'What will you do?'
'Patrick wants me to launch several Wolverine and FlightHawk missiles against targets in Libya,' Jon replied. 'Once the targets are destroyed, he'll be able to fly» in and attack more vital targets from the ground. He plans on attacking more and more targets in Libya until the president of Libya turns over Wendy and the others. We'll launch two attack planes, twelve hours apart.'
'What if Wendy is dead?' Kelsey asked, her face drawn with fear.
'I don't know,' Jon replied. 'I hope Patrick will come home. He has a little boy, you know-his name is Bradley. He hasn't seen Bradley in a long time.'
To Jon's complete surprise, Kelsey Duffield started to cry. It was the first time he had ever seen her display any emotions at all, let alone such utter sadness. But then another completely unexpected thing happened: Jon Masters reached over and hugged the little girl. For several long moments, the two stayed in each other's arms. Her weeping got more intense, deeper, and for a moment Jon didn't know if he could maintain his composure-before he realized that tears were running down his cheeks too. Helen put her arms around her husband, and they shared that terrible moment together-the first time in their short but close relationship that they shared anything more than business together.
After a while, the little girl's weeping subsided but they stayed in their siblinglike embrace. Finally, Jon asked, 'Are you going to be okay, Kelsey?'
'I think so,' Kelsey replied, sniffing. She was silent for a moment; then: 'Jon?'
'Yes?'
She sniffed away a tear again, still holding Jon Masters tightly, and asked, 'What warheads are you going to put on the cruise missiles?'
'W… what?'
'What are you going to arm those Wolverines and FlightHawks with?' the sad little girl asked. Slowly but surely, Jon could hear the familiar business-like steel returning to her voice as she added, 'I have some ideas that might help….'
CHAPTER 4
The flight had originated from Arkansas International Airport, Blytheville, Arkansas. The crew had filed an ordinary IFR flight plan with the FAA, with Bangor, Maine, as its destination and McDonnell Douglas DC-10 as its aircraft type. About twenty minutes before reaching Bangor, with unusually good weather all across the northeast United States, the crew descended below eighteen thousand feet, canceled its Instrument Flight Rules flight plan, and elected to proceed using Visual Flight Rules. The handoff was routine. Once the flight descended below three thousand feet it disappeared off radar, lost in the ground clutter of the White Mountains of eastern New Hampshire. As far as American air traffic controllers were concerned, it was a successful and completely routine trip. They did not check to see if the flight made it to Bangor, nor were they required to do so. -» In fact, the aircraft never descended at all. The crew was able to electronically alter the Mode C altitude readout of its air traffic control radio transponder, making the controllers think it had descended for landing. The controllers never had a 'skin paint,' or hard radar return, on the aircraft-they were relying only on the transponder to get the aircraft's position. The aircraft actually stayed at thirtynine thousand feet, heading eastward on a great circle route to take it over the north Atlantic Ocean.
Once the transponder was turned off, the aircraft became invisible-because it was not really a DC-10, but a modified U.S. Air Force B-52H Stratofortress bomber nicknamed the EB-52 Megafortress, owned and operated by Sky Masters Inc. as a government research and testing aircraft, designed as a stealth technologies demonstration aircraft. Its skin and major structural components were made of composite fibersteel, not metal, covered with radar-absorbent materials; instead of a large cruciform radar-hungry tail, its control surfaces were smaller, swept backward, and radically tilted in a low V-shape to minimize radar reflections. Even though the aircraft weighed nearly half a million pounds and its wingspan was longer than the Wright Brothers' first airplane flight, it had the radar cross-section of a bird.
A few hours later, the Megafortress rendezvoused with a real Sky Masters Inc. DC-10 aircraft that was modified for aerial refueling. Within half an hour, the B-52 was fully topped off with fuel. With the DC-10 in loose formation, the B-52 made its way across the north Atlantic, using bursts of its Laser Radar system to be sure it was well out of visual range of other aircraft. The DC-10 was on a standard over-water flight plan, en route to Glasgow, Scotland. About an hour prior to landing, the B-52 again hooked up and filled its tanks from the DC-10. The big converted airliner headed immediately for landing in Scotland-it was now dangerously low on fuel, even though a conventional DC-10 can make the trip across to Europe easily with plenty of fuel reserves. Its stealth wingman had nearly sucked it dry.
The EB-52 continued right across Europe, overflying countries without clearance. The reason was simple: No conventional radars could see it, so no one knew it was up there. It flew across a dozen western and central European nations without a hint of its presence. Even in crowded airspace, it was able to keep its distance so no other aircraft could see it, changing altitudes or maneuvering far enough away to keep out of sight.
John 'Bud' Franken, Commander, U.S. Navy, Retired, thoroughly enjoyed the danger of what they were doing. As the aircraft commander aboard the Sky Masters test bed aircraft, he had seen his company's planes do some amazing things-but even when the EB-52 was doing nothing but flying straight and level nearly seven miles above the Earth, it was still amazing. Franken was a former U.S. Navy test pilot and test squadron commander, and he had flown in every Navy aircraft design, both operational and ones that never made it past 'black' status, over the past twenty years-but he was truly awestruck by the EB-52.
In his soul he would always be a Navy fighter pilot, but his heart now belonged to the experimental EB-52 Megafortress.
His mission commander, sitting in the right seat across the wide cockpit, was as young as Franken was old, as operationally inexperienced as the pilot was combat-tested. Twenty-five-year-old Lindsey Reeves was simply a natural-born systems wizard. It didn't matter if the system was a complex, high-tech flying battleship like the EB-52 Megafortress or her pride and joy-a 1956 Aston-Martin DB4 GT Sanction I convertible, which she restored herself, including rebuilding the engine-she could look at it, experiment with it for a few minutes, and instantly figure out how it worked. Sky Masters Inc.'s worldwide team of headhunters had recruited her at the age of sixteen at a county science fair in her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, where she had won the competition by modifying a radio receiver to pick up Global Positioning Satellite navigation signals-at a time when GPS was still a classified military program. -
Franken was a systems guy too-you had to be to fly the 'Megafortress. It was so different from all other aircraft that it was best to let the computers do the flying, watch the computers like a hawk, and be ready to take over if they rolled over and died. But Lindsey was from another dimension when it came to machines. She wasn't much of a flier-she got airsick at the slightest hint of turbulence and used almost every non-narcotic airsickness remedy known, from wristbands to ginger tablets, to help her get through it. But when it was time to go into action, she was ready-usually.
'Three minutes to low-level entry point,' Lindsey reported. She had two overhead air vents blowing cold air on her face, plus she was breathing pure oxygen to try to settle her stomach. 'All birds reporting ready.'
'Then try to relax a little, Lindsey,' Franken suggested. 'Take off the gloves and loosen your fingers.' Lindsey always wore gloves-she said it was easier to find them that way in case she needed something to throw up in. 'You're too tense.'
'I've never flown into… into combat before,' she murmured.
'The exercises we do back in the ranges are much more intense than we'll see here,' Franken assured her. 'You're a good crew dog, Linds. Relax and take it easy.'
'Okay,' Lindsey said. But it was no use-a few moments later, she was holding a barf bag at the ready. She was nervous, Franken thought-usually within three minutes time-to-go, she was fine.
