“What do you mean, good job?” Seaver asked as he leveled off and pulled the throttles to normal power settings. “What did I do?”
“Later,” Patrick said. “Okay, crew, let’s go back and get those launchers back there.”
“What? Now you want us to bomb those targets? Why didn’t we do that be—” But Rinc stopped his protests as the lightbulb finally popped on in his brain, and he turned back to the first target. At 32,000 feet, the altitude he had climbed to when he stopped the chase on the test rocket, the JDAM satellite-guided bombs could glide over fifteen miles. As fast as the rotary launcher could spit them out, the JDAMs dropped into space.
A few minutes later, after clearing off to the voice SATCOM channel, Patrick reported, “Good work, everyone. Three good hits, all within thirty feet, which is pretty good for JDAM. One bomb hit within ten feet — a shack. Only one was the launcher, but the other three were simulated maintenance and crew vehicles — legitimate targets in anybody’s book. Let’s head back to the orbit area.”
“Okay, General, what was that climb for?” Rinc asked as he started a turn back for the patrol anchor. “We gonna chase rockets now?”
“Just wanted to distract you a little.”
“If I can speak freely, General sir — bullshit,” he said. “You don’t just want to go after launchers — you want to go after missiles too! Tell us, General — do we have a weapon that can take down a ballistic missile? You got a weapon you can put on a Bone that’ll take down a ballistic missile?”
“No comment.”
“So you don’t work for the Air Force chief of staff, do you, sir?” Long asked. “You work for some R and D unit — maybe even for the supersecret squirrels down there at Dreamland, huh?”
“Time out, all of you. That’s the last we talk about any of this,” Patrick warned. “You say a word about this to anyone outside this airframe, and your life will turn into an endless maze of courtrooms, lawyers, investigators, and maximum security cells. Do you all understand?”
“Fine, fine, General,” Rinc said. “Now tell us: What do you have in mind? What’s the mod? Is this what Block G is going to do? You gotta tell—”
“Hey!” Ollie shouted as the crew heard a slow-paced deedle deedle deedle tone on interphone. He had to remember to key the mike switch in his excitement: “SA-4 up.” The SA-4 “Ganef” is a mobile high-altitude SAM, an older system, but still deadly to any aircraft flying higher than five or six hundred feet. “Better get our asses down, boys!”
“Not quite yet,” Patrick said. “Max range of an SA-4 is fifty miles, but lethal range is about twenty miles, so we should be safe — they’ll wait until we get well within lethal range. They can see us up here, but they won’t attack yet. Let’s make the SA-4 our next target. Ollie, keep on feeding us position data.”
“Okay,” Warren said. “Rodeo, right ninety degrees, target at thirty miles.” Rinc made a tight turn and rolled out precisely on heading.
“Right five degrees, twenty-nine miles… okay, dead ahead, twenty-eight miles.”
“Stand by.” Long moved his cursor control out the proper amount, then adjusted the gain and brightness controls to tune out the terrain features on the radar-scope. He then moved his cross hairs onto the largest radar return still on the radar image. “I’m going to take a patch. Left fifty, pilot,” he ordered. Rinc made the turn. With the target offset the proper amount, Long was able to take a high-resolution “patch” of it, then examine the magnified image. “There it is. Pretty good look at an SA-4 Ganef SAM.”
“Cool!” Warren exclaimed, straining over to look. It didn’t actually look like much — just a group of boxes — but on one box, the upraised missiles could clearly be seen. “Hey, that’s pretty neat.”
“I’ve got the coordinates loaded… bombing computers are programming JDAM… programming complete,” Long announced. “Okay, pilot, steering is good to the release point. Give me Mach point nine, right turn to the release point, stand by for countermeasures and evasive action.”
No sooner had Rinc shoved in the throttles to full military power and finished the turn than the threat-warning receiver issued another alert tone, this one a faster-paced deedledeedledeedle. “Missile warning,” Warren called out. “Pilot, stand by for maneuvers…” Then they heard another warning tone, and Warren watched as the left chaff dispenser counter clicked. “Missile launch! Break right!”
Seaver reacted instantly, yanking the control stick hard right and pulling, waiting until their speed had slowed to cornering velocity, then rolling out and shoving in full afterburner again to regain their speed.
“Should we go low?” Rinc shouted on interphone.
“Uplink down… height finder down… SA-4 back in search,” Warren said.
“If we descend, we’ll have to fly closer to the target,” Long said. “Stay up here. Center up, steering is good. Twenty seconds to release. If we get another launch, pilot, we have to stay wings-level until bomb’s away. Don’t turn until I tell you. Fifteen sec—”
Another warning tone. “Missile alert! Height finder up!” Warren shouted.
“Hold heading! Ten… doors coming open.” The rumble of the doors was not as loud as before, since with a JDAM bomb release from the rotary launcher, the bomb doors needed to open only halfway.
Another warning tone. “Missile launch!” Warren shouted, reading the blinking alert message on his multifunction display. “Chaff! Chaff!”
“Hold heading!” Long shouted. Ollie swore and hit the CHAFF EJECT button as fast as he could. Chaff bundles shot out of the ejectors atop the forward part of the fuselage, creating a larger cloud of radar-decoying metal slivers that ballooned the radar cross section of the B-1 several hundred times. “Bomb away! Doors closed! Pilot, scram left! Clear to descend!”
Rinc immediately started a hard turn and hit the TERFLW button on his autopilot control — but he didn’t wait for the computer to point the nose earthward, he rolled the B-1 nearly inverted. The terrain-following fail-safe fly-up system immediately pulled the B-1’s nose downward, and the Bone plummeted to earth.
Seaver jammed the throttles to idle and popped the spoilers to try to slow down while descending at the same time. He kept the bomber nearly inverted until the nose was over forty degrees below the horizon, then pulled the pitch interrupt trigger to temporarily disconnect the autopilot. But when he tried to roll upright, nothing happened. He shook the stick, pulled it in every direction — the nose stayed down, airspeed kept on decreasing, and the earth was rushing up to meet them in a hurry.
“Five thousand to level, pilot,” Patrick warned. “Check your attitude.”
Rinc pulled the pitch interrupt trigger all the way to disconnect the autopilot, then tried the controls again. Nothing. He shoved in full military power and tried to roll wings-level — nothing. He swept the wings forward right to the airspeed limit “barber pole”—still nothing. No stick control at all.
#x201C;Four thousand!” Patrick shouted. “Pilot, roll out!”
“Can’t!” Rinc said. “I got no roll response!”
“Three thousand!”
Patrick tried his own control stick — still no response. “We’re mushing… no response… we’re in a full stall, dammit… we got the nose down and mil power and we’re in a full damned stall… What in hell’s happened?”
“Two thousand!” Long shouted. “Seaver, you motherfucker, you got it? You got it?”
Rinc reached over with his left hand and hit the PREPARE TO EJECT switch. A yellow warning light illuminated over every crew station.