At that point, two things happened. One was that Wicked Stick and her three sisters were able to lock their radars onto four more of the enemy formations, the other was that the enemy themselves suddenly realized the deadly threat that was already hurtling down from above. Their formations shattered as each aircraft tried to put as much distance between themselves and the initiation point as possible. The problem was, once again, physics.
In the time available, there was only a limited footprint that they could occupy given their speed and agility. The size and shape of that footprint were incorporated in the guidance system of the AIM-47 which plotted the aiming point to include as many targets as possible. The first wave of four finger-four elements had least time to react and, therefore, the smallest footprint. The rippling wave of nuclear explosions took down thirteen of the sixteen aircraft. The brief delay between the two missile salvoes gave the second group of four formations a greater chance of getting clear, eight of the sixteen fighters vanished in the fireballs. In less than two seconds, 21 of the 32 Caliphate fighters had been blotted from the sky. Of the remaining eleven, all had varying degrees of damage from blast and thermal pulse and their pilots were disorientated, in some cases blinded from the light flash.
General Charles Larry knew the rule; when fighter fought fighter, speed and altitude were everything. His four fighters were sitting 30,000 feet above the shattered enemy formation. What was more, the cruising speed of Wicked Stick was 300 miles per hour faster than the maximum speed of the enemy aircraft; when the Rapier went flat-out it was almost a whole Mach number faster. The F-108 may not be the tightest-turning tighter in the world but in this sort of tight it didn’t matter. The Rapier pilots had a name for this final mop-up stage in an air battle, they called it clubbing baby seals.
He’d already picked his first baby, a cripple limping away from the nuclear inferno with smoke trailing from its fuselage. As Wicked Stick screamed down behind her victim, Larry caught a flash picture of the odd-looking aircraft. The designers had put the two engines one above the other, not side-by-side the way God had intended. And the wings, very sharply swept indeed with ailerons on the tips, just like a delta but with a piece cut out.
Then, flashes erupted over the cockpit and forward fuselage as the four 20mm cannon under Wicked Stick’s nose raked the enemy tighter. Almost as he fired Larry broke right and climbed, taking him out of his own stream of shells, shooting oneself down tended to be frowned on. By the time his target exploded, Wicked Stick was already climbing hard, trading speed and energy for altitude while Larry and his KIO picked out their next baby seal.
The Ruling Council Conference Room, Jerusalem, The Caliphate.
The brilliant flashes of Sight lit up the conference room. Model instinctively counted the seconds between the Hashes and the rolling thunder of the explosions. Almost 50 kilometers. That wasn’t a thunderstorm, those were nuclear explosions, nothing else could be that bright at that distance. And the Satraps around the table were still wrapped up in their fantasy world of glory. Model’s aide came in with a teletype report. He read it and his eyes widened. It confirmed both his guess and his worst fears. If the Americans were hitting this hard this early, they were holding little back.
“Your Excellencies. I have just received some highly disturbing news.” That interrupted the conversation, a little anyway. “The leading edge of the American bomber formations have just reached our territory. The main body is still some hours away but the American strategic fighters and reconnaissance aircraft appear to have started the process of eliminating anything that may prevent their heavy bombers attacking whatever targets they choose.
“A small lead formation is approaching the coast of Palestine. The fighters based in Northern Palestine took off to intercept that formation and were engaged by American fighters which used nuclear weapons to destroy them. According to this report, there have been eight high-altitude nuclear explosions sighted and it appears that none of our fighters have survived the attack. There are casualties on the ground as well, how many this report does not tell me. There are no reports of any American losses. The Americans have sent us an ultimatum, have your Excellencies considered your response?”
The response from the Satrap of Syria was almost a sneer, one that made Model reflect on the virtues of old Heidelburg tradition of dueling with sabers.
“A few fighters, what are they to worry about? And some reconnaissance aircraft? What will they do? Photograph us to death?” There were guffaws of laughter from around the table and a few pounded their fists on the table with glee. “And our response to the American message? We should coat it with camel dung and send it back.”
“Your Excellencies, you have all seen a handful of rocks thrown against a window. They do not arrive at once but first one then two or three more before the rest arrive in a mass and smash the glass as if it had never been. This brush is the first stone. The American fighters deal with ours, then their strategic reconnaissance aircraft move in to locate our defenses and eliminate them. Then, and only then, do their heavy bombers, their B-52s, come in to destroy us.
“What has happened in the last few minutes is just the start, the opening move. The situation is going to get worse, much worse, very quickly now. In 1947 it look the Americans less than an hour to destroy Germany. We may have less time than that.”
Model looked at the assembled Satraps. Blank incomprehension and disbelief. They simply weren’t getting it.
RB-5HC “Tiger Lily”, Approaching Yaffo
Some of the targets couldn’t be missed. The harbor was one of them. When the ASG-18 was in mapping mode, it showed up clearly and the military part, the fast attack craft base, was easy to pick out also. It was impossible to punish the fast attack craft unit that had attacked the American fleet, the Djinns had all gone to the bottom under the lash of American naval air power so another FAC unit and its base was to suffer instead. Red Sonja had that duty and she was carrying a missile with a 225 kiloton warhead to do the job. That would erase the entire military facility. The town surrounding it would be collateral damage.
Another target that couldn’t be missed was an airfield to the south of the town. That was where the fighters so summarily dispatched by the escorting F-108s had come from. It was scheduled to receive an AGM-76, one with its warhead dialed up to maximum yield, 65 kilotons. That airfield was one of three targets assigned to Spider Woman, the other two were coastal defense missile batteries.
Other targets revealed themselves. The surface-to-air missile bases for example. They had to turn their radars on to function yet the moment they did so, the threat location systems aboard the RB-58s would plot their positions and target them with AGM-76s. taking down the SAM batteries was a relatively simple task, one for which the AGM-76 had been designed.
The warheads used were set to normal yield, 35 kilotons. Tiger Lily had three such batteries plotted and had her missiles ready to go. Her wing mate Coral Queen had three more. That left each of them with three more missiles for “targets of opportunity”. Tiger Lily and Coral Queen were to open the show.