“Stand by, Hammer,” Annie Dewey said. “We’re moving in.”
“Rog,” Briggs replied. He had changed seats with Fratierie and was now in the copilot’s seat, scanning the sky out the right-side cockpit windows with his suit’s sensors. “Come on down.”
“Stand by on towed arrays and countermeasures, Dev.” He swallowed hard, watching the laser radar display intently. Inside three miles, Annie announced, “Okay, Dev, let’s dirty her up.
“Go for it,” her mission commander said. “Towed decoy retracted, transmitters and countermeasures in standby. Ready.” Their threat warning receivers still showed antiaircraft artillery sites and search radars in the vicinity, but none aimed in their direction. “I gotta tell you, Heels, I feel naked up here.”
“Me, too,” Annie admitted.
“Nah. That’s only me undressing you with my eyes.”
“Har har,” Annie shot back — but he sounded truthful about that, and it made her smile again.
Annie slowed the plane to two hundred and fifty knots, swept the wings full forward, lowered flaps and slats to the approach setting. One hundred and sixty knots. It was still too fast, so Annie lowered the flaps to the next notch. The Vampire automatically settled into its before-landing nose-high attitude. It was a little weird flying with the deck angled up so sharply, flying next to another aircraft that was flying straight and level.
The LADAR showed the MV-22 in startling detail-including the shut-down engine, which showed blue-cold in their sensors, and the antiaircraft artillery damage it sustained. “Holy crap,” she exclaimed. “They got blasted all to hell. They got the right engine shut down, but the prop’s not feathered. The right side got all shot up.”
“Visibility looks like it’s less than a half-mile up here,” Deverill said. “If we got any chance of doing this, we gotta get within visual range.” Just then, the threat warning receiver emitted a slow DEEDLE … DEEDLE… DEEDLE tone. “Soviet-made triple-A, probably a ZSU-23A, ten o’clock, range about ten miles. We’re flying right into its lethal range. You gotta get him turned around in the next two minutes or we’ll both be Swiss cheese.”
“Oh, hell,” Annie murmured. She dipped the nose and quickly scooted under the MV-22 to put herself between it and the triple-A site, and to put Deverill on the same side as the MV-22 so he could try to communicate with them while she flew the plane. She pulled off another notch of power and eased the big EB-1C flying battleship closer to the stricken turboprop. She had to fly formation cross-cockpit, looking through Dev’s windows, but with the orange and yellow virtual 3-D image hovering in front of her eyes, it was as if she could look right through Dev’s body and through the clouds and darkness and watch the big MV-22 transport move closer and closer. “Where’d you guys go?” Briggs asked.
“I moved over to your left side, Hammer,” Annie said. “We’ve got a triple-A site ahead. John, you’re going to have to get a good visual on us real quick.”
“Copy, Heels,” Weston replied. Unlike the others, he couldn’t see a thing outside the windows except darkness, interrupted occasionally by flashes of antiaircraft artillery fire. Duane fished through his pubs bag stuffed into the cubby beside his seat and produced a three-cell flashlight. “My Kmart special,” he quipped. “I hope I remembered to change the damn batteries.” They worked the first time, and he shone the thin beam out the cockpit window.
Normally the beam was bright enough to inspect the deepest, darkest, tallest wheel wells of the EB-1C bomber even during the darkest preflight, but now it barely seemed to reach out to the Vampire’s wingtips. “Looks like we got some ice forming on the wings,” Deverill said. “About a half-inch right now.” He looked over to be sure the bleed air anti-ice system was activated. Normally they wouldn’t fly in conditions like this for very long-the B-1 bomber was very susceptible to ice accumulation and had terrible flight conditions with even a small load. “Any sign of the MV-22?”
“Nope,” Deverill said. He could “see” it through the electronic visor, but if he couldn’t see it visually, the MV-22 crew couldn’t see them. “I’ve got you at half a mile, Heels.”
“I’m not stopping, Dev.”
“You don’t hear me arguing, do you? Keep it coming.”
“Terminator, this is Genesis,” Samson’s ethereal voice emerged from thin air. “Genesis to Terminator. Status check.”
“We’re at one-half mile, General,” Deverill reported. “No contact.”
“We have you and the MV-22 on JTIDS,” Samson reminded them. JTIDS, or Joint Tactical Information Distribution System, allowed many different users to share information with each other. When the Vampire’s laser radar locked on to the MV-22 transport, its position was instantly relayed via JTIDS to all authorized users, including General Samson. He could clearly see that they had moved closer than one-half mile. “If you don’t have a visual, cancel the rejoin and move back up to patrol altitude.”
“General, you saw the Zeus-23-4 site up ahead,” Deverill said. “The MV’s headed right for it. We’ve got a chance to get him turned around-we’re going for it.”
“All the more reason to get the hell out of there,” Samson said. “Climb out, nail that Zeus site, and try a rejoin again when the visibility improves. Do it.”
“We’re only going to get one shot at this, sir,” Annie said hesitantly.
“I copy that, Annie, but I can’t risk both of you,” Samson said. “Abort and climb out. That’s an order.”
Annie swore under her breath, then suddenly cobbed the throttles to full afterburner. As soon as she reached two hundred knots, she started raising flaps and slats and swept the wings to the climb setting. “Dev, nail that Zeus-23!” she shouted.
“Crap, we’re losing our ticket home,” Weston swore. The roar of the EB-1’s afterburners rattled the cockpit windows, and the long tongue of flame from the four afterburners lit up the cockpit as if they overflew a searchlight. They could see nothing else except the four bright shafts of fire; then, seconds later, darkness again. They could smell the jet fuel and feel the heat of that very close encounter. “We’re deaf, dumb, and blind up here,” Weston said, hoping that stating the obvious could help them plan a way out. If they couldn’t rejoin, Weston, his crew, his passenger, and his aircraft would probably never make it home.
“I got it, Heels,” Deverill said. With the plane no longer in automatic takeoff-and-land mode, he was able to program the attack computer again. He selected another Longhorn missile, slaved its autopilot to the coordinates of the antiaircraft artillery site, and programmed a launch. Deverill watched as the radar-enhanced infrared image of the tanklike mobile antiaircraft gun unit got bigger and bigger on his large multifunction display. From only five miles away, the kill came fast. The Longhorn’s millimeter-wave radar locked on to the center of mass of the ZSU-23/4 and killed it in seconds.
But they weren’t out of the woods yet. “Another triple-A just popped up,” Duane said. “Eleven o’clock, ten miles. Must be part of the same regiment. We should … wait, another popup threat. SA-6, twelve o’clock, twelve miles. They must’ve seen their buddy go up in smoke, and now they’re hunting for us. We’re bracketed. I think we just highlighted the MV-22. They can’t see us, but they can see him.”