FIFTY THOUSAND FEET OVER THE INDIAN OCEAN
They were flying works of art, menacing yet graceful, massive yet invisible, dashing through the stratosphere like silent birds of prey. Four General Electric turbofans with reduced acoustic and infrared signatures stealthily propelled them to just below the speed of sound. Carbon-graphite composites covered their skins, stronger than steel yet lighter than aluminum. They absorbed most radar energy rather than reflecting it back to the source, allowing them to remain undetected.
The three stealth bombers flying in a standard delta formation maneuvered around the tip of Sri Lanka and turned to the northwest while remaining one hundred miles from the coast, per their flight plans.
Major Will “Sake” Sakai sat in the left seat of the lead Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit on this star-filled night. He scanned the array of displays wrapped around him and his copilot, Captain Les “Fester” Adams. The two were currently stationed at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, and they had logged over two thousand hours in the B-2, flying missions all over the world.
Past sorties included Kosovo, Iraq, and also the grueling bombing runs in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. The latter had required Sakai and Adams to fly forty-plus-hour sorties from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to Afghanistan and back, including multiple air-to-air refuelings. Compared to that, this sortie was a cakewalk.
Sakai turned his eyes to the west.
Somewhere out there, beyond the range of his radar, cruised the United States Seventh Fleet, including Carrier Strike Group Five, centered around the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier. Recently replacing the aging USS George Washington, the Reagan was home to the Carrier Air Wing 2 (CVQ-2). It consisted of nine squadrons, a deadly mix of F/A-18C Hornets, F/A-18E and F Super Hornets, plus E-2C Hawkeyes and EA-6B Prowlers for electronic warfare support.
But Sakai and Adams would not make contact with the fleet. Their mission was stealth all the way—in and out of Pakistan while dropping enough conventional ordnance to level the equivalent of a third of New York City. Each of the bomber’s two internal bays housed forty five-hundred-pound GBU-38s plus two two-thousand-pound GBU-31s, for a combined total of forty-eight thousand pounds of high explosives. The number was eight thousand pounds beyond the official limit, but Sakai knew they could carry even more, as he had in many missions. In addition, all bombs featured the bolt-on guidance package known as JDAM—joint direct attack munition—meaning Sakai could place them anywhere with ridiculous accuracy.
And tonight his “anywhere” started with a raid over the Port of Karachi before hitting in-country HVTs—high-value targets.
“Five minutes, Sake,” said Adams on the intercom.
“Roger,” replied Sakai as his GPS marked the location of the port city, though darkness enshrouded the entire horizon. No lights were visible on the ground.
“Effective EMP, I would say,” said Adams.
“Roger that, Fester. Assholes are blind, deaf, and dumb.”
“Two minutes,” stated Adams.
“Roger, two minutes,” came back into his earpiece.
The chatter stopped as his fingers moved automatically over the controls of the bombing system. They were led on a retaliation strike that was long overdue. The duplicitous nature of the Pakistani government had finally come home to roost in the form of the United States Air Force doing what no one in the world could do better. It was precision, finality, and destruction that would look as if the fist of God had slammed into the ground.
The formation approached the coast from the southeast, holding altitude as payload bay doors opened, slaved to algorithms running within the silicon fabric of the targeting computers. HVTs had been preselected by the finest strategists at the Pentagon to incur the greatest damage to military and terrorist targets per pound of explosives. But while minimizing civilian casualties.
Not quite an eye for an eye, he thought, but such decisions were beyond his pay grade.
In an instant each B-2 released a preordained number of GBU-38s, each earmarked to hit a specific target within a one-hundred-square-mile area. The onboard navigation and control systems compensated for the sudden drop in weight, close to ten thousand pounds per bird, holding altitude to within ten feet.
And just like that the Karachi bomb raid was over, at least for the B-2s, which continued in a northwesterly course while their smart munitions followed their computerized trajectories.
Less than a minute later the ground pulsated with bursts of light as military targets were hit with surgical precision. They included the Pakistani Air Force Base Masroor, home to half of the fighters making up their Southern Air Command, a mix of Mirages and F-7P interceptors, the Chinese version of the MiG-21.
“Those planes will never see the sky again,” said Adams after getting electronic confirmation that the bombs had pretty much obliterated the base.
“I hope that hurt as intended,” Sakai continued.
A village-like encampment between the base and the industrial port city, which the CIA had long earmarked as one of the largest IED—improvised explosive device—factories in the region, burst into light. The direct hit triggered a chain reaction of secondary explosions of large caches of munitions and explosives.
“That’s some village,” Adams commented, watching the pyrotechnic display.
“Looks like a fireworks factory on steroids.”
“Too bad one of the bombs didn’t drift and hit the port itself,” said Adams. “Bastards hit our port. Those chemical plants and oil refineries down there would have burned for weeks.”
“Ours is not to reason why,” replied Sakai.
“Yeah, yeah, ours is but to do—” Adams started to say when suddenly an oil refinery less than a quarter of a mile from the IED factory vanished in a massive explosion.
“What the hell?” asked Sakai.
“Secondary explosions from the IED factory,” replied Adams. “Plus maybe a little karma.”
Sakai looked back and noticed what looked like dozens of rockets, probably Chinese 107s, blasting off the factory in every direction, including toward the refineries.
As the B-2s headed for the second target, an unexpected chain reaction began on the ground, with the oil refinery causing an adjacent chemical plant to catch fire. The resulting blast engulfed three city blocks.
“Yeah,” Sakai said as they left the city behind them. “Karma can be a real bitch.”