Read Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 Online
Authors: Sky Masters (v1.1)
“If your town is under attack or is
threatened, move toward the coast as quickly as you can. Do not move toward
Davao, as you might move into the middle of a battle area, trapped between
opposing forces. Avoid Chinese or NPA troops; travel on secondary or back roads,
at night if possible. If you can travel by boat, do so only at night, stay
hidden near the coastline, and avoid all large coastal towns. Do not assist any
Chinese or federal government representatives or military personnel. If you are
forced to assist them, do so to save your own life, but escape when it is safe
to do so and resist to the best of your ability. Provide aid and comfort to any
of my militia members known to you.
“Above all, pray for the strength
and courage we will need to resist the Chinese invaders. As long as I live, I
will do everything in my powers to remove the foreign invaders from our
homeland. May God give me, and you, my loyal brothers and sisters, the strength
to continue fighting until our country is once again free.
“This transmission will be recorded
and repeated several times daily. Do not give up the fight.
Allah akbar.
God is great. Good luck.”
The opening sign reappeared, along with the national anthem, and then
Samar
began to repeat the message, this time in
Tagalog, the native language of the
Philippines
.
Andersen AFB,
Guam
Tuesday, 4 October 1994, 0211
hours local
“What do you mean, it’s down?” Brad
Elliott asked. He kicked off the sheets, and his one good foot was hitting the
floor milliseconds later as he readjusted the phone.
“Sorry, General, but that’s what it
looks like,” Jon Masters said over the phone. “Carter-Seven didn’t download its
last sensor pass over Mindanao. We’re checking on it right now, but I think our
ground equipment is malfunctioning. I can’t poll the satellites.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Five minutes later, Major General
Stone and Lieutenant General Elliott were racing for the command post. They
found half of the back panels off the control consoles, the large-screen
high-definition computer monitor was blank, and technicians scrambling
everywhere. In the midst of it all was Jon Masters, wearing cut-off jeans and a
flowered Hawaiian shirt, with his ever-present squeeze bottle of Pepsi in hand.
“Doctor Masters, what’s happening .
. . ?”
“We’re finishing our checks, Brad,”
Masters replied. “It’s no problem. We’ll have the birds back on-line in no
time.”
“You mean we lost
both
of them . . . ?”
“It’s only temporary . . .”
“Can you launch another one?” Stone
asked. “Do you have a backup?”
Masters wore an uncomfortably pained
expression. “Ahhh ... I might have a problem there, Dick,” Masters said. “I
have the launch aircraft here, but I didn’t bring a spare booster or payload.
They’re all back in Arkansas.”
“Big deal. Fly back to Arkansas and
launch another one,” Stone snapped. “The EB-52s from HAWC will be here in less
than fourteen hours, and the First Air Battle Wing will be here in less than
eighteen . . .”
“You see, I got a problem back
home,” Masters said. “My board of directors voted not to approve any more
launches until our other contractual obligations are—”
“Doctor Masters, you have a contract
with the United States Fucking Government!” Stone exploded. “I don’t want
excuses, I want your butt back on that plane of yours so we can get another
satellite up there. Now you either get me one or I’ll fry your ass.”
“That’s not necessary, General,”
Masters said, totally unperturbed. “I can have the satellite back up shortly.
Not one NIRTSat has ever failed, and this will not be the first, I promise you.
Now let me get back to work.” He did not wait for a reply, but turned and left
Stone with a drop-dead apoplectic look on his face.
Brigadier General Thomas Harbaugh,
commander of the Strategic Air Command’s Third Air Division, the headquarters
responsible for all SAC’s air operations in the Pacific, and the senior member
of the Strategic Air Command’s STRATFOR team for Pacific operations, had joined
Stone in the command post. To Harbaugh, Stone said, “Tom, we just lost the
NIRTSat system. Masters doesn’t know when it’ll be back up. I need some current
intel of Mindanao, and I need it
now. ”
“I can call DIA and Space Command
and get a KH-11 or LACROSSE satellite overflight,” Harbaugh said, “and you
should get the photos by the time your birds start arriving here.”
“Hop on it,” Stone said. “But I want
to discuss aircraft overflights as well. Unless we get Masters’ system on-line
again, getting satellite imagery from Washington out here is too long for a
naval battle. Besides, I want a few probes of the Chinese defenses. Let’s go
over the Air Battle Force plans for ‘ferret’ flights; I want several packages
put together to hand to General Jarrel when his birds start arriving.”
Ellsworth Air Force Base,
South
Dakota
Two hours later
The officers in charge of each
weapon squadron of the First Air Battle Wing were assembled in the Strategic
Warfare Center briefing auditorium; the room was secured, the building closed
down, and the doors guarded as the meeting began.
“Orders are as follows, ladies and
gentlemen,” General Jarrel began. “By order of the President, all elements of
the First Air Battle Wing have been directed to deploy immediately to Andersen
Air Force Base, Guam, and prepare for air operations under the direction of
Pacific Air Forces and Pacific Command. Commander, First Air Battle Wing, will
be myself, who will report to Major General Richard Stone, Chief, Strategic
Forces deployed, Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, immediately upon arrival. Major
General Stone becomes the overall Joint Task Force Commander effective
immediately. First Air Battle Wing commander is dual-hatted as Joint Task Force
Air Commander. The orders outline a few Marine Corps air units involved in the
operation, along with naval air operations commanders. Rear Admiral Conner
Walheim becomes Joint Naval Forces Commander. Joint Task Force Ground Forces
Commander is Army Brigadier General Joseph Towle.” Jarrel folded the message
form and stuck it in a flight-suit pocket. “No other details were given in the
message, but that’s all we need to get going.
“I have distributed copies of the
list of today’s nonflying crews and airframes; it composes about half of the
force located here at Ellsworth, including eight B-52s, four B-ls, ten KC-135s,
two KC-lOs, all twelve of our F-4Ds and Fs, ten F-15s, and six C-141s. That’s
about all Andersen can handle at one time anyway.
“Crew rest is hereby waived for
these crew members. They will pick up pre-planned mission packages, brief, and
prepare for departure within six hours.” There was a rustle of surprise
throughout the audience—they had planned and discussed a rapid deployment of a
large number of aircraft such as this, but it had never been done before. “The
bombers, KC-135 tankers, and some of the cargo aircraft will deploy nonstop to
Andersen; the fighters and KC-lOs will get crew rest at Hickam before
proceeding.
“All bomber aircraft will be fully
loaded in ferry configuration; you have the list of stores they will carry.
Deploying to Guam with weapons on board is always tricky because of the high
fuel load needed for divert reserves, but we’ll have lots of tankers to support
us, so we will load the bombers to get as close to max landing weight as
possible with normal IFR fuel reserves . . .”
“Why was this decided, sir?” one of
the squadron commanders asked. “Andersen has weapons—why not load up on gas and
supplies and upload the weapons once they arrive on Guam?”
“I want those bombers ready to fight
the minute they arrive at Andersen,” Jarrel replied. “My orders state that we
are on combat alert as of right now, and the less time we spend getting ready
for a mission after arriving on Guam, the more flexibility we’ll have. We could
be tasked for strike operations while the Wing is en route, so I want to be
ready—our crews better be ready to get a few hours’ sleep, mission plan, brief,
pull the pins on the weapons, and go. If necessary, they will land, get their
mission packets, pull the pins, do a hot refueling, and take off immediately.
“The remaining aircraft at Ellsworth
will deploy after six hours’ crew rest under the same system—bombers go direct
with weapons in ferry configuration, fighters RON at Hickam. Our OPLAN
specifies eighty percent of the First Air Battle Wing on the ramp at Andersen
within twenty-four hours. I think we can do better: I think we can have eighty
percent of the Wing flying in combat in twenty-four hours. That is my goal. I
know this is our first actual combat deployment, and we’re bound to be
inventing procedures as we go along, but this staff has practiced these
procedures now for several months, so I think we can do it. Questions?” No
reply. “Next meeting in one hour; that should be our last meeting before we
start launching planes. I expect the first group to be ready to go by then.
Let’s get to it, ladies and gentlemen—move!”
Jarrel watched as the members of the
First Air Battle Wing rapidly filed out of the auditorium. He knew the danger
these men and women were facing, and he didn’t envy them. His own father had
been killed in action in
Korea
in 1953, and he had flown over five hundred
combat sorties as an F-5 and A-7 pilot during two tours in
Vietnam
. He’d seen a lot of battle, a lot of death.
No, he didn’t envy them at all. But
they had a job to do, just as he did. He turned and headed back to his office.
“God be with them,” he said to no one but himself.
Over the Philippine Sea, east
of Mindanao The Philippines
Thursday, 6 October 1994, 0347
hours local (Wednesday, 5 October 1994, 1447 ET)
There was no mistaking its identity
or its purpose—few aircraft in the world could fly like this. “Identity
confirmed, sir,” the
Combat
Information
Center
officer on the Chinese People’s Liberation
Army Navy destroyer
Feylin
reported.
“American subsonic spy plane, bearing zero-six-five, altitude
two-three-thousand meters, range ninety-two kilometers and closing. Probably a
U-2 or TR-1.”
The commander of the
Feylin
shook his head in amazement. “Say
speed and altitude again?”
“Speed six-five-zero kilometers per
hour, altitude ... altitude now twenty-three thousand meters.”
The destroyer captain could do
nothing but smile in astonishment. Twenty-three thousand meters—that was almost
twice the altitude that any Chinese fighter could safely go, and very close to
the upper-altitude limit of the Hong Qian-61 surface-to-air missile system on
the Chinese frigates stationed in the
Philippine Sea
. “No response to our warning broadcasts, I assume,” the captain said.
“None, sir. Continuing west as
before, on course for
Davao
.”
“Then we will make good on our
promise,” the captain said eagerly. “Have
Zhangyhum
and
Kaifeng
moved into position?”
“Yes, sir. Destroyer
Zunyi
ready as well.”
“Very well. Let us see if we can get
ourselves an American spy plane. Range to target?”
“Eighty-three kilometers and closing.”
“Begin engagement procedures at
seventy-five kilometers.” The frigates had only the shorter-range HQ-61 SAM
system, but four of the five destroyers in the Philippine Sea and eastern
Celebes Sea area had the Hong Qian-91 surface- to-air missile, with four times
the range of the HQ-61—and the U-2 was coming within range of
Feylin
's system right now. Undoubtedly
the U-2 would be able to evade the first missile, but two more destroyers,
Zhangyhum
to the north and
Kaifeng
to the south, were surrounding the U-2, so
that no matter which way it turned, it would be within range of someone’s
missile system.
The U-2 was being tracked by another
destroyer,
Zunyi
. This destroyer
carried only surface-to-surface missiles, but it had the Sea Eagle radar
system, which could direct missile attacks launched from other ships without
using the telltale DRBR-51 missile-tracking radars. They would not have to
activate target-tracking radars until a few seconds from impact, so the U-2
would have no chance to react.
They were going to make their first
kill since October first, which, ironically, was Revolution Day. This would
serve as a warning to all other American aircraft: stay away from the
Philippines
.
“Bomb doors coming open, stand by .
. . bomb doors open.”
This had to be the first time in
Patrick McLanahan’s recent memory that he was going to open the bomb doors on
his B-2 Black Knight stealth bomber—and not attack something. He and Major
Henry Cobb had already flown their B-2 nearly two thousand miles, right into
the heart of what seemed like half the Chinese Navy, all to carry two bulbous
objects that would not go “boom.”
They were flying at two thousand
feet over the dark waters of the
Philippine Sea
, threading the needle through what appeared to be two long lines of
Chinese warships arranged north and south to protect the east coast of
Mindanao
. Twice now they had opened the dual
side-by-side bomb-bay doors and deployed the two pods on their hydraulically
operated arms, left them in the slipstream for a few minutes, then retracted
them again. And they knew that with each passing minute, every time they
lowered those pods they were exposing themselves to incredible danger that
would only increase the closer they flew toward
Mindanao
.
The two pods were not weapons, but
reconnaissance systems housed in aerodynamic pods that resembled a fighter’s
standard 330-gallon external fuel tanks. In the right bomb bay they had an
ATARS pod, which stood for Advanced Tactical Air Reconnaissance System. It
housed two electronic charge-coupled device reconnaissance cameras and an
infrared line scanner to photograph large sections of the sea in all directions
in just a few minutes. In another pod in the left bomb bay, on a longer
hydraulic arm that would project it eighteen inches lower than the ATARS pod,
was a UPD-9 synthetic aperture radar pod that would take high- resolution radar
images for fifty miles in all directions. All of the images were digitized,
then transmitted via NIRTSat back to Andersen for analysis. They also had their
usual complement of radar warning receivers and countermeasures systems, but on
this flight they used high-speed digital data links to transmit the threat
information they received back to Andersen.
Although the pods were incredibly
effective and relatively small, they had one major drawback—they had a radar
signature thousands of times larger than the B-2 carrying them. Every time they
were lowered out of the bomb bay, Cobb and McLanahan lost all their stealth
capabilities—and it was time to do it again. “Stand by for pod deploy . . .”
Suddenly, a huge yellow dome
appeared on McLanahan’s Super Multi Function Display, not very far to the north
of them—the dome nearly touched the B-2 icon, meaning they were very close to
being within detection range of the radar. “Charlie-band radar . . . Sea Eagle
air-search radar, either on a frigate or destroyer,” McLanahan reported. “We
may be inside detection range now—if we lower the pods, we’ll definitely be in
range.”
“Then let’s get it over with,” Cobb
said. It was one of the few words he had said throughout the entire
flight—obviously he wished he were someplace else right now.
“Rog. Pods coming down . . .”
True to his word, the second the two
pods were deployed, the computer re-evaluated their new radar cross-section,
remeasured the Sea Eagle radar’s output power, and redrew the radar’s effective
detection range “dome”—this time placing it squarely over the B-2 icon at the
lower center part of the SMFD. The radar cross-section of the two pods was so
large that Patrick estimated they’d have to fly at least forty miles to get out
of enemy radar coverage. “Air-search radar got us,
three o’clock
, range . . . range forty miles.”
As the UPD-9 pod finished its first
circular sweep, more details of the area surrounding them appeared—including
one very unwelcome one. “Surface target,
nine o’clock
, ten miles, no radar emissions, looks like
a patrol boat. . . shit, we got another patrol boat at twelve miles,
two o’clock
position. Jesus, we’re surrounded by
Chinese patrol boats . . .” McLanahan commanded the pods to retract immediately
before any one of them got a lock on the B-2.
“Air target warning! Bearing
one-eight-eight degrees, range seventy-four kilometers ... no speed or altitude
reading available . . . search radar active . . .”
“What? Are you sure? Get a track on
that last contact!” the skipper of the
Feylin
shouted.
“Negative track... target
disappeared, sir. Lost contact.” The new radar contact puzzled the destroyer
commander, but it was obviously an anomaly or a very small target, like a flock
of birds. The real quarry was still driving closer. “Status of the U-2.”
“Range approaching seventy-five
kilometers . . . now.”
“Very well. Combat, bridge, commit
forward HQ-91 system, stand by on DRBR-51 missile-guidance radar ... now. Order
Kaifeng
and
Zhangyhum
to prepare to engage.”
At that order, two HQ-91 missiles
were fired from the forward twin launchers of the destroyer
Feylin
at the U-2 spy plane, lighting up
the deck with brilliant flashes of light and a long tongue of flame as the
missiles shot skyward. The big supersonic missiles reached full speed in
seconds, exceeding twenty-five kilometers per minute in the blink of an eye.
There was no other radar that came
up, but even at a range of forty miles the sudden glare of the HQ-91 missile’s
rocket motor streaking off into space could clearly be seen. The Chinese
patrols were going after the U-2 spy plane. The forty-year-old U-2 used a new
aerial camera, the CA-990, which could take high-resolution pictures from long
standoff distances, but to get pictures of
Davao
, the U-2 had to fly as close as possible to
the
Mindanao
coast—very close to the Chinese warships.
McLanahan risked it: he deployed the
reconnaissance pods again to get more photographs—and perhaps to divert the
Chinese warship’s attention away from the vulnerable U-2, although he realized
that was a real long shot—and at the same time hit the “Transmit” switch on his
scrambled command radio: “Kelly, this is Shadow, Giant Zero, Giant Zero. Out.”
“Giant Zero” was a standard code name to warn an aircraft of a missile launch
without an associated missile-guidance radar appearing first. McLanahan let the
pods out for two spherical radar scans, about fifteen seconds, then quickly
retracted them once again . . .
But even as he did, the yellow dome
surrounding them turned briefly to red, with riblike lines through if. “Sea
Eagle radar switching to target acquisition mode... they may have found us.
Pods retracted, bomb doors closed . . .”
Suddenly, more radar domes appeared
north and south of the B-2. “Air-search radars from those patrol boats!”
McLanahan shouted. He looked on in horror as the southernmost radar dome
engulfed them, then changed from yellow to red. “Target-acquisition radar got
us, bearing one-six-three, range eleven miles. No missile-tracking radars yet,
but he might be radioing our position to his big sister out there. Henry, take
us down to two hundred feet, and let’s hope these bozos can’t lock onto us. . .
.”
“New radar contact aircraft, bearing
from destroyer
Zunyi,
two-zero-zero,
range seventy-four kilometers, speed nine-three-zero kilometers per hour,
altitude six hundred meters.”
Curse it! the skipper of the
destroyer
Feylin
thought furiously.
An aircraft somehow managed to sneak past their gauntlets. “Order all patrol
boats to begin air search immediately . . .”
“Sir, target number one turning
north, appears to be disengaging ... altitude of target one increasing to
twenty- four thousand meters, speed increasing to eight hundred.”
“Activate DRBR-51 missile-tracking
radars. Do not let the U-2 get away.”
“Sir, patrol boat 124 reports radar
contact on air target.” The technicians at the vertical-plot board on the
bridge of the destroyer
Feylin
drew
in the location of the contact—it was between two patrol boats, heading
northwest, near the Indonesian archipelago called Nenusa.
“Sir! Destroyer
Zhangyhum
reports radar contact north of his position, intermittent
contact, low altitude. He suspects an American stealth aircraft.”
That was it! Stealth aircraft,
probably stealth bombers launched from
Guam
. Obviously they were on reconnaissance
runs, because if they were carrying antiship missiles they would have sunk a
half-dozen vessels by now. So ... a U-2
and
a stealth bomber . . .