General Erdal Sivarek was the fifty-two year-old commander of the Republic of Turkey Air Force, and was one of the true fast-rising stars in the Turk Hava Kuvvetleri, the Republic of Turkey Air Force. Sivarek had been an instructor pilot in several different foreign-made combat-coded tactical fighters, including the T-33 jet trainer, F-104 fighter interceptors, F-5E Tiger day interceptor, F-4E Phantom fighter-bomber, and the F-16 fighter-bomber He’d won the coveted “Sniper Pilot” wings of a senior experienced attack pilot a full year before most other pilots his age, and he'd made flight leader, operations officer, deputy commander, and commander of his filo far ahead of his contemporaries. Three of his five children, including one daughter, were following in his proud footsteps and joining the Turkish Air Force, a fact that made him far prouder than all his other achievements.
Sivarek’s “visiting team” consisted of the very best pilots of the Second Tactical Air Force Command, Turkish Air Force, temporarily assigned to the Nineteenth Aggressor Squadron at Nellis Air Force Base. The Turkish fighter pilots got a chance to train against advanced Western warplanes, and the American and NATO participants benefited by getting realistic adversary training against some of eastern Europe’s best fighter pilots and the world’s most advanced warplanes. Tolicha Airfield was not in Turkey, but was a large simulated airbase complex built in the high desert wastelands of south central Nevada, in the Air Force bombing ranges about two hundred miles northwest of Las Vegas. The “airfield” had three long dirt runways, several plywood structures vaguely resembling military-looking buildings, a “fuel depot” built of hundreds of steel fifty-five- gallon drums welded together, antiaircraft missile and artillery radar emitters to simulate actual airfield defenses, and even plywood or inflatable aircraft shapes set up here and there to make it look like a real operating airfield. And although the “enemy” target was real and the F-16s did indeed carry live weapons, Sivarek never fired any missiles at it, only electronic signals to the range controllers—he. like his wingman, checked that the master arm switch was off about every twenty seconds. The range controllers would plot aircraft position and flight parameters at the time the attack signal was received and compute whether or not Sivarek had actually “killed” his target.
“He killed the leader. Vampire,” Colonel David Luger, the senior mission control officer on this test flight, reported over the secure satellite commlink. Luger was in a special classified section of the Nellis range control complex, watching the exercise unfold before him on several multicolor electronic wall- size monitors. The Nellis range complex was in use twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, by military units from all over the world, so special facilities were set up to monitor and control classified military weapons tests.
“Sila Zero One didn’t make very many hard evasive maneuvers, about half the normal chaff drops, and didn’t bother going lower than two thousand AGL,” David added, his Texas drawl coming through the scrambled satellite transmission. “Just not very aggressive threat reaction.” He had seen every iteration of hotshot fighter and bomber pilots—and the “target” in this exercise didn’t measure up one bit.
“Copy, Dave,” Brigadier-General Patrick McLanahan radioed back He was flying the right seat on the flight deck of an EB- 1C Megafortress-2 strategic “flying battleship,” an experimental B-1B Lancer supersonic bomber modified as a mul tipurpose attack and defensive weapons platform. “We’ll put all that on the debriefing tape. Where are they now?”
“Now, now—if I told you, we’d spoil the exercise,” Luger responded with a smile. David Luger had spent most of his Air Force career designing and flying experimental aircraft and was normally a quiet, reserved, almost nerdy guy. But once one of his warplanes were up in action, he took complete control, no matter how badly things appeared to be spinning out of control. “You said you wanted max realism in this test, so you gotta find them yourself No fair using other sensor links either—remember, we're simulating you're deep over enemy territory, with no overhead sensor support.”
“All right, all right, no harm in asking,” Patrick said. He signed off with a curt “Later.”
Sometimes, McLanahan thought, it was as if David was working extra hard just to prove to everyone that he was okay, that the Russian brainwashing or his subsequent CIA depro- gramming/reprogramming hadn’t affected his mental powers. He had no hobbies, took no vacations, and had few' relationships outside of the High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center. Patrick was pleased to see a budding intimate friendship—hardly a romance yet, but promising—between Dave and Annie Dewey, one of the Air National Guard EB-1 pilots. If only Dave took enough time to get to know her better, David Luger might actually develop a personal life.
To his aircraft commander sitting beside him in the cockpit of the EB-1C Megafortress-2 bomber, nicknamed “Vampire,” Patrick said, “Luger’s not going to let us sneak a peek, so I better get a fix on all our players. LADAR coming on.”
“Go ahead,” the pilot. Colonel Rebecca Furness, responded curtly. “Make it quick. General.”
“Rog,” McLanahan said as he activated the LADAR. or Laser Radar. Using tiny laser emitters, the LADAR scanned the sky for fifty miles in all directions, including near-space, and “drew” a three-dimensional image of all terrain, surface, and airborne objects. In five seconds, LADAR had scanned one hundred and twenty-five thousand cubic miles of earth and sky around the bomber, correlated the scan with known terrain features and current intelligence information, and stored the image in computer memory. Patrick deactivated the system and reported, “LADAR down, Rebecca.”
Furness glanced over at the large multifunction display mounted on the mission commander’s instrument panel, which showed a “God’s-eye” view of the battlefield. “What do we got, MC?” Furness asked impatiently. Rebecca Furness was a twenty-plus year veteran of the Air Force, serving mostly in the Reserves and Air National Guard. She also had the distinction of being one of the first female combat pilots in the Air Force and one of the first to command a combat unit, the 111 th Bomb Squadron of the Nevada Air National Guard—twice. Furness made it clear to everyone who would listen that Patrick McLanahan had been mostly responsible for her losing her command—and she grudgingly admitted that he had been mostly responsible for getting it back for her.
She could think of a hundred things she’d rather be doing than playing chauffeur for the boy general on yet another of his endless test flights. Rebecca had a squadron to assemble, and she knew that a lot of heavy hitters in the Pentagon, in Washington, and all over the world were watching her.
“The Falcons split up,” Patrick replied. “Number two is chasing the leader while number one is sweeping to his six to check on the number two Sila. Looks like the number two Falcon’s going to take his turn and get the lead Sila with a Sidewinder.”
“Well, let’s not wait for them to kill both of our attackers,” Furness said. “Let’s bust a move.”
“Hold your horses, pilot,” Patrick said. “We briefed this engagement a half-dozen times—you know the plan as well as I do. We want to see what they can do on their own first.”
“Why are we doing this support stuff anyway, sir?” Rebecca asked. “You picked my unit because we’re good at tactical bombing. The Bone was built to penetrate heavily defended airspace and attack high-value targets. Your Megafortress contraption can do that job better than even I ever thought possible . Why not let us do our job?”
“This is our job right now, Rebecca,” Patrick said testily. “We are here to deploy a tactical strike support system. The EB-1C Megafortress aircraft are designed to be strategic airborne battleships—that means strike support, surveillance, and reconnaissance as well as attack. Our turn to have fun comes later.”
Rebecca Furness fell silent, disappointed but not surprised over the young general’s lack of corporate knowledge. Her first combat unit, the 394th Air Battle Wing of the Air Force Reserve, had flown a modified F-l 11G Aardvark supersonic bomber nicknamed the RF-111G Vampir
e bomber, which had been primarily designed for armed reconnaissance. Rebecca herself had dubbed the EB-1C bomber the Vampire in her old jet's honor. She had enjoyed the armed reconnaissance role back then. Each mission had been a combination of many different responsibilities—standoff attack, antiship, antiradar, antiairfield, minelaying, and antireconnaissance, along with photoreconnaissance and data relay—and she’d enjoyed the challenge. Rebecca had been positive that, as the nation’s first woman to fly in a combat unit, she had been assigned to the 394th because the Vampire was supposed to be a safe, standoff weapon system, not really designed to be a frontline attack unit. The possibility of her being shot down and captured was supposed to be low. But she’d commanded her flight and flown her missions with aggressiveness and courage that won her a lot of attention and praise, and eventually her own command of a combat unit.
But truth to tell, the RF-111 was not a huge success. It was fast, stealthy, capable, and carried a large variety of payloads, like the EB-1, but it was maintenance-intensive, needed a lot of aerial refueling and ground support, and was considered old technology and not a good buy for the military—again, like the B-l. Despite their success in Operation Desert Storm, all of the F-l 11 models were soon retired from service—and the first to go was the RF-111. Having one aircraft do a variety of missions looked good on paper, but if the sortie didn’t launch or couldn’t continue the mission, the entire strike package suffered greatly. In effect, the weapon system was too capable— instead of considering all the incredible things the plane could do, all the planners could think of was what would happen if the plane broke down and didn’t make it to the target area. That was enough to kill the program.
The B-l fleet came within a few votes of being mothballed as well. Sixty of ninety planes were placed in “flyable storage,” which meant they could be flown only after a few months of intensive resuscitation. The rest were transferred to the Air National Guard and Reserves as a cost-cutting measure. Patrick McLanahan and his research group at Dreamland had hac! Other ideas for the fleet. He'd received enough funding to turn eight B-l B Lancers into EB-1C Vampire “flying battleships,” operated by the Nevada Air National Guard in peacetime and federalized into the Air Force's Air Combat Command in wartime.
The Vampire could drop or launch every weapon in the U.S. arsenal, including antisatellite and anti-ballistic missile weapons and every kind of cruise missile imaginable. Its three bomb bays could hold over sixty thousand pounds of ordnance, and external hardpoints on the fuselage gave it the ability to carry even more weapons. Rebecca was proud to command the nation's one and only Vampire unit. But the EB-1 was very much like a very big RF-111. and in this age of budget cuts and changing priorities, the second coming of the Vampire was very likely to suffer the same fate as the first.
Whether or not the EB-1C actually made it, Rebecca reminded herself that all these tests were helping to make Patrick McLanahan look pretty good, too. His use of the “we” word, she thought, was being a little disingenuous. Patrick McLanahan seemed like a good guy, but all one-star generals were alike—they just wanted to be two-star generals, and all two- stars wanted was three stars, and so on. When it came right down to it, Rebecca was sure McLanahan would grab the next rung of the ladder and use her and everyone else around him as a step to help himself up.
He was certainly, as the old saying went, “making hay while the sun shines.” Following his successful efforts both in protecting the United Republic of Korea from attack by China and at the same time protecting China from rogue retaliatory attacks by a power-mad Korean general with control of several dozen nuclear weapons. Patrick McLanahan had become an overnight hero, almost on a par with Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell. Many comparisons had been instantly made between him and his mentor, friend, former commander, and perennial thorn in the Pentagon’s ass. Brad Elliott, the former commander of HAWC, although McLanahan was definitely perceived as more of a team player than Elliott. Patrick's promotion to major-general, his second star in three years, and eventual command of the High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center—or possibly an operational command—were almost assured.
Now, Rebecca thought, he was going full speed ahead on every possible weapons program that popped into his head— or, more likely, every one that popped into his buddy Dr. Jon Masters’s head—and he was getting lots of funding and high- powered attention for almost every one of them. Jon Masters was the head of a small high-tech military contractor. Sky Masters Inc., that designed and built various pieces of hardware, including satellites, “brilliant” cruise missiles, and satellite communications and reconnaissance systems. When most of the officers in charge of HAWC had been dismissed a few years ago because of the Kenneth Francis James spy scandal, McLanahan and his wife Wendy, an electronics engineer, had gone to work for Jon Masters—and Dr. Wendy Tork still worked for him today. There was obviously a financial motive for Patrick to develop Sky Masters Inc.’s systems. It all looked a bit improper for such a direct pipeline between the military" and civilian world to exist, but Rebecca w as sure that relationship had been scrutinized by the Pentagon seven ways to Sunday by now.
Even though Rebecca questioned and maybe even resented McLanahan's business dealings, to tell the truth, she liked McLanahan s enthusiasm and drive But she believed sometimes it was all being done at someone else’s expense. Namely; hers.
“Vampire, this is Control,” Luger radioed to Furness and McLanahan on the secure Blue Force channel. “Muck, the Ukrainians look like they’re asleep or something. You're going to have to kick the Ukrainians in the butt a little. They seemed to be taking this exercise a little too lightly.”
“Roger,” Patrick responded. He took another laser radar “snapshot” of the area, studied it for a moment, then radioed on the tactical interplane frequency: “Sila Zero-One, this is Vampire. You’ve got a bandit on your tail, seven o’clock, less than four miles! I have you at two thousand feet AGL. Recommend you descend, accelerate, begin evasive maneuvers, begin terrain masking, and prepare to respond to a heat-seeking missile threat”
“Acknowledged,” the pilot responded simply.
Patrick waited—and nothing happened. “Sila Zero-One, the bandit will be within missile range in five seconds. Get out of there! Now!”
“Give us a heading. Vampire,” the Ukrainian pilot said.
“A heading? Any heading! You need to get away from him now.r'
“Our Sirena tail-warning system is inoperative,” the pilot reported. “We do not have contact. We need a heading, please.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake ..Patrick was ready to explode in frustration. He had just given them all the information they needed. Besides, they were two minutes from the target—they should be going balls-to-thc-wall anyway! “Sila Zero-One. do a hard break to the right toward that ridgeline, descend at least fifteen hundred feet, then reverse about two miles from the ridge and accelerate. Make him start thinking about hitting the mountains instead of lining up a shot on you!”
“Acknowledged.” the Backfire pilot said. He started a relatively slow turn toward the north, then reversed his turn almost immediately. “Maneuver completed,” he reported. “Returning to target heading. One hundred seventeen seconds to target.”
“I think he's more scared of the mountains than that F-16 pilot will be,” Rebecca said.
“Well, scratch one Backfire,” Patrick said disgustedly. “Might as well let the Turks get some air-to-air work in and let the Ukrainians practice some bombing.”
“He’s not doing anything—just heading direct to the target,” the second Turkish F-16 pilot reported. “Apparently his tailwarning system is not functioning,”
“Your tail is clear, so he's not playing possum so a fighter can sneak up behind you,” Sivarek said. “Give him a wake up call with the radar and see what he does.”
“Roger,” the wingman said. He briefly activated his attack radar. Sure enough, the big Ukrainian bomber sped up slightly and made a steep banked turn to the
south, pumping out chaff cartridges from its dorsal ejectors as he detected the F~16’s radar sweep. The F-16’s radar was effectively decoyed away from the bomber with the combination of chaff and electronic jammers, so the F-16 pilot merely shut off the radar. The Ukrainian bomber rolled right and headed back to his original course, speed, and altitude, as if the threat had suddenly disappeared. “Level-one evasive maneuvers. Good jamming and chaff, but small altitude and airspeed deviations. He’s back on original course and speed. No problem reacquiring.”
“Then take the kill and come join on me and we’ll get the second bandit,” Sivarek said.
“Roger,” the wingman said. He immediately switched to Sidewinder missiles, got a locked-on tone seconds later—the Backfire’s two big Kuznetov turbofans, developing almost fifty-six thousand pounds of thrust each in afterburner, were pumping out plenty of heat—and “fired.” “Missile away, two miles,” the wingman said. No need to start a stopwatch—missile flight time would be mere seconds at this range. “Good kill.”
“Give him a flyby, then come join on me, zero-four-five at sixty-two bull’s-eye, angels minus ten.”
“My pleasure, boss,” the wingman said. He cobbed the throttle to zone three afterburner, flew less than two hundred feet above the Tupolev-22M bomber, waited until he was clear, did two barrel rolls right in front of the Backfire’s cockpit windscreen, then started a fast climb. Easy kill against what was once the most feared air-breathing weapon in the Soviet arsenal.
The wingman let his speed build until he went supersonic, sending a crashing sonic shock wave washing over the bomber. That should wake him up. He then did a victory roll right in front of him, then pitched up and climbed out back to patrol altitude.
One down, one to go.
The threat warning receiver bleeped, displaying a bat-wing enemy-aircraft symbol on the God’s-eye display with range, heading, altitude, and airspeed information. "We got company," Patrick announced to Rebecca. He reactivated the laser radar and took another "snapshot” of the skies around them. "They’re both after the second Sila.”
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