The Plateau d’Albion lay east of the southern French city of Avignon, in the Haute-Provence. On one side of the plateau, the ground rose sharply, climbing to meet the first foothills of the Alps. To the west, it fell away into the vineyard-laced Rhone Valley.
The plateau was home to the silos housing eighteen intermediate-range ballistic missiles — the land-based component of the French strategic nuclear forces. Organized in two squadrons of nine missiles, each S3 IRBM carried a single 1.2-megaton warhead and had a range of nearly 2,200 miles. One hit could turn a city the size of Moscow or London into a charred, radioactive ruin. Determined to preserve their nation’s strategic independence and status as a world power, successive French governments had spent billions of francs building, maintaining, and periodically upgrading its “force of last resort.”
They spent hundreds of millions more protecting their investment from ground or air attack. Bunkers and minefields ringed the missile complex, manned by soldiers wearing the large midnight-blue berets of the 27th Mountain Division. Batteries of Roland and Improved Hawk surface-to-air missile launchers were deployed to provide a last-ditch defense against enemy air raids. But the IRBMs’ main protection came from the underground silos themselves — layer after layer of heavily reinforced concrete hardened against nuclear attack.
Battery A’s electronics van was parked under camouflage netting a short distance away from its trailer-mounted target acquisition radar. Its crew had the van’s door open to catch the remnants of a gentle night breeze tinged with the aromatic smell of pine and eucalyptus. Three triple-rail Hawk launchers surrounded the van and radar trailer.
“There they are again, sir,” the sergeant manning the SAM battery’s radar console announced with some reluctance. “The same bearing as before, but closer.”
Captain Claude Jussey sighed and set the technical manual he’d been studying aside. By rights, the tall, lantern-jawed officer thought wearily, he should be in bed, not sitting inside this crowded van watching men watching blank radar screens. Unfortunately, ever since the Americans and British began bombing targets in northern France and Germany, periodic drills and false alarms had been cutting into his sleep time. He rolled his chair closer to the console. “Where?”
“It’s gone again.” The sergeant sounded frustrated. He was a man who liked dealing in certainties and right now he seemed to be seeing ghosts. “I can’t seem to get a solid return, just faint sparkles that fade to nothing in the next second.”
He sat up suddenly. “There! You see them?”
Jussey blinked, not sure whether he had or not. The radar traces had flickered out so fast — literally from one second to the next. Was there a glitch in the target acquisition program? Or was there really something out there? Something able to absorb or deflect the radar pulses striking it? Would the Americans risk their precious stealth aircraft this far from England?
Irritation turned to unease. He lifted the direct line link to the central Air Defense Command center.
Outside the van, a bomb fell through the night sky. Seconds from impact, the Paveway III sensor rigged on the bomb’s nose “saw” the laser light illuminating its target and fed a series of guidance commands to fins at the back. The 2,000-pound GBU-24 veered, settling onto a slightly different course while still falling.
“Command Center.”
Jussey kept his eyes on the glowing radar display, noticing the faint sparkles again. “A Battery here, we have a possible air contact bearing…”
The electronics van exploded — torn apart by a massive blast that threw fragments over a wide area and left the mangled wreck ablaze. Jussey, his sergeant, and the five other men inside died instantly.
Within seconds, the 5th Air Defense Regiment’s other SAM batteries met the same fate — obliterated by a perfectly timed and perfectly aimed salvo of laser-guided bombs.
Six miles away and six thousand feet above the plateau, twelve very odd-looking aircraft banked north. Black against a pitch-black sky, they were extremely hard to see with the naked eye. More important, the U.S. Air Force 45th Tactical Fighter Wing’s F-117A stealth fighters were practically invisible to enemy radar.
Radar-absorbent materials and mesh screens over their engine intakes helped reduce each jet’s radar signature, but the real stealth secret lay in its strangely shaped fuselage and wings. Each F-117 was made up of a series of small flat surfaces, or facets, angled in different directions. Radar pulses striking each plane could only bounce back from those few sections aimed straight at the radar set itself. In flight, no facet would ever point toward a given radar for very long. So the aircraft would literally “appear and disappear” in seconds — confusing search radar crews and making it almost impossible for SAM and antiaircraft gun fire control sets to lock on.
In 1991 America’s stealth technology had proved itself in the skies over Iraq. Now, seven years later, it was proving itself over France.
With their mission accomplished, the twelve F-117As headed home for a base in southern England. Behind them, the door to the Plateau d’Albion missile complex lay wide open and unguarded.
If the men aboard the big, lumbering E-3 Sentry AWACS plane were nervous about being so far inside French airspace, they were hiding it well, Brigadier General Robert Keller decided. The voices coming through his headphones were remarkably steady.
He looked up from the radar repeater display at his command station. Rows of equipment consoles crammed the converted 707’s interior, each manned by a U.S. Air Force officer or enlisted man. From time to time, their hands moved, adjusting settings or fine-tuning controls, but mostly the operators stayed still — keeping their eyes glued to the glowing displays in front of them. All told, they were responsible for coordinating the movements of more than eighty U.S. aircraft.
One of his strike controllers came over the intercom circuit. “Lion Tamer exiting the target area. The SAMs are down.”
Here we go, Keller thought, tensing. The stealth fighters had done their work. Now it was up to the rest of his strike force to finish the job. Reports began pouring over the intercom in a rapid, precise sequence:
“SpaceCom confirms Keyhole will be up in five.” The general nodded to himself. One of America’s KH-11 spy satellites would be coming over the target area horizon in five minutes — ready to transmit high-resolution pictures back to the photo interpreters in Washington. For this strike, realtime BDA, bomb damage assessment, was critical. They couldn’t afford to leave any undamaged missiles behind.
“Pile Driver, Strongman, High Wire, and Freak Show are all in position.” The strike’s attack aircraft, fighter escorts, SIGINT, and jammer support planes were ready, Keller clicked the transmit button on his throat mike. “All Circus units, this is Ringmaster. Initiate attack!”
The cluster of blips on the radar display representing his strike force surged ahead. The general watched carefully, alert for any last-second hitch or unexpected enemy move. But his eyes kept straying to the second hand sweeping around a clock mounted next to the display. Since no one knew how the French National Command Authority would react to the threatened destruction of its precious missile force, no one could rule out a French decision to launch their nuclear missiles under attack.
If Paris gave its commanders the order to fire, Keller’s planes would have just two hundred seconds to destroy the silos before the first S3 IRBMs roared aloft.