Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 01 (10 page)

 
          
“Don’t
move, sir,” the dog handler said. “Is your identification in your breast
pocket?” Curtis nodded, once, very slowly. The guard removed Curtis’ wallet
while another guard quickly pat-searched him.

 
          
“Should
I raise my hands?” Curtis asked.

 
          
“He
means ‘don’t move,’ sir,” Elliott said, as his ID was examined. “Bambi there
weighs over a hundred and fifty pounds and could probably drag you up a
vertical ladder.”

 
          
“Bambi?”
Curtis felt his body stiffen as he looked at the dog.

 
          
“I
didn’t know you were carrying a weapon,” Elliott said to Curtis as the guard
pulled a nine-millimeter automatic from a shoulder holster.

 
          
Curtis
grunted, afraid to move his lips any further. The dog was led reluctantly to
Elliott for a quick search, and then taken away.

 
          
As
the two generals drank steaming cups of coffee just outside the guard shack
waiting for their ID verification, Curtis surveyed what little visible
landscape there was inside the compound. Inside the tall fence, the area was
completely dark leading to a row of three hangars. No lights at all were
visible anywhere. The large hangars were flanked by several smaller ones. A
wide ramp emerged from the opposite side of each hangar, and stretched out over
the horizon.

 
          
“Why
no lights inside the compound, Brad?” Curtis asked after their IDs were
rechecked and they were cleared inside the fence.

 
          
“Oh,
they have lights on, sir,” Elliott said. “All infrared. To the guards with
their sensors and sniperscopes, it’s just as clear as day. The darkness also
helps the Dobermans.”

 
          
Curtis
gulped. “Dobermans?”

 
          
“Yes,
unattended guard dogs. They’re more effective if they’re allowed to prowl, and
they’re very shy of lights. They all have laryngectomies, too, poor devils. If
they spot you, they won’t even give you the courtesy of a warning bark before
they go for your throat.” Curtis looked around nervously.

 
          
“They’re
not around now,” Elliott said. “At least, I
hope
they’ve recalled them. We’d never know what hit us if they haven’t.”

 
          
They
reached the back entrance to the hangar after another hundred- yard walk. “One
at a time,” Elliott said. They heard a buzzing sound, and Elliott grabbed the
doorhandle, pulled the large metallic door open, and stepped inside. A few
moments later, Curtis heard the same buzzer and did the same.

 
          
Curtis
was standing in a long corridor. The walls of the corridor were clear, thick
plastic on all sides, even the floor, and Elliott was just stepping out of the
second half of the unusual walkway. More security guards studied Curtis
carefully as he walked down the corridor and stopped at a plastic door. He was
aware of a large cannon-like device tracking him as he walked along, humming
like a dentist’s X-ray machine. The remote- controlled lock buzzed, and he
stepped into the second half of the plastic hallway. Another door later, he
joined up with General Elliott.

 
          
“Well,
that’s new even to me,” Elliott said. “An X-ray chamber. Must’ve put it in just
in the past few days. It checks for implants. That X-ray device, I’m told, can
find microdot transmitters embedded in your teeth, fingernails—even your
intestines.”

 
          
“Hmm.
I’m not sure how much good it will do,” General Curtis said. “I bet the
Russians have Dreamland scoped out from six different angles. A jackrabbit
probably can’t screw in this desert without some Soviet spy satellite watching
him.”

 
          
“Well,”
Elliott replied, “they might know about all the activity going on around here,
and all the security, and maybe even have snapshots of you and me taking a
stroll. But, at least for now, they don’t know anything about . . . this!”

 
          
They
emerged from the security chiefs office into the main hangar area. Curtis let
out a gasp, and even Elliott, who had seen this plane in nearly every step of
its metamorphosis, felt a thrill of pride and anticipation as he studied the
immense form before them.

 
          
“General
Curtis,” Elliott said, “meet the Old Dog.”

 
          
The
huge B-52 was completely black, a strange, eerie jet-black that seemed to
absorb
light, totally negating the
effect of the hundred maintenance floodlights surrounding it. The surface was
absolutely clean and as smooth as a bowling ball. It was as if the B-52, the
veteran of over thirty years of service, was in some sort of futuristic,
comical costume.

 
          
“What
the
hell
...” Curtis said.

 
          
“Don’t
recognize it, huh?” Elliott laughed. “Officially, the B-52 I- model, although
it’s only a B-52 H-model with a bunch of modifications. It is without a doubt
one of a kind. We use it as a test bed for Stealth-type technology, air-to-air
weaponry, weapons mating tests, computer hardware, everything. But she’s in top
flying condition—she can fly right now if you want. The workers have renamed
her from
Stratofortress
to
Megafortress,
and you’ll see why. Let me
show you around.”

 
          
Curtis
followed Elliott around to the most prominent exterior change on the bomber—a
long, needle-sharp nose and sharply angled cockpit windows.

 
          
“An
SST-style nose, Brad?” Curtis said. “Isn’t this going a little too far?”

 
          
“We
checked out every aspect of this plane’s performance,” Elliott said. “You’d be
surprised how much a long, pointed nose, pointed tip fuel tanks, more
streamlined cockpit windows, smoothed and polished skin, and no external TV or
infrared cameras help to increase this plane’s top speed. The limiting Mach on
this plane before modification was point eight-four Mach; now, the limiting
Mach speed of this baby is point nine-six without the externals. And it’s just
as comfortable at low altitude as it is in the stratosphere.”

 
          
Curtis
ran his hand over the skin. “What kind of metal is this?” he asked.
“Fiberglass? It’s not aluminum. What is it?”

 
          
“Radar-absorbing
fibersteel,” Elliott said. “A composition of fiberglass and carbon steel,
stronger than aluminum but as radar-transparent as plastic.

 
          
“We
can’t make it invisible, of course,” Elliott said. “It’s all a matter of time.
If we can get thirty or forty miles closer to the target without being
detected, all the expense and trouble is worth it. If an enemy fighter has to
come in another ten or twenty miles before he can get a solid missile lock-on,
it just improves our chances of getting
him
first and surviving. At night, the special black antisearchlight paint is worth
its weight in gold. This plane will be virtually invisible to the naked eye at
night. A fighter can be flying side-by-side with the
Megafortress
and he’ll never see it.” Elliott smiled as they walked
around the smooth, pointed nose. “Besides, the black paint and the nose make it
look mean as hell.”

 
          
As
they approached the huge bomber, Curtis stopped short.

 
          
“You
can’t. . . Elliott, you really did it this time, dammit.” Curtis was staring at
a long pylon on each wing, mounted between the fuselage and the inboard engine
nacelles. Each pylon carried six long, sleek missiles.

 
          
“Beautiful,
aren’t they?” Elliott said. “Advanced Medium-Range Air- to-Air Missiles. Radar
guided, with terminal infrared and home-on-jam guidance. Twenty-five mile
range. High-explosive proximity flak warheads. We’ve modified the main attack
radar to act as a guidance radar for these
Scorpions
.
”

 
          
‘
Scorpions
, ” Curtis muttered. “Dammit,
Elliott. We don’t even have
Scorpions
on our front-line fighters yet.”

 
          
“But
I’ve put them on a SAC bomber, sir,” Elliott said. “And they’ll go on your
B-ls, too.

 
          
“Also
on each wing we’ve put two three-thousand gallon external fuel tanks instead of
the one normal fifteen-hundred gallon tank. Both the missile pylons and all
four external tanks are jettisonable.

 
          
“We
also have split fibersteel bomb bay doors, which are lighter and more
radar-transparent. You’ll see why they’re split in a moment. There are many
places in this beast that radar energy will just
pass through
with zero reflectivity. The radar cross-section of the
B-52 used to
double
with the bomb
doors open—but not anymore. By applying the same technology to a B-l, which
already has half the radar cross-section of a B-52, you can make it practically
invisible.’’

 
          
They
reached the strange, unrecognizable tail of the airplane. “We eliminated the
typical horizontal and vertical stabilizers and replaced them with a short,
curved V-tail assembly. We built all of the tail-warning receivers and aft
jammer antennas into the tail. We’ve also included an infrared search and
warning system that is designed to detect air-to-air missile launches from the
rear.’’

 
          
“You
took the tail guns off?’’ Curtis said, pointing up at the very end of the
plane. “No big Gatling multibarrel gun, like on the H-models?’’

 
          
“Tail
guns are antiquated,” Elliott said. “Even a radar-guided Gatling gun is not
effective enough against the current class of Soviet fighters we’re expecting.
Hell, some Soviet interceptors can actually outrun a fifty-caliber shell.”

 
          
Curtis
checked the tail end closer. “Well, you’ve got something up there. A larger fire-control
radar, that’s for sure. What else? A flamethrower or something?”

 
          
“Land
mines,” Elliott explained. “Actually, air mines. That enclosed cannon in the
back fires twelve-inch-long flak cannister rockets. The aft fire-control radar
on the
Megafortress
tracks both the
rocket and the enemy fighter, and it transmits steering signals to the rockets.
When the range between the fighter and the flak rocket is down to about two
hundred yards or so, the fire-control computer detonates the rocket. The
explosion sends a pattern of metal chips out a couple hundred yards, which acts
like thousands of fifty-caliber bullets being fired all at once. There doesn’t
have to be a direct hit on the fighter.

 
          
“The
fire-control radar has an increased detection range of about thirty miles,”
Elliott continued, as Curtis shook his head. “The rockets have a range of
nearly three miles, which is very close to optimum infrared missile firing
range.”

 
          
“Elliott,”
Curtis said. “This is too much. Way too much. I don’t believe you—”

 
          
“General,”
Elliott interrupted, “you haven’t seen
nothin'
yet.” Elliott waved to a nearby guard standing near the left wing-tip. The
guard spoke briefly into a walkie-talkie, received a reply, then waved to the
general in response. Crouching below the ebony belly of the plane, Curtis and
Elliott went inside the back half of the bomb bay. Once inside, Curtis stopped
short.

 
          
“What
the ...” Mounted on a large drum-like rotary launcher in the aft portion of the
sixty-foot-long bomb bay were fourteen long, sleek missiles.

 
          
“Our
ace-in-the-hole, sir,” Elliott said. “Ten more brand-new AIM-120
Scorpion
AMRAAM missiles. They can be
guided by the fire-control radar, the bombing radar, or they can home-in on an
enemy fighter’s radar or on the fighter’s jamming transmissions. We have them
facing aft, but they can attack any threat at any angle. If one of those radars
has found a fighter, or if the threat warning receivers can see it, a missile
can hit it. The rotary launcher can pump out a missile once every two seconds.”

 
          
“Unbelievable,”
Curtis said. “Well, I suppose I should say it’s about time, eh, Brad? Nuclear
bombers with little machine guns going against Mach one fighters seemed awfully
silly to me.” He examined the launcher. “I can’t wait for you to tell me what
the other rockets do.”