by Dale Brown
Patrick had had the Nellis range crews set up a difficult nest of several antiaircraft artillery emplacements near the last planned gravity bomb target. He put so many ZSU-23s and dual 57-millimeter radar-guided guns near the target that even a B-1 going supersonic couldn’t survive overflying the target. That was the purpose: to see if the crew would alter their tactics, and if so, what they would do next. Patrick could see that Rinc had offset them far to the east of their planned track, well away from the last target. They were passing twenty thousand feet and going higher.
“We’re getting kinda high for some of the big threats out here, aren’t we?” Patrick asked. If they stayed up this high for much longer, some of the long-range strategic surface-to-air missiles could “kill” them with ease, and at this speed and angle-of-attack, they couldn’t maneuver very well. They were flying up high, obviously, to stay away from the triple-A threats that could kill them if they stayed low — but this was getting ridiculous. They were off course, off time, off altitude…
“SA-3 in search, twelve o’clock, forty-five miles,” Ollie reported. “SA-10, three o’clock, fifty miles.”
“We need to get the nose down, pilot,” Patrick warned him. “We’re naked up here. Airspeed’s dropped below four hundred, AOA is eight. What’s the plan?”
“Bandits twelve o’clock, forty miles and closing…”
“You got it, General,” Rinc said happily — and then he pulled the wing sweep handle back to sixty-seven point five degrees, rolled the Bone inverted, and started a steep left diving turn, screaming for the ground.
“Mother of God!” Patrick shouted.
“Passing thirty for six,” Long said calmly. Checklist pages and tiny bits of dirt and dust were floating around them. As they accelerated earthward, Patrick started to feel the pressure squeeze him into his seat as the G-forces built up. They had reversed their direction of flight and had rolled back upright, speeding toward the second target complex in the opposite direction they had planned — exactly opposite of the second B-1 on this bomb run!
“Hey, our track will put us nose-to-nose with our wingman,” Patrick pointed out.
“We know that,” Rinc answered. “He should be off our nose at sixteen DME, low.” The crew kept the air-to-air TACAN system dialed in so they could tell exactly how far they were from each other. “Where are those threats, D?” he asked.
“SA-3 down, SA-10 four o’clock, search only… triple-A at twelve o’clock, fast-scan search. He’s getting ready to range on us. We’ve got bandits now at six o’clock, thirty miles and closing fast, coming down the ramp at us.”
“Wingman at fifteen… fourteen…” Patrick couldn’t believe how fast the air-to-air DME was winding down.
“A little hot, Rodeo,” Long said. “Give me a few seconds. Two should do it.” Seaver responded by honking the Bone into two very steep, tight turns, one to the left and another to the right, to lose a little time without pulling off any power, still with the nose aimed earthward. “That should do it. Ten DME… passing ten for six… looking good… pop when ready, Rodeo!”
“Boards!” Rinc shouted. Patrick hit the OVERRIDE switch and deployed all four spoilers up into full speed-brake position. They all slammed forward against their shoulder straps as they quickly decelerated. As the speed decreased, Rinc swept the wings forward to fifty-four degrees to slow down even more.
“Triple-A locked on!” Warren shouted.
“Five DME!” Rinc announced over interphone. “Got them yet, General?”
“Raise the nose a little,” Patrick replied, his head spinning. “A little more… contact, contact! Eleven-thirty, low!”
“Got ’em,” Rinc said calmly. They were head-to-head with their wingman, the other B-1 bomber! Aces Two-One was screaming earthward from above while Rebecca Furness in the lead Bone was racing supersonic across the high desert. Their flight paths intersected directly over the second target complex.
“Bandit six o’clock, twenty miles!” Warren shouted. “Triple-A lock, chaff, chaff!” Then, just as suddenly: “Triple-A down! It’s the fighter on our tail! They don’t want to shoot at their own guy.”
“Get your nose up a little, pilot,” Long said. “Twenty TG to bomb release. We level at one thousand!”
But the call was too late. Out the cockpit window, they could see Aces Two-Zero laying down a string of five-hundred-pound bombs. Bright flashes of yellow light quickly made way for an immense cloud of smoke and exploding metal. The desert erupted and boiled as if it had suddenly turned to sand-colored lava.
The second B-1 passed within one mile of Furness’s bomber, just three hundred feet underneath. Rinc was watching the first B-1 and was not paying attention to his altitude until the RADAR ALT LOW warning light and buzzer came on at eight hundred feet.
“Pull up!” Patrick shouted. Seaver pulled back on the control stick to level off, but not before the bomber careened through five hundred feet above ground — aimed right at the center of the detonation pattern. The crew felt a sharp jolt and a bouncing, pinging pebbly sound underneath the plane, like a car driving across a rough gravel road.
“Ten TG!” Patrick shouted. “We’re too low! Withhold!”
Long ignored him. At that same moment, the bomb doors swung open, and Aces Two-One released their own Mk82 bomb load on their own target two complex. Again, the desert rippled and undulated as the bombs ripped apart the enemy vehicles set up below.
The B-1 was in a steep climb and escaped most of the effects of the Ballute-retarded bomb attack. The F-15 pilot chasing Aces Two-One was not quite as lucky. He stopped his descent and turned away as he saw the second B-1 bomber heading right for him, but he turned directly into the path of the first Bone’s bomb fragmentation pattern.
“Avalanche, this is Bullrider One on GUARD,” they heard on the GUARD emergency channel. “Bullrider One is declaring an emergency for a right engine fire and right wing structural damage.”
“Roger, Bullrider One,” the AWACS controller responded on GUARD. “All Bullrider and Aces playmates, knock it off, knock it off, knock it off. Bullrider One, you’re radar contact, climb and maintain one six thousand, turn right heading one-five-three, vectors for the visual approach at Nellis, squawk normal. Bullrider Two, you are radar contact, squawk normal, say intentions.”
“Bullrider Two will rejoin on Bullrider One for a formation visual approach to Nellis.”
“Roger, Bullrider Two. Climb and maintain one five thousand, fly heading one-seven-zero, vectors for a rejoin, advise when holding hands with Bullrider One. Bullrider flight, push Red Five.”
“Bullrider flight, Red Five, go.”
“Two.”
That was not the last word: the bomber crews heard a curt “Aces, Falcon five-oh-one,” then the frequency was clear. No one in either bomber had to look up that “Falcon” code in their unofficial checklist pages — it was well known to most fliers. It decodes as “Kiss my ass.”
“You can kiss my ass — at least we’re not going home with a bent bird,” Rinc retorted.
Patrick wasn’t so sure — they were a couple of hundred feet low on their bomb release and could easily have fragged themselves with their own bombs.
“You’ve got steering to the anchor,” Long said.
Rinc rejoined with Furness a few minutes later, and they made their way to the refueling area, where Pioneer Seventeen, the tanker that had participated in their low-level penetration charade, was waiting for them. They topped off their tanks, the tanker departed safely, and the two bombers settled into their orbits to wait for targets of opportunity.
“So what do you think, General?” Rinc Seaver asked.
“I think I’d hate to see the underside of this plane after we land,” Patrick replied.
There was a long, uncomfortable pause on interphone. Finally, Rinc said, “I think we were okay.”
The first target-of-opportunity message, from the SATCOM text terminal, came in a few moments later, and Rebecca’s crew broke off
and took it, leaving Rinc’s sortie in the holding pattern. Patrick got a call on the SATCOM secure voice channel several minutes later: “Go ahead, Amarillo. How did Aces do?”
“Shack — no problem,” David Luger responded. “We heard about the F-15 getting fragged too. The commander of the 366th at Mountain Home wants some butts.”
“He might get some.”
“Roger that. Listen up, Muck. We got some shit happening in Korea.”
“Korea? Did the North invade? I don’t believe it! During Team Spirit?”
“No, it wasn’t the North — it was the South,” Luger responded. “Do you believe it? South Korea invaded North Korea. Happened a little while ago. And get this: no massive invasion force. Apparently, the South has been spreading propaganda and stirring up shit in the North for months, maybe years. When the South started in, most of the North’s defense network was already shut down. The civilians that aren’t hotfooting it for the South are marching on the capital, getting ready to tear the place down. Looks like it’s a South-assisted nonmilitary revolution in North Korea.”
“Hol-ee shit,” Patrick exclaimed. “I never would’ve expected that. I always thought of the North as this big monolithic Big Brother ultra-Marxist dictatorship. Who would have thought the South could ever pull off something like that.”
“I don’t have all the details, but from what I’ve read, the North was going to implode under the weight of two million starving citizens anyway,” Luger said. “But here’s the real news, Muck: the North launched Nodongs and Scuds on the South. About a dozen ballistic missile attacks.”
“Any special weapons?”
“I’m talking only about special weapons, Muck,” Dave said somberly. “The Patriots got most of them, but a few fifty-KT nukes and a bunch of bio-chem warheads made it through. The South didn’t get hit as hard as everyone thought they might, but they got hit pretty good.”
“Oh God,” Patrick mumbled. He thought about the horrible loss of life, and he thought about the three rather small but dangerously significant nuclear conflicts in the past five years, and what this world was transforming itself into as his young son was growing up…
… but what he really thought about was Lancelot, his B-1-based antiballistic missile weapon system. If Asia was teetering on the brink of a major conflict, possibly a thermonuclear war, his air-launched antiballistic missile missiles might be the secret to defending American interests in that region.
Was he thinking more and more like Brad Elliott these days? Was that how Brad corrupted his career and ultimately destroyed himself, consumed with developing a response to a world crisis no matter what the cost? Patrick shook off those thoughts. Those were questions for another time, another place, perhaps with a therapist, with his wife, Wendy, and a glass of Banff-shire Balvenie in the hot tub. Right now, he had to put his plan into motion.
“Dave, I’ve got the first two Lancelot units lined up here,” Patrick said. “I would like to talk with Earthmover ASAP.” “Earthmover” was HAWC commander General Terrill Samson’s call sign.
“You got it,” Luger responded. “You going to terminate the pre-D now?”
Patrick thought for a moment, then replied, “Call out to Tonopah and tell the squadron to get ready to copy new deployment orders. In six hours, have them land at Groom Lake.”
“What!” Luger exclaimed. “You want the squadron at Dreamland?”
“Amarillo, I know in my gut that Lancelot is going to get a green light,” Patrick said. “From what the general told us, the 111th is going to get decertified and lose their bombers once word of this bust goes up the chain of command. Well, possession is four-fifths of ownership. I’ve got first dibs on the B-1Bs, and I’m taking them to Dreamland. You say we’ve got two kits ready to install and two more kits on the way — I’m going to install them, starting tonight. Clear out Foxtrot row for seven Bones, have the Support Squadron get some TLQs ready, and have Engineering stand by to start installing Lancelot.”
“You got it, Muck,” Dave Luger said happily. “Messages going out as we speak. I should get security clearance to recover planes within the hour. Hot damn! We’re either going to get kicked in the ass or get us a bomb squadron tonight. Firebird out.”
Patrick switched back to normal interphone and keyed his mike button: “D is back up, crew. SATCOM voice available again. Listen up, crew. We’re going to divert to a different anchor. Colonel Long, I’ll give you some coordinates to plug in.”
“Is the pre-D over?” Rinc asked.
“For now,” Patrick said. “I’ve got a reason for doing all this. If you show me something, I’ll let you all in on it.”
“I knew there was something else going down!” Rinc exclaimed. “I knew this was no ordinary pre-D. What are you planning, General?”
“Stand by,” Patrick said. He recited a series of new navigation coordinates for Long, verified them carefully, then said, “Okay, crew, listen up. Pilot, first, notify Two-Zero that you want them to stay at this orbit point after they get done until we come back and get them. Call Los Angeles Center and get them their own Mode Three code.”
“We going somewhere without our wingman, General?”
“Just tell them,” Patrick ordered. Rinc did as he was told.
“Okay, General, the steering is good to a new orbit point.”
“Roger.” Patrick had Seaver engage the autopilot. Then he set special codes in the Mode One portion of the IFF and activated Mode Two and Mode Four beacon codes. “Pilot, once you reach the reference point, give me a racetrack pattern on a southerly heading at best endurance speed, two minute legs, left turns at half standard rate. If L.A. Center or Joshua Approach gives you a warning message telling you you’re heading for a hot restricted area, I’ll give you a PPR number, but my crew should’ve already coordinated our entry. They may assign you a new Mode Three code, probably with a ‘zero-one’ prefix; go ahead and set whatever they tell you.”
“Entry? Entry into what?”
“We’re entering R-4808 North.”
“That’s not approved, General,” Long said. “That’s off limits. Way off limits. We can lose our wings and go to jail for busting that airspace.”
“Not today you won’t,” Patrick said. “Just do as I said, and hope that your ground crews set your Mode Two and Mode Four codes correctly or we’ll all be in big trouble.” The bomber immediately rolled into a turn — Patrick could feel the tension building.
“While we’re navigating to the new orbit anchor, I’ll explain what’s going to happen,” Patrick went on. “Here’s the situation: the Bones are going to act like tactical attack aircraft. No more straight and level bombing. Every target is a target of opportunity. Got it?”
“Cool!” Rinc Seaver exclaimed.
“I’m willing to give it a try,” Oliver Warren said. “It’ll be like the old F-4 Wild Weasel days — cruise around until a threat pops up, then go in after it.”
“Exactly,” Patrick said.
“We don’t have the equipment or the training for something like that, General,” Long remarked.
“We’re going to have to simulate it for now,” Patrick said. “I want to go through the motions and see what potential problems we might have. Okay: This morning we’re looking for ballistic missile launches. We can receive intelligence or reconnaissance data on the presence of mobile launchers in our area using radar planes like Joint STARS, and spot a missile launch using… other sensors, but today we have to spot the launches ourselves. Once you spot a launch, you need to cob the power and lead the missile’s flight path.”
“This sounds like total nonsense, General sir,” John Long protested. “It’s unrealistic…”
“It’s totally unrealistic, Colonel,” Patrick admitted, “but it’s the best we can do with a stock B-1B.”
“Does that mean there’re Bones out there that aren’t ‘stock’?” Rinc asked. “We got Bones that are set up for this kind of thing?”
“You don’t need to kno
w that right now,” Patrick said. “Just play along, and we’ll see how you do. We’ll be in the anchor in five minutes.”
“What kind of threats are there in the area?” Oliver Warren asked.
“Good question — glad someone thought to ask,” Patrick said. “Most mobile ballistic missile launchers are protected by short-range mobile antiaircraft systems. You’ll get anything from triple-A to SA-4s to Rapiers to Hawks to Patriots — anything the bad guys might possibly have. Do whatever you think you need to do to get away from the threats. Any more questions?” There were none. The action started just a few moments later.
They received several warnings about entering restricted area R-4808, including one on the emergency GUARD frequency from Los Angeles Center and one from Avalanche, the Air Force AWACS radar plane that was helping the fighters hunt down the B-1s. After all the urgent warnings, Seaver and his crew — except for Patrick McLanahan — couldn’t help but hold their breath as the miles-to-go indicator clicked down to zero. The radios got very quiet as Rinc started his holding pattern — it was as if no one at Los Angeles Center or any other civilian air traffic control agency wanted to talk to them anymore. The interphone got extremely quiet too. They, like the air traffic controllers, knew they were doing something profoundly special.
Patrick had been listening on the secure SATCOM channel. He clicked the interphone mike button: “Missile launch. Behind us, fifteen miles.”
“I didn’t see anything on the screen!” Ollie protested.
“You may see something, you may not,” Patrick repeated. “Sometimes if there are bombers in the area close by, launch crews won’t use the radar and just launch using forecasts or old data. It makes for a less accurate missile, but if you’re launching nukes or bio-chem weapons, you don’t have to be that accurate.”
“Well, hell,” Long protested. “What good is this goatfuck if it’s that easy to pop one off? You put a Bone and a tanker crew in harm’s way, and the bad guys can still launch? Why not just lay waste to the whole battle area and be done with it?”
