“How are we playing this?” Patricia asked.
“Those guys back in the valley have got their eye in now…no future there.”
Patricia had to agree with that.
“So I suggest we try an up and over, back into the river valley to do a straight in south to north approach over the hills?”
“We will have to trust that the Vandenberg RORSAT will be overhead by then.”
“No future in hanging around here either.” Caroline declared.
Even without the RORSAT’s downlink the plasma screens were providing ample warning of seven MiG-29 radars and over a dozen mobile air defence radars searching for them. Fortunately there were no longer any fixed air defence radar sites on the hill tops as their presence would have alerted the West that Russia had something worth targeting, somewhere in that area.
“I’ve got activity over at Saratov West, air traffic control radar just came up, so not so deactivated after all…and now a pair of radars lifting off, probably Hind Ds.” Patricia informed her pilot. “Someone in the bunker just called for his bug-out transport to be standing by when the raid is over…we could always fox ‘em into thinking we left, then take him out with an AMRAAM?”
“He’ll have a regiment’s worth of CAP and we have just one AIM-120 remaining.” Caroline pointed out. “Which one is the premier’s helo, and which one is riding shotgun?” the pilot asked rhetorically. “We stick to the plan and hope to hell there isn’t a cab rank of killer ‘Sats’ waiting up in orbit.”
Avoiding the guns in the valley entrance by cutting the corner, skimming over the hill tops and back into the wider river valley Caroline throttled back and flew east, reducing their heat signature and economising on fuel. Major Caroline Nunro was not that type of pilot who would ever complain of having too much fuel.
As the RORSAT launched from Vandenberg came over the horizon the screens again filled with information.
“Are we good?” Caroline asked.
They still had their link to the communication satellite and the RORSAT confirmed it was feeding that with targeting data.
“We’re good!”
This wasn’t familiar terrain by any means and more than a few pilots had attempted to hug the contours only to find that the crest of the hill they thought to be the top was in fact a false summit. Forward inertia takes time to translate into a climb and many an aircraft has bellied into the earth and rock of those snares for the bold and unwary, with the controls pulled all the way back in a last instinctive act. Those rare, lucky ones, learned a valuable lesson, but the unlucky ones next ride was a hearse.
The RORSAT provided them with a moving map and their own precise height, speed and position. Patricia would find them the lowest and quickest way to the target from the back seat and Caroline would follow her instructions.
“Re-entrant coming up between two hilltops on the left…standby to turn…now!”
Once again the throttles opened after they banked into a hard left climbing turn.
“That’s good, hold this angle…flat ground for a mile beyond then it rises in steps to a saddle. A mile of carefree flying and then it’s all downhill from there…there’s another Mainstay lifting off from Engels but it’ll take him time to get up high enough to safe operating height.”
Caroline lowered the nose and they skimmed the saddle, shielded from radar energy by the earth until cresting its far edge.
They were the visiting team and the defenders had the home advantage. Every attack scenario had been tried and tested during regular exercises before the war, before the West knew that the East was controlling what the satellites thought they saw. They knew all the approaches and the air defence radars had ceased 360° radiation, reverting instead to covering pre-assigned arcs, quartering the ground they knew an attacker must appear from.
Immediately upon reaching the far side of the saddle the screen flared red as powerful radar painted them.
“A Tombstones got us…Favorite’s launching at ten o’clock, six miles…pop-up coming up…Five…Four…Three…Two…One!”
Getting down in the weeds was their best tactic of breaking the radars lock but they were committed now and Caroline brought them out of their shallow dive, zooming up five thousand feet like a Pheasant flushed by the beaters, presenting their least stealthy profile, flares and bundles of chaff being pumped out automatically by the Nighthawk.
“Launcher cycling…weapon away!”
Fourteen radars, the seven MiG-29s, three Tombstones and four Clamshells had them locked up, their MWS was screeching its warnings that no fewer than seventeen radar-guided missiles were in the air. Favorites, Grumbles, AA-12 Adders and AA-10 Alamos were homing in on their radar return.
Patricia’s stomach churned as Caroline rolled hard with chaff bundles ejecting into their wake. She was taxing an airframe that was not built for aerobatics, sending them into a forty five degree dive on their egress heading, as steep as she dared take them. The Nighthawk’s twin General Electric F404 turbofans were a tried and tested design, the same engines that powered the F/A-18 Hornet and the French Dassault Rafale A, but unlike those combat aircraft the F-117A’s power plant had no afterburner ability purely and simply to reduce the stress on the airframe.
“Pull UP!… Pull UP!… Pull UP!…Pull UP!” exhorted the GPWS, replacing the Missile Warning System’s jarring tone as the aircraft’s attitude and proximity to the ground broke the missile locks more effectively than the chaff.
Back in the river valley, with the hills between themselves and the target Caroline wondered at what point she had simply stopped breathing. Sweat trickled down her face, the salt stinging her eyes.
“Time?” she queried.
“Eighteen seconds!”
Four more pairs of MiG-29 Fulcrums were lifting off to join the hunt and the seven already involved had gone to burner to close the engagement range between themselves and the lone attacker, asking for, and receiving permission to cross the restricted airspace above the mine.
On leaving the F-117X bomb bay the B-61 continued to climb for several seconds despite its weight. Gravity’s pull began to replace forward motion but its tail fins prevented an immediate vertical plunge back to earth, guiding it towards a precise spot on the surface below.
The worked out mine’s winding gear, tower and elevator were the only still functioning aspects of the old workings, the towers four legs straddled the mile deep shaft at the base of which an electric powered tramcar line ran a quarter mile to the bunkers outer blast door.
The weapon’s rocket motor only fired once it was facing vertically downwards, aligned with the centre of the shaft.
Concealed lighting was illuminating the car park landing pad beside the shaft and a Hind-D was settling onto it when something large struck the tarmac and bounced, colliding with its rotor blades. The blades shattered, shards spinning off in all directions and the aircraft was flipped onto its side where its captain quickly reacted by shutting down its twin engines. Both pilots and the crew chief clambered out and having got clear found themselves beside a seven foot diameter steel wheel, part of the winding gear that had sat atop the tower. The tower that had held the three tonne wheel had collapsed in on itself, the steel girders buckled and the internal steel cross braces that had kept the towers integrity for decades had been sheared. The crew stepped over twisted girders and gingerly peered over the edge into the dark maw of the now exposed main shaft.