Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (25 page)

           
With the fighter’s attack radars in
standby or in intermittent use, the B-2’s most powerful sensor was the ALQ-158
digital tail-warning radar, a pulse-Doppler radar that scanned the skies behind
the bomber and presented a picture of the positions of the fighters as they
prosecuted their attack. Each time the fighters began to maneuver close enough
for a gun shot, McLanahan called out a warning and Cobb jinked away, never in a
predictable pattern, always mixing sudden altitude changes in with subtle speed
changes. Without their attack radar, the F-23 pilots had to rely on visual cues
to decide when to open fire. If nothing else, they were losing points or
wasting ammunition—at best, the B-2 might escape out of the MOA before the
fighters closed within lethal range.

           
Plus, they had one more ace in the
hole, but they were running out of time. “Guardian must be around here close to
be blotting out the radios like this,” McLanahan told Cobb and Ormack, “but I
have no way of knowing where he is. He might be only a few minutes away. . . .”

Aboard the F-23 Wildcat
fighters

           
“Fox three, Fox three, Raider
Two-Zero, guns firing,” Mirisch cried out on the primary radio. The B-2 had
finally remained steady for the first time in this entire chase, long enough
for
Milo
to safely join on his wing and for Mirisch
to get his first clean “shots” off at the big bomber’s tail. The B-2 had
accelerated,
really
accelerated—it
was traveling close to six hundred nautical miles per hour, much faster than he
ever expected such a huge plane to travel.

           
Suddenly the threat scope fit up
like a gaudy Christmas wreath. There was a powerful fighter radar somewhere up
ahead,
dead
ahead, not a search
radar, but a solid missile lock-on. A “Missile Launch” warning soon followed.
It wasn’t coming from
Milo
—there was another fighter out there, and it
was attacking
them!
His RHAWS was
indicating several different threats in several different directions—
surface-to-air missiles, fighters, search radars, at least a dozen of them. It
was as if six VPVO sites and six “enemy” fighters had appeared all at once.

           
Mirisch had no choice. He couldn’t
see his attackers, he had no radio contact or data link with GCI to tell him
what was out there, he was less than two thousand feet above ground, and the
loud, incessant noise of the jamming on all channels, bleeding through the
radios into the interphone, was beginning to cause disorientation. He checked
to be sure where
Milo
was—the kid had managed to stay in
formation with him, thank God, and had not yet moved into the lead
position—then called out on the emergency Guard channel, “
Powder River
players, this is a Raider flight, knock it
off, knock it off, knock it off!”

           
Whoever was jamming him obviously
heard the call, because the noise jamming stopped immediately. Mirisch leveled
off at two thousand feet, waited until
Milo
was back safely in position on his wing,
then scanned the skies for the unknown attacker.

           
He spotted it that instant. He
couldn’t believe his eyes.

           
It was a damned B-52 bomber. But it
was like no B-52 he had ever seen before.

           
As it banked right, toward the
center of the Powder River MOA, Mirisch saw a long pointed nose, a rounded,
swept- back V-tail, eight huge turbofan engines, and twin fuel tanks on each
wingtip. But the strange bomber also sported a long wedge-shaped fairing on its
upper fuselage resembling a specialized radar compartment, and ... he saw
pylons between the fuselage and the inboard engine nacelles, with what looked
like AIM-120 air-to-air missiles installed!

           
“Lead, I’ve got a tally on an
aircraft at our
eleven o’clock
high, five miles ...”

           
“I see it, Two, I see it,” Mirisch
replied. Dammit, Mirisch cursed to himself, why didn’t you pick that sucker up
two minutes ago? But it was too late to blame anyone else. Whatever that plane
was out there, it had “killed” them both. “I don’t know
what
the hell it is, but I see it.”

Aboard Whisper One-Seven, over
Powder River
MOA,
Montana

           
General Ormack strained against his
shoulder harness to look out the B-2 bomber’s cockpit windscreens just in time
to see the huge EB-52 Megafortress do a “wing wag” and then bank away to the
north. “Jesus, what a beautiful plane. We could use a hundred of those.”

           
McLanahan laughed. “Well, it just
sent those F-23s running, didn’t it? That thing is tailor-made for the Air
Battle Force. You give every heavy bomber going in a Megafortress to provide
jamming and air-defense support, you’ve got an awesome force.”

           
McLanahan and the other participants
at the
Strategic
Warfare
Center
had been hearing about the EB-52 for weeks.
Nobody had expected it to show up during the exercises. But it had, and
McLanahan was right, it was awesome. It had a radome on its spine that had been
taken off an NC-135 “Big Crow.” The radome could probably shut down all
communications in and out of
Rapid City
. It certainly jammed everything the F-23s
who’d been on McLanahan’s tail had on them. The plane also had capability of
carrying twenty-two AMRAAMS—twelve on the wings, up to ten internally on a
rotary launcher, including rear-fighting capability. Plus HARM missiles, TACIT
RAINBOW antiradar missiles, rear-firing Stingers, Harpoon antiship missiles,
conventional cruise missiles, SLAM and Maverick TV-guided missiles, Striker and
Hammer glide-bombs, Du- randal antirunway bombs . . .

           
General Brad Elliott had six such
planes. One was under repair and two more were authorized.

           
They would revolutionize SAC and
SWC.

Puerto Princesa Airfield,
Palawan
,
the
Philippines

Same time

           
The first instructor pilot to show
up on Colonel Renaldo Tamalko’s orders that evening was twenty-three-year-old
Lieutenant Jose Borillo, one of the newest and most energetic young flight
instructors at Puerto Princesa; it was no surprise that an enthusiastic hotshot
such as he reported immediately when the squadron recall was issued. The “old
heads” usually answered the phone call right away—Sergeant Komos had all the
phone numbers of the pilots’ mistresses and girlfriends as well as their home
numbers—but took their time getting back to base. Colonel Tamalko paired Borillo
up with Captain Fuentes, an experienced and competent but unmotivated weapon
systems officer (WSO), and he took a relatively new WSO named Pilas with him as
his backseater.

           
The maintenance squadron commander,
Captain Libona, was also wide-eyed and enthusiastic as Colonel Tamalko made his
way out to the flight line to inspect his jet and brief Borillo.

           
After the inspection and briefing,
Tamalko asked Libona, “Did we get a confirmation that this wasn’t a drill?”

           
“No, sir. Sergeant Komos, who called
you, hasn’t been able to get any confirmation at all. We’re assuming it is
real.”

           
“Don’t be so sure. What about a
confirmation on that Captain Banio, the Navy guy who alerted us? Anyone
authenticate his identity?”

           
Libona shook his head. “No one’s
been able to, sir ...”

           
Tamalko let out a string of
four-lettered words. This was either a really well-executed drill... or it
wasn’t a drill at all. He sure as hell didn’t know. More than likely, it was a
drill, but he still had to respond as if it wasn’t. After all, what with all
the tension in the Spratlys. . . .

           
Tamalko turned to Borillo. “Once
we’re airborne, you leave your fucking finger off the trigger, hotshot, or so
help me I’ll shoot you down myself. Stay on my wing, keep your mouth shut and
your eyes open. If the Navy files a bad report because of you, you’ll be flying
a garbage scow on
Mindanao
five minutes after you land. Now mount up
and let’s see what the hell is going on out there.” Tamalko stomped off to do a
fast walkaround, leaving Borillo and Libona in his wake.

           
Five minutes later the two fighters
were airborne and heading north across Honda Bay toward
Ulugan
Bay
.

           
“Bear flight, one-three-seven point
one-five,” Tamalko radioed to Borillo, directing him to dial in the assigned
Navy fleet common frequency.

           
There was a pause; then: “Say again,
lead?”

           
Oh, Christ! Tamalko thought, and
hissed: “One-three- seven point one-five.” Borillo should have known enough to
ask his WSO for the frequency if he missed it—asking the flight leader to
repeat a new frequency was a mortal sin during night formation flight.

           
“Two,” Borillo finally replied.

           
Tamalko switched frequencies himself
and was about to call to order Borillo to report up on frequency, but the
channel was a mass of confused voices in several different languages.

           
And then . . .

           
“Mayday, Mayday .. . I’m hit, I’m
hit. . . get over here, someone, help me . . . missile in the air! Missile in
the air . . . ! Hard to port. . . Watch it . . . !”

           
“Bear flight, check!” Tamalko
yelled. He heard a faint “Two” over the radio, and he hoped that was Borillo.
“Cowboy, Cowboy, this is Bear Zero-one flight on fleet common. Over.” “Cowboy”
was the call sign Sergeant Komos had given him for Captain Banio’s ship, but
Tamalko couldn’t tell who was on freq or what was going on. There was so much
chatter on the channel that he wasn’t sure if anyone heard him. “Cowboy, come
in!”

           
“Bear flight . . . Bear flight, this
is Cowboy.” The voice was frantic. “What is your position? Say your position!”

           
“I need authentication before I can
report, Cowboy ...”

           
“We are under attack, Bear flight,
we are under attack,” the voice—now firmly racked with terror—replied. “Smoke
... fire in all sections ... we need you over here right now, Bear flight, we
need you down here right
now!”

           
“Mode two, three, and four squawk is
set, Cowboy,” Tamalko reported, informing the ship that his radar
identification system was set and operating. The ship’s radar should be able to
identify his coded signals and give him steering commands, if it was indeed
Cowboy he was talking to. Part of an exercise would be to check if Tamalko
would fly off following directions from an unverified radio voice, and Tamalko
was going to play this one by the book—as much as possible. “Give me a vector,
Cowboy.”

           
“Can’t... Combat section
evacuated... ship on fire, Bear flight. Please,
help
us . . . !”

           
And then Tamalko saw it, off the
nose at about forty miles into the inky night sky—two blobs of light in the
ocean, shimmering dots of red and yellow fire. The dot off his nose was dimmer
than the northern one, which looked like a huge magnesium flare, as bright as
watching an arc-welding flame. Just then he saw several bursts of light issue
from some other nearby spots in the dark ocean farther to the south, with
tracers speeding out farther to the west. “Cowboy, I see fires and tracers. Who
is shooting?”

           
“Bear flight, this is Cowboy,” a
different voice came on the radio. “Bear flight, this is Lieutenant Sapao,
engineering officer aboard the frigate
Rajah
Humabon.
We are under attack by Chinese naval warships. We have been hit by
missile fire. Patrol boat
Nueva Viscaya
also hit by missile fire . . .” The slightly calmer report was interrupted by
shouts and cries, and the newcomer Sapao issued a few orders of his own before
returning to the radio: “Chinese warships estimated thirty miles west of Ulugan
bay, estimated ten vessels including one destroyer. Also Chinese attack
aircraft in vicinity, a naval-warfare craft launching antiship missiles and
torpedoes. Frigate
Rajah Lakandula
is
operating south of our position, and patrol boat
Camarines Sur
is assisting the
Nueva
Viscaya.
Can you assist, Bear flight?”