On the panel in front of Morozov’s face, a caution light flickered on. “Ammon, we’ve lost the system!” Morozov shouted. “It just completely shut itself down!”
“Come on, Morozov, you’re supposed to be the expert. Do something! Get it back on-line. We need that system. Do something, now!”
Morozov continued in his desperate attempt to reset the defensive systems. But all to no avail.
The two missiles were now only thirty miles away. Passing through twelve thousand feet, they looked down on their target. They were twenty-eight seconds from impact.
The bomber flew over a small lake. For just a second the missiles lost their radar return as the radar signal was bounced and scattered by the swelling waves. But still they continued to track downward, their computers analyzing the bomber’s last known position and airspeed to predict where the aircraft should be. Four seconds later, the Bone passed over the U-shaped earth dam that formed the lake and proceeded down a small valley of tall birch and white pines. The AMRAAM missiles immediately picked up their target once again, only eighteen feet from where they predicted it would be.
Just fourteen miles to go. The missiles were now passing through five thousand feet. At this angle, the first missile would impact the root of the bomber’s left wing. The second missile would impact on the top of the bomber, directly behind the cockpit. Of course, the AMRAAMs wouldn’t wait until they impacted the bomber to detonate. Their fifty pounds of high explosives would explode as soon as they got to within eighty feet of the bomber.
Inside his F-16, Lt Dale Peterson was screaming into his mask as he coached the missiles on.
“Go, my sweet little ladies!” he cried. Oblivious to everything around him, he stared at his radar screen as the missiles tracked in on their target. “Come on… come on… go and get her!” he screamed into his mask, as if cheering a football team on.
Inside the AWACS, the controller was doing much the same thing. The two-star general leaned forward in his seat, his hands clutching his armrest, his expression firm as granite.
Ten seconds. Fifty-six thousand feet lay between the bomber and the missiles. The controller pushed back against his seat and waited for the impact.
Ammon saw the missiles when they were still nine miles away. They burst through a steel-gray cumulonimbus cloud, their white-hot engines condensing the air that trailed them into a thin contrail, giving the effect of a long, thin arrow that was pointing directly at the bomber. Even at this distance, Ammon could see the glint of the twelve-foot missiles. They were directly before him, closing at an incredible speed.
For nearly a full second, Richard Ammon stared in a stupor of fear. It took a while for his mortal brain to comprehend the threat.
The warheads began their final fusing countdown.
Adrenalin pulsed through Ammon’s body. His heartbeat tripled in an effort to flood his brain with oxygen. Time seemed to slow and stretch itself out. When he finally began to react, his actions were purely instinctive, born from years of intensive training, for there was simply no time now to think.
“Missiles, twelve o’clock!” he screamed while rolling the aircraft up onto its side. “Chaff! Jamming! Flares!”
Morozov immediately began dispensing silvery bundles of chaff and kicking out streams of red-hot flares. At the same time, he selected manual on his electronic countermeasures display and began to radiate white electronic noise in every direction. No sense trying to be discreet about his jamming. It was obvious the Americans knew where they were. So he filled the electronic spectrum with random bursts of energy, hoping to destroy the incoming missiles’ tracking solution.
Meanwhile, Ammon continued to roll away from the missiles, doing everything he could to put some distance between them and his Bone. He pushed the aircraft even lower, hand flying the machine to tree-top level as he screamed across the rolling hills. He kept his throttles in full afterburner, pushing through a thick wall of compressed air and accelerating through the speed of sound. He thrashed across the forested terrain in a howl of fury, the thrust from his engines blowing the branches off of trees and scattering their limbs in a thin trail of splintered wood and toasted leaves.
But still the missiles closed in on their target.
For a fraction of a second, Morozov’s jamming started to work. The missile’s guidance systems lost track of their target as Morozov filled their receivers with a huge burst of electronic noise. But the AMRAAMs were not easily fooled. Their receivers immediately attempted to burn through the thick wall of electronic jamming as their tiny guidance computers sorted through banks of logic algorithms in an attempt to keep locked onto the target.
The missiles made several attempts to burn through the jamming. No good. The radar noise was simply too thick. There was nothing to see but a huge blanket of electronic clutter that obliterated their radar return.
The guidance computers then made a quick decision. Since the target was jamming their radars, they would target the jamming instead. It was that simple. The computer’s logic was very straightforward. The target had disappeared. An electronic transmitter had appeared where the target should be. The transmitter was jamming their radar. The transmitter was now the new target. The transmitter would be the thing they destroyed.
Through it all, the countermeasures and jamming, the chaff and the flares, the missiles never deviated more than ten feet from their desired course toward their target. They were now flying level at three hundred feet, closing in on the bomber from its left side.
Lt Dale Peterson suddenly fell silent. The missiles and the target had begun to merge upon his screen. He lifted his eyes and looked out into the horizon. Even from this distance, he expected to see the rising fireball. He strained his neck and pushed forward in his seat to get a better view down the nose of his F-16. He stared across the rolling hills, with their tree-lined rivers and highways, as he waited for the seconds to pass.
Inside the AWACS, the controller reached up and adjusted his screen. As the Bone threw out multiple bands of electronic noise, his screen became blotchy with intermittent patches of sparkling fuzz. In addition to the jamming, the B-1 was also approaching the edge of his radar coverage. The controller keyed in a series of instructions at his console to command his computer to try and filter out and clean up his radar picture. He desperately hoped that he could keep a good radar return for at least a few more seconds. It was the only way he would have to confirm whether or not the Bandit was really destroyed.
Ammon was giving up hope. The missiles loomed larger than ever. Like blazing poles of fire they pursued him, matching his every pitch and roll with considerable ease. They were almost upon him. Only seconds to go.
Then he saw them. Directly ahead, little more than two miles, there stood a huge set of high-tension, high-voltage power lines. At least a dozen of the wires were strung across the small valley on their way toward the substations that lay on the outskirts of Little Rock. They glistened from their silver towers, thick and shiny, suspended seventy-five feet in the air. Ammon was flying a little lower than the wires and he had to look upward through his windscreen to keep them in sight. Big red balls were suspended from the middle of the silver threads to warn low-flying aircraft of their menacing presence.
Richard Ammon threw his stick to the right. The aircraft immediately banked to ninety degrees as he pulled around to parallel the wires. The strands of high-voltage wires slipped under his wing as the aircraft bellied up to the towers. Ammon knew that his only hope lay in putting the wires between himself and the missiles.