right now.' Zuwayy hesitated. Another explosion shook the walls and sent dust sprinkling down on their heads. 'For God's sake, Jadallah, we're running out of time! Their next action will be to cut off all communications!' Hijazi handed him a pen and a pad of paper. 'Hurry, Jadallah! It could be our only chance.'
To the two henchmen's immense relief, Zuwayy scribbled something down on the pad, then handed it back to Hijazi. Hijazi tried to read his writing-it was all numbers. 'What is this, Jadallah?' he asked.
'The combination to my safe upstairs in my bedroom,' Zuwayy replied. 'Do you think I've memorized all those bank account numbers and passwords? The numbers are locked in the safe.'
'And you didn't think of taking it with you before you ran off, Jadallah?' Hijazi asked incredulously. +
'Go get it,' Fazani told him. 'I'll call in the rocket attack. Jadallah, get going-we'll be right behind you.' Zuwayy needed no more prompting to get out. Hijazi gulped fearfully but returned the way they had come.
There were only two words that could describe the performance of the Russian missiles that were loaded onto the lead EB-52 Megafortress-and those words were 'dead weight.'
'Another alignment failure message, dammit!' Kenneth 'KK' Kowalski, the mission commander aboard the lead EB-52 Megafortress, cursed. 'That's the fifth failure!' He was trying to fire one of the Kh-15 inertially guided missiles from the aft bomb bay; but like one of the Kh-27 antiradar missiles and three of the other Kh-15 missiles he tried to launch, this latest one failed as well. 'I'll power it down and bring it back up and see if it'll realign.'
'Good thing the Libyans can't seem to shoot straight,' the aircraft commander, Randall 'Fangs' Harper, commented. 'Otherwise we'd be Swiss cheese by now.' They had successfully fired two Kh-27 missiles at Libyan surface-to-air missile sites; one site was apparently destroyed, and the other shut down before the missile hit and never came back on the air again. Out of six attempts to launch Kh-15 attack missiles from the aft bomb bay, only two were successful, and of the four unsuccessful launches, they had to emergency-jettison two of them because their internal chemical batteries had overheated and threatened to blow the missiles-and the Megafortressup with them. They had to stay at high altitude, above thirty thousand feet, to stay out of range of antiaircraft artillery and short-range antiaircraft missiles-the Libyans even still used searchlights to try and find the bombers.
Their mission was pretty much a bust, thanks to the unreliable Russian standoff weapons-except for the FlightHawk unmanned combat aircraft. Although they were not armed, they still had enough gadgetry and magic in them to affect the outcome of this mission.
'Coming up on the release point, sixty seconds… now,' Kowalski announced. 'Both birds are in the green and ready.'
'It's about time something we're carrying works,' Harper mused.
At the planned launch point, Kowalski launched both FlightHawks within two minutes of each other. Their thirty-minute flights would take them on a zigzag track within ten miles either side of an ingress corridor they had planned for the second EB-52 Megafortress. The cruise missiles descended to fifteen thousand feet aboveground, powering up their turbofan engines and unfolding their wings as they fell from altitude.
The FlightHawks were small and stealthy enough that they were almost invisible to Libyan search radars. At irregular intervals along their flight, however, they would suddenly begin sending out bursts of radar and radio energy and deploying small radar reflectors that would instantly make them appear on radar as if they were the size of Boeing 747s. When the Libyan air defense radars popped on, the FlightHawks would instantly plot their position and type of system, transmit the enemy threat locations to the Megafortresses, then deactivate the reflectors and emissions to virtually disappear from radar. In just a few minutes, the FlightHawks had flushed out almost a dozen new antiaircraft threats. The tactic worked great…
… until both FlightHawks were shot down within seconds of each other, one by random, sweeping bursts of antiaircraft artillery fire, the other by a MiG-23 fighter with a radar-guided missile that had just showed up over the capital on air defense patrol.
'Zero, this is Fangs,' Harper radioed. 'Be advised, we've got bandits in the area.' He stole a glance at Kowalski's supercockpit display, which showed the entire battlefield area, along with their wingman and the inbound infantrymen, in a 'God's-eye' view. 'Closest one is at your twelve o'clock, twenty miles, high. He got one of our 'Hawks.' <
'Copy, Fangs,' George 'Zero' Tanaka, the aircraft commander of the second Megafortress battleship, replied. 'We've got him. What's your status?'
'We've got a bellyful of duds now,' Kowalski replied. 'I'm going to try inflight-aligning them to see if we can't lob a few more in, but I have a feeling we're done for the day. We'll stand by at waypoint Lima in case you need any assistance.'
'Roger,' Tanaka said. To his mission commander, Greg 'Gonzo' Wickland, he said, 'Better check those Russian antiradar missiles-they're likely to dud on us too.'
'They're looking pretty good right now,' Wickland responded. He had reluctantly agreed to go with Tanaka on this mission-the possibility that his friend and mentor, Wendy Tork McLanahan, might still be alive down there in the heart of Libya changed his mind about being afraid of dying during a secret mission in the EB-52. 'Our first launch point is a pop-up target at two o'clock, twenty-eight miles, an SA-10 SAM site. I'll start the-'
But as Wickland watched the supercockpit display, he saw the icon representing the Libyan MiG-23 fighter turn toward them, and the green cone that represented his radar beam sweep in their direction. 'Shit, that MiG is heading our way,' Wickland interrupted himself. 'Step it down to five hundred feet and accelerate.'
'Set clearance plane five hundred, hard ride, and set four-eight-zero knots true,' Tanaka ordered the flight control computer. He carefully monitored the aircraft as the throttles advanced themselves and the terrain-following computer reset the height above ground the autopilot would continue to fly the bomber.
'He's still coming around,' Wickland said. The radar cone had changed from green to yellow-now the fighter had an azimuth-only lock-on. 'He's got us. Deploy towed array.' Behind them, one of the tiny towed array antennas unreeled itself in the bomber's slipstream. 'He's still up pretty high. Give me thirty left-let's see if he follows us.' Sure enough, the fighter turned left with the Megafortress, but his range did not increase. Every now and then the radar cone depiction on the supercockpit display flashed red-that meant the fighter's radar switched into range mode, the last measurement needed before missile launch-but it never stayed on very long. 'He's hanging out there at eleven miles, matching our airspeed, and just hitting us with his ranging radar long enough to keep up,' Wickland said. 'He's not letting our trackbreakers get a chance to wipe out his picture.'
'Waiting for instructions?' Tanaka asked.
'Give me forty right, nice shallow bank,' Wickland said. 'Let's see how aggressive he is.'
But I have a target! I have another unknown aircraft at my twelve o'clock, seventeen kilometers, very low!' the pilot of the Libyan MiG-23 shouted.
'Hibr flight, you are ordered to return to patrol altitude and proceed north to intercept inbound aircraft!' the ground radar controller shouted again. 'And you do not have permission to open fire!'
The Libyan pilot whipped off his oxygen mask in frustration. 'I tell you, Control, there are numerous enemy aircraft out here!' he shouted again. 'I am tracking one now, and there were one, maybe two others up here as well. I think Tripoli is under attack from the south!'
'You are ordered to proceed immediately to point Amm and intercept and identify unknown aircraft inbound toward the capital!' the ground controller said. 'Backup aircraft are being prepared now. Proceed immediately!'
The MiG-23 pilot had no choice. No ground radars had picked up these low-flying bandits. Aircraft north of the city could mean anything-inbound passenger airliners, cargo planes, anything but an attacker. Low-flying unidentified aircraft weaving and jinking around south of the city could mean only one thing: enemy aircraft. But the controller was telling him to chase the target he could see. He was an idiot-but he had complete authority, too.
He angrily jammed his throttles forward and yanked the stick hard right, zooming northward. He didn't e?en think of his wingman, trailing to his right and slightly higher-
he hoped he was paying attention and didn't get fined as his leader cut right in front of him.
It took only four minutes for the pair of MiG-23s to reach the intercept anchor point. 'Hibr flight, proceed on heading three-zero-zero. Your bogey will be at your twelve o'clock, range fifty K, descending through four thousand meters.'
'Acknowledged, Control,' the pilot said. 'How about sending some fighters up to track down the bogeys I found near Kadra?' No response from the controller-he couldn't see any targets down south of the city, so he wasn't going to send any planes there.
'Hibr flight, bogey at your twelve o'clock, forty-five K, still descending, now through three point five K meters.
