The autopilot continued to fly the mission profile and the big jet turned toward the coast of North Africa. Now they were flying the “blue line,” the flight track that optimized their penetration of enemy airspace. They intended to overfly the Gulf of Sirte and the crazy Libyan colonel’s “line of death.” The blue line then threaded around any radar that might detect them at close range. From there, they would fly south along the Libyan-Egyptian border and split the air defense seam between the two countries before descending to low level for the attack phase. If blind luck became a factor and the air defenses of one country did detect them, they would dart into the other country’s airspace and stir the diplomatic pot. But by the time the air defenders made a decision, the B-2 would have disappeared into the night.
“It doesn’t seem fair,” Holloway said, making light conversation as he munched a sandwich.
“What doesn’t seem fair?” Terrant replied.
“Us zapping a bunch of clueless ragheads with the world’s greatest piece of technology.”
“They’re not clueless,” Terrant grunted as he reached for his helmet and gloves.
4:03
A.M.
, Monday, April 26,
Over Northern Sudan
The threat status on Terrant’s left multifunctional display (MFD) flashed, demanding the two pilots’ attention. The B-2’s highly sophisticated and sensitive electronic countermeasures system had detected the faint pulse of a search radar. Terrant pushed at the menu buttons on the side of the MFD to analyze the new threat. “Holy shit, it’s an S-Twelve!” It was one of the few times he felt the need for profanity. The S-12 was a modern, Russian-built, highly mobile radar system that had been created to counter stealth technology and had never been reported outside Russia. It was basically a wide-aperture radar with an active array antenna.
Now it was Holloway’s turn to be cool. “What’s the range?”
Terrant pushed at another button. “Right now, over three hundred miles. No threat—so far. But we’ll pass sixteen miles abeam on the leg into the IP.” The IP, or initial point, was the last waypoint that pointed the way to the target.
“You’d think they’d place the S-Twelve at the target,” Holloway muttered.
“Good point,” Terrant answered. “They probably got it on the highest ground around to increase its range.”
Holloway studied the display for a moment and tapped the recesses of his memory. “An S-Twelve at sixteen miles will paint us,” he told Terrant. “I figure they’ll get a return about the size of a big bird.”
“Rog,” Terrant replied. Holloway’s reading of the new threat agreed with his.
But why was it there?
He thought about his options. For a moment, he considered breaking radio silence and using the SatCom radio to tell the national command center controlling the mission about the new threat. Because this was the B-2’s first combat mission, the generals would probably call for an immediate abort. The political fallout from a screw-up could ruin careers.
The nice thing about the B-2 was that the aircraft systems allowed him time to work the problem. Obviously, the Sudanese were worried about an attack and were upgrading the target’s defenses.
We stand a greater chance of being detected if we break radio silence
, he reasoned.
So what else is out there?
He answered his own question.
Nothing that can cause a problem. Don’t wimp out now. This is what we get paid for
. But being a cautious man, he decided it was time to put distance and high terrain between them and the S-12 radar.
Terrant punched at the buttons surrounding the MFD that was slaved to the navigation computer. He called up a map display, inserted the position of the new radar, and examined their route. “They’ll be looking west and north,” he said. He shoved a new digital data unit cartridge into the lower data transfer receptacle and called up a backup profile the mission planning cell had developed. This one called for a low-level ingress that took them deep into the heart of the Sudan before making an end run to approach the target from the south. It was a good plan but had been rejected because of the additional time they had to spend over hostile territory.
The computers did their magic and integrated the new radar threat into the new profile. “Yeah,” he muttered. The more he studied it, the better it looked. The new route would allow distance and high terrain to shield them from the S-12 radar. Yet they could still use their original initial point and attack axis. “What’cha think?” he asked Holloway, who had been following every step with rapt attention.
“Go for it.”
The computer confirmed Terrant’s analysis and, satisfied that an ingress altitude of 4,500 feet, which was 1,000 feet above the ground, would keep them in the shadow of the mountain range and still hold them above most small-arms ground fire, he punched in that number. He hit another button and two seconds later, the navigation and weapons delivery computers were updated. Still on autopilot, the B-2 nosed over, dropping toward the desert floor over 40,000 feet below them. “We’ll have to toss the weapon to get a decent standoff range,” Terrant said.
“No biggy,” Holloway replied. They had practiced that maneuver many times in the simulator.
4:46
A.M.
, Monday, April 26,
The Sudan
“Captain! I hear something!” the boy shouted over the field telephone linking al Gimlas to the underground echo chamber. “But it is very weak.”
“Keep your back against the wall,” al Gimlas ordered. He stood in the cool night air, stared at the starry heavens above him, and strained to hear. There! Now he too could hear it. It was very faint, little more than a buzz. He spoke into the phone. “Move around the wall to keep the noise the loudest.” He cautioned everyone aboveground to be silent. “Always keep your back to the wall.”
“It’s loudest here,” the boy said.
“Which way are you looking?” al Gimlas asked.
“To the south.”
The south!
al Gimlas thought.
They’re coming from the wrong direction. How clever
. Now he could definitely make out the sound—a jet aircraft. He wanted to shout with joy. While at Sandhurst, he had studied the way the Vietnamese had used their main resource, people, to defeat the Americans. His tutor had thought it a waste of time but had humored him. Personally, al Gimlas doubted that a cone-shaped hole could serve as an audio direction finder for locating aircraft. But maybe, just maybe, the rest would also work. Had the S-12 radar forced the plane to a lower altitude and into the range of the Shilka? He could hear it, couldn’t he? All of them could hear it.
“It’s a little louder,” the boy said over the telephone.
“Tell me when it is very loud.”
“Captain! The wall! It’s caving in! Drop the ladder!”
“Wait!” al Gimlas shouted. He could see the ground ripple around the opening in the ground. “Just a few more seconds.”
“I can’t wait! I can’t!”
“The noise, what is it doing?”
“Please! The ladder!”
“We’ll get you out. Don’t panic.”
“There!” the boy shouted. “It’s very loud.”
“Fire!” al Gimlas shouted at the top of his lungs. Twenty feet away, the four barrels of the Shilka roared to life. The Shilka, or ZSU-23-4, was a Soviet-built antiaircraft cannon mounted on a tank chassis. The four barrels sent a stream of high-explosive 23-millimeter ammunition into the air. Every tenth round was a tracer and at the Shilka’s high rate of fire, it etched the night with a solid red ribbon. The gunner traversed the barrels back and forth through fifteen degrees of arc, snaking the line of red tracers back and forth across the sky directly above him.
The ground underneath al Gimlas shook from the recoil and he could feel the dirt moving under his feet. The boy’s voice screamed in panic over his headset.
The moving map on the MFD showed them over the initial point when a bright red line swept past the nose of the B-2. Holloway’s reactions were rattlesnake quick, and he grabbed the control stick, flicked off the autopilot, and stood the B-2 on its left wing like a fighter, and turned away from the stream of tracers. “What the fuck!” he yelled. He pushed the stick forward and rolled out. It was a violent maneuver that touched the G limit the aircraft could sustain.
The red line snaked back across the sky at them. Again, Holloway stood the B-2 on a wing, this time the right one, as they cut a knife edge in the night, presenting the smallest possible target to the cannon fire. The two men saw the red line wave past them. “Shit-oh-dear!” Holloway shouted. The jet was on the very edge of control.
“Roll out!” Terrant shouted, feeling the slight buffet that indicated the loss of controlled flight. Holloway also felt it and raised the right wing. They saw the red line pass behind them and to the left. The aircraft shuddered as one round hit the underside of the left wing and exploded. They had flown through a curtain of unaimed barrage fire and the “golden BB,” the lucky shot, the one-in-ten-million chance, had found them. It was pure luck, the one factor no amount of technology, planning, and training could counter.
The B-2’s magic had also worked against it. Because of the bomber’s precise navigation capability, it had flown directly over its planned initial point and into the unaimed artillery barrage.
Al Gimlas looked skyward, his eyes following the stream of tracers. In the flash of a single explosion, he saw the batlike shape of a wing. Then it was gone. He stared at the stars in wonder. Was it real? Had they really hit a B-2? It had to be. He ran toward the communications tent. “Start digging!” he yelled over his shoulder. “I want him out. Alive.” He skidded into the tent and grabbed a handset, calling the Stinger teams. “It’s coming toward you! A B-Two.”
“What do we shoot at?” one of the teams answered.
Frustrated, al Gimlas banged his fist on the table. They didn’t have an echo chamber to tell them when the aircraft was passing overhead. But he had to tell them something. “Shoot at the sound when you hear it.”
“I can’t believe it,” Holloway breathed. “I think we’re okay.” The unbelievable strength of the B-2’s construction and the multiple redundancy of over two hundred onboard computers had saved it from what should have been a lethal hit. The explosion had damaged the left wing, ruptured the left outboard fuel tank, and destroyed or damaged four control surfaces. But the computers had automatically sealed off the ruptured tank, rerouted the fuel flow, and the quad-redundant fly-by-wire flight control system compensated for the damage to the control surfaces. Now the hours the two pilots had spent in the cockpit procedures trainers practicing emergencies exactly like this one paid results. They had to react to the warning messages the computers were sending and reconfigure the aircraft.
They were flying straight and level at eight hundred feet above the ground, the B-2 was responding to control inputs and not doing anything it shouldn’t. An engine fire light flickered. Holloway confirmed with Terrant that it was the number one, the left outboard, before he retarded the throttle. The light went out. “Shut it down?” Holloway asked.
Terrant continued to run his emergency procedures checklist. “I think it’s okay. Probably a damaged circuit.” He punched buttons, rerouting the system. “Add some power.” Holloway inched up the throttle and the light stayed out. The computers reported the engine as clean and undamaged. But they were running out of time and the weapons release point was on their nose, thirty-one seconds away.
Computers possess infinite courage and it fell to the pilots to make the critical decision. “Go for it?” Holloway asked.
“What else is out there?” Terrant asked. His mind raced with the implications as his hands went about other assigned tasks. The bird was looking more healthy all the time. They were good-to-go and the threat display was quiet.
If there are more defenses, they’ll be clustered around the target
, he reasoned.
Which means we need more standoff distance
. He made the decision. “Climb two hundred feet.” Terrant punched in the new delivery parameters for the weapon. The numbers the computer spat back confirmed his thinking. A toss delivery for the deep penetrator bomb at that altitude gave them a four-mile standoff distance. More than enough.
The sergeant in command of the Stinger team halfway down the valley leading to the research laboratory stood in the open, scanned the night sky, and strained to hear. Nothing. But Murphy’s law was on his side and he was looking in the right direction when the fuel cutoff valve in the B-2’s left outboard fuel tank failed. Normally, a downstream shutoff valve would have backed up the primary valve. But owing to battle damage, it also failed and fuel gushed into the left engine bay before a third shutoff valve could function. The number one engine flared, sending a streak of flame out the exhaust for a few seconds.
The sergeant directed the Stinger onto the torch and fired. The missile worked perfectly and he was astounded by its speed. But the bright torch streaming out behind the B-2 winked out before the Stinger reached its target. The missile’s seeker head lost the heat signature it was homing on and went ballistic, arcing through the B-2’s altitude. But the area over the wing was still hot and the missile’s heat-seeking guidance head homed on that. It ripped into the left wing and exploded, relighting the fuel. A second missile slammed into the big jet inboard of the left engine bay.
Amazingly, the aircraft held together and was still flyable, a tribute to Northrop’s engineers and workers. A third missile flashed by underneath. The proximity fuse sensed a shift in mass and it exploded, shredding the underside of the wing. Structurally, the plane was still intact. But with all of the control surfaces on the left wing destroyed, no amount of computer redundancy could save the bomber.