“I don’t know, but if he doesn’t show up soon, we’ll have to turn back.” They were halfway to the target. They’d reached the rendezvous point for their final refueling twenty minutes before, but there was no tanker in sight. Soon they would have to turn around. There was barely enough fuel to get home, let alone get to the target and back.
Suddenly the secure radio crackled to life. “Ghost One One, this is Exxon Seven One. How copy?”
“Loud and clear, Exxon,” responded Murph coldly. The transmission was scrambled, transmitted, received, and descrambled, before it was broadcast at the other end, but Drake was certain the tanker commander would still be able to hear the edge in Murph’s voice as clear as a bell.
“Sorry we’re late,” replied the refueler. “We had some engine trouble on the ground. We made up as much time as we could but the winds were killing us.”
“Copy all,” replied Murph, the edge lessening. “We’re ten miles east of the IP, heading west.”
“Roger, Ghost, we’ve got your beacon. Start your turn back to the east now and you should roll out right underneath us.”
Drake looked at the glowing blue fuel readout on the panel in front of him. “We burned a lot of extra gas in the hold,” he said over the radio. “We’re going to need all you can give us to make up the difference.”
“Roger that, Ghost. You’re our only customer. Take as much as you need.”
Drake looked across the cockpit at Murph and tapped his watch, letting his face show his concern.
“Yeah, bud. I know,” Murph replied. “We’re going to be late.”
Chapter 9
“Range to target one is sixty-five miles, bearing zero three five. Weapons are active and aligned. The first target requires four JDAMs, all version one.”
“Copy,” Murph replied. “The radar is armed and ready for map one.”
Murph and Drake had three major targets. The second two were bunkers with minimal defenses, but the first was a surface-to-air missile site. It was their job to take down the SAM, clearing a path for conventional forces to follow.
The late refueling had put them a half hour behind schedule. They’d made up all but five minutes by burning extra fuel, but five minutes could mean everything. Attacking this SAM system required a complex targeting maneuver to pick up four sets of GPS coordinates on the fly, and a late arrival over the target would cost them the critical element of surprise. Their expected time on target, or TOT, was set to coincide with a cruise missile strike against strategic targets surrounding their own. Once those missiles began to hit, the jig was up. The triple-A and the SAMs would start flying.
Murph had tried to convince Control to slip the whole attack, changing the timing by a few minutes, but Control wouldn’t budge. Control gave them the opportunity to opt out, but leaving that SAM untouched would endanger the conventional aircraft that followed. Murph and Drake had volunteered to press on.
“Target range is now fifty miles, bearing zero five zero. All four impact points are showing achievable.” Drake pressed a button to take his first radar picture. A thin, invisible beam shot out from the B-2’s antenna, holding steady on the target as the aircraft tracked across the night sky. The computer constantly calculated the aircraft’s position and movement to keep the radar steady.
The B-2’s synthetic aperture radar enabled the aircraft’s small antenna to behave like it was several miles wide; and the bigger the radar antenna, the better the resolution. The picture it generated on Murph’s display was photo quality.
Murph examined the target while the computer placed small crosses on the screen to predict the weapons’ impact points, known as desired points of impact, or DPIs. If everything was as it should be, the DPIs on the screen would match the picture in his strike folder and they could press on with the strike. Unfortunately, SAM components tend to move around, and if any of these had moved, Murph would have to find it on the radar map, mark it, and then fire the radar again, enabling the computer to calculate the new coordinates. The whole process was known as GPS-aided targeting, what the pilots liked to call GAT. It worked great in smooth quiet air, but it was a lot harder when dodging antiaircraft shells.
Murph frowned at the screen. “The radar van has moved. It couldn’t have gone far . . . Wait, there it is . . . I’m marking it . . . Okay, stand by for GAT two.”
“Thirty-five miles to target, bearing zero six zero. You’re . . .” Drake’s voice trailed off in midsentence. He stared in awe as the ground suddenly erupted in a series of explosions. “There go the cruise missiles. Now we’re in for it.”
As if to affirm his prediction, the sky lit up with tracer rounds and flack, reminding Drake of the images he’d seen on TV during Desert Storm.
“Firing GAT two,” said Murph. Drake knew his partner was trying to pull his attention back to the targeting procedure, but his eyes were still fixed on the fireworks outside. Then there was a bright flash where their target was supposed to be. For a moment Drake wondered if they were pulling double duty with a cruise missile, but the explosion didn’t fade away like all the others; the flame was constant, and it was moving.
“SAM launch!” said Drake. “It’s coming straight out of our target site!”
“Steady . . .” cautioned Murph. “He can’t see us; he’s shooting blind because of the cruise missiles. Just pray they don’t get lucky. The second map is good. The computer is feeding the new coordinates to the JDAM.”
Drake focused on the targeting display and resumed his duties. “Okay, all DPIs are showing achievable. We are three minutes from weapons release.”
The three minutes felt like three hours as they inched closer to the target, wading through a sky that was thick with lead and fire. Fortunately, none of the tracers or missiles seemed to be aimed at anything but sky.
Drake told himself that the B-2 was nothing more than a wisp to anyone on the ground, a spirit of death passing in the night. At high altitude, the four embedded engines would make no sound for the enemy to hear and the charcoal gray jet would barely seem a shadow, a black void sweeping over the stars of a moonless sky.
Of course, that was only true until the B-2 opened its bay to drop its bombs. For a fleeting moment they would be exposed. Everything he’d been taught told Drake that it wasn’t enough exposure to allow a SAM operator to shoot them down, but it was still exposure.
“Three, two, one, weapons away,” Drake said, unconsciously holding his breath when the doors swung open. He watched his weapons screen for what seemed an eternity as the rotary launchers moved each bomb into position and dropped it into the night. Then, finally, the doors closed, and Murph began the turn toward the next target. None of the enemy radars showed any signs of tracking them.
“All four bombs show a good release,” Drake reported, breathing easier. In a few seconds the SAM site would be no more, and a new hole in the Taliban’s defenses would open for other strikers to follow.
“Get on the SATCOM. Tell them Dallas Three is down. I-45 is open for business,” said Murph, using the codes that would inform Control that their SAM target was destroyed and the path was clear for non-stealth aircraft. The infiltration route they had just cleared was named after an intrastate highway in Texas.
Drake did as he was commanded and then returned to his targeting display. “The five-thousand-pound GAMs are in position and aligned, we are forty-three miles from the first bunker target, and both DPIs are achievable,” he reported. He glanced over at Murph. “Do you think we’ll catch you-know-who sleeping?”
“We can hope,” replied Murph, “We can surely hope.”
Drake checked the position of the bombs on his rotary launcher, picturing the big five-thousand-pounders suspended above the weapons bay doors. The five-thousand-pound GPS aided munitions had a unique look. They had been rapidly developed by filling old M201 howitzer barrels with explosives, but cannon barrels were not des
igned with aerodynamic stability in mind. To compensate for this, Northrop Grumman had fitted the bombs with leather bras, like those found on sports cars in the eighties. The small bras were wrapped around the forward section of the cannon body—just behind the nose cone—and fastened in place with tension clips, making each GAM look like a Great Dane wearing a poodle’s sweater.
Drake smiled grimly as he watched the next target approaching on his display. He knew the Taliban would not find his bombs nearly as funny as he did. “We’ll use station eight on both launchers, then rotate to six for the next target,” he told Murph. “Watch the delivery corridor. These things don’t leave a big margin for error and I don’t want to take another spin to get it right.”
“Don’t worry,” replied Murph. “I’m lined up nice and sweet. I’ll put ’em right in the basket.”
Murph expertly guided the big bomber into the weapons delivery corridor depicted on the display. Even though the GAMs were GPS guided, he still had to align the jet with the target and release them at the right moment. Guided or not, the GAMs were just free-fall bombs; they didn’t have rocket engines to propel them. If Murph didn’t release them at the right angle and distance to the target, all the GPS guidance in the world couldn’t get them to the bunkers. The basket was the small volume of airspace into which a guided bomb had to be tossed. And with their large mass and small, tail-mounted flight controls, the GAMs had a tiny basket.
“Ten seconds, safe and in range.” Drake watched Murph ease the jet into the north side of the corridor to compensate for the wind. “Both DPIs are achievable . . . Stand by for release in three, two, one . . .” The aircraft shook as the two massive bombs automatically dropped from the left and right launchers, changing the bomber’s weight by ten thousand pounds in an instant. “Weapons away,” continued Drake. “You’re cleared for the turn; the next target is thirty seconds out.”
The next target came up fast and the last two weapons were on their way to the second bunker before the first two were even halfway to the surface. These bunker targets were well away from the chaotic antiaircraft activity surrounding their first target, and this area remained undisturbed. Both ground and air remained dark and silent, at least for another few seconds.
Chapter 10
Washington, D.C.
11 January 2002
A thin, brown-haired man wearing the crisp blue uniform of an Air Force captain slapped his briefcase down on a cluttered desk, flipped his computer on, and slumped into his chair. “Another exciting day of reading e-mails and shuffling paperwork,” he muttered to himself, raising a hand to adjust the round, rimless glasses resting on his nose. This job was a complete disappointment; it was not at all what he had hoped for.
Danny Sharp sat in his cramped office at the Combat Plans Division of the Pentagon. In the surrounding offices sat his Army, Navy, and Marine counterparts—all of whom were just as frustrated as he was. It amazed Danny how four guys could be so incredibly busy throughout the day, yet so undeniably bored with their jobs. It wasn’t for lack of exertion—Danny had worked there barely a full week and he had already shuffled a rain forest of paperwork up and down the chain of command—it was just that none of that paperwork seemed to accomplish anything.
How far I’ve fallen. Danny had arrived just after Christmas, motivated and excited, expecting to have a lot of important assignments; after all, there was a big hole in the side of the Pentagon and Operation Enduring Freedom was well under way. Unfortunately, he found that command of the battle had long since shifted to CENTCOM. The high-level Pentagon work was over.
Danny’s division had already returned to the same old, same old, updating and maintaining dusty conventional war plans that had occupied the Pentagon’s shelves for decades. What really irked him was that he had left a position as an intelligence officer in a combat unit in order to take this job. In fact, the stealth fighters of the 9th Fighter Squadron—his former unit—had just deployed to a classified location in support of the war.
Danny could be camped at the enemy’s doorstep right now. Instead, he was stuck in a basement office, and the most exciting part of his day was lunch, when he sat in the cafeteria and listened to stories about moments of terror and acts of heroism on the day the airplane came through the wall.
A beep from Microsoft Outlook advised him that he had a new e-mail. His new boss, Colonel Walker, requested that he pay him a visit. The colonel needed some advice.
That was odd. Colonel-Richard-T.-Walker-U.S.-Army, which was probably what it said on his driver’s license, did not strike Danny as a man who needed advice from anyone, let alone an Air Force captain. In any case, he’d better not keep the man waiting.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” asked Danny less than a minute later.
Walker stared down at the papers on his desk, tapping his square jaw with a pen. “Mm-hmm,” he said without looking up. “Sit down, Sharp. Make yourself comfortable.” Even when speaking in normal tones, the colonel’s voice carried so much command that Danny immediately sat down; however, making himself comfortable was not an option.
The chair was set so low that Danny’s narrow shoulders barely crested the desktop. He felt tiny, and it occurred to him that this was probably intentional. He noticed that in addition to Walker’s papers, another page lay on the desk facing him.
Walker stopped tapping long enough to make a note in a margin, then he raised his eyes from his work. “Read that paper in front of you and sign it. You’ve got a pen, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.” Danny tensed. It was at this point in his nightmares that he reached into his pocket and withdrew his daughter’s pink Barbie pen, but he relaxed a bit as a black pen labeled LOCKHEED MARTIN emerged in his hand. He tried to scoot forward to reach the desk. The chair’s wheels squeaked intolerably as it rolled and the colonel’s tapping pen paused in annoyance. Danny cringed, but then the tapping resumed.
The paper in front of him was a nondisclosure statement, a type of document he’d signed on several occasions before. The language was the same as always: “I will not reveal or release any information pertaining to blah, blah, blah . . . a prison term of blah, blah, blah . . . on pain of death blah, blah . . . cross my heart and hope to die.” Danny was intrigued, though, by the name of the program at the top of the paper: Cerberus, the name of the three-headed dog that guarded the gates of Hades. Sometimes these names were randomly chosen and had no bearing on a project, but something told Danny that this one was different.
“Read faster, Sharp. I’ve got a meeting in half an hour.”
“Yes, sir.” Danny signed the document and pocketed his pen.
Colonel Walker looked up. His eyebrows were knitted together in a scowl beneath his flawless crew cut. Danny tried not to look frightened, remembering that the scowl was Walker’s usual countenance. He had not seen the colonel without it since arriving at the unit. After an awkward moment, Walker reached out with two fingers pressed together and waved them in front of Danny’s face in a mock blessing.
“You are now cleared into Cerberus, Captain Sharp; a project that, like the hound himself, is a real pain in the rear. All your clearance work is already done.”
Walker withdrew a small notepad from his desk and scribbled a couple of lines. Then he tore off the top piece and handed it to Danny. “Here, take this. Memorize it and burn it.”
As soon as it touched his fingers, Danny felt the strange, almost greasy feel of the paper. Flash paper. He had heard of its use in the old Strategic Air Command days, but he had never come across it, even while working with the stealth fighters. Everyone used pulpers these days, making flash paper an unnecessary fire hazard. He stared at the cryptic lines on the page. “What are these?”
“The first item is a six-letter key word, a combination that unlocks a safe in the Lockup. The second item is the safe’s identification: Whiskey one four Echo. There, you’ll find a file with all the details
you need to get started.”
Walker folded his hands in front of him. “In the meantime, here’s the gist: This project came down from POTUS right after he took office. He wants an option that allows us to take out certain undesirable opposition leadership with minimal collateral damage; and no, by ‘undesirable opposition leader’ I don’t mean Dick Gephardt, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Danny wiped away a smirk, cursing his inability to maintain a poker face.
“Since the beginning of last year, we’ve been pursuing an option that just isn’t panning out. At the time, Target Three had the most priority, so we manipulated operations in Iraq to accommodate our plan. After six months of prepping the battlefield, we made a couple of test runs. Both of them were utter failures. Cerberus is floundering, Sharp. We need a fresh face and some new ideas.”
Walker leaned forward on his thick forearms and looked Danny in the eye. “I’m not going to pull any punches here, Sharp. Your record is nothing spectacular. There were ten other guys in line for this job who were just as qualified as you, some even more.”
“You sure know how to make a guy feel wanted, sir,” Danny quipped, and then immediately regretted opening his mouth.
The scowl intensified. “Don’t interrupt. You’ve got stealth stink on you, and that is why you are here. I think somewhere in that cranium of yours is the solution to my problem, and that makes you the fresh face I’ve been looking for.” The colonel raised an eyebrow. “So you’d better come up with some new ideas, and quick.”
Chapter 11
On Saturday, Danny Sharp drove his family through the snowy labyrinth of central D.C. on the way to the National Museum of the American Indian. He’d never been fond of meandering around a cavernous building to look at other people’s stuff, but Carol had a heavy dose of Navajo in her blood and she wanted the kids to learn about the Native American role in the nation’s history. She was right next to him, talking about something that was obviously important to her, but Danny wasn’t listening. He could not get Cerberus off his mind.