But he was going too fast. At this speed his turn radius would swing him past the set of high-voltage wires and into the path of the missiles. He had to stay on his side of the wires. He immediately yanked his throttles back to idle and extended his speed brakes in an attempt to slow down. The aircraft decelerated quickly, throwing Ammon forward against the harness of his ejection seat.
“Keep jamming!” he screamed to Morozov as the aircraft turned and slid up against the wires. “Light up the sky!” he cried as the B-1 rolled out and flew past one of the steel-framed towers, missing it by less than a wing span.
Morozov reached up and slammed the power switch on his jamming computer. The computer immediately increased the jamming. Enormous bursts of energy emitted in every direction. The Bone was illuminating the invisible radio spectrum with a hundred thousand watts of flashing power. It blazed and strobed and flashed and burned, coaxing the missiles forward, beckoning them on, pulling them toward the aircraft, the only possible source of such amazing electronic power. The electronic haze spread for miles, immediately turning both the AWACS’ and the F-16’s radar screens to little more than round scopes of white strobing fuzz.
As Morozov threw his power switch to maximum, Reaper’s Shadow was just beginning to fly down another small valley. It paralleled the high strands of wire. Ammon turned away from the wires to put some distance between himself and the cables.
The missiles sped along, cutting toward the bomber from its left side, oblivious to anything but the aircraft. They flew directly into the strand of three-inch cables. The copper wires immediately cut the missiles into fractured pieces, detonating the high explosive warheads in the process. There was an enormous explosion. The cables fell, strobing the air with arcing bolts of white lightning as the missiles exploded around them. A burst of vaporized metal and plastic filled the air, sending a billowing cloud of black smoke skyward to be dissipated by the southern winds.
A bright flash reflected into his cockpit from the blazing explosion. “Stop jamming! Stop jamming!” Ammon cried into his mask. Morozov flipped his jamming switch to off.
Ammon pushed the Bone back into the wires, flying as close as he dared. He snugged in tight to the strands of high cables, nearly scraping his wings along a copper-tipped tower. It took all of his concentration and mental ability to mask so close to the wires without getting caught in their web.
Ammon knew that the fighters were still out there. And they wouldn’t know for sure if he was dead. So they would still be searching; sweeping the ground with their radar from their perch up at twenty thousand feet. They would attack again if they found him. And this time he couldn’t count on being so lucky.
He only had one hope of getting away. And the next thirty seconds would be the most critical. If the fighters could be distracted for just a moment, thinking they had already gotten their kill, then they might not begin a secondary sweep with their radar. If he could just get some distance between them, it was possible he might get away.
An experienced fighter pilot would not have fallen for such a simple deception. Even after seeing the impact on his radar, a good pilot would have immediately begun another sweep, knowing that it was possible that his missiles did not get a kill.
Fortunately for Richard Ammon, he was not being pursued by an experienced pilot.
The AWACS controller still stared at his screen. He had seen the whole thing. He had watched as the missiles tracked in on the bomber, then the wild gyrations as the aircraft attempted to maneuver away. He had watched as the B-1 attempted to jam on the missile, his screen filling entirely with white fuzz from the intensive electronic noise. Then, just as the missiles should have impacted the target, his screen had suddenly cleared.
Then there was nothing. No missiles. No target. No jamming. Only a few clutters of ground return as his radar continued to sweep through the area, searching for the bomber from high in the sky. But he didn’t see any target and he had to assume the target was dead.
“Blade, it appears that you have a good kill,” the controller finally said. His voice sounded stressed and fatigued.
“Yeah, I blew that sucker out of the sky!” Peterson cried. His enthusiasm was perfectly clear. “Did you see that, Dragonfly? I thought he was going to burn out my radar from all that jamming. Unbelievable, eh? But I got him. Did you see that? That sucker is dead!”
The AWACS controller didn’t smile as he listened to the pilot congratulate himself. After a few seconds he pressed his microphone switch to interrupt.
“Yeah Blade, you did a wonderful job. But listen, we may not be finished here yet. We are at the outer envelope of our radar. We’re getting lots of clutter in our low-level return. I don’t think we could see the bomber any more, even if he was there.
“Now we need you to take a few good sweeps with your radar. Check it out real good and tell us what you see. Meanwhile, proceed to the detonation site and get a confirmation on the kill. This is something we need to be sure of. We also need to know where the wreckage is. Someone’s got to get out there and clean up all the mess.”
Lt Dale Peterson shrugged his shoulders and began a few halfhearted sweeps with his radar. But what was the use? He had seen the explosion. He had seen the flash of white light and the rising pillar of black smoke. And then the aircraft jamming had suddenly dropped off of his screen.
So where had the bomber suddenly gone to? Just disappeared into thin air? I don’t think so, Peterson thought to himself. Man, that sucker is gone.
So he took a few quick sweeps with his radar, then concentrated on finding the crash site. The smoke was beginning to dissipate, so he marked the site on his navigation computer. It shouldn’t be too hard to find the wreckage, he thought. It must be scattered across the countryside for more than a mile.
For the next ten minutes Peterson flew atop the Arkansas forest, looking for a smoking hole or burning fields. By the time he realized there was no wreckage to be found, Reaper’s Shadow was more than one hundred miles away.
Milton Blake turned toward President Allen and wiped the sweat from his brow. The president returned Blake’s look with a cold stare of his own.
“That was pretty close, now wasn’t it, Milton? We almost killed our own man.”
Blake looked up, but didn’t respond. It was Weber Coy who finally said, “Yes, sir. That was far too close for our comfort. But it should be smooth sailing from here. He’s within a few minutes of hitting the coastline. Getting away from our own fighters may prove to be the most difficult part of this mission. At this point, I feel that we have every reason to be optimistic.”
Once again, Blake reached up to wipe the sweat from his forehead and nodded in agreement. Then, stuffing his hand into his enormous pants pocket, he fished around for a small tube of antacids and popped four of them into his mouth.
Allen studied his men for a moment and then said. “No. I think that is wrong. The toughest part is yet to come. He still has to fight his way through the Med and across the Ukrainian border. That will be much more dangerous than this. So I’ve come to a decision. We can’t just sit here, watching like fools, when there is something that we can do.”
“But sir,” Blake replied. “You know that we can’t get involved. We can’t expose ourselves to—”
Allen cut him off. “I know that, Milt. But still, there is something that we can do. Something that may prove very important for Ammon if things suddenly turn bad. And I think it’s the least that we owe him.