The Chinese Sukhoi-33 pilot had just released the trigger on his fighter’s cannon after a three-second burst from the left rear quadrant at about a half-kilometer distance when he saw the big 2,900-pound missile ignite its rocket motor. The missile shot straight ahead, climbed almost straight up, then looped backward and down right toward him! He got off a quick one-second burst at the bomber before dropping decoy chaff and flares and breaking hard right away from the missile and plugging in full afterburner power.
Guided by the Striker’s onboard radar, the Striker missile heeled sharply, ignoring the tiny clouds of chaff dropped by the fighter. With incredible precision, the Striker missile lined up on the Sukhoi-33’s tail and cruised in. The Chinese pilot made a last-ditch dodge to the left, but even the high-performance jet was no match for the speed of the big Striker missile at full thrust. The explosion completely vaporized the fighter — nothing recognizable was left to hit the water.
“I’m blind again,” McLanahan shouted on interphone. He started to roll the trackball across the screen to highlight the target — again, nothing. “I think I lost my system, Nancy,” he said. “I’ll try a reset. Let’s hope this last asshole runs out of gas or—”
Suddenly, Cheshire screamed, “Fighters! Twelve o’clock! Right in front of us! Launching missiles! My God!” She could clearly see the twin trails of air-to-air missiles leaving the wing hardpoints of the plane in front of them, streaking directly toward them — it was as if the missiles were aiming directly for her! It was like watching a demonstration video of an air-to-air-missile launch. Nancy Cheshire closed her eyes and waited for the impact, waited for the explosion, waited for death…
… so she didn’t see the missiles streak just a few dozen yards overhead, past the Megafortress, and hit the last Chinese Sukhoi-33 carrier fighter, seconds before it opened fire on the EB-52 from close range.
When she found herself still alive, Cheshire opened her eyes. There before her, making a graceful left turn to parallel her course, was another EB-52 Megafortress! The second Megafortress, paired with hers, had come off the refueling anchor when the shooting started and had just arrived in the area. “Oh my God, it’s Kelvin and Diane’s crew,” Cheshire breathed. “When the shooting started, I forgot all about them coming on station. They must’ve just come off the tanker and headed right down here when they heard the shooting start.”
“What a beautiful sight,” McLanahan said to Cheshire. He was behind her again, checking on Elliott. “Get on their wing — it looks like they’re headed back to the air refueling anchor.”
“You got it,” Cheshire agreed. “How’s Brad?”
Elliott’s oxygen blinker looked OK, so he was breathing; McLanahan checked for any signs of chest trauma or bleeding, and found nothing. Elliott’s eyes were closed, but when McLanahan gently touched his eyelids, the veteran three-star aviator opened his eyes. “Quit fucking with me, nav,” Elliott groused.
“Are you okay, sir?”
“I feel like I’ve got a two-thousand-pound bomb on my chest,” he responded. “The windblast must’ve knocked the wind outta me.”
“Any other pain? You’re not having a heart attack on me, are you, sir? You took one hell of a slam by that windblast when the cockpit windscreen let go. ”
“Hey, I’ll compare EKGs with you any day, Muck,” Elliott grumbled, trying to sit up against the starboard bulkhead. “We okay?”
“Kelvin Carter showed up and saved our bacon right at the nick of time,” McLanahan said. “We’re on his wing, heading back to the anchor.” Elliott nodded. He looked a little pale, and his oxygen blinker showed a slightly shallow, labored breathing pattern. McLanahan removed a flight glove and tried to take Elliott’s pulse, but he shook McLanahan’s fingers off his wrist. “Get away from me and help Cheshire fly the beast,” Elliott said. “I’m fine. It’s her flying you need to keep an eye on now.” “Har har,” Cheshire said.
“Brad…”
“Get out of my face, nav. I’m fine,” Elliott said.
Deciding that there was nothing more he could do for his friend and aircraft commander now, McLanahan nodded. He retrieved both his and Elliott’s flight jackets and covered the pilot up with them. “I’ll check on you in a few,” he said.
“You better not wake me up trying to play nurse,” Elliott said, giving his young protege a thumbs-up. “Get back to your seat. And Muck… I mean, Patrick?”
“Yeah, Brad?”
“We had to take on those Chinese warships, didn’t we?” Elliott asked. “We had to help defend those ships, didn’t we?” The pain in his eyes was obvious — but whether it was from his injuries or from having doubts about his actions, McLanahan couldn’t tell.
“We had to do something, Brad — we’re not out here flying around for nothing,” McLanahan replied.
The smile in Elliott’s eyes seemed to light up the cockpit, despite the windblast damage. “You’re damned right, Muck,” Elliott breathed behind his oxygen mask. “You’re damned right.”
“Mr. President, there is no one on Capitol Hill more aware of the need for extreme security than me,” the new Senate Majority Leader, Barbara Finegold, said, as the group settled in for the meeting in the White House West Wing’s Cabinet Room, “but eventually you have to release some information to the congressional leadership. Now might be the perfect time to do it.”
“Senator, as I told you before this photo op began, there is nothing else I can tell you,” the President said, with a forced smile. “I have procedures I need to follow too, and I have to wait on the results of the security review. ”
“I see,” Senator Finegold said, letting out an audible exasperated breath. The seating had been rearranged after the press had departed, so now Finegold, the forty-eight-year-old former Los Angeles mayor and third-term senator from California, was seated across from the President, instead of two seats from him as in the official press photos. On her side of the table was House Minority Leader Joseph Crane and several other prominent House and Senate Democrats. Seated to President Martin- dale’s right was Vice President Ellen Whiting, Secretary of Defense Chastain, House Majority Leader Nicholas Gant, Senate Minority Leader Michael Fortier, and White House Chief of Staff Jerrod Hale; on the President’s left was Secretary of State Hartman, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral George Balboa, National Security Advisor Philip Freeman, CIA director Layne W. Moore, and Attorney General Robert M. Procter.
“Great meeting, everyone, thank you,” the President said. Chief of Staff Jerrod Hale stood, a signal for the rest of the President’s advisors to start heading for the door, but the President said, “We have a few minutes more. Any other questions I can answer for anyone?” Hiding his impatience, Hale stood beside the door and listened intently to every word.
“Mr. President, I’m afraid this might require some Senate Arms Services Committee hearings to determine exactly what happened in the Persian Gulf,” Finegold forged on, “and to respond to the question brought up by the media and by several well-known military experts as to exactly how the radar sites in Iran were destroyed. If it’s true that the only way those sites could have been bombed was by an American stealth bomber secretly flying all the way across China and Afghanistan, as has been speculated, I think the congressional leadership needs and has a right to know. ”
“You certainly have the right and the authority to call such hearings,” the President said. Although Kevin Martindale had been successful in regaining the White House by a slim margin, he had not been as successful in helping to keep a majority in the Senate, and Barbara Finegold was a powerful and worthy adversary. Tall, dark, immensely popular, with a fashion models face and figure, she was already being touted as a shoo- in for her party’s presidential nomination in the year 2000, outstripping the former administration’s vice president and a host of other male candidates. “We will cooperate all we can—”