Air Battle Force by Dale Brown Read Free Book Online

Patrick said. “We’re clear of the Pakistani coastal-defense sites—take it up to Mach one point one, five-thousand-foot clearance plane.”
    â€œThis is not a good idea,” Rebecca said—but she found herself pushing up the throttles anyway.
    â€œI’m running your range numbers,” Luger radioed, studying the fuel-flow data being transmitted to him via satellite from the Vampire. “At your current fuel consumption, and assuming you don’t take extra time retrieving the StealthHawks or dodging air defenses, you’ll be almost at emergency fuel state at the scheduled refueling control point. If you couldn’t tank, you might not have enough fuel to make it to Diego Garcia.”
    â€œCopy,” Patrick responded.
    They skirted along the Iran-Pakistan border and descended to three hundred feet terrain-following, giving an extremely wide berth to the Iranian border city of Zahedan, which had the largest fighter-interceptor wing in all of Central Asia. They detected more SA-10 surface-to-air units and several short-range, radar-guided antiaircraft artillery units situated along the border—they all had their search-and-acquisition radars on full power. Soon they also detected Iranian fighters—more than a dozen of them, a mixture of French, Russian, and even former American jets. “Damn, we’ve got the entire Iranian air force looking for us,” Rebecca said.
    â€œThe closest one is forty miles away,” Patrick said, “and he doesn’t have us. The Iranian jets aren’t crossing the border either.”
    Just then one Iranian MiG-29 surprised them—he suddenly turned directly toward them, illuminating them with his radar, and headed quickly east, crossing the Pakistani border near the town of Saindak. “Caution, MiG-29 search mode, nine o’clock, thirty-three miles, high, below detection threshold,” the threat-warning computer reported.
    â€œGeneral . . .” But the Vampire bomber had already responded—it activated its radar trackbreakers and unreeled the ALE-55 fiber-optic towed decoy from a fairing in the tail. The ALE-55 was a small, bullet-shaped device that transmitted jamming and deception signals to hide the bomber and deflect any incoming threats away from it. It was a very effective but definitely last-ditch device to help the bomber escape if it was under direct attack. “We will never launch on a mission ever again without having defensive weapons on board, I promise you that,” Rebecca went on. The Vampire could carry a wide array of defensive air-to-air missiles, from short-range Stingers to extremely long-range Anaconda missiles—but this wasn’t supposed to be an attack mission.
    â€œPakistani search radar, three o’clock, forty miles,” Patrick reported. “Well below detection levels.”
    â€œWarning, MiG-29 tracking mode, nine o’clock, twenty-five miles.”
    â€œTrackbreakers active,” Patrick reported, punctuating the report with a curse. The trackbreakers could spoof and interfere with the fighter’s tracking radar but would also tell anyone around them that a warplane was in the area—and enemy fighters might be able to track the origin of the jamming signal or fire a missile with the ability to home in on the signal.
    â€œPuppeteer, this is Control,” Luger radioed. “Step it on down to COLA and head northeast. He doesn’t have a solid lock on you yet.”
    Patrick studied the large supercockpit display on his forward instrument panel. The terrain to the northeast near the Pakistan-Afghan border was completely flat, with several dry lake beds farther north. A bomber the size of a B-1, even as stealthy as it was, would be easy to track against a flat desert from a MiG-29 chasing it from above. The MiG-29 also had an advanced infrared sensor that could spot the B-1’s red-hot engines over twenty miles away—it