Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 (77 page)

 
          
The
pilot of the DC-10 rechecked that the pressurization system was indeed pumping
the cabin back up and that his side storm window was securely closed. “It
wasn’t enough time,” he said. “Our guys needed another five minutes.”

           
“Maybe we can turn back in—keep the
fighters around for a little while longer?”

           
“I think we used up all our lucky
charms on that last stunt,” the pilot said. “Those Libyan bastards could’ve
pulled the trigger just to see what color the fire would’ve been as we
plummeted to earth—we’re not going to risk twisting the tiger’s tail again.
It’s the bomber’s turn now— we did our job.” He switched to the command channel
and spoke: “Headbangers, this is Three Sierra Mike, we’ve made our turn
northbound. We kept eight bandits with us as long as we could. Good luck.”

 
         
“We
copy, Sierra Mike,” George “Zero” Tanaka responded. “Thanks for the assist.”

           
The second EB-52 Megafortress, with
Tanaka and Wickland back at the controls, swept in at low altitude over the
rolling sand- and rock-covered hills of southern
Tripoli
inbound toward the Presidential Palace.
Wickland’s supercockpit display was a nightmarish presentation of destruction:
Every Libyan air defense site discovered by the FlightHawks was highlighted,
and the route of flight adjusted accordingly. Because they had no standoff
weapons—both of their Kh-27 antiradar missiles worked, but they had to expend
both of them early on the inbound run because so few sites had been taken down
by the first Megafortress—they were forced to zigzag in between the threat
computer’s guesstimate of each site’s lethal radius.

 
          
“Coming
up on a right turn, thirty degrees of bank, ready, ready ... now,” Wickland
said, and the modified B- 52 Stratofortress bomber banked hard in response.
“We’ve got a ZSU-57-2 site at our
nine o’clock
, seven miles.” Wickland glanced out the
cockpit just as the radar-guided twin-barreled fifty-seven-millimeter
antiaircraft artillery guns opened fire—their jammers and trackbreakers did not
even need to jam the Libyan radar because they were well out of range. Tracers
fluttered through the air in eerie snakelike patterns across the sky—a few
rounds twisted in their direction, but most of the rounds were behind them as
the site’s radar locked onto the countermeasures array towed behind the
Megafortress. “Coming up on a hard left turn, forty degrees of bank ... now.”
It was like being on an indoor roller coaster.

 
          
Wickland
activated the laser radar arrays for two seconds to take a snapshot of the sky
and earth surrounding them. “Those fighters are headed this way,” he said. '’First
flight of MiGs is north of us at forty-three miles, coming in hard. The other
two flights of MiGs are still heading north with the DC-10 .. . and now we got
another flight of three MiGs lifting off from Mitiga Airfield,
one o’clock
, eighteen miles. They’ll be on top of us in
no time.”

 
          
“How
are we doing on the bomb run?” Tanaka asked. “Thirty seconds to the first
target,” Wickland responded. “This will be a pull-up push-over release on an
SA-3 site. I need full military power for this release.”

           
“You already got it.”

           
“All trackbreakers and jammers
active. Acquisition radar at
eleven o’clock
, eight miles.” Wickland magnified the last
LADAR image of the target area. This SA-3 site consisted of four
quadruple-missile fixed launchers with a trailer-mounted long-range radar and
another trailer- mounted fire-control radar, all in a five-acre hand-shaped
site. The Megafortress’s attack computers programmed the coordinates of the
center of the ‘hand’ and the ‘thumb,’ where the radars and control systems were
located. At the exact point as directed by the attack computer, the rear bomb
doors opened and retracted inward, and the Megafortress began a steep climb.

 
          
“Warning, SA-3 target tracking mode ”
the threat warning computer blared.

           
“Trackbreakers active ...”

           
“Warning,
missile launch, SA-3 uplink!”
The threat computers automatically ejected
decoy chaff and flares, and the jamming signals coming from the towed array
came on continuously.

 
          
“C’mon,
baby, toss those suckers!”

           
The Megafortress nosed over, then
began a hard left bank. At the very apex of the roller coaster-like arc, the
attack computer released two one-thousand-pound high- explosive bombs from the
rotary launcher. Like the last kid in a “crack-the-whip” line, the bombs sailed
out of the bomb bay with such force that they flew nearly three miles through
the air. Just as two SA-3 missiles streaked from their launcher, the bombs hit,
destroying the fire-control radar with an almost direct
hit.      •

 
          
The
first missile self-destructed seconds after launch when it lost its uplink
signal; the second missile was able to switch to command line-of-sight guidance
signals from the SA-3 long-range radar. Fortunately, the long-range radar was
locked onto the towed countermeasures array, not the Megafortress itself, and
the blast from the second missile’s one-hundred-and-thirty-pound warhead
destroyed the towed array—well over two hundred feet behind the bomber. The
Megafortress’s jammers completely shut down the long-range search radars and
defeated a second two-round missile volley launched moments later.

 
          
The
Megafortress made another hard left turn, correcting on course, dropping six
air-retarded cluster bomb canisters on a power substation at the periphery of
the palace grounds before making a hard right turn back toward the Presidential
Palace. Wickland ordered a climb to one thousand feet, then sixty seconds later
released another stick of six cluster bomb dispensers on the security guard
barracks and headquarters outside the palace gates. The last releases were
virtually simultaneous: two gravity bombs on the front gates themselves, the
last stick of cluster bombs on the entry way to the palace, and two more
gravity bombs on the palace itself.

 
          
The
Megafortress then continued eastbound, passing right over Matiga Airfield, the
old American Wheelus Air Force Base on the eastern side of the city.
Antiaircraft artillery units fired into the sky all around them, but the
Megafortress’s jammers and trackbreakers kept any of the radar-guided
heavier-caliber units from locking in on them. The final bomb run was right
across the center of the airfield, dropping the remaining gravity bombs on the
runway, radar facility, and control tower, then seeding cluster bombs
throughout the aircraft parking areas. Almost a dozen aircraft of all kinds,
from fighters to cargo planes to helicopters, were destroyed.

 
          
“Set
clearance plane COLA,” Tanaka ordered. The Megafortress turned sharply
northward away from the coast, but Tanaka had to override the autopilot because
it appeared they turned right toward a large Libyan warship in the
Gulf of Sidra
.

 
          
“We’ve
got company,” Wickland said. “MiG-23s, coming in fast, seven o’clock, eleven
miles.” At that same instant, they received another warning: “Missile launch,
SAN-8 from that Libyan warship!” The threat defense computers ejected chaff and
flares, and the Megafortress did a hard right break back toward the coast near
Ed Dachla. The naval surface-to-air missile exploded less than a hundred feet
off their left side, violently shaking the big bomber.

 
          
“I
think we got some fuel leaks from the left wing, and we’re losing
pressurization,” Tanaka reported. “I’ve also got a fault on the left
ruddervator trim system.”

 
          
“We
got a ‘MISSILE HOT’ light on the left weapon pylon,” Wickland said. He
acknowledged the fault, but by then the weapons computer had ejected first the
left pylon and its remaining air-to-air missiles, and then the right pylon to
balance out the aircraft. “There goes the last of our heaters.” He checked the
supercockpit display. “I think we’re clear of that ship, but the fighters are
coming in hot,” he said. “Let’s continue southeast. We’ll try to make it to the
Cussabat
Mountains
—the MiGs may not be able to find us there.”

 
          
But
they were too late. The first MiG-23 moved in almost at the speed of sound and
fired a heat-seeking missile from point-blank range. The Megafortress detected
the missile launch and immediately initiated a right break, ejecting chaff and
flares from the left ejectors. The combination of the decoys and the active
laser countermeasures system steered the missile away from a direct hit, but
the Russian-made R-60 missile exploded just ahead of the left wingtip.

 
          
“Shit,
we lost the entire left wingtip!” Tanaka shouted. The vibration coming from the
left wing was tremendous—it felt as if the entire wing was going to snap right
off. “I’ve got to slow down or we’ll lose the whole wing!”

 
          
“The
second MiG coming in fast!”

 
          
“Stinger
airmines!” Tanaka shouted. “Blast that sucker!”

 
          
But
the second MiG-23 was already firing its twenty-three-millimeter cannon as the
airmines were launched, and the bullets hit first: Warning messages flashed on
all of the multifunction displays in the Megafortress’s cockpit. Wickland
looked out his window and saw the number-four engine throwing off tongues of
flames and flashes of fire. “Oh, Jesus!” he shouted. “We’re hit!”

 
          
“Just
make sure you smoke that MiG!” Tanaka shouted. He kept his eyes flying over the
system readouts, hands on the controls and throttles and his feet on the rudder
pedals, ready in an instant to take over if the Megafortress’s flight computer
didn’t immediately respond. But the computer was in charge for now: By the time
the warning messages had flashed on the screens, the computers had already shut
down the number-four engine, discharged the fire extinguishers, isolated the
hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical, and fuel systems to that engine, and had
reconfigured all of the aircraft systems to take up the load from the destroyed
engine.

 
          
“The
second MiG is breaking away,” Wickland said, checking the supercockpit display.
“I think we got—” He stopped when the computer issued a fresh warning: “The
first MiG is heading for us again.
Nine o’clock
, eight miles and closing fast.” A moment
later: “Another MiG inbound,
six o’clock
, twenty-five miles. Both are locked on.”
With a shut-down and shattered number-four engine, the radar cross-section of
the normally very stealthy Megafortress was multiplied a hundred times, making
it an easy target.

 
          
Tanaka
started a hard right turn. “We’re going to have to take them over the desert,”
he said. “No other way to do it.” He looked over at his partner. “Make sure
your straps are tight, Gonzo. Put your clear visor down and zip your jacket all
the way up.” Wickland looked as if he was going to shrivel up and die as he
hurriedly pulled his shoulder and lap belts as tight as he could stand, his
hands shaking uncontrollably.

 
          
They had not quite finished their turn when
the computer reported, “Warning, radar lock MiG-23,
two o'clock
,
fifteen miles. . . warning, missile launch, MiG-23 R- 24.. . missile launch,
MiG-23, R-24”

 
 
         
“Jammers and countermeasures active,”
Wickland said tonelessly. “Active laser countermeasures firing ... decoys out..
Everything had to work perfectly now—they were well outside their absconded
Libyan air-to-air missile’s range. Tanaka started up and down jinks, trying to
get the radar-guided missiles to overcorrect and overshoot their target. For a
moment Wickland thought he could see the missiles heading toward him, but he
knew that was impossible—traveling at night over three times the speed of
sound, the naked eye could never see them. His hands closed over the handles of
his ejection seat.

 
          
“Don’t
wait for my order,” he heard Tanaka say. “If the missiles hit, just go. Don’t
wait for me. Don’t wait...” And just then, Wickland saw a tremendous burst of
light and a huge fireball blossom directly in front of him. His fingers
tightened on the lever and he began to rotate them upward, exposing the
ejection initiation trigger....