Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (89 page)

 
          
“You’ve
got fifteen Seagulls on your tail,” McLanahan reported on the secure radio
channel after they made their turn inbound toward
Haiti
. “I aborted four on you—two because of
connectivity faults with the Sea Stingers, one because of an engine problem,
one because the data link seemed to get weaker at longer ranges. All the rest
looked good, Admiral. You’re clear to descend. I’ll work the drones down behind
you and keep them five hundred feet above you the whole time.”

 
          
“Thanks,
people. Two-Nine’s in the green with twelve thousand pounds,” Hardcastle
replied. “Talk to you in a few.” On interphone he said, “Ready any time you
are, Rush.”

 
          
“Go
for it.”

 
          
“Roger.
Autopilot is on, heading hold on, altitude hold off. Radar and radar
altimeter.”

 
          
“On
and checked,” Masters replied. “Radar altimeter-alerter bug set to five hundred
feet. Radar on terrain-avoidance mode, fault lights off, press-to-test good.”

 
          
“My
left MFD set for TA, thirty-mile range,” Hardcastle said, setting his left-side
nine-inch color-computer monitor so it showed a wedge-shaped radar display with
five-mile-range marks and flight- data information arranged along the edges. He
set his second MFD to show engine and performance data, and the center MFD to
show infrared scanner pictures. “Checked and set.” He put his hands on the
control stick and power control. “I’ve got the airplane.”

 
          
“You’ve
got the airplane,” Masters acknowledged, transferring control to Hardcastle so
he could set up his own MFD configuration. He set his right MFD to show the
radar data and the left main MFD to show engine performance indicators in large
numerals and graphic displays so he would immediately notice any engine
malfunctions. “My MFDs are checked and set. Let me test the IR picture first
... if it’s good I’ll use it for landfall.”

 
          
Hardcastle
punched the FLIR scanner controls on his control stick to ON, and the ten-inch
nitrogen-cooled eye unstowed itself on the Sea Lion’s nose and activated. They
could easily see
Haiti
on the horizon ahead of them as a strip of white, with the coastal
headlands looming cold and dark beyond. Masters lowered his helmet-targeting
visor and activated the TADS/PNVS system, which slaved the scanner ball—and the
Chain Gun pod when activated—to point at whatever he was looking at. The image
projected clearly and without much distortion on the visor, still allowing him
to see out the window and look at his MFDs and controls when he wanted. “My
sights look good.” He raised his targeting visor, glanced over at Hardcastle
and put his hands on the controls once again. “I’ve got the aircraft. Check out
your sights and take another look around the cockpit. Make sure I’ve got the
exterior lights off.”

 
          
“You’ve
got the aircraft,” Hardcastle verified, placing his fingers on the light
switches to double-check—there would be no use flying low to avoid detection if
all the anti-collision, strobes, position and running lights were still on.
“Exterior lights are off.”

 
          
On
interphone Masters announced, “Crew, prepare for low-level descent. Helmets,
jackets, gloves, strapped in and secure.”

 
          
“Crew
ready for descent,” the report from the I-Team commander came.

 
          
“Very
good. Here we go.” On the command channel Masters called out, “Two-Nine
starting descent.”

 
          
“Roger,
Two-Nine,” Elliott said on the radio. “Good hunting. You’ve got the Seagull
gaggle ready to go behind you.”

 
          
“Roger.”
Masters gently pushed the control stick forward and the altitude slowly began
to wind down. He trimmed the aircraft for a thousand-foot-per-minute descent
rate and checked the radar altimeter to be sure it was responding. “Good radar
altimeter, good radar. Nacelles still at zero.”

 
          
“Checks,”
Hardcastle replied. He let his crosscheck cover the cockpit, the instruments
and out the windows as well. He could see a faint outline of the rugged coast
ahead, but everything else was dark. Punching up the satellite-navigation
system he double-checked the navigation data with three shore-based navigation
radios. “Looks like the satellite data’s good. Right on course.” He made
another scan.

 
          
“We
would’ve heard something from Seven-One if we were off,” Masters said. “Passing
ten thousand feet for five hundred.” “Checks,” Hardcastle replied.

 
          
Several
minutes later the AV-22 leveled off at five hundred feet above the waters of
the Golfe de la Gonave, thirty miles before reaching
Haiti
’s west-central coast. Masters engaged the
autopilot on hard-altitude hold and rechecked the radar altimeter,
terrain-avoidance/terrain-following radar system and scanner system as the
coastline approached. “I’ve got a pretty good picture with the FLIR so I’ll
stick with that,” Masters announced. Hardcastle flipped the multimode radar to
STANDBY so as to avoid detection by Haitian coastal defense units. They could
hear a few isolated radio reports from airliners and small commercial planes
heading into Port-au- Prince and
Gonaives
, but no alerts, either in Spanish, French
or English about the presence of the AV-22 or the drones.

 
          
“Feet
dry for Two-Nine,” Hardcastle reported to Elliott as they crossed the
coastline. He turned to his interphone: “Ten minutes to target crossing, crew.”

 
          
“Here’s
where it starts hitting the fan,” Hardcastle muttered, tightening his lap and
shoulder belts and rolling his sleeves back down. “We should start seeing the
drones move ahead of us.” There were no messages from the E-2, no visual
contact with the drones, no radio calls on any frequency. “Six minutes,”
Hardcastle announced. “The drones should be approaching Verrettes soon.” “Sure
is quiet,” Masters said.

 
          
“I’ve
got a feeling Salazar won’t issue us any warning messages,” Hardcastle said,
searching the sky all around them. “If he finds us, he’ll be right on our tail.
McLanahan briefed that they didn’t start getting challenged until they were
relatively close to the base, and the drones are a lot smaller than a fighter.”

 
          
They
waited another minute; by then, with only five minutes to go before the AV-22
arrived over Verrettes, they should have heard
something
—the attack couldn’t be going this well ... “I can’t stand
it any longer,” Hardcastle said. “I know I shouldn’t break radio silence, but I
gotta know what’s going on.” He switched to the command frequency. “Seven-One,
this is Two-Nine. What’s our status?” No reply. “Seven-One, how copy?”

 
          
“Loud
and clear, Two-Nine,” McLanahan replied.

 
          
“Where
are the drones? What’s going on? Are they engaging?” A slight pause, then:
“Two-Nine, the drones are RTB at this time.”

           
“What?
You’re sending them back?
All
of
them?”

 
          
“Affirmative.”

 
          
“Elliott,
dammit, what the hell is going on? What are you doing? Are you sending us in
there by ourselves? We don’t have the firepower to do it by ourselves. What’s
going on? Are you under attack?” “Negative, Two-Nine. We’re in contact with you
. . . and with Shadow One-One flight.”

 
          
“Shadow
flight? Who are they?”

 
          
“Check
out your
two o’clock
position, two miles.”

 
          
“What
the hell... ?” Masters engaged the terrain-avoidance radar to help them stay
above the rolling ground, engaged the autopilot, then used the infrared scanner
to look out to his right. Hardcastle lowered his helmet-targeting visor and
also looked out.

 
          
What
they saw were two dark shapes that reminded Masters of two huge flying
cockroaches. They had flat undercarriages, an unusually curved upper fuselage,
stubby low-mounted wings and a very thin, steeply sloped aft section topped off
with two thin, radically swept stubby vertical stabilizers. Unlike a normal
aircraft’s image in an infrared scanner, with a hot aft-end near the engine
exhausts and a hot spot near the cockpit, this one appeared cool and dark all
over with no telltale heat emissions to give itself away—its infrared signature
was cooler than the surrounding countryside. Masters zoomed in on the two
buglike aircraft, but even at high magnification he could make out little
detail. The two planes slowly accelerated away from the AV-22 and were soon
lost in the darkness—even looking at their aft end with the infrared seeker
they could see no hot exhaust dots, no rear profile, not even an exhaust trail.

 
          
It
had simply disappeared into the night. It was definitely out there, just a few
miles away—easily within detection range of both the infrared scanner and the
multimode radar—but none of their systems was picking them up.

 
          
“Did
you
see
that?” Masters said. “What
were they?” He set the infrared scanner to full wide view—still nothing. “I’m
not picking them up on the FLIR. Did they go supersonic?”

 
          
“I
don’t think so,” Hardcastle replied. “Stealth fighters don’t go supersonic—”

 
          
“Stealth
fighters?
Those
things were Stealth
fighters? What are they doing here?”

 
          
“I
think Elliott has just declared war on Salazar and the drug smugglers,”
Hardcastle said in a low voice. “He’s not going to keep on using only Border
Security assets to deal with those guys—he’s brought in his own air force.”

 
          
“But..
. can he do that?” Masters asked, taking the AV-22 off hard autopilot and
returning to manual flying with the scanner. “I mean, how can he pretend this
is a simple Border Security Force reconnaissance run when he’s got Stealth
fighters flying around out here? Can Elliott order planes like that to—”

 
          
Masters
paused, his mind racing as he realized what was happening. “Elliott really
did
declare war on these guys,” Masters
said cross-cockpit. “He’s going to bomb the bloody hell out of Verrettes . . .”

 
          
The
town of
Verrettes
was located in the
Artibonite
River
valley, a gently sloping fertile plane in
the west-central part of
Haiti
. The F-117A Stealth fighters stayed at low
altitude, less than five hundred feet above ground, hugging the crest of the
hills and staying away from the road and railroad lines down toward the river.
Unlike the AV-22 Sea Lion, the Stealth fighters did not use radar to search out
the terrain—they employed a computerized navigation database to pick the
minimum altitude along their route of flight, then used an infrared scanner to
circumnavigate the occasional man-made obstructions not on the database.

 
          
The
Stealth fighter was designed to avoid detection in several ways . . . Its multifaceted,
bug-like shape did not allow radar energy to reflect directly back at enemy
radar receivers, which reduced its radar signature. Its twin turbofan engines
used a complex system of baffles to cool the engine exhaust to reduce the heat
signature, making acquisition by passing heat detectors much more difficult. It
used no radar transmitters for navigation, so it could not be detected by
passive radar threat-warning receivers—it used infrared scanners, both forward-
and downward-looking, for navigation and bombing. The Stealth carried no
external weapons or fuel tanks—they had to bring a KC-135 tanker from their
base in
Tonopah
,
Nevada
, all the way to the
Great
Inagua
Island
rendezvous point—a post-attack refueling
was essential. All of the fighter’s weapons were carried in semi-recessed
fuselage wells in the belly, which reduced drag and radar signature. Although
the F-117A could travel at supersonic speeds the sonic booms and shock waves
would be a dead giveaway, so they stayed at a much more conservative,
fuel-efficient speed of nine miles per minute as they sped toward Verrettes.