Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 02 (82 page)

 
          
“What
is he shooting at. . . ?” His question was interrupted by another bright flash
and explosion from the missile site, the boom rolling across the airfield and
slamming into the slanted windows of the control tower—but this time no missile
left the site.

 
          
Tret’yak
stared in amazement at the remains of the SA-8 site on the small hill
overlooking the runway—half the hill had been blown away, men and vehicles
scattered around like a child’s upended toy box. The sudden destruction was
clearly visible in the glare of a massive fuel fire on top of the hill.

 
          
“The
missile site has been hit,” Tret’yak called out. “Launch the fighters, send
units three and four south to engage the aircraft that is launching those
missiles, get five and six airborne—”

 
          
Another
volley of gunfire from the fifty-seven-millimeter unit, followed by an
explosion and fireball not a half-kilometer off the end of the runway that lit
up almost the entire base. The shock wave from the explosion knocked Tret’yak
sideways. The area was littered with secondary explosions, and fires erupted in
the forests surrounding Sebaco.

 
          
“We
got one,” someone in the tower yelled. “We got an American aircraft . . .”

 
          
The
celebration was cut short by another volley of gunfire from the
fifty-seven-millimeter gun emplacement. Tret’yak, back on his feet, stared out
to watch the gun’s tracers streak into the night. Suddenly the significance of
what he was watching hit him full force: “Why is the anti-aircraft artillery
unit firing tracers?” he yelled. “Their gun is radar-guided and it’s
nighttime—they don’t need tracers. It will only give away their position. Order
them to—”

 
          
Too
late. As Tret’yak watched, the gun site was obliterated. When the glare of the
explosion cleared from Tret’yak’s eyes, he saw that the gun’s radar-trailer,
located inside a bunker of its own fifty meters away from the gun itself, had
been destroyed. There was collateral damage to the gun itself but it was still
intact.

 
          
“Anti-radar
missiles,” Tret’yak said angrily. “They are launching anti-radar missiles.
Order the north gun site to use infrared and electro-optical guidance. I want
an ambulance over to that south gun sight to—”

 
          
“Another
missile,” someone yelled, pointing toward the southeast. In the glare of the
forest fires and the burning radar trailer, Tret’yak saw it—a large, sleek,
slow-moving winged- missile. It drifted lazily past the burning trees, past the
fifty- seven-millimeter gun emplacement—Tret’yak could see men pointing at the
missile, but the gun never slewed around and never got a shot off at the
object. As if the thing was doing an approach to the runway, the missile
cruised right onto the field just to the south of the taxiway, right on the
northern edge of the parking ramp. As soon as the missile was over the ramp
area, objects like small boxes began to eject themselves from both sides of the
craft.

 
          
And
then huge columns of fire began erupting from the parking ramp every ten or
fifteen meters. The main taxiway was hit almost directly down the center,
carving large craters in the tarmac. The bombs did the same to the north half of
the parking ramp, lifting sections of concrete as if the earth itself was
opening up. Bombs fell on the two fully loaded and fueled MiG-23s on the ramp,
creating a destruction that spread across the parking ramp. Burning missiles
from the MiGs arched across the base, and twenty-three-millimeter gun rounds
pinged oflF the control tower, creating jagged holes in the shatterproof glass.
Tret’yak, the controllers and the radiomen dove for the floor. The cluster-bomb
drone continued on, dropping its load of destruction. It missed the two MiGs
parked on the runway hammerhead by several meters, showering the fighters with
pieces of concrete.

 
          
Tret’yak
stumbled to his feet, grabbing for a microphone. “Sebaco three and four, take
oflF.” He did not issue the order in Spanish, but the MiG pilots needed little
prompting. The number three MiG put his plane in full afterburner and roared
down the runway, pulling his nose up in a hard fast climb. The fourth MiG
taxied up to the end of the runway but chose to wait until the third MiG was
clear before starting its takeofiF.

 
          
Finally
the fourth MiG lined up with the runway, slapped in max afterburner, released
brakes and sped away. The fighter just managed to get its gear up at the end of
the runway when an explosion ripped off the MiG’s tail section. The MiG flipped
up and backward, and the pilot ejected just as the fighter continued its
backward spiral and slammed into the ground about a mile ofiF the end of the
runway.

 
          
A
nightmare, Tret’yak thought—except this one was real. One by one, Sebaco’s
defenses had been neutralized—and not one enemy fighter had yet been spotted—a
blur of motion ofiF to the south attracted his attention, and then he did see
it ... a massive dark shape hugging the ground no higher than the ten-story
control tower. It flew diagonally across the south end of the runway about a
half-mile from the tower. It was
huge,
one of the biggest aircraft Tret’yak had ever seen. The sound of its engines
was like a freight train rumbling by at full speed.

 
          
The
aircraft banked sharply left, aligning itself with the row of buildings and
hangars along the parking ramp area. Tret’yak could see a few soldiers firing
their rifles at the apparition, but to the KGB general it was as if they were
trying to kill a whale with squirt guns. The aircraft roared down the runway
with the sound of a gigantic waterfall. Illuminated as it was in the fires on
the parking ramp, Tret’yak could see that the monstrosity had a long pointed
nose, no visible tail-control surfaces and huge sprawling wings with missiles
of different sizes hanging from them. It was not like any aircraft he had ever
seen.

 
          
Just
as quickly as the thing appeared it was gone, leaving in its wake clouds of
dust and smoke swirling around the few remaining fires. The silence was
awesome, as if the huge black craft had sucked all air and all sound away with
it. Tret’yak stood in the control tower, staring through the shattered glass of
the control tower at the scene below. What had been an important Soviet
military base a few minutes before had been turned into chaos.

 
          
“What
was
that thing?” the senior
controller asked, shaking bits of glass off his tunic. “I’ve never seen
anything like it.”

 
          
“It
had to be some sort of bomber,” Tret’yak said, shaking his head. “But I’ve
never known such a large aircraft to fly so low on a bomb run. It was obviously
the aircraft that launched the anti-radar missiles and set off those bombs that
cratered our ramp.”

 
          
“Could
it have destroyed our fourth fighter?”

 
          
“It
could not have—” But Tret’yak paused. A bomber carrying air-to-air missiles?
Why not? That bomber that passed by seemed to be carrying several kinds of
weapons under its huge wings. Instead Tret’yak replied, “Any reports from our
radar sites? Any reports from
Managua
?”

 
          
“No,
sir, not yet. We should have communications reestablished shortly.”

 
          
Tret’yak
turned to the communications operator. “I want a rescue crew out to find the
pilot of our fourth MiG. And I want that ramp cleared as soon as possible. Our
fighters will need to land in about an hour.” The operator nodded and began to
issue the orders. Lights snapped on, further revealing the damage caused by the
strange drone. But as men and machines moved out to the ramp to put out the
fires, the extent of the damage was not as total as first thought.

 
          
“We
have been hit, but not put out of action,” Tret’yak said. “The runway appears
open, our fuel stubs and hangars are intact and only half our ramp space has
been affected. This base is still operational.”

 
          
“We’ve
been fortunate, sir,” the senior controller said, “that bomber looked large
enough to carry a hundred bombs. It could have caused much destruction ...”

           
Tret’yak was about to reply, but the
words caught in his throat. He remembered seeing weapons hanging off the wings
. . . the bomber did not drop any bombs over the base . . .

 
          
He
suddenly turned to the communications operator. “Clear that ramp immediately,
shut off the lights.”

 
          
“But
sir, the firefighters—”

 
          
“That
bomber is coming back. It did not withdraw—it only found more targets. Order
the gun sites to—”

 
          
Too
late. An explosion erupted in the northern fifty-seven- millimeter
gun-emplacement bunker—Tret’yak didn’t need his binoculars to know that the
north gun had just been destroyed. “Tell the south gun to open fire. Forget the
radar guidance—just fire the gun to the north, bracket the area.
Quickly.
”

 
          
But
the radio operator froze, gaping out the windows to the north across the
runway. Tret’yak grabbed the microphone and was about to push the man out of
the way when he too looked up and followed the man’s stare.

 
          
The
dark shape roared out of the jungle surrounding Sebaco like some sort of
prehistoric bird, swooping so low over the trees that it appeared to be
skimming the tops, the wing vortices and engine thrust snapping branches and
parting the forest. When it cleared the trees it dropped even lower, not more
than twenty or thirty meters above ground. It was headed right for the control
tower, aiming its pointed nose at a spot, it seemed, right between Tret’yak’s
eyes.

 
          
In
rapid succession four dark streaks arced away from the bomber’s belly. The
first headed straight ahead, plowing into the center of Sebaco’s two-kilometer
runway. The explosion obscured the bomber for several seconds until the behemoth
crashed through the column of smoke, bearing down on the control tower.

 
          
A
second missile missed the control tower by a few meters, flew by and hit a
building somewhere behind the tower— Tret’yak immediately thought of his
headquarters building a few hundred meters directly in that weapon’s path. The
missiles seemed to be massive bombs with wings, more flying whales than
missiles. A third and forth explosion rocked the hangars oflF to Tret’yak’s
left, blowing out the hangar doors, collapsing both buildings and scattering
pieces of steel and concrete in all directions. Secondary explosions blew the
roofs oflF another hangar, adding more fuel to the fires now burning out of
control all along the flight line.

 
          
The
massive aircraft then executed an impossibly tight left turn toward the
southeast. The roar of the bomber’s engines was so great that it threatened to
collapse the control tower. As it banked away, its broad jet-black fuselage
missing the tower by only a dozen meters, the remaining glass panels exploded
as if grenades had been set oflF inside the room. Tret’yak was thrown oflF his
feet, blinded and deafened by the hurricane-like aftermath. Tables, books,
chairs and pieces of equipment flew everywhere.

 
          
Tret’yak
could not move for several moments, and even though he was awake and alert he
felt as if he had been dismembered. Finally he shook oflF the piles of debris
on his back and struggled to his feet. The control tower was beginning to fill
with smoke as the fires in the nearby hangars intensified; the underground fuel
pits, containing over forty thousand decaliters of jet fuel, were in danger
unless the fires could be contained.

 
          
He
helped his men to their feet and toward the exits as he surveyed what he could
see of his airbase. The runway had one huge crater in the center, leaving about
nine hundred meters usable on either side of the crater—not enough to recover
the MiG-23S. It would take a day to repair it; the fighters would have to land
at Sandino International, Bluefields or Puerto Cabezas. The taxiway was
destroyed and the parking ramp was unusable.
Two fifty-seven
-millimeter guns and one SA-8 missile site
out of commission—the SA-io site in the Rio Tuma valley had apparently been
destroyed as well. Not to mention the one MiG-23 fighter destroyed right after
takeofiF. Tret’yak checked the area behind the tower and found the second
American glide-bomb had hit the roof of the underground headquarters building,
but caused no apparent serious damage or fire.