by Dale Brown
Breanna checked her instruments, scanning the glass panels of the cockpit as slowly as she could manage. Time was starting to blur by as quickly as her heart was pounding.
Jeff had told her about the first time he’d been in combat, flying over Iraq. He’d tried to keep calm by counting slowly to himself as he looked at each instrument in his F-15C, counting it off.
That was Mack Smith who’d told her that. Jeff hadn’t flown Eagles in the Gulf.
“Interceptor radar ahead,” said Chris.
Breanna looked at the left MUD, which painted the sky ahead with different colors, indicating the presence of enemy radars. A green blob hung halfway down the screen, dripping and fading. The computer was processing signals received by the enemy and plotting them in real time on the screen, color-coding the seriousness of the threat. Green meant that the enemy could not detect them, generally because it was out of range due to the Megafortress’s stealthy configuration or, as in this case, low altitude. Yellow meant that they could potentially be detected but hadn’t been. Red meant that they were being actively targeted.
“We have a MiG-29, two MiG-29’s,” said Chris, working with the computer to ID the threats. At this point they used only passive sensors—active radar would be like using a flashlight in a darkened room. “They’re well out of range. Seem to be tracking north. Thirty miles. Thirty-two. Other side of the border.”
“Keep an eye on them for the Ospreys,” Bree told him. “Gotcha, Captain.”
Breanna hit her way-point just south of the Somalian border, adjusting her course to track northeastward.
“Lost the MiGs,” said Chris. “Think they were from A-1?”
“A-l’s supposed to be too small for anything bigger than a Piper Cherokee,” said Breanna. The airstrip was located about twenty miles northwest of their target area, right on the coast.
“Maybe from Sudan then. Or Yemen. They have to be working at the very edge of their range.” Chris checked through the paperwork, double-checking their intelligence reports and satellite maps, making sure the MiGs couldn’t have landed anywhere nearby.
“Mark Two in zero-one minutes. Border in zero-one minutes,” the computer told Breanna. It also gave her a cue on the HUD that they were nearing the danger zone, spitting back the flight data they had programmed before.
“Stand by to contact Vector flight,” she told Chris. “We’re looking good.”
“Hell of a moon,” he said.
Breanna had no time to admire the scenery. She edged the Megafortress lower toward the ragged steppes and jagged rocks of the African Horn, glancing quickly at the MUD to make sure no enemy radars had suddenly snapped to life. The Megafortress was now skimming over the rocky savanna at a blistering 558 nautical miles an hour. She had to be careful and alert—the EB-52 lacked terrain-following radar. Even with the improved power plants the Megafortress lacked the oomph of, say, an F-111, which could pull up instantly if an obstacle loomed. The computer and sensors helped her stay low along a carefully mapped route.
“Border,” said Breanna. They passed into Somalia, apparently undetected. Their target lay approximately 150 miles dead ahead.
“Preparing to launch cruise missiles,” said Chris, selecting the weapons-control module on his computer display. “Bay.”
The Megafortress was equipped with a rotary launcher in the bomb bay similar to the devices installed in B-52Hs. In a stock B-52, up to eight cruise missiles could be mounted, rotated into position, and then launched. Fort Two’s launcher allowed for a variety of weapons besides the cruise missiles; in this case, two Scorpion AMRAAMplus air-to-air missiles and four JSOW weapons, which had imaging infrared target seekers. The AGM-86c cruise missiles had to be preprogrammed, a relatively laborious task for someone like Chris who wasn’t used to doing it. But once they were launched they did all the work.
“Bomb bay is open,” the computer reported to Breanna. The open bay made them visible to radar, though their low altitude made it extremely unlikely they would be spotted.
“Launch at will,” Breanna told Chris.
The computer made the process almost idiot-proof, but Chris worked through the procedure carefully, making sure they were at the preprogrammed launch points and altitudes before pushing each of the large missiles off. The twenty-foot-long flying bombs lit their engines as they slipped below the Megafortress, popping up briefly before descending even lower, guided by radar altimeters and sophisticated on-board maps.
“No turning back now,” said Chris as he closed the bomb bay door.
“We can always turn back,” said Bree. “Let’s hope we don’t have to.”
DANNY FELT THE REST OF HIS ASSAULT TEAM STARTING to tense as the Osprey passed over the border into Somalia. Talk had gotten sparser and sparser since takeoff; no one had spoken now for at least five minutes.
No matter how much you trained for combat, or thought about it, or dreamed about it, you were never ready for it when it arrived. You punched the buttons like you were trained to, reacted the way you’d taught your body to react. But that didn’t mean you were really, truly ready. There was no way to erase the millisecond of fear, the quick surge of adrenaline that leaped at you the instant you came under fire.
These guys knew it. They’d been there before.
“Vector One has peeled off. We’re ten minutes from our target,” said the pilot.
Some of the others tried peering out the windows, craning their heads toward the front. The cruise missiles would be finding their targets any second now; in theory they’d see the flashes.
Danny steadied his eyes on his MP-5, double-checking it to make sure it was ready. He had two clips ready in each vest pocket, along with a grenade, the pin taped so it couldn’t accidentally get snagged.
Good to go.
* * *
CHRIS HAD HIS FACE PRACTICALLY PASTED TO THE screen, which was projecting an infrared image of the Somalian base, now just over twelve miles away.
“Nothing,” he said. “I see the SA-6’s, that’s all. But we’re still a good way off.”
“No Zeus?”
“No antiair guns at all. No other defenses.”
“AGMs to target, ten seconds,” said Bree. “Nine, eight, seven—”
“Wow, I see it!” shouted Chris, and in the next second the horizon lit with a yellow-red explosion. “Got him!”
The second cruise missile splashed five seconds later. Both completely obliterated their targets.
Breanna tensed, waiting for the RWR to warn her that the Somalians had belatedly turned on their antiaircraft radars.
Nada.
She activated the nightscope viewer panel. The view was limited to twelve degrees and Breanna never felt particularly comfortable with it, preferring the radar and IR scans. But the synthetic view didn’t mind the humid conditions caused by the recent rain, couldn’t be jammed, and was easy to sort when things got hot—pun intended.
“We’re going to be overhead in about sixty seconds,” she told Chris. “What do you think?”
“I don’t have a target,” he said. “Looks like the place is deserted. Shit, there are no secondaries. I think those SAMs were decoys.”
“Or we missed.”
“No.” Chris played with the resolutions on the screen. “I saw them. They’re gone. No related vehicles. I’m thinking decoys, Bree. Or they left. Place is deserted.”
“Vector Leader, this is Fort Two,” said Breanna, alerting the assault team. “SAMs have been splashed. No live defenses. Copy?”
“Roger, copy,” returned the ground mission commander from the Osprey. “We’ll proceed as planned.”
“Fort Two,” said Bree. She turned to her copilot. “Chris, pull out the satellite maps. Give me the heading of that east-west road.”
“I can see it on the screen,” he told her. “What are you thinking?”
“Let’s see where it goes,” said Bree. She selected the FLIR imaging for her MUD, then banked the Megafortress to follow along the road
way. It rose through the hills toward northern Ethiopia, with a new leg skirting Hargyesa, a relative megalopolis. The road seemed deserted—or at least there were no warm engines or bodies on it, according to the FLIR.
“They could be anywhere, Bree,” said Chris. “We don’t want to get out too far from Vector, in case they run into problems.”
“I’m not intending on getting too far away, Chris,” she told him. “Relax.”
“I’m relaxed,” he said defensively. He checked his screen. “They’re thirty seconds away.”
Breanna swung out of the south leg of her orbit, heading back toward the center of the target area. She selected the starscope input for her screen, and saw two dark shadows leap into the green, wings tilting upward as they swept into a landing.
“Dead as a doornail,” said Chris, who was using the infrared to monitor the scene. “Nothing moving. Nothing hot.”
“You’re ready with the JSOWs just in case?”
“Now who’s getting tense?” asked Chris.
“Let’s open the bay doors just to be sure.”
“Roger that,” he snapped. She couldn’t quite tell if he was being sarcastic.
* * *
THEY’D PLANNED TO RAPPEL, SO HITTING THE GROUND behind the swirling motors was a bit of a letdown, but Danny could live with it. He and the rest of the Whiplash team spread out quickly, moving to cover the first team’s assault of the main building.
It wasn’t much of an assault. The Delta troopers had lowered themselves from their Osprey to the roof of the main building, working down to the main floor in about a fifth of the time a training exercise would have taken—less actually, since any training exercise would have used another Spec Ops team as enemies.
“We’re clear, Captain,” said the Delta commander over the corn set. The lightweight Dreamland gear made him sound as if he were standing at Danny’s side. “We have blood on the floor in the basement, and some flight gear.”
“Shit. We’re too late.”
“All right. We’ll search and secure,” said the commander.
Danny cursed, then relayed the information to his men.
AS SOON AS THE GROUND TEAM CONFIRMED THAT THE school was deserted, Breanna pointed Fort Two toward A-1, the airstrip close to the Gulf of Aden.
“I don’t know, Bree,” said Chris. “They could be anywhere. I’m thinking Mogadishu.”
“Mogadishu’s five hundred miles southeast of here.”
“My point exactly.”
Breanna didn’t think that they would be lucky enough to find them on the ground. But she did want to see if her theory was at least possible. A-1 was a little more than seventy-five miles away, a straight line back toward the northwest. While they didn’t have particularly fat fuel reserves, she figured they could get close enough to get a look at the airstrip before turning back to shepherd the Ospreys home.
“We’ll be within FUR range in five minutes,” she told her copilot.
“Four and a half. I’ve already computed it,” he told her. “Man, I could. go for a cigarette right about now.”
“I thought you gave up smoking.”
“Stuff like this tickles my throat,” he said. “Shit, we got something in the air.”
Chris seemed to be operating on a sixth sense, picking up something before the high-powered detectors had sniffed out the radar. But he was right—a Jay Bird radar had flicked on ahead. The computer poked a green puff in the radar-warning screen. It was below them, which seemed impossible since they were at only a thousand feet.
“The source is far off,” said Chris, hunkering over the screen and working the computer to refine the read. “This is on the ground, Bree. Shit, this has to be a MiG-21. Off, it’s off.”
“On the ground? Has to be A-1.”
“Yeah. Like it was a maintenance check or something. Or a decoy.”
“We’ll be close enough to find out pretty soon.”
“Be nice to have a pair of fighters covering our butts about now,” Chris said.
“We can deal with a MiG-21 ourselves,” said Breanna. “Ground radar?”
“Negative. Scope’s clean. No ground stations. Nothing. Of course, they could take off and turn it on once they were in the air. We’re sitting ducks here.”
“The MiG radar can’t find a standard B-52 at twenty miles,” said Bree.
“What I’m worried about are those MiG-29’s we saw before,” said Chris. “Maybe they’re Libyan fighters. Qaddafi’s got a bunch of them.”
For once, his fear was well-founded. The passive sensors on the MiGs could theoretically allow the interceptors to target Fort Two from long range, possibly even before being detected by Fort Two’s own passive arrays.
“I think those MiGs we saw before are out there,” said Chris. “I thinking they’re waiting to ambush the Ospreys. They could be in those mountain ranges to the west.”
“If they came from Libya, they’d never have the range to linger,” said Bree.
“What if they launched from A-1? If it’s long enough for a MiG-21, they’d have no problem.”
Breanna leaned closer to her stick. They were about thirty miles from the airstrip.
“I think there’s something stalking us, maybe twelve miles off,” said Chris. “What do you think of turning on the active radar?”
“If there is something out there, it’ll tell them we’re here,” said Bree. “And it’s expressly against orders.”
“Well, there is that,” said Chris. “But getting shot down is too. If we hit the radar we can get a clear picture. We see something, we launch the Scorpions. I swear something’s watching for us, Bree. They’re to the west, right there.” He pointed across the cockpit. “I can feel it.”
“We’ll see them first,” said Breanna.
“Maybe not. They could circle out through the hills, duck around us, go for the Ospreys. The rotor engines are monster signals for any IR seeker. They’ll be sitting ducks.”
Less than sixty seconds now separated them from the small airstrip where Breanna believed Smith and the others had been taken. Turn on the radar and they might never reach it.
On the other hand, if the MiGs were where Chris thought, the Ospreys would be sitting ducks.
“Go to search and scan,” she ordered.
“On it.”
Chris was wrong. The MiGs weren’t in the mountains to the west.
They were hugging the ground forty miles to the east, running south like all hell. There were four of them, and while two were within striking distance of Vector, they didn’t seem to be interested in the Ospreys—they were going for the F-117’s, just arriving on target with their Paveways as Breanna clicked the radio to broadcast a warning.
Northern Somalia
23 October, 0430
AS THE BUS WOUND DOWN OUT OF THE HILLS, THEY could smell the scent of the sea through the open window. The moon and the stars were fading, the sky blending into the early dawn.
“There’s an air base down there,” said Gunny, who was at the window. “Shit, Major, come tell me what I’m looking at.”
Smith pulled himself up from his seat and stepped over Jackson, who was sleeping in the aisle. Howland was hunched two rows back, snoring into the seat back. Mack’s head had stopped hurting, but his ribs throbbed worse than ever. He slid in the seat behind Melfi, his leg irons clanking as he pushed his face to the window.
A long strip of black jutted roughly parallel to the sea, lit by the full moon. A phalanx of heavy earthmovers worked on one end, pushing and leveling. On the other, crews were erecting a shelter of some sort; from here it looked like a curved pizza box. There were planes lined in a neat row near the middle. They were far away and the light was poor, but one was definitely an airliner or similar transport. There were at least two others, smaller military jets, possibly MiG-21’s. The bus bounced and turned around the road, its path taking them out of view.
“The strip’s being extended. They’ve paved it pretty recently,” Mack told G
unny. “We had a small airstrip on the map up north here somewhere when we briefed the mission; I think we had it pegged as a dirt strip. It’s a lot bigger than that now.”
One of the guards at the front of the bus grunted an instruction to keep quiet. Mack held up his hand as if he would, then leaned close to Gunny.
“There’s a transport down there, an airliner. I can’t tell in the dark what it is, but I’d bet they’re going to fly us out.”
“I say we don’t,” hissed Gunny. “I don’t think they’re going to be taking us home. And I don’t want to star in this trial the raghead is talking about.”
“I agree,” Mack said. He felt his ribs tug at him, as if to remind him they weren’t exactly loaded with options. “I don’t know what sort of chance we’re going to have, though.”
“Were you thinking of that when you slugged the raghead’s guard?”
“No,” said Mack. “But I should have.”
“You make a move, we’ll follow,” said Melfi solemnly. “Should we stall getting off the bus?”
What would that get them? A few more minutes? For what?
Odds were the Iranian would just shoot them and be done.
Preferable to being turned into cowards and traitors. That was where this was headed.
Mack grunted noncommittally, unsure what to say, much less do. He put his head back against the stiff seat top. The anger that had exploded inside him had disappeared; it seemed foreign now, as if it belonged to someone else—Melfi most likely. He was a pilot—logical, careful, precise.
Except when he let himself get shot down. That had been a fuck-up, despite what Gunny had said.
Unlike him. He was too damn good to get whacked so easy. Too damn good to do something stupid.
So what the hell was he doing sitting here?
As the bus started down the winding road, the moon stabbed his eyes. Mack sighed, but didn’t close them.