Sky Masters

Romeo 4808N — that was its official name, although its unclassified nickname was “Dreamland” — was a piece of airspace in south-central Nevada designated by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Defense as a “restricted” area, which meant all aircraft — civilian, commercial, other military flights, even diplomatic — were prohibited to fly over it at any altitude without permission from HAWC. Even FAA Air Traffic Control could not clear aircraft to enter that airspace unless in extreme emergency, and even then the violating aircraft could expect to get intercepted by Air Force fighters and the air-traffic controller responsible could expect a long and serious scrutiny of his actions. R-4808N was surrounded by four other restricted areas that were meant to act as a buffer zone to give pilots ample warning time to change course if they were — accidentally or purposely — straying toward R-4808N.

If one entered R-4808N without permission, military aircrew members would at best lose their wings, and commercial and civilian pilots would lose their licenses — and both would be in for an intense multiday “debriefing” conducted by teams of military and CIA interrogators, who would discard most articles of the Bill of Rights to find out why someone was stupid enough to stray into Dreamland. At worst, one would come face-to-face with McLanahan and Cobb’s FB-111B racing across the desert floor at the speed of heat — or nose-to-nose with a BLU-96 fuel-air explosive bomb or some other strange and certainly far deadlier weapon.

Several thousand workers, military and civilian, were shuttled from Las Vegas, Nellis Air Force Base, Beatty, Mercury, Pahrump, and Tonopah every day to the various research centers there. Most civilian workers reported to the Department of Energy facilities near Yucca Flats, where nuclear weapon research was conducted; most military members traveled forty miles farther northeast to the uncharted aircraft and weapons facilities northeast of Yucca Flats called Groom Lake. A series of electronic and human observation posts was set up just south of Groom Lake in Emigrant Valley, where they could observe the BLU-96 HADES bomb’s destructive power.

At the northern tip of Pintwater Ridge, the navigation computer commanded a full 60-degree turn toward the west. McLanahan clicked on the command channel: “CROWBAR, Vapor Two-One, IP inbound, unlocking now at T minus sixty seconds. Out.” It took only seconds to configure the switches for weapon release, and finding the target on radar was a snap — it was a six-story concrete tower, resembling a fire-department training tower, surrounded by trucks, a few surplus tanks and armored personnel carriers, and surrounded by about a hundred mannequins dressed in various combat outfits, from lightweight fatigues to bulky chemical suits. Obviously, HAWC was not concerned about evaluating the effects of a HADES bomb on minefields — they had “softer” targets in mind for the BLU-96. Surrounding ground zero were several thirty-foot-high wooden blast fences erected every one thousand feet, which would be used to gauge the effect of the HADES bomb’s shock wave.

McLanahan could shack this bomb with one eye — it was hardly a test of either his or Cobb’s skill. This was going to be a “toss” release, where the bombing computer displayed a CCIP, or continuously computed impact point, steering cue on Cobb’s heads-up display; the steering cue was a line that ran from the target at the bottom of the heads-up display to a release cue cross at the top, with the release pipper in the middle. Cobb would offset the bomber to one side of the release cue line; then, at the right moment, would turn and climb so as to “walk” the pipper up the release cue line and eventually place the release cue cross directly in the center of the aiming pipper. When the cross split the pipper, the bomb would release — the hard turn would add “whip- crack” momentum to the bomb, allowing it to fly farther than a conventional level release.

It was all a very computer-controlled and rather basic bombing procedure — hardly a difficult task for a fifteen-year Air Force veteran bombardier. But sortie rates were down and flying hours were being cut, and McLanahan and his fellow flight test crew dogs were sniveling every flight they could. Except for a few high-value projects — Dreamstar, ANTARES, the Megafortress Plus, the A-12 bomber, the X-35 and X-37 superfighters, and a few other aircraft that were too weird for words and probably would never see daylight for another decade — research activity at Dreamland had almost ground to a halt. Peace was breaking out all over the world — despite the efforts of nut-cases like Saddam Hussein, Moammar Quaddafi, and a few renegade Russian generals to disrupt things — and the military would be the first to pay for the “peace dividend” that most Americans had been waiting for at least the past five years.