Ammon pushed the Bone back into the wires, flying as close as he dared. He snugged in tight to the strands of high cables, nearly scraping his wings along a copper-tipped tower. It took all of his concentration and mental ability to mask so close to the wires without getting caught in their web.
Ammon knew that the fighters were still out there. And they wouldn’t know for sure if he was dead. So they would still be searching; sweeping the ground with their radar from their perch up at twenty thousand feet. They would attack again if they found him. And this time he couldn’t count on being so lucky.
He only had one hope of getting away. And the next thirty seconds would be the most critical. If the fighters could be distracted for just a moment, thinking they had already gotten their kill, then they might not begin a secondary sweep with their radar. If he could just get some distance between them, it was possible he might get away.
An experienced fighter pilot would not have fallen for such a simple deception. Even after seeing the impact on his radar, a good pilot would have immediately begun another sweep, knowing that it was possible that his missiles did not get a kill.
Fortunately for Richard Ammon, he was not being pursued by an experienced pilot.
The AWACS controller still stared at his screen. He had seen the whole thing. He had watched as the missiles tracked in on the bomber, then the wild gyrations as the aircraft attempted to maneuver away. He had watched as the B-1 attempted to jam on the missile, his screen filling entirely with white fuzz from the intensive electronic noise. Then, just as the missiles should have impacted the target, his screen had suddenly cleared.
Then there was nothing. No missiles. No target. No jamming. Only a few clutters of ground retrn as his radar continued to sweep through the area, searching for the bomber from high in the sky. But he didn’t see any target and he had to assume the target was dead.
“Blade, it appears that you have a good kill,” the controller finally said. His voice sounded stressed and fatigued.
“Yeah, I blew that sucker out of the sky!” Peterson cried. His enthusiasm was perfectly clear. “Did you see that, Dragonfly? I thought he was going to burn out my radar from all that jamming. Unbelievable, eh? But I got him. Did you see that? That sucker is dead!”
The AWACS controller didn’t smile as he listened to the pilot congratulate himself. After a few seconds he pressed his microphone switch to interrupt.
“Yeah Blade, you did a wonderful job. But listen, we may not be finished here yet. We are at the outer envelope of our radar. We’re getting lots of clutter in our low-level return. I don’t think we could see the bomber any more, even if he was there.
“Now we need you to take a few good sweeps with your radar. Check it out real good and tell us what you see. Meanwhile, proceed to the detonation site and get a confirmation on the kill. This is something we need to be sure of. We also need to know where the wreckage is. Someone’s got to get out there and clean up all the mess.”
Lt Dale Peterson shrugged his shoulders and began a few halfhearted sweeps with his radar. But what was the use? He had seen the explosion. He had seen the flash of white light and the rising pillar of black smoke. And then the aircraft jamming had suddenly dropped off of his screen.
So where had the bomber suddenly gone to? Just disappeared into thin air? I don’t think so, Peterson thought to himself. Man, that sucker is gone.
So he took a few quick sweeps with his radar, then concentrated on finding the crash site. The smoke was beginning to dissipate, so he marked the site on his navigation computer. It shouldn’t be too hard to find the wreckage, he thought. It must be scattered across the countryside for more than a mile.
For the next ten minutes Peterson flew atop the Arkansas forest, looking for a smoking hole or burning fields. By the time he realized there was no wreckage to be found, Reaper’s Shadow was more than one hundred miles away.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Milton Blake turned toward President Allen and wiped the sweat from his brow. The president returned Blake’s look with a cold stare of his own.
“That was pretty close, now wasn’t it, Milton? We almost killed our own man.”
Blake looked up, but didn’t respond. It was Weber Coy who finally said, “Yes, sir. That was far too close for our comfort. But it should be smooth sailing from here. He’s within a few minutes of hitting the coastline. Getting away from our own fighters may prove to be the most difficult part of this mission. At this point, I feel that we have every reason to be optimistic.”
Once again, Blake reached up to wipe the sweat from his forehead and nodded in agreement. Then, stuffing his hand into his enormous pants pocket, he fished around for a small tube of antacids and popped four of them into his mouth.
Allen studied his men for a moment and then said. “No. I think that is wrong. The toughest part is yet to come. He still has to fight his way through the Med and across the Ukrainian border. That will be much more dangerous than this. So I’ve come to a decision. We can’t just sit here, watching like fools, when there is something that wc can do.”
“But sir,” Blake replied. “You know that we can’t get involved. We can’t expose ourselves to—”
Allen cut him off. “I know that, Milt. But still, there is something that we can do. Something that may prove very important for Ammon if things suddenly turn bad. And I think it’s the least that we owe him.
“Now tell me, what helicopters do we have in the area?”
Milton Blake looked puzzled. “In the area?”
“In the Med. Something near the Ukraine.”
Blake thought for a moment and then said, “The U.S.S. Ticonderoga is on duty in the Med. She has a small contingent of choppers. She is probably the closest thing that we have.”
Allen smiled. The Ticonderoga. He was familiar with the ship. “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. ... ”
THIRTY-THREE
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REAPER’S SHADOW
RICHARD AMMON WAS STARING THROUGH THE THICK PLEXIGLAS, OUT the right side of his windscreen. From this altitude, he could just barely make out the dim lights that dotted the Azore Islands, fifty-seven miles to the south. The bright white lights were dimmed to a soft yellow glow as they filtered through the water-soaked atmosphere. They looked comforting and inviting as they twinkled in the distance.
Ever since passing over the forested beach line of southern Mississippi and out into the Gulf, Ammon had seen nothing but deep water and hazy gray skies. Just north of the Bahamas, he had counted six or seven tiny islands beneath him, but since then, he had seen no land at all. For seven hours he had watched the endless waves and open nothingness, feeling more lost and isolated with every mile that passed beneath him on his way out into the enormous Atlantic Ocean.
His day was short, flying east as he was, and it wasn’t long until the blue water and white-capped waves began to darken into a deep black of shadowy water. Then, in the late evening, as the sun slipped rapidly down behind him and darkness settled in, he lost even that much of a view, leaving him only an occasional glimpse at the moon as it broke from behind the high stratus clouds.
When he finally caught a view of the Azores, the tiny island chain that dotted the Atlantic almost 1,000 miles west of Portugal, it seemed like he had been over the open ocean for a very long time. After hours of empty water, it seemed good to see at least a reminder of dry earth.
He raised his eyes and glanced at the glistening moon as it shimmered above the deep waters of the North Atlantic. It had been dark for nearly an hour and the moon was now high on the eastern horizon. At this altitude, the sky looked like a huge platter, round and full, sparkling and blinking with stars.
He looked down at his navigation computer and read its digital display. 28.l5.l0W 41.12.07N. Without referring to his chart, Ammon mentally plotted his position in the North Atlantic. It was only a rough guess, but he figured they were at least nine hundred mil
es from the closest shore.
For the hundredth time he checked his total fuel remaining readout. His pulse quickened again. Six thousand pounds of jet fuel! Six thousand pounds! They had started out with just over two hundred thousand. Now they were down to just six!
Another twenty minutes of flying. Maybe twenty-two minutes. If he was careful. And if they were lucky.
And landfall was almost two hours away.
He sucked in a chestful of air and held it, trying to calm himself down. He reached down and pulled on his parachute harness, making certain it was strapped tightly to his back. He stared outside, forcing himself to look away from the fuel readout. He listened as Morozov called out desperately on the radio.
“Wolf five-three. Wolf five-three. Do you read? Do you read?”
Nothing. No response. The radio was deadly quiet.
In the rear cockpit, Morozov fiddled with the radio squelch. He positioned the switch for better long-distance reception, then pressed his radio switch once again.
“Wolf five-three, Heater four-one.”
Again he waited. Nothing came back. Morozov checked for the third time to make sure that he had dialed up the proper frequency. It was the right one. His voice thickened and a heavy sweat beaded across his upper lip.
Ammon listened for as long as he could stand it, then shaking his head, he finally said, “Okay, Morozov. Less than six thousand pounds.”
Morozov didn’t respond. The radio remained very quiet.
“Less than six thousand pounds, now ol’ buddy. Less than twenty minutes. Let’s see ... just about nine hundred miles to landfall. How far do you think you can swim?”
“Shut up!” Morozov commanded. “I haven’t got time for your mouth!”
“Okay, okay,” Ammon replied in his humblest tone. “Sorry, I’ll try to be a bit more discreet.”
Morozov slammed his microphone switch down once more.
“Wolf, Wolf, how do you read?”
Ammon listened intently to the radio, hoping like he had never before. But still, there was only the static. And his four jet engines continued to suck down the fuel.
WOLF 53
Three hundred miles to the east, and cruising toward the B-1 at its highest speed, was an enormous KC-10 refueling tanker. The tanker crew had taken off late, for most of the entire northern coast of Spain was socked in with horrible weather, and they were now more than thirty minutes late for the air refueling. In fact, they were lucky to have made it at all. But the weather had broken just enough for them to get off. Now they needed to make up some time. They were scheduled to refuel a B-1 that was being deployed from the States. And the bomber would be very thirsty. So they hurried to get back on time.
The pilot pushed at his throttles once again, adjusting them to just below his max-limit speed. The copilot looked at his watch, then, nodding his head to the pilot, reached down to dial up the air refueling frequency on his UHF radio.
“Twenty minutes now to air refueling,” he said. “We’re still a few minutes late.”
“The bomber shouldn’t complain,” the pilot replied. “Not with the weather we plowed through to get here. I’ve never seen so much lightning in my life. And I’m telling you now, if he gripes even once, I’ll make him beg us before we pass on any fuel.”
The copilot smiled and agreed. “Yeah,” he laughed. “It’s kind of cool when you’re the one with the gas.”
Three days earlier, a forged message had been sent from Headquarters, ACC, to the Tanker Task Force that was deployed at Torrejon Air Base in Spain, requesting them to refuel a B-1 that was going to be enroute to a forward operating location, some where in Germany. The message gave a time and a refueling location. It appeared to have been run through the appropriate channels. It appeared to have the appropriate codes.
But the message had originated not from any Headquarters office, but from a home computer that had hacked its way into the Department of Defense’s message network.
It hadn’t been a complicated process. The message network that carried such routine requests as asking for air refueling support had never been very well-protected, and hackers had broken its code dozens of times. But because the network only dealt with routine and unclassified information, the Department of Defense had never felt it a high priority to spend the money to upgrade the network’s security systems.
Morozov’s people had broken into the system twice before, and although it had been several years, still, nothing had changed.
So, four hours after putting the request into the computer, Morozov’s people had his reply. The Task Force would support the B-1 deployment. They would refuel the B-1 in the air, just northeast of the Azore Islands. The times, headings, altitudes, coordinates, and pre-assigned radio frequencies all checked out.
And that was it. Everything was set.
REAPER’S SHADOW
Morozov shook his head. It had been a very good plan. It was going to be tight, he knew that from the very beginning, but it should have worked out. They had burned a lot more fuel than he had ever planned on, thanks to that F-16 episode back in the States. But even still, he had expected to meet the tanker with just enough fuel.
Of course, he had assumed the tanker was going to be on time.
He tried another channel as he swore into his mask. In the front cockpit, Ammon stared out the side of his canopy and watched the cold sea down below.
WOLF 53
The KC-10 pilot nodded to the copilot, who then switched the radio frequency over.
“I hope they’re up on this frcq,” the copilot said. “With all that weather going on back to our east, we really can’t afford any delays.”
“Yeah,” the pilot agreed. “I’d really like to get this thing going, then head on back home.” The flight engineer in the aft seat nodded his head. They were all anxious to start heading back toward Spain. No one liked these mid-Atlantic air refuelings. Especially at night. Especially with bad weather at home base.
The copilot dialed up the frequency. Almost immediately, an anxious voice filled his headset.
“Wolf five-three, Wolf five-three, this is Heater four-one. Wolf five-three, do you read?”
“Heater four-one, this is Wolf five-three,” a man’s deep voice boomed through Morozov’s headset. “We got you loud and clear. You’re a little early tonight, aren’t you?”
Morozov breathed a short grunt into his mask. Wiping his flight glove across his upper lip, he spoke into his microphone once more.
“Oh, yeah, that’s a roger. It looks like we are going to be about twenty minutes early. Big tail wind crossing the pond from the jet stream. And we’re running a little bit low on gas. Any chance you could meet us at the rendezvous point a little early?”
“Stand by, Heater,” the tanker replied. Then after a short pause, the voice crackled back.
“That’s a negative, Heater four-one. In fact, we’ll be lucky if we get there on time. We got socked in back at Torrejon. Thunderstorms everywhere. Best we can do would be a rendezvous time of twenty-one eleven. How will that work for you?”
Morozov glanced at his watch. That was still twelve minutes away!
“How much fuel we got?” he called out tersely to Ammon.
“Forty-one,” Ammon replied.
Morozov did the math in his head. Forty-one hundred pounds ... about eighteen minutes of fuel. It would take them twelve minutes to the rendezvous. Couple minutes to hook up with the tanker. That was fourteen, maybe fifteen minutes total.
They would only be running on fumes!
He never intended to cut it so close.
“No, Wolf,” Morozov finally replied. “That’s still too late. We are almost running dry here. Starting to suck on our cushions, if you know what I mean. So just tell me, what is the soonest you can be at the point?”
Inside the tanker, the pilot glanced over at the copilot who did some quick math on a portable air-data computer. After several seconds, the copilot lifted the small display up to the pilot so
that he could read the numbers, while shrugging his shoulders.
The tanker pilot keyed his microphone switch.
“Sorry, Heater. That is about as early as we’re going to make it.”
A short pause.
“Heater, how much fuel do you have?” the tanker pilot asked.
“Twenty thousand pounds,” Morozov lied.
“Uh ... that’s not much now, Heater.” Inside the B-1, Ammon almost laughed as he wished it were true.
“Okay, Heater,” the tanker pilot continued, “you still have the option of turning back to the Azores, just like the emergency air refueling plan says.”
The tanker pilot was right. No aircraft was ever sent across the Atlantic without always being in a position to make some kind of emergency landing, just in case their air refueling tankers couldn’t meet them to pass off fuel. But he didn’t want to give the impression that he knew more about their situation than the B-1 pilot did. So he was careful about what he said. And, as always, the ultimate decision was left up to the bomber crew.
The tanker pilot listened for a moment, then said, “Did you copy, Heater four-one? Do you need to turn back to the Azores for an emergency landing? If twenty-one eleven will not work for you, maybe that’s what you should do. I’m sorry, that’s the earliest that we’re going to be there.”
Morozov swallowed hard and stared at his watch, then said, “No. No, Wolf. Plan on meeting us then. Twenty-one eleven will work out.”
Ammon could hardly believe it. How close was it going to be?!
Ammon glanced at his fuel gauge once again. Under 4,000 pounds. He slowly shook his head as he figured how quickly they would burn 4,000 pounds of fuel.
It was going to be tight. Very tight. There was no room for error. Not the slightest edge for mistakes. If his fuel gauge wasn’t exactly right, if the tankers were even a little bit slow, or if they had any trouble finding or linking up with the tankers, then it was over. And they were taking a swim.
Shattered Bone Page 34
