit display, a huge one-by-two- foot computer screen that showed a variety of information, all selected by the mission commander and controlled by voice commands or by a trackball on the right side. Two more MFDs on either side of the supercockpit display showed systems readouts and warning messages.

  Their course was depicted on Lindsey’s display as a roadway, with the road as the computer-recommended altitude. Symbols showed known and detected threats and obstacles. Two large upside-down green cones either side of course represented the search radars in eastern Libya, with the “roadway” threading precisely between and underneath the edges of the cones; more cones represented Egyptian and naval search radars. Colored symbols all along the Libyan coastline represented the location of known antiaircraft threat sites, but so far none were active.

  “Our first threat is an SA-10 site, two o’clock, forty miles,” Lindsey reported. “We should be underneath it in five minutes. We’ve got two Egyptian Roland sites at eleven o’clock—search radars only. We should be outside detection range. Egypt also has a Patriot site at extreme range, nine o’clock, fifty miles—we should be well clear. No fighters detected yet. LADAR coming on—our course is clear so far. We might have Libyan fighters at three o’clock, seventy miles—they’re moving pretty fast, but they don’t have radars on so we can’t identify yet.” Lindsey kept up a constant litany of reports and observations. Although Franken had all that information right in front of him as well, it was reassuring to hear Lindsey reciting it all—two pairs of eyes scanning the instruments
was always better than one, especially when the action got hot and heavy.

  The computer-generated “road” started to rise up to meet the aircraft depiction on their navigation displays, so both crew members monitored the level-off carefully. They performed a fast terrain-following system check, verified that everything was working normally. They were over water right now, forty miles off the Libyan coast. The Libyan coastal air defense sites were all around them, but right now they were quiet—no radar emissions at all.

  “Want to step it down, Bud?” Lindsey asked.

  Franken studied the threat display. They knew the position of the nearest SA-10 site—it just wasn’t transmitting yet. At two thousand feet, they were right at the edge of lethal coverage at this range. They could descend well below the missile’s engagement envelope, but then risk being heard from the ground. Only government and military aircraft were allowed to fly at night over Libya, and a big plane like a B-52 flying low to the ground well away from an airport would certainly attract attention. “Let’s leave it here for now,” Franken replied. “We’ll give it a few minutes and then—”

  Suddenly a female voice from the threat warning receiver spoke: “Caution, search radar in acquisition mode, nine o'clock, thirty-seven miles, Patriot SAM."

  “The Egyptian Patriot got us,” Lindsey said. “If the Libyans detect the Patriot system fired up, they’ll fire up their own radars.”

  “Stepping down,” Franken said. He hit the voice command button on his control stick: “Set clearance plane to one thousand.”

  “Clearance plane set one thousand feet, pitch mode auto TF," the flight control computer responded. Just then the computer reported, “Warning, Patriot SAM tracking, nine o'clock, thirty-six miles. . . Patriot SAM acquisition mode... warning, Patriot SAM tracking, nine o 'clock, thirty-five miles...”

  “Dam it, he got us, he locked on,” Lindsey reported. “Let’s step it down to five hundred feet.”

  “Caution, Patriot SAM acquisition mode...” But that brief lock-on, just three or four seconds, was all it took for the Libyan air defense sites to be alerted. “Caution, SA-10 SAM at ten o'clock, thirty miles, acquisition mode... warning, SA-10 SAM height-finder at ten o'clock, thirty miles...”

  “Trackbreakers active,” Lindsey verified. “Let’s take it down to two hundred.”

  “I didn’t expect to be flying hard TF so far out,” Franken said. “Here we go.” He issued commands, and the big bomber rumbled down until it was two hundred feet above the Mediterranean Sea.

  “SA-10 SAM in acquisition mode," the computer reported.

  “He knows we’re out here, but he can’t find us ... yet,” Franken said. “Linds, where are those fighters you saw earlier?”

  Reeves activated the laser radar for a few seconds. “They’re on their way now,” she said. ‘Three aircraft headed our way at six hundred thirty knots, twenty-nine thousand feet. Less than six minutes out. No identification yet.”

  “Not exactly burning up the program here, are we?” Franken deadpanned. “So much for the stealthy approach. We might end up fighting our way in.” There was no response from Lindsey—and when Franken turned to find out why, he noticed Lindsey vomiting into her barf bag. He reached across and grasped her shoulder. “You okay, Linds?”

  Her eyes were wet with tears—obvious even in the dim red glow of the EB-52’s cockpit. “I... I don’t know,” she said weakly. “I’m ...”

  “I need you, Linds. I can’t do this without you.”

  “I’m so scared,” she cried. “My stomach... I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “Lindsey...” He waited a few moments while she retched in her bag again; her trembling fingers dropped the bag somewhere on the center console. She was so rattled that she couldn’t refasten her oxygen mask. “Lindsey, listen to me—”

  “Warning! airborne search radar in acquisition three o’clocky forty-seven miles, MiG-25” the threat computer reported.

  “I... I can’t do this,” Lindsey sobbed. “I’m sorry, I can’t—”

  “Listen to me, Lindsey—listen to me!” Franken shouted. “If we turn around, the Libyans will chase us all the way across the Mediterranean Sea. When we run out of missiles, they’ll shoot us down. We might make it out—but our guys on the ground probably won’t. We have to keep going. Do you understand?”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “You have to!” Franken said. “There are three guys on the ground who won’t stand a chance unless we help. But I can’t do this alone, not even with the computers.” He grasped her shoulder tightly and shook it. “You’ve got to hang in there, Linds. Just think of this as a simulator ride— a very, very intense simulator ride. Okay?”

  It didn’t look good at all. Lindsey’s head lolled back and forth, slowly at first, then faster, as if she was looking for something. She started to pull off her left flying glove. “Here,” Franken said. “Go to town—and then let’s get to work.” He pulled off his right glove and passed it to her. She barely got it up to her face before the torrent quickly filled the black Nomex glove. Franken couldn’t believe that tiny little stomach of hers still had anything left in it to regurgitate.

  Reeves was hunched down, her head almost between her knees, her hands holding on to the eyebrow panel for support, as if she was going to puke right on the deck— Franken thought she might pass out. But to his relief, Lindsey pulled her oxygen mask up to her face, fumbled and finally snapped the bayonet clip in place, then took several deep breaths of pure oxygen. Her right hand disappeared onto the right console, and soon her supercockpit display started dancing as the displays changed with ever- increasing speed.

  “Scorpions are ready,” Lindsey reported weakly.

  “How about you, kiddo?”

  “I’m hungry,” she said. “Let’s do our thing so we can go home and get a couple burgers.”

  “Warning, airborne search radar tracking, three o’clock, thirty miles, MiG-25,” the computer reported.

  “The weapons pylons are making our radar crosssection as big as a friggin’ barn,” Franken said. “Looks like we’re going to pop some Scorpions after all.” The AIM- 120C Scorpion air-to-air missile was the Megafortress’s main defensive weapon—a radar-guided supersonic missile capable of hitting enemy fighters as far as thirty miles away. The EB-52 carried four on each wing, mounted on launch rails attached to the sides of the weapon pylons.

  “Let’s step it down to COLA,” Lindsey suggested. “Maybe he won’t want to come down that low.”

  “Roger. He we go. Hold on to your lunch.”

  “My lunch is long gone,” Lindsey shot back. Franken shoved the throttles to full military power and ordered the computer to COLA mode. COLA, or computer-generated lowest altitude, used both the terrain and cultural data in the terrain-following computer and combined it with occasional bursts from the laser radar and air data information to compute the absolute lowest altitude the EB-52 bomber could fly, depending on airspeed, terrain, obstructions, and flight performance. The faster the bomber flew, the more aggressively the autopilot would hug the ground—literally flying at treetop level if it could. Over water, the computer could take the bomber right down to fifty feet above the surface of the water—only a very tall sailboat mast could stop them.

  “Threat report,” Lindsey asked.

  “MiG-25 tracking four o'clock, twenty miles, altitude ten thousand feet” the computer reported.

  “They’re trying to get on our tail,” Franken said. “Let’s do it, Linds. Ready?”

  Reeves froze for a few long moments, then looked over at Franken. “Let’s do it,” she repeated. She pressed the voice command button. “Attack MiG-25,” she spoke.

  “Attack MiG-25, stop attack the computer responded, offering her the command that would stop the attack. When she did not respond within three seconds, the computer said, “Launch commit Scorpion right pylon” There was a slight rumble from the right wing and then a streak of light from Lindsey’s windscreen. The AI
M-120 Scorpion missile flew an “over-the-shoulder” launch profile, arcing over the EB-52, then back toward the Libyan MiGs. The laser radar array automatically activated for two seconds, updating the Scorpion’s autopilot with the fighters’ flight path. The missile climbed above the MiGs, then descended rapidly toward the spot where the missile predicted the MiGs would be at impact. Ten seconds before impact, the LADAR flashed on again, updating the missile’s autopilot for the last time. Five seconds before impact, the Scorpion’s own radar activated and locked onto the lead MiG-25 fighter.

  That was the first indication—an immediate “MISSILE LOCK” warning—the Libyan pilots got that they were under attack.

  The wingmen did exactly what they were supposed to do, executing a textbook formation breakaway, climbing and turning away from each other and giving their leader room to maneuver. But the lead pilot—concentrating on the attack, just moments away from firing his first radar- guided missiles—didn’t react fast enough, or didn’t believe the indication, or chose to ignore it, hoping for a lucky break, the two-in-three chance that the attack was against one of his wingmen.

  The thirty-seven-pound shaped warhead detonated like a shotgun blast a fraction of a second before the missile hit the MiG right above and to the left of the starboard engine nacelle. The MiG-25’s heavy steel hull, reinforced with titanium—the MiG-25 was designed to fly at nearly three times the speed of sound—deflected most of the energy of the blast. But the missile still had enough punch to crack the fuselage, rip open the fuselage fuel tank, and smack the starboard engine. Running at one hundred percent power, the engines didn’t need much of a hit. The engine’s turbine blades, knocked out of their precisely engineered highspeed orbits, shot through the engine case like atomic particles flying into space after a nuclear explosion; the extreme heat from the engines ignited the fuel from the ruptured fuel tank, causing a fire. The MiG-25 pilot had only seconds to react—but again, he was concentrating too hard on his quarry to pay attention to the warning lights, telling him he had only a few heartbeats to punch out—before the MiG blew itself into a ball of fire and spun into the Mediterranean Sea.