Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (51 page)

 
          
“Pizda
tih a radila! "
Stoica swore in Russian. But he knew

 
          
Yegorov
was right. This guy, whoever it was, definitely had some teeth. Besides, one
glance at his fuel gauges told him the other story: going into afterburner
twice, plus carrying two external wing pylons, really sucked away the gas. He
had enough fuel for one more shot—but he elected not to take it. Reluctantly,
angrily, he turned left and headed south toward
Romania
.

 
 
          
“He’s
bugging out,” Patrick said, as he studied the God's-eye view on his
supcrcockpit display. “He's heading south . . . into
Ukraine
.”

 
          
“Dammit,
General, this is the
last
thing we need," Furness swore. “We’re on
an unauthorized and probably illegal mission—and now we have battle damage,
serious
battle damage! I’m not even sure if we’ll be able to air-refuel this thing
without a rudder and with only partial elevon control ”

 
          
“Wonder
where he's going?” Patrick mused. "If he was a Russian fighter, shouldn't
he be headed the other way?”

 
          
“Are
you listening to me, McLanahan? We almost got shot down.
You
almost got
us shot down.”

 
          
“We
were told by General Samson that the Russians agreed to let us go,” Patrick
told Furness. “All the other Russian aircraft returned to base—all except one.
a fighter with very low radar cross-section. Now he’s heading south into
Ukraine
. What’s up with that?”

 
          
“You’re
lucky to be alive, our tail is shot to hell, and all you can think of is where
the guy that almost killed us is headed?” “LADAR coming on,” Patrick said. He
tracked the unknown aircraft for just a few minutes longer until it disappeared
from his screen, just fifteen miles away. Definitely a stealth fighter, Patrick
thought—the laser radar had a range of over fifty miles. “He’s still heading
south. No change in heading. Maybe we should follow him, try to reacquire.”

 
          
“Why
the hell not?” Rebecca asked sarcastically, the anger thick in her voice. “Our
ass is grass if we go home now anyway.” Rebecca continued on course back home,
and Patrick did not argue any further.

Over the
Baltic Sea
Days later

           
From the outside, it resembled a
normal Boeing DC-10 Model 30F. with no windows and with big cargo doors instead
of passenger doors. Customs inspectors in
Aberdeen
,
Scotland
, two days earlier had found only a
cavernous empty cargo hold, with a few dozen passenger seats on rolling pallets
bolted to the forward part of the compartment, along with portable lavatories.
This particular DC-10 had some unusual cargo-handling equipment installed
inside—some sort of out- sized equipment in the back of the cargo compartment,
along with large doors underneath—but its American FAA Form 337 airframe
modification sheets and logbook entries were in perfect order.

 
          
After
stopping in Scotland for two days, during which time workers began loading the
plane with cargo, the crew had filed a flight plan direct to Al-Manamah,
Bahrain, with sixty thousand four hundred and fifty pounds of oil drilling
parts and equipment. Again, the forms were all in order, and the cargo
carefully inspected by both United Kingdom Inland Revenue officials, as well as
shipment supervisors representing the Bahraini company receiving the parts, and
the German insurance company that had written the shipment insurance policy for
the four thousand mile flight. It was now obvious why they needed this
particular plane and its unusual gear—some of the parts, including oil well
pipe, manifolds, and valves, were massive, far too large to fit through the
side cargo door. The parts had simply been hoisted aboard the plane through the
cargo doors on the bottom. After a three- hour weather delay and another hour
coordinating a new international flight plan across the ten countries they
would overfly on their nine-hour flight, they finally got under way shortly
before sunset.

 
          
But
as soon as the flight was airborne, the twenty technicians and engineers aboard
the aircraft got to work. The oildrilling equipment that resembled massive
cast-iron pieces were easily and quickly disassembled—they were actually
composed of lightweight steel sheeting over polystyrene foam. Pump manifolds
became control consoles; oil-drilling valves became test equipment and toolboxes;
and oil-drilling pipe became pieces of two unusually shaped missiles.

 
          
The
missiles had a curly-sided triangular cross-section, rather than a conventional
round torpedo shape, with the bottom side slightly broader in an aerodynamic
“lifting body” fuselage design. They had no conventional wings or control
surfaces such as tail feathers or fins. When the missiles’ flight control
systems were tested after assembly, the missiles’ skin actually seemed to
undulate and ripple, like the scales of a swimming fish. The missiles’ engine
inlets and exhausts were narrow slits both atop and at the weapon’s tail. Tiny
sensor arrays covered the outside, looking in all directions. Each missile
weighed about three thousand five hundred pounds. They were slid inside a
pressure-sealed chamber over the curious cargo doors on the bottom of the
aircraft fuselage.

 
          
By
the time the missiles were in place, the DC-10 was over northern
Belarus
, fifty miles west of the city of
Vitebsk
. The technicians still inside the aft part
of the cargo compartment donned helmets, parkas, gloves, and oxygen masks, and
signaled on intercom that they were ready for the next step. The mission
commander nodded, took a sip of Pepsi from a large squeeze bottle, keyed a
microphone button, waited for the secure satellite transceiver link to lock in,
then; “Hey, Archangel, this is Mad Dog.”

 
          
“Go
ahead, Mad Dog.”

 
          
“We’re
all ready to go. Say the word.”

 
          
“Do
it.”

           
“Got it. Buzz me if you change your
mind."

           
“Very well. Good luck.”

           
“Don't need it, but thanks. Later.”
He turned to the aircraft intercom: “Okay, guys, countdown is under way. T
minus two minutes and counting,” Doctor Jon Masters reported. “Final prelaunch
checks complete, running pregyro spin-up checks, awaiting RLG alignment in
forty-two seconds. Stand by for launch chamber depressurization.”

           
Jon Masters w as happiest in his lab
or on a computer design system, but he enjoyed actually going out and firing a
few of his babies off every now’ and then. In his early thirties, w ith boyish
good looks bordering on impish, Jon Masters was the Bill Gates of the military
hardw are and weapon contractors. He had earned his Ph D about the same time
most kids were learning to drive a car. and he had helped NASA build a
worldwide tracking and data system and had been made chairman of a small
high-tech weapons firm in
California
by the time most young men were getting their first real job. A few
years later, he was firmly in control of his company and known the world over
as an innovative inventor and designer. Sky Masters Inc, developed hundreds of
different strategic and tactical military systems—everything from miniature
satellite reconnaissance and communications systems, to high-tech aircraft,
sensors, and air-launched weapons.

 
          
His
most lucrative contracts had always been the top-secret stuff—satellites
launched specifically for a classified mission, stealth warplanes, and Buck
Rogers-like high-tech weapons. His company actually manufactured few of his
designs—he found it much more profitable to license the designs to other
high-tech firms. But this project was different. He’d personally supervised
every aspect of this mission. This was the ultimate request, and the ultimate
challenge—he wasn't going to let anyone down. Jon Masters had a long enough
string of successes working for classified top-secret projects that he could
afford to be cocky, but he knew that if it could go wrong, it might go wrong,
and he could never be positively sure until the mission was over

 
          
The
countdown went smoothly and swiftly. It took less than thirty seconds to spin
up and align the RLG, or ring laser gym, which provided super-accurate attitude
and heading information to both missiles’ autopilots and navigation computers.
Once the RLG was aligned, the chamber in which the missiles sat was
depressurized, and the final data download began. Launch aircraft position,
airspeed, altitude, and heading, along with target coordinates and last-second
enemy antiaircraft intelligence information, was dumped to the missiles’
onboard computers, checked, then rechecked by computer in a matter of seconds.
One more self-test was accomplished, the launch aircraft began a shallow climb,
the cargo doors on the bottom of the fuselage were opened, and both missiles
were ejected one by one into the slipstream.

 
          
The
missiles were only in the air for a few minutes when an alert sounded. “Grant
Two reporting a flight-control malfunction.” one of the technicians reported.
“Looks like the entire left-side adaptive wing actuators are out.”

 
          
“Did
you try a recall order?”

 
          
“It
responded in the affirmative, then started reporting offtrack.” the tech
replied. “It’s trying to make its way back to us, but it can’t steer.”

 
          
“Cripes,”
Masters exclaimed under his breath. “And that was the best one in the fleet.
Did we get a data dump yet?”

 
          
“Yes,
sir. Grant Two sent a complete data dump as soon as the malfunction occurred,
and I requested and received another one.
Blytheville
acknowledged the fault and data dump, too.”
The missiles always collected engine, systems, environmental, attitude, and
computer data for the last thirty minutes of flight, like a flight data
recorder did on an airliner, and it uploaded that information via satellite
back to the launch aircraft and to Sky Masters Inc.’s headquarters in
Blytheville
.
Arkansas
. The upload came regularly throughout the
flight, just before reaching their target, and whenever there was a glitch.

 
          
Jon
Masters reached over to a red swatch cover, opened it inserted a key into a
lock, turned it. and then pressed a button. Ten miles away, the second missile
exploded. “Eighteen million down the tubes.” he muttered. There was no such
thing as insurance for an experimental missile—especially one being used
illegally. “How ’s Grant One?”

           
"Straight and true, on course,
all systems in the green.”

           
Jon nodded. Well, he thought
ruefully, that’s why we launch two at a time, even with the best systems—and he
had the best systems around. Just ask him.

           
Grant One (Jon Masters always named
his devices after U.S. presidents) continued its flight, descending smoothly
from thirty-nine thousand feet under battery power only, heading 1 east.
Several minutes after launch, with its battery power halfway depleted, it
automatically started its turbojet engine, but kept the power-off glide going
until reaching five thousand feet above the western Russian lowlands. The
engine throttled up as it began to level off, then reported one last status
check to its mothership. Jon responded w ith a final "go- ahead” order.

 
          
The
missile accelerated to four hundred and eighty knots airspeed and descended to
one thousand feet above ground level as it cruised north of
Moscow
, skirting the long-range air defense and
air traffic control radars ringing the city. Every twelve seconds, it updated
its inertial guidance system with a fix from the Global Positioning System
navigational satellites, but after only a forty-five-minute low-level flight,
its navigational error was less than sixteen feet.

 
          
Twenty-five
miles northeast of
Moscow
, it turned south, descended to five hundred feet above the earth, and
accelerated to five hundred and forty nautical miles per hour as it approached
the air defenses ringing
Zhukovsky
Flight
Test
Center
near Bykovo. It had already been programmed
with a course that would take it around major known cultural features such as
tall transmission towers or buildings, but the missile also used a comb-size
millimeter-wave radar to alert it of ,any unknown obstacles in its path. The
radar was sensitive enough to detect the high lead and sulfur content of the
smoke coming out of some factory chimneys in its path and easily
circumnavigated them as if they were obstructions.

 
          
The
missile turned on its imaging infrared sensors seventy seconds prior to target,
then uplinked the images via satellite to Jon Masters aboard the DC-10 launch
aircraft. The image showed the base in line detail, with reds, pinks, purples,
and oranges forming enough contrast to see buildings.

           
A white box surrounded the computer's
best guess as the intended target. From ten miles away, it was hard to tell if
the box was on the right building, but in less than a minute, he'd find out.

 
         
 It
was off, but not by too much. The navigation system had rifted off a few dozen
yards, and the white box was centered on an adjacent hangar. Jon entered
commands into the computer, froze the image in computer memory, then used a
trackball and rolled a crosshair cursor over the proper target impact ioint—a
spot three-quarters of the way across the roofline— and commanded the missile to
hit that exact spot. He then made sure the terminal maneuver was programmed as
a PUP— Pull Up, Push Over, in which a few seconds before impact the nissile
would climb a few hundred feet and then plunge itself lown onto the target
point. Several air defense radars in the irea had detected the missile—rather,
they had detected
something
out there—but the missile’s stealth
characteristics made it impossible to get a solid lock on it.

 
          
The
last few seconds of the missile’s three hundred mile flight were the most
spectacular. Eight seconds before impact, Grant Two made its steep climb. The
imaging infrared picture stayed locked on target. Then, just before the missile
reached a thousand feet above ground, it did an even steeper dive. Jon caught a
glimpse of the roof of the Metyor Aerospace building for just a few seconds
before the missile hit.