Wings Of Fire

by Dale Brown

  "This is Three Sierra Mike, we have a catastrophic fire in the cockpit and we were forced to evacuate the cockpit. The aircraft is on autopilot, and we are trying to put the fire out. As soon as we put the fire out we can retake control of the plane. Don't shoot! We are a cargo plane. We're carrying relief supplies bound for Khartoum, Sudan, on an international flight plan. We have twenty-two relief workers on board plus a crew of five. Give us time to get the fire out. Over."

  "Three Sierra Mike, you are flying into restricted Libyan airspace during a time of severe emergency flight restrictions," the flight leader said. "This is a wartime situation. If you do not reverse course in two minutes, I will have no choice but to open fire. You must do everything you can to reverse course or at least stay out over the Gulf of Sidra. I will be forced to open fire if you do not comply."

  "Please, for God's sake, don't shoot!" the pilot cried. "We'll have control of our plane in less than two minutes! Please, stand by!"

  "Think he's for real, lead?" the wingman radioed.

  "I know I'd have a tough time if my cockpit was filled with smoke like that," the flight leader said. "We'll wait until he crosses the twenty-kilometer mark, then open fire if he doesn't turn away."

  It seemed to take forever-the big American plane was definitely slowing down. The other Libyan fighters circled, jockeyed around, and generally tried their best to fly nightstaggered formation with the crippled American plane. No one departed-all the pilots wanted to watch when Hibr lead fired his missile and brought the big plane down.

  Tripoli Air Defense Control confirmed the orders moments later: shoot to kill if the plane crosses the twentykilometer ring.

  "Three Sierra Mike, this is Hibr flight, you are ordered to turn away now," the flight leader radioed. "I am ordered to shoot you down if you do not comply. This is your last warning." He then angled upward, clearing the DC-10's powerful wake, and started to maneuver behind the big plane. The lights of Tripoli were brilliant, filling the horizon below-he was afraid that maybe he was too late, that twenty kilometers was still too close. Even if the plane was hit, could it still glide on fire and hit the city?

  At that moment, the smoke stopped streaming out of the DC-10's cockpit, and the big plane started a slow tendegree bank turn to the left. It took almost ninety seconds, but finally the big plane was heading away from Tripoli. It was just thirty seconds-about three kilometers-away from the flight leader pressing the button on his control stick that would send the DC-10 crashing to earth.

  "Too bad, Hibr flight," one of the other pilots radioed. "We thought you'd finally get a chance to hit something this time."

  It wasn't funny, the lead pilot thought-he was sure that this was nothing but a feint for an attack from the south. This plane had managed to draw off nearly all of Libya's

  alert fighter patrols away from the capital. Something was not right here....

  "I Kheyma flights, this is Hibr lead. I'm getting close to bingo fuel," the flight leader radioed. "Hibr flight is going to depart the formation and head to base. Escort this bastard out of our airspace."

  "You got it," one of the other pilots said. "Suf flight has the lead. We'll stay in formation with the American until he's well away." The leader of the flight of two MiG-23s descended to five hundred meters below the American cargo plane, then turned south; a few moments later, his wingman was in loose fingertip formation.

  "Hibr flight, this is Control. Understand you are declaring bingo fuel at this time."

  "Negative, Control," the flight leader said. "We're twenty minutes from bingo. I want vectors to the last position of those unidentified radar contacts south of Tripoli."

  Cut it kind of close, didn't you?" the DC-10's flight engineer asked as he removed his emergency firefighting mask. He collected the empty casings of the smoke signal flares he had been shooting out the window and put them in an empty canvas survival bag. "That fighter departed to get behind us to shoot our asses down, didn't he?"

  The pilot of the DC-10 rechecked that the pressurization system was indeed pumping the cabin back up and that his side storm window was securely closed. "It wasn't enough time," he said. "Our guys needed another five minutes."

  "Maybe we can turn back in-keep the fighters around for a little while longer?"

  "I think we used up all our lucky charms on that last stunt," the pilot said. "Those Libyan bastards could've pulled the trigger just to see what color the fire would've been as we plummeted to earth-we're not going to risk twisting the tiger's tail again. It's the bomber's turn nowwe did our job." He switched to the command channel and spoke: "Headbangers, this is Three Sierra Mike, we've

  made our turn northbound. We kept eight bandits with us as long as we could. Good luck."

  We copy, Sierra Mike," George "Zero" Tanaka responded. 'Thanks for the assist."

  The second EB-52 Megafortress, with Tanaka and Wickland back at the controls, swept in at low altitude over the rolling sand- and rock-covered hills of southern Tripoli inbound toward the Presidential Palace. Wickland's supercockpit display was a nightmarish presentation of destruction: Every Libyan air defense site discovered by the FlightHawks was highlighted, and the route of flight adjusted accordingly. Because they had no standoff weapons-both of their Kh-27 antiradar missiles worked, but they had to expend both of them early on the inbound run because so few sites had been taken down by the first Megafortress-they were forced to zigzag in between the threat computer's guesstimate of each site's lethal radius.

  "Coming up on a right turn, thirty degrees of bank, ready, ready ... now," Wickland said, and the modified B-

  52 Stratofortress bomber banked hard in response. "We've got a ZSU-57-2 site at our nine o'clock, seven miles." Wickland glanced out the cockpit just as the radar-guided twin-barreled fifty-seven-millimeter antiaircraft artillery guns opened fire-their jammers and trackbreakers did not even need to jam the Libyan radar because they were well out of range. Tracers fluttered through the air in eerie snakelike patterns across the sky-a few rounds twisted in their direction, but most of the rounds were behind them as the site's radar locked onto the countermeasures array towed behind the Megafortress. "Coming up on a hard left turn, forty degrees of bank ... now." It was like being on an indoor roller coaster.

  Wickland activated the laser radar arrays for two seconds to take a snapshot of the sky and earth surrounding them. "Those fighters are headed this way," he said. "First flight of MiGs is north of us at forty-three miles oming in hard. The other two flights of MiGs are still heading north

  with the DC-10 . .. and now we got another flight of three MiGs lifting off from Mitiga Airfield, one o'clock, eighteen miles. They'll be on top of us in no time."

  "How are we doing on the bomb run?" Tanaka asked.

  "Thirty seconds to the first target," Wickland responded. "This will be a pull-up push-over release on an SA-3 site. I need full military power for this release."

  "You already got it."

  "All trackbreakers and jammers active. Acquisition radar at eleven o'clock, eight miles." Wickland magnified the last LADAR image of the target area. This SA-3 site consisted of four quadruple-missile fixed launchers with a trailer-mounted long-range radar and another trailermounted fire-control radar, all in a five-acre hand-shaped site. The Megafortress's attack computers programmed the coordinates of the center of the 'hand' and the 'thumb,' where the radars and control systems were located. At the exact point as directed by the attack computer, the rear bomb doors opened and retracted inward, and the Megafortress began a steep climb.

  "Warning, SA-3 target tracking mode," the threat warning computer blared.

  "Trackbreakers active .. ."

  "Warning, missile launch, SA-3 uplink!" The threat computers automatically ejected decoy chaff and flares, and the jamming signals coming from the towed array came on continuously.

  "C'mon, baby, toss those suckers!"

  The Megafortress nosed over, then began a hard left bank. At the very apex of the roller coaster-like a
rc, the attack computer released two one-thousand-pound highexplosive bombs from the rotary launcher. Like the last kid in a "crack-the-whip" line, the bombs sailed out of the bomb bay with such force that they flew nearly three miles through the air. Just as two SA-3 missiles streaked from their launcher, the bombs hit, destroying the fire-control radar with an almost direct hit.

  The first missile self-destructed seconds after launch when it lost its uplink signal; the second missile was able

  to switch to command line-of-sight guidance signals from the SA-3 long-range radar. Fortunately, the long-range radar was locked onto the towed countermeasures array, not the Megafortress itself, and the blast from the second missile's one-hundred-and-thirty-pound warhead destroyed the towed array-well over two hundred feet behind the bomber. The Megafortress's jammers completely shut down the long-range search radars and defeated a second two-round missile volley launched moments later.

  The Megafortress made another hard left turn, correcting on course, dropping six air-retarded cluster bomb canisters on a power substation at the periphery of the palace grounds before making a hard right turn back toward the Presidential Palace. Wickland ordered a climb to one thousand feet, then sixty seconds later released another stick of six cluster bomb dispensers on the security guard barracks and headquarters outside the palace gates. The last releases were virtually simultaneous: two gravity bombs on the front gates themselves, the last stick of cluster bombs on the entryway to the palace, and two more gravity bombs on the palace itself.

  The Megafortress then continued eastbound, passing right over Matiga Airfield, the old American Wheelus Air Force Base on the eastern side of the city. Antiaircraft artillery units fired into the sky all around them, but the Megafortress's jammers and trackbreakers kept any of the radar-guided heavier-caliber units from locking in on them. The final bomb run was right across the center of the airfield, dropping the remaining gravity bombs on the runway, radar facility, and control tower, then seeding cluster bombs throughout the aircraft parking areas. Almost a dozen aircraft of all kinds, from fighters to cargo planes to helicopters, were destroyed.

  "Set clearance plane COLA," Tanaka ordered. The Megafortress turned sharply northward away from the coast, but Tanaka had to override the autopilot because it appeared they turned right toward a large Libyan warship intheGulfofSidra. "

  "We've got company," Wickland said. "MiG-23s, com-

  ing in fast, seven o'clock, eleven miles." At that same instant, they received another warning: "Missile launch, SAN-8 from that Libyan warship!" The threat defense computers ejected chaff and flares, and the Megafortress did a hard right break back toward the coast near Ed Dachla. The naval surface-to-air missile exploded less than a hundred feet off their left side, violently shaking the big bomber.

  "I think we got some fuel leaks from the left wing, and we're losing pressurization," Tanaka reported. "I've also got a fault on the left ruddervator trim system."

  "We got a 'MISSILE HOT' light on the left weapon pylon," Wickland said. He acknowledged the fault, but by then the weapons computer had ejected first the left pylon and its remaining air-to-air missiles, and then the right pylon to balance out the aircraft. "There goes the last of our heaters." He checked the supercockpit display. "I think we're clear of that ship, but the fighters are coming in hot," he said. "Let's continue southeast. We'll try to make it to the Cussabat Mountains-the MiGs may not be able to find us there."

  But they were too late. The first MiG-23 moved in almost at the speed of sound and fired a heat-seeking missile from point-blank range. The Megafortress detected the missile launch and immediately initiated a right break, ejecting chaff and flares from the left ejectors. The combination of the decoys and the active laser countermeasures system steered the missile away from a direct hit, but the Russian-made R-60 missile exploded just ahead of the left wingtip.

  "Shit, we lost the entire left wingtip!" Tanaka shouted. The vibration coming from the left wing was tremendous-it felt as if the entire wing was going to snap right off. "I've got to slow down or we'll lose the whole wing!"

  "The second MiG coming in fast!"

  "Stinger airmines!" Tanaka shouted. "Blast that sucker!"

  But the second MiG-23 was already firing its twentythree-millimeter cannon as the airmines were launched,

  and the bullets hit first: Warning messages flashed on all of the multifunction displays in the Megafortress's cockpit. Wickland looked out his window and saw the number-four engine throwing off tongues of flames and flashes of fire. "Oh, Jesus!" he shouted. "We're hit!"

  "Just make sure you smoke that MiG!" Tanaka shouted. He kept his eyes flying over the system readouts, hands on the controls and throttles and his feet on the rudder pedals, ready in an instant to take over if the Megafortress's flight computer didn't immediately respond. But the computer was in charge for now: By the time the warning messages had flashed on the screens, the computers had already shut down the number-four engine, discharged the fire extinguishers, isolated the hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical, and fuel systems to that engine, and had reconfigured all of the aircraft systems to take up the load from the destroyed engine.

  "The second MiG is breaking away," Wickland said, checking the supercockpit display. "I think we got-" He stopped when the computer issued a fresh warning: "The first MiG is heading for us again. Nine o'clock, eight miles and closing fast." A moment later: "Another MiG inbound, six o'clock, twenty-five miles. Both are locked on." With a shut-down and shattered number-four engine, the radar cross-section of the normally very stealthy Megafortress was multiplied a hundred times, making it an easy target.

  Tanaka started a hard right turn. "We're going to have to take them over the desert," he said. "No other way to do it." He looked over at his partner. "Make sure your straps are tight, Gonzo. Put your clear visor down and zip your jacket all the way up." Wickland looked as if he was going to shrivel up and die as he hurriedly pulled his shoulder and lap belts as tight as he could stand, his hands shaking uncontrollably.

  They had not quite finished their turn when the computer reported, "Warning, radar lock MiG-23, two o'clock, fifteen miles. . . warning, missile launch, MiG?23 R-

  24... missile launch, MiG-23, R-24."

  "Jammers and countermeasures active," Wickland said tonelessly. "Active laser countermeasures firing ... decoys out..." Everything had to work perfectly now-they were well outside their absconded Libyan air-to-air missile's range. Tanaka started up and down jinks, trying to get the radar-guided missiles to overcorrect and overshoot their target. For a moment Wickland thought he could see the missiles heading toward him, but he knew that was impossible-traveling at night over three times the speed of sound, the naked eye could never see them. His hands closed over the handles of his ejection seat.

  "Don't wait for my order," he heard Tanaka say. "If the missiles hit, just go. Don't wait for me. Don't wait..." And just then, Wickland saw a tremendous burst of light and a huge fireball blossom directly in front of him. His fingers tightened on the lever and he began to rotate them upward, exposing the ejection initiation trigger....

  CENTRAL LIBYA A SHORT TIME LATER

  Within a few minutes after receiving the call from Tripoli, the crews aboard two dozen mobile SS-12 missiles, armed with a variety of warheads-ranging from one-thousandpound high-explosive to chemical to subatomic neutronprepared their missiles for launch. Within five minutes of receiving the final launch order, one by one, the rockets lifted off into the dawn sky on columns of fire.

  Giant zero! Giant zero! Rockets detected!" the mission commander aboard the second AL-52 Dragon reported. After refueling, the Dragon had gone on patrol over west-central Egypt, covering both the Salimah oil fields and Cairo from any rockets launched from Libya.

  Long before the mission commander even keyed the microphone, the most sophisticated computer system ever placed aboard any aircraft was already prosecuting the at-

  tack. The mission commander merely watched in fascination as the che
micals they carried in the tail section of the plane mixed and created their magic, and the Dragon came to life once again. The crew watched through the telescopic optics as the SS-12 rocket was blown apart by the COIL laser.

  "Yeah, baby, yeah" the mission commander crowed. "We got it!" The LADAR warning system bleeped again as more SS-12 rockets were detected. But one by one, the AL-52 Dragon aircraft detected and attacked every SS-12 that rose out of the desert.

  As it attacked each one, coordinates of the launch points were transmitted to U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bombers orbiting over southern Libya and northern Chad. The coordinates of the launchers were instantly programmed into satellite-guided AGM-158A standoff missiles, which were launched from well over one hundred miles away within moments after the rockets were launched. The missiles, called the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, carried a one-thousand-pound highexplosive warhead and an infrared terminal seeker. The missile flew toward the rocket's launch point, detected the red-hot launcher and support trucks with its heat-seeking terminal sensor, and destroyed them with pinpoint accuracy.

  OVER SOUTHERN TRIPOLI, LIBYA THAT SAME TIME

  "Wait!" Tanaka shouted, pulling Wickland's hand carefully away from the ejection handle. "That wasn't the missile!" The fireball became a fat comet, arcing across the night sky. Seconds later, a second fireball appeared, this one spinning crazily across the horizon like a burning tumbleweed blown across a prairie. "What the hell... ?"

  "Yo, Zero," a voice came over the long-forgotten command radio channel. "Is that you out there?" -

  "Bud? Is that you?"

  "Roger that," John "Bud" Franken, at the command of the second, improved AL-52 Dragon aircraft, replied. "Looks like we got here right on time. What's your status?"

  "We're short one engine and we have a few more holes now than we did at takeoff," Tanaka said, "but we're still flying. Can you clear our six for us so we can get the hell out of here?"