Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 (4 page)

           
sugar pills—doughnuts, rolls, and
other such snacks

           
TACIT RAINBOW—AGM-136 antiradar
cruise missile designed by Northrop Ventura Corporation; seeks out and destroys
enemy radar sites from as far as fifty miles; if the enemy radar shuts off, it
can orbit the area until the radar is reactivated, at which time it will home
in and destroy it.

           
Tank—nickname for the main Joint
Chiefs of Staff conference room; also called the “Gold Room”

           
TCS—Telescopic Camera System, the
long-range optical sight used on F-14 Tomcat fighters to identify enemy
aircraft from beyond unaided visual range

           
TDRS—Tracking and Data Relay System,
a series of satellites used to relay information from spacecraft to
ground-control facilities without using other Earth stations; provides
continuous and rapid data exchange for spacecraft

           
TDY—temporary duty, usually
referring to military assignments lasting less than 180 days

           
Tomahawk
—long-range,
very accurate attack cruise missile; can be launched by submarines or naval
vessels, and can carry a variety of warheads including nuclear, antiship, land
attack, antirunway, or antipersonnel mines

           
Type
EF5
guided missile destroyer
—new
class of primary Chinese heavy warships

           
UHF—ultra-high-frequency; primary
line-of-sight radio frequency band

           
UNIDO—United Nationalist Democratic
Organization, the principal political party in the
Philippines
organized to oppose the Marcos regime;
placed in power in 1986

           
VFR—Visual Flight Rules;
good-weather flight rules

           
VLS—Vertical Launch System, the
current standard Navy missile- launch system, which uses a large box of missile
cells instead of rotary missile storage magazines and which fires its missiles
straight up instead of on rails

           
VPVO, VIP VO
—Voyska Protivovozdushnoy Oborony,
the Troops of Air Defense of the
Soviet Union; here referring to the complex of fixed and mobile simulated enemy
radar threat sites in the Strategic Training Range Complex operated by the
Strategic Air Command to train bomber crews

           
WSO—Weapon Systems Officer, the
navigator-bombardier on most tactical bomber aircraft such as the F-4, A-6,
F-lll, etc.

           
ZSU-23-4—mobile air-defense gun unit
built in the Soviet Union and used all over the world, consisting of four
rapid-firing radar- guided 23-millimeter cannons; deadly to all aircraft which
come within range

           
Zuni
—standard
unguided attack rocket carried by tactical fighter attack aircraft

           
Date:
5/21/90

           
PENTAGON DECLARES
PHILIPPINES
“IMMINENT DANGER” AREA

           
WASHINGTON
(MAY
18)
UPI
—The Defense
Department designated the Philippines Friday as an area of imminent danger for
special pay purposes, which means US military and civilian employees will be
getting slightly larger paychecks.

           
The Pentagon said it took the action
because of the “current unstable conditions” in the
Philippines
, where three American servicemen have been
killed in politically motivated attacks this month alone.

           
Imminent danger pay is an additional
15 percent of basic salary for American citizens who are department employees
and $110 per month for all
US
military personnel.

           
Date:
5/22/90

           
“Well, first in my mind, the
communist dream in the
Philippines
will always be there. The communist dream
of taking over and dominating the country will always be there because you
can’t kill an ideology.”

           
General Renato S. de Villa, Chief of
Staff, Armed Forces of the
Philippines
, from
Asia-Pacific
Defense Forum,
U.S. Pacific Command, Winter 1989-1990

           
Date:
11/2/90

           
“... Turmoil in
China
... combined with speculation about
U.S.
forces departures from the
Philippines
, have merged to Cause a new appreciation
for
U.S.
regional security presence. ... I believe there is a growing
realization in the Pacific that
U.S.
presence cannot be taken for granted. If
the
U.S.
presence is substantially reduced, many Pacific nations perceive the
danger of other nations moving into the vacuum created

           
by our departure, with a potential
result of conflict and instability.”

           
Admiral Huntington
Hardisty
,
U.S.
Navy,
Commander in Chief
,
U.S.
Pacific Command, from
Asia-Pacific Defense
.
Forum,
U.S. Pacific Command, winter 1989-1990

           
Date:
11/6/90

           
MELEE MARS INAUGURATION OF AUTONOMY
IN
SOUTHERN PHILIPPINES

           
COTABATO
(NOV
6)
REUTER—
Police punched
and clubbed 17 Moslem students before dragging them off by their hair on
Tuesday after they disrupted President Corazon Aquino’s inauguration of an
autonomous government in the southern Philippines, witnesses said.

           
The students, members of an
organization supporting Moslem rebels demanding a separate state on Mindanao
island, chanted slogans against the autonomous government about 20 meters from
where Aquino was speaking.

           
Manila
has set up the autonomous government,
dominated by Moslems, as a way to end separatist violence on
Mindanao
, the second-largest island in the
Philippines
.

           
The government, headed by former
Moslem rebel commander Zacaria Candao, can pass its own laws, collect taxes and
license fees, and set up a regional police force in the four predominantly
Moslem provinces on
Mindanao
island it controls.

           
Manila
would retain control of defense and foreign
policy. —from
U.S.
Naval Institute Military Database
Defense

           
News.

           
Date:
14 January 1991

           
AIR FORCE TO CREATE TWO NEW
COMPOSITE AIR WINGS BY 1993

           
WASHINGTON
—
The U.S. Air Force will develop by 1993 two
composite tactical air wings that combine different types of aircraft in the
same unit. The new wings will serve as prototypes for the possible
reorganization of the service’s tactical force structure along more
mission-oriented lines. . . . [The composite air wings] would include aircraft
that could perform attack, defensive, standoff jamming, and precision- strike
missions. —from
Aviation Week and Space

           
Technology
magazine, p.26

           
Although the B-1B bomber is now
officially called “Lancer,” the author will still use “Excalibur.”

           
Every effort has been made to
present realistic situations, but all of the persons and situations presented
here are products of my imagination and should not be considered reflections of
actual persons, products, policy, or practice. Any similarity of any
organization, device, weapons system, policy, person, or place to any
real-world counterpart is strictly coincidental. The author makes no attempt to
present the actual military or civil policies of any organization or
government.

           
The author hopes readers will note
the chronological setting of this novel in regards to some of his previous
books, most notably
Day of the Cheetah.
While certain characters and backdrops in that book appear here, the events
described in this book come a full two years earlier than those in
Day of the Cheetah.
Moreover, this book,
like that one, stands completely on its own—neither a prequel nor sequel.

           
Monday, 6 June 1994
, 0812 hours local Somewhere over
Southern Nevada

           
“T minus two minutes and counting .
. . mark.”

           
Lieutenant Colonel Patrick McLanahan
glanced up at his mission data display just as the time-to-go clock clicked
over to
00:01:59
.
Dead on time. He clicked open the command radio channel with the switch near
his left foot. “Vapor Two-One copies,” he reported. “CROWBAR, Vapor Two- One
requesting final range clearance.”

           
“Stand by, Two-One.”

           
Stand by, he thought to himself—not
likely. McLanahan and his partner, Major Henry Cobb, were flying in an FB-111B
“Super Aardvark” bomber, skimming two hundred feet above the hot deserts of
southern Nevada at the speed of sound—every five seconds they waited put them a
mile closer to the target. The FB-111B was the “stretched” version of the
venerable F-l 11 supersonic swing-wing bomber, an experimental model that was
the proposed interim supersonic bomber when the B-l Excalibur bomber program
was canceled back in the late 1970s. Only a few remained, and the High
Technology Aerospace Weapons Center (HAWC)—the Defense Department’s secret test
complex for weapons and aircraft, hidden in the restricted desert ranges north
of
Las
Vegas
—had
them. Most F-l 11 aircraft were seeing their last few years of service, and
more and more were popping up in Reserve units or sitting in museums or base
airparks—but HAWC always made use of their airframes until they fell apart or
crashed.

           
But the “Super Vark” was not the
subject of today’s sortie. Although an FB-111B could carry a
twenty-five-thousand-pound payload, McLanahan and Cobb were carrying only one
twenty-six-hundred-pound bomb that morning— but what a bomb it was.

           
Officially the bomb was called the
BLU-96, but its nickname was HADES—and for its size it was the most powerful
non-nuclear weapon in existence. HADES was filled with two hundred gallons of a
thin, gasoline-like liquid that was dispersed over a target, then ignited by
remote control. Because the weapon does not need to carry its own oxidizer but
uses oxygen in the atmosphere to ignite the fuel, the resulting explosion had
all the characteristics of a nuclear explosion— it created a mushroom cloud
several hundred feet high, a fireball nearly a mile in diameter, and a shock
wave that could knock down buildings and trees within two miles. Oddly enough,
the BLU-96 had not been used since the Vietnam War, so HAWC was conducting
experiments on the feasibility of using the awesome weapon again for some
future conflict.

           
HADES had been designed as a weapon
to quickly clear very large minefields, but against troops it would be utterly
devastating. That fact, of course, would go into HAWC’s report to the
Department of Defense.

           
“Vapor, this is CROWBAR, you are
cleared to enter R-4808N and R-4806W routes and altitudes, remain this
frequency. Acknowledge.”

           
McLanahan checked his watch. “Vapor
acknowledges, cleared to enter Romeo 4808 north and Romeo 4806 west routes and
altitudes at zero-six, 1514 Zulu, remain with CROWBAR. Out.” He turned to Cobb,
checking engine instruments and the fuel totalizer as his eyes swept across the
center instrument panel. “We’re cleared in, Henry.” Cobb clicked the mike twice
in response. Cobb never said much during missions—his job was to fly the plane,
which he always did in stony silence.

           
Romeo 4808N—that was its official
name, although its unclassified nickname was “Dreamland”—was a piece of
airspace in south-central Nevada designated by the Federal Aviation
Administration and the Department of Defense as a “restricted” area, which
meant all aircraft—civilian, commercial, other military flights, even
diplomatic—were prohibited to fly over it at any altitude without permission
from HAWC. Even FAA Air Traffic Control could not clear aircraft to enter that
airspace unless in extreme emergency, and even then the violating aircraft
could expect to get intercepted by Air Force fighters and the air-traffic
controller responsible could expect a long and serious scrutiny of his actions.
R-4808N was surrounded by four other restricted areas that were meant to act as
a buffer zone to give pilots ample warning time to change course if they
were—accidentally or purposely—straying toward R-4808N.

           
If one entered R-4808N without
permission, military aircrew members would at best lose their wings, and
commercial and civilian pilots would lose their licenses—and both would be in
for an intense multiday “debriefing” conducted by teams of military and CIA
interrogators, who would discard most articles of the Bill of Rights to find
out why someone was stupid enough to stray into Dreamland. At worst, one would
come face-to-face with McLanahan and Cobb’s FB-111B racing across the desert
floor at the speed of heat—or nose-to-nose with a BLU-96 fuel-air explosive
bomb or some other strange and certainly far deadlier weapon.

           
Several thousand workers, military
and civilian, were shuttled from
Las Vegas
, Nellis Air Force Base, Beatty, Mercury,
Pahrump, and Tonopah every day to the various research centers there. Most
civilian workers reported to the Department of Energy facilities near Yucca
Flats, where nuclear weapon research was conducted; most military members
traveled forty miles farther northeast to the uncharted aircraft and weapons
facilities northeast of Yucca Flats called
Groom
Lake
. A series of electronic and human
observation posts was set up just south of
Groom
Lake
in
Emigrant
Valley
, where they could observe the BLU-96 HADES
bomb’s destructive power.

           
At the northern tip of Pintwater
Ridge, the navigation computer commanded a full 60-degree turn toward the west.
McLanahan clicked on the command channel: “CROWBAR, Vapor Two-One, IP inbound,
unlocking now at T minus sixty seconds. Out.” It took only seconds to configure
the switches for weapon release, and finding the target on radar was a snap—it
was a six-story concrete tower, resembling a fire-department training tower,
surrounded by trucks, a few surplus tanks and armored personnel carriers, and
surrounded by about a hundred mannequins dressed in various combat outfits,
from lightweight fatigues to bulky chemical suits. Obviously, HAWC was not
concerned about evaluating the effects of a HADES bomb on minefields— they had
“softer” targets in mind for the BLU-96. Surrounding ground zero were several
thirty-foot-high wooden blast fences erected every one thousand feet, which
would be used to gauge the effect of the HADES bomb’s shock wave.

           
McLanahan could shack this bomb with
one eye—it was hardly a test of either his or Cobb’s skill. This was going to
be a “toss” release, where the bombing computer displayed a CCIP, or
continuously computed impact point, steering cue on Cobb’s heads-up display;
the steering cue was a line that ran from the target at the bottom of the
heads-up display to a release cue cross at the top, with the release pipper in the
middle. Cobb would offset the bomber to one side of the release cue line; then,
at the right moment, would turn and climb so as to “walk” the pipper up the
release cue line and eventually place the release cue cross directly in the
center of the aiming pipper. When the cross split the pipper, the bomb would
release—the hard turn would add “whip- crack” momentum to the bomb, allowing it
to fly farther than a conventional level release.

           
It was all a very
computer-controlled and rather basic bombing procedure—hardly a difficult task
for a fifteen-year Air Force veteran bombardier. But sortie rates were down and
flying hours were being cut, and McLanahan and his fellow flight test crew dogs
were sniveling every flight they could. Except for a few high-value
projects—Dreamstar, ANTARES, the Megafortress Plus, the A-12 bomber, the X-35
and X-37 superfighters, and a few other aircraft that were too weird for words
and probably would never see daylight for another decade—research activity at
Dreamland had almost ground to a halt. Peace was breaking out all over the
world—despite the efforts of nut-cases like Saddam Hussein, Moammar Quaddafi,
and a few renegade Russian generals to disrupt things—and the military would be
the first to pay for the “peace dividend” that most Americans had been waiting
for at least the past five years.

           
“T minus thirty seconds, final
release configuration check,” McLanahan announced. He quickly ran through the
final seven steps of the “Weapon Release—Conventional” checklist, then had Cobb
read aloud his heads-up display’s configuration readouts. Everything was
normal. McLanahan checked the crosshair placement on target, made a slight
adjustment, then told Cobb, “Final aiming . . . ready. My dark visor’s down.”
McLanahan told Cobb his dark visor was down because Cobb seemed never to check
around the cockpit, although McLanahan knew he did. “Tone on.” McLanahan
activated the bomb scoring tone so the ground trackers would know exactly when
the release pulse from the bombing computers was generated.

           
“Copy,” Cobb said. “Mine too.
Autopilot off, TF’s off. Coming up on break ... ready ... ready ... now.” He
said it as calmly, as serenely as if he were describing a china teacup being
filled with afternoon tea—but his actions were certainly not dainty. Cobb
slammed the FB-111 in a tight 60-degree bank turn to the left and hauled back
on the control stick. McLanahan felt a few roll flutters as Cobb made minute
corrections to the break, but otherwise the break was clean and straight—the
more constant the G-forces Cobb could keep on the BLU-96, the more accurate the
toss delivery would be. Through the steady four Gs straining on every square
inch of their bodies, Cobb grunted, “Coming up on release ... ready ...
ready... now. Release button ... ready ... now.” McLanahan saw the flash of the
release pulse on his weapon control panel, but he jabbed the manual release
“pickle” button just in case the bomb did not separate cleanly.

           
“This is CROWBAR, good toss, good
toss,” McLanahan heard on the command channel. “All stations, stand by . . .”

           
Cobb had just completed a 180-degree
turn and had managed to click on the autopilot again when both crew members
could see an impossibly bright flash of light illuminate the cockpit, drowning
out every shadow before them. Both men instinctively tightened their grips on
handholds or flight controls just as a tremendous
smack
thundered against the FB-lllB’s canopy. The bomber’s tail was
thrust violently to the left in a wide-sweeping skid, but Cobb was waiting for
it and carefully brought the tail back in line without causing a roll couple.

           
“Henry—you okay?” McLanahan shouted.
He could see a few stars in his eyes from the flash, but he felt no pain. He
had to raise his dark visor to be able to see the instrument panels.

           
Cobb raised his own visor as well.
“Yeah, Patrick, I’m fine.” After returning his left hand to his throttle
quadrant, he made one quick scan of his controls and instruments, then resumed
his usual position—eyes continually scanning, head . caged straight ahead,
hands on stick and throttles.

           
“CROWBAR, this is Vapor Two-One,
condition green,” McLanahan reported to the ground controllers. “Request
clearance for a flyby of ground zero.”

           
“Stand by, Vapor.” The wait was not
as long this time. “Vapor Two-One, request approved, remain at six thousand MSL
over the target.”

           
Cobb executed another hard 90-degree
left bank-turn and moved the FB-11 IB’s wings forward to the 54-degree setting
to help slow the bomber down from supersonic speed. They could see the results
as soon as they completed their turn back to the target. There was a ragged
splotch of black around what was left of the concrete target tower, resembling
a smoldering campfire thousands of feet in diameter. The tanks and armored
personnel carriers had been blackened and tossed several hundred feet away from
ground zero, and the regular trucks were burned and melted down to
unrecognizable hunks. Wooden blast targets up to two miles away had been singed
or knocked down, and of course all the mannequins, regardless of what they had
been outfitted with, were gone.

           
“My God ...” McLanahan muttered. He
had never seen an atomic ground zero before except in old photos of
Hiroshima
or
Nagasaki
, but guessed he was looking at a tiny bit
of what such devastation would be like.