the ECM-”
“Coming online now!” Frodo shouted. The right side of his supercockpit display was on once again, and his fingers were flying across the touchscreen. “ADS active!” The Vampire’s ADS, or Active Defensive System, was a pair of free-electron laser emitters, one atop and one underneath the fuselage. When the laser radar detected an incoming missile, the ADS lasers would slave themselves to the LADAR and attack the missiles with beams of white-hot laser energy powerful enough to destroy the thin dielectric nose cap of most surface-to-air missiles at long range. They had to fight off at least a half-dozen Russian missiles fired from the carrier’s escorts.
“Airspeed’s finally picking up,” Boxer said. “I’m going to see if number four is back with us.” She gently advanced the throttle of the number four engine, watching the exhaust temperatures to make sure the fire that was in the engine wasn’t going to reignite-and sure enough, the exhaust-gas temperature in the engine began to spike, and she pulled the throttle to idle, then to “CUTOFF.” “Looks like number four is dead, Frodo-a fire starts in the burner can when I advance the throttle,” she said. “Let’s get on the radio and see if our tanker can-”
“Bandits!” Frodo yelled. “Su-33s, three o’clock, twenty-five-”
Just then the threat warning computer blared, “Missile guidance, AA-12, three o’clock!” Boxer punched out chaff and flares and did another hard left break…
…but it was too slow with the lost engine, and there wasn’t enough airspeed to keep the break in to defeat the missile. They felt a hard whummp and the entire tail section of the Vampire skidded to the left. Boxer had to fight the control stick with both hands and stomp hard on the right rudder pedal to keep the plane straight and prevent a roll right into the ocean.
“Boxer…?” Frodo shouted.
“I got it, I got it!” Boxer shouted. She knew that’s probably exactly what most bomber pilots said right before they crashed after being hit by a missile, but she truly believed she could maintain control. She released the control stick with her left hand long enough to raise a red-colored switch guard on her side instrument panel, raised a switch inside to the “ARM” position, then climbed slightly. “Nail those fighters, Frodo!”
Frodo activated his “MASTER ARM” switch on his side instrument panel. As soon as he did, the supercockpit display changed from a view of the Russian fleet to a three-dimensional depiction of the airborne threats around them. The laser radar detected and began tracking all of the Russian Sukhoi-33 carrier-based fighters, and the fire control computer quickly prioritized each one in order of threat. As soon as the first fighter came within range, the computer opened the forward bomb-bay doors and ejected an AIM-120 AMRAAM missile into the slipstream.
The missile descended about fifty feet as it stabilized itself. Boxer hoped the Vampire was not side-slipping too much or the missile would likely fly right into it, but it separated cleanly, its digital gyros restoring stability in the badly disturbed air around the bomber. Its rocket motor fired, and it streaked after the first Sukhoi. The missile used laser guidance signals from the Vampire bomber, so the Su-33 had no threat indications that it was being tracked or a missile was in the air until seconds before impact, when the AMRAAM activated its own terminal guidance radar. By the time the Russian pilot knew he was under attack, it was too late.
“Formation two is heading back to the carrier-they must be low on gas,” Frodo reported, his voice strained. “The last guy from formation three is orbiting over his leader. Looks like we’re in the clear.”
Boxer looked over at her mission commander and saw his fingers shake as he tried to type in instructions on his supercockpit display. “It’s okay, Alan,” she said softly. “You did good.”
Frodo raised his oxygen visor. He sat quietly for a few moments, staring at his lap; then: “You could have gotten us killed, Boxer,” he said in a low, trembling voice.
Gia didn’t know what else to say except, “Sorry, Frodo.”
His head snapped over toward her, and his eyes were blazing. “Sorry? You’re sorry? That’s it?”
“I guess so.”
“You should’ve bugged out when they started to lock us up,” Frodo said. “We should’ve turned around when we found out they were serious.”
“Our job was not to turn around, Frodo-our job was to probe the fleet and report,” Boxer said. “I’m not the kind of person to turn tail and run at the first sign of danger.”
“But why the high-speed passes? We could’ve flown right into one of those close-in cannons. Hell, we were flying so low they could’ve hit us with a damned mop stuck out a porthole!”
“They pissed me off, and I wanted to show them they couldn’t scare me off,” Boxer said.
“They almost shot us out of the sky! They almost killed us! I’ve got two sons at home, Colonel. You could’ve made them fatherless, and for what-because you got pissed? Thanks a lot, Colonel.”
“Don’t worry, Major-I’ll tell the review board you objected to going in and recommended we turn around,” Boxer said. “You won’t take any flak for my actions. Just find us a place to land.”
“Armstrong to Fracture Two-One.”
Boxer switched her comm panel to the primary control frequency. “Two-One, go.”
“Everyone all right?” Jessica Faulkner radioed from Armstrong Space Station.
“We’ve been better,” Boxer replied. “We lost number four, lost the rudder, probably lost most of the horizontal stabilizer, and I feel a bad vibration in the tail. We’ll do a controllability test before we try air refueling or landing, but I think we’re going to end up ditching or crash-landing.”
“We’ll pass that along,” Gonzo said. “Your tanker is about three hundred miles east, heading toward you for the rendezvous. We have limited coverage on you right now, but as of three minutes ago, your tail was clear. If you can’t tank, the closest air base is Salalah, Oman, about four hundred and fifty miles east-northeast. Got enough gas for that?”
“Barely.”
“That’s your only hard-surface runway for a thousand miles, guys, unless you want to try Al Mukalla, Yemen,” Gonzo said, “but the Russians might spot you and try for some payback. We’ll keep an eye out for you as much as possible and pass along your information. Good luck.”
It was not looking good as the Air Force KC-767 aerial refueling tanker rolled out in front of the Vampire bomber. “Rudder control is almost zero,” Boxer said as she slowly, carefully pulled the throttles back. “Elevator control is about fifty percent-it looks like the mission-adaptive system is having to work overtime to compensate for the loss of the tail stabilizers.” She started to bring the power back, but the vibrations increased below 400 knots, and below 350 knots indicated airspeed, the vibration almost made the plane uncontrollable. “Looks like our limit is three-fifty, Milkman,” Boxer radioed to the tanker. “What’s your max?”
“Our published max is three hundred,” the pilot responded, “and the most I’ve ever done in an emergency is three-twenty. The plane gets real twitchy in pitch above that.”
“And we’re not too responsive in pitch ourselves,” Boxer said.
“I’m willing to give it a try,” the tanker’s boom operator said.
“Thanks, but I think we’ll divert to-”
“Bandits!” Frodo shouted. “Two Su-33s…no, two formations of Su-33s, six o’clock…damn, just fifteen miles, with the second formation three miles in trail! My rear LADAR array must be shot off-I picked them up on the threat receiver only!”
“Time to bug out, Milkman,” Boxer said. “We’ll hold them off for you.”
Just then, the threat-warning computer blared: “Caution, caution, radar tracking, Su-33.”
“He’s right on top of us!” Frodo shouted.
At that moment they heard a heavily accented Russian voice radio, “American bomber, this is Russian Southern Fleet patrol aircraft on GUARD. We have you and your tanker aircraft on our radar and long-range optical sensors. We have more fighters in pursuit. You cannot escape. Your aircraft is badly damaged.”
“I can’t see them except on the threat receiver,” Frodo said. “I can’t launch an AMRAAM as long as they stay in the rear quarter.”
“Can we try an over-the-shoulder launch and have the missile track on its own?” Boxer asked.
“It needs an initial bearing and distance from the fire control computer to launch-it won’t take info from the threat receiver,” Frodo said. “The AMRAAMs are deadweight unless they appear on the lateral arrays.”
“You are trying to think of a way to escape,” the Russian fighter pilot radioed. “We noted you shot down one of our brothers, so you have defensive weapons, but the fact that we have come well within missile range of you undetected means that your defensive weapons are unusable, at least right at the present moment. We are in firing position now on both yourselves and your aerial refueling aircraft. We applaud your courage and exceptional fighting and flying skills on your high-speed pass through our task force. We have a proposal for you, warrior to
