“I’ll bet that change in radar detection has more to do with the five days our bird spent in the hangar while they put a new coat of that super-secret radar-absorbent paint on,” she said with a grin.
“This bomber is so much deadlier than my old one. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the B-2—but it wasn’t completely invisible to radar. A good radar operator could still spot us periodically. I have it on good authority that when our bombers flew deep-penetration raids over Moscow, their air defense guys would see us fading in and out on their radar scopes,” Pappi added.
Major Daniels crinkled her eyebrows. “If they could see you guys coming in and out of focus, how come they couldn’t shoot more of you guys down?”
Pappi flashed a sarcastic smile. “Stealth doesn’t mean invisible, Double D,” he explained. “It just means our cross-section or radar signature is significantly reduced. In the case of our B-2s, the Russians could get a general idea of where we were, but they couldn’t develop a good enough picture to generate a targeting lock to engage us with one of their missiles.”
Her face became pale. “How did you get shot down then? What happened on that mission, Pappi?”
An awkward moment of silence passed between them before Pappi sighed. “I suppose you deserve to know,” he began. “I screwed up our mission. The Russians had the entire place lit up like Christmas with search radars, airborne early-warning aircraft, and fighters. By and large, we had flown in relatively undetected. I mean, they had a few soft hits on us, but nothing that could pin us down. They knew we were in the area, or at least headed to Moscow, but they hadn’t locked us up yet.
“I was flying the plane. My copilot, “Ricky,” was a combat virgin like you. He’d missed out on the previous combat operations, so he wanted to be the one to deliver the payload. For this first mission, we were sent in on a decapitation strike. The brass wanted to see if we could take Petrov out right at the beginning of the war. When we entered the strike zone, Ricky opened the bomb doors and proceeded to drop our two bunker-busters.”
Pappi paused for a moment as he looked out the window at the dark air whipping past their plane. “Once the bombs had been dropped…all I wanted to do was get out of there. We’d been getting painted by targeting radars on and off for nearly an hour. When I felt the weight of the bombs leave the aircraft, I immediately turned us for home before Ricky had had a chance to get the bomb bay doors closed. That left an exposed part of our underbelly open, and as I turned, it provided the dozens of radars searching for us with enough of area for them to gain a solid return on us. In fractions of a second, multiple radars suddenly had a firm lock on us, and before either of us knew it, an SA-21 fired two missiles after us.
“At first we didn’t think anything of it. We knew that as soon as the bomb bay was closed off, our stealth ability would be intact once again, and we figured the missile would lose track of us and we’d escape. At first, that’s exactly what it looked like would happen. However, we didn’t know that the Russians had recently upgraded their guidance systems to use a lot of unique AI technology; that allowed the missiles’ warheads to take the known data it had for us and calculate with a degree of certainty where we would be.
“When the missile got to within ten kilometers of our position, a new sensor in the targeting computer took over, which looked at the displacement of air in the area. This obviously led them to the anomaly our aircraft created, and the missile zeroed in on us. Before either of us knew what had happened, it had gotten within range of its proximity sensor, and the warhead detonated.”
Pappi paused for a second again, reliving that fateful day. He took a deep breath and continued, “When it hit us, it didn’t destroy our bird right away. We had all sorts of damage, but we were still flyable. What really doomed us was when one of the SA-10s further away from Moscow was able to lock onto our damaged bird and fired another missile at us. After that, we both ejected and then tried our best to escape and evade our way back to friendly territory.”
Daniels just took it in; she didn’t judge him or second-guess him. She could tell he was still struggling internally with what had happened, and she knew he probably blamed himself for getting them shot down. She knew from the stories she’d been told that Ricky had been taken prisoner and later died in a POW camp.
She looked over at Pappi and saw him wipe away a tear. “You did the best you could with a crappy situation, Boss. Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.”
Pappi nodded. “I know,” he said glumly. “I’ve accepted it. I know I made mistakes, and I know some of it was also outside my control. I’ve made peace with it at this point.”
Before they could continue their conversation, one of the instruments on the bomber started to beep. Pappi saw on the navigation screen that they were roughly five minutes from weapons release.
“Looks like we’re almost over the target,” Pappi announced. “Stay frosty, Double D. I’m showing a massive increase in enemy search radars.” Then he went to work getting the Raider’s bombs ready to be released.
Their current mission over Beijing was focused on going after the party leadership of the government. They had been given the home addresses of one hundred out of the one hundred and fifty members of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. Next to the Central Military Commission or CMC, the Standing Committee was the largest body of senior government officials. Washington was hoping that going after the senior leadership of the country might convince the PLA and the government to surrender so further bloodshed could be avoided.
Pappi double-checked the targeting system, making sure each of the one hundred GBU-38 500-pound laser-guided bombs was ready to go after their individual targets. If everything went according to plan, they’d nail two-thirds of the Standing Committee in a single blow.
A few minutes went by in relative silence as they worked on their own parts of the mission. Then the computer indicated they’d reached the optimal position to release their bombs, ensuring that each of them would have enough altitude and speed to silently glide to their intended targets. Pappi silently hoped each of them would be successful in delivering their intended message to the Chinese government from the American president…surrender.
Chapter 24
Crisis Brewing
President Xi sat at the table while one of General Yang’s subordinates provided them with an update on the latest bombing raid on Beijing. Over the past two evenings, the Americans had made a concerted effort to go after the Standing Committee, and the members who had not been killed during the first night of attacks were rightly concerned about their safety.
What gave Xi some serious pause was not that the Americans had gotten lucky and killed eighty-six of them on the first night — an enemy could get lucky with intelligence. What bothered him the most was that despite the PLA relocating the remaining members of the Committee, the Americans had somehow managed to carry out a devastating strike the very next day that had killed another forty-eight members. That left a mere sixteen members of the Standing Committee alive, and the only reason they hadn’t been killed was because none of them had been in Beijing at the time of the strike. Something was wrong. Xi was hell-bent on figuring out who the mole was inside the military or the government — whoever it was needed to be eliminated.