Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 05 (57 page)

 
          
But
now the F-14 itself was moving in. “Fighter at one o’clock high, range less
than three miles, closing at seven hundred knots ... HAVE GLANCE active!”

 
          
The
HAVE GLANCE system, the high-powered laser emitter married to a
missile-tracking radar, had a deadly effect on delicate, sensitive combat
sensors such as those found on heat-seeking missiles, passive and active
radar-homing missiles—and the human eyeball. The F-14 pilot had just zoomed
down the ramp through 15,000 feet and was arming up his 20-millimeter cannon
when the HAVE GLANCE laser blinder locked on to his aircraft and fired.

 
          
The
helium-argon laser, only the size of a large videotape camera but just as
powerful as an industrial-strength diamond-cutting laser, didn’t cause any pain
when the orange-blue beam hit the pilot’s eyes. He saw a quick flash of dirty
blue light that temporarily obscured his vision, like a waft of smoke or sand.
He blinked—the spot was still there. He blinked again—ah, the spot was
beginning to clear, still fuzzy but getting better. The Iranian pilot could see
the radar range click down on his heads-up display . .. 3,000 meters to fire
... 2,000 meters to fire . . . ready to fire . . .
now!

 
          
But
he wasn’t locked on to the target anymore—like the Phoenix missile, his
fire-control radar had first locked on to a cloud of chaff, then on a piece of
terrain when the bomber jinked away. The radar wasn’t counting down to his
shoot point... it was counting down to when his fighter would hit the ground. A
light from a passing car near the town of Chanf was the first indication to the
pilot of how close he was to the ground—a split second before he impacted,
traveling at almost the speed of sound straight down.

 
          
“Scope’s
clear,” McLanahan said. “Chah Bahar’s off the nose, forty miles. We’re well
inside radar range of that A-10 radar plane now.”

Aboard the Islamic Republic op
Iran aircraft carrier
Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini

THAT SAME TIME

 
          
“Combined
radar reports a low-flying aircraft now two hundred fifty kilometers north of
our position, heading south at very low altitude—less than two hundred meters,
speed seven hundred kilometers per hour,” Brigadier General Muhammad Badi,
Major Admiral

 
          
Akbar
Tufayli’s chief of staff aboard the carrier
Khomeini
,
reported. “Chah Bahar air defense forces have engaged numerous unidentified air
targets south of Iranshahr, destroying one believed to be a decoy.”

 
          
“Good,”
Tufayli said confidently. “This new radar system seems to be working
perfectly.”

 
          
“Shall
we commit any of our fighters to the pursuit?”

 
          
“No,
Badi, not yet,” the Pasdaran naval commander replied. “We shall wait until the
aircraft is over water before committing our forces.” He paused to think for a
moment. “The bomber is over eastern
Iran
now? That means it must have flown westward
across
Afghanistan
... and across
India
and
China
, too, perhaps? This means that the
Americans may have violated Chinese airspace to attack from the Asian side,
rather than attempt another attack from overwater! I think our Chinese friends
would be very interested to learn about this new development, wouldn’t you say,
Badi? Get me the Chinese group commander at Chah Bahar immediately.”

Aboard Air Vehicle-011

 
          
“It
worked once before—let’s see if they work again,” McLanahan said. “Missile
launch, ready ... ready... now ... doors open ... one away . . . two away. . .
doors closed ...” At that instant, there was another missile launch warning
from the SA-10 site—again, when the bomb doors were open, the B-2A bomber was
at its most vulnerable position.

 
          
The
SA-10 Grumble missile flew a high ballistic flight path over the rugged terrain
of southeast
Iran
, flying up to 50,000 feet before starting its terminal dive into the
“basket,” where its quarry was supposed to fly. When it turned on its active
terminal radar and flashed it into the target “basket,” it acquired the B-2 A
bomber immediately. The SA-10 Grumble missile actually had two seeker heads—an
active radar seeker in the nose and, since the missile actually flew
“side-ways” into a lead-computing intercept, it also had an infrared seeker
head mounted in the body of the missile that looked sideways at its target as
it got closer, acting as a backup and as a terminal fine-tuning device for a
precision kill. With two seeker heads, the SA-10 was very difficult to decoy.

 
          
But
the bomber’s HAVE GLANCE laser immediately destroyed the infrared seeker,
allowing the IR seeker’s computers to deliver false aim-correcting data to the
missile—just for about a second, but long enough to knock the missile out of
its nice, smooth intercept. At the same instant that the HAVE GLANCE laser hit,
Jamieson threw the bomber into another hard left break, just as McLanahan
dumped chaff. The SA-10 missile wobbled, reacquired, locked on to the chaff,
decided it wasn’t moving fast enough and rejected that lock, reacquired the
bomber—and hit the right wing, near the tip just forward of the trailing edge.
The shaped-charge missile warhead punched a two-foot-wide hole in the wing,
destroying the right wing ruddervators and rupturing the right wing fuel tank.

 
          
The
B-2A bomber heeled sharply to the right, flipping over at nearly a
ninety-degree bank, throwing the bomber nearly into a full accelerated stall.
Jamieson tried to correct the turn, but had trouble controlling the aircraft.
“Controls not responding!” he shouted at McLanahan. “We lost the right ruddervators
... c’mon, dammit, give it to me, give it to me!” It took both men on the
control stick, then full left rudder trim, to straighten the bomber out.

 
          
“Lost
the right ruddervators,” McLanahan confirmed. “Left ruddervators are deployed
fifty, sixty percent. Power plants, all other systems OK. Fuel looks like it’s
draining out the right wing . . . right wing valves are closed, all engines
feeding off the left wing, boost pumps on, system still in AUTO but I’ll watch
it. Hydraulics OK.”

 
          
Meanwhile,
the two JSOW cruise missiles were on their way, and as expected, the
“screamers” did their magic once again. Two JSOW “screamers,” one east and one
west of Chah Bahar, created so many false targets, emergency radar locks, and
close-in automatic engagements that a dozen air defense sites within twenty
miles of Chah Bahar opened up all at once—and all of them shooting east or
west, instead of north, toward the B-2A.

 
          
At
ten miles from Chah Bahar, McLanahan and Jamieson launched the next two
missiles—these were AGM-88 HARMs (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles),
supersonic radar seekers loaded with a 150-pound conventional high-explosive
warhead with tungsten alloy steel cubes embedded in the explosive to triple the
warheads destructive power. The rotary launcher ejected two HARM missiles out
into the slipstream, the missiles fired ahead of the bomber, then quickly
locked onto the Chah Bahar radar straight ahead and homed in. With the radar at
Chah Bahar on full-cycle duty to counter the JSOW “screamers” and direct Chah
Bahar’s murderous antiaircraft defenses, the HARM missile had a clear shot all
the way, and seconds later the search radar had been destroyed for good.

 
          
“Okay,
Mack,” Jamieson said. “We’re at the IP. We can turn back and hightail it for
the hills, and we got a pretty good chance to make it outta here. We can E and
E through the Pakistani or Afghan hills, then bug out over the
Gulf
of
Oman
and catch our tanker.”

 
          
“You
don’t want to do that, Tiger,” McLanahan said. “You want to see that carrier go
down. So do I.”

 
          
“Yeah,
you’re right,” Jamieson said. “Hell, I didn’t want to live forever anyway.
Let’s take care of business and get the hell outta here.” He began pushing up
the throtdes to full military power while McLanahan cut off the COLA
terrain-avoidance system, and they started a steep climb over the
Gulf
of
Oman
toward the carrier.

Aboard the
Khomeini

THAT SAME TIME

 
          
“The
radar at Chah Bahar is down,” Badi reported to Major Admiral Akbar Tufayli. “We
are resynchronizing with the A-10 radar plane and our own search radar. He is
repositioning his orbit fifty kilometers further north to compensate for the
loss of the shore station. We have requested that another A-10 take up a
position to back up our A-10 on station; his ETE is thirty minutes. . . . Stand
by ...” It took only a few moments. “We have reacquired the target, sir,
bearing zero-one-five, range ninety-six kilometers, speed six hundred
kilometers per hour—it appears to have slowed down considerably.” “Possibly
damaged,” Tufayli said. “Now may be the time to commit our forces to hunt that
bomber down and destroy it forever!” “Range ninety kilometers, speed
five-ninety, altitude now reading ... sir, altitude is increasing. He’s
climbing
.. . now passing three hundred
meters, four hundred .. . range eighty kilometers, passing six hundred
kilometers in altitude. We have a solid lock-on, sir . . . seventy-five
kilometers and closing, speed down to five hundred kilometers!”

 
          
“Engage
at maximum range,” Tufayli ordered. “Launch the alert fighters. Get everything
we have airborne. Where is that bomber now?”

 
          
“Still
climbing, sir.. . Interceptor flights Twenty and Twenty- one engaging target,
range sixty kilometers and closing ...”

 
          
“Twenty?
Twenty-one? Where are those flights from?” Tufayli asked.

 
          
“Those
are the air defense F-4 Phantoms from Chah Bahar, on station with the A-10.” He
stopped and looked at his commander. “The A-10? Could that bomber be going
after the
radar plane?”
“Get him out
of there! Have him take evasive action! ” But it was too late. The B-2A bomber
launched two more AGM-88 HARM missiles, which homed in straight and true on the
A-10 radar plane, sending it quickly spinning into the
Gulf
of
Oman
.

           
“He’s ... he’s gone, sir, off our
radar screens,” Badi reported. “Interceptors have lost the target.”

 
          
“No!”
Tufayli shouted, slamming a fist
on his seat in anger. The F-4s had poorly maintained radars, with few spare
parts, and were not as reliable as the Sukhoi-33s or the MiG-29s. “Not now! We
were so close! Badi, I want every fighter we have in the air right
now!
I do not care if we shoot at every
bird or every cloud in the sky that even remotely
looks
like a bomber on radar. I want it done, and I want that
bomber on the bottom of the
Gulf
of
Oman
!
Now!”

Aboard Air vehicle-011

 
          
Nose
pointed down to the sea, throttles to idle to present the smallest possible
thermal cross-section astern, the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber plunged down into
the darkness of the
Gulf
of
Oman
. As it passed through 5,000 feet, following
the computer’s projected track to where it thought the carrier
Khomeini
was, McLanahan saw a tiny spot
of light on the ocean—soon he saw others. “SAR coming on ...,” he announced,
“now ... SAR standby. Got the carrier, directly ahead, fifteen miles . .. last
four missiles are programmed and ready to go.”

 
          
“Punch
those ‘Elmers’ out and let’s go home,” Jamieson said. Thirty seconds later, the
last four JSOW missiles were on their way to the aircraft carrier
Khomeini.