Hypersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (22 page)

O’Malley had gone on: “There have been three thousand attacks
around the world just in 1985, and everybody is trying to pretend they didn’t happen. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union is a rust belt, sinking in its own waste. We’ve got to stop these Muslim fanatics, and the top guy right now is Qaddafi, in Libya. He’s a smart-ass, and Reagan knows we need to squash him.”

So there it was. All of the planning was directed at a joint Air Force/Navy strike at five targets in Libya, in cooperation with friendly NATO countries. That had gone sour in early April, when France, Germany, Italy, and Spain not only refused to cooperate in a strike, they denied passage of U.S. warplanes through their airspace. Some friends.

Now the fleet of eighteen F-111Fs—Aardvarks they called them because of their long, pointed, slightly turned-up noses—was en route on a round-trip flight (they hoped) of sixty-four hundred miles that would take thirteen hours and twelve in-flight refuelings. The F-111’s three targets were in Tripoli, while Navy carrier planes were hitting two sites in Benghazi. A fleet of twenty-eight McDonnell Douglas KC-10 and Boeing KC-135 tankers flew with the strike force.

It was relatively quiet in the cockpit of Lujack 34, his call sign. There was no radio chatter and the airplane flew well on its autopilot. These were special versions of the F-111, with powerful Pratt & Whitney TF30 engines, each putting out 25,100 pounds of thrust and giving a top speed of Mach 2.2. Best of all, they were equipped with the new and highly classified AN/AVQ-26 Pave Tack bombing system.

Pave Tack was sort of a modern Norden bombsight both in importance and in secrecy. It had been one of Bob Rodriquez’s last contributions to precision bombing. He had developed a system that gave high-speed tactical aircraft the ability to acquire, recognize, and attack tactical targets during day, night, and some adverse weather conditions. Building on Bob’s earlier designs, Pave Tack used an imaging infrared sensor and laser designator/ranger for navigational updates, target acquisition and recognition, and weapon delivery.

V. R. had gone through a conversion course at Cannon Air Force Base, immersing himself in the big swing-wing F-111F and its complex electronics. Now he had about two hundred hours in the aircraft, and was the low-time man in the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing. He didn’t have to wonder what Chuck Waple thought about that.

Especially on this mission. They had launched from RAF Lakenheath at 17:36 GMT, and their first night refueling—in radio silence,
of course—had been from a big McDonnell Douglas KC-10—the first time anyone in the 48th had refueled from that aircraft. And it was thirteen long years since the last wartime flights in Vietnam. Very few people in the formation were combat veterans. V. R. had been blooded, flying secretly for Israel and scoring a victory over a Syrian MiG. No one in the squadron knew this, although it would have helped V. R.’s new-guy position to have told them.

The tankers helped the fighters navigate at 26,000 feet and 450 knots. The fighters clustered next to their “mother tanker” in such tight formation that radar controllers on the ground could see only the tankers on their screens as they charted an extremely accurate course, skirting all NATO airspace. Four EF-111F Raven electronic warfare aircraft flew with them, ready to blank out enemy radar, communications, and SAM launching electronics. Grumman had modified a dozen F-111s into electronic counterwarfare aircraft. The crews called it the “Spark-Vark” and reveled in its advanced equipment that included GPS navigation gear.

They would need the EF-111s. V. R. and the rest of the 48th pilots felt they were on a crapshoot, facing a duel with the sophisticated Soviet surface-to-air missiles that were part of the expensive Libyan integrated air defense system. There were Soviet spy ships in the Mediterranean, watching for an attack they knew was coming. The same governments that denied overflight also harbored Soviet operatives eager to pass information on to Moscow. This night would really test the F-111F—and the 48th TFW.

O’Malley had balked at the instructions to have eighteen F-111s make the attack; he thought the element of surprise would be lost. He knew that the long route and the multiple refuelings would increase the chances of a mishap by orders of magnitude. But he had been overruled by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who wanted a significant amount of bombs dropped on the target. The only concession they made was demanding that the Air Force and Navy aircraft attack simultaneously, to maximize any element of surprise that remained.

Time droned by for the F-111s, with the almost hourly stimulation of in-flight refuelings keeping the crews awake.

“Tony, how are we doing? Will we meet the rules of engagement?”

Waple’s sleepy voice came back. “No problem, Skipper, if we get
down and manage to identify the targets. All the equipment is functioning perfectly. You just have to fly down the chute at the right time and the right speed.”

The right time was now. V. R. and the other F-111Fs descended to two hundred feet, releasing their bombs precisely at 02:00 hours local Libyan time. V. R.’s target was the Tripoli airport. They got confirmation on the target and Waple’s twelve Snakeye parachute-retarded Mk 82 bombs, five hundred pounders, destroyed an Ilyushin IL-76 transport and tore up some revetments. As V. R. pulled up he saw a flash in the distance, and thought,
Oh-oh. Someone just caught the golden bb.

The combined Navy and Air Force assault was over in ten minutes. Libyan resistance was light, and seemed confused and inaccurate. By morning they’d have the reconnaissance photos to tell how much damage had been done. He was content. They had hit their targets, and maybe they had Qaddafi’s attention. Now he hunkered down for the long flight back, more of the same, plowing along, excitement subsiding, doing the air refueling drill, and wondering what O’Malley would think about the raid.

And wondering when he would get back to the 415 TFS, the Nighthawk—and Ginny. He thought for a moment and reflected,
There’s my problem. I’ve got things in the wrong order.

November 23, 1987
Mojave, California

S
TANDING OUTSIDE THE
dingy office, Rod nodded at Harry and smiled, saying, “Looks like it’s going to be an all-male family reunion.”

“They missed a bet. They expected it to be hot and here it’s a pleasant sixty degrees.”

Both men recalled a previous visit, one that had tested the late Tom Shannon’s will and courage with its heat. Tom had passed away on New Year’s Day, 1984, quietly in his sleep, just as his father had done.

“The temperature’s not the only thing different; we’ve got a bit of a crisis on hand with AdVanceAir Leasing, as you know. Do you want to start, or should I?”

Harry smiled. “Well, let me start with a general discussion, find
out what everyone has been doing. I know everyone wants to hear from V. R. how the Libyan raid went off. And I know O’Malley is going to give us a pitch on how rotten the Muslims are—you can’t avoid it when he’s around. Everybody else will want to have their say, too. When we’ve finished chewing the rag, you give your pitch first, because I know you have nothing but bad news. I’ve got mostly good news, so I’ll finish on an upbeat note.”

They went through the fragile door, twisted almost off its hinges by a hot Mojave wind last summer. Inside, the rest of the group, all Shannon intimates and all investors in AdVanceAir Leasing, kept up their buzz of conversations.

For years they had met at the traditional New Year’s Eve party at the Shannon house in Palos Verde. Last year, everyone was spread all over the world, and Harry canceled the party. This year Harry and Anna were planning a three-week cruise over the Christmas holidays. But today’s business was so urgent that everyone agreed to move the meeting date up, and coordinate their schedules to meet at Mojave. O’Malley was at Edwards on business so V. R. caught a flight down from Tonopah to drive over with him. Dennis Jenkins had picked up Warren Bowers in Santa Monica and drove out with him and Harry.

The dreary mélange of used furniture—folding metal chairs, padded office chairs with missing casters, a bench—was pushed around into a circle as Harry stood by the cloth-covered briefing board. He noted that the cloth was black this time—Rod had a puckish sense of humor.

“Good morning, all. Sorry the ladies didn’t see fit to make it, but we’ll take them all out to dinner tonight to make up for it. We’ve got about forty minutes of business to conduct, give or take a quarter of an hour, but first I know we all want to hear from V. R. about Operation El Dorado Canyon, when he and his F-111 buddies put the fear of God into Qaddafi.”

Steve O’Malley gave out a hearty “Hear! Hear!” and they smiled. He had slipped the idea for the raid into the back door of the White House Military Office. A buddy who flew Air Force One dropped the idea casually to one of Cap Weinberger’s staffers, and it had taken off.

V. R. stood up, smiling, gave them the story of the raid, then
turned to O’Malley, saying, “General, you know the results better than I do. Why don’t you tell us all what really happened.”

Beaming, O’Malley said, “Well, even though the tangible military results were not all we wanted, the psychological results were. In short, we scared the shit out of Qaddafi, that’s for sure. There’s been a definite decline in hostile actions from the Muslim organizations Qaddafi was funding. He himself was reported to be virtually incapacitated for days after the raid. He disappeared for twenty-four hours. He likes bombing others, but isn’t so crazy about being bombed himself. You know that he claims that his daughter was injured. I’m only sorry that it was her and not Qaddafi himself.”

O’Malley paused and went on. “The rules of engagement inhibited the attack. It is damn hard to get a positive target I.D. in that environment. Only four of the F-111s—V. R.’s was one of them—got definite target identification. Six had to abort because of aircraft problems, and seven flat missed their targets entirely. One put a bomb near the French embassy.”

Dennis Jenkins yelled “Hear! Hear!” and got a laugh.

“But we got a lot of pointers for improvement. For the next A-rab we go after.” O’Malley was quiet for a moment, then said, “We were also lucky. The Libyans didn’t put up anything like the defense they should have been able to do with the equipment they had on hand. You know they had at least three thousand Soviet technicians there—they must all have been drunk. We lost one airplane, as you know. They claim it was shot down by a SAM, and maybe it was, but it could have been just pilot disorientation.”

V. R. spoke up. “You said it, General.” V. R. never presumed on their friendship to call him Steve. “It was pitch-black, the flak was limited but coming up on all sides, and we had to jink around. It would have been easy for someone to lose their orientation and go in.”

There was some back and forth, the usual banter among friends, then Harry called on Dennis to talk. “What’s going on in your world, Dennis?”

“Harry, you’ve got the CFO’s report in your back pocket there, so I won’t comment on the business. But I would like to say that NASA seems to be slowly recovering from the loss of the
Challenger.
”

They were all quiet. Not a man in the room could forget where he
was when the ghastly news of the January 1986 Space Shuttle disaster had burst over the networks.

“When do you think they’ll fly again? Or do you think they’ll fly again?”

Dennis shook his head. “They’ll fly again, for sure, but not until they’ve gone over everything another thousand times. They are shaken that such a trivial seeming thing—a rubber O-ring—could have caused such a tragedy. It will be two years, maybe three, until they fly again. But they will fly. NASA is committed to it, and so are the astronauts.”

Jenkins went on. “The
Challenger
got the year off to a bad start, but there were some high spots later in 1986 that have to give you hope for the business. Lockheed kept on churning out C-130s—more than eighteen hundred now, and no sign of the line stopping. We had the first flight of the McDonnell F-15E. It is one hell of a strike fighter, and it’s going to be around for a long time. And maybe the cheeriest news of 1986 started out here in Mojave. Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager made it around the world, nonstop and un-refueled in the
Voyager
. That was some deal, you have to admire them—Dick, Jeana, Burt, the whole crew.”

V. R. nodded in agreement. “That was a lot riskier than bombing Qaddafi! Every time I watch their takeoff roll, I get goose bumps. They looked like they were going to buy the farm right there at Edwards.”

Harry spoke up. “We’ll hear a lot more from them. Burt Rutan already has a series of designs in the works, all totally unlike anything we’ve seen before. He’s a genius, just like Dad said he was.”

Surprisingly Warren Bowers spoke up. “What about ’87, Dennis? Anything worth while mentioning there?”

Jenkins smiled. “Well, the funniest thing was that kid, what was his name, Mathias Rust, flew a Cessna into Moscow and landed in Red Square.”

There was applause and O’Malley called out, “Don’t let that fool you. They had him under surveillance all along, and could have shot him down, but after all the bad publicity about shooting down the Korean Airliner, they didn’t have the guts to do it. But it does show that there are cracks in the Soviet system.”

Dennis nodded and went on. “We’re getting some competition in fighters. The Brits and the French have the Typhoon in work, and the Swedes have another hot little fighter, the Saab Gripen; I don’t know
how they do it, a tiny little country staying up with the rest of the world.”

O’Malley, always a trifle chauvinistic, said, “They do it with American technology. That’s a G.E. engine they are using, and they are arming it with Sidewinders and Mavericks, all good G.I. issue, built under license.”

Jenkins said, “Agreed, but be that as it may, they’ll be competition, and the market for fighters gets tighter every year as their price goes up. Remember what Norm Augustine predicted: someday every dollar in the Air Force budget will go to buy just one airplane.”