“He killed the leader, Vampire,” Colonel David Luger, the senior mission control officer on this test flight, reported over the secure satellite commlink. Luger was in a special classified section of the Nellis range control complex, watching the exercise unfold before him on several multicolor electronic wall-size monitors. The Nellis range complex was in use twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, by military units from all over the world, so special facilities were set up to monitor and control classified military weapons tests.
“Sila Zero One didn’t make very many hard evasive maneuvers, about half the normal chaff drops, and didn’t bother going lower than two thousand AGL,” David added, his Texas drawl coming through the scrambled satellite transmission. “Just not very aggressive threat reaction.” He had seen every iteration of hotshot fighter and bomber pilots — and the “target’ in this exercise didn’t measure up one bit.
“Copy, Dave,” Brigadier-General Patrick McLanahan radioed back. He was flying the right seat on the flight deck of an EB-1C Megafortress-2 strategic “flying battleship,” an experimental B-1B Lancer supersonic bomber modified as a multipurpose attack and defensive weapons platform. “We’ll put all that on the debriefing tape. Where are they now?”
“Now, now — if I told you, we’d spoil the exercise,” Luger responded with a smile. David Luger had spent most of his Air Force career designing and flying experimental aircraft and was normally a quiet, reserved, almost nerdy guy. But once one of his warplanes were up in action, he took complete control, no matter how badly things appeared to be spinning out of control. “You said you wanted max realism in this test, so you gotta find them yourself No fair using other sensor links either — remember, we’re simulating, you’re deep over enemy territory, with no overhead sensor support.”
“All right, all right, no harm in asking,” Patrick said. He signed off with a curt “Later.”
Sometimes, McLanahan thought, it was as if David was working extra hard just to prove to everyone that he was okay, that the Russian brainwashing or his subsequent CIA deprogramming/reprogramming hadn’t affected his mental powers. He had no hobbies, took no vacations, and had few relationships outside of the High-Technology Aerospace Weapons Center. Patrick was pleased to see a budding intimate friendship — hardly a romance yet, but promising — between Dave and Annie Dewey, one of the Air National Guard EB-1 pilots. If only Dave took enough time to get to know her better, David Luger might actually develop a personal life.
To his aircraft commander sitting beside him in the cockpit of the EB-1C Megafortress-2 bomber, nicknamed “Vampire,” Patrick said, “Luger’s not going to let us sneak a peek, so I better get a fix on all our players. LADAR coming on.”
“Go ahead,” the pilot, Colonel Rebecca Furness, responded curtly. “Make it quick, General.”
“Rog,” McLanahan said as he activated the LADAR, or Laser Radar. Using tiny laser emitters, the LADAR scanned the sky for fifty miles in all directions, including near-space, and “drew” a three-dimensional image of all terrain, surface, and airborne objects. In five seconds, LADAR had scanned one hundred and twenty-five thousand cubic miles of earth and sky around the bomber, correlated the scan with known terrain features and current intelligence information, and stored the image in computer memory. Patrick deactivated the system and reported, “LADAR down, Rebecca.”
Furness glanced over at the large multifunction display mounted on the mission commander’s instrument panel, which showed a “God’s-eye” view of the battlefield. “What do we got, MC?” Furness asked impatiently. Rebecca Furness was a twenty-plus year veteran of the Air Force, serving mostly in the Reserves and Air National Guard. She also had the distinction of being one of the first female combat pilots in the Air Force and one of the first to command a combat unit, the 111th Bomb Squadron of the Nevada Air National Guard — twice. Furness made it clear to everyone who would listen that Patrick McLanahan had been mostly responsible for her losing her command — and she grudgingly admitted that he had been mostly responsible for getting it back for her.
She could think of a hundred things she’d rather be doing than playing chauffeur for the boy general on yet another of his endless test flights. Rebecca had a squadron to assemble, and she knew that a lot of heavy hitters in the Pentagon, in Washington, and all over the world were watching her.
“The Falcons split up,” Patrick replied. “Number two is chasing the leader while number one is sweeping to his six to check on the number two Sila. Looks like the number two Falcon’s going to take his turn and get the lead Sila with a Sidewinder.”
“Well, let’s not wait for them to kill both of our attackers,” Furness said. “Let’s bust a move.”
“Hold your horses, pilot,” Patrick said. “We briefed this engagement a half-dozen times — you know the plan as well as I do. We want to see what they can do on their own first.”
“Why are we doing this support stuff anyway, sir?” Rebecca asked. “You picked my unit because we’re good at tactical bombing. The Bone was built to penetrate heavily defended airspace and attack high-value targets. Your Megafortress contraption can do that job better than even I ever thought possible. Why not let us do our job?”
“This is our job right now, Rebecca,” Patrick said testily. “We are here to deploy a tactical strike support system. The EB-1C Megafortress aircraft are designed to be strategic airborne battleships — that means strike support, surveillance, and reconnaissance as well as attack. Our turn to have fun comes later.”
Rebecca Furness fell silent, disappointed but not surprised over the young general’s lack of corporate knowledge. Her first combat unit, the 394th Air Battle Wing of the Air Force Reserve, had flown a modified F-111G Aardvark supersonic bomber nicknamed the RF-111G Vampire bomber, which had been primarily designed for armed reconnaissance. Rebecca herself had dubbed the EB-1C bomber the Vampire in her old jet’s honor. She had enjoyed the armed reconnaissance role back then. Each mission had been a combination of many different responsibilities — standoff attack, antiship, antiradar, antiairfield, minelaying, and antireconnaissance, along with photoreconnaissance and data relay — and she’d enjoyed the challenge. Rebecca had been positive that, as the nation’s first woman to fly in a combat unit, she had been assigned to the 394th because the Vampire was supposed to be a safe, standoff weapon system, not really designed to be a frontline attack unit. The possibility of her being shot down and captured was supposed to be low. But she’d commanded her flight and flown her missions with aggressiveness and courage that won her a lot of attention and praise, and eventually her own command of a combat unit.