Debt of Honor - Tom Clancy [428]
"There's IP Two," the copilot said, recalling the aircraft commander back to the mission.
"Good ground-fix," the EWO said.
Zacharias could see it clearly this time, the wide flat path of deep blue, different from the broken, darker ground of this hill country, and the pale wall that held it back. There were even lights there for the powerhouse.
"Doors coming open now."
The aircraft jumped upwards a few feet when the six weapons fell free. The flight controls adjusted for that, and the bomber turned right again for an easterly course, while the pilot felt better about what he'd been ordered to do.
The battery commander slammed his hand down on his instrument panel with a hoot of satisfaction. He'd gotten three of the four, and the last explosion, though it had been a miss, might well have knocked the bomb off-target, though he felt the ground shake with its impact on the ground. He lifted his field phone for the missile command bunker.
"Are you all right?" he asked urgently.
"What the hell hit us?" the distant officer demanded. The Patriot commander ignored that foolish question.
"Your missiles?"
"Eight of them are gone—but I think I have two left. I have to call Tokyo for instructions." It was amazing to the officer at the other end, and his immediate thought was to credit the site selection. His silos were drilled into solid rock, which had made a fine armor for his ICBMs after all. What orders would he receive now that the Americans had tried to disarm him and his nation?
I hope they tell you to launch, the SAM officer didn't quite have the courage to say aloud.
The last four bombs from the third B-2 tracked in on the hydroelectric dam at the head of the valley. They were programmed to strike from bottom to top in the reinforced-concrete face of the structure, the timing and placement of the target points no less crucial than those of the weapons that had tracked in on the missile silos. Unseen and unheard by anyone, they came down in a line, barely a hundred feet separating one from another.
The dam was a hundred thirty meters high and almost exactly that thick at its base, the structure narrowing as it rose to a spillway width of only ten meters. Strong, both to withstand the weight of the reservoir it held back and also to withstand the earthquakes that plague Japan, it had generated electricity for more than thirty years.
The first bomb hit seventy meters below the spillway. A heavy weapon with a thick case of hardened steel, it burrowed fifteen meters into the structure before exploding, first ripping a miniature cavern in the concrete, the shock of the event rippling through the immense wall as the second weapon struck, about five meters over the first.
A watchman was there, awakened from a nap by the noise from down-valley, but he'd missed the light show and was wondering what it had been when he saw the first muted flash that seemed to come from inside his dam. He heard the second weapon hit. then the delay of a second or so before the shock almost lifted him off his feet.
"Jesus, did we get them all?" Ryan asked. Contrary to popular belief, and contrary now to his own fervent wishes, the National Reconnaissance Office had never extended real-time capability to the White House. He had to depend on someone else, watching a television in a room at the Pentagon.
"Not sure, sir. They were all close hits—well, I mean, some were, but some of the bombs appeared too premature—"
"What does that mean?"
"They seem to have exploded in midair—three of them, that is, all from the last bomber. We're trying to isolate in on the individual silos now and—"
"Are there any left intact, damn it'.'" Ryan demanded. Had the gamble failed?
"One. Maybe two. we're not sure. Stand by, okay?" the analyst asked rather plaintively. "We have another bird overhead in a few minutes."
The dam might have survived two, but the third hit, twenty meters from the spillway, opened a gap—really, it dislodged a chunk of concrete triangular in shape. The section