Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (76 page)

           
The Mode Two told a horrifying
story—they had already lost one B-52 and one B-2, and they were still hundreds
of miles from the Chinese amphibious assault force. McLanahan found his throat
dry and his forehead hot and moist, and he found he could not control the
slight trembling in his fingers—the trembling of real fear. He felt alone up
here, and he felt as if every enemy vessel on that SMFD could see him and was
waiting to kill him.

           
After spending weeks with these men
at the Strategic Warfare Center—swapping stories, techniques, and complaints;
mission planning and debriefing until late at night at the 0-Club or at the
Black Hills Saloon until being tossed out; and learning how to fight as a unit
instead of as lone penetra- tors—it was as if a bit of his own soul had
disappeared with each missing icon on that screen. They were dead, quickly and
suddenly—and the toughest part of the mission was still ahead. The faces of the
crew dogs that manned the missing bombers floated unbidden before his eyes, and
burning drips of sweat that rolled into his eyes couldn’t blur those horrible
images.

           
Patrick had seen combat, had seen
men close to him die, but this was harder than he ever imagined. All those
faces, all those names—this morning they were all together, and now they were
never coming back. Just like that. . .

           
“What do you got, Patrick?”

           
McLanahan shook himself out of
reverie and focused his eyes past the ghostly faces he saw in the SMFD and
concentrated again on the situation. The faces did not haunt him— they seemed
to help him, seemed to encourage him to continue . . .

           
“Patrick . . . ?”

           
Patrick looked over at Cobb and
nodded. “I’m all right, Henry ...” Cobb had glanced at his partner briefly,
waiting to see if he would get back into the fight, before resuming his usual
stone-still stance. The faces had moved away from the SMFD—they felt as if they
were looking over his shoulder now, marveling at the technology McLanahan
commanded and waiting for him to continue the fight—and that made him feel much
better.

           
“We are twenty miles from the
coastline near Kiaponga,” Patrick said. “The B-52s behind us are joining up
with Carter’s EB-52. There’s a destroyer battle group in the mouth of the
Davao
Gulf
, and I think Carter and his B-52s from the
south group are going after it. The number-two east strike group will
follow—they’re all intact with all six B-52s.”

           
“Where are the Tomahawks?” Cobb
asked.

           
McLanahan touched an icon on his
SMFD, and several blinking objects and a short data list appeared on the God’s-
eye view. The Tomahawk cruise missiles could be interrogated just like a manned
aircraft. “About ten miles ahead of the B-52s and not far behind us. We’ll go
feet-dry, turn west, and let the Tomahawks go past us as they head inland; when
they get ahead of us, we’ll head north and proceed to our targets.” McLanahan
studied the display for a moment, then ceased his Mode-2 interrogations—even
though the Mode-2 signals were encoded and transmitted in very short bursts,
the enemy could still track an aircraft from them. “Looks like about half the
Tomahawks are still with us.”

           
“Good,” Cobb said. “I’d just as soon
let those puppies beat the bushes for us.”

Aboard the destroyer HONG LUNG

           
The grease-board plotting technician
drew a line from a frigate icon near the mouth of
Davao
Gulf
to near the tiny
village
of
Kiaponga
. Out of all the other dots, circles, icons,
and lines on the board, that one line commanded Admiral Yin’s attention. “What
is that?” he asked.

           
“Sir, frigate
Xiamen
reports a weak UHF signal along this
bearing,” the situation officer replied. “Several microburst transmissions.
Computer projection calling it a possible aircraft, airspeed eight hundred
kilometers per hour, heading northwest.”

           
Yin seemed to be transfixed by this
fine. “Any primary radar target? Altitude readout?”

           
“No, sir.”

           
“Do they have an analysis of the
signal itself?”

           
“Not yet, sir.”

           
Captain Sun was completely
perplexed—a destroyer and a frigate were coming under attack, but Yin was
wondering about a microburst radio transmission. “Sir,
Jinan
is under attack by antiship missiles
again—he cannot hold out much longer. We must assist him. I recommend ordering
him to withdraw to the west so we can provide surface-to-air missile coverage
for him. And we should head farther to the northeast to provide similar
coverage for
Xiamen
—he is tracking numerous Tomahawk cruise
missiles heading in his direction as well as the B-52 bombers ...”

           
“I want to know what that signal
was, Captain.”

           
“Very well, sir,” Sun replied. “And
as for
Jinan
and
Xiamen
. . .
?”

           
“Steer
Hong Lung
northeast to cover
Davao
Gulf
as much as possible, but
Jinan
will hold its position,” Yin said with a
hint of exasperation in his voice. “They have almost as much firepower as we
do, and they have more escorts. I will not allow my ship commanders to start
running all over the
Celebes
Sea
at the first
sign of trouble. I also want a report on our fighter coverage—I have not seen
one fighter on that board since the first group of J-7s and Q-5s were engaged.”

           
A few moments later a new manual
plotting technician took over on the vertical-plot greaseboard, and he began
filling in icons for a group of fighters just west of
Mount
Apo
. “Sir, fighter groups fourteen, with six
total Jianjiji-7 fighters, and composite fighter-attack group two, with three
Qiangjiji-5 fighters and three A-5K fighter-bombers, are thirty-seven
kilometers west of Mount Apo,” Captain Sun reported. “They will be on station
over
Davao
Gulf
in three minutes.”

           
Yin slammed a fist down on the table
before him and hissed, “That is not
good
enough! We’re supposed to have a hundred fighters available to us on this
operation, and there are only
twelve?
I had better see two more groups airborne immediately. I want all available J-7
and Q-5 fighters airborne immediately to attack the inbound bombers . .

           
“It will be done immediately, sir...
but I must remind you that it leaves no Q-5 fighters available for close air
support for our Marines,” Sun said. “The Q-5 and the A-5 are the only planes we
have that can aerial refuel. Also, few of these aircraft are equipped for night
combat . . .”

           
“We will have no Marines to provide
close air support
for
if we do not
stop these bombers!” Yin shouted. “Launch all available fighters now! And I
want two fighters dispatched to search along the projected trackline of that
microburst transmission. I want
nothing
to get past our defenses and strike our Marines . . .
nothing!”

           
The updated NIRTSat data feed came
in just as Cobb and McLanahan’s B-2 crossed the coastline south of Kiaponga.
Cobb had reactivated the terrain-comparison COLA computer, and they were
snaking just two hundred feet above the lush coastal hills and valleys of the
Sarangani
Peninsula
of southern
Mindanao
. On his Super Multi Function Display,
McLanahan could see the updated positions of three Tomahawk cruise missiles
that were to go in ahead of his B-2 Black Knight bomber; the computer used the
missile’s last reported heading and speed, along with a knowledge of the
missile’s pre-programmed flight plan, to estimate the missile’s position.
“We’ll be ready for a turn in about sixty seconds,” McLanahan told Cobb. The
aircraft commander clicked his mike in response.

           
The terrain sloped up steeply from
the eastern cliffs facing the Celebes Sea in the Gian River Valley; the valley
was at least six miles wide and did not rise as steeply on the west side. “Stay
on the west slope of the coastal hills, on the ‘military crest,’ ” McLanahan
said. “It’s not the best place to be, but it’s better than getting trapped down
in the valley. The hills should shield us from the warships off the coast as
well.” Another double click in response as Cobb banked the B-2 gently right and
began flying north-northeast along the western side of the coastal hills, not
flying too high but not diving too deeply into the valley.

           
McLanahan expanded his SMFD out to
sixty miles’ range. At the top of the north-up display was their primary
target, the radar site on
Mount
Apo
. A yellow-colored dome surrounded the
point, representing the range of the Chinese radar site operating there—that
was their target. The edge of the yellow dome did not quite touch the B-2
icon—not because they were out of the radar’s range, but because the energy
levels being recorded from the radar were less than those required to get a
radar return off the stealth bomber. From that radar site the Chinese could
vector in fighters against every American bomber in the strike package.

           
McLanahan immediately designated the
top of the mountain as the target for two SLAM missiles, programming in evasive
tumpoints and data-link activation points and checking the Global Position
System satellite signal for good navigational data feed to the missiles. He had
to program in a terminal “pop-up” maneuver for the missiles in order to hit the
radar domes from above rather than from the side.

           
The one deficiency with the SLAM
missile system over land was that the aircraft that was to steer the missile
onto its target needed to have a clear line-of-sight radio signal between the
two—that meant climbing away from the radar- clutter sanctuary of the terrain,
which could expose the launch aircraft to enemy radar. The navigation-missile
control computer interface would advise Cobb and McLanahan when it was time to
climb, based on the bomber’s altitude and the signal strength—usually it
commanded a climb in time to establish a clear signal sixty seconds before
missile impact. Fortunately the B-2’s low radar cross-section made it less
vulnerable to enemy radar than other SLAM-capable launch aircraft. “Missile
programmed, Henry, ready for launch . . .”

           
Just as he said those words, two
red-colored triangles appeared at the top of the display, with yellow arcs
extending from the apex of the triangles out toward the B-2’s icon at the
bottom of the scope—again, the arcs did not quite touch the icon, probably
because of the B-2’s stealth characteristics. “Fighters at
ten o’clock
, forty miles,” McLanahan said. “Two . . .
now showing six, at
least
six,
heading this way ... I don’t think they see us yet. ...”

           
“Fighter group fourteen, your
targets are at thirty nautical miles, twelve o’clock, airspeed four-fifty,
altitude less than one hundred meters,” the radar controller on Mount Apo
reported. “Suspected cruise missiles heading northwest. Recommend right break
and spacing for single intercept. Composite group two, your bandits are at
eleven o’clock
, twenty-seven miles. Groups fourteen and
two, your flight leaders are directed to depart your formations for special
patrol, designated Group Delta. Delta, come right to heading one-six-eight,
take one-thousand-meters altitude and switch to controller frequency gold.
Acknowledge.”

           
Two fighters broke out of the pack
of fighter-bombers and headed southeast: a JS-7 fighter and an A-5K fighter-
bomber. The A-5K was the upgraded version of the Q-5 good-weather attack plane,
with sophisticated Aeritalia- made avionics that gave it an all-weather bombing
capability, including a low-light TV camera and laser rangefinder.