mission was a preflight, takeoff, two air refuelings—one east of Hawaii, the other north of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean—airspeed adjustment to make sure they were on time, and a flip through MDU pages, checking stuff. That, and look out the window as they chased the sunset.
Long flights in the B-2A bomber were comfortable and relatively stress-free, but in this plane it was even more brainless than in the Block 10 and Block 20 planes at Whiteman. Navigation was managed by an automatic navigation System run by dual redundant inertial reference unit a Northrop astro-tracker—first developed for the Blackbird spy plane—that could track and lock on to stars even in daytime for accurate heading data, and a Global Positioning System satellite navigation system for position and velocity data—the B-2A’s navigation accuracy could be measured in a few feet, even without using the radar.
The fuel-management system was automatic and completely hands-free. Jamieson trusted the automatic navigation and flight-control systems enough to take short catnaps throughout the flight when things were quiet (he would never, ever admit he trusted McLanahan well enough to watch over things). The seats were big and comfortable—unlike most ACES II ejection seats, which were narrow and hard—and the cockpit was very quiet. You could take the “brain bucket” off, put electronic noise-canceling headsets on, and listen to the single-sideband HF radio channels from all over the world while monitoring the plane and the computers. Station and oxygen checks every thirty minutes, mission status reports by satellite every hour, and sit back and wait for the action to start. The GLAS, or Gust Load Alleviation System—the pointed “beaver tail” on the back of the B-2A’s short fuselage— smoothed out the occasional turbulence bumps with ease.
Jamieson didn’t know if McLanahan ever napped. Whenever a message came in on the satellite receiver, he was right there to receive it; whenever the computer alerted them to a Significant navigation turn point or mission checkpoint, McLanahan was always right there to respond. Jamieson used the chemical toilet mounted behind the mission commander’s seat quite often—Jamieson had never subscribed to the “low-residue” diet recommended for long over-water flights and had brought along two big box lunches filled with fried chicken, bologna sandwiches, raw vegetable sticks, and fruit juice, plus sticky buns that could be warmed up in the bomber’s microwave oven in the tiny galley beside the entry hatch, and plenty of coffee. On the other hand, McLanahan had brought only Thermos bottles of cold protein drinks, plus coffee and lots of water; even so, he’d cleared off for relief only twice. Had to be the “B-52 bowels,” Jamieson decided—since the big B-52s carried only a cramped, uncomfortable, smelly “honey bucket” instead of a real chemical toilet on board, some crew members got accustomed to flying very long missions without using it.
Their flight path took them over the Pacific and Indian oceans, on a less direct course far from the normal transoceanic flight routines in order to avoid visual detection by a passing airliner.
Since this was a secret mission, they didn’t need to give position reports or talk to anyone when crossing international boundaries.
McLanahan activated the radar for a few seconds every time they passed close to land, but mostly kept it in standby to prevent stray electronic emissions from giving away their position. They had no anticollision lights or transponder beacon codes activated—they were counting on the “big sky” theory to keep them away from other aircraft.
They’d overflown the Hawaiian Islands four hours after takeoff and received their first refueling about 120 miles west of Honolulu.
They passed within radar range of Guam, overflew the Philippines, and shot a two-second radar image each of Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand—all without one challenge from any nation’s air defense systems. They were nothing but ghosts.
Approaching the Maldives in the northern Indian Ocean southwest of SriLanka, out of radar range of India’s potent Soviet-built air defense network, they refueled from a U.S. Air Force KC-10 Extender tanker. Now, with full tanks and in long-range cruise mode, the real magic of this incredible warplane was obvious: they could just as easily fly all the way back to Hawaii now if they wanted. The computer listed all the alternate and emergency airfields available to them with their full tanks—they ranged as far north as Anchorage, Alaska, as far south as Auckland, New Zealand, or Cape Town, South Africa, even as far west as London!
If they included civil airfields on the list, runways big enough for a standard Boeing 727, they had their choice of about three hundred airports within max fuel endurance range.. That kind of power really impressed Tony Jamieson, and it was what drove him to the big bomber game and the B-2A Spirit stealth bomber in particular. The power he commanded was unlike anything ever believed possible. With only two aerial refuelings, he could fly halfway around the world—but more impressive, he could fly over their fleets, their capitals, their cities, their military bases, and he could unleash devastating weapons on all of them, and those on the ground would not know he was ever there, even after the missiles hit! He knew the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier battle group was just a few minutes farther east in the Arabian Sea—they had flown within Sixty miles of the group—but the greatest seaborne battle group in the world had had no idea they were nearby.
Eleven hours after takeoff, they’d finally come within radar range of the Arabian Peninsula. McLanahan knew there was an American E-3C Airborne Warning and Control System radar plane flying in southeast Saudi Arabia, to observe all air and sea activity near the Iranian aircraft carrier fleet; Saudi Arabia also operated a sophisticated peninsula-wide air defense command-and-control system called Peace Shield Skywatch, which linked seventeen regional radar sites to a central control facility in Riyadh. But the bomber had overflown Saudi Arabia, then southern Iraq, and then down along the Persian Gulf into southern Iran without one squeak of a radar locked onto them or one challenge on any radio frequency, even though there were lots of Saudi, Iranian, and American fighter patrols up that night. Less than sixty miles away was the Strait of Hormuz and the Iranian military city of Bandar Abbas, one of the most heavily defended places on earth, Just 100 miles south of the strait in the Gulf of Oman was the huge Khomeini aircraft carrier battle group, challenging all those who tried to enter the Persian Gulf.
“I don’t friggin’ believe this,” Jamieson exclaimed. “We’re flying over no-man’s land here. One missile jock get, lucky, and he bags himself a B-2A stealth bomber.” McLanahan made no reply—probably the first indication that night that he was nervous. The threat indicator on McLanahan’s supercockpit display was showing massive amounts of threats all around them: numerous SA-10 surface-to-air missile sites near the larger cities in western Iran; a cluster of mobile SA-8 missile units and ZSU-23/4 antiaircraft artillery sites in Iraq, all radiating and searching the skies; and a handful of high-performance MiG-29s over Iran, not too far away. They were bracketed by long-range search radars, but not one of them showed any indication of locking a continuous-wave or height- finder signal on them.
Tensions in the region were always high, but since the invasion of Abu Musa Island and the deployment of the Khomeini carrier group, it seemed everyone had every man and every piece of military hardware they owned out in the field, ready for battle. “What in hell are we doing up here, McLanahan? This is nuts …”
“There’s an ISA rescue mission being executed now over Bandar Abbas,” McLanahan said—he knew that Jamieson knew why they were doing this mission, but he had to get his AC’s mind off the threats surrounding them and back on the mission right now. “That salvage vessel that got hit by the Iranians the other day? It was an ISA ship. They took several captives, and the ISA’s going to get them back.”
“I heard it was a civilian vessel,” Jamieson said.
“It was civilian, but it was being used by the Intelligence Support Agency to run surveillance on the Khomeini carrier group.”
“So that’s why the Iranians are pissed,” Jamieson commented. “Can we blame them?”
“We can and we do,” McLanahan said. “They were conducting surveillance only, no closer than thirty miles to tiny ship, operating over international waters and airspace.”
“So when the rag heads said that the crew of the ship shot down two of their fighters … that was true?”
“In self-defense, and only after the ship was attacked by fighters from the Khomeini.” McLanahan said. He looked at Jamieson. “Any more questions, Colonel?”
“Touchy, touchy,” Jamieson said. “Just wanted to listen to you explain our mission—I wanted to see how much of a brainless little government robot you’ve become.”
“Glad to see you’re keeping yourself amused,” McLanahan said. He continued: “Our intelligence says the crew members that were captured aboard the ship were taken to Suru Prison near Bandar Abbas. The infiltration group is going right into the prison itself. We’re going to provide air cover for them.”
“We fly all this way, I expect to blast something apart,” Jamieson said, with mock grumpiness. “A carrier would make a mighty big boom, for instance-“
“Stand by, target area’s coming up,” McLanahan interrupted. With little else to do, Jamieson leaned over to
