Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (Novels of the Jet Age)

by Walter J. Boyne

  The three strike forces were but the tip of the massive United Nations’ spear. At other bases all across Saudi Arabia and other supportive nations in the Gulf, hundreds of fighters, bombers, reconnaissance, electronic countermeasure, and support aircraft were airborne. A flight of Boeing B-52Gs was inbound from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, flying the longest combat mission in history, ready to fire their air-launched cruise missiles at Baghdad. The crowded decks of huge Navy aircraft carriers in the Red Sea and the lower Persian Gulf were alive with action as they prepared for the assault. AWACS aircraft, another of Bob Rodriquez’s great contributions, orbited just as they did every other night, also looking perfectly routine to the sleepy Iraqi observers, but ready to orchestrate the attack.

  There was an hour to go before bombs away and V. R. had to force himself to think of other things than the capability of Baghdad’s air defenses. Israel’s 1981 attack on the Osirak nuclear facility had so enraged Hussein that he funded the creation of an amazingly sophisticated defense system. It was conservatively rated as seven times more powerful than the system that had defended Hanoi during the Vietnam War. The critical command and control facilities were buried underground, his aircraft were in shelters designed to withstand a nuclear blast, and there were more than seven thousand antiaircraft guns and sixteen thousand surface-to-air missiles, most of them deployed around Baghdad.

  It was tough to think of “other things” and not think about his beloved Ginny. Her death over Lockerbie, Scotland, gave this mission a visceral touch, for he knew that Saddam Hussein funded terrorists. He had not recovered from the loss and lived a monastic life, centered only on flying, and on revenge. To him, as to O’Malley, the war against the terrorists was a personal one.

  To escape thoughts of Ginny, he forced himself to think briefly of Kelly Johnson, again hoping him to be wrong about the F-117A, but mentally praising him for all he had done for the nation. Johnson’s U-2s were part of the attack team tonight, and the newest Air Force fighter, the Lockheed F-22A, had just won the fighter competition over Northrop’s F-23A. Others had fathered the F-22, but Johnson had fathered the Skunk Works culture that made it possible. On a more personal note, Kelly had been solicitous about both Vance and Tom Shannon, and had helped V. R. on more than one occasion.

  Tonight was going to be tough. He had two pinpoint targets in Baghdad that he had to identify in quick succession with his forward-looking infrared system. He would have to track the first target, designate it with a laser beam, and release the bomb with the downward-looking infrared system. Then he had to make a thirty-degree turn, and repeat the act a few seconds later on the second target. All the while he had to fly the aircraft, watch out for missiles, and be sure that all of the things that kept the Nighthawk stealthy were functioning correctly.

  V. R. had been in Iraqi airspace for thirty minutes when a pitch-black Baghdad loomed ahead. He eased his fighter in broken-field turns around the effective range of the defensive radars just as a halfback would elude tacklers, then acquired his first target, the huge telecommunications center that had been dubbed the “AT&T building” by planners. He kept the crosshairs of his laser designator on the building that served as the central communications center for the Iraqi war machine. At precisely the correct interval, the weapons bay snapped open, and a two-thousand-pound GBU-27 Paveway III laser-guided bomb streaked toward its target, diving toward a tiny spot of laser light fixed on the roof of the building. The bomb burst through the laser spot, plummeting into the building and destroying it. The world knew before V. R. did that his mission was a success for all radio communications, including those of CNN, ceased immediately.

  Pumped with adrenaline, certain that he had already proved the Nighthawk in combat, V. R. turned immediately toward his second target, another slightly smaller communications center. Once again his crosshairs stayed locked on until the Paveway released to plunge with an eerie accuracy into the communications center. Exultant, V. R. immediately headed for his post-strike refueling from a waiting tanker. Then there would be the long trip back to Khamis Mushait, for landing. As his excitement ebbed, he realized how glad he was that Kelly Johnson had been wrong and that Bob Rodriquez had pioneered the Paveway III. Stealth and precision guided munitions—this was the way to fight the war. As he flew back the adrenaline rush of the attack was slowly succeeded by a building fatigue. Underneath these sensations, there was one constant, a percussive Bolero-like beat signaling his aching, never-ending memory of his dead wife Ginny.

  June 12, 1991

  The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

  As V. R. SHANNON moved down the corridor of the E Ring toward O’Malley’s office he shuddered. Unless he played his cards right, he’d soon be working here, trapped in the five-sided building with thousands of others day in and day out, doing damn little, if any, flying.

  A young major flew out of O’Malley’s office, caught sight of V. R.’s chest full of ribbons, and came to a respectful halt.

  “Colonel Shannon? I’m Doug Culy. General O’Malley’s waiting for you. Let me take you right in.”

  O’Malley’s back was turned to the door, and as usual he was on the telephone, speaking rapidly to someone about yesterday’s crash of the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey. The tilt-rotor craft was intended to replace helicopters, but was caught in the usual congressional debates that surround every new weapons system.

  “I don’t give a damn if no one was hurt; this is serious, they are attacking this program every day, and I’ve got to have some answers as to why it crashed. And I want them today, by three o’clock.”

  He slammed the phone down and whirled around in his chair, a grin breaking out when he saw Shannon standing by the door.

  “Come on in, V. R., great to see you.”

  They chatted about their families for a moment, and O’Malley said, “Before we get down to the real business of the day, I’ve got some numbers to run by you. One of my staffers took these numbers out of Buzz Moseley’s report, and I’m pretty sure they are right, but my staffer’s drawn a conclusion I’m worried about and I want to see what you have to say.”

  O’Malley leafed through a mound of papers on his desk and came up with a blue folder. Inside was a single sheet of paper, and he read, “F-117As flew 1,271 missions during Desert Storm. F-117A pilots averaged about twenty-one missions each. On the first night, the F-117A force represented only 2.5 percent of the attacking force, but hit 34 percent of the targets.”

  He paused and said, “Now here’s the kicker: ‘The F-117As demonstrated that stealth aircraft can be flown without electronic warfare aircraft in attendance on all missions except those into the most heavily defended areas.’ ”

  V. R. sat up straight. “The first numbers are good; I flew twenty-one missions myself. But the conclusion is dead wrong. The F-117As need electronic jamming on every mission; if they don’t have it, someone is going to get knocked down, surer than hell.”

  “Why do you say that? You didn’t get hit, none of the stealth fighters took a hit.”

  “No, but it was just a miracle that we didn’t fly into a golden BB after the first night. They were shooting at random. But the thing that spooked us was that they were already doing some pretty clever things with their radar. It was obvious that they were trying to track us, and if the war had not ended when it did, they would probably have figured it out. That’s why we need jammers.”

  From the look on O’Malley’s face, V. R. knew he’d said the wrong thing.

  “There was the real problem. The idiots ended the war without getting Saddam Hussein! We’ll be back there fighting in another ten years, and this time it will be even rougher. I know what happened, some wise guy came up with a great sound bite—‘the hundred-hour war’—and the White House went for it. What a crock this is. This is going to be an open invitation to terrorists to go to Iraq for training and for funding. Hussein will do anything to get revenge for this. We should never have let him off the hook.”

  Shanno
n was quiet. He knew the next subject would be Muslim terrorism, and it was way too painful for him still. He burned with a fierce hatred for the terrorists, but O’Malley was over the top so much that the scuttlebutt was that he’d never get his fourth star.

  He was wrong. O’Malley, his face florid with rage, said, “The Air Force hammered the Iraqis into the ground; it was the most successful air campaign in history. And the Army, with its grandstanding ‘Hail Mary’ sweep through the remnants of the Iraqi Army, is getting all the glory. The Air Force is being treated as a support arm, for Christ’s sake, when it won the war on its own. All we needed the Army for was to round up the prisoners.”

  Shannon didn’t speak. When O’Malley was wound up like this, there was no need.

  “Well, we are going to show them. We are going to put on a PR campaign that will have their heads swimming. And you are going to lead it.”

  O’Malley pressed a buzzer on his desk and Major Culy literally ran in.

  “You met Doug outside, probably. Anyway, he’s going to take you down to the colonel’s assignment section, and let you talk over your next job. I know you don’t want to come to the Pentagon, nobody does, but face it, you are coming. And you are coming to work for me. There’s no sense in creating the finest Air Force in the world if nobody knows about it.”

  Shannon stood up, indignant. “Don’t make me fly a desk, General! You can’t do that.”

  “Don’t worry about flying a desk. You are going to be my lead man on every new airplane the Air Force is buying from the F-22 to the C-17 to the V-22. And you are going to be telling the world exactly what the Air Force did in Iraq and what we can do with the new equipment. Don’t argue with me, you’ve cherry-picked your assignments up to now; now it’s time to hunker down and do some work the Air Force wants you to do.”

  There was nothing V. R. could say to that. He had been given one prime assignment after another, and been promoted faster than anyone in his class at the Academy. It was payback time.

  January 1, 1992

  Palos Verdes, California

  THE SHANNONS WERE getting old, and while their New Year’s Eve parties had never been very wild, even staying up to midnight was a challenge, so Harry had changed the celebration to a brunch on New Year’s morning, and it seemed to make it easier on everyone.

  Lieutenant General Steve O’Malley had flown in yesterday and spent the night in the house, sleeping in Tom’s old room. Anna had fussed around changing sheets, dusting, making sure that the bathroom was stocked with everything from toothpaste to dental floss, intent on doing something useful. Now Steve was holding court in the library, laughingly chiding Harry, Bob Rodriquez, Dennis Jenkins, and even poor old Warren Bowers for their lack of faith in him. Nancy Shannon was, as usual, absent. Soon after Tom’s death she began to travel, and now almost never came to visit them. There had been no arguments, no reproaches, but Harry felt that she was just too embarrassed over the way she had handled company business, and was seeking to escape.

  He knew the feeling. Riding herd on Anna all these years had taken its toll on him, and in his heart he envied Nancy.

  “Come on, admit it! You believed I was bonkers when I told you the Soviet Union was on the way out, and that the Muslims were the new enemy. I’ve seen those looks, those taps on the side of the head.”

  It was true. Most of the group—V. R. Shannon excepted—had thought O’Malley was overreacting when he diminished the Communist threat and warned of the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. The Soviet Union had been fighting the United States in the Cold War since 1945. It had an incredible force of nuclear arms, including intercontinental ballistic missiles that were more powerful, more accurate, and far more numerous than those of the United States and its allies. It had a powerful scientific and industrial complex that had led the space race for many years. The Soviet Army was by far the most powerful in the world, with more planes, tanks, and artillery than any possible United Nations combination.

  Mae Rodriquez, her eyes shining, sitting with her ex-husband Bob on her left and their son, Rod, on her right, holding both their hands, had long believed in O’Malley and she wanted to egg him on, see him enjoy himself. She said, “How did you know, Steve, when no one else did?”

  O’Malley laughed. “I’ll tell you who really knew—Ronald Reagan and Cap Weinberger. They knew that if they spent enough money on defense, the Soviets would bankrupt themselves, and they did!”

  Grinning, O’Malley didn’t go into the other factors that he knew counted. First was the utter failure of the Communist economic system, so complete that food had to be rationed in Moscow for the first time since World War II. Then there was the rise and fall of Mikhail Gorbachev, who let the genie of democracy out of its Soviet bottle with economic reforms and an unprecedented openness. His plan backfired as modern communications enabled the Russian people to see, for the first time, how impoverished their system was.

  Still, it had happened so quickly. The Soviet military had indeed been devastated by the efficiency of American operations in Operation Desert Storm, and realized that they were hopelessly far behind and could never catch up, given the rust-bucket Soviet economy. Then one political event followed another. Hardline Communists sequestered Gorbachev in an attempt to force him to reintroduce Stalinist methods of government, but the public rebelled and the military refused to go along with the coup. Then individual members of the federation began to declare their independence—the Baltic states first, then Georgia, the Ukraine, and others. Boris Yeltsin led the way in Russia itself, informing the United Nations that it was no longer a part of the Soviet Union on December 24. Then, fittingly, given the suppression of Christianity by Communism, on Christmas Day, December 25, Gorbachev resigned as President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, televising an emotional, ten-minute speech explaining how freedom of speech had prevailed. The following day, the Soviet flag was hauled down at the Kremlin.

  But O’Malley was not about to deliver a history lesson, nor was he willing to stop chewing his old bone of Muslim aggression.

  “Let’s not get too cheerful. The Muslims are going to succeed for the very reason that the Soviets failed. The Soviet Union had systematically destroyed religious faith, and when things got bad, the people had nothing to cling to. The Muslims live and breathe their faith, and they are already so poor that nothing worse can happen to them. That’s why they are so dangerous, that’s why we’ve got to figure new ways to beat them. They are going to be a lot harder to deal with than Russia—I tell you in ten or twenty years we are going to be looking back and wish that good old Joe Stalin was running things in Russia and that the Soviet Union was our big enemy.”

  As he stopped, everyone in the room turned to look at Bob Rodriquez. One of the few Americans who had actually lived life as an Arab, working undercover for the CIA in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Rodriquez believed as O’Malley did. Despite his instinctive sympathy for the average Arab individual, he was aware that militants had captured the initiative within the Arab world, and that basically O’Malley’s gloom and doom forecasts were correct.

  Rodriquez said, “Look, folks, I’m just back from a long crazy time. I’ve got to admit that I think Steve is right about the threat, and I don’t have any solution for it to offer. It’s a matter of time. If we would get maybe twenty or thirty years to deal with the problem, to set up some huge sort of Marshall Plan to help the Muslim economies all over the world, maybe we could change things. Steve always says that is the false twist the fanatics put on religion that is the problem, and they get away with it because of the absolute poverty. He’s right. If you are a twenty-year-old man and know that you’ll never have a decent job, that you and your family will always be scraping by, one day at at time, and that people in the West are living well, driving big cars, and so on, you are bound to hate them. Then some fanatical Imam comes along and convinces them that heaven awaits them if they kill an infidel. And men like Hussein and Arafat make use of them,
pay their families a bonus if they die in a suicide bombing. It’s hard for us to understand, and impossible for them not to understand—it just makes good sense to them.”

  Mae squeezed his hand.

  “That’s enough, Bob. Let’s stop thinking about what bad might happen and tell these wonderful friends of ours about something good that is going to happen.”

  Everyone looked at Mae knowingly. The looks on the three faces of the Rodriquez family had given everything away from the moment they came in, but everyone had carefully avoided comment, wanting Mae to have the pleasure of making the announcement.

  The three stood up, Mae’s arms about Bob and Rod, and she said, “Bob and I are going to remarry next month. We are going to be a family again . . .” Mae burst into tears and both men, short, dark, intense Bob, and the taller, grinning Rod kissed her.

  Harry stood watching the happy group, remembering the many times that the extended Shannon family and their friends had celebrated the New Year in the old Palos Verdes home. It had not always been so happy. He noticed Warren Bowers scribbling furiously in his inevitable notebook. Warren had finished his two-volume biography of Vance Shannon, and said he was now working on a novel about a fictional aviation family.

  Harry smiled to himself. “If he’s writing about the Shannons he won’t need much fiction; most of the facts in this family have been hard to believe.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE PASSING PARADE: Presidents Yeltsin and Bush formally proclaim end to Cold War; United States lifts trade sanctions against China; secession of Bosnia and Herzegovina leaves rump Yugoslavia of Serbia and Montenegro; first antismoking patch, NicoDerm, marketed; the “Teflon Don” John Gotti convicted; Hurricane Andrew ravages Florida; Atlanta loses to Toronto in World Series; Bill Clinton elected President, Democrats control Congress; Dr. Mae C. Jemison becomes first African American woman astronaut; Prince Charles and Princess Diana to separate; Bush pardons former Reagan officials accused in Iran-Contra debacle; author Vaclav Havel elected as President of Czech Republic; terrorists cause huge explosion at World Trade Center; Branch Davidian religious cult attacked by federal agents; final episode of long-running television sitcom Cheers; Israel and PLO sign a peace agreement at White House; women allowed to enter combat in U.S. military; White House lawyer Vincent W. Foster, Jr., commits suicide under mysterious circumstances; China violates nuclear moratorium; North American Free Trade Agreement approved by House; war clouds build in Balkans once again.