“Why was this decided, sir?” one of the squadron commanders asked. “Andersen has weapons — why not load up on gas and supplies and upload the weapons once they arrive on Guam?”
“I want those bombers ready to fight the minute they arrive at Andersen,” Jarrel replied. “My orders state that we are on combat alert as of right now, and the less time we spend getting ready for a mission after arriving on Guam, the more flexibility we’ll have. We could be tasked for strike operations while the Wing is en route, so I want to be ready — our crews better be ready to get a few hours’ sleep, mission plan, brief, pull the pins on the weapons, and go. If necessary, they will land, get their mission packets, pull the pins, do a hot refueling, and take off immediately.
“The remaining aircraft at Ellsworth will deploy after six hours’ crew rest under the same system — bombers go direct with weapons in ferry configuration, fighters RON at Hickam. Our OPLAN specifies eighty percent of the First Air Battle Wing on the ramp at Andersen within twenty-four hours. I think we can do better: I think we can have eighty percent of the Wing flying in combat in twenty-four hours. That is my goal. I know this is our first actual combat deployment, and we’re bound to be inventing procedures as we go along, but this staff has practiced these procedures now for several months, so I think we can do it. Questions?” No reply. “Next meeting in one hour; that should be our last meeting before we start launching planes. I expect the first group to be ready to go by then. Let’s get to it, ladies and gentlemen — move!”
Jarrel watched as the members of the First Air Battle Wing rapidly filed out of the auditorium. He knew the danger these men and women were facing, and he didn’t envy them. His own father had been killed in action in Korea in 1953, and he had flown over five hundred combat sorties as an F-5 and A-7 pilot during two tours in Vietnam. He’d seen a lot of battle, a lot of death.
No, he didn’t envy them at all. But they had a job to do, just as he did. He turned and headed back to his office. “God be with them,” he said to no one but himself.
10
There was no mistaking its identity or its purpose — few aircraft in the world could fly like this. “Identity confirmed, sir,” the Combat Information Center officer on the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy destroyer Feylin reported. “American subsonic spy plane, bearing zero-six-five, altitude two-three-thousand meters, range ninety-two kilometers and closing. Probably a U-2 or TR-1.”
The commander of the Feylin shook his head in amazement. “Say speed and altitude again?”
“Speed six-five-zero kilometers per hour, altitude… altitude now twenty-three thousand meters.”
The destroyer captain could do nothing but smile in astonishment. Twenty-three thousand meters — that was almost twice the altitude that any Chinese fighter could safely go, and very close to the upper-altitude limit of the Hong Qian-61 surface-to-air missile system on the Chinese frigates stationed in the Philippine Sea. “No response to our warning broadcasts, I assume,” the captain said.
“None, sir. Continuing west as before, on course for Davao.”
“Then we will make good on our promise,” the captain said eagerly. “Have Zhangyhum and Kaifeng moved into position?”
“Yes, sir. Destroyer Zunyi ready as well.”
“Very well. Let us see if we can get ourselves an American spy plane. Range to target?”
“Eighty-three kilometers and closing.”
“Begin engagement procedures at seventy-five kilometers.” The frigates had only the shorter-range HQ-61 SAM system, but four of the five destroyers in the Philippine Sea and eastern Celebes Sea area had the Hong Qian-91 surface-to-air missile, with four times the range of the HQ-61 — and the U-2 was coming within range of Feylin's system right now. Undoubtedly the U-2 would be able to evade the first missile, but two more destroyers, Zhangyhum to the north and Kaifeng to the south, were surrounding the U-2, so that no matter which way it turned, it would be within range of someone’s missile system.
The U-2 was being tracked by another destroyer, Zunyi. This destroyer carried only surface-to-surface missiles, but it had the Sea Eagle radar system, which could direct missile attacks launched from other ships without using the telltale DRBR-51 missile-tracking radars. They would not have to activate target-tracking radars until a few seconds from impact, so the U-2 would have no chance to react.
They were going to make their first kill since October first, which, ironically, was Revolution Day. This would serve as a warning to all other American aircraft: stay away from the Philippines.
“Bomb doors coming open, stand by… bomb doors open.”
This had to be the first time in Patrick McLanahan’s recent memory that he was going to open the bomb doors on his B-2 Black Knight stealth bomber — and not attack something. He and Major Henry Cobb had already flown their B-2 nearly two thousand miles, right into the heart of what seemed like half the Chinese Navy, all to carry two bulbous objects that would not go “boom.”
They were flying at two thousand feet over the dark waters of the Philippine Sea, threading the needle through what appeared to be two long lines of Chinese warships arranged north and south to protect the east coast of Mindanao. Twice now they had opened the dual side-by-side bomb-bay doors and deployed the two pods on their hydraulically operated arms, left them in the slipstream for a few minutes, then retracted them again. And they knew that with each passing minute, every time they lowered those pods they were exposing themselves to incredible danger that would only increase the closer they flew toward Mindanao.
The two pods were not weapons, but reconnaissance systems housed in aerodynamic pods that resembled a fighter’s standard 330-gallon external fuel tanks. In the right bomb bay they had an ATARS pod, which stood for Advanced Tactical Air Reconnaissance System. It housed two electronic charge-coupled device reconnaissance cameras and an infrared line scanner to photograph large sections of the sea in all directions in just a few minutes. In another pod in the left bomb bay, on a longer hydraulic arm that would project it eighteen inches lower than the ATARS pod, was a UPD-9 synthetic aperture radar pod that would take high-resolution radar images for fifty miles in all directions. All of the images were digitized, then transmitted via NIRTSat back to Andersen for analysis. They also had their usual complement of radar warning receivers and countermeasures systems, but on this flight they used high-speed digital data links to transmit the threat information they received back to Andersen.
Although the pods were incredibly effective and relatively small, they had one major drawback — they had a radar signature thousands of times larger than the B-2 carrying them. Every time they were lowered out of the bomb bay, Cobb and McLanahan lost all their stealth capabilities — and it was time to do it again. “Stand by for pod deploy…”
Suddenly, a huge yellow dome appeared on McLanahan’s Super Multi Function Display, not very far to the north of them — the dome nearly touched the B-2 icon, meaning they were very close to being within detection range of the radar. “Charlie-band radar… Sea Eagle air-search radar, either on a frigate or destroyer,” McLanahan reported. “We may be inside detection range now — if we lower the pods, we’ll definitely be in range.”