Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 (53 page)

 
          
With
the decoy destroyed, the second R-60 missile fired by the MiG-23 veered back
toward the Megafortress. It was too close to be decoyed by the towed array
again, so another defensive system activated: the active laser defensive
system. Directed by the EB-52’s laser radar, a large helium-argon laser mounted
in a fairing atop the Megafortress fired beams of laser light at the oncoming
R- 60 missile. After a few seconds, the missile’s seeker head was blinded by
the laser’s intense heat and light, and the missile could no longer track.

 
          
“We
got it!” Wickland shouted. “We—!”

 
          
Just
then, they heard a fast-paced
DEEDLEDEE-DLEDEEDLE!
warning tone and the computerized voice say calmly,
“Warning, radar missile launch MiG-23 R-24.”
The first MiG-23 had
turned around, locked onto the EB-52, and had taken a shot with a radar-guided
missile, then a second one.

 
          
‘Take
defensive action,” Tanaka told the computer. The computer was way ahead of its
human commander: It immediately ejected decoy devices from the left ejection
chambers, tiny winged canisters that had several times the radar cross-section
and infrared signature of the largest aircraft in the world—then threw the
EB-52 bomber into a steep right bank. The defensive systems in the EB-52
Megafortress bomber were completely automatic: The tiny decoys made invitingly
large targets, and with the bomber in a tight turn, the decoys were all alone
in space, dangling themselves in front of the Libyan missiles. Along with the
decoys, the Megafortress emitted jamming signals to the MiG-23’s India-band
radar that prevented the radar from tracking any other targets but the decoy.

 
          
With
the power and airspeed already up, the bomber was able to sustain a tight
ninety-degree bank turn for several long seconds, crushing both crew members
into their seats with unexpectedly heavy G-forces. Both crew members caught a
glimpse of one bright explosion out the left window—one of the missiles had
exploded less than a hundred yards off their left wingtip. The second R-24
radar-guided missile was handled by the active laser defensive system— it took
only a few seconds for the laser to completely blind the second missile, and it
continued on straight ahead and harmlessly exploded on the desert floor below.

 
          
But
after its tight defensive break, the Megafortress was dangerously slow. Tanaka
rolled the big bomber out of its tight turn, keeping the power in full military
power and the nose pointed down to try to quickly regain lost airspeed. The
first Libyan MiG-23 had overshot the EB-52—but the second MiG-23, which had
stayed down low to maintain contact, was now in perfect attack position,
directly behind the Megafortress. It closed in almost at the speed of sound in
seconds. “
Warning, bandit
six o'clock
, four
miles, MiG-23,"
the
computer warned.
“Warning, MiG-23
six o'clock
,
three miles
.. .
warning, missile launch detected..

 
          
The
Megafortress’s next defensive weapon automatically activated: the Stinger
airmine system. Instead of the fifty-caliber or thirty-millimeter machine guns
in earlier B-52 bombers, the EB-52 Megafortress carried a fifty- millimeter
cannon that fired small LADAR-guided rockets. With a range of about three
miles, the tiny rockets were steered toward incoming enemy aircraft or missiles
and then detonated ahead of them, creating a cloud of titanium flak that could
shred jet engines with ease. The crew heard a
poof! poof! poof!
sound far behind them and a hard jolt every few
seconds as the small rockets were launched. The MiG-23 that stayed down low
flew through a cloud of tungsten pellets that shredded the cockpit canopy and
engine; the pilot punched out just before his fighter started to spin out of
control.

 
          
‘Tail’s
clear, Zero!” Wickland crowed. “The MiG up high looks like he’s staying up
there trying to find us.”

 
          
“Where
are those bombers?” Tanaka asked.

 
          
Wickland
expanded out his display. “
Eleven o’clock
, forty miles. Three fast-movers, low.
They’re within fifty miles of Jaghbub, going almost six hundred knots. I’m not
sure if we can catch them. They’ll be over the base in five minutes.”

 
          
“Nike,
this is Headbanger,” Tanaka radioed to Chris Wohl.

 
          
“Go.”

 
          
“You’ve
got three inbounds, ETE five minutes. We can’t catch them unless you can get
them to turn around.”

 
         
Wohl
turned to Hal Briggs. “Sir, we need a distraction for those bombers,” he said.
“What do they have in storage?”

 
          
“Just
about anything you want,” Hal said. “I’ll be right back.” Briggs jet-jumped out
toward the underground weapon-storage area. He came back a few minutes later
carrying a twin-barreled 12.7-millimeter truck-mounted antiaircraft gun and a
large metal box of ammunition. He jet-jumped to an isolated area about two
miles west of the airfield, as far away as possible from the underground
shelters where Sanusi’s men were taking cover. “This what you had in mind,
Sarge?”

 
          
“It’s
about time, sir,” Wohl said. He was already scanning the sky with his battle
armor’s sensors for the incoming bombers. “Get ready.”

 
          
“Nike,
one minute out. We’re still just out of missile range.”

 
          
Hal
Briggs had to work fast with an unfamiliar weapon, trying to quickly get the
ammunition belt fed into the feeder. Normally the action was engaged
electrically in the gun, but luckily Briggs found a manual crank that he used
to wind a spindle that would fire the first round—after that, gas from the
cartridges should initiate the action.

 
          
“What
are you doing over there, sir?” Wohl called out.

 
          
“Hey,
you try and load this thing.” In a second Wohl dashed over to him, gave Briggs
his electromagnetic rail gun, and started unfeeding the backward-looped
ammunition belt. “Now we’re talking!” Briggs shouted as he hefted the big high-tech
weapon.

 
          
“Just
don’t miss, sir—we’re running out of projectiles,” Wohl growled.

 
          
“Oh,
pul-leese!”
Briggs plugged in the
data cable to his belt, charged the weapon, raised it, and followed the cues in
his helmet-mounted electronic visor. His visor gave him a complete status
readout—Wohl was right, only two projectiles remaining. “Never bagged a bomber
before— this’ll be fun.”

 
          
“Fifteen
seconds.”

 
          
“I
see it!” Briggs shouted. The Tupolev-22 bomber was coming in straight and
level, about a thousand feet above ground, at six hundred knots on the dot—the
target was small, fast, and low. The aiming system in the battle armor wasn’t a
lead-computing sight—this was going to be a thousand-in-one shot. Briggs fired
at two miles out, just as he saw a stick of bombs drop from the bomb bay. ‘Take
cover!” he shouted. “Bombs away!”

 
          
The
streak of burning air from the projectile passed in front of the bomber’s nose
by several hundred feet—he had led the target too much.

 
          
The
bomber dropped a stick of six five-thousand-pound napalm canisters that created
a tremendous wall of fire and a wave of heat that nearly pushed both of them
over. The intent was obvious—he was marking the target area for the second
bomber.

 
          
Briggs
whirled around and aimed. The first bomber was in a steep climbing right turn
in full afterburner—a perfect profile. This time, the streak of superheated air
passed right through the forward section of the Tupolev-22’s fuselage. Just
when Briggs thought he might have missed it again, a tongue of flame spat out
from the left engine compartment. The Tu-22 twisted unnaturally to the left,
its nose moving higher into the sky. Both afterburners winked out—Briggs could
now see it through only the rail gun’s electronic sights. The bomber seemed to
hang in midair, like a big graceful eagle climbing on a thermal—then there were
four puffs of light and smoke as all four crew members ejected, and the bomber
did a tail-side straight down and crashed into the desert just north of the
minefield.

 
          
Meanwhile,
Chris Wohl had finally loaded the dual antiaircraft cannon. He held the gun up
in his left hand by its mounting pedestal, held the ammunition can in his right
hand, then swiveled to the west and scanned the sky, looking for the oncoming
bombers. Suddenly, Wohl started firing into the sky. The big antiaircraft gun
bucked and shook, but thanks to Wohl’s exoskeleton, he was able to keep the
weapon fairly steady. Every twelfth shell from the can was a tracer round, and
as he swept the sky to the west, he created a snakelike wave of light in the
sky. The ammunition was gone in a few seconds; Wohl dropped the gun and the
ammo can, and both he and Briggs jet-jumped away from that spot—they knew what
was going to happen next…

 
          
The
second Tu-22 bomber veered hard to the south, away from the tracers—but the
third bomber came in hard and fast and laid down a stick of thirty or forty
five- hundred-pound high-explosive bombs, right on the spot where Briggs and
Wohl had been positioned. The incredible pounding from the bombs knocked both
men off their feet, and it seemed like dirt, dust, sand, and all sorts of
debris rained down on them for at least the next ten minutes. Their battle
armor’s power was almost depleted by that time—but they survived the attack.

 
          
The
third bomber stayed low and accelerated straight ahead without using
afterburners, as it was supposed to do in a defended area, so it was able to
escape. But the second Tu-22 that did the hard bank turned away from the
airfield—right into the waiting missile range of the Megafortress’s AIM-120
missiles. Wickland dispatched it quickly with one Scorpion missile.

           
“You guys all right back there?”
Tanaka asked.

 
          
“Everyone’s
in one piece,” Briggs said, “and they didn’t hit the airfield, so I think we’re
still in business. Where did that third bomber go?”

 
          
“He’s
bugging out—probably wondering where his two wingmen went,” Tanaka said. “We’re
going to head back and finish the job on Zillah, then see if there’s anything
we can hit at Al-Jawf. Keep your heads down. Headbanger clear.”

 
          
Wickland
pressed the attack at Zillah Air Base thirty minutes later by first firing one
antiradar missile at the airfield surveillance radar at Zillah Air Base, then
at another unexpected SA-10 mobile surface-to-air missile site that had just
activated its radar, both from high altitude. After defending themselves from
the SAM sites, Wickland used the laser radar and took second-long snapshots of
the base, magnifying and enhancing the images until he could identify them as
precisely as possible, then designated specific targets and loaded their
coordinates into the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapons. Once the target
coordinates were entered, the attack computer loaded a released track into the
autopilot.

 
          
The
attack computer automatically opened the bomb doors and started releasing
weapons when the bomber reached the release track. The AGM-154 JSOW did not
need to be at a precise weapon-release point—at high altitude, they could glide
unpowered for up to forty miles and flew to their targets with uncanny accuracy.
Four of the six JSOWs were programmed for Zillah’s main runway, cratering it
enough so no heavy or high-performance aircraft could use it. For the other
four targets, Wickland switched on an imaging-infrared sensor in the weapon’s
nose as it got closer to its target, and if the weapon was off-course he could
lock it onto their exact impact points—a building they suspected as the base
command post and communications center, the fuel farm, a power plant, and the
surveillance radar facility at the base of the control tower. The
one-thousand-pound high-explosive warheads made short work of all
targets—Zillah Air Base was effectively shut down with just eight well-placed
hits.

           
The EB-52 then headed toward
Al-Jawf, three hundred miles to the southeast. Attack procedures for the
Wolverine cruise missiles were much different from those of the other
precision-guided weapons: They didn’t need any procedures. Each missile was
programmed with a large set of targets in memory, and the missiles were simply
released when about fifty miles from the target area. Wickland used the laser
radar to try to spot targets and designate final impact points for the
missiles, but the Wolverines liked it best when they were on their own. They
used millimeter-wave radars to search for targets; then they would fly over the
targets and drop either anti-armor CBU-97 Sensor-Fuzed Weapons or CBU-87
Combined Effects Munitions on light armor or other vehicles. The missiles would
continue their search for targets, even turning around and reattacking if they
found they missed a target. Then, before the missile’s jet fuel ran out, the
missile would either find a building or use a designated target sent to it from
the Megafortress and fly into it, destroying the target with a two-hundred-pound
high-explosive warhead.