On Whitley’s command, one missile was launched from the left pylon. The missile shot forward ahead of the bomber, then looped overhead in an “over the shoulder” missile-attack profile. The EB-52’s laser-radar arrays datalinked steering information to the missile, aiming the missile to a point in space where the MiG would be on its projected flight path. When the targeting computer determined that the MiG would be in range, the Scorpion missile activated its own radar and locked on to the MiG.
That was the first indication the MiG-29 pilot had that he was under attack — and by then it was too late. The Russian activated his electronic countermeasures and ejected chaff and flares to try to decoy the oncoming missile, but he stubbornly stayed on the same flight path, hoping to catch up to his quarry in the next few seconds. Undeterred by the decoys, the Scorpion missile scored a direct hit on the MiG’s left wing, sending the fighter into an uncontrollable spin into the Bering Sea.
“Splash one MiG-29, guys,” Whitley announced.
“Roger that, Wildman,” Luger said. “Let’s bring that Megafortress around so it can refuel the StealthHawks coming back from the Kamchatka Peninsula, and then we’ll bring it back to Shemya for refueling and rearming.”
“Should we fly it back to help the guys in the Condor?” Whitley asked. “We still have three Scorpions on board, plenty of gas, and three towed arrays left.”
“We’ll need the Megafortress for the follow-on attacks,” Luger said. “Everything is proceeding as the general planned so far. Besides, it looks like the StealthHawks are lining up a target of their own.”
“Four-seven, Control, we are not picking up any more targets on radar,” the ground radar controller at Petropavlovsk replied. “Four-nine flight of two will be airborne in three minutes. ETE five minutes.” Silence. “Four- seven, do you copy? Acknowledge.” Still no response. Suddenly the radar-data block representing the lone MiG-29 on patrol started to blink. The altitude readout from the fighter’s encoding transponder showed it in a rapid descent…then it disappeared. “Tashnit Four-seven, do you copy?” Something was wrong. “Tashnit Four-nine, we’ve lost radar contact with Four-seven. Your initial vector is three-three-zero, base plus twelve. Radar is clear, but use extreme caution.”
“Four-nine flight of two, acknowledged. We’ll be airborne in two minutes.” The two MiG-29 fighters taxied rapidly down the taxiway, their pilots quickly running alert-takeoff checklists as they made their way to the active runway. At the end of the runway, they lined up side by side, received a “cleared for takeoff” light-gun signal from the control tower, locked brakes, pushed the throttles to max afterburner, and screamed down the runway together. Both were off the runway in less than fifteen hundred meters. The pilots raised gear and flaps, accelerated to five hundred kilometers per hour, pulled the throttles back to full military power, and started a left- echelon formation turn to the northwest.
Almost at the same instant, both fighters exploded in midair. There was no time for either pilot to eject — the burning aircraft hit the ground almost immediately, still in formation.
Splash two more,” Matt Whitley reported. “StealthHawk One took out the MiG on the Condor’s tail, and StealthHawk Two took care of the two MiGs launching from Petropavlovsk. Both are returning to Bobcat Two-three for refueling, and they’ll all recover to Shemya for rearming. StealthHawks Three and Four are proceeding across the Sea of Okhotsk to the feet-dry point.”
“Roger that, Wildman,” Hal Briggs said. He felt naked now without the vaunted StealthHawks, a commando’s best friend. The RAQ-15 StealthHawk was the improved version of Dreamland’s FlightHawk remotely piloted attack vehicle. Small, stealthy, fast, and powerful, the StealthHawk could fly through the most heavily defended areas in the world at up to ten miles per minute and attack targets with pinpoint precision. The StealthHawks carried a mix of weapons in their ten-foot-long bomb bays; these birds were configured for both air defense and defense suppression, with AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles and AGM-211 mini-Maverick guided missiles configured to home in on and destroy enemy radars. The best part: The StealthHawks could be retrieved by their unmanned EB-1C Vampire motherships, brought up inside the bomb bay, refueled and rearmed, and flown back into battle.
The same unmanned EB-52 Megafortress bomber that launched the Condor had launched two StealthHawks from wing pylons. That was the reason the plane was visible from so far away one moment, then invisible to radar the next: The StealthHawks riding on the wing pylons completely destroyed the Megafortress’s stealth capabilities, which were fully restored once the StealthHawks were released. The EB-52 could refuel the StealthHawks in midair from a hose-and-drogue-type refueling system.
Meanwhile, an EB-1C Vampire bomber from Battle Mountain had launched two more StealthHawks over the Sea of Okhotsk between the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula and Sakhalin Island; those two StealthHawks would escort the Condor in toward the Siberian coast. The Vampire bomber would then retrieve, refuel, rearm, and relaunch the EB-52’s two StealthHawks and send them inland to rotate patrols with the other two StealthHawks. The rotations would continue until the Vampire had to return to Eareckson to refuel and reload.
Briggs’s Condor infiltration aircraft had leveled off at ten thousand feet and proceeded west-northwest across the west side of the Kamchatka Peninsula toward the Sea of Okhotsk. The Condor’s turbojet engine was running at 80 percent power, sending them smoothly on their way at a little over six miles per minute. The Condor descended slightly to five thousand feet above the sea, likely high enough to prevent any Russian naval patrols from hearing or seeing it but low enough to avoid the long-range surveillance radars and antiaircraft missile batteries located along the shore and on patrol vessels on the Sea of Okhotsk.
The crossing was treacherous. The Russian patrol vessels were arrayed so tightly across the Sea of Okhotsk that Battle Mountain had to make the Condor do several heading changes to avoid detection — they were even forced to steer the Condor toward a slightly less capable weapon system in order to avoid another, deadlier missile system that suddenly appeared.
Soon the inevitable happened — they vectored themselves right into the radar footprint of a Russian warship that had appeared as if out of nowhere. “Air-search radar!” Dave Luger shouted over the secure satellite link. “Echo-band air-search radar, close aboard, two o’clock, twenty-eight miles — probably a big-ass destroyer!”
“Get us out of here, Dave!” Hal Briggs shouted.
“Too late,” Whitley said. “You’re already inside his radar coverage. We’re descending you to one hundred feet and turning you south. He’s got another ship on his right — maybe he’ll turn right into the bastard.”
“The patrol boat at your nine o’clock position is turning northeast,” Dave Luger said. “It’s trying to either engage you or force you to fly north into that destroyer.”
“We gotta nail that patrol boat, Dave,” Hal Briggs said. “We don’t have any choice.”
Luger hesitated — but not for long. He knew they had no choice as well. “Matt…”
“Roger that,” Whitley said. He entered commands into his computer console. “Designating Sierra One-nine as a target. Commit one StealthHawk.”
“Commit,” Luger ordered.
The StealthHawk unmanned attack missile received position and velocity information moments later by satellite and activated its own millimeter-wave radar and imaging infrared sensors as it cruised at ten miles per minute toward the Russian
