Wendy forced the harrowing memory out of her mind and followed the checklist to bring the stealth bomber to life. Twenty minutes later, call sign Shadow 24 was ready to taxi. With permission from the control tower, she added power as the rain continued hammering the windscreen.
Approaching Runway 19, Jacoby received permission to take off. He glanced at Wendy and spoke over the aircraft intercom system (ICS), “Are you ready to go flying this lovely night?”
“Let’s roll,” she replied, scanning her instruments one last time and hoping like hell, as she did every time she took off in foul weather, that the engineers at Northrop Grumman had indeed solved the moisture problem for good.
Jacoby keyed his radio mic. “Shadow Two-Four is cleared, squawking, and rolling.”
She held her breath as the B-2 careened down the wet runway in a blur of wispy clouds, fog, and rain streaking across the armored windscreen.
“Here we go,” Wendy stated when they reached takeoff speed, and she nudged the control column back, lifting the nose for a few seconds before the Spirit of Indiana rose through the rain and immediately went in the soup, or IMC — instrument meteorological conditions — losing all visibility.
“Gear up,” Jacoby announced, and he secured the landing gear, while she kept her eyes glued to her instruments, steering the bomber along the precise departure flight path. They finally broke through the clouds, climbing above twenty-nine thousand feet into a clear night.
But the beautiful starry sky was lost on Wendy as she talked to the Boeing E-3C AWACS controller from the 552d AWAC Wing at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma City. “Shadow Two-Four will go dark in thirty seconds.”
She then glanced over at Jacoby. “Nav lights out.”
He placed the three-position master mode switch in the go-to-war setting. The quadruple-redundant flight controls now operated in a stealth mode, the radio emitters were turned off, and the weapons systems were ready. The AWACS controller would note the stop squawk from the B-2 transponders that provided position and altitude to both civilian and military aircraft.
With its transponders off, the B-2 disappeared — literally ceased having any type of radar signature. Only two people now knew the whereabouts or the altitude of Shadow 24.
“Please tell me the damn computer is tracking,” she said, leveling off at 48,000 feet, well above commercial traffic, and engaging the autopilot.
“Like an Arkansas bloodhound,” Jacoby quietly chuckled. “Right on the money.”
Just south of Guatemala City, La Aurora International Airport served the majority of flights into and out of the country. A victim of mismanagement and stalled efforts at renovation, the airport struggled to meet the modern standards of travelers. However, three American airlines did fly there, and the airport was the fourth busiest in Central America.
Near the outer perimeter of the airport, far away from the wandering eyes of tourists and American airline pilots, sat an Antonov An-26 “Curl” twin-engine turboprop transport. The cargo area of the former Mali Air Force aircraft housed fifty oil drums, filled with a deadly combination of fuel, fertilizer, and roofing nails.
And less than forty miles away, at a private airport, an Antonov An-30 “Clank,” formerly of the Romanian Air Force, also had been transformed into a jihadist kamikaze bomber.
Nearing the Aurora airport, Wendy and Jacoby began their final approach. This mission required surgical precision. Fortunately, flight operations did not take place overnight at the airport, and the radar would be shut down.
Wendy scanned the multiple screens of the Electronic Flight Instrumentation System (EFIS), confirming their position relative to the target. Seconds later, she released a single GBU-31 JDAM. The Joint Direct Attack Munition technology provided the 500 lb. weapon with integrated inertial guidance coupled to a GPS receiver, giving it improved accuracy over legacy laser-guided or imaging-infrared technology.
Dropping from one of the internal bays, it glided in a parabolic trajectory, striking the Antonov twenty-one seconds later. A large explosion licked the sky as the ordnance and the explosives inside the cargo plane detonated, lighting up the tarmac in pulsating waves of orange and yellow. The shock wave rattled the panoramic windows at the airport terminal, but no other damaged occurred.
“One down,” Jacoby commented over the ICS as lights and sirens wailed across the airport.
“Hope the bastards are sleeping in their planes tonight,” Wendy mumbled as she changed course for the private airfield, where a second JDAM obliterated the An-30 tied down at the edge of the ramp.
The pilots turned away from the column of flames casting a stroboscopic glare on the surrounding jungle and set a course north, across the Yucatan Peninsula and into the Gulf of Mexico.
And as the Spirit of Indiana rushed through the night sky completely undetected and approached the coastline south of Pensacola Beach, Florida, the crew members drank bottled water and looked forward to having breakfast at the Classic Cup Café in Kansas City, Missouri.
At five in the morning, President Cord Macklin followed the smell of bacon to the main room in the Aspen Lodge, where he found Hartwell Prost sitting by a window thumbing his phone and holding a steaming mug of coffee. He couldn’t wait to get his own.
Before him, the service staff had already laid out a spread of pastries, hard-boiled eggs, hash browns, bacon, and other breakfast choices. And yes, full-leaded coffee.
Decaf is for wimps, he thought, pouring himself a cup. No cream or sugar.
“Slept well, Hart?” he asked as Okimoto and his team emerged from the same hallway and deployed around the room.
“Like a baby, sir. Thank you.”
“Where’s the motley crew?”
The DNI stretched an index finger at the window. “Pulling up now.”
Macklin waited until General Chalmers, Admiral Blevins, Defense Secretary Pete Adair, and Secretary of State Brad Austin settled in and grabbed something from the trays. The Pentagon brass looked exhausted. It was obvious they had been up all night tracking the strikes. Adair wore neutral slacks and a black sweater, while Chalmers wore his Air Force Service Dress Uniform consisting of a three-button coat, matching trousers, and a service cap, which the general kept on the table — all in the Shade 1620 known as “Air Force Blue.” Blevins wore the Navy Service Dress Blues with the prescribed white combination cap.
Pointing his reading glasses at his secretary of defense, Macklin said, “So, let’s have it, Pete. The good, the bad, and the ugly.”
Adair, a former Green Beret who loved high-stakes poker and skeet shooting, placed his mug on the coffee table and looked up. “Overall, we had many well-executed, successful strikes. The Air Force as well as Lincoln and Vinson destroyed all of their assigned objectives, but the latter lost a Rhino.”
Macklin frowned at the mention of a downed Super Hornet. “SAM?”