Sky Masters

Every effort has been made to present realistic situations, but all of the persons and situations presented here are products of my imagination and should not be considered reflections of actual persons, products, policy, or practice. Any similarity of any organization, device, weapons system, policy, person, or place to any real-world counterpart is strictly coincidental. The author makes no attempt to present the actual military or civil policies of any organization or government.

The author hopes readers will note the chronological setting of this novel in regards to some of his previous books, most notably Day of the Cheetah. While certain characters and backdrops in that book appear here, the events described in this book come a full two years earlier than those in Day of the Cheetah. Moreover, this book, like that one, stands completely on its own — neither a prequel nor sequel.

Maps

Prologue

Monday, 6 June 1994, 0812 hours local

Somewhere over Southern Nevada

“T minus two minutes and counting… mark.”

Lieutenant Colonel Patrick McLanahan glanced up at his mission data display just as the time-to-go clock clicked over to 00:01:59. Dead on time. He clicked open the command radio channel with the switch near his left foot. “Vapor Two-One copies,” he reported. “CROWBAR, Vapor Two- One requesting final range clearance.”

“Stand by, Two-One.”

Stand by, he thought to himself — not likely. McLanahan and his partner, Major Henry Cobb, were flying in an FB-111B “Super Aardvark” bomber, skimming two hundred feet above the hot deserts of southern Nevada at the speed of sound — every five seconds they waited put them a mile closer to the target. The FB-111B was the “stretched” version of the venerable F-111 supersonic swing-wing bomber, an experimental model that was the proposed interim supersonic bomber when the B-l Excalibur bomber program was canceled back in the late 1970s. Only a few remained, and the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center (HAWC) — the Defense Department’s secret test complex for weapons and aircraft, hidden in the restricted desert ranges north of Las Vegas — had them. Most F-111 aircraft were seeing their last few years of service, and more and more were popping up in Reserve units or sitting in museums or base airparks — but HAWC always made use of their airframes until they fell apart or crashed.

But the “Super Vark” was not the subject of today’s sortie. Although an FB-111B could carry a twenty-five-thousand-pound payload, McLanahan and Cobb were carrying only one twenty-six-hundred-pound bomb that morning — but what a bomb it was.

Officially the bomb was called the BLU-96, but its nickname was HADES — and for its size it was the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in existence. HADES was filled with two hundred gallons of a thin, gasoline-like liquid that was dispersed over a target, then ignited by remote control. Because the weapon does not need to carry its own oxidizer but uses oxygen in the atmosphere to ignite the fuel, the resulting explosion had all the characteristics of a nuclear explosion — it created a mushroom cloud several hundred feet high, a fireball nearly a mile in diameter, and a shock wave that could knock down buildings and trees within two miles. Oddly enough, the BLU-96 had not been used since the Vietnam War, so HAWC was conducting experiments on the feasibility of using the awesome weapon again for some future conflict.

HADES had been designed as a weapon to quickly clear very large minefields, but against troops it would be utterly devastating. That fact, of course, would go into HAWC’s report to the Department of Defense.

“Vapor, this is CROWBAR, you are cleared to enter R-4808N and R-4806W routes and altitudes, remain this frequency. Acknowledge.”

McLanahan checked his watch. “Vapor acknowledges, cleared to enter Romeo 4808 north and Romeo 4806 west routes and altitudes at zero-six, 1514 Zulu, remain with CROWBAR. Out.” He turned to Cobb, checking engine instruments and the fuel totalizer as his eyes swept across the center instrument panel. “We’re cleared in, Henry.” Cobb clicked the mike twice in response. Cobb never said much during missions — his job was to fly the plane, which he always did in stony silence.