Chapter 14:
Where Fools Fear to Tread
After the organized chaos of the Silverfish recovery, the postponed Operation Brainstorm finally was given the go-ahead. Fortunately, Williamson's public revelations about the Remote Viewer Project had not compromised the security of the operation. To keep it that way, the White House and the nation's security organs had spent the last three days plugging the probable sources of leaks (i.e., threatening people). As a result, the mainstream news media treated remote viewing either as a joke or as just another government boondoggle, mostly ignoring the story after it was 24 hours old. The tabloid media's continuing interest in the story merely reinforced the aura of unreality surrounding it.
In the Ninth Recon Wing ready-room, all crews were informed that our mission was to over-fly the Republic of Russia and then onward to the two targets in Iraq: the University of Mosul and University of Baghdad. The CIA suspected that quantities of weapons-grade nuclear materials were being hidden at those schools. Although my remote viewing success rate at identifying targets in training was only 70 percent (Megan’s was 60 percent), the Air Force still wanted to do actual over-flights of Iraq, since a recent Defense Intelligence Agency analysis reported that remote viewing was 33 percent more accurate when performed within 20 miles of the target. The success of the hastily prepared Silverfish operation seemed to support their conclusions. Operation Brainstorm now had the credibility it had sorely lacked with the skeptics at the Pentagon.
After the briefing, I started thinking "classified thoughts": Do we really need to over-fly Russia in order for us to get to Iraq in a hurry? Hell, no. The US Air Force has bases in Europe that are fairly close to Iraq. And even more questionable: why use five planes but only two remote viewers? What were the other three planes up to? The real mission probably has less to do with Iraq than with monitoring the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1991, who in the hell really knew who was in control of the Soviet nuclear weapons?
The wing’s sorties to Iraq via Russian airspace were timed with the orbit of America’s only operating KH-11 spy satellite, which could monitor Eurasia for only 16 hours per day - with our spy planes covering the eight-hour gap in coverage. The five Blackbirds would rotate through the sorties, from California, over the North Pole to Russian and Iraqi airspace - with an in-flight refueling over the Black Sea. Then the longer return flight at the seemingly ubiquitous 30 degrees latitude, Iraq to California - a 14,000-mile round trip.
* * *
20 hours later:
The first two sorties of Operation Brainstorm were completed without incident, and both crews were winging their way back to California by now. Six hours after the second Blackbird had cleared Turkish airspace, my crew's plane - with the third sortie - took-off from Beale. Megan was scheduled for the fifth one, and then it would start all over again. I didn't anticipate getting much sleep in the foreseeable future, until U.S. astronauts could repair the other, broken KH-11 to restore full spy-satellite coverage of the Earth. Unfortunately, the launch of the first Space Shuttle since the Challenger Disaster was still months away.
After the usual topping-off of our fuel tanks over the Pacific, we rocketed toward the north pole, crossing it less than two hours later. At an altitude of over 90,000 feet at a speed of Mach 3, deep inside Russia, we were blissfully unaware that an armed take-over was being attempted – at that very moment – in Moscow, by an anti-Gorbechev clique which made up the so-called Committee for the State of Emergency, a conspiratorial faction inside the Politburo. These hard-line communists were pissed-off because three months ago, most of the decision-making power had been transferred from the Politburo to the individual Soviet Republic's legislatures – “All power to the Soviets” was finally realized, but not as Lenin and Trotsky had envisioned.
So, while the President of the USSR – Michail Gorbechev – vacationed in the Crimea, these traitorous Politburo members placed him under house arrest and ordered military units to patrol the streets of Moscow. The date: 19 August 1991. Tanks rolled through the streets of Moscow, and troops occupied the Russian Parliament. The coup plotters had to have been aware that the US spy satellite was currently out of range of Moscow, on the other side of the globe. Of course I knew none of those details at the time.
Wahoo said over the Interphone, "We got an emergency satellite message comin' through right now." Seconds later he said, "Aw shoot, looks like we gotta boogie outta here, y'all." He went on to explain that the message ordered us to abort the mission, and that we were already past the point of no return to any NATO base in Western Europe, thanks to the terrible fuel economy of the Blackbird.
Since our last in-flight refueling had taken place nearly three hours ago, over the Arctic Ocean, our only remaining option was to fly at maximum speed to our next scheduled re-fueling point over the Black Sea, in friendly Turkish airspace. The message from the Pentagon made no mention of the current turmoil in Moscow, only this code-phrase: “walrus/pancake,” meaning to abort the mission and fly immediately to the nearest NATO air base. Naturally we couldn’t reply to the message without giving our position away, so we maintained radio silence. After Wahoo checked his code book, he said, “Bad news, y’all. Looks like trouble on the ground, so we might be might be stirring up a hornet’s nest just by being here. The mission is tits-up, but keep all the cameras rollin’, Frankie. We might as well git some tourist shots while we’re here.” The plane was equipped with every kind of sophisticated camera , including still film, motion-picture film and video - in optical, infrared and ultraviolet frequency range. It was equipped with x-ray and gamma ray sensors as well. In an extreme National Emergency (such as a nuclear alert), all data and camera images could be transmitted back to the Pentagon War Room in real time. But doing so would likely expose us to attack from surface-to-air missiles - and the Blackbird lacked offensive and defensive weapons of any kind. Its Mach 3+ speed and invisibility to radar were its only means of survival in a hostile environment. Wahoo added, "Sarge, if ya see anythin' interestin' inside yer psychic brain, sing out."
"Roger." I watched a video feed on my computer screen, using a small joystick to zoom the high resolution images down to rooftop level. The colorful spires of the Kremlin came into view. Thousands of enraged, freedom-hungry Muscovites were rioting as we overflew them, and Boris Yeltsin was now making his heroic pose atop a tank. "I'm looking at Moscow on video - damned tanks are all over the streets!"
The Mach meter displayed on my monitor read: Mach 3.2: 2,150 MPH at our altitude. The sun burned white in a blue-black sky, and the green Caspian Sea churned below us. Three-hundred miles south of Moscow, Lieutenant Francona reported edgily, "Wahoo, we got a problem. We just started emitting radio signals in the 800 megahertz range. I just ran diagnostic tests on the UHF radio, but there's nothing wrong with it. "
"Shoot, Frankie you gotta find the source of that signal - pronto."
Suddenly realizing a possible cause of the radio emission, I nearly puked as I recalled that my cell phone transmitted in the same high-megahertz range. The phone, tucked inside a zippered pocket in my flight suit, must have activated when the call button pressed against something as I fidgeted around inside the cramped cockpit. I unzipped a leg pocket and took out the phone, instantly pressing the disconnect button. I cut-in on the Interphone: "Shit! I think my phone got turned on by mistake."
“Well now that's just tee-riffic, Sarge,” Wahoo said with bitter sarcasm. He sighed, “Ah-right. I'll bump this baby up to Angels 95," - 95,000 feet.
Francona said, "That was it, Wahoo - the radio emission stopped now."
Soon we were so high we could see the bluish-gold atmosphere stacked against the curvature of a midnight-blue horizon - one of the most beautiful sights I ever saw, but I was too angry at myself and scared to enjoy it. Wahoo coaxed the plane to its limit. "...C'mon honey, a littler higher - that's it...I got a lousy feelin', Frankie, because of Sarge's fuckin' phone possibly givin' our position away. So git ready, now. Put TJS on stand-by." TJS was the Tactical Jamming System, which, during evasive maneuvers, blasted powerful radio waves across the entire radio spectrum in order to mislead missile radio homing systems.
"Roger – TJS on stand-by," Francona said.
Vivid images of small missiles roaring into the sky filled my mind. "My God, I think they're shooting missiles at us." I said into the mike, sounding like a zombie.
Wahoo replied, "Sarge, you been right before, so I'm alterin' course a li'l bit east, away from the Russkie ABM Complex. Shoot, at this rate we'll be runnin' on fumes when we hit NATO airspace - goin' to headin' 1-6-5."
Scant seconds later, Francona announced with deadly calm, "Two incoming bogies - heading 1-8-0, 300 miles, Mach 3.5 closing speed,” verifying my psychic hunch. Surface-to-air-missiles were bearing down on our last position before we had changed course. “Decoys deployed. Passive Radar is lit-up like a Christmas tree.” In addition to TJS, our Blackbird was equipped with small spherical metallic decoys that emitted heat and radio waves, which were good for confusing hostile missiles and aircraft radar. Our own Passive Radar was currently displaying a huge amount of returns from the decoys which now covered our retreat.
"Roger that - changin' headin' to 0-9-0." The Mach meter read: 3.4 - about 2,500 MPH as we turned due east, away from the incoming missiles. At this extremely high speed, I briefly passed-out due to the high G-forces when we began the relatively leisurely turn.
When I came-to, Francona was saying: "…We're outrunning the bogies now - closing speed down to Mach 3 point 1 - bogies are going for the decoys...detonations 50 miles away at Angels 90. Gotta be nukes! Approximate yield around two kilotons each. Radiation detectors picked up two pulses of low-level gamma and x-rays, probably from neutron warheads." Neutron-based nukes were designed to kill people rather than to vaporize valuable property.
Wahoo said, "Neutron war-hayds? Those bastards don't wanna blow us up - just knock us down so they can git their grubby hands on our bird - or whatever's left of 'er. Shoot, the commies ain't got nothin' that flies half this high. So when they heard radio signals comin' from 90 thousand feet up, they had somethin' special ready for us."
Although we could fly more than a mile higher than Russian SAMs, we still could be still exposed to lethal radiation if they exploded within a few miles of us. The only thing that kept me from panicking was the knowledge that both crew compartments, as well as our electronic systems, were protected by a thin layer of lead/cadmium shielding.
"I'm filin' my retirement papers soon as we git home. How long before we reach the nearest friendly airspace, Frankie? We may have-ta put ‘er in the drink when we git there."
"Only forty-five minutes at this speed on heading 1-9-0."
"That'll swing us back over their ABM Complex, but fuck it – goin' to 1-9-0.” The ABM Complex was where most Russian SAMs were based. “Them Russkies ain’t gonna cage my bird.”
"Yes sir," replied Francona."
If the Russians ever got hold of a Blackbird, it would be an intelligence catastrophe, not to mention ammunition for President Hedges' opponents in next year's election. Wahoo had no intention of running out of fuel in Russian airspace or being forced down, preferring to self-destruct the priceless spy plane (with us still in it?). My terror ratcheted upward as these implications sunk in. Wahoo seemed to read my mind: “Sarge, ya know how the government is about protectin' secrets. ’Specially this-here rocket yer jockey’n.”
“Roger,” was all I could croak, feeling numb and cold with dreadful fear.
One thought kept repeating: I screwed the pooch.
"I'll git ya home, Sarge. They can only take pot shots at us now that we gone radio silent again." That reassured me - temporarily.
We performed another long shallow turn to south-southwest, and then we jetted straight toward SAM units of the Soviet Rocket Forces. Five minutes later, Francona said, "Picking up passive signals on four bogies but they're on non-intercept headings...Now we got three incoming bogies - 300 miles at vector 2-7-5, closing speed Mach 3.8." That was very bad news, since we had no choice but to head in the general direction of the missiles if we hoped to make it into friendly airspace. They may have been only taking pot shots, but they knew we had to be somewhere in the general vicinity.
"Frankie, when they git within 200 miles, deploy the rest-a the jammers. Then Wahoo’s voice adopted a fatherly tone, giving me a feeling a doom. "Start studyin’ up on yer ejection procedure, son. We probably won’t eject, but a boy scout is ah-ways prepared. Comin' 'round to 1-7-0."
Francona: "Bogies at 200 miles – jammers released…Bogies now at 180 miles, turning to non-intercept heading 3-1-0."
"We just might outrun this wave, Sports Fans." Wahoo must have recently read The Great Santini. "But we’re runnin' low on fuel 'cause we’re zig-zaggin - we got 28 minutes-a fuel, at this speed. Frankie, how long before we hit friendly airspace?"
"Twenty minutes at Mach 3 – on heading 1-8-0."
"We’re goin' to Mach 3 point 2 - headin' 1-8-0 it is." Our heading was now due south.
"Incoming bogies turning to vector zero-zero-zero, 90 miles closing at Mach 3 point 4.” Missiles were coming at us from due north, rapidly gaining on us.
"The computer can dodge this mess faster 'n me. Frankie, Now switchin' control to the ECM-autopilot." ECM means Electronic Counter-Measures.
"Roger. All decoys now deploying...TJS radar lighting up at full power. Our heading turning to 1-7-0...Incoming at 50 miles - they're going for the decoys! Shit - one bogie turning to vector three-five-zero - can't outrun it...30 miles." The ECM flung us into a mind numbing left turn, corkscrewing upward ever higher. "Heading changing to 1-6-6, climbing to Angels 96...changing to 1-6-2...1-5-8…20 miles and closing, climbing to Angels 97...10 miles!"
We didn't see the detonation, since blackout shields now covered the crew canopies. The gamma-ray warning alarm shrieked three seconds before we felt the blast, the concussion waves knocking my head around as if I were a bobble-head doll. Through the radio static, I could just make out Frankie laconically announcing: “Fire in port engine.”
This is it! I’m fucking dead meat no running away this time this is fucking for real!
Absurdities ran through my head: Maybe Ayn Rand will hire me as an engineer on her fucking railroad! In the middle of a stomach-churning barrel roll at Mach 3, I was inspired to bad poetry: Angels 95 – I won’t be alive! Angels 96 – no more sex! Angels 97- is there heaven? Angels 98 – haul the freight! Angels 99 –Angie’s 69 was so divine...God...Ma!
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