by Dale Brown
“We’re going to have company soon, so let’s move out as quickly as possible,” Hal said. “We’ll forget about securing the Condors — this place will be crawling with security, and one man won’t be able to hold them off. All four of us will go hunt down the Shahabs.” He turned to the large boxy object from his aircraft. “CID Two, deploy.” Immediately the device began to unfold itself…until it had grown into a nine-foot-tall robot, with armored skin surrounding hydraulic “muscles. CID Two, pilot up,” Hal spoke, and the robot assumed a leaning-forward stance, its arms straight back, its right leg extended backward forming a walkway. A small hatch had opened on the robot’s back. Hal climbed up the leg and slid himself into the tight metallic-like fabric inside, slid his arms into the robot’s “sleeves,” and secured his head inside the visor and sealed breathing mask assembly.
“CID Two, activate,” he spoke into the dark, suffocating mask. Seconds later he felt as if he was standing in his BDUs at the end of the runway. He looked at his hands and feet and saw the robot’s mechanical fingers and feet moving, but it was his fingers and feet! “Man oh man, I love this thing!” he said.
Charlie Turlock had already boarded and activated her Cybernetic Infantry Device, and now she carried one of the weapons backpacks over to Hal and attached it onto his back. Hal didn’t feel the weight one bit, but his electronic display showed him his weapon status: twenty-five rounds each of forty-millimeter armor-piercing and high-explosive grenades.
In the meantime, Brakeman had donned his battle armor’s powered exoskeleton, which was a latticework of armored microhydraulic actuators that attached to his battle armor and gave him added strength, mobility, and speed. He looped two spare battery belts over Hal’s shoulders, strapped ammo bags and spare battery packs to his back, and checked his electromagnetic rail gun. Hal picked up two more weapon backpacks — again, he didn’t feel as if he was carrying a thing. “Ready to move out?”
“Ready,” Charlie said. She too was carrying two weapons backpacks in her hands and spare battery packs on her shoulders. Ricardo had already donned her exoskeleton, loaded herself up with spare battery packs and ammo, and her rail gun was at the ready.
“Good luck, guys,” Hal said. He extended an armored fist, and the others touched their fists to his. “I’ll see you all at rally point Bravo.” He gave an eye-point command. The barrel of his grenade launcher extended and leveled to firing position, and he chambered a high-explosive round. “Let’s go kick some Iranian ass and get the hell out of here.”
Their attack plan was simple: each commando had a circuit of about twenty to twenty-five miles in which to search for and attack targets. The last known location of Shahab transporter-erector-launchers was on their electronic charts, and the team followed the land navigation prompts in their visors to each launcher. Only about half of the estimated fifty to sixty missile launchers were displayed — they hoped they would come across the rest of them as they proceeded. Since one Tin Man commando didn’t have a pre-planned circuit, Ricardo and Brakeman traveled together.
Using millimeter-wave radar images, visual enhancement, and datalinked images downloaded via satellite and transmitted between the other commandos, each unit was able to “see” all of the targets around them well before they approached them, and as soon as they detected new threats the rest of the team — as well as the men and women aboard Armstrong Space Station, the Megafortresses orbiting nearby, their headquarters back at Battle Mountain, and the persons watching the mission in the White House Situation Room — knew about them too. The commandos ignored dismounted security patrols and most light patrol vehicles because their weapons couldn’t pentrate their armor — they just simply ran past them directly at the Shahab launchers.
Maria Ricardo found the first targets, a group of four Shahab-2 launchers arrayed about two hundred yards apart in a small gully, with their missiles already raised into launch position. “Jackpot,” she crowed. “Four Shahabs ready to fire.” She knew that about a dozen soldiers and at least one light vehicle was chasing her, but she didn’t care. Ricardo simply lowered her electromagnetic rail gun to her hip, locked the millimeter-wave aiming emitter in with her helmet’s aiming cue, and fired one round at each TEL. She didn’t wait to see if her shots had any effect because she knew there were a lot to attack in a short space of time, but she didn’t need to wait — shortly after leaping off, she heard four satisfyingly loud explosions behind her as each TEL detonated, ripped apart by the two-pound hypervelocity tungsten slugs she pumped into them.
“Got some too,” Charlie reported. “Two Shahab-3 TELs. Look like they’re fueled but not yet elevated.” She fired one armor-piercing grenade at each launcher, then a high-explosive round at the maintenance and fueling vehicles still nearby. She could feel machine-gun bullets pinging off the CID’s armored shell, but she ignored them. “Moving on. One, how’s it going?”
“I feel like some fucking mythical avenging angel, that’s how it’s going, Three,” Hal Briggs responded. He had come across another group of three Shahab-2s, also in firing position. He fired armor-piercing grenades at two of the launchers, causing their missiles to topple over and explode on the ground. “I’ll show ’em how it’s done now!” he cried out through the flaming wreckage around him. Hal ran over to the third TEL, put his spare backpacks down beside them, then stooped down, grasped the TEL, and lifted. The entire launcher and missile flopped over on its side, crumpled as if it was made out of cardboard, ruptured, and caught on fire. Hal picked up his spare backpacks and ran off before they exploded. “Come and get me, you bastards!” he shouted over the radio. He stopped, turned toward the Iranian Revolutionary Guards soldiers pursuing him, and raised the backpacks triumphantly. “Come and get me, assholes, because I’m coming to get you!”
“Condor, exfil point Bravo loks like it’s compromised,” Kai Raydon radioed from Armstrong Space Station. “We’re sending Dasher to point Foxtrot. Dasher” was the MV-32 PAVE DASHER tilt-jet transport aircraft that would come in to pick up the four Condor commandos. The jet variant of the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor transport, the MV-32 was larger, faster, more heavily armed, and could carry more troops or equipment. It had been deployed secretly to Iraq to assist the Air Battle Force ground ops team, but now that the Condor aircraft were going to be abandoned the MV-32 was now tasked with picking up the commandos after their mission.
The four commandos all reported successful raids and clean kills so far…but about three-quarters of the way through their circuits, they saw Shahab missiles rising through the sky. “Faster, guys,” Hal ordered. “We’re letting some get away!”
“You can’t get them all, One,” Patrick radioed from the White House Situation Room. “Do the best you can. I want all of you back in one piece. Remember you’ve got an extra three miles to go to reach Foxtrot. Watch your ammo and batteries.”
ABOARD HEADBANGER FIVE-ZERO,
OVER EASTERN IRAQ
THAT SAME TIME
A tone sounded and a blinking icon appeared on the mission commander’s supercockpit display. “Missiles airborne,” Air Force Reserve Brigadier-General Daren Mace announced. Mace was the operations officer and second in command of the Air Battle Force at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base. The twenty-four-year veteran Air Force navigator-bombardier leaned forward in his ejection seat excitedly. “Looks like Four-Zero picked up some missile launches.” He quickly designated the missiles, identified as Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, on the screen. “There’s your steering, Margaret. Go get ’em!”
“Got it, General,” Air Force Reserve Captain Margaret “Mugs” Lewis responded. She was more than twenty years younger than her mission commander, flying her first operational mission with the Air Battle Force, but she was a veteran B-1B Lancer aircraft commander and knew how to make the big supersonic bomber dance. But every minute aboard this variant of her beloved B-1 known as the EB-1C Vampire was a delight for her.
The sleek, supersonic Vampire bomber’s three bomb bays were completely
loaded for this cover mission. The forward and middle bomb bays were combined into one and contained a rotary launcher with eight ABM-3 Lancelot air-launched anti-ballistic missiles. Resembling the Patriot anti-aircraft missile, the Lancelot was designed to destroy ballistic missiles in the boost, mid-course, or terminal phase. It had a range of almost one hundred miles, a top speed of Mach six, and a precision terminal seeker radar as well as guidance from the Vampire bomber’s powerful attack radar.
The Vampire’s aft bomb bay was loaded with four AGM-177 Wolverine cruise missiles. The 2,000-pound weapons had a small turbojet engine, a maximum speed of just 300 knots, and a maximum range of only 50 miles. But the cruise missile was special because of its three weapons bays, each containing a different type of submunition — anti-armor, anti-personnel, and area-denial cluster bombs — and its millimeter-wave and imaging infrared seekers that could locate, identify, track, attack, assess, and even re-attack its own targets. Finally, the little Wolverine cruise missile could attack one last target before its fuel ran out by kamikaziing into it and detonating its 50-pound warhead.
The laser-projection heads-up display in front of Lewis depicted a sequence of squares angling off to the right, and so she steered the EB-1C Vampire until the aircraft icon was right inside the squares. The squares represented a “highway in the sky” route computed by the attack computers to get the bomber into perfect attack position, and a graphical bar chart told her what power to set to reach the optimal launch point on time, so she pushed the throttles up until the bars matched. “Excellent, Captain,” Daren said. “About ten seconds for a LADAR launch fix.”
At the proper time the Vampire’s LADAR, or laser radar, automatically activated. The LADAR used high-speed electronically scanned laser beams to “draw” a picture of everything in the sky, on the ground, or even in space for two hundred miles quickly and with very high precision, presenting it on their supercockpit displays in incredible detail. “LADAR down,” Daren said. “Lancelot missiles counting down…ten seconds…doors coming open…missile one away…missile two away…doors closed. Okay, we’re shifting targets to the launchers.”
The heads-up display shifted, and Lewis turned the bomber to follow. She could have easily let the computer fly the attack runs, but this was actual combat, not a test flight, and she was really enjoying herself. “Coming on release point…fifteen seconds…ten seconds, doors coming open…missile one away…missile two away, doors coming closed. Okay, Mugs, left turn back to the patrol orbit and I’ll take a look at the Wolverine’s target area. We’ll check our fuel state once we’re out of Iran.”
The Lancelot missiles, similar to Patriot PAC-3 ground-launched anti-aircraft missiles, steered themselves to an intercept “basket” using course and altitude information uploaded from the Vampire bomber moments before launch. The missile received course updates during its flight from brief bursts of the Vampire’s LADAR and from datalinks received from satellites and other attackers tracking the Shahab-3 missiles. Two seconds before reaching the intercept “basket,” a Ka-band pulse-Doppler radar in the nose of the Lancelot missile activated, immediately detected the Shahab-3s, and steered itself to a precision kill.
The Wolverine cruise missiles similarly steered themselves to their patrol area by navigation information from the Vampire bomber. Once in its patrol orbit, the missile activated its millimeter-wave radars and imaging infrared sensors and started transmitting detailed images of the target area. The millimeter-wave radars detected, evaluated, then precisely measured any hard metallic objects in the target area and compared the objects to a catalog of objects in its internal memory.
When it found an object it thought was a Shahab rocket launcher, it reported it to the Vampire crew. “We got a couple launchers,” Daren announced. He switched his supercockpit display to the imaging infrared picture. Sure enough, it was a transporter-erector-launcher, with the rocket erector cradle just being lowered and a reload vehicle maneuvering beside it, ready to load another rocket. On the other side of the launcher was a fuel truck, ready to refuel it. “Committing the Wolverine to attack.”
Daren entered commands into the missile control computers, and the Wolverine missile departed its patrol orbit and headed toward the launcher. It took about six minutes for the missile to reach the spot. As it overflew the launch site, it ejected several small canisters from one of its bomb bays, stabilized by a parachute. Each canister had an infrared sensor that detected and locked onto the heat from the launcher and service vehicles. At a pre-determined altitude above the ground the canisters detonated, releasing white-hot slugs of molten copper flying at the speed of sound that easily pierced the engine compartments of each vehicle, causing explosions and fires that quickly destroyed them. The Wolverine missile then turned and headed back to its patrol orbit to wait for more attack instructions.
Back in their patrol orbit over Iraq east of Kirkuk, Mace and Lewis checked their systems and fuel status. “AC’s in the green,” Margaret said. She was still hand-flying the aircraft, and Daren had to admit she was good — she was able to check her switches, her oxygen, and all of her instruments and still keep the Vampire flying rock-steady.
“Everything’s in the green over here,” Daren said. “One of the Wolverines was shot down, but the other one is still in its patrol orbit and has about half of its submunitions. We still have two Wolverines and six Lancelots. You did good, Mugs. You handle the jet well.”
“It’s easier in real life than the missions we have in the simulator,” Lewis commented, taking a swig of orange juice. “It’s like a big video game, except I’m controlling a four-hundred-thousand-plus-pound supersonic jet worth billions of dollars instead of a little game controller. Sometimes I forget we’re in a combat zone.”
“Oh, it’s real enough — never forget where you are or what you’re doing,” Daren cautioned her. “The minute you get complacent, something will jump up and bite your ass.” An alert beeped in his helmet, and he immediately switched his multi-function display to a wider view of northern Iran and then zoomed in on Tehran again.
“More Shahab-3s heading west?”
“We got missiles inflight, but they’re heading east-northeast toward Tehran. The bastards are shooting at their own people! Looks like Nancy will be getting some shots in today too.”
OVER THE CASPIAN SEA, TWO HUNDRED
MILES NORTH OF TEHRAN, IRAN
THAT SAME TIME
“Missile contact, Hamadan, heading northeast…second missile in flight, same heading!” Air Force Reserve First Lieutenant Greg “Huck” Dannon shouted excitedly. Dannon was an experienced B-52 copilot, but like many of the crews at Battle Mountain, this was his first operational mission. He got his nickname because he looked like all the drawings of Huckleberry Finn anyone had ever seen, and appeared just as young. “I…we should…I mean…”
“Relax, Huck, relax,” the AL-52 Dragon’s aircraft commander, Air Force Brigadier-General Nancy Cheshire, said, straightening up in her seat as if just awakening from a nap. The veteran pilot was some sort of bionic crewdog: even though crewmembers were allowed to wear headsets while in high-altitude cruise, she always wore her flight helmet, gloves, and cold-weather jacket; always kept her oxygen mask on except when drinking water (and only water) and always kept her clear visor down; never ate any meals on board, and never had to; and never took a nap on board an aircraft, and never had to. “Let the systems do the work — you need to keep calm and monitor everything carefully.”
Cheshire was the commander of all of the Air Battle Force’s modified B-52 bomber fleet at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base, a grand total of six planes — all of which were involved in operations near Iran — plus a steadily growing fleet of eight QA-45C “Hunter” unmanned stealth bombers undergoing final flight tests at Dreamland before becoming fully operational. Cheshire, a soft-spoken and very laid-back test pilot turned wing commander, was the first female test pilot at Dreamland before being chosen to command the Air Battle Force’s B-
52 bombers at Battle Mountain.
Although she was checked out in every aircraft under her command at Battle Mountain, plus every aircraft that had been flown at Dreamland for the past ten years, her favorite aircraft was by far the AL-52 Dragon. This Dragon — the only one that survived the American Holocaust and the Air Battle Force’s counterattack over Russia — was the latest variant of the B-52 bomber tested at Dreamland and deployed at Battle Mountain. Originally a test bed aircraft only, the Dragon carried only one weapon, but it was one of the most powerful weapons ever fired from an aircraft: a three-megawatt plasma-pumped electronic laser. Steered by an adaptive-optics mirror system in the nose, the laser beam fired from the Dragon had a maximum range of about three hundred miles and could attack and destroy or disable targets in space, in the sky, and even on the ground.
“Make sure the computer has designated the targets…there, that’s what that symbol means, remember?” Nancy prompted her mission commander. “Do a quick scan for any other threats — don’t assume the computer will always pick the right targets. A fighter a hundred miles away always has priority…”
“A fighter? Where?”
“Just an example, Huck,” Nancy said patiently. Man, this guy was skittish — he either needed a few more combat sorties under his belt, or a roll in the hay. “The targeting computer is programmed to go after ballistic missiles first, but if a fighter is nearby, even if it’s a long way away, it’s a bigger threat in my book. You also want to make sure it hasn’t designated any friendly aircraft or missiles. The system is good, but it’s not foolproof. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“A simple ‘yes’ is good, Huck,” Nancy said. She was only in her early forties, but these young kids in the force today made her feel much older sometimes. “Okay, it looks like the coast is clear, and the Dragon has the two top priority targets. This indication”—she pointed to the upper left corner of Dannon’s supercockpit display—“tells you that the targeting laser has already locked onto both missiles and has measured them and the surrounding atmosphere for attenuation compensation. Dragon does that automatically but not continuously unless you tell it to. Will it fire the main laser automatically?”
