Shattered Bone

by Chris Stewart

  “Let me ask you something,” Murry interjected. “If you were Salinas, if you knew you were looking at at least ten more years in Harada, and if you had surrounded yourself with some of the worst thugs and creeps in the business, would you trust them with your bank accounts and their security numbers? That doesn’t seem like a very bright thing to do.”

  Cosner quit chewing once again. “Okay,” he finally said, “let’s make some calls.”

  Twenty-four hours later, the two agents knew the truth. Salinas had indeed paid a quick visit to a bank in Colón, then shortly thereafter was murdered. The details were still sketchy, but one thing was certain. Salinas, the drug lord, was dead.

  But that wasn’t all. Carlos Manuel Salinas had not visited the Banco de las Americas by himself. He had been accompanied by some kind of advisor.

  Cosner and Murry shifted into high gear, for with figures floating in the fifty million dollar range, and with Salinas, one of the most powerful members of the drug cartel, having been popped, something bad was definitely going on. A new guy had obviously come to town. And he was good. He had some connections, that was evident by the way he got Salinas out of prison, then had him killed. The guy had some pretty good tricks. And lots of power.

  The real question was, who was he?

  Very shortly after the story broke within the drug enforcement community, many people, from the local Panamanian police in downtown Colón to every DEA office in the world, was busy wondering who this special man might be.

  The security camera at the Banco de las Americas was quickly confiscated. After several days of behind-the-scenes political wrangling, a copy of the video was sent to the DEA office in Miami, with a follow-on copy to DEA headquarters in Washington D.G Again and again, the image of Morozov and Salinas entering the bank was run through a high resolution tape machine. Dozens of agents studied the image, racking their brains, searching their memories, trying to figure out who the man with Salinas might be.

  Then, some hotshot new agent in D.C. made a suggestion. Why not digitize the image and feed it into the image-processing computer over at the Defense Intelligence Agency? This was just the thing that the DIA computer had been designed for—to take an unidentified image and digitize it so that the computer could search through its files, comparing thousands of known photos in an effort to match the picture with a name. It was a long shot, no doubt, but maybe, just maybe, with the help of the computer, they could put a bead on the man.

  Again, there was some behind-the-scenes political wrangling. In fact, the head man, the director himself, had to get involved. A fair bit of begging and maneuvering finally produced an agreement to let the DEA use the image-identification computer.

  Six hours later, a “For Your Information” bulletin was sent to every intelligence and counterintelligence agency in the United States government. Ivan Morozov, former head of the Russian Sicherheit was again at work. Last known to have been contracted out to the Ukrainian government, he seemed now to be branching into other things. Keep your eyes and ears open, the agents were told. Based on the amount of money he was now involved with, he was apparently working on something very big.

  ELEVEN

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  BONE 01

  THE PASTURES AND DRY WHEAT FIELDS OF SOUTHWESTERN RUSSIA PASSED beneath him in a blur, his shadow sweeping across the empty fields at over 1,000 feet per second. The aircraft’s dart-like nose cut through the cold air at just under the speed of sound, the heat and thrust from the four huge engines kicking up faint rooster tails of dust and sand and blowing debris—telltale signs of the enormous aircraft’s arrival.

  The B-1 first appeared as a tiny dot, a mere pinpoint on the horizon. From a distance, the aircraft didn’t have any form, its light-gray paint reflecting back little of the evening’s closing light. But as the aircraft got closer, its tapered nose and sharply canted wings quickly became visible, and it was only a matter of seconds before the shape-less dot grew to fill the evening sky.

  But for all the speed and commotion, the B-1 approached its target like a whisper. There was no rush of compressed air or roar from its mighty engines to give warning of the aircraft’s approach. The B-1 was simply too fast to be betrayed by its own treacherous noise. At .98 mach, the bomber was racing behind the sound of its engines by just a fraction of a second. By the time anyone near the target heard the aircraft approach and turned their eyes upward, it would have already passed overhead.

  Dogs were one of the few creatures that knew the B-1 was coming. As they lay on their bellies, they could feel the ground vibrate and shudder as the massive aircraft approached. Their ears could sense the thick wall of compressed air that extended forward from the B-l’s nose cone. The canines would raise their heads and look around anxiously, but few of them knew to look overhead.

  Sitting inside the cockpit, Richard Ammon heard none of the noise from his engines. The tight steel walls and thick Plexiglas of the cockpit protected him from all of the commotion. But he wasn’t oblivious to the power. A small nudge from his throttles was all it took to push him back into his seat. A tiny push with his fingers against the control stick was all it took to roll the aircraft up and onto its side.

  The cockpit was tight, every inch of it crammed with computer screens, gauges, and switches. Every inch was designed with some purpose in mind.

  In front of Richard Ammon sat his main computer screen, or CRT. This was his primary flight and weapons instrument. Running down both sides of the CRT were dozens of other instruments and gauges. In his left hand were the four throttle controls. Extending up from the floor between his legs was a thick control stick. The top of the stick was also covered with buttons and switches.

  Ammon sat in an ACES II ejection seat at the front station, allowing him a clear view of the passing terrain. Immediately behind him, separated by a thick bulkhead, was Ivan Morozov. Morozov’s cockpit looked even more intimidating than the pilot’s. Before him sat four CRTs, each of them essential to the navigation and defense of the aircraft. Surrounding the CRTs were dozens of keypads, each button superimposed with a series of coded symbols. It was an intimidating maze of computer screens, keypads, and symbols. To someone unfamiliar with combat aircraft, it would have been hopeless. But not to Morozov. Flying, with all of its subtleties and challenges, was something he understood. As a young officer in the Soviet Air Force, before transferring into the intelligence field, he had spent three years as a navigator/bombardier in the Sukhoi SU-24 fighter, flying reconnaissance along the West German border. In addition, for the past several months, he had been studying the B-l’s weapon and navigation systems until he knew them like the back of his hand. He knew that someone had to fly the mission with Ammon, and from the beginning, he was determined that it be himself.

  As Ammon and Morozov busied themselves in the cockpit, the B-1 continued to speed across the flat terrain, skimming above every obstacle while cruising just below the speed of sound.

  This was the B-l’s domain. For this purpose was it created. It could cruise at this speed for hours, never tiring, never deviating from its desired course, and always exactly on altitude. With its banks of computers, phased-array radar, low-level terrain following systems, and multiple weapons capability, the B-1 was the most sophisticated aircraft in the world.

  But designing and building the aircraft had not been an easy task. For fifteen years the aircraft’s designers had wrestled with one engineering problem after another. Many times they had been tempted to quit, for it seemed that they had been given an impossible job. The pieces just didn’t fit together. There were simply too many mutually exclusive criteria to bring together in one single aircraft.

  To begin with, they had been told to design an aircraft that could penetrate the world’s most advanced air defenses to attack a heavily defended target. The aircraft would be required to go against the best surface and airborne threats that the enemy had to offer.

&nb
sp; “Okay,” the engineers said. “We can do that. We’ll build a small and nimble fighter. We’ll make it capable of pulling twelve Gs. We’ll make it light and extremely maneuverable. And very small. If we are going to send this aircraft far behind enemy lines, we want it to be as tiny as possible. That will give the enemy a much smaller target to shoot at.”

  But then the engineers were told that the B-1 had to be able to carry up to 50,000 pounds of weapons. In addition to that, it had to have an intercontinental range, which meant it had to carry enormous amounts of jet fuel.

  So much for developing a small and nimble fighter. The B-1 would have to be huge—maybe half as big as a football field—to carry such a load of weapons and fuel.

  The engineers also discovered that the new aircraft had to be an accurate bomber. Very accurate. It couldn’t just scatter a cluster of bombs in any random pattern, hoping a bomb or two would hit the target. Surgical strikes required much more than that. Even dropping a bomb within a few yards of its target wasn’t good enough. It had to fall within a few feet. In some cases even inches.

  “Okay, we can do that,” the engineers muttered as sweat started to bead on their brows.

  Then the designers were given the bombshell.

  “We want the aircraft to be nearly invisible,” they were told. “We want its radar cross section to be one thousandth of the aircraft’s actual size. Make this aircraft look like nothing more than a flock of birds that are cluttering up the enemies’ radar.”

  The engineers spent many nights pondering how to make a 400,000 pound aircraft look like nothing but a bunch of speedy sea gulls.

  Hey, this will be easy, they used to joke. We can make an aircraft that will do all that. The only problem is, when we are finished, the sucker certainly will never fly.

  As the designers wrestled with the problems, they began to realize two important facts that were core to the design of the new aircraft.

  First, the new bomber would have to be able to fly incredibly low in order to avoid being detected by the enemy’s radar. To do this it would need a terrain-following system that was better than anything yet developed. It would have to enable the aircraft to fly up the steepest mountains and down the deepest, winding valleys, all at treetop level. And it would have to do it automatically, without the pilot even touching the controls. Because the safest time to go into battle would be at night, when it was more difficult to be detected by enemy fighters and missiles. But at night, the pilot couldn’t see. So the low-level, terrain-following system had to be completely automatic.

  In addition to a low-level penetration capability, the aircraft needed speed. A blinding, shattering, screaming speed. A speed so great that it would leave any attacking aircraft sucking up hot exhaust gases as it watched the B-1 screeching by. The aircraft was too big to play with the fighters. It needed speed so it could run away.

  For fifteen years, the engineers worked on the bomber. And when they were finished, not only had they produced the most sophisticated aircraft in the world, but also the most deadly. Rockwell and the Air Force called the bomber the “Lancer”. The pilots who flew it called it the “Bone”.

  Ammon was using the B-1’ s computers to fly at 200 feet above the trees and telephone wires, hugging the earth like a blanket. This was where the B-1 belonged. This was usually the safest place to be. Usually ....

  But right now Ammon didn’t feel very safe. He was about to be jumped by two Russian Mig-31s. And they were very angry. Their orders were clear. Shoot down the hostile bomber. Kill it before it got away. Although the Mig-31 pilots were never told it was so, it didn’t take them long to figure out that the B-1 was after their nuclear assets, and as they realized that their missiles were in imminent danger, their determination increased even more. They would blow the B-1 out of the sky.

  It was Morozov’s job to keep them alive. It was his job to search the radio spectrum for any hostile aircraft or missiles, then jam their radar if they started tracking the B-1. As such, he should have detected the Mig-31s early, while they still had their radar in search mode.

  However, Ammon wasn’t the kind of pilot who liked to sit around and hope the other guy would be able to save him. He was looking for the fighters himself, searching the sky ahead and above him as the B-1 skimmed over the ground. He jammed his neck and scanned the horizon, searching for the deadly little fighters.

  The Mig-31 pilots detected the bomber on their Hot Light radars at 63 miles. They were approaching the bomber from its four o’clock. They were nearly guaranteed the element of surprise.

  Ammon jumped in his seat when the earphones in his helmet came alive. Threat tones cried in his ear, howling and beating like some kind of crazy synthesizer music. The bomber’s ALQ-161 defensive system had been designed with a certain degree of artificial intelligence, enough to recognize the fact that it was presently being operated by the hands of a novice. As a result, the automatic features of the system took over, at least to a sufficient degree to advise the crew of the presence of the Mig-31s. The insistent, screeching tone in Ammon’s ears was designed to warn him that he soon was going to die. At least he would if he didn’t do something. And he had only a few seconds in which to act. Any hesitation would guarantee a tragic result.

  “What have you got?!” Ammon screamed, as he slammed all four throttles into afterburner.

  “Two Mig-31s!” Morozov yelled back. “One is at three o’clock. Looks like twelve miles. His playmate is right behind him. Okay! Okay! Hang on! Lead is moving in. Now! Break right! Get down in the dirt!”

  Ammon threw his stick to the right. The aircraft immediately rolled up on its side. He pushed the aircraft even lower, dishing it toward the fields and trees, searching desperately for somewhere to hide. “Oh, give me a mountain or canyon,” he pleaded, as he scanned the landscape surrounding him. But there was nowhere to hide. No valleys or hills to run for. No mountains in which to seek an escape. Only this flat open nothingness.

  It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. The Mig-31 pilots could pluck at him at their leisure. He could roll and jam and throw his throttles into afterburner, but they were too dose now, and he could not hide.

  Still the lower he could get, the better. If nothing else, flying very low would help to clutter up the Mig-31 s’ radar. Ammon pushed the nose of the aircraft even lower. He sucked in his breath as the B-1 barely skimmed over a tall windbreak of poplar trees. With all four of his engines still in full afterburner, he quickly accelerated through the speed of sound. Behind him, the shock wave and sonic boom blew out the windows of every farmhouse within three miles.

  Ammon’s eyes never stopped moving. He continued to search the sky around him as he rolled his wings back to level.

  “Where are they?” he called to Morozov, searching frantically for the Mig-31s. Instead of turning and running away, Ammon had turned into the oncoming fighters and was now heading straight toward them. Once the fighters had him on their radar, it wouldn’t do any good to try and run, and by turning toward them, Ammon had increased the closure rate between the three aircraft to well over 1,000 miles an hour. That would give the Mig-31 pilots only a few seconds to analyze and run their intercept. If Ammon could survive their first pass, they would have to turn around and chase him down. And that was a race they couldn’t win. The fighters didn’t have the speed or fuel to stay with the B-1 once they got in a high-speed, tail chase down low.

  “Where are they?” Ammon muttered again, more to himself than Morozov. The threat tones in his headset told him the fighters were still in search mode. Neither of them had locked him up on radar yet. The Mig-31 s’ computers were still trying to pick the B-1 out from the ground clutter that dirtied up their radar.

  Suddenly the threat tone in Ammon’s headset increased in pitch and intensity and became an insistent warble.

  “Lead’s got us locked up!” Morozov screamed over the interphone. “Break left! I’m trying to jam him!”

  Ammon immediately yanked the aircraft in
to a hard left turn. He felt himself settle into his ejection seat from the G forces that pulled at his body. In the seat behind him, Morozov was constantly hitting his chaff and flare buttons. Chaff, chaff, flares! Chaff, chaff, flares! He punched the buttons as fast he could, spitting them out like a mad man. Bundles of aluminum foil strips were spit out into the slip-stream where they were spread by the wind into a blanket of radar reflecting material. A single flare followed every two bundles of chaff, its phosphorous burning white heat as it tumbled through the sky. In theory, any radar-guided missile would be thrown off by the wall of chaff, while a heat-seeking missile would be drawn away from the bomber by the hot-burning flares. Between the jamming, the chaff, and the flares, no missile should have been able to maintain its lock on the aircraft.

  At least that was the theory.

  Up front, Ammon was still searching for the fighters. He was focusing all of his attention on finding his attackers, allowing the computers to fly the aircraft.

  Because even in a world of radar and missiles and silent death from miles away, one axiom from the aces of the First World War still held true. “Lose sight, lose fight.” No one knew that better than Ammon. He had killed many aircraft in simulated dogfights because they lost sight and couldn’t see him.

  Suddenly a tiny flash of light caught his eye. There they were. Or at least one of them. The lead Mig-31 had followed the B-1 as it made its last break to the left. Now he was abeam them and only a mile out. The fighter began to slide back, moving into position behind them. Once he was behind the B-1 it would all be over. Even if Morozov could jam him, the fighter was close enough now to take a gun shot with his cannon. Ammon jinked the bomber left, then right. No good. The fighter was staying with him and was now nearly in position. Ammon lost sight of the fighter as it slid back behind his tail. He unknowingly tensed his stomach muscles as he waited for the cannon plugs to start shattering their way through his aircraft.