As Wallet strode up to him to give him the news, Milton Blake stood by the President’s chair, anxious to hear every word. Weber Coy, the CIA director, was also standing nearby.
“How did they find him?!” the President asked, turning toward Milton Blake. “You told me he would just slip away. So how did they find him so quickly?”
Wallet glanced around the room to make sure that no one could hear them, then answered the question. “Apparently there was an AWACS radar plane that happened to be on a routine training mission near the bomber’s planned escape route. When the Shattered Bone message went out, the AWACS was brought into the loop. As luck would have it, they were almost directly on top of the bomber, and they have continued to track him as he’s flown to the south.”
“‘As luck would have it,’ huh? That is so much B.S.,” Allen replied. “I don’t believe in tooth fairies, and I don’t believe in simple luck. So, what’s the deal with this bomber? This… the cutting edge of our military technology… the best warplane that we have, and already, it’s being tracked by an airborne radar?”
Allen frowned at his security advisor. “Milton, you told me you had considered every angle. So I’m wondering, what do you plan to do now?”
“Ammon, we’ve got a small problem,” Morozov broadcast over the intercom. Richard Ammon immediately began searching the sky, expecting Morozov to announce an incoming fighter.
“What do you have?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the sky.
“The airborne threat warning computer seems to have taken a hike. It’s giving me all sorts of sporadic and wild indications. I’ve tried several times to reset it, but so far no luck. I’m not sure if I know how to straighten out its logic.”
Ammon’s mind raced. That was the computer that searched the sky, looking for any sign of a hostile fighter’s radar. Without it, they were blind. They would never see what hit them. They could have a whole squadron of F-16s flying right on their tail and never even know they were there.
“Come on Morozov, that system is our baby! Do something. Do anything. Just get that thing back up on-line.”
Ammon continued to search the sky up ahead, his eyes darting from cloud to cloud as he searched for American fighters. He racked his brain, trying desperately to think of how to reboot the defensive systems computer. But he had no idea. None at all. That was supposed to be Morozov’s area of expertise.
Morozov continued to flip through the operator’s manual for the ALQ-161 defensive system computer. He scanned his fingers down the trouble-shooting guide. He read quickly and tried everything he could think of, but nothing seemed to work. The computer continued to bounce around, giving spurious and incorrect information.
For a long time, Ammon didn’t say anything as he frantically searched the sky for incoming fighters. He craned his neck from side to side, looking for a contrail or the quick flash of a wing. He paid particular attention to the bright haze that circled the sun, knowing that was where the fighters would most likely come from. He squinted into the sunlight, fully expecting to see the white tail of an incoming missile.
But he saw nothing but hazy, gray sky dotted by an occasional cotton-white cloud. In the distance, on the horizon, he could barely make out the dark shapes of a few high-rise buildings. Little Rock lay directly ahead.
Peterson watched the target track down on his radar. How could this be? It was almost too easy. It almost didn’t even seem right.
The bomber was now fifty-two miles away. It was still heading southeast. Same speed. Same altitude. If this kept up, it would be like shooting a blind deer with a machine gun. Not very sporting, but a kill just the same. The boys in his squadron were going to be very proud of their newest pilot.
Peterson flicked at the coolie hat on the top of his stick. A small cursor glided over his radar screen toward the target. When the cursor was superimposed over the black square, Peterson pushed up a small switch on the top of his throttle. His HUD immediately indicated that two AMRAAM missiles were armed and ready to fire. A light growl in his headset indicated they had locked on to their target. The bomber was just moving inside of fifty miles. From this altitude, that was nearly an optimum range. Peterson listened to the missile trackers for just a second to ensure that they had a good solid lock, then cleared his voice and said, “Dragonfly, confirm Blade is cleared to fire?”
The controller inside the darkened AWACS looked up at the general once again. The general nodded his head at the controller without taking his eyes off the radar screen. The controller keyed his microphone switch and replied, “Blade, you are cleared to engage.”
Lt Peterson pressed the “fire” switch with his finger. He felt the two missiles as they dropped off of their rails. His eyes narrowed to a slit as the powerful missiles ignited their motors, filling his cockpit with a dazzling strobe of white light. For a fraction of a second, the missiles hung in midair, suspended. Then they began to pull ahead of the fighter as they quickly accelerated away, leaving a trail of white smoke and turbulent air.
THIRTY-TWO
The missiles accelerated to Mach in less than ten seconds and tracked straight to the target. Steered by a miniature radar within their nose cones, the missiles honed in on the low flying bomber, seeking the scattering protons of radar energy that reflected and bounced back from the aircraft’s wings and tail.
Every second that passed brought the missiles 5,600 feet closer to Reaper’s Shadow. The missile’s onboard computers were constantly updating the geometry that made up the intercept solution. It was beginning to look like a near perfect tracking scenario. No rough terrain for the target to hide from. No blazing sun reflecting off white hot desert sands. A huge rate of closure to home in on. And the target was not even attempting to maneuver away.
In the Reaper’s tail lay an extremely sophisticated radar-detecting antenna. Its purpose was to detect and gather any radar signals that were beamed onto the bomber. It quickly sensed the energy from the AMRAAM missile’s radar and sent a signal to the ALQ-161 defensive system’s computer. The computer received the signals and began to process the information. It analyzed the wavelength, frequency, and strength of the signal, then sorted through two and half million bites of information in its attempt to identify the source of the radar.
In less than a second it had its answer. The radar in question was classified as non-threatening. Its source was more than 93 million miles away. The bouncing protons were nothing more than scattered energy from enormous sun spots. Nothing to be concerned with at all.
As part of its redundant safety features, the computer was programmed to analyze the signals once again. The whole process started over. Gather data, send to computer, analyze features, compare against memory banks. Conclusion. The source of the energy was a Russian Bad Dog acquisition radar, found only on the newest Russian Naval destroyers.
This conclusion obviously failed the computer’s logic test. The process began once again. Sometime during this third and final circuit, the computer realized that it could no longer tell the difference between a radar signal and a piece of Swiss cheese.
Three seconds later, the computer shut itself down.
Which is why the threat warning tones were not screaming through the earphones in Ammon’s helmet as the missiles tracked in on his bomber.