Ground crew cleared the immediate area as the Pratt & Whitney turbofan wound up to an angry howl, the cockpit canopy closing the men inside their pressurised cocoon as Thorne built up for take off as quickly as the cold engine would allow. He ran a last minute check on his systems and made sure all were functioning correctly, which they were, and couldn’t help but dwell on the digital readout listing the B83 bomb beneath his belly as he cycled through his weapons on his instrument panel’s CRT display. Hal had checked and activated the device following its mounting beneath his fuselage, and all that was required now was for him to arm it as he turned into a final approach to target. Once he designated a specific target on his ground attack radar, the aircraft’s automated delivery systems would do most of the work.
Thorne pushed his throttle forward to full power, keeping his eyes on his readouts as the F-35E started to roll forward. He caught sight of Eileen then in his peripheral vision, standing a dozen metres away to his right and watching with a terrible expression of fear on her face. He turned his head just once, their eyes met, and he gave a reassuring, characteristic grin as he raised his hand in a gesture that was half wave, half joking salute. He hoped it helped make her feel better in some way… it hadn’t done much for him. In seconds, the F-35E Lightning II was powering along the strip in a short take-off run and leaped nimbly into the air, clawing its way into the sky as its undercarriage folded away beneath its fuselage. Another minute and they were heading south at 10,000 metres, Thorne in radio contact with the Extender and quickly catching her up.
The flight down the western coast of the British Isles took slightly more than an hour, the fighter and tanker cruising easily at high-altitude and in loose formation. Thorne would occasionally break away to complete a few full circuits of the area, checking with his active and passive radar systems for any threat, but none materialised, and German ground radar was unlikely to pick them up so far west of the continent.
They refuelled high over the Irish Sea, the dark waters completely invisible below, and spent nervous minutes connected to the long boom beneath the tail of the KC-10A as it pumped vital jet fuel back into the Lightning’s emptying internal tanks. Trumbull watched intently throughout the whole of the tense business, asking questions only when absolutely necessary and respecting Thorne’s need for concentration: it was a manoeuvre the man had only carried out a few times, and never before at night.
With tanks filled once more, they bid the Extender farewell as the F-35E turned east and the tanker flew on to the south-west and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. Thorne and Trumbull were now ‘on their own’, and he immediately took the Lightning down to very low level and engaged the aircraft’s autopilot. The jet’s computers took over and implemented the mission’s pre-programmed flight plan, turning them onto a south-easterly course and heading for the first preset waypoint fifty kilometres due west of Abbeville and the French coast. At no time did the aircraft stray above 200 metres as it hurtled through the darkness at a steady 500 knots: approximately 925km/hr.
The flight path took them low past the Welsh coast and then south of Liverpool, down the mouth of the River Dee before crossing into England. Terrain-following-radar kept the aircraft just a few dozen metres above the surface of the earth as they thundered on, the howl of the engine the only evidence of their passing as they hurtled on in complete darkness. At such low altitude, the landscape was clear enough below them in the light of a newly-risen moon that was almost full, and the sight of the ground rushing past so quickly was breathtaking indeed.
The jet crossed the East Sussex coast north of Brighton and slipped out across the southern reaches to the Channel, the unbroken surface of the water glistening in the moonlight as the Lightning flew on. Thorne had brought along his iPod as usual, and a selection of instantly forgotten tracks had played softly in the background of a journey during which there was surprisingly little conversation between the two men. Thorne kept his eyes squarely on his instruments, alert for any possible threat, and the mood was tense and serious. Although Trumbull didn’t completely understand the magnitude of what they were about to do, he clearly recognised how much it meant to the man in the cockpit ahead of him, and he was therefore content to sit back and silently take everything in.
Six minutes into their flight across The Channel, the F-35E’s autopilot decided it had reached Waypoint One and automatically turned the craft sharply onto a course due east without any change to their incredibly low altitude.
“Stay alert, Alec,” Thorne remarked softly over the intercom, “we’re only about ten minutes to target now, and things might get a bit rough after the drop.”
“Are we in danger of being damaged by the bomb ourselves?” Trumbull asked slowly, carefully considering the question before asking it.
“There’s some danger… but not a lot, all things considered,” Thorne admitted. “We’ll be climbing to about three thousand feet to acquire the target and then make the drop. The bomb itself is retarded by a parachute that will bring its rate of descent down to around seventy feet per second after release, which should give us about forty seconds to get clear. I’ll be able to push this thing past 700 knots after the drop, meaning we should be able to put almost ten miles between us and the target before it detonates.” Converting to imperial measurements for Trumbull’s benefit wasn’t difficult — Thorne was old enough to remember the system himself well enough as a child before Australia had really converted to metric — and he could pretty much make the calculations on the fly. “At that distance, we’ll probably still get battered around in the air a bit as the blast washes past us, and it’ll light up the sky behind us like a bitch, but I’m hoping we’ll be safe enough… assuming this ‘old girl’ holds together okay.”
“Why wouldn’t it…?”
“Well, this particular aircraft is actually a bit of a mock up,” Thorne explained quickly with a shrug. “Something Lockheed kinda ‘threw together’ at the request of Hindsight itself. There are really only three models of F-35 — the ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ variants, of which all are single-seat aircraft, and the ‘B-model’ is the only one capable of vertical take off and landing. The ‘E’ at the end of this aircraft’s designation is really just an indication that it’s an experimental prototype. There was already some talk at the time that the Israelis and a few other nations were interested in a two-seat variant, so Lockheed was more than happy for us to help fund a one-off test model for the conversion.” At no stage did it occur to Thorne that Trumbull had no knowledge whatsoever of the modern Realtime nation of Israel. “That was something that also suited our peculiar needs.” He shrugged again. “So far, she’s been operating fine, but there wasn’t really much time for proper testing under high stress loads, and I’m not sure how she’ll handle the kind of hammering we’re likely to get from a nuclear blast. Fortunately, being a ground burst at least, the EMP won’t bother us at that distance.”