Sky Masters

by Dale Brown

computer displayed a CCIP, or continuously computed impact point,

  steering cue on Cobb's heads-up display; the steering cue was a line

  that ran from the target at the bottom of the heads-up display to a

  release cue cross at the top, with the release pipper in the middle.

  Cobb would offset the bomber to one side of the release cue line; then,

  at the right moment, would turn and climb so as to "walk" the pipper up

  the release cue line and eventually place the release cue cross directly

  in the center of the aiming pipper. When the cross split the pipper,

  the bomb would release-the hard turn would add "whip-crack" momentum to

  the bomb, allowing it to fly farther than a conventional level release.

  It was all a very computer-controlled and rather basic bombing

  procedure-hardly a difficult task for a fifteen-year Air Force veteran

  bombardier. But sortie rates were down and flying hours were being cut,

  and McLanahan and his fellow flight test crew dogs were sniveling every

  flight they could. Except for a few high-value projects-Dreamstar,

  ANTARES, the Megafortress Plus, the A-I 2 bomber, the X-35 and X-37

  superfighters, and a few other aircraft that were too weird for words

  and probably would never see daylight for another decade-research

  activity at Dreamland had almost ground to a halt. Peace was breaking

  out all over the world-despite the efforts of nut-cases like Saddam

  Hussein, Moammar Quaddafi, and a few renegade Russian generals to

  disrupt things-and the military would be the first to pay for the "peace

  dividend" that most Americans had been waiting for at least the past

  five years. "T minus thirty seconds, final release configuration check,"

  McLanahan announced. He quickly ran through the final seven steps of

  the "Weapon Release-Conventional" checklist, then had Cobb read aloud

  his heads-up display's configuration readouts. Everything was normal.

  McLanahan checked the crosshair placement on target, made a slight

  adjustment, then told Cobb, "Final aiming... ready. My dark visor's

  down." McLanahan told Cobb his dark visor was down because Cobb seemed

  never to check around the cockpit, although McLanahan knew he did. "Tone

  on." McLanahan activated the bomb scoring tone so the ground trackers

  would know exactly when the release pulse from the bombing computers was

  generated. "Copy," Cobb said. "Mine too. Autopilot off, TF's off.

  Coming up on break... ready... ready... now." He said it as calmly,

  as serenely as if he were describing a china teacup being filled with

  afternoon tea-but his actions were certainly not dainty. Cobb slammed

  the FB- 111 in a tight 60-degree bank turn to the left and hauled back

  on the control stick. McLanahan felt a few roll flutters as Cobb made

  minute corrections to the break, but otherwise the break was clean and

  straight-the more constant the G-forces Cobb could keep on the BLU-96,

  the more accurate the toss delivery would be. Through the steady four

  Gs straining on every square inch of their bodies, Cobb grunted, "Coming

  up on release . . ready . . . ready . . . now. Release button .

  . . ready . . now. McLanahan saw the flash of the release pulse on

  his weapon control panel, but he jabbed the manual release "pickle"

  button just in case the bomb did not separate cleanly. "This is CROWBAR,

  good toss, good toss," McLanahan heard on the command channel. "All

  stations, stand by... Cobb had just completed a 180-degree turn and had

  managed to click on the autopilot again when both crew members could see

  an impossibly bright flash of light illuminate the cockpit, drowning out

  every shadow before them. Both men instinctively tightened their grips

  on handholds or flight controls just as a tremendous smack thundered

  against the FB111B's canopy. The bomber's tail was thrust violently to

  the left in a wide-sweeping skid, but Cobb was waiting for it and

  carefully brought the tail back in line without causing a roll couple.

  "Henry-you okay?" McLanahan shouted. He could see a few stars in his

  eyes from the flash, but he felt no pain. He had to raise his dark

  visor to be able to see the instrument panels. Cobb raised his own

  visor as well. "Yeah, Patrick, I'm fine." After returning his left

  hand to his throttle quadrant, he made one quick scan of his controls

  and instruments, then resumed his usual position-eyes continually

  scanning, head caged straight ahead, hands on stick and throttles.

  "CROWBAR, this is Vapor Two-One, condition green, McLanahan reported to

  the ground controllers. "Request clearance for a flyby of ground zero.

  "Stand by, Vapor." The wait was not as long this time. "Vapor Two-One,

  request approved, remain at six thousand MSL over the target." Cobb

  executed another hard 90-degree left bank-turn and moved the FBI 1 lB's

  wings forward to the 54-degree setting to help slow the bomber down from

  superSonic speed. They could see the results as soon as they completed

  their turn back to the target. There was a ragged splotch of black

  around what was left of the concrete target tower, resembling a

  smoldering campfire thousands of feet in diameter. The tanks and

  armored personnel carriers had been blackened and tossed several hundred

  feet away from ground zero, and the regular trucks were burned and

  melted down to unrecognizable hunks. Wooden blast targets up to two

  miles away had been singed or knocked down, and of course all the

  mannequins, regardless of what they had been outfitted with, were gone.

  "My God.. ." McLanahan muttered. He had never seen an atomic ground

  zero before except in old photos of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but guessed

  he was looking at a tiny bit of what such devastation would be like.

  "Cool," was all Cobb said-and for him, that was akin to a long string of

  epithets and exclamations. McLanahan turned his attention away from the

  ugly burn mark and the holocaust below: "CROWBAR, this is Two-One,

  flyover complete, request approach clearance. "Vapor, this is CROWBAR,

  climb and maintain eight thousand, turn left heading three-zero-zero,

  clear to exit R-4806W and re-enter R-4808N to PALACE intersection for

  approach and landing. Thanks for your help."

  "Eight thousand, three-zero-zero, PALACE intersection, Vapor copies all.

  Good day. Out." McLanahan set up the navigation radios to help Cobb find

  the initial approach fix, but couldn't shake the pow~ul impression HADES

  had left on him. It was a devastating weapon and would represent a

  serious threat and escalation to any conflict. No, it wasn't a nuclear

  device, but the fact that one aircraft could drop one bomb and kill all

  forms of life within a one-to-two-mile radius was pretty sobering. Just

  one B-52 bomber loaded with thirty to forty such weapons could destroy a

  small city. Thankfully, though, there wasn't a threat on the horizon

  that could possibly justify using HADES. Things were pretty quiet in

  the world. A lot of the countries that had regularly resorted to

  aggression before were now opting for peaceful, negotiated settlements.

  Flare-ups and regional disputes were still present, but no nation wanted

  war with another, because the possibility for massive destructi
on with

  fewer military forces was a demonstrated reality. And for McLanahan that

  was just as well. Better to put weapons like HADES back in storage or

  destroy them than to use them. What Patrick McLanahan did not know,

  however, was that half a world away, a conflict was brewing that could

  once again force him and his fellow flyers to use such awesome weapons.

  NEAR THE SPRATLY ISLANDS, SOUTH CHINA SEA WEDNESDAY, 8 JUNE 1994, 2247

  HOURS LOCAL nst as fifty-seven-year-old Fleet Admiral Yin Po L'un,

  comander of the Spratly Island flotilla, South China Sea Fleet, People's

  Liberation Army Navy of China, reached for his mug of tea from the young

  steward, his ship heeled sharply to port and the tray with his tea went

  flying across the bridge of his flotilla's flagship. Well, evening tea

  would be delayed another fifteen minutes. Sometimes, he thought, his

  lot in life was as if the gods had sent a fire-breathing dragon to

  destroy a single lam-and the dragon finishes drowning in the sea along

  the way. The skipper of Yin's flagship, Captain Lubu Vin Li, chewed the

  young steward up one side and down the other for his clumsiness. Yin

  looked at the poor messboy, a thin, beady-eyed kid obviously with some

  Tibetan stock in him. "Captain, just let him bring the damned tea,

  please, " Yin said. Lubu bowed in acknowledgment and dismissed the

  steward with a slap on the chest and a stern growl. "I apologize for

  that accident, sir, " Lubu said as he returned to stand beside Yin's

  seat on the bridge of the Hong Lung, Admiral Yin's flagship. "As you

  know, we have been in typhoon-warning-condition three for several days;

  I expect all the crew to be able to stand on their own two feet by now."

  "Your time would be better spent speaking with Engineering and

  determining the reason for that last roll, Captain, " Yin said without

  looking at his young destroyer skipper. "The Hong Lung has the world's

  best stabilizer system, and we are not in a full gale yet-the

  stabilizers should have been able to dampen the ship's motion. See to

  it." Lubu's face went blank, then pained as he realized his mistake,

  then resolute as he bowed and turned to the ship's intercom to order the

  chief engineer to the bridge. The most sophisticated vessel in the

  People's Liberation Navy should not be wallowing around in only

  force-three winds, Yin thought-it only made the rest of his unit so

  unsightly. Admiral Yin turned to glance at the large, thick plastic

  panel on which the location and condition of the other vessels in his

  flotilla were plotted with a grease pencil. Radar and sonar data from

  his ships were constantly fed to the crewman in charge of the bridge

  plot, who kept it updated by alternately wiping and redrawing the

  symbols as fast as he could. His ships were roughly arranged in a wide

  protective diamond around the flagship. The formation was now headed

  southwest, pointing into the winds which were tossing around even his

  big flagship. Admiral Yin Po L'un's tiny Spratly Island flotilla

  currently consisted of fourteen small combatants, averaging around

  fifteen years of age, with young, inexperienced crews on them. Four to

  six of those ships were detached into a second task force, which cruised

  within the Chinese zone when the other ships were near the neutral zone.

  On the outer perimeter of the flotilla, Admiral Yin Po L'un deployed

  three Huangfen-class fast-attack missile boats, capable against heavy

  surface targets, and four Hegu-class fastattack missile boats with

  antisubmarine and antiaircraft weapons. He had an old Lienyun-class

  minesweeper on the point, a precautionary tactic born of the conflict

  with the Vietnamese Navy only six years earlier. He also had two big

  Hainan-class fast patrol boats with antiair, antiship, and antisubmarine

  weapons operating as "roamers, " moving between the inner and outer

  perimeters. All were direct copies of old World War II Soviet designs,

  and these boats had no business being out in the open ocean, even as

  forgiving and generally tame as the South China Sea was. The ships in

  Yin's flotilla rotated out every few weeks with other ships in the

  six-hundred-ship South China Sea Fleet, based at Zhanjiang Naval Base on

  the Leizhou Peninsula near the Gulf of Tonkin. Yin's flagship, the Hong

  Lung, or Red Dragon, was a beauty, a true oceangoing craft for the

  world's largest navy. It was a Type EF5 guided-missile destroyer that

  had a Combination Diesel or Gas Turbine propulsion system that propelled

  the 132-meter, five-thousand-ton vessel to a top speed of over

  thirty-five nautical miles per hour. The Hong Lung had a helicopter

  hangar and launch platform, and it carried a modern, French-built

  Dauphin II patrol, rescue, antimine, and antisubmarine warfare

  helicopter. Yin's destroyer also carried six supersonic Fei Lung-7

  antiship missiles, the superior Chinese version of the French Exocet

  antiship missile; two Fei Lung-9 long-range supersonic antiship

  missiles, experimental copies of the French-built ANS antiship missile;

  two Hong Qian-9 1 single antiair missile launchers, fore and aft, with

  thirty-missile manually loaded magazines each; a Creusoit-Loire

  dual-purpose 100-millimeter gun; and four single-barreled and two

  double-barreled 37-millimeter antiaircraft guns. It also had a single

  Phalanx CIWS, or Close-In Weapon System gun. Developed in the United

  States of America, Phalanx was a radarguided Vulcan multibarrel

  20-millimeter gun that could destroy incoming sea-skimming antiship

  missiles; from its mount on the forecastle perch behind and below the

  con, it could cover both sides and the stern out to a range of two

  kilometers. The Hong Lung also carried sonar (but no torpedoes or depth

  charges) and sophisticated targeting radars for her entire arsenal. The

  Hong Lung was specifically designed to patrol the offshore islands

  belonging to China, such as the Spratly and the Paracel Islands, and to

  engage the navies of the various countries that claimed these islands-so

  the Hong Lung carried no antisubmarine-warfare weaponry like the older

  Type EF4 Luda-class destroyers of the North Fleet. The Hong Lung could

  defeat any surface combatant in the South China Sea and could protect

  itself against almost any air threat. The Hong Lung's escort ships-the

  minesweepers and ASW vesselscould take on any threat that the destroyer

  wasn't specifically equipped to deal with. "Position, navigator, "

  Admiral Yin called out. The navigator behind and to the Admiral's right

  called out in reply, "Sir!", bent to work at his plastic-covered chart

  table as a series of coordinates were read to him from the LORAN

  navigation computers, then replied, "Sir, position is ten nautical miles

  northwest of West Reef, twenty-three miles north of Spratly Island air

  base."

  "Depth under the keel?" "Showing twenty meters under the keel, sir, "

  Captain Lubu Vin Li replied. "No danger of running aground if we stay

  on this course, sir." Yin grunted his acknowledgment. That was exactly

  what he was worried about. While his escorts could traverse the shallow

  waters of the Spratly
Island chain easily, the Hong Lung was an

  oceangoing vessel with a four-meter draft. At low tide, the big

  destroyer could find itself run aground at any time while within the

  Spratly Islands. Although the Spratlys were in neutral territory, China

  controlled the valuable islands informally by sheer presence of force if

  not by agreement or treaty. Yin's normal patrol route took the flotilla

  through the southern edge of the "neutral zone" area of the island

  chain, scanning for Philippine vessels and generally staying on watch.

  Although the Philippine Navy patrolled the Spratlys and had a lot of

  firepower there, Admiral Yin's smaller, faster escort ships could mount

  a credible force against them. And since the Philippine ships had no

  medium or long-range antiship missiles or antiair missiles in the area,

  the Hong Lung easily outgunned every warship within two thousand miles.

  They were currently on an eastward heading, cruising well north of the

  ninth parallel-and as far as Yin was concerned, the "neutral zone" meant

  that he might consider issuing a warning to trespassers before opening

  fire on them. The shoal water was also south of their position, near

  Pearson Reef, and he wanted to stay clear of those dangerous waters.

  "CIC to bridge, " the interphone crackled. "Wenshan re ports surface

  contact, bearing three-four-zero, range eighteen miles. Stationary

  target." Captain Lubu keyed his microphone and grunted a curt,

  "Understood, " then checked the radar plot. The Wenshan was one of the

  Hainan-class patrol boats roaming north and east of the Hong Lung; it

  had a much better surface-search radar than the small

  Huangfen-classboat, the Xingyi, in the vicinity; although the Xingyi was

  equippe~Fei Lung-7 surface attack missiles, often other ships had to

  seek out targets for it. Lubu turned to Admiral Yin. "Sir, the surface

  contact is near Phu Qui Island, in the neutral zone about twenty miles

  north of Pearson Reef. No recent reports of any vessels or structures

  in the area. We have Wenshan and Xingyi in position to investigate the

  contact." Yin nodded that he understood. Phu Qui Island, he knew, was a

  former Chinese oil-drilling site in the Spratly Islands; the well had

  been capped and abandoned years ago. Although Phu Qui Island

  disappeared underwater at high tide, it was a very large rock and coral