Battle Born Read Online Free

surface-to-air missile system, widely exported all over the world. Its mobility, its top speed of almost three times that of sound, and its all-weather, all-altitude capability made it a deadly threat. The SA-6 fired a salvo of three missiles that were almost impossible to evade. “Three o’clock, within lethal range! Trackbreakers active!”
    At the same moment, several white arcs of smoke traced across the sky, the thin white trails aiming right for the B-1, and the warning tone on interphone changed to a fast, high-pitched
deedledeedledeedle.
“Smoky SAMs!” the copilot shouted. Smoky SAMs were little papier-mâché rockets, no threat to thebomber by themselves, but signifying a missile launch against the bomber crew. It meant the crew hadn’t done their job protecting their bomber.
    “Simulated SA-6 launch!” the DSO shouted. “Uplink shut down! Chaff, chaff!” Clouds of thin tinsel shot out of canisters along the Bone’s upper spine, creating a radar target several hundred times larger than the 400,000-pound plane itself.
    “Hold heading!” the OSO shouted. “TG ten! Doors coming open!”
    The copilot watched as one of the simulated SAMs passed directly overhead. Talk about the “bullet between the eyes,” he thought grimly—if that had been a real antiaircraft missile, they’d have been dead meat. And he would have watched the final stroke all the damned way.
    “Ready . . . ready,
now
! Bombs away!” the OSO shouted. One cluster bomb canister dropped free of the aft weapons bay. At the precise instant, it split apart and scattered the bomblets across the target area in a direct hit on the trailer.
    “Bomb doors closed!” the OSO shouted. “Clear to maneuver!”
    “Pump right,
now
!” the DSO shouted. The pilots rolled the bomber to the right away from the target area and pulled back on the control stick until the stall warning horn sounded, then released the back pressure. The DSO ejected more clouds of chaff behind them, successfully breaking the “enemy” radar locks and allowing the bomber to escape.
    “That release looked good from back here, pilots!” the OSO yelled gleefully. “What did you see up there?”
    “We saw our shit get blown away by a SAM!” the copilot yelled. “They had us dead-on!”
    “I had the uplink shut down,” the DSO protested. “No way that missile would’ve hit . . .”
    “Well, then they used an optical tracker or they got lucky,” the pilot said. “But they got us. If one of those smoky SAMs was a real one, we’d’ve gotten nailed. Shake it off, Long Dong. Nail the next one. These Navy pukes aren’t playing fair anyway.”
    “Shit!” the OSO cursed into his oxygen mask. A perfect bomb run, a perfect release . . . and they got zilch. All that hard work for nothing. He angrily entered commands into his keyboard to sequence to the next target area. “Steering is good to the next target complex, pilot. We’ll take out the next Scud missile site.”
    “What are the defenses in the area?” the copilot asked.
    “SA-3s, SA-6s, and Zeus-23s,” the DSO replied.
    “All right. Shake it off, guys,” the pilot said. “No more mistakes. Let’s kick some ass this time.”
    “I’ve got another SA-6 and an SA-3 up,” the DSO reported. “SA-6 is nine o’clock, moving outside lethal range. The SA-3 is at one o’clock.”
    “Where are the fighters?” the pilot asked.
    “No sign of ’em,” the DSO replied.
    “Clearing turn coming up,” the pilot said. “Back me up on altitude, co.” He banked the B-1 up on its left wing, then strained to look aft up through the eyebrow windows for any signs of pursuit. When he had turned almost ninety degrees, he initiated a steep left turn. “I got it,” he told the copilot. “Find the damn—”
    “Aces!” they suddenly heard on the interplane frequency. It was their wingman, five miles somewhere behind them. “Bandit coming down the ramp! I think he’s on you! You see him?”
    Both pilots