Final Storm (40 page)

Tapping the flag three times gently, Hunter punched the throttles to full military, and the big green bomber suddenly lurched ahead through the cold sky, speeding ever closer to his destination.

T
IME PASSED

The dark green shape of the B-1 shot through the deep twilight over Soviet Central Asia, pushing its huge shadow along the flat, barren ground only two hundred feet below.

In less than two hours, Hunter had traversed some twelve hundred miles straight through the heart of Russian airspace without being detected. The feat, though on the face of it fairly incredible, was actually the result of the close video teamwork between himself and the three officers back in the mission control center of the USS
Ohio.

To help him fly safely at that altitude, Wa had been typically alert, calling out terrain features in his path that were detected by the guidance system. Once warned, Hunter was able on most occasions to manually compensate for the plane’s automatic tendency to pitch up several hundred feet to avoid ground obstacles. And by keeping the big bomber as low as possible, they had already avoided a few Soviet ground-based SAM sites and even a couple of transport planes lumbering across the desolate skies.

Toomey had been silent, except to relay information from his screen about the potential threats. Whenever possible, Hunter had simply diverted the plane’s flight path around the missile sites’ effective radar range, not wanting to give away the bomber’s presence by forcing Toomey to remotely switch on the high-powered jammers of the defensive system. That would be risky. Because although the powerful electronic “noise” would surely drown out the Soviets’ radars, it would also be sure to tip them off that there was something out there.

Better to rely on stealth and speed, Hunter reasoned, until absolutely necessary.

Suddenly, Jones hollered out an alarm.

“
Jesus Christ
, Hawk!
Look out!
”

Hunter, busy rechecking the MAPS coordinates on his CRT screen, looked up just in time to see a giant spiderweb looming in front of the big bomber. Gray steel and black wire rose like a huge fence that threatened to trap the B-1 like a trawling net.

Even before Hunter could react, he felt the B-1’s nose pitch violently upward, accelerating to respond to an instantaneous command from the bomber’s navigational system. The sensitive probes of the bomber’s phased-array antenna had detected the thin skeleton of a high-tension power line support tower built after the war and therefore not included in the MAPS data. Immediately the onboard terrain guidance system put the B-1 into a drastic climb to get over the maze of wires.

But while the airplane’s avoidance gear had done its job and saved the airplane, it was not without cost.

First of all, the rear portion of the B-1’s left side tailplane stabilizer slashed through one of the electrical wires, tearing a large gash in the small wing’s skin, and carrying away several important static dischargers located there. Suddenly the rear end of the airplane was rippling with hundreds of small electrical shocks, caused by the loss of the discharge units. But even more serious, in climbing to almost a thousand feet in the rapid ascent, the huge shape of the bomber was now visible to the Soviet radar crews on the ground.

“They see us!” Toomey yelled sharply over the intermittent screech of the radar threat warning. “It’s a search radar—narrow-beam scan…. Take her back down, Hawk, before they lock on us!”

They had appeared on the radar screen at a nearby auxiliary SAM station only for an instant. But before Hunter was able to wrestle the big plane back down to two hundred feet, the B-1’s radar warning signal began to howl both in the sub’s command center and in the airplane cockpit. At the same time, Toomey saw two thin pencil beams on his screen begin to tighten around a single point along the line.

“They’ve locked on to us!” he snapped, as he turned the dials of his defensive countermeasures system to transmit a strong remote-control barrage of electronic energy over a corresponding band to thwart the Russians’ radar. “Commencing jamming now …”

Even as Hunter rolled the big plane over to dive for the ground, Toomey could see the electronically imprinted flash on his screen. He knew it was the resulting fire on the horizon as a huge Soviet anti-aircraft missile blazed off its launch rails to streak after the suddenly exposed bomber.

“Missile launch! SA-2!” Toomey said tightly, frantically twisting his dials to jam the ground controllers’ uplink signals. “Take evasive action!”

Hunter was already reacting. He didn’t need to be told twice that the deadly “telephone pole” SAM was headed straight for the B-1.

“You can’t outrun it, Hawk, so aim
right for it
,” Jones said, looking up at Hunter through the TV screen. Hunter immediately hauled the control stick sharply over and turned toward the glowing rocket.

“Aim right for the Goddamn thing, Hawk …” Jones repeated, a little more anxious now.

Hunter continued the maneuver, forcing the shuddering plane into a sixty-degree bank. Suddenly the glowing missile shot directly under his right wing. Due to Toomey’s jamming, the missile’s guidance system was left with nothing to aim for. But unluckily, the SAM’s on-board self-destruct system picked that moment to detonate.

The near-miss explosion nearly tipped the B-1 completely over—it was only Hunter’s quick action and extraordinary skill as a pilot that kept the bomber from plowing into the tundra.

The four TV screens began to blink incessantly as Hunter fought to control the airplane. Finally, he leveled it out and the TV screens refocused.

“Hawk,
you still there
?” JT yelled.

“I am,” Hunter answered, looking over his left shoulder. “But I’m not so sure about the left wing …”

His control board computer TV screen was blinking crazily, telling him that he had sustained damage to the port wing’s leading edge slat guide rails and the slat drive shaft, both critical steering mechanisms for the big airplane.

“What’s your condition, Hawk?” Jones asked soberly.

“The port wing’s frontside is ripped up,” he reported. “It also looks like the tip fairing is gone.”

“I’m not getting any fire indications,” Wa reported. “Slight leak through the fuel vent tank. Could get worse …”

“Whatever the damage, you’ve got to get the hell out of there before they lock in on you again,” Jones told him.

“I hear you, General,” Hunter said.

With that he immediately punched all four throttles down to the afterburner stops and the B-1 leapt forward as if propelled by a cannon blast. The sudden burst of speed drove him deep into his seat as the view outside the cockpit became an unrecognizable blur.

It was only after Toomey gave the “all clear” signal that Hunter began to decelerate to full military power, shutting down the fuel-greedy afterburners.

“Looks like it’s still holding together,” Hunter said, quickly scanning his control board and glancing back at the injured wing. “We were lucky.”

The general waved away the statement with a static-filled swirl of cigar smoke.

“You still got a long way to go,” he said. “And now they know you’re there.”

“Anything on the screen, JT?” Hunter asked.

“Nothing. They lost us after that little dash.” Toomey’s video image was tight as Hunter watched his friend continue to scan the video display.

The silence from the radar threat warning was a welcome relief after the high-decibel shrieking faded out.

“But now they know that you’re not just some fog or atmospheric interference,” Jones said soberly. “And judging by the MAPS display, even if you jink and jag the rest of the way, the SAM sites get thicker from here on in. Not to mention fighters …”

“OK,” Hunter said, “I think it’s time to give these bulletheads something to chase.”

With that he reached over to the wounded B-1’s radio transmitter, flicked a series of switches and watched as a yellow light glowed for several seconds, then blinked off.

“Now let’s just hope they take the bait,” he said grimly.

F
IFTY-TWO THOUSAND FEET
over the frigid waters west of the Bering Sea, a lone B-52H Stratofortress sliced through the blackness of the night skies, leaving eight ghostly contrails behind its tapered wings.

The navigator had just relayed a position check to the pilot, and the bomb coordinator had rechecked his console to confirm the bomber’s readiness.

Minutes before a yellow light on the pilot’s cockpit display flashed six times, illuminating the dim interior of the bomber with its amber glow. Now a sharp wail burst from the radio receiver.

“That’s it,” the pilot said to the co-pilot. “Priority signal received and confirmed …”

The pilot reached over and toggled a series of switches, shutting off the light and the alarm.

“Pilot to crew,” the bomber’s commander then called over the airplane’s intercom. “We have just received the incoming priority signal confirmation. Everyone knows the drill. We can assume that Soviet interceptors have already been scrambled, so we’ll dive for the deck as soon as our birds are away. Hang tight—it will be rough riding for a while, especially when we start to pull out. But I promise you a smooth ride home.”

With that, the Stratofortress’s bomb coordinator flicked open the safety covers of the bomber’s weapons control switches and deliberately clicked down the two toggles on the left-hand side. Instantly, red “Armed” lights came on above them. A similar action brought the massive bomb bay doors swinging down to their full open position.

A confirming light appeared on the pilot’s cockpit display.

“I have arming lock confirmation,” he called into his microphone. “Ditto bomb bay open confirmation.”

“Roger,” came the message back from the bomb coordinator. “My confirms also ‘green,’ sir.”

“OK,” the pilot said, checking his position one last time against the mission checklist. “Drop ’em …”

Instantly the bomb coordinator flipped another series of buttons, activating the very special load of weapons that had been stowed in the B-52’s massive bomb bay.

“Payload away!” he called into his microphone, mashing his “pickle” button twice.

At that moment, two heavy cylinders tumbled off the big jet’s bomb racks, dropping through the open bay doors into the freezing slipstream of the big bomber’s flight patterns.

Almost immediately, both cylinders sprouted short, stubby wings as each drone’s tiny turbofan motor coughed to life and propelled it rapidly ahead of the bomber. Soon, the two vehicles established parallel flight paths some five hundred feet apart.

Each missile, technically termed a “self-propelled decoy unit,” was specially designed to mimic the radar and infrared signature of the huge B-52 that had given birth to it in mid-flight. Along the barrel-shaped fuselage and stubby wings of the decoy, dozens of radar-reflective pods bounced the searching beams of the Soviet radars back with great intensity—great enough to make each little drone appear to be a full-size bomber headed for the Soviet mainland …

Even as the high-tech decoys began their one-way journey, the bomber that had launched them was engaged in a death-defying-maneuver to escape and reverse direction.

Against the protesting shrieks of fifty-year-old metal in the sagging wings, the pilot had plunged the Stratofortress in a hard, diving turn that exceeded the plane’s maximum safe angle of forty-five degrees. The shuddering monster groaned as eight powerful engines combined with sheer gravity to force her downward toward the frigid blackness of the sea below at a terrifying rate of more than five hundred miles per hour.

Lights were flashing intermittently, and multiple stall warnings sounded as the big bomber continued what would seem to be her death plunge to the sea. But as they entered the relative warmth of the lower altitudes, the thicker air began to flatten out the steep dive.

Gradually, responding to the pilot’s firm pressure on the yoke and the increased lift, the huge Stratofortress leveled out at a mere three hundred feet above the wavetops.

Like a gray ghost ship, the B-52 whispered along through the freezing spray, rapidly increasing the distance between herself and the drones she had just launched. The dull moonlight was reflected in the off-white surface of the wings, each of which carried the telltale identification letters UAAC on its topside.

A hundred miles to the east, another B-52 had completed a similar missile launch and diving escape. And a hundred miles to the west, the same.

All in all, ten of the hulking bombers had launched a total of twenty self-propelled decoy units. Now, all of them broke away and headed back to their bases in Alaska.

“I
T WAS RIGHT HERE,
Captain,” Sergeant Vasilov exclaimed, pointing to his screen. “Now it appears to have vanished.”

For the second time in two hours what looked like a solid radar contact had appeared momentarily in the pulsing sweep of the radar’s scanning bar which covered an area some two hundred and fifty kilometers to the west of Krasnoyarsk.

Captain Mursk had dismissed the first reported contact as typical interference, or even the product of Vasilov’s nerves.

But he was now becoming very uneasy about the second event.

After calling out to all his operators to be extra alert, Mursk walked away from the bank of radar consoles to an isolated corner of the vast Defensive Systems room. He needed time to consider his next course of action.

His instincts were telling him that something unusual was passing through their airspace and possibly heading for the massive Krasnoyarsk complex itself. In the old days, before the emergence of the forward-thinking Red Star, he would have definitely sat on the information, not daring to alert his superiors unless something solid happened.

But things had changed. No longer would a Soviet officer be punished for tripping the defense alert system only to later find out it was an honest mistake.

Deciding his course of action, Mursk reached for a special red phone on the central control console and punched in a special code. Within seconds he expected to be talking to the commander of the nearest Red Star air base.