“Officer of the deck, plot a course to the second launch barge’s position,” the captain ordered. “All ahead full. I want a full investigation on what kind of weapon sunk that barge. Air, water, electromagnetic, debris analysis, the works.” He paused, then added, “And have the corpsmen prepare to do a full radiation scan as well.”
The last order froze everyone on the bridge in their tracks. The captain was silent for a long moment, then said, “Get to it, gentlemen. Keep your damn eyes open.”
It took less than twenty minutes for the two Air Force jets to fly back to Elliott Air Force Base. The base, ninety miles northwest of Las Vegas, was situated near a dry lake bed named Groom Lake. Anyone who viewed the lake bed — which would have been both difficult and illegal, since the airspace for fifty miles around the base was restricted from ground level to
Bradley James Elliott Air Force Base was the name of the installation built next to the dry lake. It resembled a cross between a small, old, nearly abandoned air base and a modern industrial development facility. It had some old wooden buildings and many modern concrete buildings. Because it was so far from the nearest town, it had dormitory-style enlisted, officer, and civilian quarters. There were few amenities: a mess hall, only a small shopette instead of a full commissary and exchange, a little-used outdoor pool, and no base theater.
The roads were well maintained and the sidewalks were lined with cactus and Joshua trees. The roads had typical Air Force base names, honoring Air Force legends: military aviation pioneers like Rickenbacker and Mitchell, leaders like Spaatz and LeMay, Air Force Medal of Honor recipients like Loring and Sijan, and air combat aces like Bong and DeBellevue. Other streets had names that most people new at the base might not immediately recognize, like Ormack and Powell — names of dead test pilots who had been assigned to the base. About two thousand men and women worked at the base, typically four days on, three days off. They were either bused in in convoys of air- conditioned Greyhound buses, making the 110-mile drive in under two hours, or flown in on unmarked jet airliners from Nellis Air Force Base north of Las Vegas in a matter of minutes.
The one difference between this base and dozens of other military bases resembling it around the world: Elliott Air Force Base did not appear on any map. There were no signs for it. It was not on any listing of active Air Force bases. No one could ask for an assignment there, and if someone did, he or she would be likely to come under secret investigation as to why the request had been made. Every person assigned there swore an oath never to reveal any details about the base or its activities. Most people took that oath very, very seriously — not because of the substantial legal penalties, but because they really believed that keeping their activities secret contributed to the strength and security of their homeland. By almost every conventional measure except physical presence, Elliott Air Force Base did not exist.
The base was the home of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, under Terrill Samson’s command. HAWC was officially Detachment One of the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center headquartered at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Before any new aircraft or air-launched weapon began unclassified operational testing at any of the Air Force’s test facilities prior to full-scale production and deployment, it flew at HAWC first. HAWC’s pilots and engineers worked with aircraft and weapons years before the rest of the world ever saw them, and in many instances worked with weapon systems the world would never see. What would seem like the stuff of science-fiction novels were commonplace devices at HAWC. The secrecy and the weird sightings reported in the deserts of southern Nevada led many to believe the secluded area was harboring aliens from outer space and their spacecraft.
In reality, HAWC was simply a site for innovative, creative aerospace engineers. Although the days of unlimited “black” budgets were gone, free thinking — by engineers, pilots, scientists, and even the commanders — was encouraged and rewarded here.
Terrill Samson taxied the F-111 toward a row of twelve low hangars, all painted to blend in with the sand- colored desert landscape around them. As the plane approached, a hangar door slid open, and it taxied directly inside without stopping or even slowing down much. The hangar doors started to close long before the plane was fully inside — the less time the doors were open, the less chance that snooping eyes could catch a glimpse of whatever was inside. It had been preceded minutes before by the bomber that it had stayed with over the Pacific Ocean just a short while earlier, and parked next to it.
As soon as the F-111’s engines were shut down, the crew chief and his assistant brought boarding ladders over to its side. But General Victor Hayes was still too stunned to remove his helmet and unstrap himself, let alone climb out of the cockpit. Samson took off his own helmet and released his straps, then sat in the cockpit, amused, quietly watching the Air Force chief of staff. A dozen heavily armed security policemen, maintenance crews, and engineers had descended on both aircraft on arrival, prepared to swarm over them and to gather electronically recorded information about the test launches. Now they all waited for Hayes and Samson to step out, perplexed but wisely keeping out of earshot.
“Well, sir?” Samson asked. “What do you think?”
The hangar was air-conditioned, but long before entering it Hayes felt a chill — especially when he thought about what he had witnessed that morning. “What do I think?” he echoed. “I can’t believe it. That warhead is incredible. Talk to me, Earthmover. What the hell else have you got here? Whatever you’re selling, I’m buying. I don’t know how we’re going to pay for it, but I’m for damned sure in the market.”
“What I’ve got, sir, is a bunch of concepts and demo models,” Samson said. “All a leftover of Brad Elliott’s vision and leadership. He’s got stuff here that would make James Bond shit his pants. I’m sorry I blew the poor son of a bitch off for so many years. We all thought he was just certifiable. It turns out he was a certifiable genius.”
“The antiballistic missile stuff, Earthmover. Lancelot,” Hayes said. “That’s what Congress wants to field right now. What is it, how much, how fast can we get it in the field?”
“Let me show you what we’ve got, sir,” Samson said. Hayes removed his straps at last and followed Samson out of the chase plane and over to the B-1 beside it. After their IDs were checked and verified by thumb and retina prints, they began a walkaround of the big, sleek bomber. “We call it the EB-1C Megafortress-2, sir,” said Samson. “Prime-time example of taking a good strike aircraft and making it better. You won’t notice too many changes outside, but Brad transformed this thing into a real tactical strike machine.”
Hayes touched the big bomber, and his eyes narrowed in surprise. He was trying to identify what he felt. “That’s not steel,” he said.
“Fibersteel,” Samson explained. “Same stuff as RAM — radar-absorbent material — but fibersteel is structural-strength. We’ve reduced the weight and the radar cross section and increased the durability by at least fifteen percent just by reskinning with fibersteel. A stock B-1 has ten times the radar cross section of a B-2 stealth bomber. This one has only three times the RCS.”
He pointed to the bomber’s broad, flat underside, between the nosewheel well and forward bomb bay. “There are the external weapons and fuel hardpoints. Best move we made was to bring those back. We can launch any weapon in the arsenal, including air-to-air missiles. Each external hardpoint can hold three AIM-120 Scorpion air- to-air missiles, two AGM-88 HARM antiradar missiles, four AGM-65 Maverick missiles, one AGM-84 Harpoon antiship missile, one Wolverine cruise missile, even one AGM-142 Have Nap TV-guided missile. We’ve even modified Lancelot as a low earth-orbit satellite killer.”
“Brad Elliott revived and perfected the old ASAT antisatellite program,” Samson said proudly. “The B-1 can get a datalink from Space Command or use the LADAR, wait until an enemy satellite passes overhead, then fire an ASAT from an external hardpoint straight up. With a plasma-yield warhead installed, it’ll kill a satellite up to two hundred miles in orbit; with a conventional explosive warhead, about one hundred miles. We haven’t tested it, but all the computer models say it will work. And we can do it all now, sir.”
“Amazing!” Hayes exclaimed. “I want to see that tested. Killing satellites two hundred miles in space — my God, what a capability that’ll give us.” He motioned to the long, pointed nose and asked, “That nose cone looks weird — almost like glass instead of fiber-steel. What kind of radar did you put in this thing? Still the stock one, or did you soup it up too?”
“The EB-1 Megafortress uses LADAR — laser radar,” Samson replied. “It’s what I told you about just before the launch, when you were looking at the display. The emitters are tiny. They’re in the nose, fuselage, and tail.
