Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (73 page)

           
Just then a “Missile Warning” light
began to blink on both the Super Multi Function Display and the pilot’s center
CRT monitor.

           
Patrick said, “Now I’ve got another
Charlie-band missile director radar at one to two o’clock—that must be from the
center destroyer.” He was about to touch the electronic countermeasures icon on
the bottom of the SMFD, but the computer had already brought the ECM status
panel forward on the screen—and what he saw caused his throat to go instantly
dry. “Charlie-band missile director . . . computer’s calling it a DRBC-51 radar
directing an HQ-91 SAM system ...”

           
“A -91?” Cobb asked. “Shit, we’re
well inside that mother’s range!”

           
“I know, I know,” McLanahan moaned.
He had spent too long screwing with the SLAM missiles and lost track of all the
other warships around them. “All trackbreakers active, missile warning system
and HAVE GLANCE jammers ready, chaff and flares ready, HARM missile programming
against that radar... shit, shit! Charlie-band tracker changing to
Charlie-three command . .

           
The “Missile Warning” indication
changed to a “Missile Lock” warning. “Missile radar locked on!” McLanahan
shouted. “Trackbreakers on . . . descend and accelerate if possible ...”

           
They were already as low as they
could safely go at night—the huge B-2 was less than one hundred feet above the
Celebes Sea
, with Cobb hand-flying the Black Knight,
since the terrain-following computer would not fly the bomber overwater below
two hundred feet. “C’mon, you guys, where the
hell
are you . . . ?”

           
McLanahan was rewarded a second
later with precise range and bearing information from his B-2 to the destroyer
displayed on his SMFD. He knew he was not using radars or lasers to get that
data—that meant that his wingman, the second B-2 stealth bomber in his attack
formation, was ranging on the destroyer and data-sharing the information with
him. The question was, who was going to get there first?

Chinese destroyer JINAN

           
“Locked onto first air target,” the
operator of
Jinan
's aft HQ-91 missile fire control radar
reported. “Slight jamming on lower bands, switching to frequency-agile mode ...
Temporarily clear of jamming, ready with missile detector, sir.”

           
“Understood,” the chief of the
Jinan
's
Combat
Information
Center
replied. “Aft launcher, report.”

           
In the large aft missile magazine, a
large eighteen-missile rotating drum dropped an HQ-91 onto a rail and fed it
forward to an open station, where four missileers snapped large triangular fins
on the nose and tail sections of the missile body. Two other technicians made a
fast check of the finning process, and the missile was sent forward, erected,
and rammed upwards onto the launcher rails. A second magazine crew had done the
same with a second missile for the twin-rail launcher. As the missiles clicked
into place on the launcher, a continuity check was automatically performed and
an electronic report received from each missile— if the “report” was missing or
erroneous, the launcher would immediately swivel over and down and spit the bad
missile down an armored safety chute for examination or disposal.

           
Thirty seconds after the alert was
sounded, the aft launcher was loaded and ready, with two more missiles
belowdecks finned and ready. “Aft launcher reports ready, sir,” the aft launch
operator reported.

           
“Deck clear, stand by to launch on
three, two, one,
launch
. . .” The
HQ-91 missiles operator checked his readouts, gripped the launch handle,
squeezed the safety grip, pulled the trigger, and hit the launch button with
his thumb. “Missile one away . . . missile two . . . !”

           
“Incoming
missiles
/” one of the Sea Eagle radar operators suddenly shouted.
“High-speed, bearing two-four-one degrees . . .” Two AGM-84E SLAM missiles from
the
second ,
B-2 Black Knight in
McLanahan’s attack formation had detected the HQ-91 missile fire-control radar
and homed in on it just after missile launch.

           
But like the TACIT RAINBOW missiles,
the SLAMS were big, subsonic targets, and easy for the destroyer to lock on
radar. The vessel’s guns began firing, and with full radar tracking and fire
control, they could not miss—both SLAMS were destroyed well before they reached
Jinan
.

           
But that left them vulnerable to two
HARM missiles fired from McLanahan’s B-2. Like TACIT RAINBOW, the High-Speed
Anti-Radar Missiles homed in on enemy radar transmission, but instead of
cruising to their targets over long distances and being very inviting targets for
enemy gunfire, HARM flew at speeds over Mach three and were often untouched or
even undetectable. The longer
Jinan
kept radars on to track the incoming SLAM
missiles, the easier it was for the HARMS to find their targets. The missiles
homed in precisely on the fore and aft radar dishes of the “Fog Lamp”
fire-control radars, hit, and exploded.

           
Although the HARMs only hit the
emitters on the tall fore-and-aft antenna masts on the destroyer
Jinan
,
and the two HARMs’ warheads were a scant
fifty pounds, the results in the
Combat
Information
Center
belowdecks were as disruptive as a nuclear
bomb blast. All the cabin and console lights in CIC flicked off immediately,
replaced by emergency lights for the cabin only—most of the weapons control
systems were dead or in rest. “Hold your positions!” the CIC officer shouted to
his console and weapons technicians. “Put your sets in reset and stand by!” The
CIC officer picked up the emergency battery-powered telephone. “Bridge, CIC, weapons
systems and sensors in full reset. I say again, weapon systems in full reset.
Over.”

           
“Bridge copies,” a reply came.
“Missile impact on both main and aft mast.”

           
The CIC officer felt his jaw drop.
Both masts—that meant both HQ-91 missile directors were down. The Sea Eagle
search radar, which was still operational, could be used for fire control, but
it was highly inaccurate. They could still direct attacks by the other patrol
boats, however, but in just a split second a four-thousand-ton warship was
rendered virtually impotent. . .

           
... But not entirely impotent. When
the lights came back on a few moments later, most of the CIC’s equipment was
still in working order. “There’s a second bomber out there somewhere, and I
want it,” he shouted at his
Combat
Information
Center
crew. “Get a report from up on deck, make
sure all our weapons are clear to fire—the forward 100 and the aft HQ-91
launcher should both be clear. I want infrared and low-light sensor manned, and
I want Sea Eagle slaved to the one-hundred-millimeter cannon and HQ-91. Bridge,
CIC, I show the aft HQ-91 system still operational. Clear me to engage the
second stealth bomber.”

           
“C-3 band uplink shut down . . .
search radar only,” McLanahan reported. “I think I got the missile director.
Damn, I wish I could say thank you to those guys in the other B-2. I think they
saved our bacon with those SLAM launches.” His eyes were glued to the SMFD,
checking the rear hemisphere tail warning radar for any sign of tracking
Masurca missiles. But after two minutes, nothing appeared. Patrick took a deep
breath, as if it were the first time all day he’d been able to breathe, and
Cobb rustled uneasily in his seat as the threat from the destroyer passed—for
Cobb, that was akin to a wild shout of relief.

           
McLanahan said, “Still got two
India-band control radars at
two o’clock
. Give me thirty degrees left, let’s give
these guys a wide berth.” He opened the left bomb bay and readied two more HARM
missiles of his own to engage the patrol boats. “Search radar only,
six o’clock
. . . that destroyer must still have its
air-search radar on . . .” Patrick considered turning back to get within range
of one more HARM missile launch at the destroyer’s big search radar, or perhaps
even a SLAM missile launch at the destroyer itself, but the patrol boat’s
gun-control radars ahead were a bigger threat now. With the destroyer’s big
threat, the HQ-91 surface-to-air missile, gone, the B-52s could take care of
the destroyer now. . . .

           
“Tracking air target at bearing
three-four-two, range eleven miles and increasing, altitude less than eighty
meters ..The radar operator quickly checked the track history of that target;
it had none. It had literally appeared out of nowhere, right in the middle of
the Chinese fleet, and it was about to disappear once again . . .

           
So this is what a stealth bomber
looked like on radar!

           
“Commit aft HQ-91 missiles,” the CIC
officer aboard
Jinan
ordered.

           
“Yes, sir . . . aft HQ-91 missiles
showing faulted, track error.”

           
“Bypass it. Slave to the Sea Eagle
system for command guidance.”

           
“Copy . . . fault log cleared, HQ-91
slaved to air-search radar only, no target illuminations, beam-riding mode only
. . . launcher crew reports ready.”

           
“Four-missile salvo . . . shoot.”

           
It was the definition of a long shot
all the way—a faint radar return from the suspected stealth bomber, no solid
lock-on, heavy jamming, no target illumination for the HQ- 91 to follow, no
lead-computing mathematics or sophisticated intercept trigonometry, no
proximity detonation—the missiles were going to either miss or hit the target
square-on.

           
The second B-2 had the unfortunate
luck to make a slight turn to line up on a Chinese patrol boat that had locked
onto it with a fire-control radar. The first HQ-91 streaked by just to the left
of the bomber, but the second of the four-missile salvo hit the Black Knight on
the left wing, exploding and turning the entire left side of the high-tech
bomber into a huge yellow fireball in seconds.

           
The bomber hit the warm waters of
the
Celebes Sea
with the force of a car crusher, killing
the crew instantly. The boomerang-shaped aircraft cartwheeled edge-on across
the water for several thousand yards before plunging into the waters and
disappearing from sight forever.

           
“Target hit! Good hit on number-two
aircraft!” A cheer went up in
Jinan
's
Combat
Information
Center
. . .

           
. .. but it was very short-lived.
“Warning! Incoming missiles, multiple contacts, bearing .. . opposite side,
one-four- three, range thirty miles, altitude . . . altitude less than fifty
meters, speed six hundred knots!”

           
It had to be the Tomahawk missiles,
the ones that had survived
Kaifeng
'
s counterattack. “Radio to all vessels,
missile warning, direct defensive fire on . . .”

           
“B-52 bombers launching missiles,
bearing two-zero-five, range fifty-one nautical miles . . . encountering heavy
jamming now, all frequencies ...”

           
Missiles coming from two sides now
... one, maybe more B-2s roaming around ... a B-52 that everyone has lost track
of... things were not going well all of a sudden. At less than thirty miles’
range, the Tomahawk missiles were his first priority. Captain Jhijun screamed
so loud into the intercom that it probably didn’t need an amplifier:
“CIC, bridge, I need an intercept estimate.
Can you get the Tomahawk missiles?”

           
“Jamming is heavy, but I think we
can manually maintain a lock. Intercept confidence is good. But the number of
inbounds is unknown . . .”

           
“Engage as many as you can,” Jhijun
said. “Our close-in weapons should get the rest.” Along with its
130-millimeter, and 25-millimeter antiaircraft guns, the destroyer
Jinan
carried two American-made Mk 15 Phalanx
cannons, one on each side, which were automatic radar-guided Gatling guns
designed to destroy incoming missiles at close range. Ironic that they would be
used to engage American missiles . . .