… Yeah, too easy! He was within twenty miles and had this guy locked up for almost thirty seconds, and he hadn’t made one maneuver yet. His threat-warning receiver must’ve been screeching in his ears loud enough to deafen him! The lead F-15 pilot noticed the target had accelerated, but only to about four hundred knots — at least two to three hundred knots slower than he expected! What in hell was going on?
“Bullrider, this is Avalanche,” the AWACS radar controller announced, “bogey number one has started a very rapid descent, heading down at thirty thousand feet per minute and accelerating to five hundred knots… he’s descending below angels ten, now at six hundred knots. He’s crossing over to your seven o’clock, forty miles. Suggest you break off your attack on bogey two and take vectors to bogey one.”
Son of a bitch! the lead F-15 pilot swore into his oxygen mask. They did a double switch — they put the faker down low, and they put the real bomber up high. He had to go get the bomber before it got to terrain-following altitudes — the B-1 was difficult to chase and almost impossible to get a radar lock on once it tucked itself deep into the valleys at treetop level. But the tanker was less than fifteen miles away — an easy target and a lot of points. Losing a tanker in a two-week-long battle meant the B-1 squadron couldn’t do a lot of their normal-length patrols.
“Billy, this is lead, you got me in sight?” the F-15 lead pilot asked.
“Rog.”
“You get the guy down low. I’ll clear off to the left and go get the bomber.”
It would’ve made more sense for the guy on the perch to go after the bomber, but bagging a B-1 was a better prize, and he was the leader. “Roger, lead. I’ve got a visual on you. You’re clear to the south.”
“Lead’s breaking left. Avalanche, this is Bullrider One, I’ll take a vector to bogey one. Bullrider Two is going to nab bogey two.”
“Roger, Bullrider.” There was a touch of irritation in the AWACS controller’s voice. It was a hazardous maneuver. His job was to bring aircraft together — preferably in a position where the good guy can kill the bad guy. It was not typically his job to separate aircraft. But he monitored the formation split, made sure the two F-15s were far enough away from each other as they maneuvered around to get pointed at their respective targets. At their combined speed, even twice the normal separation distance — ten miles each — gave them only six seconds to react to a collision situation.
The second F-15 pilot was a little miffed that he was given the “easy” kill, the tanker, but a kill was a kill. He’d get max points if he moved right in for a gun kill and didn’t waste any missiles — he didn’t even have to use his radar. As he pointed his fighter’s nose down, he picked up speed and closed the distance quickly. Man, that tanker was low! Those crews must be sweating bullets, flying below ridgeline level like that!
Finally, at four miles’ distance, he could see his quarry. Actually, he saw the tanker’s shadow first — big, slow, and highlighted against the dry brown rocky hills occasionally broken up by dirty white snow, it was easy. “Avalanche, Bullrider Two tally-ho.” The AIM-9M Sidewinder heat-seeking missile simulator he carried growled its lock-on warning. “Bullrider Two tracking heat.”
“Copy, Bullrider Two, good heater.”
“Rog. Withholding. Closing in for guns…”
“They took the bait,” Patrick said. He was watching the profile of the attack on his threat profile display, which showed all of the “players” in the range. “They broke off from Two-Zero and they’re going after the tanker.”
“Both of them?” Rinc Seaver asked.
“Yep… stand by. No, one’s going after Two-Zero, the other’s going after the tanker.”
“Aces, this is lead, looks like one’s after you,” Seaver radioed to Rebecca Furness on the interplane frequency.
“Roger. We’re heading for mother earth. Looks like our tanker’s had it, though,” Rebecca responded.
“We can’t let the tanker get nailed,” Rinc Seaver said on interphone. “We won’t lose Damage Expectancy points if he gets shot down, but…”
“But we lose a tanker,” Patrick said. “They might not want to play with us anymore if we keep on sending them out to get shot down.”
“Lock up that fighter air-to-air, Long Dong,” Rinc said. “Put him in rendezvous mode.” Patrick looked over at Rinc in surprise. Long reconfigured his attack radar to rendezvous mode, which was exactly like an F-16 fighter’s radar’s air intercept mode, and in a few seconds he had the F-15 Eagle locked up. The pilot’s Horizontal Situation Display now showed a set of cross hairs — keep the cross hairs centered, and eventually they’d smack into the fighter.
“Steering is good, Rodeo. He’s low and slow, closing in on our tanker.”
“Not for long,” Rinc said. He turned the bomber westward and cobbed the throttles to max afterburner.
“What’s the plan, Seaver?” Patrick asked.
“No one chases one of our tankers, sir,” Rinc Seaver said. He turned toward him, and Patrick could see his eyes dancing with excitement and evil. “No one messes with Aces High…”
It took only a few more moments. The tanker — a KC-135R Stratotanker, leaving a trail of black smoke several miles long as it struggled around the craggy hills — couldn’t maneuver very well way down here. It was almost like closing in for an aerial refueling rendezvous — the pilot felt like calling “Stabilized precontact and ready,” as if he was ready to move in and plug in for gas. Instead, he called, “Avalanche, Bullrider Two, visual contact on bogey two, a KC-135 Stratobladder, looks like California Air Reserves. Closing in for guns.”
“Roger, Bullrider,” the AWACS controller responded, “we copy your—” He broke off and shouted frantically, “Bullrider Two, Bullrider Two, pop-up bogey at your three o’clock low, low, low, range nine miles, airspeed eight-zero-zero, collision alert, collision alert!”
In a panic the pilot searched out the right side of his cockpit canopy. But before he could spot it, it was right in front of him—a B-1B Lancer bomber, wings swept all the way back, in what looked like a tight ninety-degree left bank. The F-15 pilot thought he could see the bomber pilots through their windshield, it was that close! For goddamn sure they were going to collide!
He thought about a quick snap-shot — just squeeze the trigger and hope to hit it — but survival came first. He hauled back on his control stick as hard as he could, then shoved in full afterburners. All he saw for a few seconds was the side of a mountain — and then his nearly blacked-out vision filled with blue sky. He kept the stick pulled back and his fighter’s nose aimed for blue sky for several seconds, not wanting to release the back pressure until he was positive he was away from the ground and the mountains and all low-flying mother-fucking planes. “Fighters were not meant for flying so damned close to the ground, not so close to the ground, not so close to the ground,” he kept on muttering, like a mantra.
It was an illegal maneuver. It had to be. His range to the tanker was less than three miles, seconds before claiming a gun kill. Because this was the first day of the exercise, the ROE stated all opposing aircraft could close to no less than two miles, and closure rates were restricted to less than one thousand knots — no going nose-to-nose over the sound barrier. The F-15 pilot knew the rules, knew the bomber pukes busted the rules, knew he could get the AWACS radar controller to document the entire violation…