A new star suddenly appeared in the sky, white, painful, glaring white even through the black protective visor. In the rear cockpits, even through the shields and filters, the stations turned white from the thermonuclear explosion fifty miles away. A split second later, even before the first new star had reached its full power, there was a second flash and another new star lit up the sky over Burma. There was a gap, a couple of seconds no more than that, then a third, much dimmer star, one that was marginally less painful to see, appeared. Marisol shook and rolled from the blasts, another thing they hadn't expected.
Yet, the strange thing was, 45,000 feet below the place where the fighters had died, under the black clouds of the Monsoon, nobody would know that the RB-58s had captured little pieces of the sun and unleashed them on their enemies. It showed on the radar though, there were ugly splotches where the weird electronic effects of a nuclear initiation had blanked out the radar transmissions. Under those leprous patches, twelve enemy fighters had been blotted from the sky in less than five seconds. Tengchan and the other radars would be seeing the same thing and they would know what had happened.
“Control, this is Marisol. Four enemy fighters destroyed with one GAR-9. One more kill and we're aces.”
“Negative Marisol. Word from the top. Multiple kills with GAR-9s count as a single kill towards ace status. You've got four more to go. Good hunting.”
A nice sentiment, but it didn't look like it. Xavier was reporting the Tengchan radar was still working but all the others were down. Kozlowski turned Marisol towards Tengchan then grinned as it hurriedly went off the air. It stayed off, even when Marisol turned away, back on her racetrack.
A few minutes later Tengchan came on again, only to shut down as soon as Marisol turned towards it once more. That time, it stayed shut down. The first stage of today's lesson had been delivered; challenging SAC was a very, very bad mistake. A mistake that carried a nuclear penalty.
Cockpit, B-60E “Miss Tressmine” 47,000 feet over Haipaw, Burma
“Whoa, the Ladies are throwing a Hissy Fit. Three nuclear explosions, 45,000 feet. GAR-9s. Marisol. Tiger Lily and Sweet Caroline are all claiming kills. They're reporting the Chipanese shut down air activity on the spot. Don't want their airbase nuked I assume. I'd suggest we alert Guns to get his new toy ready, just in case.”
The B-60E carried the six-barreled Vulcan cannon in place of the old twin 20mm mount. Even the B-52s hadn't got those yet, they still had quadruple .50s.
General Cameron relaxed in the commander's seat. This was the second time he'd done something like this, the first one had been twelve years earlier in Paris. Then, he'd incurred the lasting hatred of every shopaholic in Europe by devastating the Champes Elysee. What his B-60s were about to do today built on that experience. Already the formation was splitting into its three sub-groups, each targeting an enemy concentration
“Bring the group around to zero-zero-five. Load up the radar picture, drop a reference bomb. Now let's hope the Ladies clear a way in for us.”
Cockpit RB-58C “Marisol”, 65,000 feet over Myitkyina, Northern Burma
“We have enemy radars sir, Fire Cans, nine of them. Positions dialing in now.”
The number made sense, electronic reconnaissance had isolated twelve hostile fire control radars, four per enemy concentration. Three had been picked off during the reconnaissance runs. That left nine. And the RB-58s had a total of 12 AAM-N-10s. It was time to make a demonstration. This time, the anti-aircraft gunners would be in no doubt about what was killing them.
“Take 'em down. We'll hit from under the cloud cover.”
Central Command Post, Triple Alliance Base, Myitkyina, Northern Burma
There was something wrong with the clouds, Major Ranjit noticed suddenly, they seemed to be boiling and spreading as if giant stones were being thrown into them. Then, four shapes burst through, big delta-winged aircraft surrounded in a ball of shimmering, shining silver. They were silent, silent as the grave, even as rockets streaked from under their bellies and curved into targets far out in the enemy hills. Then, the roar of their jets and the supersonic bangs drowned out the explosions of the missiles but the delta winged jets were already gone, climbing through the clouds, leaving eight oily smoke tracks boiling up into the sky from the enemy-held hills. The anti-aircraft guns that had remained obstinately out of reach of the Australian 25 pounders were blind.
Hill Kumon 541, West of Myitkyina, Burma.
They hadn't stood a chance. Lieutenant Wu Si Bo had guessed the bombers were doing around Mach Two when they'd blown up the other radars, way too fast for any of the guns to get a shot in. He'd yanked the power cable from his radar and shut it down as soon as he'd seen something was about to happen so his crews were alive, none of the others were so lucky. Or were they the lucky ones? One thing they were clear, they were fighting Americans now and Americans didn't fight, they destroyed. But the Shan States positions were too close to the Australian base for the Americans to drop nuclear bombs without destroying their allies as well. And they weren't that ruthless. Were they?
Cockpit, B-60E “Miss Tressmine” 47,000 feet over Myitkyina, Burma
Everything was in the hands of the K-11 radar bombsight. They had the radar pictures, they'd identified the aim points, the reference bombs had provided the corrections. Lost in all the noises of the B-60, the crews didn't hear the bomb bay doors open, but they felt the thump-thump-thump-thump as all four sets of snap-action doors opened. More than half the length of the bombers was their bomb bay. The B-60s were adjusting their positions, delicately, elegantly, their grace deceitfully denying the deadliness of what they were about to do. The intervalometers had been set, when the K-l Is gave the order, they'd start to spew 500 pound bombs out of that cavernous pit. 176 per aircraft, 1,056 in total on each enemy concentration. The big bombers didn't even lurch as the stream of bombs left the bays.
Hill Kumon 541, West of Myitkyina, Burma.
Lieutenant Wu Si Bo saw something very strange. Six long black lines had emerged from the clouds and were heading steadily for him. Far over to the north he could see six more. The lines seemed to go on forever, and now they were matched by a soft, gentle but all-enveloping howl. As if a dragon was wailing defiance at them. A dragon above them.
The Dragon had been born in Paris, on the Champes Elysee. What had started out as a warning to the French not to start any opportunistic wars of conquest or revenge had turned into something else. When the targeteers had inspected the devastation, they'd quickly understood that something quite unexpected had happened. What was supposed to have been a long, snake-like path of destruction had actually been an extended egg-shape, the destruction going far beyond that anybody had expected. What was even more curious, the Arc de Triomphe had been destroyed before the last salvo of bombs had hit it.
The explanation had taken some finding, but once found it had been obvious. Each of the thousand pound bombs had landed just behind the blast and shock wave front of the one that preceded it. So, as the explosions had marched down the Champes Elysee, they'd multiplied their effects over and over again. Each bomb had built on those before it to create a piston that shattered everything in its path.