But instead of evading the SA-10 and SA-12 surface-to-air missile sites, Stud One-One’s job was to attack and destroy them.
Each SA-10 and SA-12 brigade consisted of six transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) surrounding the pre- surveyed launch points in the area of the Strongbox. Each TEL had four vertically launched missiles, connected to the command post by microwave datalinks backed up by armored fiber-optic cables. The surveillance, target tracking, and missile guidance radars were also similarly linked to the command post vehicles, and each brigade’s command posts were linked to each other so they could share radar data. As with the Shahab-5 launch silos near Zarand, there were two SA-10 brigades and one SA-12 brigade in the Strongbox area, with a total of seventy-two anti-aircraft missiles ready to fire, plus another ninety-six reloads that could be made ready to launch in under thirty minutes.
There was no way one Black Stallion attacker could destroy all one hundred and sixty-eight missiles — that would take an entire squadron of heavy bombers loaded with precision-guided munitions, which didn’t exist any more in the United States Air Force. But there were only three command posts coordinating the surface-to-air missile defenses of the Strongbox…and that was precisely how many AGM-170D SPAW missiles Olray and Benneton had just launched.
“Good missile separation from the Meteor,” Benneton reported. “SA-10 and SA-12 long-range surveillance… switching to target tracking mode…now I’ve got a new tracking radar warning! Do you see this, Genesis?”
“Roger, One-One,” Patrick responded. “It’s been identified as an extremely high-powered Golf-band frequency-agile phased array radar last seen on a Russian anti-ballistic missile ground-based laser.”
“Anti-missile laser!”
“Stud One-Three got the same indications down south, but nothing else happened — the SA-10s and -12s came up and engaged normally,” Patrick reported. “The laser system I’m familiar with used a small electronic diode laser to refine tracking and do atmospheric attenuation readings, and One-Three got hit with it too, but nothing else happened.”
“What does all that mean, Genesis?” Benneton asked worriedly.
“We think it’s just a target tracking radar or a decoy emitter, One-One.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“There’s not a whole lot we can do anyway except perhaps try to accelerate and boost into a higher orbit,” Olray said. “We’re pressing on.”
“SPAWs on course, good acceleration, still reporting good connectivity,” Benneton said. At that moment the warning tone sounded and a “LASER ILLUM” alert came on their multi-function screens. “There’s the laser warning, Genesis.”
“Roger, we see it. Continue.”
“Okay.” She rechecked the flight profile of the SPAW missiles, but couldn’t help glancing nervously at the “LASER ILLUM” alert. “What kind of laser did you say this was, Genesis?”
“Try to ignore it, MC,” Olray said. “We’ll be over their horizon in four minutes.”
“It’ll last just a minute — they might be trying to lock onto the SPAWs,” Patrick said. “Continue.”
“Roger. Good track…looks like Odin is taking precision course guidance.”
“That’s affirm, One-One,” Raydon said. “Last NIRTSat picture was just four minutes ago. We got ’em zeroed in. Satellite datalink is solid and the SPAWs are ridin’ the rail.”
“Maybe we ought to blast off on outta here, AC, now that Silver Tower has the wheel,” Benneton said. “That laser warning is making me nervous.”
“One-Three didn’t get anything,” Olray reminded her. “Less than three minutes and then we’ll be out of sight. Just try to…”
Except for the screams, that was the last either of them uttered. At that instant the cockpit filled with a brilliant blue-orange light that quickly grew brighter and brighter and hotter and hotter, and seconds later the XR-A9 Black Stallion exploded in a massive fireball, drawing a bright line of fire across the sky clearly visible to anyone on the ground even in daylight.
The streak of fire was not only visible to persons on the ground, but visible to some in the sky as well. “Look at that!” exclaimed U.S. Air Force Reserve Captain Mark Hours. “Somebody’s on fire. That doesn’t look good.”
“Way too high to affect us…I hope,” the EB-52 Megafortress’s aircraft commander, U.S. Air Force Reserve Major Wyatt Cross, said. He pointed to his supercockpit display aboard the highly modified B-52 battleship. “But we got some good news: the SA-10s and -12s are down. You copy that, guys?”
“We copy,” Brigadier-General Hal Briggs responded. “Definitely good news.” He and one of his Air Battle Force Ground Operations teammates were inside an MQ-35 Condor air-launched special operations transport aircraft nestled in the EB-52’s bomb bay. The Condor was a small stealthy aircraft powered by a turbojet engine designed to glide commandos behind enemy lines and then fly them out again a short distance after their mission was complete. Normally the Condor could carry four fully armed commandos, but the equipment Briggs and his partner, U.S. Army First Lieutenant Charlie Brakeman, carried took up a lot of space. While Briggs rode in the Condor aircraft with his standard black battle dress uniform, Brakeman wore Tin Man battle armor. “Let us go and let’s get to it.”
“Coordinating with the rest of the package now. Stand by.”
Hours was already checking his wide-screen supercockpit display. Two other aircraft were visible on the moving-map presentation of the battle plan. He used his eye-pointing system to select the status of the nearest of the two. “Lead is showing thirty seconds to release, guys. Stand by.”
Brakeman put on his helmet, locked it in place, powered up his battle armor, pulled his chest and lap belts tight, and gave Briggs a thumbs-up. Briggs put on a standard flight helmet, clipped his oxygen mask in place, pulled his straps tight, and returned the thumbs-up. “We’re ready when you are.”
“Here we go, guys,” Cross announced. “Good luck.” Briggs heard a loud rumbling and saw the bomb bay doors retracting inside the walls of the bomb bay. “Doors coming open…ready…ready…release…doors coming closed.”
The Condor aircraft dropped free of the EB-52—because it was daylight, and they rarely flew daytime missions, they actually got to watch the amazing EB-52 roar overhead as they fell free. It was the part Briggs hated most because that sudden weightlessness and the seemingly uncontrollable swaying and pitching as the aircraft stabilized itself in the Megafortress’s violent slipstream was hard on his stomach, but as soon as the Condor’s little wings popped out and the mission-adaptive actuators throughout the craft steadied it, he felt better.
“Doing OK, Brake?” Briggs asked.
“No problem, sir,” Brakeman replied. “You okay, sir?”
“I always get a little queasy at first. I’m okay.”
“Welcome to the theater, Condor,” Brigadier-General David Luger radioed from the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center Battle Management Center at Elliott Air Force Base in Nevada. “This is Genesis Two. We’ve got you about eleven minutes to touchdown. Everyone doing OK?”
“Condor One good to go,” Briggs said. “Condors, sound off.”
“Condor Two, good to go,” Brakeman responded.
“Condor Three, in the green,” responded the first commando from the lead EB-52 battleship, Army National Guard Captain Charlie Turlock. Her partner, U.S. Army Specialist Maria Ricardo, answered a few moments later. “Sorry, Condor Four had to lose some of her breakfast,” Turlock said. “We’re both in the green — Four is just a little more green.”
“Welcome to the club, Four,” Briggs said.
“Here’s the situation, guys: the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have ordered deployment, and we suspect a launch, of their ballistic missiles following the insurgent and regular army attacks on their headquarters base in Tehran,” Dave said. “Stud One-Three attacked and destroyed two of three Shahab-5 medium-range missiles in the south. We don’t know what’s going to happen with the third known -5 missile, but we think they’re going to launch it as soon as they can.
“In the north, the situation is more dynamic,” Dave went on. “The bad news first: we lost Stud One-One. We think a Russian ground-based laser got it.”
