Battle Born

PROLOGUE

Get pumped, hogs!” the B-1B Lancer’s pilot shouted excitedly on interphone. “We’re coming up on the squid low-level. I’m ready to kick some ass! Let’s show them who the top dogs are. I’m going to give us a few seconds on this way point, Long Dong. Thirty knots should do it. I want lots of room to rock and roll when they jump us. Power coming back to give us a few seconds’ pad. I want some shacks!” He pulled the throttles back until the time over target matched the required time over target on the flight plan. Then he pulled off one more notch of throttle until he had a good twenty-to-thirty-second pad.

“Go for it, Rodeo,” the B-1B’s OSO, or offensive systems officer, responded eagerly. He glanced at his flight plan for the time over target, then at the time-to-target readout on his forward instrument panel. Being a few seconds late at this point meant they could fly faster on the bomb run itself, where the threats were likely to be heaviest. They fully expected to get jumped by fighters on this run, which meant they’d be running all over the sky trying to stay alive.

As he made the airspeed adjustment, the pilot strained forward in his ejection seat to look at his wing-man, a second B-1B bomber in loose formation on his right wing. The B-1 “Bone” (few called it by its official nickname, “Lancer”) rarely fought alone. If one B-1B supersonic bomber was a devastating weapon, two were triply difficult to defeat. They would need every possible advantage to win this battle.

Sure, this was only an exercise, not a true life-or-death struggle. But everyone in the B-1B was playing it as if it were the real thing. As someone once said, “The more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle.” Besides, in the eyes of these U.S. Air Force heavy bombardment crewdogs, getting “shot down”—especially by the U.S. Navy — was almost as bad as a real-life kill.

Naval Air Station Fallon was the home of the Navy Strike and Air Warfare Center and the new home of the “TOP GUN” Fighter Combat School. All aircraft carrier fighter and bomber aircrews were required to report to Navy Fallon before a deployment to certify their knowledge and skills in air-to-air and air-to-ground combat tactics. The Navy Fallon Target Range comprised over ten thousand square miles of an isolated corner of northern Nevada east of Reno, with some of the airspace restricted to all other aircraft from the surface to infinity, so the crews could practice live air-to-ground bombing, gunnery, and air combat maneuvers. Powerful TV cameras located throughout the range would score each bomber crew’s attacks, and instrument packages onboard each aircraft sent electronic telemetry to range control stations, allowing great scoring accuracy in air-to-air engagements during post-mission briefings.

Because the Navy liked to mix it up with as many different “adversaries” as possible, the U.S. Air Force was frequently invited to “play” at Navy Fallon. For the USAF bomber crews, there was no greater thrill than to blow past the Navy’s defenses and bomb some targets on their home turf.

Ever since the B-1Bs arrived in Reno, there had been a heated competition between the Air Force and Navy about who were northern Nevada’s best military aviators. The competition would be even hotter today, because the B-1 unit in the box was the Nevada Air National Guard’s 111th “Aces High” Bomb Squadron from Reno-Tahoe International Airport, just a few miles west on Interstate 80 from Navy Fallon. The 111th was one of only three Air National Guard wings to fly the sleek, deadly B-1B Lancer. Some serious bragging rights were on the line here.

“Get us some range clearance, Mad Dog,” the pilot ordered.

“Rog,” the copilot responded. On the discrete “referee’s” radio frequency, unknown to the defensive players, he announced, “Fallon Range Control, Fallon Range Control, Aces Two-One flight of two, Austin One Blue inbound, requesting range clearance.”

“Aces Two-One flight, this is Navy Fallon bomb plot,” came the response. “Aces Two-One cleared hot into Navy Fallon ranges R-4804, R-4812, R-4810, Austin One MOA, Gabbs North MOA, and Ranch MOA routes and altitudes, maximum buzzer. Altimeter two-niner-niner-eight. Remain this frequency, monitor GUARD.”

“Two-One, cleared into-04,-12,-10, Austin One, Gabbs North, and Ranch, two-niner-niner-eight, coming in hot and max buzzer, check,” the copilot responded.

“Two,” the second B-1’s pilot responded. The less a wingman said on the radio, the better.

On interphone, the B-1’s copilot announced, “We’re cleared in hot, maximum buzzer.”

“Let’s go fry us up some squid, then!” the pilot shouted again. There was no response. The rest of the crew was getting ready for the action.

Two systems operators, the OSO and the DSO — the defensive systems officer — sat behind the pilots in ejection seats in a small compartment just above the entry ladder hatch. As his name implied, the OSO handled the bomber’s weapon and attack systems. The DSO’s job was to call out threats as they appeared, monitor the system to make sure it responded properly when a radar threat came up, and take over operation of the defensive gear if the computers malfunctioned.

A tone sounded over interphone, a slow, almost playful deedle… deedle… deedle. “E-band early-warning radar, gang,” the DSO announced. “Bad guys are searching for us. No height finder yet. Time to go low.”

“Copy,” the pilot said. On the interplane frequency, he radioed, “Trapper, take spacing. Keep it within eight miles.”

“Rog, Rodeo,” the wingman’s pilot responded, and began a slight turn, letting the distance between the two bombers increase. Although they would both be flying the same route and attacking the same target, they would fly slightly different paths, separated by at least thirty seconds. This would hopefully confuse and complicate the defender’s task. The two bombers also used air-to-air TACAN to monitor the distance between them, and they had emergency procedures to follow if the distance dropped below three miles and they didn’t have each other in sight. “See you in the winner’s circle.”

“Radar altimeter set AUTO, bug set to 830, radar altimeter override armed,” the copilot announced on interphone. “Both TFR channels set to one thousand hard ride. Wings full aft. Flight director set to NAV, pitch mode select switch to TERFLW, copilot.”

“Set pilot.” The pilot was flipping switches before the copilot read each step. The command bars on his center vertical situation display, or VSD, dipped to twenty degrees nose-down. “Twenty pitch-down command. Here we go.” When he pressed the TERFLW, or terrain following, switch on his Automatic Flight Control System control panel, the B-1 bomber dove for the hard desert earth below like an eagle swooping in for the kill. In the automatic TERFLW descent, the 350,000-pound bomber was screaming earthward at over fifteen thousand feet per minute.

“Min safe altitude nine thousand,” the OSO called out. “Looking for LARA ring-in.” Just as he announced this, the low-altitude radar altimeter locked onto the earth. Now that the bomber knew exactly where earth was, it descended even faster. Dirt, dust, a piece of insulation, and a loose flight-plan page floated around the cabin in the sudden negative Gs of the rapid descent. The OSO felt like breakfast was soon going to follow, and he pulled his straps tighter.

Suddenly, the DSO shouted, “Bandits eleven o’clock, thirty miles and closing fast! Looks like a Hornet!”

“Shit!” the pilot cursed. He was hoping they wouldn’t find them so early. “Hang on, crew.” With his gloved right index finger, he pulled the trigger on his control stick to the first detent, then rolled the B-1 up on its left wing until they were almost sideways. The sudden loss of lift from the sleek, blended fuselage made the bomber plummet from the sky even faster.

“Passing twenty!” the OSO shouted a few seconds later, after pinching his nose through his oxygen mask and blowing against the pressure to relieve the squeezing in his ears. “Passing fifteen! C’mon, Sonny, let’s get down there! Push it over!” The pilot didn’t roll the bomber upside down, but he did increase the bank angle to well over ninety degrees. It roared out of the sky like a lightning bolt.

Just seconds before it would have hit the ground, the pilot rolled out of his steep bank with a fast yank of the control stick. The big but nimble bomber snapped upright with the speed and agility of a small jet fighter and leveled off less than a thousand feet above the ground. Its AN/ASQ-164 multimode radar displayed a profile of the terrain out to ten miles ahead of the aircraft on both pilots’ VSDs. The B-1 punched through a layer of clouds at six thousand feet — and before their eyes was the high-terrain, snow-encrusted Dixie Peak staring right back at them, nearly filling the windscreen. “Damn!” the pilot shouted, banking left again to fly around the peak. “I hate letdowns over mountains!”

“That cumulogranite might’ve just put the fear of God into that squid pilot chasing us,” the OSO reminded him. “Let him try to chase us now, with Dixie staring in his face!”

With the valley floor in clear sight, the rest of the descent went smoothly. The Offensive Radar System electronically scanned ten miles ahead and to both sides, measuring the width and height of the entire terrain and providing pitch inputs to the autopilot so the bomber would clear it by the selected altitude. The pilots first selected TF 1000 and accomplished a fast check of both redundant TFR system channels, then stepped the clearance plane down to its lowest setting of TF 200. They also selected “hard ride,” which would command steeper climbs and descents over the terrain so they could hug the earth even closer.

Now that they were clear of clouds and could see the ground, after checking the TERFLW system for a few moments, the pilot deactivated automatic navigation and used visual contour procedures to guide the huge bomber. Instead of gripping the control stick, he pushed on the sides of it with an open palm, dodging and cutting down and between any significant terrain features while allowing the automatic TERFLW system to guide them over high terrain. Flying in a straight line only made it easier for defenders to find them. Hugging terrain contours while letting TERFLW keep the B-1B as low as possible was the best and safest tactic. “Where’s that bandit, D?” the pilot shouted.

“Moving to four o’clock, twenty-five miles,” the DSO replied. “He’s not locked on… wait, he’s got a lock! Notch right, reference heading two-four-zero!”

“Aces, notching right!” the pilot shouted on the interplane frequency. He then honked the B-1 into a tight sixty-degree bank turn to the right, changing course ninety degrees to their original track and placing themselves on the back side of Dixie Peak. Most modern-day fighters like the F-15, F/A-18, and F-22 used pulse-Doppler attack radars, which acquired targets based on relative speed. Turning ninety degrees to the fighter’s flight path made relative speed equal to the fighter’s speed, causing the fighter radar’s computer to analyze the target as a terrain feature and squelch the target. The turn would also complicate the fighter pilot’s attack geometry and give the bomber a chance to hide behind terrain. The B-1 descended to less than three hundred feet above the desert floor, flying over six hundred miles per hour.

“Lost the bandit,” the DSO reported. “He’s somewhere at five o’clock.”

“Rog,” the pilot said. He knew that Dixie Peak was between him and the fighter, and the longer he kept it there, the closer he’d get to his target before the next attack.

“Clear to the IP, pilot,” the OSO shouted. “Center up, steering’s good.” The pilot started a left turn back toward the target area, drawing a mental picture of the air situation.

It was not a favorable attack setup for him and his crew, but these Navy air intercept exercises were usually one-sided affairs. Austin One Military Operating Area, or MOA, acted as the “funnel” of airspace that led to the three restricted areas where practice targets were attacked with live weapons. Navy fighters could chase a bomber all the way down as low as it could go in Austin One. Fighters could continue the chase in the restricted areas, but had to fly no less than a thousand feet above the ground to stay clear of bomb explosions. The Ranch MOA at the western end of the run was the “recovery zone,” where the bombers and fighters had to disengage and establish safe altitude separation while the bombers turned around. The bombers were required to fly through the restricted area again and clear their bomb bays of all other weapons before they could exit the range complex.

The Navy pilots knew all this, of course, so all they had to do was wait at the bottom of Austin One for the bomber to enter the restricted areas. It gave the fighter jocks a little less time to intercept before bomb release, but they were almost assured of a kill. The first fighter they encountered was probably a young jock on one of his first fighter-intercept exercises, hoping to score an early kill while the bomber was at high altitude.

Well, the B-1B Lancer was not that easy to kill. It had almost the same agility as a jet fighter, it was just as fast, and it had one-half the radar cross section. Down low, no fighter in the world could keep up with a B-1—if it dared even to fly down close to the dirt.

The pilot released the trigger on his control stick, and the bomber made a relatively gentle thirty-degree bank turn toward the IP, or initial point, the start of the bomb run itself. The air-to-air TACAN read six miles — just right, about thirty seconds apart. “Lead is two NAP from the IP,” he radioed on interplane.

“Copy,” the wingman replied. “We’re seven NAP. We’re popeye.”

“Bandits at seven o’clock, no range,” the DSO announced.

“Hold steady,” the OSO called out. “Let me get my ACAL and get a patch.”

“Range nine miles, five o’clock,” the DSO shouted. “I think he’s got a lock. Notch right, reference three-zero-zero.”

“Got my ACAL, guys,” the OSO said on interphone. “Clear to notch!” The pilot complied with a sharp right turn. Staying on a straight-line course for more than a few seconds with enemy defenders in the area was deadly for a bomber. The bombing computers needed accurate altitude data to compute bombing ballistics, and the OSO had to fly over a specific point on the route, usually the initial point of the bomb run, to calibrate altitude. There were several ACAL points on the route, but the one prior to the bomb run was the most important.

“AI’s down,” the DSO shouted. The fighter had turned off his radar, knowing he would disappear from the bomber’s radar threat sensors. “He might have a visual on us!”

“ADF zero-three-zero, pilot!” the OSO shouted. The pilot turned hard left back toward the inbound track line to the target. By “ADF’ing” the course, he would return to the original inbound heading to the target, making it easier for the OSO to find the target on radar.

As soon as the pilot rolled out of his turn, the OSO switched to the target itself. Exactly as predicted, the first target appeared right under his cross hairs. “Got you, you bitch!” he crowed. “Pilot, give me twenty right, and I’ll get a patch.” When the pilot rolled out on his new heading, the OSO moved his cross hairs directly on the box, clicked the left button on his radar controller down twice, then clicked the button up.

The high-resolution synthetic aperture image on his digital display resembled a black-and-white photograph. The clarity was startling — he could actually make out the outline of a large tractor-trailer vehicle. “Hogs, I got a big mother trailer-sized vehicle — looks like a Scud missile reloading operation.” He centered the cross hairs directly on the image. “You’re cleared to the target! Let’s nail that puppy! We’re seven seconds late. Give me twenty more knots, pilot.” The pilot goosed the throttles a bit more — they were now screaming inbound to their target at almost ten miles per minute. “TG twenty seconds.”

“Bandits four o’clock, twenty miles and closing!” the DSO shouted. “Notch right!”

The pilot yanked the control stick right…

“No! TG fifteen! Wings level!” the OSO responded. “Stay on the bomb run!”

Suddenly, they all heard a faster-pitched deedle deedle deedle tone, no longer playful at all. “SA-6 up!” the DSO shouted. The SA-6 was a mobile Soviet-made medium-range surface-to-air missile system, widely exported all over the world. Its mobility, its top speed of almost three times that of sound, and its all-weather, all-altitude capability made it a deadly threat. The SA-6 fired a salvo of three missiles that were almost impossible to evade. “Three o’clock, within lethal range! Trackbreakers active!”

At the same moment, several white arcs of smoke traced across the sky, the thin white trails aiming right for the B-1, and the warning tone on interphone changed to a fast, high-pitched deedledeedledeedle. “Smoky SAMs!” the copilot shouted. Smoky SAMs were little papier-mâché rockets, no threat to the bomber by themselves, but signifying a missile launch against the bomber crew. It meant the crew hadn’t done their job protecting their bomber.

“Simulated SA-6 launch!” the DSO shouted. “Uplink shut down! Chaff, chaff!” Clouds of thin tinsel shot out of canisters along the Bone’s upper spine, creating a radar target several hundred times larger than the 400,000-pound plane itself.

“Hold heading!” the OSO shouted. “TG ten! Doors coming open!”

The copilot watched as one of the simulated SAMs passed directly overhead. Talk about the “bullet between the eyes,” he thought grimly — if that had been a real antiaircraft missile, they’d have been dead meat. And he would have watched the final stroke all the damned way.

“Ready… ready, now! Bombs away!” the OSO shouted. One cluster bomb canister dropped free of the aft weapons bay. At the precise instant, it split apart and scattered the bomblets across the target area in a direct hit on the trailer.

“Bomb doors closed!” the OSO shouted. “Clear to maneuver!”

“Pump right, now!” the DSO shouted. The pilots rolled the bomber to the right away from the target area and pulled back on the control stick until the stall warning horn sounded, then released the back pressure. The DSO ejected more clouds of chaff behind them, successfully breaking the “enemy” radar locks and allowing the bomber to escape.

“That release looked good from back here, pilots!” the OSO yelled gleefully. “What did you see up there?”

“We saw our shit get blown away by a SAM!” the copilot yelled. “They had us dead-on!”

“I had the uplink shut down,” the DSO protested. “No way that missile would’ve hit…”

“Well, then they used an optical tracker or they got lucky,” the pilot said. “But they got us. If one of those smoky SAMs was a real one, we’d’ve gotten nailed. Shake it off, Long Dong. Nail the next one. These Navy pukes aren’t playing fair anyway.”

“Shit!” the OSO cursed into his oxygen mask. A perfect bomb run, a perfect release… and they got zilch. All that hard work for nothing. He angrily entered commands into his keyboard to sequence to the next target area. “Steering is good to the next target complex, pilot. We’ll take out the next Scud missile site.”

“What are the defenses in the area?” the copilot asked.

“SA-3s, SA-6s, and Zeus-23s,” the DSO replied.

“All right. Shake it off, guys,” the pilot said. “No more mistakes. Let’s kick some ass this time.”

“I’ve got another SA-6 and an SA-3 up,” the DSO reported. “SA-6 is nine o’clock, moving outside lethal range. The SA-3 is at one o’clock.”

“Where are the fighters?” the pilot asked.

“No sign of ’em,” the DSO replied.

“Clearing turn coming up,” the pilot said. “Back me up on altitude, co.” He banked the B-1 up on its left wing, then strained to look aft up through the eyebrow windows for any signs of pursuit. When he had turned almost ninety degrees, he initiated a steep left turn. “I got it,” he told the copilot. “Find the damn—”

“Aces!” they suddenly heard on the interplane frequency. It was their wingman, five miles somewhere behind them. “Bandit coming down the ramp! I think he’s on you! You see him?”

Both pilots furiously scanned out their cockpit windows. Suddenly, the copilot shouted, “I got him! Two o’clock high! He’s diving right on top of us! He’s got us nailed!”

The pilot swore loudly, then racked the bomber into a steep right turn, jammed the throttles to full military power, pulled the pitch interrupt trigger to the first detent, and zoomed the B-1 skyward.

“What are you doing, Rodeo?” the copilot shouted.

“I’m going nose-to-nose with this bandit!”

“Are you nuts?”

“The best way to defeat a fighter on a gun or close-in missile pass is nose-to-nose,” the pilot said. “I’m not going to let this Navy puke get a clear shot on us!”

Both pilots clearly saw the oncoming fighter as it plummeted toward them. It was a Navy or Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet, the primary carrier attack plane, which also had a good air-to-air capability. The Bone’s nose was thirty degrees above the horizon in the steep climb. All they could see was blue sky and the fighter diving down on them.

The sharp zoom maneuver was sapping their speed quickly. “Airspeed!” the copilot shouted — just a warning right now, not an admonition. The aircraft commander was still in charge here, no matter how unusual his actions seemed.

“I got it,” the pilot acknowledged. He pushed the throttles forward into full afterburner power. “C’mon, you squid bastard. You don’t have a shot. You’re running out of sky. Break it off.”

“We better get back down, pilot,” the OSO urged him. “We’re off our force timing!”

“Get the nose down, pilot,” the copilot warned.

“You lost us, bub,” said the pilot, addressing the pilot of the Hornet.

The OSO switched his radar display to air-to-air, and the ORS immediately locked onto the Hornet. “Range three miles and closing!” he shouted. “Closure rate one thousand knots! This doesn’t look good!”

“Airspeed!” the copilot warned again. They were now draining fuel at an incredible three hundred pounds of fuel per second and going nowhere but straight up.

“Pilot, we’re off our force timing and three thousand feet high!” the OSO called. “We’re inside the one-mile bubble!” For safety’s sake, the rules of engagement, or ROE, at Navy Fallon prohibited any pilot from breaking an invisible one-mile-diameter “bubble” around all participants. “The ROE—”

“Shut up, co!” the pilot snapped. “We still got three seconds!” Breaking the ROE could put all the players in serious danger — and he was breaking rules one after another. “We’re not going to show ourselves. He’ll have to break it off.”

“Get the nose down, dammit!” the copilot shouted again.

Then, seconds before the copilot was going to push his control stick and try to overpower the pilot, the fighter rapidly rolled right. They had lost almost three hundred knots of airspeed — and for what? They saved themselves from the fighter but were now in the lethal envelope for any surface-to-air missile battery within thirty miles.

“Ha! Where are you going, you wussie?” the pilot shouted happily. He was breathing as hard as if he had just finished a hundred-yard sprint. “Keep him in sight, co,” he panted.

“This will work out perfectly, hogs,” the OSO said. “This next target is a Zeus-23. We’ll stay high and nail him! Center up.”

The pilot started a left turn toward the next target. “Where’s that fighter?” he asked.

“Eleven o’clock, moving to ten o’clock, way high,” the DSO reported.

“Zeus-23 at twelve o’clock,” the DSO reported. The real “Zeus-23,” or ZSU-23/4, was the standard Russian antiaircraft artillery weapon system, a mobile unit with four 23-millimeter radar-guided cannons that could fill the sky with thousands of shells per minute out to two miles away — deadly for any aircraft.

“That’s our target, crew,” the OSO stated. He put his cross hairs on the Zeus closest to the preplanned target area. “Action left forty-five.” When the pilot rolled out of his turn, the OSO took a radar patch on the target. “I got the patch. Steering to the target is good. Give me full blowers, Rodeo!” The pilot shoved the throttles back into max afterburner, and a few seconds later they broke the speed of sound.

“Bandit now at nine o’clock, ten miles and closing!”

“Stand by… bombs away!” the OSO yelled. The CBU-87 cluster bomb scored a direct hit.

“Zeus-23’s still up,” the DSO said.

“What?” the OSO yelled. “That run looked great! We were a little off, but well within the kill zone. Those squids are jacking us around, guys! That was a good kill all the—”

“Forget about it, Long Dong,” the pilot interrupted. “Where’s my steering?”

The OSO called up the last target in the third restricted-area bombing range. “Steering is good,” he said. “Single Scud-ER transporter-erector-launcher with communications van. Supposed to be tucked in between some hills. Max points if we get this one, guys — it’s worth more than all the other targets put together. Gimme a little altitude so I can see into the target area.”

“Scope’s clear,” the DSO immediately reported.

It was clear to see why the OSO needed some altitude. The pilots couldn’t see much more than a few miles ahead, and if they couldn’t see, the radar could see even less. They were several seconds late too, and the faster speed meant even less time to spot the target. “Get ready for a vertical jink,” the pilot said. He reset the clearance plane switch to one thousand feet, and the bomber responded with a steep climb.

“I got… squat,” the OSO reported. The cross hairs went out to a large section of blackness. There were no radar returns yet in the target area. His hesitant voice infuriated the pilots even more. “ADF a one-three-five track, pilots. Clear back down.”

The pilot released the pitch interrupt trigger, and the bomber settled back down to its roller-coaster ride just two hundred feet above the blurred earth zooming by. “You got the target?” he asked.

“Not yet,” the OSO responded. “The radar predictions said we won’t see the targets until four NAP if we stay low — we’d need to go up to two thousand to see it sooner. Let’s get back on planned track, and then give me another jink so I can get a better—”

“Bandits!” the DSO interrupted. “Eight o’clock, fifteen miles and closing! I think it’s an F-14—no, two F-14s! Give me a hard left thirty!”

“I’ll lose my look down the canyon!” the OSO objected. But the pilot rolled into a hard ninety-degree bank turn, rolling out just far enough to track perpendicular to the fighter. “Reverse as fast as you can!” the OSO said. “I need one last look down that canyon!”

“Clear to turn back!” the DSO said after only a few seconds. The pilot started a right turn. “Trackbreakers active! Bandits never turned. They’re nine o’clock, nine miles.”

“Give me a vertical jink now!” the OSO said.

“Negative!” the DSO interjected. “We’ll be highlighted against the horizon! If the fighter gets a visual on us, he’s got us!”

“I need the altitude!” the OSO cried. “I can’t see shit!”

“If we climb, he’ll spot us!” the pilot protested.

“Then center up!” shouted the OSO. “I’ll try to get a lock close-in.” He knew he’d have only seconds to see the target on radar before bomb release.

Sure enough, as they closed in on the target, all he could see on the digital radar screen was dark green, interspersed with flecks of white. The terrain was shadowing every bit of ground radar returns. Nothing showed up on the MTA display — no moving targets at all.

“Twenty TG,” the OSO said. “Action left thirty. I need one thousand feet, pilot, and I need it now.”

“All right,” the pilot said. “You got about five seconds.” He spun the clearance plane switch and they climbed. “You get your fix, Long Dong?”

The last climb did it. The cross hairs fell on a lone radar return in the very southern edge of the gully. When the pilot rolled out of the turn, the OSO snapped a patch image of the last target. “Got it! Steering is good!” he said. Damn, what a relief. His cross hairs were nestled right over a long, thin target, small and partially hidden. Magnifying the radar image showed a definite Scud transporter-erector-launcher on the move. A small, mobile target — max points if they hit it. “Let’s nail this sucker! Fifteen TG! Ten… doors coming open… five… bombs away!” The pilots could see the target, a white trailer with an old sewer pipe strapped atop it, configured to look somewhat like a Scud missile. “Doors coming closed…”

“We got it!” the copilot shouted happily. “We nailed it!”

“Let’s start a right turn to two-four-three,” the OSO said.

But just as they zoomed past the target area and crossed over the southern edge of the gully, a flurry of smoky SAMs filled the sky. “I’ve got SA-3s, SA-6s, SA-8s, and triple-A all around us!” the DSO shouted. “Scram! Scram left!”

The B-1 snap-rolled to the left so hard that the OSO’s head hit the right bulkhead. Then he was thrown forward as the bomber quickly decelerated. He cried out in pain, his vision swimming with stars.

The pilot threw in forty degrees of bank and pulled on the stick to 2.5 Gs — almost tripling their weight — then pulled the throttles to idle to slow to cornering velocity.

“C’mon, Rodeo, turn!” the OSO shouted. “Pop the brakes! Go to ninety degrees bank!”

“We’re restricted…”

“We’re gonna get hosed if you don’t get that nose around, pilot!” the OSO said. “Pop the brakes! You’re VMC. Go to ninety degrees bank!”

“Speedbrakes coming out,” the pilot shouted on interphone, then flipped the speedbrake OVERRIDE switches and thumbed them to decelerate even faster. The “scram” maneuver was an emergency turn designed to get away from ground threats as quickly as possible. It meant instantly slowing the B-1 bomber to cornering velocity, a speed that increased the turn rate but wouldn’t normally sacrifice controllability.

“SA-8! Zeus-23! Eight o’clock, lethal range!” The electronic countermeasures system was ejecting chaff and flares as fast as possible, but the threats stayed locked on. The sky was suddenly filled with white lines — smoky SAMs, dozens of them, flitting around them like bees around a hive. Several of the little paper rockets hit the Bone, though there was no way they could do any actual damage — they weighed less than two pounds and were as fragile as a toy.

The pilot kept the back pressure on his control stick right at 2.5 Gs until the bomber had decelerated to their planned cornering velocity, then shoved the throttles to max afterburner. The maneuver worked. By the time he had plugged in the afterburners, they were headed virtually in the opposite direction. He pushed the control stick right to roll wings-level and thumbed the speed-brake control to retract the speedbrakes so they could recover their lost airspeed…

… except that the bomber never rolled upright. They were still in a steep bank. “Damn! Damn! Damn!” the pilot kept shouting. “What’s happening here?” The TERFLW FAIL warning tone sounded, a continuous low tone signaling that the terrain-following system had failed. The system automatically performed a 3-G fail-safe pull-up, designed to fly the bomber away from the ground — but if it was in a steep bank angle, a fly-up would drive it into the ground unless the pilots intervened quickly. “Shit, what’s going on?” yelled the pilot. “It won’t roll wings-level! Mad Dog, get on your stick. I think my controls failed!”

“Get the nose down! Airspeed!” the copilot shouted as he grabbed for his stick. He tried to move it, but the bomber would not respond. He checked the flight control indicators. “Retract your speedbrakes! Spoilers are still up.” The pilot thumbed the switch to retract them, but there was no change. “Check my OVERRIDE switches!” he yelled.

The copilot reached over to the center console and checked the switches. “Spoiler OVERRIDE switches are normal,” he said. “What’s going on?”

The OSO could feel a definite sink building — it felt like the bomber was mushing, on the verge of a stall. It was yawing to the left as well, as if the pilot had pulled back power on the left engines. “Roll out! Roll out!” he shouted on interphone. “TF fail! You got it, pilot? Altitude!” But he didn’t have it.

The pilot saw his altimeter beginning to spin down faster and faster. He felt a weightless sensation, felt his body floating in his straps. They were going in! Oh shit! Oh shit!

No choice, no warning — the pilot put his hand on his ejection lever, closed his eyes, and pulled.

Without warning, the upper hatch over each crew member’s station popped free, followed by a roar of windblast and a cloud of debris and dust that enveloped the aft compartment a split second before the rocket motors blasted the pilot up the ejection seat rails. A crushing blow slammed against his right shoulder, and he felt his body tumbling hard through the sky as it was snatched into the slipstream.

The last thing he remembered was seeing the sleek, deadly looking B-1B slide underneath him, still in a moderate left bank but with the nose up in a gentle climb. The pain in his shoulder was excruciating. He saw a tremendous fireball, a massive cloud of fire as big as the mountains surrounding his home back in Reno…

… and he saw two ejection seats, with partially inflated parachutes, fly right into that hellish wall of flames.

Seconds later he felt a sharp blow to his back and head… and then everything went black.

In recent months Wonju Air Base had been placed on alert at least once a day, so when the Klaxon sounded that night, the ROK crews assumed it was more of the same. They ran to their planes and prepared to launch their fighters with surprising calm.

Because Wonju was South Korea’s northernmost air defense installation, less than thirty miles from the Demilitarized Zone and about one hundred miles from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, it would always be one of the first to react to any incursion by North Korean attackers. Wonju had a mixed fleet of aircraft. The primary air defense weapon was the F-16K, a fighter license-built in South Korea by a conglomerate of Korean heavy equipment manufacturers. The fighters were designed to respond to a massive invasion force, so had only one centerline external fuel tank; but they carried two radar-guided AIM-120 AMRAAMs (advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles) and eight AIM-9M Sidewinder short-range heat-seeking missiles, plus 200 rounds for the 20-millimeter cannon. A minimum of twelve F-16Ks pulled round-the-clock alert at Wonju.

The base’s fleet also included a number of French-built Mirage F1 fighters, American-built F-5 fighters for daylight intercepts — the North Korean Air Force was ill equipped to fight at night — and American-built F-4E Phantom jets for both bombing and air defense work. The alert fleet of twelve F-4Es was loaded with high-explosive and incendiary “firestorm” bombs specifically targeted for low-level, high-speed bombing raids of key selected North Korean targets, should the expected — many said inevitable — invasion from the North take place.

At the sound of the Klaxon, all alert crews went to their fighters and bombers, started engines, and monitored the air defense network. Even though they were in a heightened state of alert, no planes launched. A “launch on alert” could set off an uncontrollable military escalation between North and South in minutes. With engines running, the entire alert force could be in the air in less than two minutes. With planes taking off every fifteen seconds from the main runway and the two taxiways, twenty-four warplanes could be in the sky from this base alone in less time than it took a highspeed attacker to fly ten miles.

The crews listened and waited. Was it the actual invasion this time? Was this the big showdown between the Communists and the South here at last?

“Unidentified aircraft heading south at three-four-zero degrees bearing from Wonju, fifteen miles, you are in danger of crossing the Demilitarized Zone at your present heading and airspeed,” the South Korean air defense controller warned. “This is your final warning. If you cross restricted airspace, you will be fired upon. Unidentified aircraft, turn north immediately or you will be fired upon.” At that same moment, two green lights flashed on the flight-line ready board. The first two South Korean F-16s had launch clearance.

As soon as they were airborne, the lead pilot switched his wingman to the air defense controller’s call-up frequency. “Sapphire Command, Tiger flight of two, passing three thousand, check.”

“Two,” his wingman replied.

“Tiger flight, Sapphire Command reads you loud and clear,” the controller responded. “Switch to blue seven.”

“Tiger flight going to blue seven now.” After receiving a curt “Two” from his wingman — any good wing-man will answer all calls with little more than his position in the formation — the two pilots changed over to a secure HAVE QUICK radio frequency. The channel “hopped” to different frequencies at irregular intervals, making it difficult for outsiders to eavesdrop. “Sapphire, Tiger flight with you passing four thousand, check.”

“Two.”

“Tiger flight, this is Sapphire Control, read you loud and clear,” the air defense controller responded, his voice now slightly garbled by the computer-controlled frequency-hopping algorithm. “Say position from Solar.”

The lead pilot flipped his navigation system to the Solar way point, an imaginary point from which they could give position reports without revealing their position to outsiders. “Tiger flight is zero-six-three degrees bearing and oneniner miles from Solar.”

“Roger, Tiger flight. Fly heading two-niner-five and take base plus one-four.” Base altitude today was ten thousand feet, so the F-16s started a climb to twenty-four thousand feet. A few minutes later, when they were less than twenty miles from the DMZ, the controller called, “Linear.”

The lead F-16 pilot activated his APG-66 attack radar, and seconds later the radar locked onto a target directly off the nose. “Tiger flight is tied on, bogey bearing two-niner-seven, range thirty-two, low, speed three-zero-zero.”

“Tiger flight, that’s your bogey,” the controller replied.

The F-16’s APG-66 pulse-Doppler radar could track several targets simultaneously, but just for good measure the lead ROK pilot broke lock on the target and let the radar scan the sky again. No more targets. A lone invader from the North? The North rarely flew single-ship. A tight formation of many invaders? The Communist fliers were not known for their formation flying skills in daytime, and they rarely flew at all at night, much less in formation.

But the ROK pilot had learned never to rely on such assumptions. It was always better to assume there were numerous attackers out there. “Tiger flight, tactical spread, now.”

“Two.” The second F-16 left his leader’s right wing-tip and spread out several hundred feet laterally and two hundred feet above, close enough to keep his leader in sight in the darkness but still be able to move and react quickly if the tactical situation changed. The Communist pilot might be able to see two targets on his radar screen — if he bothered to turn his radar on. So far, there was not one squeak from the threat-warning receiver, meaning he was not using his attack radar. Some of the North’s advanced J-7 and MiG-29 fighters purchased from China had infrared tracking devices and infrared-homing missiles, so radar wasn’t necessary close-in, but it was still very strange for an attacker to charge blindly into enemy territory without using radar.

The target continued across the DMZ without the slightest change in airspeed, altitude, or heading. The Communists had just committed an overt act of war, breaking the fragile truce between North and South.

The second Korean War was under way.

To the ROK pilot, this was not just an act of war — this was an act of barbarism. The two nations had been struggling for years to make peace and eventually reunite their two countries. Covert probes by North Korean special forces and provocative but nonaggressive border “incidents,” meant to trip the South into reacting with force for propaganda purposes, were bad enough. But this was a deliberate air-attack profile.

There was plenty of mutual distrust to go around. The South was accused of building up an invasion force by buying or license-building American fighters, warships, antiaircraft systems, radars, and high-tech precision-guided weapons. The North was accused of continuous spy missions and of deploying improved surface-to-surface missile systems capable of bombarding Seoul with chemical, biological, or even nuclear warheads. Everyone knew the arms race between the two countries had to stop, but neither side wanted to make the first substantive move.

Both nations tried “baby steps” toward peace. The North agreed to dismantle its breeder nuclear reactors in favor of light-water reactors, less capable of producing weapons-grade nuclear material. The West promised huge grants of cooking and heating oil so the North would not be tempted to trade weapons for oil from unfriendly Middle East nations such as Iran. The South canceled joint U.S. and Japanese military maneuvers, removed Patriot and Rapier air defense systems from the DMZ, and reduced U.S. military presence to less than ten thousand troops. But the distrust continued.

The ROK pilot wanted nothing more than to see the entire Korean peninsula reunited once again — under a Korean, not a foreign, flag. That had been the dream of all Koreans since the Chinese and Japanese occupations. But what he wanted didn’t matter right now. Right now his homeland was under attack, and it was his sacred responsibility to stop it.

He scanned an authentication encoder-decoder card strapped to his left thigh. Even though the pilots and the controller were on a secure frequency and had already verified each other’s identity, they were entering a critical phase of this mission. Careful coordination and verification was an absolute must. The card was changed every twelve hours and would provide positive command validation for all upcoming orders: “Sapphire Command, this is Tiger flight, authenticate Tango-Alpha. Over.”

“Sapphire authenticates Alpha.”

“Authentication received and verified. Tiger flight requests final intercept instructions.”

“Stand by, Tiger flight,” the controller responded. The wait was not long. “Tiger flight, you are ordered to attempt to make visual contact to verify the target’s identity. If it is a hostile aircraft, or if identification is not possible, you are instructed to attempt to force the aircraft to land at a category Charlie, Delta, Echo, or Foxtrot airfield, military or civilian. If the hostile will not respond, or if you are approaching any category Bravo airspace, you are authorized to destroy the hostile aircraft.” Then the controller read the current date-time group and authentication code, and it matched.

The F-16 lead pilot called up the coordinates of the closest category Bravo airspace, which happened to be Seoul itself. They were only fifty miles north of the edge of the thirty-mile Buffer Zone around the South Korean capital. At their current airspeed, the pilot had only about seven minutes to convince the Communist invader to turn around or land before he had to shoot him out of the sky.

He tried the radio first. In Korean, then in broken Chinese, he radioed, “Unidentified aircraft seventy-eight miles northeast of Seoul, this is the Republic of Korea air defense flight leader. You have violated restricted airspace. I have you in sight and am prepared to destroy you if you do not reverse course immediately. I warn you to reverse course now.” No response. He tried the universal emergency frequencies on UHF, VHF, and HF channels as well as several known North Korean fighter common frequencies, but there was still no response.

It took two minutes for the F-16 pilot, with his wing-man flying high cover position, to maneuver alongside the hostile aircraft. Thankfully, it was only a single plane, not an entire attack formation. It was easy to intercept the intruder visually because he had all of his outside navigation and anticollision lights on — and, the ROK pilot soon realized with surprise, he had his landing gear and takeoff flaps still down too! Incredibly, this pilot had launched and flown hundreds of miles with his gear and flaps down. He was sucking fuel at an enormous rate, and at over three hundred knots had probably overstressed them both to the breaking point. The ROK F-16s were equipped with three-thousand-candlepower spotlights on the left side of the plane, and when the pilot was close enough to see the plane’s shadowy outline in the darkness, he flicked them on.

“Sapphire, this is Tiger flight lead, I have visual contact on the hostile,” the ROK pilot reported on the secure HAVE QUICK channel. “It appears to be an A-5 Qian attack plane.” The A-5 was a Chinese-made attack plane, a thirty-year-old copy of the ancient Soviet Su-7 attack fighter. It was a mainstay of the North Korean People’s Air Army. “Configuration as follows: single engine, single pilot, small cylindrical fuselage, with short delta wings, large nose intake, and a small radome in the center of the intake. I see a red and blue flag of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on the side, along with a tail code, ‘CH,’ and number one-one-four.” The “CH” stood for Ch’ongjin, a North Korean air-attack base.

Ch’ongjin was known to have large stores of chemical and possibly nuclear weapons.

“The A-5 is carrying three external stores: one one-hundred-deciliter centerline fuel tank and another one-hundred-deciliter fuel tank under each wing.” He steered the searchlight across the weapons, gulped in shock, then added in a barely controlled voice, “Correction, Sapphire, correction. The stores under the wings are not fuel tanks, repeat, not fuel tanks. They appear to be gravity weapons, repeat, gravity weapons. I see four purple stripes around the center of the starboard gravity weapon.”

This was the worst possible news. The purple stripes around the bomb, a standard marking in both the Communist Chinese and the old Soviet military from which all of North Korea’s weapons came, meant that they were thermonuclear bombs. They were the old-style Yi-241 weapons, disguised to look like fuel tanks — the Chinese and Soviets had once even stored them outside secure areas to try to convince Western intelligence analysts that they were not nuclear bombs. But each of these “fuel tanks” had the explosive power of 600,000 tons of TNT — more than enough to level Seoul or any other city in the world. Because they were considered unreliable, two of them were dropped on a single tar-get — if the first one detonated, the second would “fratricide” in the fireball.

There was a moment’s tense pause. Then the controller ordered, “Tiger leader, this is Sapphire; you are instructed to attempt to divert the hostile away from category Bravo airspace in any way possible.” The F-16 pilot could hear the quiver of fear in the controller’s voice. “You must not allow the hostile aircraft to close within fifty miles of category Bravo airspace, but you are instructed to shoot down the hostile only as a last resort.” The reasoning was clear: if the pilot put a missile into the A-5, at best the explosion would scatter nuclear material; at worst, the devices could detonate, causing widespread destruction. The ex-Chinese and ex-Soviet weapons did not have the numerous safety features of Western nuclear devices — they were designed to explode, not designed to safe themselves.

“Tiger flight copies,” the leader acknowledged. “Check.”

“Two copies,” his wingman responded immediately. With the safety radius now increased to fifty miles, they had less than three minutes to get this intruder turned around.

The lead pilot shined the searchlight into the A-5’s cockpit canopy from a distance of less than fifty meters. What he saw shocked him yet again: the North Korean pilot was not wearing a helmet! It looked as if he had simply climbed in the plane and blasted off without any of his flight gear. This was astounding, although it did explain why he never heard the radio or configuration warnings.

The North Korean pilot shielded his eyes from the searchlight — and, thankfully, turned away from the F-16. Good — they were no longer heading directly for the heart of the capital. The ROK pilot edged closer to the A-5 and again shined the light into the cockpit; again, the A-5 turned away. He was heading almost southeast now, well away from Seoul. This time the F-16 pilot flew slightly above and closer to the North Korean plane. As the A-5 descended and turned away, he saw that the pilot appeared to be screaming, gesturing wildly at the ROK plane while trying to shield his eyes from the blinding light.

The F-16 pilot called up a list of nearby category Echo airfields and found a deactivated military base, Hongch’on, less than thirty miles away. It was isolated; the nearest populated area was a small town over twenty miles distant. There was no time to search for a better choice.

The North Korean seemed to be weirdly single-minded, which worked to the F-16 pilot’s advantage: if he steered away from the A-5, the Communist pilot tried to turn right toward Seoul, but if he crowded him, the pilot turned left, away from him. If he climbed over him, the Communist descended, but if he flew at the same altitude, the A-5 pilot would try to climb back to original altitude or maintain altitude. Good.

“Sapphire Control, this is Tiger lead, I have the hostile turned toward Hongch’on, and I will attempt to get him to land. Have security and special weapons maintenance crews standing by. Our ETA is fifteen minutes.”

They were over Hongch’on in a little over twenty minutes. The airstrip was illuminated by several trucks shining their headlights onto the concrete; there was more than enough light. But herding the reluctant North Korean pilot to land on the nine-thousand-foot-long runway was proving more difficult. It was as if the North Korean pilot had finally realized what the F-16 was forcing him to do, and he kept trying to turn away from the runway. Finally, the wingman got on his left side, and they boxed the A-5 in. But when the leader tried to force it lower and along the runway centerline, the plane rolled hard left, striking the wingman’s right wingtip.

“Damn! He midaired me! Tiger Two is lost wing-man!” the second F-16 pilot shouted as he climbed away from the North Korean attack plane. “Lead, I have substantial damage to my right wingtip and number ten weapon station. I am climbing, passing five thousand.”

“How is your controllability?” the leader asked. “Do you need an escort?”

“Negative,” the wingman replied. “I feel a slight vibration from the damage area and I’ve lost some airspeed, but I have no warning or caution lights and my controls feel okay. I have safed and locked all my weapons. Still showing full connectivity on all stations except number ten. I am visually inspecting my right pylon…” The lead F-16 pilot knew his wingman was fishing a flashlight out of his flight suit pocket so he could see his wingtip: “I have lost my number ten weapon. Substantial damage to my right wingtip, but very little observed damage to my right wing.”

“Good,” the lead F-16 pilot responded with relief. “Stay above us at ten thousand feet until I end this intercept, and then I’ll escort you back to base.” The wingman had over an hour’s worth of fuel remaining. More than enough.

The A-5 pilot was trying to turn back toward Seoul again. The lead F-16 moved in tight on his right side and fired its 20-millimeter cannon. The blaze of the muzzle flash made the pilot leap in shock, and he turned away exactly as before. The ROK pilot waited until the A-5 was almost in the direction of Hongch’on. Then he yanked the throttle, dropped back a few hundred feet behind it, kicked in a little left rudder, and fired a one-second stream of shells across the tail, being careful not to shoot below the wings at the thermonuclear bombs.

The shells ripped across the horizontal and vertical control surfaces, tearing them to shreds. Several rounds entered the engine exhaust, and the F-16 pilot could see sparks, then a fire spreading inside the engine compartment. The A-5’s airspeed, already limited because of the hanging gear and flaps, was cut nearly to nothing as the engine slowly began to disintegrate. The fighter dropped like a brick.

Although the Communist pilot was obviously suffering from mental lapses evidenced by flying without his gear, his instinct and training took over as the A-5 began to die. The fire was extinguished as it fell, and the plane nosed over to help build up airspeed. As it did, the pilot was able to maneuver his stricken jet toward the runway at Hongch’on. Incredibly, he nearly managed to plant it on the runway. It was in a landing attitude, nose up slightly to try to preserve some airspeed, at the moment that it slammed into the ground about three miles short of the runway, digging into the soft peat surrounding the airfield. The F-16 pilot, trying to keep it in sight as long as possible, watched in horror as it flipped upside down in the soft earth, then spun across the ground. The bombs and fuel tank scattered. He couldn’t see where they landed.

As the ROK pilot climbed away from Hongch’on, he thanked the gods that his own intended landing base was many, many miles away.

The provincial police evacuated the village of Hongch’on quickly and efficiently, and forces from the Republic of Korea Army base at Yongsan sealed off the area within twenty miles of the crash site. Village officials were simply told that a military plane had crashed, and that was good enough reason for them. Fortunately, the early morning winds were light, so the authorities anticipated no further evacuations for several hours, after the rising sun stirred the atmosphere again.

Slowly, deliberately, the Army nuclear weapons experts closed in toward the crash site. There was evidence of fire and debris everywhere, but they detected no radiation. The fires were small, probably because the A-5 had little fuel left in its tanks — just enough for a one-way suicide run over Seoul to dispense the cargo of death. There were no signs of explosion.

The wreckage of the fighter was found inverted, facing opposite from the direction of flight. The plane was almost intact, a tribute to its tough-as-nails construction. The centerline fuel tank was crushed up into the bottom of the fuselage, the cockpit canopy had been flattened — and the nuclear weapons were nowhere in sight.

While searchers fanned out to look for them, the pilot’s body was pulled out of the cockpit. His head was crushed. He was wearing a dark brown wool flight suit ringed at the collar and cuffs with lamb’s wool, typical of the North’s Air Army, but he had no other flight gear at all — not only no helmet but no gloves, no survival gear, not even flying boots. How he survived the nearly one-hour ordeal in the freezing-cold cockpit was impossible to guess. There was no name tag. Some of his insignia, including the pilot’s wings and flag of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, had been partially torn off. Either he was trying at the last moment to hide his identity or country of origin — or he was ashamed to reveal it.

But the most incredible revelation was the pilot’s body itself. It was as emaciated as a scarecrow. He could not have weighed more than one hundred pounds. His chest was sunken, his ribs were visible, and his skin was stretched taut across his bones. He looked like a concentration camp survivor, so skeletal that investigators guessed he might not have had a regular meal in months. The body was carried away from the crash site for further investigation.

Less than an hour later, searchers found both thermonuclear gravity bombs. By a remarkable stroke of fortune, neither had ruptured. One bomb’s housing had cracked, but there was no spill and the basketball-sized globe of fissionable material was intact. The second bomb was fully intact except for its tail fins and several dents and scrapes. The weapons were carefully packaged in lead-lined caskets and carried away for analysis.

South Korea had now acquired its first two thermonuclear weapons. Unknown to it or to the rest of the world, the tiny nation would never be the same again.