Stand by for missile launch.” The SAFE IN RANGE light began blinking — the missile countdown would hold until he rolled wings-level. “Verify launch mode in auto.”
“It’s in auto,” Mace replied.
“Forty degrees to roll-out,” Parsons said. “Stand by on missile launch. Stand by on bomb doors. Check cockpit lights up full and PLZT down. Close the curtains.”
No one knew for sure what it would be like to fly in the vicinity of a modern-day nuclear explosion. There would be no fallout and less total energy released, but the effects on a “hardened” jet aircraft were just impossible to predict. They had had briefings on EMP and blast-shockwave effects, and they had their game plan laid out — radar fixpoints to re-initialize the navigation computers if they dumped, which circuit breakers to pull if the flight control computers went haywire, even small radiation dosimeters taped next to their skin to check for the amount of radiation they had been exposed to. They had lowered their special PLZT (Polarized Lead-Zirconium-Titanate) goggles in place and checked to make sure they were operating. PLZT goggles were electronic visors that would instantaneously darken to protect their eyes from serious damage from a nuclear flash. The PLZT goggles were like wide, bug-eyed sunglasses, so Mace and Parsons had turned up the cockpit lights not only to see the instruments before the burst, but to help see them after the burst as their eyes readjusted.
They had metal curtains and shields to cover the canopy and windscreen, and just seconds before roll-out they unclipped the curtains and pulled them across the canopies, then raised the windscreen shields and locked them into place. They were flying blind now. Every bit of skin was covered — gloves were on, collars were pulled up, zippers were up and tight; their oxygen supply was turned off to prevent any chance of fire; and their shoulder straps and lap belts were as tight as they could make them. One of the last items on the checklist was to shut the radios off to prevent the EMP from traveling through the energized external antennas and frying the electronic circuits. He reached down to his CDU to set all the radios to OFF—
— and just then the SATCOM RCV light blinked on the forward instrument panel and the thermal printer clattered to life. Mace heard it and gasped aloud. “Jesus fucking Christ, Bob, a SATCOM message.”
“Coming up on missile launch.”
Mace waited an interminable, spine-tingling thirty seconds for the printer to finish, then tore a long strip of thermal printer paper out of the printer, his hands and lap filled with decoding documents. He ran down the phonetic names one by one against the correct page of the decoding book. “Actual message … all Eighth Air Force units … I’ve got a SATCOM message for us, Bob.”
The F-111G bomber rolled wings-level, and the SAFE IN RANGE light stayed on steady. “Screw it, Mace. The missile’s gone. Turn off the radios, lower your PLZT goggles, and stand by on bomb doors.”
THREE
It was a termination message. He knew it was, without even decoding it. The clear-text messages were for real, meant to warn them that the termination order was on the way. The Pentagon, the White House, did not want them to launch this missile.
He knew what he was doing was wrong — until he decoded the message and authenticated it, he was obligated to carry out his current orders and launch the SRAM, but Mace didn’t feel he had a choice. He reached down to the weapons control panel and moved the bomb-door mode switch from AUTO to CLOSE.
When the SAFE IN RANGE light stopped blinking, the AGM-131X missile computer activated the MSL POWER light, and it began blinking as inertial guidance information was transferred from aircraft to missile. It took only two-tenths of a second for a complete computer dump; then the computer would command the bomb doors to open. The MSL POWER light continued to blink as the computer tried to open the bomb doors, but Mace had seen to those. The computer could not override the position of the bomb-door switch. It would wait about thirty seconds for the doors to respond; then the computer would automatically shut down the first missile, power up the second missile, and attempt to launch it. By then Mace thought he would have the message authenticated with Parsons, and he would either allow the second missile to launch automatically or just manually power it down.
But he had to decode this new message.
The timer in Parsons’ brain ran out: “Standing by on bomb doors… safe-in-range light steady … doors … check doors, Mace …” He looked over to his radar navigator and saw him, his PLZT goggles off and his shoulder straps loosened, furiously checking data from the SATCOM printer. His lap and glareshield were full of decoding documents. “What in hell are you doing?” Parsons screamed.
“We got a SATCOM message. I’m decoding it.”
“Why didn’t the bomb doors open? Why didn’t the missile launch?”
“I got the doors closed until I—”
“You what?” Parsons screamed. He leaned over and saw the bomb-door mode switch. “Are you crazy? Have you lost your mind? Open those damn bomb doors now! That’s a damned order!”
“I know it’s a recall order, Bob,” Mace said, pleading with his aircraft commander. “I know it is. It’ll just take me a second.”
“Dammit, I’ll have you fucking court-martialed! Open those—”
On the computer control panel, the MSL POWER light stopped blinking and the red MASTER MAL and MSL MAL lights came on. At the same time, the SAFE IN RANGE light on Parsons’ panel went out — and he knew why. Since they were doing an “over-the-shoulder” SRAM launch, they had been flying away from the target. Now, thirty seconds past the launch point, they were out of range. They would not get a SAFE IN RANGE light unless they turned back toward the target — and now all of the Iraqi air defense units on the ground were alerted to their presence and ready for them.
“Jesus, Mace,” Parsons cried out, “we lost the safe-in-range light! We have to turn back.”
“Just wait,” Mace argued. “If this is a recall message, we don’t have to turn.”
“And if it’s not a recall, we have to fly over that infantry formation out there again,” Parsons said. He snapped open his PLZT goggles and opened the flashblindness curtains on his left-side canopy with an angry wave of his hand, scanning carefully for any more enemy SAMs coming at them before jabbing an angry finger at his radar navigator. “You son of a bitch, you fucked up big-time. Your flying career is history, Mace. You chickened out and screwed up. I’m coming left. We’ll launch the second missile as soon as we get a safe-in-range light — no over-the-shoulder launch this time. Make sure the second missile is powered up and ready to—”
Mace saw it out Parsons’ left cockpit canopy, a bright burst of light from the ground, a stream of yellow fire, and a bright ball of light spiraling right toward them, and screamed “Shit! SA-7! Break left!” The large spot of light with a long, bright yellow tail climbed over Parsons’ canopy sill, then descended straight at the hot leading edge of the F-111G’s left wing.
The warhead of the SA-13 man-portable SAM is only two point two pounds, but the explosive energy is directed forward into a round cylinder designed to punch a hole through titanium- and ceramic-armored attack helicopters — against glass, thin steel, and aluminum, it found little resistance. The left cockpit canopy shattered, the entire left side of the windscreen disintegrated, and the blast blew a three-foot hole in the left side of the bomber just aft of Parsons’ seat.
Parsons’ steel seat took the entire force of the explosion, but the sheets of shattered Plexiglas windscreen battered his body, and the sudden force of the six-hundred-mile-per-hour windblast drove him unconscious and almost ripped his left arm out of its socket. The only thing holding his shattered body in the plane was a few bits of metal and the remnants of his right shoulder-harness strap.