Wings Of Fire

by Dale Brown

  It was Zuwayy's alternate headquarters, his safest hiding place in all of Libya-and the entrance to his preferred es-

  cape route, should his plans fail and his little self-conceived revolution dissolve. It was an easily concealed flight from there to Sudan, Yemen, then Saudi Arabia or Syria, all of whom might give him safe passage or asylum. Besides, occasionally he would do a prayer service or celebration at Jaghbub, televised throughout the Arab world, and the people of Libya would delight in seeing the historic mosque and Green Palace in use once again.

  The mosque and the Green Palace, the home of the asSanusi kings, were located inside a sixty-acre ancient sundried brick walled fortress. The original three-meter-high walls were heightened an extra four meters, reinforced with steel, and topped with motion detector probes, with a catwalk on the inside and guardposts installed every ten meters around the perimeter. The original wooden gate was reinforced with Kevlar and steel, with an extra set of electrically operated steel antitank doors inside. Along with the mosque and the palace, there was a small security building, an eight-horse stable and barn, a covered riding arena with bleacher seats, and a short equestrian show-jumping course. North of the compound out as far as two kilometers, antitank and antipersonnel mines were laid across the open desert. Guards patrolled the oasis and the area to the south, and more guards patrolled by boat on Lake Jaghbub.

  The military base was located to the west and south, spread out over several hundred acres, including an airfield large enough to accommodate light to medium transport planes. The entire area was defended by radar, numerous antiaircraft artillery batteries, roving patrols with manportable SA-7 antiaircraft missiles, and a wide variety of low- and medium-altitude-capable mobile surface-to-air missile systems, including several SA-6, SA-8, SA-9, and SA-13 units deployed in random patrols over two hundred square miles around Jaghbub. The Libyan army practiced artillery and mortar fire missions in the desert beyond the airfield.

  There was at least one squadron of attack helicopters stationed at the air base, including ex-Soviet Mil Ml-24 heavy helicopter gunships and French-made SA342 Gazelle light

  helicopter gunships, and one full armored battalion with ex-Soviet main battle tanks and armored personnel carriers. The base was considered too close to the Egyptian border to base a large number of fixed-wing combat aircraft there, but a few ground attack and air defense aircraft played a "shell game," hiding in one of a dozen reinforced concrete shelters located on the base. There was even a road-mobile Scud missile battalion located there, with a dozen SS-1 Scud missiles deployed all over the region at presurveyed launch points, ready to strike at preprogrammed targets in Egypt, Chad, Kenya, or Ethiopia, or targets of opportunity passed along by reconnaissance forces.

  The Egyptian intelligence data Patrick had received from Susan Salaam and Ahmad Baris gave precise details on all of this-and all had been passed along to Patrick's mission planners in Blytheville. Now the Night Stalkers were on the attack.

  The EB-52 made the turn at the bomb run initial point. Most threats were several miles ahead or far behind them, so Franken and Reeves risked a slight climb to two thousand feet above the desert just as the computer began the first launch countdown. "Computer counting down," Lindsey reported. "Release switches to 'CONSENT.'"

  Franken made sure his red-guarded switch was up and the switch inside was up. In this highly automated digital cockpit, he noted with a trace of humor, it was always amusing that Patrick McLanahan and the other designers always kept these Cold War-era "two-man control" switches in place. Both switches had to be set to release a weapon. It was of course possible for one person to activate both switches-but the idea was for one of two persons to overrule the other if the need arose. Some things-some mind-sets-never change.

  At zero, the port-side FlightHawk detached itself from its wing pylon and fell two hundred feet while it unfolded its wings and flight controls and started up its small turbojet engine. Once it had stabilized itself, it began a climb to its patrol altitude. A minute later, the second FlightHawk launched as well. Both unmanned combat aircraft carried

  air-to-air weapons, long-range surveillance sensors, and electronic jammers and decoys, all to protect the Megafortress while it was in the target area. At the flight planned point, the Megafortress started a right turn in its racetrack orbit area, which allowed the FlightHawks time to fly into their patrol positions east and west of the racetrack.

  "Computer started the countdown to bomb bay weapon release," Lindsey reported several minutes later. "FlightHawks are on patrol and ready."

  "Get ready, Linds," Franken said. "We might be getting busy again."

  She hurriedly took a big sip of water from a plastic bottle. "Then I better get something in my stomach to barf up," she said. But judging by the way she said it, Franken was sure she would be ready if things started to heat up again.

  When the computer counted down to ten seconds, the forward portion of the EB-52's bomb bay doors swung open and a Wolverine cruise missile dropped free, followed by seven more in twelve-second intervals. The Wolverine missiles resembled fat surfboards, with a small turbojet engine in the tail. They had no wings or flightcontrol surfaces, but used mission-adaptive skin technology to reshape the entire missile body to create lift and steer itself with far greater speed and precision than conventional flight controls.

  Each Wolverine missile had four weapon sections, including three bomb bays and a fourth weapon section right behind the sensor section in the nose. Using an inertial navigation system updated by satellite navigation, the Wolverine missiles flew to preprogrammed bomb run initial points, then activated infrared and millimeter-wave radar sensors, looking for targets. Their small size and low profile meant they were almost invisible to the air defense radars surrounding them-but they were all able to detect, analyze, classify, and lock onto the radars themselves.

  The Wolverine missiles then worked together with the FlightHawks to analyze and correlate the radar transmis-

  sions and then locate the associated missile launchers. The radar units for most air defense units were set up far away from the missile launcher so antiradar missile attacks would not destroy the missiles or launchers; they were usually connected by some sort of electronic link, usually a microwave system or cable. Many times the enemy would set up decoy radar transmitters, hoping the antiradar weapons would go after the decoys. But the FlightHawks were able to determine from the type of radar detected what kind of air defense system it was, and if it had a remote launcher setup it would listen for the data transmission between the radar unit and the missile launch unit in a surface-to-air missile battery, compute the location of the launcher, and pass its location to the Wolverine missiles. In this way, their weapons wouldn't be wasted on nonlethal radars or on decoys.

  Six of the Wolverine missiles were programmed for SEAD, or suppression of enemy air defenses. As they flew over each air defense weapon site they detected, they scattered cluster bombs across the missile launchers. Each of the Wolverine's three bomb bays held seventy-two onepound high-explosive fragmentary bomblets, which covered an area of about thirty thousand square feet with shrapnel. If a Wolverine attacked a particularly lethal SAM site but the FlightHawks determined that the site was still active, it would command the Wolverine to turn around and reattack the target. Two of the Wolverines were hit by antiaircraft artillery fire, both by gunners who, with thenradars turned off so they wouldn't be targeted by the radarseeking weapons, merely swept the skies with their guns blazing, hoping to get lucky. Once all three bomb bays were empty, each surviving Wolverine missile would perform a suicide dive into a fourth target, where an internal two-hundred-pound high-explosive warhead would destroy one last target and hopefully all remnants of the missile itself.

  The remaining two Wolverines were programmed to hunt down vehicles instead of antiaircraft sites. Instead of bomblets, they carried devices called sensor-fuzed

  weapons, or SFWs. There were eight SFW canisters per bomb bay in th
e Wolverine. When the infrared sensor in the Wolverine's nose detected large vehicles nearby, it flew toward them and ejected two SFW canisters overhead. The canisters floated down on small parachutes, spinning as they descended. As they spun, tiny heat-seeking sensors spotted the location of vehicles on the ground. At a precise altitude above the ground, the canisters exploded, sending dozens of one-pound slugs of molten copper at the vehicles. The copper slug was like a sabot round from a tank or artillery piece-the hypervelocity slug was powerful enough to punch through three inches of solid steel. Once inside a vehicle, however, the slug cooled enough where it couldn't penetrate the other side-so the slug simply exploded and spattered inside, creating thousands of tiny white-hot copper bullets that shredded anything in its path in the blink of an eye. Like the other Wolverines, these tank-killing cruise missiles located, attacked, and reattacked targets until all of their SFWs were expended; then they suicide-dived into preprogrammed targets-one into the base command post, the other into a communications building.

  Hal Briggs marveled at the intelligence information they received from the Egyptians-it was all up to date and incredibly detailed. As he scanned the area with his battle armor's electronic sensors, the satellite datalink connecting him with the temporary headquarters at Mersa Matruh filled in details of what the sensors picked up-guard posts, boundaries of minefields, fence positions, even locations of doghouses and latrines were pointed out. He was kneeling just to the north of the minefield, scanning the compound, when suddenly he heard a ripple of explosions. "Nike, looks like our little buddies are on the job," Hal radioed on the secure command satellite network. He heard several secondary explosions as a Wolverine cluster bomb attack destroyed a pair of SA-10 antiaircraft missiles, sending a balloon of fire into the night sky. The

  Libyans began firing antiaircraft artillery into the sky, tracers arcing everywhere, but judging by the wild, random sweep of the tracers across the sky, it didn't appear as if they were locked onto any of the Wolverines yet. "What's it look like to you?"

  "Why do you ask me these things, sir? You can see everything I see." Chris Wohl was stationed on the south side of the military compound, keeping watch on the main access road between the military base area and the Jaghbub compound.

  "Relax, Sarge. It looks quiet out here."

  "That's because you've got five hundred mines between you and the bad guys," Wohl said. "I've got two T-55 tanks less than a hundred meters away from me. This looks pretty damned suspicious to me, sir-the Libyans look like they're on full alert."

  "I don't blame them-we're only fifteen miles from the Egyptian border." Just then they heard three beeps come over their communications network. "Here we go, guys."

  Briggs raised and adjusted a device that looked like a small, fat mortar launcher. He double-checked the settings on the mount, armed it, and then used his boot thrusters to jet-jump away from the area. Thirty seconds later, the launcher activated, shooting a projectile with a onethousand-foot-long piece of half-inch-thick rope behind it. As the rope reached its full length, the projectile detached itself, and the rope sailed through the sky, eventually fluttering gently to the sand in a wavy snakelike pattern. Ten seconds later, the rope-which was actually a detonatorlike cord-automatically exploded.

  The shock of the explosion caused every mine within a hundred feet either side of the detonator rope to explode, creating an incredible light show across the desert as an entire three hundred thousand cubic feet of sand simultaneously blew into the sky. The vibrations and shock waves rushing across the desert set off even more mines in a spectacular ripple pattern, like waves from a rock thrown into a still lake.

  "Yeah, baby, yeah" Briggs exclaimed as the rolling ex-

  plosions washed over him like a brief but violent minihurricane. "Talk to me, honey!"

  "Don't get yourself shot while you're patting yourself on the ass, sir," Wohl said.

  "Hey, you got the job I wanted-just make sure you don't miss."

  "I've got this job for one reason, sir-I never miss," Wohl said. At that, he hefted a huge rifle that looked like a cross between a big Barrett .50-caliber BMG sniper rifle and something out of a science-fiction movie. The weapon was plugged into his belt with a short fiber-optic data cable, and with a simple voice command it was activated and Wohl started searching for targets.

  It did not take long. Vehicles started rolling out of a security building inside the tall fence less than a minute after the explosions in the minefield. The first out was an armored car with only two men in it, probably officers; Wohl let it pass. His intended targets: The two ex-Soviet T-55 tanks sitting near the entrance, both small, fast, and still powerful despite their age, following closely behind the armored car.

  Wohl didn't want to wait until the first one cleared the gate, so he had it in the electronic sights of the big gun as soon as he saw it move out. About ten meters before it reached the gate, Wohl pressed the trigger. Silently, with the recoil electromagnetically dampened out, a sausage-sized depicted-uranium projectile weighing about three pounds shot out from the muzzle of the electromagnetic rail gun at over twenty thousand feet per second. There were no explosives in the projectile-its effectiveness was in mass times velocity, pure momentum. In about a second, the sabot round hit the tank in the right side just below upper track level. It pierced the thick outer hull and passed completely through the tank's diesel engine and transmission and out the other side without losing more than twenty percent of its velocity. The projectile didn't even begin a ballistic flight path for another two miles, and it finally buried itself thirty feet diagonally in the sand after flying more than five miles.

  For a few seconds, it appeared as if Wohl had missed-

  there was nothing at all to indicate that the tank had been hit except it had stopped suddenly and one track drive sprocket and drive shaft was sliced into pieces. But inside, the tank's engine was disintegrating with incredible speed and destructive force. It was as if a hundred parts inside the engine, instantly dislodged from their bearings and mounts, simply decided to fly apart at the same instant. The big diesel engine simply split apart and became a deadly cloud of shrapnel, killing the four crewmen inside instantly. The T-55's gun turret popped off the top of the tank like a champagne cork, spinning twenty feet in the air before landing against the fence. Smoke and flames spewed out the opening like an upside-down rocket engine.

  Wohl immediately targeted the second T-55, and seconds later it too was a burning mass of metal, blocking the base entrance. Wohl jet-jumped twenty yards east, retreating to a spot where he could fire inside the base. He sent one projectile into the security building through the front door, hoping to take out some communications equipment. But he was only waiting for his real target.

  It came less than five minutes later: an Italian-made Agusta A109 VIP transport helicopter, escorted by a Mil Mi-8 transport helicopter. Their intelligence information was right on: The Agusta was Libyan president Zuwayy's personal helicopter, and the Mi-8 carried his security staff, twelve heavily armed Republican Guard troopers. Wohl didn't have to lead either helicopter with the rail gun at such short range: one shot each, and both helicopters came down hard.

  But by now security forces and infantrymen had started streaming out of the base, and they were even starting to walk automatic weapons fire in his direction-time to leave. "Nike is evacuating," he radioed.

  "Taurus is on the move too," Hal Briggs reported. "Let's get the hell out of Dodge."

  Wohl turned to leave-but before he could use his thrusters to jump away, suddenly the sand around him disappeared in a blinding cloud of fire. Out of nowhere, a third T-55 tank had raced around the two stricken tanks, lo-

  cated Wohl's hiding place, and had opened fire with a 101millimeter round that exploded just a few feet away-if he had been hit by the round, at this range, it might have killed him. Wohl was blasted off his feet and thrown twenty feet in the air.

  'Taurus ... Taurus ..." The blast had stunned Wohlhe could make his
arms and legs move, but he couldn't get his legs under him well enough to run or jump away. He could hear the T-55 moving closer, and he desperately tried to crawl behind a sand dune or into a ditch-anything to avoid a direct hit by a tank shell. Alarms were ringing in his suit-most of the energy in his suit was already gone.

  No answer. Briggs was already gone. Even if he heard him, he couldn't get back in time.

  Wohl could now feel the T-55's treads moving closer. He picked up the electromagnetic rail gun, hoping to get one last shot off-but it was already a tangle of broken parts in his hands. The hypervelocity rail gun rounds were nonexplosive-he couldn't even fashion a grenade or smoke screen out of the now-useless rounds. His electronic stunbolts were useless against a tank, and even if he was confronted by infantrymen, he might have one or two bolts left before his power drained out completely.

  Crap. In his entire military career, he hadn't gotten more than a scratch or a few minor cuts and bruises in combatunless he was dealing with the Tin Man battle armor. Every time he had anything to do with it, the damned suit had managed to bite him in the ass. This time, he had relied on it too long. The one weakness in the suit is that you started to believe you were invulnerable, and that's when you got into trouble, getting too cocky and getting into worse and worse scrapes.