As the command crew assembled outside, the lieutenant quickly determined the cause of the double explosion-a Mil Mi-24 attack helicopter, just a few kilometers away, was firing guided antitank missiles at the S-300 battery. He realized then that the Mi-24 hadn't crashed-it had just ducked down below the S-300's radar coverage, cruised in, and attacked. It was flying perhaps ten meters above the desert, flying at just thirty or forty kilometers an hour, slowly and carefully picking its targets. Occasionally a blast of machine-gun fire erupted from its nose cannon, followed by a streak of fire as its laser-guided missiles sped off their launch rails and hit home.
In seconds, it was over-and the entire S-300 battery, eight launchers and a I vehicle, had been destroyed, and the Mi-24 helicopter simply disappeared into the night sky. Soon, only the sounds of burning vehicles and screaming men could be heard.
King Sayyid Muhammad ibn al-Hasan as-Sanusi, on board the Mi-24 helicopter in the flight engineer's station, patted the pilot on the shoulders, then turned to the radio console at the engineer's station behind the cockpit. "Headbanger, Headbanger, this is Lion," he radioed. 'Target Alpha is down, repeat, Alpha is down. Commence your run."
At that moment, he saw a long trail of fire coming from the direction of Zillah Air Base. The bombers were on their way.
He hoped to hell the Megafortress could stop them.
LADAR coming on… now," Greg Wickland reported. Seconds later: "LADAR standby." The image frozen in his wide-screen supercockpit display was almost as clear as a sixteen-color photograph. What he saw horrified him: "The bombers-they're gone."
"Oh, shit," George "Zero" Tanaka muttered. He strained to take a look at the supercockpit display. "Looks like two planes still on the base, getting ready for takeoff."
"Fighters," Wickland said. "MiG-23s. Must be the last of the bombers' air cover." He flashed the LADAR on and off several times so he could keep watch on the fighters, taking a laser snapshot and then rolling and turning the three-dimensional image to pick up as much detail as possible. Soon he could see them rolling down the runwaythe LADAR even detected their afterburner plumes. "Looks like they're heading north-not toward us." He turned to his aircraft commander. "Our mission was to try to destroy the bombers or crater the runway so the bombers couldn't launch. We missed them. What do we do now? There's no use attacking the base if the bombers are gone." His eyes grew wide with fear as he started to guess what Tanaka had in mind: "You're not thinking of going after the bombers, are you?"
"It's our only chance of stopping them."
"We've only got eight air-to-air missiles," Wickland reminded his AC-not just for Tanaka's benefit, but also to assure himself of how dangerous this plan really was. The EB-52 Megafortress carried eight radar-guided AIM-120 Scorpion missiles in stealthy external weapon pods, along with four AGM-88 HARMs (high-speed antiradar missiles). Internally, the EB-52 carried a rotary launcher with eight AGM-154 JSOW (joint standoff weapons), which were satellite- and imaging-infrared-guided thousandpound glide bombs that could be targeted by the laser radar and attack computers; plus another rotary launcher with eight Wolverine powered "brilliant" cruise missiles, which could locate and attack their own targets. "It's crazy. I think we ought to-" +
"Listen, Wickland," Tanaka interrupted angrily, "right now, I don't care what you think." He dropped his oxygen mask and looked at his mission commander with pure anger. "I asked you before we entered hostile airspace if you wanted to do this, and you said 'press on.' Now we've stirred up the hornet's nest, we've got friendlies on the ground directly in harm's way, and we are not going to back down now."
"But you said-"
"I know what I said, and I was right-this wasn't our fight, and this is not our country," Tanaka said. "But we're committed. Do you understand that, Wickland? The time to back out was twenty minutes ago before Sanusi's forces entered defended airspace, or even five minutes ago before we started jamming the Libyan SAM sites. Now we're in the middle of the shit, and I'm not just turning around and going home. So you'd better do your job and do it damn well, or I won't wait to be blown up by a I-/'// put a bullet up your ass myself. Now give me a heading to those planes."
Wickland silently did what he was ordered to do. The MiG-23 fighters turned east-northeast, and Tanaka rolled in about thirty miles behind them to follow. Less than fifteen minutes later, they detected another flight of aircraft: three Tupolev-22 supersonic bombers, heading northeast toward the Gulf of Sidra. "There they are," Tanaka said. He began to push the throttles up until they were in full military power.
"What are you doing?" Wickland asked.
"We've got to nail those guys before the fighters join up," Tanaka said. "Those are Tupolev-22s-they're just as fast as the MiGs. Once they join up, they'll accelerate to attack speed, and we'll never catch them."
Wickland was silent, but Tanaka could sense the fear in his body as they quickly closed in. "Eight miles to go… seven miles, coming up on max missile range," he said. "Six miles… five… the bombers will still get away…."
"At this point, we'll just have to hope we take the tailend Charlie fighters out-maybe the bombers will break up once they find out their fighters are gone," Tanaka said.
"We're in max range." Wickland quickly touched the supercockpit display and spoke: "Attack target."
"Attack MiG-23 Scorpion, stop attack," the computer responded. Moments later, the first AIM-120 air-to-air missile shot out of the starboard external weapon pod and streaked off into the darkness.
But the MiGs must have sensed something was wrong, or maybe one of the pilots was checking his six, because the MiG-23 fighters suddenly peeled away from the formation, dropped decoy flares, climbed rapidly, then reversed direction. Seconds later, they heard a high-pitched DEEDLE DEEDLE DEEDLE! warning and a female computerized voice announcing, "Warning, fighter search radar, MiG-23, eleven o'clock, sixteen miles," followed immediately by a fast-paced DEEDLEDEEDLEDEEDLE! and "Warning, fighter radar lock, MiG-23, eleven o'clock, high, fifteen miles."
"The Scorpion broke lock," Wickland said. At that moment the second MiG-23 turned sharply right, and the two Tu-22 bombers accelerated and rapidly descended. "The second fighter is coming at us, and the bombers are getting away!" Wickland cried.
Tanaka hit his voice command button: "Evasive action! Configure for terrain following!" he spoke. Immediately the flight computer responded to the voice command, nosing the EB-52 bomber over in a hard twenty-degree nosedown dive. Tanaka kept the power in, diving right to max airspeed-the throttles automatically pulled themselves back to keep from exceeding the airframe's design speed. "Where are those fighters, dammit?"
"Got 'em!" Wickland shouted. "Closest one is coming around to our nine o'clock. The nearest bomber is at our one o'clock, thirty-two miles." He touched the icon for the Tu-22 bomber, then hit his voice command stud: "Attack priority," Wickland told the attack computer.
"Target out of range," the computer responded.
"We know the bomber's heading for Jaghbub," Tanaka said. "We'll head over that way and bushwhack — him." He turned the bomber farther to the northeast, cutting off the corner of the route to try to head the Libyan bombers off. "Warning, MiG-23, seven o'clock, eleven miles, high." The Megafortress was now down at three hundred feet above the desert, flying at nearly full military power at four hundred and twenty knots airspeed. "I think we're losing the MiGs," Wickland said. "They're trying to get a shot off from up high."