Leadership Material

'Copy,' Wendy said weakly. She scrambled to catch flying pencils and checklists as the negative Gs sent anything unsecure floating around the cabin. Switching her oxygen regulator to '100 %' helped when her stomach and most of its contents threatened to start floating around the cabin too. 'I'm jamming. He's…' Suddenly, they all heard a fast-pitched 'DEEDLEDEEDLEDEEDLE!' warning, and red alert lights flashed in every compartment. 'Radar missile launch, seven o'clock, twenty-five miles!' Wendy shouted. 'Break right!'

Elliott slammed the Megafortress bomber into a hard right turn and pulled the throttles to idle, keeping the nose down to complicate the missile's intercept and to screen the bomber's engine exhaust from the attacker as much as possible. As the bomber slowed it turned faster. Patrick felt as if he were upside down and backwards-the sudden deceleration, steep dive, and steep turn only served to tumble his and everyone's senses.

'Chaff! Chaff!' Wendy shouted as she ejected chaff from the left ejectors. The chaff, packets of tinsel-like strips of metal, formed large blobs of radar-reflective clouds that made inviting spoof targets for enemy missiles.

'Missiles still inbound!' Wendy shouted. 'Arming Stingers!' As the enemy missiles closed in, Wendy fired small radar- and heat-seeking rockets out of a steerable cannon on the Megafortress's tail. The Stinger airmine rockets flew head to head with the incoming missiles, then exploded several dozen feet in the missile's path, shredding its fuselage and guidance system. It worked. The last enemy missile exploded less than five thousand feet away.

It took them only four minutes to get down to just two hundred feet above the Gulf of Oman, guided by the navigation computer's terrain database, by the satellite navigation system, and by a pencil-thin beam of energy that measured the distance between the bomber's belly and the water. They headed southwest at full military power, as far away from the Iranian coastline as possible. Brad Elliott knew what fighter pilots feared-low-altitude flight, darkness, and heading out over water away from friendly shores. Every engine cough was amplified, every dip of the fuel gauge needles seemed critical-even the slightest crackle in the headset or a shudder in the flight controls seemed to signal disaster. Having a potential enemy out there, one that was jamming radar and radio transmissions, made the tension even worse. Few fighter pilots had the stomach for night overwater chases.

But as Wendy studied her threat displays, it soon became obvious that the MiG or whatever it was out there wasn't going to go away so easily. 'No luck, guys-we didn't lose him. He's closed inside twenty miles and he's right on our tail, staying high but still got a pretty good radar lock on us.'

'Relaying messages to headquarters too, I'll bet,' Elliott said.

'Six o'clock, high, fifteen miles. Coming within heater range.' With the enemy attacker's radar jammed, he couldn't use a radar-guided missile-but with IRSTS, he could easily close in and make a heat-seeking missile shot.

'Wendy, get ready to launch Scorpions,' Brad said.

'Roger.' Wendy already had her fingers on the keyboard, and she typed in instructions to warm up the Megafortress's surprise weapon- the AIM-120 Scorpion AMRAAM, or Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile. The EB-52 carried six Scorpion missiles on each wing pylon. The Scorpions were radar-guided missiles that were command-guided by the Megafortress's attack radar or by an onboard radar in the missile's nose-the missiles could even attack targets in the bomber's rear quadrant by guidance from a tail-mounted radar, allowing for an 'over- the-shoulder' launch on a pursuing enemy. Only a few aircraft in the entire world carried AMRAAMs-but the EB-52 Megafortress had been carrying one for three years, including one combat mission. The enemy aircraft was well within the Scorpion's maximum twenty-mile range.

'Twelve miles.'

'When he breaks eight miles, lock him up and hit 'em,' Brad said. 'We gotta be the one who shoots first.'

'Brad, we need to knock this off,' Patrick said urgently.

Wendy looked at him in complete surprise, but it was Brad Elliott who exclaimed, 'What was that, Patrick?'

'I said, we should stop this,' Patrick repeated. 'Listen, we're in international airspace. We just dropped down to low altitude, we're jamming his radar. He knows we're a bad guy. Forcing a fight won't solve anything.'

'He jumped us first, Patrick.'

'Listen, we're acting like hostiles, and he's doing his job-kicking us out of his zone and away from his airspace,' Patrick argued. 'We tried to sneak in, and we got caught. No one wants a fight here.'

'Well, what the hell do you suggest, nav?' Brad asked acidly.

Patrick hesitated, then leaned over to Wendy, and said, 'Cut jamming on UHF GUARD.'

Wendy looked at him with concern. 'Are you sure, Patrick?'

'Yes. Do it.' Wendy reluctantly entered instructions into her ECM computer, stopping the jamming signals from interfering with the 243.0 megahertz frequency, the universal UHF emergency channel. Patrick flipped his intercom panel wafer switch to com 2, which he knew was set to the universal UHF emergency channel. 'Attention, Iranian air-craft at our six o'clock position, one hundred and seventy-six kilometers southeast of Bandar Abbas. This is the American aircraft you are pursuing. Can you hear me?'

'Patrick, what in hell are you doing?' Elliott shouted on interphone. 'Defense, did you stop jamming UHF? What in hell's going on back there?'

'That's not a good idea, Patrick,' John offered, sternly but not as forcefully as Elliott. 'You just told him we're Americans. He's going to want to take a look now.'

'He'd be crazy to answer,' Brad said. 'Now stay off the radio and…'

But just then, they heard on the radio, 'Shto etah? Nemalvali pa-zhaloosta.'

'What the hell was that?' Wendy asked.

'Sounded like Russian to me,' Patrick said.

Just then, in broken English, they heard, 'American aircraft at my twelve of the clock position from my nose, this is Khaneh One-Four-One of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force. I read you. You are in violation of Iranian sovereign airspace. I command you now to climb to three thousand meters of altitude and prepare for intercept. Reduce speed now and lower your landing-gear wheels. Do you understand?'

'One-Four-One, this is the American aircraft. We have locked defensive weapons on to your aircraft. Do not fly closer than twelve kilometers from us or you will be attacked. Do you understand?'

'Range ten miles.'

'You are at sixteen kilometers,' Patrick radioed. 'Do not come any closer.'

'Patrick, this is nuts,' Brad said. 'You're going to try to convince him to turn around? He'll never go for it.'

'Nine miles. Closure speed five hundred knots.'

'One-Four-One, you are at fourteen-point-five kilometers, closing at thirteen kilometers per minute. Do not, I repeat, do not fly closer than twelve kilometers to us, or you will be attacked. We are not in Iranian airspace, and we are withdrawing from the area. This is my final warning. Do you understand?'

'Eight miles…'

'One-Four-One, we have you at twelve kilometers! Break off now!'

'Stand by to shoot, Wendy! Damn you, McLanahan…!'

'Here he comes!' Wendy shouted. 'Closure rate… wait, his closure rate dropped,' Wendy announced. 'He's holding at eight miles… no, he's slowing. He's climbing. He's up to five thousand feet, range ten miles, decelerating.'

'Cease jamming, Wendy,' Patrick said.

'What?'

'Stop jamming them,' Patrick said. 'They broke off their attack. Now we need to do the same.'

'Brad?'

'You're taking a big damned chance, Muck,' Brad Elliott said. He paused, but only for a moment; then: 'Cease jamming. Fire 'em up again if they come within eight miles.'

'Trackbreakers and comm jammers to standby,' Wendy said, punching instructions into the computer. 'Range nine miles. He's climbing faster, passing ten thousand feet.'

'You Americans, do not try to approach our Iran, or we will show you our anger,' the Iranian MiG pilot said in halting English. 'Your threats mean nothing to us. Stay away or be damned.'

'He's turning north,' Wendy said. 'He's… oh no! He's diving on us! Range ten miles, closure rate seven hundred knots!'