“Zipper” Tarantino. The Dragon’s electronic laser really didn’t need to “warm up,” like less sophisticated chemical or diode lasers, but the system stored electrical power in massive banks of capacitors to use during the firing sequence, and the more power that could be stored prior to the first shot, the more shots the laser could fire. “Two-two has LADAR contact, two-five-zero miles bull’s-eye. I count six targets as well, but at first the computer counted seven. We may have a big gaggle of multiple contacts coming at us.”
“Checks,” McLanahan said. “I still count six. Let me know when you’re in attack position.”
“Roger,” Tarantino said. The AL-52 departed its holding pattern, flew northwest toward the oncoming targets, and then began a long north-south racetrack pattern at twenty thousand feet altitude. By the time the Dragon was in its racetrack, the unidentified aircraft had accelerated to six hundred knots’ airspeed and were less than one hundred miles away. “Two-two is ready to engage. I now count six groups, but I believe there are multiple contacts in each group.”
“You are cleared to engage,” Patrick ordered. “Take out the lead aircraft in each group if you can break it out.”
“Roger,” Tarantino said. He selected all six groups of unidentified returns as targets, then zoomed in on the nearest group. The airborne laser used an adaptive-mirror telescope to focus laser energy on its target, but it also allowed the user to get a magnified and extremely detailed visual look at the target. “I’ve got a visual, lead,” he reported. “Looks like Russian MiG-23 fighters. Each formation looks like it has four fighters in very close formation. Three big fuel tanks and two gravity weapons each. I can’t identify the weapons, but they look like B-61 gravity nukes.”
Patrick called up the datalinked image from the AL-52 Dragon’s telescope on his supercockpit display. “That checks,” Patrick said. “RN-40 tactical nuclear gravity bomb, the only one cleared for external carriage on supersonic fighters. Start weeding them out, Zipper.”
“Roger that, sir. Fire in the sky.” He hit his command button and spoke, “Attack targets.”
In the tail section of the AL-52 Dragon, pellets of tritium fluoride dropped into an aluminum combustion chamber under computer control and were bombarded by beams from several diode lasers. The resulting cloud of gas was compressed and further heated by magnetic fields until the gas changed to plasma, a highly charged superheated form of energy. The plasma energy was channeled into a laser generator, which produced a tremendous pulse of laser light that was amplified and focused through a long collimation tube through the AL-52’s fuselage and directed forward. A four-foot diameter mirror, controlled by laser-radar arrays on the AL-52’s fuselage, predistorted and steered the laser beam toward its target, correcting and focusing the beam to compensate for atmospheric distortion.
Even after traveling almost a hundred miles through space, the invisible laser beam was focused down to the size of a softball by the time it rested on the fuselage of the lead Russian MiG-23 fighter-bomber. Precisely tracked by the laser-radar arrays, the beam quickly burned through the fighter’s steel surface on the left side just forward of the wing root. Before the laser burned through fuel and hydraulic lines under the skin, the sudden structural failure caused the MiG’s entire left wing to peel away from the fuselage like a banana skin. Before the pilot or any of his wingmen knew what was happening, their leader disappeared in a tremendous ball of fire and hit the icy Bering Sea a fraction of a second later.
The sudden loss of their leader caused the first attack formation to scatter. Executing their preplanned lost- wingman maneuvers, the three wingmen turned away from their original track and started a rapid climb to be sure they got away from the ocean, from their doomed leader, and from the other members of their attack group. They had no choice but to completely clear out of the way, then rejoin using radar or visual cues or execute their strike as single-ship attackers.
The other three four-ship formations saw the first plane explode and go in. Thankful it wasn’t them, they activated their electronic countermeasures equipment, tightened their oxygen masks and seat belts, and prepared to take on whatever enemy antiair weapons were in the vicinity — until the second lead MiG-23 exploded right before their eyes, moments after the first, and again with absolutely no warning whatsoever.
“Bobcat, I’ve got six single-ships and four more attack formations still inbound,” Tarantino reported. “I’ve also got a caution message on my laser. I might have just two or three shots remaining before the magnetron field strength is below safety limits.”
“Copy that, Two-two,” Patrick responded. “I’m engaging now. You can reposition to engage any bandits that leak through.” Patrick activated his laser-radar arrays, designated the third attack formation, and, at a range of about sixty miles, commanded, “Attack aircraft.”
Now flying faster than sixty miles per minute, it did not take long for the first Anaconda missile to reach its quarry. Seven seconds before impact, the missile activated its own terminal-guidance radar — that was the first indication to the MiG-23 crews that they were under attack.
The third attack formation scattered, leaving trails of radar-decoying chaff in their wakes. The first Anaconda missile’s radar was now being hopelessly jammed, and it switched guidance back to the signals from the EB-52 Megafortress’s laser-radar system. The missile abandoned the third formation of MiGs and steered itself toward one of the single-ship aircraft. The missile ran out of fuel and detonated several hundred feet away from its target, but that was enough to create fear and confusion in all of the remaining attackers.
The second and third Anaconda missiles did not miss. They picked off single-ship attackers one by one as they maneuvered to get on their bomb-run tracks. “Splash two,” Patrick announced. “I count three large formations and…hell, at least fifteen or twenty single-ship attackers lining up for bomb runs. I’ve got nine Anacondas remaining.”
Just then he heard, “Time to bug out, sir,” on the command channel.
Patrick studied his supercockpit display — and his eyes widened in surprise as his sensors finally identified the weapon approaching them from behind. “Left turn heading one-five-zero, and do it
O’Dea didn’t hesitate but threw her EB-52 into a hard left turn, cobbing the throttles to full military power and keeping back pressure and bottom rudder in to tighten the turn. She could hear one of their six passengers on the upper deck retching and hoped to hell it was into a barf bag. Shade completed her turn first and only then asked, “What’s going on, General?”
“Lancelot in the air,” Patrick said simply.
“Roger that,” O’Dea said. That was enough for her.
One hundred miles behind Patrick’s formation of modified B-52s was a second formation of three modified B- 1B bombers called “Vampires.” Commanded by Brigadier General Rebecca Furness from Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base, the EB-1C Vampires were the next generation in flying battleships, specifically designed to carry a large variety of standoff weapons into combat.
The Vampires’ primary weapon was the ABM-3 Lancelot air-launched anti-ballistic-missile weapon. Designed to be an interim weapon for use against ballistic missiles until the airborne-laser aircraft weapon system was perfected, the ABM-3 was in effect a four-stage air-launched Patriot missile, using the Vampire bomber as its first- stage engine. Steered by the Vampire’s laser-radar array and by its own onboard terminal-guidance radar, the Lancelot missile had a range of nearly two hundred miles and could attack targets even in near-Earth orbit.
But the Lancelot missile itself was only part of the effectiveness of the weapon; its primary deadliness came from its plasma-yield warhead. Unlike a high-explosive or thermonuclear warhead, Lancelot’s warhead created a large cloud of plasma gas that instantly converted any matter within its sphere into plasma, effectively vaporizing it. Even though the size of the superhot plasma sphere was limited when created in Earth’s atmosphere — the warhead was designed to explode in space, where the plasma bubble was thousands of feet in diameter and could even be electronically shaped and steered by computer control — the kill zone in the lower atmosphere was still
