Lt Peterson did not reply.
“Now listen, buddy,” his leader said. “This is a piece of cake. No big thing at all. You just let Dragonfly drive you into the target. Then set up for the AMRAAM shot while he’s still in your face. Remember, shoot, shoot, look. Fire two missiles and see what they do. That will probably do it. If it doesn’t, give him two more. If the guy is really lucky, he might get through your missiles, but then you always have your guns. “Man, I’m telling you, this is going to be great,” Major Perry continued in an effort to buck up his young wingman. “You are one lucky guy. You’ll be the youngest lieutenant to ever log a combat kill.
“Now go get her, ol’ boy, and I’ll get your autograph when you get home. Just take it easy and follow the book. You’ll do fine. I know you will.”
Peterson clicked his microphone twice in reply. His mouth was too dry to form any words.
The major took a quick glance back at Lt Peterson to see the lieutenant wipe his glove across his face. The major figured he had about a fifty-fifty chance of getting the bomber. Maybe. If he was lucky. Or a little more experienced. Perry turned back and studied his engine instruments, which had continued to gradually decay. He was starting to lose altitude. The cockpit shuddered and rumbled as the wounded engine roared. He cursed once more at his jet, then jammed down hard on his microphone switch.
Peterson listened as Major Perry coordinated with the AWACS for a clearance and heading to an emergency landing field, then watched in sheer fear and amazement as his flight leader peeled off and turned to the south, heading toward Biloxi, Mississippi.
Blade six-four was now a flight of just one.
“Blade two, you still with me?” It was the AWACS controller. Peterson blinked twice and cleared his throat. He took a deep breath as he mustered his voice.
“That’s affirm, Dragonfly. Blade is with you.”
“Blade, target is now one-five-zero miles, straight ahead, heading one-three-zero. He must know that we are tracking him, but so far he has made no attempt to jam our radar. He will be breaking your bubble in the next two minutes.”
Peterson reached down and selected range-while-search on his radar, then adjusted the range out to eighty miles. He pulled back his power to begin a descent, then reached down and armed all of his weapons while he waited for the Bone to appear on his radar screen.
Richard Ammon let out a long and weary sigh. His hands trembled. His back knotted into taut strands of muscle. He felt exhausted. Ammon knew he would have to pace himself. He had a very long mission. He shook his shoulders and tried to relax as he studied the terrain up ahead.
After taking off from McConnell, Ammon had initially steered the bomber south toward Texas. After two hundred miles he turned forty-five degrees to the east and took a heading that would steer them toward the Gulf of Mexico. His intention was to get away from the many military installations that dotted the southern States. He was flying at three hundred feet and 550 knots, just under the speed of sound. At this speed and altitude, it would have been impossible to have been tracked by any ground-based radar. They were too low. Virtually invisible to any radar on the ground.
Unfortunately for Richard Ammon, eight minutes after taking off he had flown directly underneath the nose of an AWACS airborne control aircraft.
At the time, the AWACS was on a routine training mission and was completely unaware of the crisis. But soon after the bomber had passed unobserved under its nose, the AWACS began to receive a series of urgent commands. At first, there was total confusion as the airborne command center scrambled to understand the scope of the crisis. It took the controllers several minutes to decipher their codes and authenticate all of the messages that had begun to pour in. Precious time was lost as they scrambled through their checklist. But once they got past the initial confusion, the controllers set about to track the low-flying bomber. They immediately tuned the huge orbiting radar that sat on the aircraft’s back and concentrated its electronic energy toward the south. They had little trouble finding the fleeing bomber. It was only sixty miles off its right wing.
So much for Ammon’s stealthy escape.
By then, the B-1 was passing through central Arkansas. The Mississippi coast was just four hundred miles to the south. Forty minutes away. Once the fleeing bomber went “feet wet” out over the water, it would simply disappear into the huge expanse of the Gulf of Mexico and its thousands of miles of aqua blue sea.
Inside the B-1, Ammon was busy as he concentrated on making their escape. He knew the fighters were coming. He knew that by now they would already be airborne, their radars tracking in search mode, hunting the sky, snooping along the terrain in an all-out effort to find him.
But there would only be a few of them — thank heaven for Cold War military cutbacks — and they wouldn’t know where to look. From Texas to Tennessee, the B-1 could be anywhere. There was simply too much terrain for the fighters to cover. Like a needle in a haystack, the Bone could just slip away.
Lt Dale Peterson leveled off at twenty thousand feet. He pushed his throttle back up to ninety-two percent to hold his airspeed at four hundred knots and reached down to adjust the tracking file on the target.
The bomber was now seventy-five miles away and closing very quickly. His radar told him that the two aircraft were approaching head on at over one thousand miles an hour. Over eighteen miles every minute. One thousand five hundred feet every second. Either way you looked at it, the distance between them was closing very quickly.
Which was good. Peterson’s Doppler radar needed a fast rate of closure in order to pick the low-flying B-1 out from the clutter of the ground and the trees. Speed was the only thing that allowed the Falcon’s radar to see the incoming B-1.
Peterson stared through his Head-Up Display (HUD) at the terrain that lay below him. Rolling hills heavily forested with tall pine and birch trees. An occasional lake sped underneath his nose, its surface frothing and white from the twenty-knot wind that was blowing at the surface. The towns were scattered and widely dispersed, but Peterson was also getting a very large return on his ground-mapping radar at forty-six miles. He knew that would be the mass of buildings, highways, and homes of Little Rock. Peterson did some quick calculations and realized that he would encounter the bomber as it passed just south of the city.
“Dragonfly, say bearing and range to the target,” Peterson said to the AWACS controller.
“Bearing three-five-eight. Range six zero miles. Have you lost the target on your radar?” The controller’s voice sounded alarmed.
“Negative Dragon. Just checking.” Peterson was tracking the target very easily. It showed up as a solid dark square that was making its way down his screen at a steady and predictable rate.
Which was the reason that he had asked the AWACS to confirm its location. The Bone was flying very low and very fast, but it was holding true to its original heading as it flew across the rolling hills of central Arkansas.
Which caused the Lieutenant to wonder. Why wasn’t the bomber maneuvering away from the fighter? Why wasn’t it trying to hide behind some of the higher terrain? So far it had made no attempt to jam his radar. It was as if the B-1 didn’t even know he was there.
“We have contact with the bomber,” Chad Wallet said to the President in a whisper. “It is flying southeast, toward the Gulf. We have two… I mean one… of our F-16s out of Florida inbound to the target.”
Allen looked up from the huge conference table in the White House situation room with a blank face. The room was cramped and very noisy. Surrounded by the banks of telephones and computer screens, he felt awkward and out of place.