Sky Masters

Prologue

“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-111 supersonic swing-wing bomber, an experimental model that was the proposed interim supersonic bomber when the B-1 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-111 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-111B’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-111B’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.

“Cool,” was all Cobb said — and for him, that was akin to a long string of epithets and exclamations.

McLanahan turned his attention away from the ugly burn mark and the holocaust below: “CROWBAR, this is Two-One, flyover complete, request approach clearance.”

“Vapor, this is CROWBAR, climb and maintain eight thousand, turn left heading three-zero-zero, clear to exit R-4806W and re-enter R-4808N to PALACE intersection for approach and landing. Thanks for your help.”

“Eight thousand, three-zero-zero, PALACE intersection, Vapor copies all. Good day. Out.”

McLanahan set up the navigation radios to help Cobb find the initial approach fix, but couldn’t shake the powerful impression HADES had left on him. It was a devastating weapon and would represent a serious threat and escalation to any conflict. No, it wasn’t a nuclear device, but the fact that one aircraft could drop one bomb and kill all forms of life within a one-to-two-mile radius was pretty sobering. Just one B-52 bomber loaded with thirty to forty such weapons could destroy a small city.

Thankfully, though, there wasn’t a threat on the horizon that could possibly justify using HADES. Things were pretty quiet in the world. A lot of the countries that had regularly resorted to aggression before were now opting for peaceful, negotiated settlements. Flare-ups and regional disputes were still present, but no nation wanted war with another, because the possibility for massive destruction with fewer military forces was a demonstrated reality.

And for McLanahan that was just as well. Better to put weapons like HADES hack in storage or destroy them than to use them.

What Patrick McLanahan did not know, however, was that half a world away, a conflict was brewing that could once again force him and his fellow flyers to use such awesome weapons.