by Dale Brown
a verbal "MISSELE LAUNCH!" warning sounded in their
headsets. "Break left!" A Chinese Sukhoi-27 fighter leading
a flight of two J-8 fighters had used the information from Anq-
ing's brief search radar lock on the EB-52 Megafortress to
guide themselves within range of its Infrared Search and Track
sensor, so it could close within missile range without using its
attack radar-only the Megafortress's passive infrared threat
warning system had seen them coming. The Chinese fighters
launched their heat-seeking missiles at optimum range, less
than four miles away.
Brad Elliott yanked the Megafortress's control stick hard left
until the bomber rolled right into a full ninety-degree bank,
then he pulled until he heard fibersteel screeching in protest.
Luger was pumping decoys and flares out the right-side ejec-
FATAL TERRAIN 415
tors. Elliott ignored the stall warning horn, ignored Nancy
Cheshire's screams that they were going to stall, ignored the
initial buffet, the point at which disturbed airflow over the
wings starts pounding on the trailing edges of the wings.
'Me Megafortress could lose 300 knots of airspeed and be
for all intents out of control-but Elliott knew, from over ten
years' experience in this creation of his, exactly what the point
of no return was. It was the departure break, the point at which
the turbulent airflow over the wing that was causing all the
pounding and shaking suddenly starts to break free of the wing
completely, and lift rapidly bleeds off. The Megafortress's
crew were crushed down into their ejection seats as Elliott
pulled to tighten the turn, but seconds later they felt light in
their seats as the bomber started to drop out from under them.
'Me Megafortress would stop flying in less than two seconds-
time to roll wings level. At that point, the Megafortress was
turning at four Gs, sixty degrees per second, as fast as or even
faster than the Chinese fighters could ever turn. The Megafor-
tms flew out of the lethal cone of five PL-2 missiles ...
... but not away from the sixth deadly missile. One of the
six Pen Lung-2 missiles was fooled by the hot, noisy decoy
gliders, missed by several dozen yards, and exploded as its
fuzing timer battery ran out-but the fast-turning EB-52 flew
right into the exploding missile's lethal radius. Its shaped-
charge high-explosive warhead blew a continuous rod of steel
into the left rear side of the cockpit, decompressing the cabin
and hitting Dave Luger with small pieces of shrapnel and fi-
bersteel.
The cabin was already partially depressurized, but the sud-
den breach of the cabin seemed to have sucked the air out of
every one of the crew members. But Dave Luger still found
enough air in his lungs to scream aloud. "Shit!" he swore
.holding his head with his left hand. A piece of shrapnel had
ripped through the bulkhead and ricocheted off his instrument
console before cutting painfully into his left thigh and left
forearm and pinging off his helmet near his left temple. Luger
looked down in surprise at the dark bloody gashes that had
appeared as suddenly 'as a stroke of lightning. He felt no
pain-yet. It was almost humorous for him to think that he
had just been injured-again-flying a Megafortress mission.
"Cripes, Muck," he said to McLanahan, as his partner turned
to him in horror. "I think I just got nailed again."
416 DALE BROWN
McLanahan was out of his seat in a second, leaving the
second Striker missile on its own. The second Striker, with no
guidance inputs, relied solely on its own GPS satellite updates
and its onboard nav computers and flew itself to its prepro-
grammed target coordinates, hitting sixty-eight feet north of
the center of the Anqing fighter base's headquarters building.
The 2,000-pound high-explosive missile leveled half of the
three-story concrete building in a blinding flash of fire and a
powerful earth-shattering blast.
"This is bull, Muck," Luger was saying. "How come I
always get injured on one of these things? When is it going
to be your turn? I always . But then he looked down and
saw that three long, angry red rips like huge tiger's claws arced
across McLanahan's left shoulder and side across his back.
, ,Jeez, Muck, you got hit too, dammit." A surge of energy
coursed through Luger, and he helped his longtime friend and
partner back into his own seat and helped him strap back in.
McLanahan was already looking woozy, and Luger helped him
reattach his oxygen mask, secured up to his face, and made
sure he was on 100-percent oxygen.
"Stay with me, Patrick," Luger said, cross-cockpit. Mc-
Lanahan nodded wearily, as Luger strapped himself back in
and made sure his oxygen was on and 100 percent too.
"Where are the fighters, guys?" Nancy Cheshire shouted
on interphone. The Megafortress was still mushy, right at the
edge of the stall. Elliott and Cheshire could do nothing but
keep the wings level, the nose below the horizon, and wait for
the airspeed to come back-they hoped that would happen
before they ran out of altitude. Cheshire shouted, "How are
we on the cumulogranite, Muck7- No immediately reply.
"You guys okay back there?"
"We're both hit, dammit," Luger responded.
"What?" Both Elliott and Cheshire snapped their heads
around to look. "You guys okay?"
"Clear of terrain ahead, head westbound only-very high
terrain north, south, and east," McLanahan shouted by way of
response, his voice strained. "You're cleared down to three
thousand feet in this area if you need it. When you can, give
me a heading of three-four-zero. We're okay."
"Turns are a no-no right now," Cheshire said. "They don't
sound very good. I'll go check them over. You got it, Gen-
eral
FATAL TERRAIN 417
"I got the plane, Nance," Elliott acknowledged. They trans-
ferred controls with a positive shake of the control stick.
Cheshire stepped out of her seat and crawled under the aft
instrument console to check on both navigators.
"You're both bleeding like stuck pigs," Cheshire said as
she examined their wounds. She looked across and saw small,
jagged shrapnel holes in the fuselage. "Pilot, better check the
instruments-we might have taken some damage."
"I got my hands full as it is, co," Elliott said.
"Dave took a crack in his head and a couple in the leg and
arm," Cheshire reported on interphone. "Muck got a bunch
in the back, left side, and left shoulder. You guys are going,
to have some cool scars to show your grandkids. Your seat-
attachment shoulder harness is cut, Patrick-if we get in trou-
ble, and if you get the time, think about using one of the
downward-ejecting seats. "
"Thanks, Nance," McLanahan said. "I'll keep it in mind.
But as long as we're sucking dirt here, I'll stay in this seat."
"Okay." Cheshire found the first-aid kit and s
lapped as
many large bandages and compresses on the biggest gashes as
she could. "You GIBs will live," she said to the "Guys In
Back." McLanahan's wounds looked the worst, but the blow
to Luger's head worried her the most-he would have to be
checked carefiffly for signs of a concussion or other head
trauma. "Just please advise us before you pass out, okay,
Dave?"
"Anything for you, Nancy," Luger replied. Cheshire gave
Luger a wink and went quickly back to her seat and strapped
in tightly.
"Where are those fighters?" Elliott asked.
"I'm going to do a radar sweep," Luger said, fighting off
a wave of dizziness and nausea every time he moved his head.
4"Radar coming on." He activated the oninidirectional radar
for a few seconds, then turned it back to STANDBY. "Fighters
are turning right to pursue, at five o'clock high, eight miles."
"We're coming to the river floodplain area," McLanahan
said. "Set for COLA altitude again. We've got four minutes
until we get into any high terrain again."
"The search radar is down," Luger announced, "so they'll
have a tougher time finding us. We'll-" Just then, the threat
warning receiver bleeped again: "Fighters at six o'clock, corn-
418 DALE BROWN
ing inside six miles, I think they got a lock on us! Give me a
hard turn to the right."
"Can't turn yet!" Cheshire shouted. "We're still not above
three hundred knots!"
:'I need a right turn fast!"
'Where are they?"
11 Radar coming on. . ." Luger activated the attack radar,
and immediately the warning tones sounded again: "Bandits,
six o'clock, five miles!" he shouted. He instinctively activated
the Stinger tail airmine cannon ... before realizing with shock,
"Shit! No tail cannon rounds! Activating Scorpion missiles!"
But before he could command a AIM-120 launch, the crew
heard, "MISSILE LAUNCH, MISSILE LAUNCH!"
"Break right!" Luger shouted.
"We can't!" Cheshire shouted back. "We got no airspeed!
No airspeed!"
Luger ejected flares and decoy gliders again-but it was too
late. The missiles were in the air, headed right for them ...
. . . no, not for them! Seconds before they launched from
four miles behind the EB-52 Megafortress, the two Chinese J-
8 fighters were hit by Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, fired by
two Taiwanese F-16 fighters. The F-16s had broken off from
the returning bombing pack to escort the EB-52 Megafortress
on its separate strike route. The F- l6s could receive datalink
information from the EB-52's radar, so it knew where to look
for the Chinese fighters; then, using their Falcon Eye infrared
sensors, similar to the Sukhoi-27's Infrared Search and Track
sensor, the F- l6s were able to sneak up on the Chinese fighters
without being detected themselves.
The Chinese Sukhoi-27 was still alive, however, and now
he was fighting mad. He broke off the attack on the Megafor-
tress, wheeled, immediately pounced on the two F-16s, and
fired two PL-2 missiles into one of the F-16s. The second F-
16 was alone, trapped right in the crosshairs of the faster and
equally nimble Su-27 ...
No, not quite alone. "Attack radar on ... commit Sco rpion
launch on air target X ray," Luger ordered, and he fired two
over-the-shoulder AIM-120 missiles at the Su-27. Moments
before the Su-27 closed in for the kill, he was blasted apart
by a double hit of Scorpion radar-guided missiles. "Splash
one-27," he announced.
"Thank you, Headbanger," the Megafortress crew heard
FATAL TER RAI N 419
over the emergency UHF channel in heavily accented English.
"Good luck, good hunting."
"The F-16 is heading home," Luger said, as he studied his
threat display. "But he's three hundred miles off his flight
plan. I don't know if he'll have the fuel to make it all the way
back to Kai-Shan."
"Yes, he will," McLanahan said. He quickly composed a
satellite transceiver message on his terminal. "I'll send in Jon
Masters's tanker aircraft. They can do a low-level pickup
emergency refueling over the coast."
"Jon's tanker ever do an emergency refueling before?" El-
liott asked.
"Hell no," McLanahan said. "I don't think Jon's tanker
has ever refueled any other plane except a Megafortress and
a couple others, and I know for sure that none of the Taiwa-
nese pilots have refueled from Jon's DC-10. But now's a
damned good time to learn. We don't need the fuel right
now-the Taiwanese F-16 does."
In less than four minutes, the Megafortress sped across the
wide, flat Chang Jiang River valley and across to the protective
sanctuary of the Ta-Pieh Mountain range, just as another wave
of fighters arrived from the neighboring Changsha fighter base
to search for the mysterious attacker. The Megafortress con-
tinued northwest bound through the mountains for a few
minutes, then cut northeast until they were at the extreme
northeast end of the Ta-Pieh Mountains. From there, they
launched their next attack: two Wolverine antiair defense
cruise missiles against the surface-to-air missiles and antiair-
craft artillery units defending the bomber base at Wuhan, fol-
lowed by two Striker missiles.
As the Striker missiles sped inbound, McLanahan suddenly
whooped for joy: "Hey, crew, I think we hit the jackpot!" He
could clearly see two separate parking areas at the huge
bomber base at Wuhan-both filled with heavy bombers. One
area was reserved for at least forty H-6 bombers, lined up
almost wingtip to wingtip; the other parking area had four H-7
bombers, former Russian Tupolev-26 supersonic heavy bomb-
ers. "I'm going to program the last two Striker missiles for
the base, too-might as well nail the targets as we get 'em.
The navy base at Shanghai will have to wait for our next attack
opportunity." McLanahan steered the two Striker missiles al-
ready in flight at the H-7 supersonic bombers, planting one
420 DALE BROWN
Striker in between two bombers so the tremendous blast
knocked out both bombers at once, then launched the two re-
maining Strikers at the H-6 parking ramp. All four H-7 bomb-
ers went up in huge clouds of fire, and the Strikers destroyed
eight more H-6 bombers and damaged several more.
As a parting gesture, McLanahan quickly programmed the
last two Wolverine missiles to orbit over Wuhan bomber base
and attack any targets of opportunity with the anti-vehicle
skeets-any H-6 bomber that tried to start engines and taxi
clear of the devastated parking ramp for the next forty minutes
would be treated to a personalized demonstration of the power
of an anti-vehicle skeet shooting molten copper slugs into it
from out of the darkness. Another thirteen H-6 bombers, plus
a number of fuel, security,'and maintenance vehicles, were
damaged or destroyed by the skeets, launched from the Wol-
verine cruise missiles.
As the Chinese air defense fighters from Nanjing and Wuhu
air bases converged first on Anqing, then Wuhan , to try to find
and destroy the unidentified attacker, the crew of the Mega-
fortress turned southeast through sparsely settled Zhejiang
province, going feet-wet directly between the two Chinese na-
val bases at Wenzhou and Dinghai. Chinese air defense sites
were in an uproar over the invasion on the garrisons at Xia-
men, which meant that all available naval air fighter units had
been sent on patrol to the south to try to stop any more Tai-
wanese invaders. Like a ghost riding the rising coastal fog, the
Megafortress quietly slipped out of Chinese airspace and dis-
appeared over the East China Sea.
PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE,
NEAR COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO
TUESDAY, 24 JUNE, 1327 HOURS LOCAL
(1527 HOURS ET)
The first detection was from the U. Space Command's Pa-
cific Satellite Early Warning System, or SEWS, a large heat-
sensing satellite that detected the bright flash of fire from the
first 65,000-pound Dong Feng-4 ballistic missile lifting off
from its fixed launching pad in east-central China. Since the
FATAL T ER RAI N 421
launch detection was immediately correlated with a known
DF-4 launch site, an automatic ICBM launch warning was is-
sued by Space Command to all American, Canadian, and
NATO military units throughout the world through the North
American Aerospace Defense Command at Cheyenne Moun-
tain. The entire Space Command complex, known as Team
21-the Space Operations missile detection wings, the
worldwide communications network, and the crisis manage-
ment team of the Cheyenne Mountain Strategic Defense Com-
bat Operations Center-were on full alert when the next seven
DF-4 missiles were detected moments later.
The commander of U. Space Command was called out of
a lunch meeting with some of his visiting wing commanders,
and he was quickly escorted to the Air Force Missile Warning
and Space Operations Command Center. General Joseph G.
Wyle was the new commander of "the Mountain." A father