Battle Born

Seconds later Rinc and Patrick saw a brilliant sparkle of white-yellow lights in the desert ahead on the horizon, spreading out in a long, wide oval pattern — the unmistakable look of a stick of detonating cluster bombs. At the same moment, the SA-3 search radar disappeared completely. “SA-3 down,” Warren announced.

“Good shooting, guys!” Rinc crowed. Colonel Fur-ness’s crew obviously dropped its bombs close enough to the SA-3 site to score it as a “kill.”

The crew heard deedle deedle deedle in their headphones, and Warren announced, “Fighter at twelve o’clock, fifteen miles, looks like he’s heading down the chute after our wingman.”

“Go-Fast, this is Rodeo, bandit on your tail!” Rinc radioed to their leader.

“We’re on the rail, Rodeo,” Rebecca in Aces Two-Zero responded. “We’re lining up for the second release. Can’t maneuver too much.”

“You son of a bitch,” Rinc swore. “We’re going to fry his butt. Long Dong, we’re going to racetrack around back and you can get your ACAL and a patch on the second pass. We’re ten seconds ahead right now. If we do this right, we’ll lose about thirty seconds time-over-target. We’ll lose points, but not as many as we’d lose if our leader gets shot down.”

“Go for it, pilot,” Long said, but it was obvious he didn’t think much of the plan.

Seaver didn’t hesitate. He punched the throttles into max afterburner and turned sharply right to line up behind the lead F-15 fighter. “Lead, we’re coming up behind you,” he radioed to Furness. “Give me some S-turns so we can catch up. We’ll get those Eagle pukes off your butt.”

Meanwhile, Long switched radar modes on his APG-66 attack radar back to rendezvous mode and locked onto both the F-15 and their wingman in the other Bone. “Got them,” he said. “Twelve-thirty, eight miles, fighter’s at about a thousand feet AGL… range seven miles… six miles… five…”

“Tally-ho,” Patrick shouted, pointing out the windscreen. Rinc followed his gloved hand and saw the fighter, highlighted against the blue sky.

“Gotcha!” Rinc said. They slid through the sound barrier and rapidly closed the distance. “Knock knock, motherfucker…”

* * *

“Bullrider flight, you’re cleared to the perch,” the lead F-15 pilot said on his interplane frequency.

“Roger, lead. I’m at your six, moving up. Got you in sight.”

“What the hell happened, Billy? I didn’t hear you call out a ‘guns’ on the tanker.”

“I was three seconds from hosing the tanker and then the second B-1 popped out of nowhere and flew between me and the tanker,” the wingman explained. “I lost sight of both of them and had to bug out before I hit a goddamn mountain.”

Shit! Shit! Shit! the leader swore to himself. This morning was not going well at all. He was angry not only because his wingman failed to kill the tanker but because he couldn’t catch up with the first B-1 before it bombed its first target. He couldn’t see the B-1 down low, but he knew he’d been there — the sight of a bunch of cluster bombs detonating across the desert floor just a few miles in front of him was hard to miss. “Well, why didn’t you call KIO or record a violation?”

“Because… oh, fuck it, just because,” the wingman said. “I recorded a possible heater kill anyway. It was a gutsy move. They deserve the save.”

“Like hell they do,” the lead F-15 pilot shot back. “They deserve to get busted for doing a stunt like that.” But if the pilot on the scene didn’t register a violation, there was no violation — even if the AWACS airborne radar controllers or range controllers saw it. No doubt the bomber crew would get a stern lecture on range safety from the commander, but if no one called a foul, there was no foul.

A bat-wing symbol appeared on the lead F-15’s threat scope, but the pilot got no warning tone, indicating that he was being painted with friendly radar. He immediately dismissed the indication, thinking it was his wingman taking up his position on the perch again, covering his leader. “Avalanche, Bullrider One, moving into position on bandit one, record a heater track, now.”

“Copy, Bullrider… Bullrider One, bandit at your six o’clock low, five miles, closing rapidly. Bullrider, can you delouse?” That was a request for the wingman to try to identify the newcomer.

Low? His wingman was low? That meant the target on his threat scope wasn’t his wingman! Oh, shit! “Bullrider flight, you got that bogey? You see him?”

“Negative, lead!”

“Bogey one six o’clock, three miles… two miles, closing fast!”

“I got him, lead, I got him!” the wingman cried out. “He’s right under you!”

Not for long. Just as the lead F-15 pilot rolled right a bit to get a better look underneath him, the B-1 bomber, in full afterburner, zoomed up directly in front of him. The pilot instinctively rolled hard left and pulled until he heard his stall warning horn, then rolled out. “Billy, you got him in sight? You got him?”

“Screw that, lead! I lost sight of you! I’m lost wingman! I’m blind! I’m level ten thousand!”

“Bullrider Two, collision alert, snap right forty degrees now!” the AWACS radar controller shouted. The lead F-15 pilot had rolled up and right into the path of his wingman on the high perch. The second F-15 took immediate evasive action. It was just in time — the two planes missed each other by less than two hundred feet, without either pilot seeing the other’s plane.

The lead F-15 pilot mashed his mike button as he jerked his control stick over hard, waiting for the crunch of metal and the explosion he knew was going to happen. “Knock it off, knock it off, knock it off!” he shouted on his command channel. That was the signal to all aircraft to stop maneuvering, roll wings level, and assess the situation. He had lost complete situational awareness, and any maneuver he might make could cause an accident or death.

“I got you in sight, lead!” the second F-15 called, after he rolled out of his snap-turn. “I’m at your five o’clock, one mile. I’m climbing to eleven thousand.”

The near-miss rattled the lead F-15 pilot so much he had to drop his oxygen mask to keep from hyperventilating. Damn, what in hell was wrong with those bomber pukes? They used their aircraft like missiles, not giving a damn about peacetime safety-of-flight. Two near-misses within just a few seconds of each other — that was too much!

“I’m going to nail those sons of bitches if it’s the last thing I do!” the lead pilot shouted to himself as he snapped his oxygen mask back in place. No hot dog Guard bomber pukes are going to make any Eagle driver look like a putz!

* * *

At two hundred feet above the ground, Patrick felt safer now than he had for most of the flight in the Nellis range — he wasn’t accustomed to flying so close to other aircraft while on a mission, let alone “enemy” aircraft. He noticed he had pulled his shoulder and lap belts so tight that they hurt, but he didn’t even consider loosening them. Again, for the umpteenth time, he checked his ejection levers and ejection mode switches, mentally targeting the levers in case he had to go for them while they were upside down or pulling lots of Gs. This crew seemed hell-bent on making the worst happen.

Were they reckless? Maybe. Were they dangerous? Some might think so. But the question was — were they effective? Did they get the job done? So far, protecting their tanker and their wingman, the answer had to be yes. But at what price? When were these stunts going to finally catch up with them?

Rinc Seaver steered the bomber back around in a bootleg racetrack pattern, rolled back in over their lead-in point. Long got his altitude calibration, then took his initial fix and high-resolution patch of the target area. The bomb release — another Combined Effects Munitions cluster bomb attack, a few hundred meters beside where the other B-1 had dropped — was almost an anticlimax.

Were they effective at hitting their assigned targets? Definitely — but, again, at what price?

“I heard a ‘knock it off’ call, crew,” Patrick announced on interphone. “Stand by. I’ll be on the voice SATCOM. Everyone else toggle off.” Patrick got an acknowledgment from the rest of the crew, then dialed up the secure voice satellite channel. “Firebird, this is Aces Two-One secure.”

“This is Firebird,” Dave Luger responded. They authenticated themselves once again; then: “Hey, Muck, we just got a call from Avalanche, the AWACS controlling your Red force in the range. They relayed a safety-of-flight violation regarding your crew. Claim you busted the ROE by flying too close to the fighters?”