He thought what he saw was a glitch in the two displays that gave him horizontal and vertical plots of the missile tracks. He turned to his radar technician and asked, “Radar, what happened to those missile tracks? What do you get?”
“Don’t know, sir,” the radar technician replied. “I saw the target rocket launch, then the airborne missile launch, then the cruise missile launch to attack the launch barge, same as the first test sequence. It looked like a good intercept. Then poof. Nothing. Both tracks disappeared. No debris.”
“Comm, did the zoomies broadcast an abort warning?” the TAO asked a communications technician.
“No, sir,” the communications specialist confirmed.
“Damn Air Force weenies,” the TAO muttered. “Too embarrassed by a faulty flight to tell us they self-destructed both missiles.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “Radar, you say you’re not picking up any debris?”
“No, sir,” said the radar technician. “Usually, the SPY-1B will track debris pretty good, enough so we can clear a specific piece of airspace or ocean.” The SPY-1B was the three-dimensional phased-array radar on the Aegis-class warships, powerful enough to track a target as small as a bird two hundred miles away. “Nothing this time.”
“Humpf,” the TAO grunted. Both missiles might have splashed down. He didn’t know enough about either of them to know if they floated, if the warheads became more unstable in seawater, what they looked like when they broke apart, how to disarm a ditched missile — and a hundred other things he would’ve been briefed on if the Air Force had done its job correctly. “Comm, tell all vessels to stay east of the second launch barge. Radar, clear all aircraft out of the range via the shortest way possible away from the missile tracks. Then do a systems check, find out why we can’t see their debris.” On the intercom, he radioed, “Bridge, Combat.”
“Go ahead.” The TAO recognized the captain’s voice.
“We lost track of the missile debris, sir, so we’re clearing all aircraft away from the missiles’ flight paths and terminating all activity. We’re done for the day.”
“Copy that. We’ll form up and head back to the barn.”
“What did you see up there, sir?”
“We saw…” There was a very long pause, then: “We don’t quite know what we saw, Combat. We saw two good missile plumes heading toward each other, then… well, we’re not sure after that. We saw a flash of light, and some of the lookouts say they saw a big silver globe. But we didn’t hear or pick up anything. No explosion, no nothing.”
“Checks down here, sir,” said the TAO.
“What did it look like to you, Combat?”
“About the same.”
“What about the cruise missile? Did it hit its target?”
“Stand by,” the TAO said. “Radar, what have you got on the second launch barge? Did the zoomies hit it?”
“I… I don’t know, sir,” the radar technician stammered. “It’s like the ABM intercept. It looked normal, heading right for the target, then… gone.”
“Gone? The target? Gone like blew up? Gone like sunk?”
“Gone like… gone, sir,” the technician said. “I pick up nothing. The missile has disappeared… shit, and the barge disappeared too!”
“What the hell are you talking about? Surface range thirty, high res,” he demanded, and checked the short-range surface radar depiction. There was no sign of the barge.
“I’ve got a good radar lock on the first launch barge, sir,” the technician said, “but zilch on the second. It must’ve broke apart and sunk like a stone.”
“That barge was almost two hundred feet long, eighty feet wide, and weighed ninety tons. Those things do not just disappear,” the TAO said aloud to no one in particular. Even the first launch barge, which was hit dead-on by the sensor-fused weapon dropped by the cruise missile, was still partially afloat. The TAO hit the intercom button: “Bridge, Combat. We don’t have a fix on the second launch pad. It must’ve sunk. What kind of warhead did they have on that thing? It must’ve been a two-thousand-pounder at least.”
“Negative, Combat,” the captain responded. “We didn’t hear or see any explosion.”
The TAO looked at his CIC crew members in shock. “How is that possible, sir?” was all he could think to ask.
“I don’t know,” the captain said, feeling the anger rise in his throat. He had a suspicion that the Air Force had pulled a fast one on him — that they had tested a new weapon in the wide-open daylight skies and seas, in a well-used military weapons range that belonged to the U.S. Navy. To the officer of the deck, the captain said, “How long for us to get to that second launch barge’s last position?”
“About thirty minutes at standard, sir.”
“Officer of the deck, plot a course to the second launch barge’s position,” the captain ordered. “All ahead full. I want a full investigation on what kind of weapon sunk that barge. Air, water, electromagnetic, debris analysis, the works.” He paused, then added, “And have the corpsmen prepare to do a full radiation scan as well.”
The last order froze everyone on the bridge in their tracks. The captain was silent for a long moment, then said, “Get to it, gentlemen. Keep your damn eyes open.”
It took less than twenty minutes for the two Air Force jets to fly back to Elliott Air Force Base. The base, ninety miles northwest of Las Vegas, was situated near a dry lake bed named Groom Lake. Anyone who viewed the lake bed — which would have been both difficult and illegal, since the airspace for fifty miles around the base was restricted from ground level to infinity—would have seen a roughly five-mile sheet of hard, sunbaked sand. But seconds before the planes touched down, sprinklers popped on and highlighted a long strip of sand-colored concrete in the lake bed. Less than three minutes later Terrill Samson had turned off the runway and the sun evaporated the water. The runway disappeared once again.
Bradley James Elliott Air Force Base was the name of the installation built next to the dry lake. It resembled a cross between a small, old, nearly abandoned air base and a modern industrial development facility. It had some old wooden buildings and many modern concrete buildings. Because it was so far from the nearest town, it had dormitory-style enlisted, officer, and civilian quarters. There were few amenities: a mess hall, only a small shopette instead of a full commissary and exchange, a little-used outdoor pool, and no base theater.
The roads were well maintained and the sidewalks were lined with cactus and Joshua trees. The roads had typical Air Force base names, honoring Air Force legends: military aviation pioneers like Rickenbacker and Mitchell, leaders like Spaatz and LeMay, Air Force Medal of Honor recipients like Loring and Sijan, and air combat aces like Bong and DeBellevue. Other streets had names that most people new at the base might not immediately recognize, like Ormack and Powell — names of dead test pilots who had been assigned to the base. About two thousand men and women worked at the base, typically four days on, three days off. They were either bused in in convoys of air-conditioned Greyhound buses, making the 110-mile drive in under two hours, or flown in on unmarked jet airliners from Nellis Air Force Base north of Las Vegas in a matter of minutes.
The one difference between this base and dozens of other military bases resembling it around the world: Elliott Air Force Base did not appear on any map. There were no signs for it. It was not on any listing of active Air Force bases. No one could ask for an assignment there, and if someone did, he or she would be likely to come under secret investigation as to why the request had been made. Every person assigned there swore an oath never to reveal any details about the base or its activities. Most people took that oath very, very seriously — not because of the substantial legal penalties, but because they really believed that keeping their activities secret contributed to the strength and security of their homeland. By almost every conventional measure except physical presence, Elliott Air Force Base did not exist.