Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 Read Online Free PDF Page A

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-l 11 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-l 11 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