The Egyptian intelligence data Patrick had received from Susan Salaam and Ahmad Baris gave precise details on all of this-and all had been passed along to Patrick's mission planners in Blytheville. Now the Night Stalkers were on the attack.
The EB-52 made the turn at the bomb run initial point. Most threats were several miles ahead or far behind them, so Franken and Reeves risked a slight climb to two thousand feet above the desert just as the computer began the first launch countdown. "Computer counting down," Lindsey reported. "Release switches to 'CONSENT.'"
Franken made sure his red-guarded switch was up and the switch inside was up. In this highly automated digital cockpit, he noted with a trace of humor, it was always amusing that Patrick McLanahan and the other designers always kept these Cold War-era "two-man control" switches in place. Both switches had to be set to release a weapon. It was of course possible for one person to activate both switches-but the idea was for one of two persons to overrule the other if the need arose. Some things-some mind-sets-never change.
At zero, the port-side FlightHawk detached itself from its wing pylon and fell two hundred feet while it unfolded its wings and flight controls and started up its small turbojet engine. Once it had stabilized itself, it began a climb to its patrol altitude. A minute later, the second FlightHawk launched as well. Both unmanned combat aircraft carried air-to-air weapons, long-range surveillance sensors, and electronic jammers and decoys, all to protect the Megafortress while it was in the target area. At the flight planned point, the Megafortress started a right turn in its racetrack orbit area, which allowed the FlightHawks time to fly into their patrol positions east and west of the racetrack.
"Computer started the countdown to bomb bay weapon release," Lindsey reported several minutes later. "FlightHawks are on patrol and ready."
"Get ready, Linds," Franken said. "We might be getting busy again."
She hurriedly took a big sip of water from a plastic bottle. "Then I better get something in my stomach to barf up," she said. But judging by the way she said it, Franken was sure she would be ready if things started to heat up again.
When the computer counted down to ten seconds, the forward portion of the EB-52's bomb bay doors swung open and a Wolverine cruise missile dropped free, followed by seven more in twelve-second intervals. The Wolverine missiles resembled fat surfboards, with a small turbojet engine in the tail. They had no wings or flightcontrol surfaces, but used mission-adaptive skin technology to reshape the entire missile body to create lift and steer itself with far greater speed and precision than conventional flight controls.
Each Wolverine missile had four weapon sections, including three bomb bays and a fourth weapon section right behind the sensor section in the nose. Using an inertial navigation system updated by satellite navigation, the Wolverine missiles flew to preprogrammed bomb run initial points, then activated infrared and millimeter-wave radar sensors, looking for targets. Their small size and low profile meant they were almost invisible to the air defense radars surrounding them-but they were all able to detect, analyze, classify, and lock onto the radars themselves.
The Wolverine missiles then worked together with the FlightHawks to analyze and correlate the radar transmissions and then locate the associated missile launchers. The radar units for most air defense units were set up far away from the missile launcher so antiradar missile attacks would not destroy the missiles or launchers; they were usually connected by some sort of electronic link, usually a microwave system or cable. Many times the enemy would set up decoy radar transmitters, hoping the antiradar weapons would go after the decoys. But the FlightHawks were able to determine from the type of radar detected what kind of air defense system it was, and if it had a remote launcher setup it would listen for the data transmission between the radar unit and the missile launch unit in a surface-to-air missile battery, compute the location of the launcher, and pass its location to the Wolverine missiles. In this way, their weapons wouldn't be wasted on nonlethal radars or on decoys.
Six of the Wolverine missiles were programmed for SEAD, or suppression of enemy air defenses. As they flew over each air defense weapon site they detected, they scattered cluster bombs across the missile launchers. Each of the Wolverine's three bomb bays held seventy-two onepound high-explosive fragmentary bomblets, which covered an area of about thirty thousand square feet with shrapnel. If a Wolverine attacked a particularly lethal SAM site but the FlightHawks determined that the site was still active, it would command the Wolverine to turn around and reattack the target. Two of the Wolverines were hit by antiaircraft artillery fire, both by gunners who, with thenradars turned off so they wouldn't be targeted by the radarseeking weapons, merely swept the skies with their guns blazing, hoping to get lucky. Once all three bomb bays were empty, each surviving Wolverine missile would perform a suicide dive into a fourth target, where an internal two-hundred-pound high-explosive warhead would destroy one last target and hopefully all remnants of the missile itself.
The remaining two Wolverines were programmed to hunt down vehicles instead of antiaircraft sites. Instead of bomblets, they carried devices called sensor-fuzed weapons, or SFWs. There were eight SFW canisters per bomb bay in the Wolverine. When the infrared sensor in the Wolverine's nose detected large vehicles nearby, it flew toward them and ejected two SFW canisters overhead. The canisters floated down on small parachutes, spinning as they descended. As they spun, tiny heat-seeking sensors spotted the location of vehicles on the ground. At a precise altitude above the ground, the canisters exploded, sending dozens of one-pound slugs of molten copper at the vehicles. The copper slug was like a sabot round from a tank or artillery piece-the hypervelocity slug was powerful enough to punch through three inches of solid steel. Once inside a vehicle, however, the slug cooled enough where it couldn't penetrate the other side-so the slug simply exploded and spattered inside, creating thousands of tiny white-hot copper bullets that shredded anything in its path in the blink of an eye. Like the other Wolverines, these tank-killing cruise missiles located, attacked, and reattacked targets until all of their SFWs were expended; then they suicide-dived into preprogrammed targets-one into the base command post, the other into a communications building.
Hal Briggs marveled at the intelligence information they received from the Egyptians-it was all up to date and incredibly detailed. As he scanned the area with his battle armor's electronic sensors, the satellite datalink connecting him with the temporary headquarters at Mersa Matruh filled in details of what the sensors picked up-guard posts, boundaries of minefields, fence positions, even locations of doghouses and latrines were pointed out. He was kneeling just to the north of the minefield, scanning the compound, when suddenly he heard a ripple of explosions. "Nike, looks like our little buddies are on the job," Hal radioed on the secure command satellite network. He heard several secondary explosions as a Wolverine cluster bomb attack destroyed a pair of SA-10 antiaircraft missiles, sending a balloon of fire into the night sky. The Libyans began firing antiaircraft artillery into the sky, tracers arcing everywhere, but judging by the wild, random sweep of the tracers across the sky, it didn't appear as if they were locked onto any of the Wolverines yet. "What's it look like to you?"