Another threat warning tone sounded, this time with the text warning “MISSILE LAUNCH. SA-12 in the air,” she reported. “SPAW missiles powering up, and data transfer in progress…thirty seconds to separation…second SA-12 is up…another SA-12 in the air…SPAW missile data transfer complete, missiles ready to go…now we have an SA-10 target acquisition radar up…coming up on separation point…now.”
The Meteor vehicle split apart and ejected its three weapons. The AGM-170D SPAW missiles stabilized themselves in the slipstream, took their initial GPS satellite position and velocity updates, did a fast self-check, then fired its first-stage solid-motor rocket engine. In less than twenty seconds the SPAW missiles had accelerated to Mach three and streaked across the sky toward their assigned targets. A few seconds later, the first two SA-12 missiles plowed into the empty Meteor vehicle, blowing it to bits.
When the SPAW missiles’ motor casings were empty, small air intakes on the SPAW missiles’ bodies extended. The interior shape of the motor casing compressed the incoming supersonic air. Fuel and a spark were introduced, and the missiles’ scramjet engine flared to life. Seconds later the missiles passed Mach five. The SA-10 anti-aircraft missiles had a max speed of Mach six, but their solid-fuel rocket motors had already burned out so they were simply coasting toward a spot in space where their targeting computers predicted their quarry would be. The more they turned to chase down the SPAW missiles the slower they flew, until seconds before intercept they could no longer maintain altitude and simply fell to Earth.
The SA-12 battery had fired two more missiles at the incoming AGM-170D attack missiles, and the SA-10 battery fired two more as well. The SA-12s destroyed the first incoming SPAW missile. But by this time the SPAWs were just seconds from impact, and their speed had increased in the descent to well over Mach six, and the SA-10s missed the other two incoming attackers. Patrick’s “Need-It-Right-This-Second” micro-satellites orbiting over the target area provided the final precision steering signals to the SPAW missiles, and both of the surviving missiles made direct hits on their assigned Shahab-5 launch silos. The resulting thermium-nitrate explosions, and the massive secondary explosions caused by thousands of gallons of rocket fuel and oxidizer blowing up in their silos, were bright enough to be seen for a hundred miles away.
“Direct hits, guys and gals!” Patrick announced. “Excellent job!”
“But we still have one silo remaining,” Kai Raydon said. “They’ll launch the third one, sir, I know it — now that we’ve attacked their other babies, they know we’re gunning for them.”
“We’ll deal with them then,” Patrick said. “Right now we’ve got Stud One-One ready to release.”
“Meteor on course and on glidepath,” Benneton said, announcing her payload readouts aloud. “Carrier temps normal. Thirty seconds to weapon release.”
Olray and Benneton’s targets were different than Noble’s and Moulain’s: they only carried three AGM-170D SPAW missiles, like Stud One-Three, but they knew there were going to be many more Shahab-2 and -3s in the field than there were Shahab-5 silos, and only three SPAWs wouldn’t take them all out. Someone else was going to do that job. They also knew, like Zarand, that the Strongbox would be defended by Iran’s most sophisticated high-altitude, anti-missile-capable air defense weapons.
But instead of evading the SA-10 and SA-12 surface-to-air missile sites, Stud One-One’s job was to attack and destroy them.
Each SA-10 and SA-12 brigade consisted of six transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) surrounding the pre-surveyed launch points in the area of the Strongbox. Each TEL had four vertically launched missiles, connected to the command post by microwave datalinks backed up by armored fiber-optic cables. The surveillance, target tracking, and missile guidance radars were also similarly linked to the command post vehicles, and each brigade’s command posts were linked to each other so they could share radar data. As with the Shahab-5 launch silos near Zarand, there were two SA-10 brigades and one SA-12 brigade in the Strongbox area, with a total of seventy-two anti-aircraft missiles ready to fire, plus another ninety-six reloads that could be made ready to launch in under thirty minutes.
There was no way one Black Stallion attacker could destroy all one hundred and sixty-eight missiles — that would take an entire squadron of heavy bombers loaded with precision-guided munitions, which didn’t exist any more in the United States Air Force. But there were only three command posts coordinating the surface-to-air missile defenses of the Strongbox…and that was precisely how many AGM-170D SPAW missiles Olray and Benneton had just launched.
“Good missile separation from the Meteor,” Benneton reported. “SA-10 and SA-12 long-range surveillance…switching to target tracking mode…now I’ve got a new tracking radar warning! Do you see this, Genesis?”
“Roger, One-One,” Patrick responded. “It’s been identified as an extremely high-powered Golf-band frequency-agile phased array radar last seen on a Russian anti-ballistic missile ground-based laser.”
“Anti-missile laser!”
“Stud One-Three got the same indications down south, but nothing else happened — the SA-10s and -12s came up and engaged normally,” Patrick reported. “The laser system I’m familiar with used a small electronic diode laser to refine tracking and do atmospheric attenuation readings, and One-Three got hit with it too, but nothing else happened.”
“What does all that mean, Genesis?” Benneton asked worriedly.
“We think it’s just a target tracking radar or a decoy emitter, One-One.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“There’s not a whole lot we can do anyway except perhaps try to accelerate and boost into a higher orbit,” Olray said. “We’re pressing on.”
“SPAWs on course, good acceleration, still reporting good connectivity,” Benneton said. At that moment the warning tone sounded and a “LASER ILLUM” alert came on their multi-function screens. “There’s the laser warning, Genesis.”
“Roger, we see it. Continue.”
“Okay.” She rechecked the flight profile of the SPAW missiles, but couldn’t help glancing nervously at the “LASER ILLUM” alert. “What kind of laser did you say this was, Genesis?”
“Try to ignore it, MC,” Olray said. “We’ll be over their horizon in four minutes.”
“It’ll last just a minute — they might be trying to lock onto the SPAWs,” Patrick said. “Continue.”
“Roger. Good track…looks like Odin is taking precision course guidance.”
“That’s affirm, One-One,” Raydon said. “Last NIRTSat picture was just four minutes ago. We got ’em zeroed in. Satellite datalink is solid and the SPAWs are ridin’ the rail.”
“Maybe we ought to blast off on outta here, AC, now that Silver Tower has the wheel,” Benneton said. “That laser warning is making me nervous.”
“One-Three didn’t get anything,” Olray reminded her. “Less than three minutes and then we’ll be out of sight. Just try to…”
Except for the screams, that was the last either of them uttered. At that instant the cockpit filled with a brilliant blue-orange light that quickly grew brighter and brighter and hotter and hotter, and seconds later the XR-A9 Black Stallion exploded in a massive fireball, drawing a bright line of fire across the sky clearly visible to anyone on the ground even in daylight.