Lacrosse was the code word for the top-secret synthetic aperture radars that cruised hundreds of miles over hostile territory, penetrating clouds and darkness, plucking minute mobile targets from difficult geographic backgrounds. The newest birds had a real-time data link that dumped high-priority targets directly to the bombers in flight. It was the only hope for tracking down the dreaded SS-25 and SS-24 mobile ICBMs featured in the Russians’ arsenal.
The Russians obviously knew about Lacrosse. Their bag of tricks contained counters and decoys, anything to trip up a bomber crew. For the Russians, fake launcher trains and dummy mobile missile launchers, inflatable SAM sites, and armored vehicles were standard fare. Not to mention the thousands of surreptitious transponders and signal generators bombarding the airwaves with a symphony of bogus electronic emissions designed to overload US ESM gear. But today those airwaves were silent.
Ledermeyer drew a blank. “Negative, Buck. They won’t transmit until the first bombers make landfall. No sense giving the ASATs a frequency to home in on.”
Joe looked up from a crumpled navigational chart, worried. He had been mentally rehearsing alternate mission routes, measuring the total flight distance to Turkey, and then calculating fuel consumption. The answer always came back the same — a slim chance of making the distance. He looked over at the boss.
“Maybe the Mainstays were caught on the ground, Buck. We could come up in altitude for a couple hundred miles and save a hell of a lot of fuel. The interceptors are blind without the Mainstays.”
Buck frowned. The same idea had momentarily crossed his mind.
“We’ll stick to the plan,” he said curtly. He felt like a fat duck flying straight toward a well-concealed hunting blind.
The Obskaya Guba or Gulf of Ob suddenly sprang into view, the bright sunlight masking the long, flat shoreline. The plane was grossly out of position, screaming over the flat earth toward SAM sites protecting the Russian homeland from the twin shores. At over six hundred knots, Buck had only an instant to override the autopilot, pop up, and veer sharply to port to line up on the channel centerline. He eased back to one hundred feet after the hasty maneuver.
“You jackass,” he scolded himself. “We could have flown over some damn air-defense radar.”
“Shit, I could have sworn we were dead on track,” answered Joe.
“Take a GPS fix and update the autopilot. I don’t want that to happen again.” Buck settled back in his ejection seat, shaken and embarrassed. Hopefully, flying over the water would give them another half an hour of peace from radars blinded by excessive sea return. Problem was, there weren’t any radars, at least according to the ESM gear. Their state-of-the art avionics would carry them only so far. Buck knew that. Human skill and instinct, and the human emotions that came with the package, would make or break the mission. Since the days of the first air combat in World War I, it had always been the same; brave men with unflagging determination had won the day.
The time ticked by, the water becoming less green and choppy in this protective finger. The featureless shores in the distance continued to sparkle and gleam in the afternoon sun.
Twenty-five minutes down the chute, Jefferson screamed into the intercom.
“Mainstays! Two of ’em! Bearing 030 and 270. Signal strength strong. Shit, they’ve got to be right on top of us.”
“God dammit,” shouted Buck, fumbling at the controls. “The bastards were lying in the weeds.” His mind raced for an answer. Sure as shit, they’d been detected, and within minutes, the interceptors would swoop down from above to blow them out of the sky. He cursed himself for being so stupid, so predictable. Ivan now had the upper hand. Well, he wouldn’t make it easy, not by a long shot.
“Ledermeyer, stand by for a SRAM shot.”
“Against an air target? We won’t hit anything.” The offensive weapons officer panicked. Mentally, he wasn’t ready. He had only seconds to ramp up.
“Just do it. We don’t have time to screw around.”
Buck banked hard to starboard, hugging the ground, leaving the shimmering Gulf trailing in the distance. He lined the bomber’s nose on the 270 degree Mainstay bearing, praying the fighters had already received an intercept vector and were committed for their initial pass. Jefferson worked feverishly, manipulating the sensitive defensive avionics, sucking up the Mainstay’s radar energy, massaging the pulses, instantaneously reradiating the subtly shifted waveforms. Hopefully, the Mainstay’s range gate would wander, feeding erroneous data into the Russians’ highly centralized air-defense network. As a last resort, Buck could shift to active jamming. Black boxes crammed within the fuselage could randomly flood the airwaves or selectively attack a range of Russian sensor frequencies.
“Where the hell are you going, Buck?” asked Joe.
“Heading straight for the Mainstay. Then we’ll break southwest for the northern-most point of the Urals. Maybe we can bluff them into thinking we’re heading west.”
“Foxhound!” exclaimed Jefferson excitedly. The Russian fighter had delayed turning on his look-down/shoot-down Pulse Doppler radar for maximum surprise, relying on the Mainstay’s directions. Chaff dispensers and IR decoy flares spit out in rapid succession from the bomber’s fuselage. It was all happening too fast.
“Bearing?” shouted Buck, glancing over his left shoulder. Before Jefferson could answer, a glistening silver blur blasted down their port side, one thousand feet overhead. The Foxhound’s fire-control radar disappeared from Jefferson’s scope. Two air-to-air missiles, shot out of pure desperation, drifted off into the distance, leaving white smoke trails that quickly dissipated in the wind.
“Totally out of position,” crowed Joe. “He’ll never get another shot.”
“Yeah, but they got us cold,” Buck reminded him.
“Foxhound to starboard. Radar’s locked on!” Jefferson was working his gear like a madman. More chaff dispensers spewed forth.
Buck jerked the bomber upward to break-lock.
“Missile launch!”
The second Foxhound had anticipated the course change and was dead on their ass. A pair of air-to-air missiles, released seconds apart, streaked toward them, the white exhaust trails signaling an excellent shot. Jefferson frantically switched to pulse jamming and simultaneously began ejecting white-hot flares to confuse any IR seekers. Cranking the B-1B hard through 180 degrees, the first missile passed three hundred feet to stern, trailing-off harmlessly. The second followed by half a mile. A last minute midcourse correction sent it close to starboard, detonating in an intense reddish-yellow fireball that partially engulfed the right wingtip of the B-1B. Hot shrapnel from the fragmentation warhead pierced the wing, puncturing fuel tanks and scattering metal fragments throughout the forward fuselage.
The concussion snapped the plane to port. Portions of the front windscreen shattered, cutting visibility. Dazed, Buck shook off the worst effects and nursed the wounded bomber back to base course, once again dropping low. Blending into the protective ground clutter before either Foxhound could regroup and re-attack was their only chance for survival.
“Damage report!”
“My God,” gasped Ledermeyer, “Jefferson’s hit. His shoulder’s torn up bad.” He could barely be heard over the rushing wind generated by the irregular holes punched by the warhead’s razor-sharp fragments. Ledermeyer released his harness and hunched over, tending his gravely wounded comrade. Jefferson lay limp against the bulkhead, his head lifelessly bouncing each time the plane pitched upward. Ledermeyer peeled back the blood-soaked flight suit, only to see a gaping chest wound. He recoiled in horror.
“Shit!” he panted. “His whole chest is torn open.”
Buck suffered silently, forcing himself to focus on the brownish-gray ground zipping by at an incredible six hundred knots. He loved Jefferson like a brother.