The planes split and raced up, down, and off. Afterburners glowed hot; thrust plastered pilots into cockpit seats and strained both men and machine.
One then two of the enemy shots missed, a third clipped off the wing of Dasher Ten, an F-111. As the bird spiraled toward the spiked mountains below, the cockpit assembly separated with the pilot and weapons officer inside. A chute deployed and it descended into the unknown. Dasher One and Two completed their maneuvers and re-aligned. The other F-15s and F-111s found formation again. 'Bogey! Bogey!' 'Electric Jets at twelve o’clock coming in fast!' 'Hit the burners!'
The Imperial planes followed Dasher One’s orders and created maximum thrust on their afterburners. The sudden jolt of speed surprised the enemy flight of four black F-16s, once known as ‘electric jets’ to old school aviators.
The opposing fighters roared by in a blur. Streams of jet wash rocked the passing planes like boats caught in wakes.
'Dash Two, take Thunder flight and hit your primary target. Dash three, take my wing, four and five you two are married. Swing around, it’s time to bump heads.'
'Dash One, that’s a negative, you’ve got no scopes.'
'Follow orders, Billy, I don’t need a scope to splash these pricks. You got your orders.'
Dasher One executed a high-g turn about and ordered, 'Find their tailpipes and use the heaters. Thunder, get your asses in gear. Every one else, snuggle up to these bandits we want a knife fight in a phone booth here.'
The F-16s held a huge advantage not only in radar but also in maneuverability. Their only chance was to use heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles at close range. 'Dasher One this is Dash Seven, roger that, tallyho.' Four of the F-15s closed ranks and sought targets. The three remaining F-111s followed Dasher Two’s fighter to the west. — Trevor shifted uneasily aboard the bridge of the Excalibur as the radio chatter echoed through the control room.
The first question of the day had been answered: the California Cooperative’s stealth field worked as advertised. Imperial jets in the zone lost their radar, rendering radar-locking munitions ineffective and blinding them to the enemy. The fight played over the radio. 'Dash One, Fox Two.' 'Dash Four, you’ve got one on you six.' 'Heater found its mark! Sierra Hotel! Splash one bandit!' 'Roger that Dash One, Bravo Zulu.' 'Dash Four, turn to your…' 'Dash Four is down. Mother send a Helo, I’ve got one of my boys in trouble.' 'Dash One, this is Dash Five, negative, I didn’t see a chute. He didn’t get out, man.' 'Dash Three, Fox Two, missile away.' 'Christ. This is one fucked up fur ball. I can’t see shit on my scopes! How the Hell we supposed to fight these guys?' 'I’m hit! This is Dash Three, I got-' Static. 'Three? Three? What’s your status?' 'Dasher One this is Dasher Five, three is gone away, no chute.' 'Flight leader, Dash Five here, bandits bugging east, tell Mother company's coming.' 'Dasher one, Fox Two! Missile track…shit…missed.'
' Excalibur to Lightning Flight, disengage.' 'Lightning lead to Mother, you got bad guys heading your way.' —
Dasher Two led the three Aardvarks low and fast over the sharp peaks of the Sierra Nevadas. Those peaks became less pronounced and more green than white as the target approached.
Billy-the F-15 pilot-knew the target zone from photographs and computer mock-ups salvaged from Pentagon records and maps. The older pilots in his group-guys like Dasher One who had been flying before 'all this'-told stories of mission planning that involved detailed satellite imagery and real-time Intel.
Must be nice.
Alas, military satellites were unreliable and rarely accessible. No more GPS-guided munitions, at least for the time being. Throw in the interference of the Stealth Field and that meant laser-guided and even gravity-'dumb'- bombs. Of course, the whole point of Thunder flight was to take out that Stealth Field. The target should be easy enough to hit: a big three-sided building resembling a 1970's stereo speaker.
'Thunder, we need altitude. Let's grab some sky.'
Each plane gained altitude. While this made them easier marks for the defenses at Beale, it also allowed the gunners on the Aardvarks to better target their quarry.
'Dash Two this is Dash Seven, we're locked and loaded just get us to the party.'
'Roger that,' he answered her voice. 'Make it count.'
The old PAVE-PAWS facility sat three miles east of an airport. It came in to view as the mountains faded away, replaced by trench-like mounds of rolling earth.
Billy spied the three-sided structure on the far side of a group of featureless, rectangular buildings which, he knew from his briefings, had stood for decades. However, he also saw that The Cooperative had made some changes.
A tower with dark-tinted windows and an array of sensors on top rose from the center of the compound. A pair of mushroom-shaped objects protruded from the sides of the tower. No one in the briefing knew their function.
On the south side of the complex the Witiko had constructed a square, open-roofed building that intelligence labeled the 'pen' but that was all they shared on that subject.
Next, Billy spotted three horizontal boxes atop short bases, what intelligence guessed to be anti-air batteries.
To the north of the three main buildings sat a cluster of fuel tanks. Billy thought how confident the Witiko must be in their defenses to locate such explosive materials close to their facility. 'I'm painting the target now,' the female weapons officer aboard Dash Seven reported. Billy saw a flash, then another, from the base. Despite a clear scope, he understood. 'INCOMING!' 'One more second…' He saw-literally saw-the weld marks and bolts on the surface of an anti-air missile as it streaked by his cockpit.
The three bombers stayed on course even as the missiles closed. The first two missed but the third hit Dasher Eight. The plane disintegrated into a cloud of fast-flying debris. Thrusting engines-no longer attached to an airframe-flew off aimlessly like rogue fireworks.
Nonetheless, the remaining two Aardvarks dropped clusters of ordnance following laser beams toward the PAVE PAWS building.
That's when the mushroom-shaped devices revealed their nature.
Metal covers on each slid away revealing honeycombs. From those holes fired a veil of shells in a dense storm creating a bubble of safety overhead of the base, hitting and destroying the incoming payloads.
Some of the laser-guided bombs exploded in the air, others smashed off-course and landed inside the chain link fence surrounding the Stealth generator, causing damage to secondary buildings.
Another anti-air missile scored a hit, tearing apart Dash Seven and sending lifeless pieces-mechanical and otherwise-tumbling from the sky.
With their strike thoroughly defeated and more missiles aiming their way, the remaining Aardvark and Billy's F-15 retreated as fast as their engines allowed.
– Jon Brewer-the Brain of the Excalibur — darted his eyes from display to display. Voices and tones played through his earpiece. His right hand rolled a track ball fixed in a side rail that in turn moved a pointer on the Air Counter-Measures screen to the Heat-Defeat option.
At the same time, on the right eyeglass of his goggles he saw the image of approaching F-16 jets. Beyond those goggles he could see-on another of the mounted screens-a radar image that offered no warning of the approaching threat. His left fingers found the buttons he wanted not by looking, but by training. The voices in his ear piece echoed his orders. 'Sparrow tubes loaded and ready.' 'Securing flight deck; closing hangar doors.' 'Close Support Batteries ready to fire.'
He waited. The F-16s closed. Soon enough, The Cooperative's fighters would have to leave the safety of their Stealth Field if they wanted to engage the Excalibur.
And when they did…
First one, then three flashed on the radar.
I see you now.
Jon's fingers tapped a warning.
'Incoming enemy fire. Brace for impact.'
Three more faster-moving blips painted on the radar screen. Missiles. His missiles.
'Sparrows away.'
Rockets raced from the Excalibur and passed more rockets heading in for the massive ship, fired by the F-
