Shattered Bone

by Chris Stewart

  Then Ammon got an idea. It was desperate and risky, but at the time it was all that he had.

  With a sudden jerk, he pulled back hard on the stick while simultaneously slamming all four throttles back into full afterburner. Within three seconds, the aircraft was pointed nearly straight up, climbing skyward at forty thousand feet pcr minute. The aircraft’s speed and momentum carried the bomber skyward. Up into the sky it climbed. Straight up. Up into the sun.

  The Mig-31 pilot easily followed them as they shot skyward. But then the unthinkable happened. He lost sight of them in the glare of the sun. He stared and squinted and cursed. He jerked his head from one side of the cockpit to the other as he desperately searched for the bomber. He rolled his fighter inverted in an effort to shade his eyes from the glare. But it didn’t make any difference. The B-1 was gone.

  The Mig-31 pilot pulled the nose of his fighter back down to the horizon, rolled himself upright, and stared down at his radar. Nothing. He couldn’t even find them on radar.

  “Lead’s blind,” he announced in a disgusted tone over the radio, cursing himself as he spoke. He had blown it. He had just lost a year’s worth of cool points. His name would be muttered with shame at the bar.

  But hopefully his wing man knew where the bomber had stolen off to. The Mig-31 pilot silently prayed that his number two had done a better job of keeping the target in sight.

  He swore once again in frustration when he heard two reply, “Two is blind as well.”

  Fifteen thousand feet below them, the B-1 sped to the east. It was back at treetop level, skimming once again over the fields and trees.

  After pulling the bomber up into the sky, Ammon had immediately rolled inverted and pulled back into a steep dive. His evasive maneuver turned out to be nothing more than a modified yo-yo. Kind of a screwed up outside loop. But whatever he called the maneuver, it had worked. The threat tones in his helmet told him the fighters didn’t know where he was. Their radars were back in search mode. And even if they found him now, it wouldn’t matter. They could never catch him. For now at least, he was safe.

  “That was close, fly-boy,” Morozov mumbled. “I think you got lucky.” His breathing was heavy and hard.

  “No, Morozov,” Ammon shot back. “I’m not lucky. I’m good. There’s a difference. And don’t you forget it.”

  Morozov grunted. “Ok, Carl. Whatever you say.”

  They pressed on to the target.

  “Time to arm the missile?” Ammon asked.

  “Four minutes,” Morozov replied. “You should start to see the target environment soon after the missile is armed.”

  Once again Ammon searched ahead of the aircraft. Their first target was the Buturlinovhka-Voerenky nuclear missile site located just north of Khoper River. So far, he couldn’t see anything that looked like the target, only the same dusty fields and an occasional farm house. But then they were still more than sixty miles out. He wouldn’t be able to see any of the aboveground buildings or guard towers of the facility until he was about fifteen miles away.

  In the aft cockpit, Morozov rolled his target radar to the side to take a look at a fix point as they flew by. As the radar looked at the way-point, it immediately showed up on his center CRT. The point Morozov had chosen to look at was a stop sign at a small intersection near a line of tall trees. “Incredible,” Morozov thought as the navigation computer did some quick thinking. “From more than ten miles, I can look out and find something as small as a sign post.” Just then, a series of numbers flashed onto Morozov’s screen, displaying their new position. They had made a nice correction back to the bomb run course and were now only three hundred feet from their desired flight path. “Truly incredible,” Morozov muttered again. They had flown thousands of miles, been intercepted and chased by enemy fighters, and still were able to navigate back to within less than a football field of their desired position. Morozov was truly impressed.

  “I’m telling you, Carl, the Americans have made this too easy,” he called out to Ammon. “This radar is absolutely incredible. Even at this distance, I can actually make out the air shaft of the facility complex. Now it’s just a matter of choosing my target.”

  After checking the final coordinates, Morozov began to enter the final data into his weapons computer. The Buturlinovhka-Voerenky missile facility consisted of ten hardened silos controlled by a single underground launch facility. It would be a relatively easy target to destroy, for once the central launch facility was taken out, the ten silos would then be rendered useless. Morozov had already determined that, because the command launch facility was “shallow,” the M-95 penetration missile would easily dcstroy it.

  One of the most powerful weapons on earth, only about three hundred M-95s had ever been built, for they were incredibly expensive and complicated to maintain in combat order. However, their great expense and high maintenance was easily justified, for they were the best weapons in the world when it came to hitting underground silos or buried bunkers.

  The missile owed its great success to three things—its incredible speed, its depleted uranium core, and finally, its small nuclear warhead. As it approached its objective, the missile would pull up into a steep climb, then turn and dive, accelerating to Mach 7 as it bore down on its target. This blinding speed, in conjunction with the ultra-dense uranium core, allowed the warhead to cut through the earth like a bullet through water. Not until then did the nuclear warhead go off, then baaam!!, the bunker was gone.

  So far as western intelligence could confirm, more than ninety percent of Russia’s hardened targets and bunkers could be destroyed if attacked by the M-95 missiles. The Ukrainians didn’t have anything that could come close to the destructive capability of the M-95, and in fact, to get hold of these missiles was one of the primary reasons they had devised a plan to steal the Bone. But the M-95 wasn’t the only weapon that was stuffed into the belly of the Bone. The bomber also carried other nuclear weapons. But they wouldn’t be used. At least not on this target. Morozov was holding them in reserve. For them, he had something special in mind.

  After he was finished punching the final target information into his computer, Morozov keyed his microphone switch once again.

  “Okay, pilot, I’ve selected and programmed an M-95 for this target. It is set for maximum penetration before explosion. If we release the weapon at two hundred feet, my systems are telling me we have to get to within ... thirteen-paint-two miles of the target to guarantee the missile is within range. Confirm?”

  Ammon did some quick math in his head. “Yeah, that sounds about right,” he replied. At twenty miles, Morozov would put the missile in final countdown. At thirteen miles, it could be launched. The missile would then drop from the belly of the aircraft, ignite its ramjet engine in the slipstream, then scream out ahead of the bomber, allowing the B-1 to turn away from the target and proceed to its next destination.

  As they closed in on the first target, Ammon searched the sky up ahead of the aircraft. Nothing was there. It appeared they were going to make this a successful bomb run.

  Suddenly the aircraft began to violently shake. Two red fire lights illuminated on the panel in front of him as his headset came alive once more. This time it was a constant high pitched tone, warning him of a fire in both of his right engines.

  For just a second Ammon pictured himself back in his F-16 as he spiraled down toward the Yellow Sea. The same sick feeling overcame him. He had been in this situation before. He even noted that the fire warning tones sounded the same on both aircraft.

  He shook his head and reached up to punch the fire suppression buttons. “I’ve got a fire in numbers three and four,” he said to Morozov, his voice shaking from the violent vibrations.

  “I think we’ve taken a missile!” Morozov shouted back, his voice barely understandable above the cry of the warning tones. “It must have been a heat seeker. I never got any warning on my radar.”

  At this point, Ammon didn’t care what hit him. He only wanted to save th
e aircraft. He scanned his engine instruments. Engines three and four were definitely gone. They weren’t producing any thrust and their exhaust temperatures were climbing through the ceiling. Ammon immediately reached up to select the alternate fire suppression. Just as he was punching the button, a bright light flashed from outside. The aircraft shuddered again, this time with enough force to knock Ammon sideways in his seat. Again another knocking explosion. The aircraft began to settle toward the earth.

  The hydraulic legs of the simulator brought the cockpit slowly back down to ground level. Over the intercom system, Ammon heard the voice of the simulator controller.

  “You took another fox-one up the tail,” he said in a dry tone. “That’s the second time you’ve let that happen. You’ve got to work together, comrades, or you’re never going to make it. We’ve been doing this sixteen hours a day for over a week now. You should be getting it down. We’ve got to start seeing some rapid improvement, my friends. It only gets harder from here.”

  In the simulator across from Ammon and Morozov, the two controllers who piloted the Mig-31 s smiled at each other again. So far their job had been very easy.

  Ammon heard Morozov throw his helmet up against his console, smashing it loudly against the plastic screen of the simulator. The smoke from Morozov’s cigarette began to cloud the tiny cockpit.

  BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, WASHINGTON D.C.

  Though the United States Air Force dealt with some of the most highly classified and sensitive information that had ever existed, they had not had a serious internal breach of security in over forty years. All through the ’80s and early ’90s, while the Navy suffered through the Walker spy ease and Pollard scandal, while the CIA tried to estimate how many informants had been killed and how much damage had really been done by Aldrich Ames, while the Army dealt with the sudden embarrassment of the Seymour treason, the Air Force had remained above it all.

  This was due in large part to the work that was accomplished in a cramped and busy office buried deep in the bowels of USCOM, an even more cramped and noisy building in the center of Bolling Air Force Base. Located just across the river from the Pentagon, Bolling was near enough to the center of power to know what was going on, yet because it wasn’t as convenient to get to as the Pentagon, by and large the politicians and heavy brass left its workers alone, allowing them to do their job without a great deal of supervision or interference.

  Located in the basement of the USCOM building was the office of the Internal Counter-Espionage Division, or ICED. Set up in the early ’80s, ICED’s mission was to monitor, track, observe, and ferret out any spies that might be hiding within the Air Force. Not only did they monitor the whereabouts of suspected spies, they also kept an extensive list of anyone with a TOP SECRET security clearance who they also suspected might be willing to lean in that direction. Young airmen with unusually high burdens of debt, suspected homosexuals, rebellious sergeants, or officers with wounded egos—all of these were people that ICED liked to keep a close eye on.

  And through the years, they had had great success on two fronts. First, they had been able to stop several potentially damaging spy rings before they had much success. Second, because they were internal to the Air Force, ICED was able to complete its work without having to look to the outside for help, thus greatly reducing their public exposure. No bad news was ever leaked to the press.

  At 6:50 in the morning—at about the same time that Ammon and Morozov were getting shot down in their simulator—Lieutenant Colonel Oliver Tray, deputy director of ICED, was just arriving to work. A slender man with narrow shoulders and sandy blond hair, Tray was dressed in tight bike shorts and a loose fitting t-shirt, having ridden his bike in to work. After hoisting his mountain bike down two flights of stairs, he hid it away in a broom closet and headed down the hallway, through the security doors, to the office lounge. Lt Col Tray bypassed the percolating pot of coffee and trays of glazed donuts and, instead, poured himself a glass of orange juice from the miniature cooler. Gulping the orange juice down, he turned and headed back down the narrow hallway to the men’s bathroom to shower.

  On his way to the bathroom he passed the director’s office. As he strode by the open glass doors, the director’s secretary looked up from her tidy desk and called out. “Ollie, if you have a minute, Colonel Fullbright wanted to see you.” Tray stopped in his tracks and turned to face Kay, the middle-aged secretary who ran the director’s office. Pointing to his sweating clothes he silently mouthed the word “Now?”

  “He said to tell you as soon as you came in,” Kay responded to Oliver’s gesture. “He’s on the telephone to General Mann right now. If you hurry, I’ll try to cover for you.” Tray smiled and gave a quick thumbs up as he hurried down the hall.

  Ten minutes later, freshly showered and dressed in a clean blue uniform, Lt Col Tray walked into his boss’s office and took a seat by the enormous oak-top desk.

  “Have you seen the morning reports?” the colonel asked, throwing a thick red folder across the desk toward his assistant director. He liked Lt Col Tray, but worked him hard. It was just part of their business.

  “Uh, no sir. I just got in.”

  Something must be going on, and as usual, the director was the first one to know. It was to avoid embarrassing situations such as these that Tray usually showed up to work at least thirty minutes before his boss, allowing enough time to take a look at the overnight message traffic before Colonel Fullbright came in. So how was it that Colonel Fullbright seemed to always be the first one in when something was up? Did he have some kind of sixth sense, or was he just lucky? Tray really didn’t know, but he hated how it always seemed to work out that way.

  Of course, Tray wasn’t the first one to sit in wonder at some of the things Fullbright seemed to come up with. Truth was, Fullbright was one of the most intelligent men in the entire Air Force. A graduate of MIT, he had moved up through the ranks with lightning speed, and had already been selected to receive his first star, for many of the nation’s top generals had also taken notice of the man. He was young and brash and cool as ice under pressure. And Oliver Tray loved working for him.

  Which was the main reason he seemed so embarrassed to tell his boss that he hadn’t yet read the morning reports.

  Fullbright watched Tray shake his head, then said, as he waved his hand toward the red binder, “Well, take a look at this. It’s rather lengthy, so go ahead and take it back to your desk. Give it some thought, then come and tell me what you think.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll get right back to you.” Tray picked up the folder and stood up from his chair and started to walk out of the room.

  “I’ve got to tell you, you’re going to love this,” Fullbright said with a snort as Tray made his way to the door. “When I read it, it almost blew me away.”

  “Interesting reading?” Tray replied, not knowing exactly what Fullbright meant.

  “Yeah. Do an initial check-out, if you can. See if you think this guy might just be blowing smoke. Bring him here if you need to. I’ll get back with you later on this morning.”

  Tray turned around to leave once again. He was almost out the door before Fullbright called him back. “Oliver, there’s one more thing I wanted to ask you.”

  “Sir?”

  “What about BADGER? How does it look?”

  Tray wrinkled his nose. “Nothing, sir. Nothing at all. I’m afraid it doesn’t look very good.”

  The colonel swore. “I can’t believe that we lost him! How could he just disappear? How did we let him slip through our hands?”

  “Unless ...“ Lt Colonel Tray paused, “unless he was actually killed.”

  “Do you really believe that might be what happened?” Fullbright asked.

  After some thought, Oliver replied, “No sir, I don’t. Although it’s the most likely explanation, still, I don’t think it is as simple as that. I’m afraid we might have let him slip away.”

  Fullbright swore again and frowned.

  “Sir, we a
lways knew this could happen. If they wanted him back, there really wasn’t much we could do.”

  “Yes, I know, but still that doesn’t make it any easier. We’ve got two lousy options. Either he’s dead, or we let them bring him in. Either way, we didn’t do our job.”

  Oliver nodded his head, but didn’t respond. After a while, Fullbright grunted, then turned his attention back to his desk, dismissing Tray with a wave of his finger.

  Tray made his way back to his office, shut the door, sat down at his desk, and opened the red folder. The first page was a log which was used to keep track of everyone who had had access to the TOP SECRET message binder. He logged into the file by writing his name, the date, and the time that he had picked up the folder from his boss. Then he began to read.

  The first message was from the Defense Intelligence Agency, a short advisory about some Ukrainian intelligence officer who, after many years of inactivity, had recently been sighted in Central America. It was speculated that he was now involved in the drug trade. Lt Col Tray scanned through the single page report. Not much of interest there. He moved on.

  The next five messages were from various sources, two from the DIA, one from the CIA, and two from the National Reconnaissance Office. All five of the classified intelligence reports concerned the recent political tensions between Russia and the Ukraine, particularly the latest movement of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border. In the past few days, eleven Russian divisions had begun to pull back from the border, putting some distance between themselves and the Ukrainian armies that were massed in defensive positions along the common front. However, satellite imagery clearly showed a continued increase in activity of Fedotov’s short-range attack missiles. Tray mused over these reports for several minutes. So Fedotov was pulling some of his troops back. Could be good. Could be bad. It all depended on how things went. Either way, the impending war in the former Soviet Union was not his primary concern.