by Mack Maloney
“That, ladies and gentlemen, is called ‘Stealth.’”
Chapter Twenty-eight
THE STEALTH AIRPLANE WAS probably the most closely guarded secret the U.S. Government ever had, before the lid came off when one of its models crashed in the California highlands back in the early 1980s. Oddly enough, just like the Ghost Rider Project, the object of Stealth was radar avoidance. Ghost Rider deflected radar waves through an ultra-complicated, electronic jamming system. Stealth was invisible to radar primarily because of its design and what it was made of.
Even Hunter wasn’t entirely sure how it worked—not yet anyway. It looked like a flattened-out teardrop with French curve wings and tail section. It was about two thirds the size of an F-16, small for a military jet. It was painted dull black. But it was because of this small, curving design and the use of mostly non-metallic building materials and paint, that U.S. aeronautical engineers were able to get the Stealth airplane’s radar signature down to nothing. Unlike the five Ghost Rider B-l bombers, this airplane was designed as a fighter. It sported two .20 mm cannons and also hardpoints on its wings to carry missiles or bombs. Hunter instantly knew that if he could get this airplane back to the Badlands, along with the fifth Ghost Rider black box, then the Western Forces would be nearly invincible against the Russian SAMs.
No wonder Viktor wanted it so much.
“We’ve got to get it out of here,” Hunter said. With that, the group took positions around the wing and fuselage and started to push. The airplane was lightweight by design so it was fairly easy to get it rolling. Once it was out on the field, Wack produced a length of chain and worked on setting up a makeshift towing line.
Meanwhile, Hunter had popped the airplane’s canopy and had climbed inside. How the airplane got into Calypso’s hands and into Yankee Stadium, he would never know. But he could tell by one sniff that at some point recently, the airplane had been expertly maintained, right down to clean oil in the engine, and fresh fuel in the tanks. Its battery was still charged, and Hunter was glad to see that like his F-16, the Stealth was equipped with a self-starter.
By this time, they had towed the airplane out into the stadium’s enormous parking lot. Hunter had everyone stand clear as he flipped a barrage of preliminary switches. Then, he crossed his fingers and hit the start button …
Without an instant’s hesitation, the engine sprang to life.
He quickly adjusted the fuel mixture and activated the computer. Then he climbed out.
Zal met him. “Jesus, Hawk,” the ADF pilot said. “If that thing can penetrate their radar net, their aircover will be zilch. Once the word gets out and you show up over the battlefield in that, and you’ll have half of them turning tail and running back home.”
Just then an idea flashed through Hunter’s mind.
“Wack,” Hunter yelled to the House leader. “You got film in that camera?”
Five minutes and 20 high-power strobelight flashes later, Wack was removing a roll of film from the camera and handing it to Hunter. “I’ll be sure to send you prints,” Hunter said, jokingly.
But it was the last laugh he’d have for a long time. For now it was decision time. The others wisely stood off to the side as Dominique stood by him. He turned to her and opened his mouth to speak. But no words would come out.
She did all the talking necessary. “Oh, Hawk,” she sighed as she held him. “I know what you have to do.” She was crying. He felt a heaviness in his chest. Before they had departed House of David territory, Wack had made arrangements for two of his fighters to meet the Free Canadian sub at its rendezvous point and direct it up the Hudson River to a point off the Hunter’s group’s position. The plan had been for the sub to carry the commandos out, head for JFK where only Hunter would be dropped off to pick up his F-16, and bring the rest of the group—Dominique included—back to the safety of Free Canada. Wack and his guys would then make their way back to safer ground.
Now there was a slight change in plans. Hunter was determined to fly the Stealth back to the war zone. This would mean leaving behind two of his greatest loves—Dominique and his F-16.
“Come for me darling,” she said, kissing him hard. “Come for me when the war is over. I’ll be waiting, like I always have.”
He looked at her. She was beautiful. “I love you, honey,” he said, hugging her tightly. He didn’t want to let go. “Someday …”
He could say no more.
Suddenly, he saw a muzzle flash off in the distance. Wack and Zal saw it to. A shell came crashing into the parking lot, landing nearby. A check of Zal’s NightScope confirmed their worst fears.
“Christ!” Zal yelled. “It looks like an armored column coming our way.”
Hunter took a look through the scope. He counted at least twenty vehicles, all gunwagons of some sort, including several tanks.
“Who the hell are they?” Simons, the Canadian commander asked, taking the scope from Hunter.
“Probably some ‘instant allies,’” Wack told them. “If Viktor is still alive, he could have rounded up some heavy metal from the other groups. Either that or word got around real quick as to what we found here.”
“Whoever they are, they’re coming to claim this package,” Hunter said referring to the Stealth. Suddenly a tank round landed even closer to them, causing the group to hit the pavement. “And they ain’t going to be friendly about it,” he finished.
Another round came in, and landed dangerously close to the Stealth. The column was about a half-mile away, traveling quickly up the Hudson Parkway. At this rate, Hunter’s tiny army would soon be overwhelmed.
Suddenly they saw another muzzle flash—this one coming from the blackness of the nearby Hudson. A shell landed right in front of the column hitting squarely on the lead gun wagon.
Hunter took the NightScope and peered in the direction of the latest gunfire. “It’s the sub!” he yelled.
Hunter could see the definite outline of the submarine as it sat in the middle of the river. Several figures were scurrying around its deck, working the gun installed there.
“Come on!” Hunter yelled. “They’re giving us the cover we need …”
He turned to look at the parking lot. It was only about 1800 feet long and he calculated the Stealth would need at least 2500 to take off. Still he had to try it.
The enemy column was recovering. It had stopped but now was returning fire toward the sub as well as toward the stadium parking lot. Hunter grabbed Dominique one more time. She hugged him and then squeezed his hand and whispered: “I’ll always be with you …”
Then she was gone, hustled off into Wack’s gunwagon. Zal rushed up to Hunter and quickly shook hands.
“Don’t worry, Hawk,” he said. “We’ll take care of her. We’ll get her to a safe house in Quebec. Fitz will know where she’ll be.”
“Thanks, Zal,” Hunter told his friend. “Thanks for coming to the rescue.”
“Good luck, buddy,” Zal said, as they both ducked away from another enemy shell explosion. “I hope I get a chance to get back into my F-105 and join the party out in the Bads.”
“Great!” Hunter yelled over the noise.
With that Zal jumped into the House gun wagon. Wack wheeled the big car back toward Hunter. The fighter reached his hand out the window.
“See ya, Hawk,” he said. “Take good care of that flag.”
“You know it,” Hunter told him. “We’ll meet again.”
The gun wagon roared away, followed by the rocket car that was firing as it went. The last Hunter saw of Dominique, she was waving to him through the bullet-proof glass. “Goodbye,” he said, to no one but himself. Suddenly, he was alone. He couldn’t remember ever being so devastated.
Another shell hit nearby, too close to the now-warmed up Stealth. He turned his attention to the troops firing at him from the highway. His sadness turned instantly to anger. A fire was lit in his heart that wouldn’t go out for a long time. He clenched his fists. His eyes began to burn. These troops.
The Russians. The Circle. The Mongols. Viktor. All of them were marked. He felt himself go a little bit crazy. Another shell landed nearby, but he didn’t even bother to duck.
“Fuck around with me, will you?” he screamed, climbing into the Stealth.
He spun the jet around and pointed it toward the longest part of the parking lot. There was only one way the jet would get airborne. He simultaneously engaged the air brakes and gunned the engine. Higher and higher the RPMs climbed. The engine was roaring, smoking, straining. Like a coiled cat, it was ready to leap. Yet he held back, waiting. Two more shells landed nearby. He could see the deck gun of the submarine go off again. The House of David rocket car fired once more. There were tracer bullets flying everywhere. All the while, the Stealth’s engine was screaming for release.
“Okay,” Hunter said after checking the instruments. “Time to go …”
With that he snapped off the air brakes. Like a dragster starting out down a quarter mile, the jet’s tires squealed and smoked. The airplane catapulted forward, going from zero to 100 mph in less than three seconds. At 125 mph, Hunter coolly brought up the landing gear. Now the airplane was airborne whether it liked it or not. At the same time he yanked back on the controls and turned the nose of the airplane straight up. He felt the tail end of the ship smack into the far parking lot fence. No matter. Scratched paint he could live with. He was flying.
Higher he climbed, until all the lights and the omnipresent fires of New Order Manhattan came into view. He quickly checked his instruments. Everything looked good. The airplane was very smooth flying and easy to handle. And the controls were so standard, any military pilot could have figured them out eventually. It took Hunter approximately four seconds.
He test-fired the cannons. They too worked perfectly. Then he turned the airplane around and dove. Below him was the enemy convoy. He could see the sub still firing off shore. Somewhere down there he knew that the Canadian commandos were scrambling aboard a rubber life raft and paddling like hell toward the sub. Wack and his fighters, vastly outnumbered, would soon be drawing all the fire from the enemy column. Hunter intended to even things up.
He came in low and fast on the line of trucks, tanks and gunwagons. With the press of a button, the two cannons opened up and a deadly spray of fire rained down on the column. One truck, then another went up in flames immediately.
He flipped the airplane over and bore down on the enemy again. The cannons routinely chopped up vehicle and body alike. More explosions followed as the shells hit gas tanks and ammunition boxes. Best of all, no one was shooting at him.
By the end of his third strafing run, all firing from the column had ceased. He pulled up and slowed down. After a few seconds he spotted the two House of David gunwagons sprinting across the George Washington Bridge. They would temporarily retreat into New Jersey then sneak back into Manhattan when the time was right. Hunter was glad to see the brave fighters make it out in one piece.
He turned again and came down low over the river. A light was flashing at him from the sub’s conning tower. It was blinking: “A-OK. A-OK.” One more pass over the river and he saw the sub was submerging. He knew it would glide just a few feet below the surface until it got out into deeper water. Then it would be off to the sanctuary of Canada. He felt his heart lighten just a notch. For the first time in a long while, he felt that Dominique was finally safe.
He climbed and turned the jet west. Already he could feel the sting of the battle in his bones.
Chapter Twenty-nine
THE FLIGHT OF 20 B-52 Stratofortresses were still 30 miles from their target when the SAMs first appeared.
“Take evasive action!” each bomber pilot heard simultaneously. “We got company coming up at five o’clock!” The familiar voice belonged to General Jones. Flying the lead bomber, he was the first to pick up the Soviet anti-aircraft missiles. The general hit a button on his control column which activated a chaff dispenser at the rear of the airplane. Immediately a long stream of radar-reflective tinfoil squirted out of the B-52. The other bomber pilots did the same. The tinfoil cloud would serve to confuse the on-board radar homing devices on the SAMs. But not by much.
Within 10 seconds the early morning sky was filled with SA-2 missiles—the same type American pilots dodged over North Viet Nam years before. One missile found its target with deadly accuracy, hitting one of the big bombers on the port wing, severing it from the fuselage. The airplane immediately flipped over and began a long plunge to earth. There were no parachutes.
“Group, break!” Jones yelled into his radio. Immediately the Stratofortresses peeled out of their closed formation and went to pre-assigned staggered altitudes. At the same time, each pilot switched on his airplane’s Electronic Counter-Measures devices designed to confuse the enemy missiles. But Jones knew that this would provide only minimal protection at best.
“Jesus, this one has our name on it!” Jones yelled to his co-pilot, as they could see a missile’s trail of smoke rising up toward them. Jones pushed down on the controls and put the B-52 in a harrowing dive. The missiles whooshed by them dangerously close to the starboard wing. They had hardly recovered when another missile just missed impacting on their nose.
“Christ, there are hundreds of them!” the co-pilot yelled, looking down at the multitude of tell-tale smoke trails rising up out of the clouds.
Jones yanked back on the controls and put the bomber into a steep climb. Back in Viet Nam, a bomber force such as this would have had the luxury of dozens of fighter aircraft as escorts, as well as many fighter-bombers sweeping in on SAM sites before the big boys arrives. But not so here. With the exception of a half dozen fighters looking out for the Yaks, the B-52s were on their own.
Jones had ordered the big bomber strike on the most formidable targets in the Badlands: the Soviets’ castle-like main base near Wichita and the nuclear power station nearby, both of which Hunter had identified during his foray into the forbidden zone. The pre-dawn bombing raid was timed to catch the enemy off-guard. But still, Jones knew his losses to the SAMs would be high—probably no other target in the ’Bads was so protected as these two were by the deadly Soviet missiles.
Time was running out for the Western Forces. Jones’s intelligence people told him that the Circle Army would be in place and linked-up with the Soviet forces in the Badlands in a matter of days. Once that took place, the Western Forces would be facing an organized, fully deployed enemy. It would be next to impossible to fight them even up at that point. The democracy’s only hope harked back to Jones’s conversation with Hunter several days back. Increase the air attacks, disrupt the enemy’s lines of communication, hit important targets, keep them guessing.
Which is why Jones knew this bombing mission was so necessary. Air strikes on SAM sites up and down the Badlands had continued unabated for the past several days, with thankfully low loss rates for the democratic air forces. These attacks served two purposes. They kept the enemy off-balance, and they punched holes in the SAM line, very important passageways that the Western Forces would soon need critically.
But Jones needed time. Time for the armies of the west to fully mobilize. Time for all of the available air units to get operational. Time for all the Free Canadian “volunteers” to get in position. And time for the west’s best weapon—Hawk Hunter—to return, ideally with the fifth black box in hand. Then they might have a chance.
A missile explosion off to his left jarred Jones’s thoughts. He saw another one of his bombers get hit; a long fiery trail spiraling down was all that was left of it. He put his airplane into another dive, and yanked it hard to the portside, just in time to avoid two missiles that were rising up toward him, side-by-side.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he called over to his co-pilot. The sky all around them was filled with powerful explosions and white streaks of exhaust contrails caused by the seemingly endless barrage of SAMs.
And they were still 20 miles from the target …
Still the
bombers pressed on. Jones’s navigator called out the coordinates of the “castle” target, now 10 miles ahead. Jones radioed for his bombardier to make his final adjustments, then he ordered his remaining bombers to quickly form up again. One group would divert to hit the nuke station; he would lead the others to hit the Soviets’ main base.
They were going to use an old World War II tactic called “bomb-on-leader.” This meant when Jones’s B-52 started dropping its bombs, the rest of the bomber group would follow suit. It was up to Jones and his crew to pick the absolute correct time to order their bombs away.
Seven miles to target and amazingly the SAM fire increased. Two more Stratofortresses were hit; one right behind Jones took a missile hit direct on its bomb bay door. The big airplane was immediately obliterated. The other airplane got its wing clipped. Jones watched as most of its crew bailed out and the pilot steered the ailing bomber into a suicide dive directly into a SAM concentration just outside the castle base. The airplane slammed into the enemy position with a tremendous explosion.
Soon Jones’s bombers were only seconds from the target. The general’s bombardier called up his ready signal and Jones acknowledged it. He waited for a three count, gritted his teeth then yelled, “Bombs away!”
He immediately felt the aircraft go lighter as the 30 tons of bombs fell away from the bomb bay. The other B-52s dropped their bombloads at exactly the same times. As Jones watched out of his window, he could see the first string of bombs landing right in the middle of the walled city. Then another string hit. Then another. The resulting explosions were so powerful and concentrated, a fiery mini-mushroom cloud rose up over the city.
Just as the last bomb was dropped, Jones ordered the entire force to immediately climb. Then the survivors turned for home. The B-52s had battled their way in and now would have to battle their way out. But they had delivered 400 tons of high explosives right on top of the main command center of the enemy.