He shook his head. “No, I can’t blame them. But the fact they’ve got that big-ass radar powered up this late is going to make things a little trickier.”
“Perhaps Martindale should have warned them we were coming.”
“Too risky,” Brad countered. “It’s unlikely that the feds or the Russians have penetrated Sky Masters communications, but if either of them has…” He let the thought trail off.
Nadia sighed. “It would be a very bad day for us.”
“Yep. So the name of the game tonight is still How Not to Be Seen.” He thought for a moment. “Bring up NavPlan Two.”
“Understood. Going to NavPlan Two.” Nadia pulled up her navigation display. Deftly, she entered commands instructing their computer to switch to one of the several alternate flight plans Brad had plotted before leaving Poland.
Their cues on his HUD shifted immediately. Brad tugged the stick to the right, pulling the Ranger into a tight turn toward the north. This new course would take them around the outer edge of that Argus-Five radar’s detection envelope. Once they put the concealing mass of the Sheep Creek Range between them and the Sky Masters — operated airport, they could safely swing back south. Land-based radars could not see “through” higher ground.
“New S-band Doppler radar detected at eleven o’clock,” the computer said suddenly. “Signal strength increasing.”
That was the kicker, Brad knew. Evading the Sky Masters Argus-Five meant flying almost straight into the zone of another radar, this one sited high up in the Sheep Creek Range’s jumble of high plateaus, rounded rises, and boulder-strewn washes. The good news was that this new radar was one of the U.S. Weather Service’s NEXRAD stations. And that gave them a chance to spoof it without being noticed.
“Activate SPEAR,” he told Nadia. “Target that S-band Doppler weather radar.”
Her fingers danced across one of her MFDs, bringing their ALQ-293 Self-Protection Electronically Agile Reaction system online. SPEAR transmitted carefully tailored signals on the same frequencies used by radars hunting for their XCV-62. By altering the timing of pulses returned to a potentially hostile radar, it could trick that radar into thinking the Ranger was somewhere else in the sky… or even render it effectively invisible. “SPEAR is engaged,” she said. “Matching frequencies.”
Crossing his fingers mentally, Brad held his course north. Since the primary mission of the WSR-88D radars in the NEXRAD network was weather tracking, they were highly automated. Plus, any meteorologist who was up so late keeping tabs on this particular radar should be paying more attention to cold fronts, thunderstorms, and the like than to a single tiny blip that quickly faded off his or her screen.
“NEXRAD radar now at ten o’clock. Range thirty miles.”
Nice theory, McLanahan, Brad thought, trying not to hold his breath. Now to see if it matched reality. They were almost broadside to that radar now, without any terrain between them high enough to provide cover. If they were going to get pinged, this was the time. Seconds passed, each seeming longer than the last while the Ranger streaked on, flying low over the arid Nevada desert.
“No detection,” Nadia said finally with mingled relief and satisfaction. “SPEAR has control over that radar. It can’t see us!”
“Copy that.” Brad tweaked his stick again, following the steering cues on his HUD as they slid left a few degrees and then kept moving. “Starting our final turn toward the LZ.”
The XCV-62 banked slightly, starting a long, curving turn that would bring them back around to the southwest — coming in along the spine of the Sheep Creek Range. The aircraft’s nose pitched up, climbing to stay above the fast-approaching high ground. Brad started throttling back, slowly shedding airspeed.
Beside him, Nadia had her eyes fixed on a computer-generated map. “We are three minutes out from the landing zone,” she told him.
“No visual yet,” Brad said tightly. They were roughly fourteen nautical miles out from the straight stretch of little-used dirt road he’d picked out earlier from satellite imagery as a possible place to land. It was still hidden in among the rugged hills and gullies ahead of them. “DTF disengaged,” he said, toggling a control on his stick that turned off the Ranger’s terrain-following system. He pulled back slightly, gaining more altitude to take a look at their planned LZ. Their airspeed dropped to three hundred knots.
Abruptly, a cursor blinked into existence on his HUD. “There it is.”
“Ninety seconds out.” Nadia slaved one of her MFDs to their forward-looking passive sensors and zoomed in her view. “The LZ appears clear. I am not picking up any unidentified thermal contacts.”
Brad nodded. Except for occasional hikers, no one spent much time this high up in the Sheep Creek Range. Through his HUD, he could see the dirt road rolling away into the distance. It was a thin, bright green line against the darker green of the surrounding plateau. Using another control on his stick, he selected a touch-down point. Instantly, the Ranger’s navigation system updated his steering cues. “We’re go for landing.”
“Sixty seconds out.” Nadia tapped a key, alerting their passengers in the troop compartment that they were making their final approach.
Brad entered a quick command on one of his own MFDs. “Configuring for a short-field rough landing.” Then he throttled back some more. The Iron Wolf aircraft slid lower.
The muffled roar from the Ranger’s four turbofan engines diminished fast. As their airspeed dropped, hydraulics whined shrilly. Computer-directed control surfaces opened along the trailing edge of the wing, providing more lift. The XCV-62’s nose gear and twin wing-mounted bogies swung down and locked in position.
The dirt road, with a glowing line drawn across it to mark Brad’s desired touch-down point, loomed ahead through the windscreen, growing larger quickly as they descended. They came in low over the road, thundering along just feet above the ground. His left hand hovered over the throttles.
One hundred yards. Fifty yards. Twenty-five yards. The computer-drawn touch-down marker was suddenly a fiery green blaze across his whole HUD.
“Landing… now,” he said decisively. With a smooth motion, he chopped the throttles back almost all the way.
The Iron Wolf stealth transport dropped out of the sky. It touched down with a sharp jolt — shaking and rattling hard as it bounded down the rutted dirt road. Plumes of dust and sand kicked loose by its passage drifted away on a light breeze. Quickly, Brad reversed thrust, gradually bringing them to a full stop about a thousand feet from where the Ranger’s landing gear first kissed the earth.
For a moment, he sat still, breathing hard. Then he grinned over at Nadia. “Well, check off one more successful landing in this crate. Or, depending on how you look at it, one more narrowly avoided crash.”
She made a show of peering out both sides of the cockpit and then looked back at him with a crooked smile of her own. “Since the aircraft does seem to be in one piece, I suppose your more optimistic appraisal is warranted.” She turned more serious. “Now what?”
“Now we drop the ramp and have Captain Schofield and his merry band of scouts guide us to a somewhat less conspicuous position a little off this road. Before the sun comes up, we need to be out of sight, especially from the air.”
Thirty minutes later, the Ranger was parked near the opening of a draw lined with sagebrush just east of the dirt road they’d used as an improvised landing strip. Schofield and one of his men were draping Scion-designed camouflage netting across the aircraft to shield it from visual, thermal, or radar detection. The rest were hard at work smoothing out the tracks left by the aircraft’s gear when it taxied into this hiding place.