The Strike Eagles carried drop tanks on their wing hard-points and two LANTIRN infrared pods on special hard-points — one for targeting, the other for navigation. Sparrow radar-guided missiles mounted next to their drop tanks provided air-to-air combat capability. Each of the two-seater attack aircraft also carried one massive GBU-28 laser-guided bomb on its centerline pylon.
The 4,700-pound GBU-28 was an extraordinarily powerful weapon developed under extraordinary circumstances. During Desert Storm, several of the first U.S. attacks on Baghdad’s hardened command and control bunkers failed when 2,000-pound bombs bounced off or failed to pierce multiple layers of reinforced concrete. Frantic requests for more potent air ordnance resulted in the GBU-28 penetrator, commonly called Deep Throat. Designed, built, and shipped to the combat zone in seventy-two hours, the weapon was a miracle of ingenuity and improvisation.
The Deep Throat was also as ugly as hell. To manufacture it, U.S. arms experts had snagged surplus eight- inch gun barrels, machined them out, and buried them upright in the ground. Then bucket gangs of men wearing protective suits took turns pouring molten explosive right into the open barrels. Once the explosives cooled, specialists fitted a delay fuse and laser guidance system to the front and control fins to the back. The whole result looked very much like a giant, homemade pipe bomb.
But it was incredibly effective. When dropped on Iraqi targets, the GBU-28 had vividly demonstrated that it could punch through more than twenty-two feet of reinforced concrete or more than one hundred feet of packed earth before exploding. Now America’s war planners were betting the same weapons could rip open the French missile silos.
Campos hoped they were right. The penalties for failure were too terrible to contemplate.
The colonel checked one last time, making sure his wingman was still back there — ready to attack immediately after he and McRae rolled off the target. The Eagles were attacking in pairs. Their orders were clear: even if the first bomb scores what looks like a solid hit, dump the second Deep Throat in right after it. When attacking heavily protected weapons that could kill millions if they got off the ground, air force doctrine was explicit — bounce the rubble.
“Bingo!” McRae had spotted their assigned missile silo several miles ahead and several thousand feet below!
A new steering cue appeared on the F-15E’s HUD.
In the Strike Eagle’s backseat, McRae stared hard at the LANTIRN display. Despite the darkness, the surrounding barbed-wire fence and an adjacent radio mast showed up clearly in infrared. He looked for the flat concrete slab that covered the silo itself and found it. His hand settled on the laser designator, switched it on, and held the beam right in the middle of the slab. “Anytime you’re ready, Neil.”
Campos nosed over into a gentle dive and held the Strike Eagle on course so he wouldn’t pull the laser off target. Sure that he had the right parameters, he thumbed the weapon release on his stick.
The GBU-28 dropped away from the F-15 and fell toward the French missile silo.
Guided by McRae’s laser, the bomb slammed nose-first into the thick silo cover. Still moving at more than six hundred miles an hour, it smashed through layers of steel and concrete and exploded inside the silo itself — just meters away from the forty-five-foot-tall S3 ballistic missile.
White-hot fragments shattered the delicate mechanism of the missile’s nuclear warhead, turning the deadly device into useless junk. Others ruptured the missile casing and plowed into tons of packed-solid fuel propellant.
The propellant ignited.
The whole concrete cover bulged and then blew off — tossed to one side by what looked like the world’s biggest Roman candle. A blinding plume of fire and flaming gas rocketed hundreds of meters into the air, turning night into day across the Plateau d’Albion.
The picture being transmitted from a point 22,300 miles above the earth’s equator showed a darkened globe fringed with sunlight spilling along its eastern horizon.
For more than twenty years, data from American DSP early warning satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the Indian Ocean had been routinely processed at the Woomera facility, code-named Casino, before being transmitted to the United States. But nothing about this morning was routine for the air force officers crowding around the monitoring station. They were watching for the first pulses of light that would signal French missiles roaring up and out of their silos.
Even though the Circus strike had been timed so that one of the two operational G-PALS constellations was over northern Europe, no one knew how effective the system would be against a real missile attack. And no one really wanted to find out. The space-based defense system’s Brilliant Pebbles had proved they could knock down satellites following predictable orbits. Detecting and intercepting ballistic missiles arcing up from the atmosphere was likely to prove considerably more difficult.
Bright white lights blossomed suddenly across a small section of southern France.
One of the watching officers, a colonel, turned ashen. “Flash message to the NCA! Possible IRBM launches from the Albion complex!”
Another man, this one monitoring satellite-relayed radio transmissions from the strike controller, interrupted him. “Negative! Negative! Ringmaster radar shows no missile tracks! Repeat, no missile tracks! Those plumes are secondary explosions.”
Some of the men closest to the screen whistled softly in admiration. All of the eighteen white-hot tongues of fire bathing the Haute-Provence in an eerie glow had appeared within seconds of each other. General Keller’s F-15 crews had achieved an almost perfect time-on-target attack.
France no longer possessed a land-based strategic nuclear deterrent.
Pairs of Mirage F1Es soared off the long, concrete runway, climbing fast into the gray, predawn sky. In itself there was nothing unusual about that. The interceptors and fighter-bombers based at Juterbog had been flying sorties over the Polish front since the war began. But these planes were flying west — back to France.
Colonel Manfred Witz stood near the windows of the base control tower with his hands on hips and an angry expression on his face. The small, spare Luftwaffe officer scowled down at the frantic scene unfolding on his flight line.
French ground crewmen in greasy coveralls scurried back and forth between aircraft shelters, ordnance bunkers, and maintenance workshops. They were loading gear aboard a long line of canvas-sided trucks guarded by French military police. Other crews were mustering beside a camouflaged C-130 Hercules transport.
Despite heated German protests, the French Air Force squadron at Juterbog was pulling out — under orders from Paris. Witz knew they weren’t the only ones going. He’d seen message traffic recalling at least two other air units and several SAM batteries. With U.S. and British planes apparently roving over France at will, the French were desperately trying to strengthen their own air defenses.
The colonel grimaced. Transferring so many aircraft away from the Polish front was madness — especially right now. Caught between their own combat losses and the steady tide of U.S. reinforcements flying into Poland, the Luftwaffe and the French Air Force were already increasingly unable to control the air over the battlefield. This latest move would only make the situation worse.
He turned abruptly and stomped away from the window. The tower’s junior officers and enlisted personnel saw him coming and hastily bent to their work. When the colonel was in one of his rages, it was safest to stay out of his way.
These French idiots have opened a hornet’s nest and now they’re clutching at straws, Witz thought bitterly. The Combined Forces were stripping away French and German military capabilities one at a time. Round-the-clock air raids and cruise missile attacks had sunk most of the Confederation’s naval units. Those few ships and submarines still afloat were being bottled up in port by enemy minefields. Now the Americans and British were going after French nuclear forces. And once they were finished with that, he knew only too well whose air bases would be next on the target list.
