“Ledermeyer, stand by for a SRAM shot.”
“Against an air target? We won’t hit anything.” The offensive weapons officer panicked. Mentally, he wasn’t ready. He had only seconds to ramp up.
“Just do it. We don’t have time to screw around.”
Buck banked hard to starboard, hugging the ground, leaving the shimmering Gulf trailing in the distance. He lined the bomber’s nose on the 270 degree Mainstay bearing, praying the fighters had already received an intercept vector and were committed for their initial pass. Jefferson worked feverishly, manipulating the sensitive defensive avionics, sucking up the Mainstay’s radar energy, massaging the pulses, instantaneously reradiating the subtly shifted waveforms. Hopefully, the Mainstay’s range gate would wander, feeding erroneous data into the Russians’ highly centralized air-defense network. As a last resort, Buck could shift to active jamming. Black boxes crammed within the fuselage could randomly flood the airwaves or selectively attack a range of Russian sensor frequencies.
“Where the hell are you going, Buck?” asked Joe.
“Heading straight for the Mainstay. Then we’ll break southwest for the northern-most point of the Urals. Maybe we can bluff them into thinking we’re heading west.”
“Foxhound!” exclaimed Jefferson excitedly. The Russian fighter had delayed turning on his look-down/shoot-down Pulse Doppler radar for maximum surprise, relying on the Mainstay’s directions. Chaff dispensers and IR decoy flares spit out in rapid succession from the bomber’s fuselage. It was all happening too fast.
“Bearing?” shouted Buck, glancing over his left shoulder. Before Jefferson could answer, a glistening silver blur blasted down their port side, one thousand feet overhead. The Foxhound’s fire-control radar disappeared from Jefferson’s scope. Two air-to-air missiles, shot out of pure desperation, drifted off into the distance, leaving white smoke trails that quickly dissipated in the wind.
“Totally out of position,” crowed Joe. “He’ll never get another shot.”
“Yeah, but they got us cold,” Buck reminded him.
“Foxhound to starboard. Radar’s locked on!” Jefferson was working his gear like a madman. More chaff dispensers spewed forth.
Buck jerked the bomber upward to break-lock.
“Missile launch!”
The second Foxhound had anticipated the course change and was dead on their ass. A pair of air-to-air missiles, released seconds apart, streaked toward them, the white exhaust trails signaling an excellent shot. Jefferson frantically switched to pulse jamming and simultaneously began ejecting white-hot flares to confuse any IR seekers. Cranking the B-1B hard through 180 degrees, the first missile passed three hundred feet to stern, trailing-off harmlessly. The second followed by half a mile. A last minute midcourse correction sent it close to starboard, detonating in an intense reddish-yellow fireball that partially engulfed the right wingtip of the B-1B. Hot shrapnel from the fragmentation warhead pierced the wing, puncturing fuel tanks and scattering metal fragments throughout the forward fuselage.
The concussion snapped the plane to port. Portions of the front windscreen shattered, cutting visibility. Dazed, Buck shook off the worst effects and nursed the wounded bomber back to base course, once again dropping low. Blending into the protective ground clutter before either Foxhound could regroup and re-attack was their only chance for survival.
“Damage report!”
“My God,” gasped Ledermeyer, “Jefferson’s hit. His shoulder’s torn up bad.” He could barely be heard over the rushing wind generated by the irregular holes punched by the warhead’s razor-sharp fragments. Ledermeyer released his harness and hunched over, tending his gravely wounded comrade. Jefferson lay limp against the bulkhead, his head lifelessly bouncing each time the plane pitched upward. Ledermeyer peeled back the blood-soaked flight suit, only to see a gaping chest wound. He recoiled in horror.
“Shit!” he panted. “His whole chest is torn open.”
Buck suffered silently, forcing himself to focus on the brownish-gray ground zipping by at an incredible six hundred knots. He loved Jefferson like a brother.
“What about the gear?” he asked coldly. “Come on, Ledermeyer, answer me.” The response came haltingly.
“Hard to tell. It’s gonna take a while to sort out. My stuffs OK.”
Joe was unscathed, battling to shake off the blast effects. He scanned meters and digital readouts, mentally calculating the health of the bomber. A glance to starboard confirmed the worst. Fuel from one of the main wing tanks sprayed like a garden hose from the pockmarked wing. His voice cracked. Joe’s confidence, stretched to the breaking point by hours of uncertainty, collapsed in a split second.
“Wing’s fucked up. Tip’s gone.” Joe eased a switch, which triggered the whine of hydraulic pumps. The swept wings slowly inched forward.
