by Dale Brown
They had also switched missiles along with changing procedures: Instead of four short-range heat seekers and two semiactive radar missiles, they now carried four long-range R-77 radar-guided missiles, plus two extra fuel tanks. These advanced weapons had their own radars that could lock on to targets as far as thirty kilometers away. This meant that the MiG-29s could simply designate targets, let the missiles fly, then maneuver and escape — they no longer needed to keep the fighter’s radar locked on to the target all the way to impact.
They had only a limited number of the expensive R-77s at Petropavlovsk — more had been sent to air-defense bases in the west and to fighters deployed to active bomber bases at Ulan-Ude, Blagoveshchensk, and Bratsk — but air-defense command had ordered every one of them loaded and sent aloft right away. This was obviously no time to hold back. Every enemy aircraft downed meant that the chances of America’s mounting any sort of counteroffensive against Russia in the far east were slimmer and slimmer.
“Tashnit Two-one, this is Detskaya,” the radar controller said, “initial vector thirty right, your target is one-two-zero K, low, cleared to engage. Acknowledge.”
“Two-one acknowledges cleared to engage,” the lead fighter pilot responded. Flying at well over the speed of sound, the two advanced Russian interceptors from Petropavlovsk closed in on their target rapidly. They already had their orders: no visual identification, no standard ICAO intercept procedure, no warning shots, no radio calls. All Russian air traffic had already been ordered to clear out of more than one hundred thousand cubic kilometers of airspace over the Sea of Okhotsk, the Bering Sea, and the Kamchatka Peninsula — anyone else up here was an enemy, and he was going to down them without any warning whatsoever.
“Da, Detskaya. Ya ponimayu.”
“What is your state, Two-one?”
“Base plus two, control,” the pilot responded. That meant he had forty minutes of fuel remaining, plus one hour of reserve fuel that was inviolate — because the closest emergency-abort base, Magadan, was about an hour’s flight time away.
“Acknowledged. I will launch Two-two. Continue your approach to the target, Two-one.”
“Acknowledged.”
They had just passed within one hundred kilometers of the target. No sign of any other players up here yet, but they had to be up here — the Americans would not send an aircraft into the teeth of the Russian air defenses like this without having another plane ready to sneak past. Maybe it was a decoy? Whatever it was, it was making a large and very inviting target for the MiGs. Just over forty seconds and they could engage from maximum range.
At that moment the radar controller reported, “Sir, target turning south…Continuing his turn, looks like he’s turning around.”
“Too late, aslayop,” the sector commander said under his breath. “I still want him to go down. Have Two-one continue his attack.”
“Acknowledged, sir.” But a few moments later: “Sir, the target is off our scope! Radar contact lost!”
“Lost?” The sector commander could feel the first prickles of panic under his collar. “How could you lose such a big contact less than one hundred and fifty kilometers out? Did he descend? Is he jamming you?”
“Negative, sir,” the controller replied. “Just a weak radar return.”
Shit, shit, shit…The commander fumbled for the mike button on his headphones: “Two-one, control, are you tied on yet?”
“Negative, control,” the MiG pilot responded. “I was expecting to pick him up any second now.”
“We have lost contact,” the commander said. “Advise when you have him either on radar or IRSTS.” The Infrared Search and Track System on the MiG-29 was a very accurate and reliable heat-seeking sensor that could detect and track the hot dots of large engine exhausts at ranges out to two hundred kilometers away — it was so accurate that it was used to guide active air-to-air missiles close enough to their targets so they could lock on with their terminal-guidance radars. This unknown target was flying away from the MiG — its hot engines should show up clearly on IRSTS.
“Status, Captain?” the regional commander radioed once again.
Better to confess right away, he thought: “Sir, the target has disappeared from our scopes,” he replied. “The target turned away from shore and was flying away from the interceptors. The target was beyond the radar’s optimal range, and we did have some weather recently — a slight heading change and a little frozen moisture in the air could easily cause him to drop off our screens.”
“I don’t need excuses, Captain — I need a visual ID on that aircraft, or I need him crashing into the Bering Sea,” his commander told him. “The interceptor should be using his infrared sensor to track him.”
“No contact on IRSTS yet, sir, but if he did make a heading change, the sensor might not pick up his engine exhausts until closer in. The interceptor should be picking up his heat trail soon, and he’ll be in radar contact soon afterward. He can’t simply have disappeared, sir — we’ll get him.”
“How long until Two-one gets into firing position?”
“About five minutes, sir.”
“Call me when the fighter has radar contact,” the regional commander ordered, and he abruptly disconnected the line.
Crap, the sector commander thought, the old man is really pissed now. He switched to the brigadewide radio network, which connected him to all of the different regiments under his command. “Attention all units, this is Brigade. We have lost radar contact with an unidentified aircraft, last seen two hundred and thirty-five kilometers west of Petropavlovsk. All units, stay alert. Immediately report any outages or jamming to Brigade. That is all.”
He knew it was a lame message. His men were already on a hair-trigger alert and had been ever since the attack on the United States — they didn’t need to be told to stay alert. But this was serious…he knew it, he felt it. Something was happening out there.
* * *
Not even the old guys ever blew lunch in their helmets, Breaker,” Hal Briggs said. He didn’t need to turn around in his seat to know what had happened — even through the filtration system in the Tin Man electronic battle armor’s helmet, he could smell that unmistakable smell.
“Damn it, I’m sorry, sir,” First Lieutenant Mark “Breaker” Bastian said. Bastian, a former Air Force combat air controller, was a nephew of Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian, the former commander of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center and originator of the special-ops team code-named “Whiplash” that was the progenitor of the Battle Force ground-operations team. He was a big, muscular guy, with incredible speed and stamina for someone his size. He had excellent eyesight, was an expert marksman, and had made over two dozen combat jumps in his short military career.
He also had an extraordinarily queasy stomach. The poor guy got airsick even before boarding an aircraft. Fortunately, his vasovagal episodes occurred only after or just before he was about to do something dangerous, not during, so his jumpy stomach didn’t usually interfere with his performance.
“It’s okay, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Major Chris Wohl said. He had loosened his restraints and turned to help Bastian remove his battle-armor helmet. “Just make sure you clean out the inside of the helmet carefully — the thing is filled with electronics, and you don’t want crap interfering with any of it. If you can’t clean it well enough, use the spare helmet.”
“Take your time,” Hal said. “We have a long way to go.”
“Someone open a window,” Marines Corps Staff Sergeant Emily Angel said after Bastian began cleaning his gear. Emily had no call sign because everyone called her by her very apropos last name: Angel. With short dark hair, glittering dark eyes, and a body honed by five years in some of the toughest infantry units in the U.S. Marines Corps, Angel had been handpicked by Chris Wohl to join the Battle Force ground team after he’d watched her compete in an urban-warfare search-and-destroy course competition at Quantico. The reason for recruiting new members there was simple: The Bat
tle Force stressed small-unit tactics, speed, and maneuverability over strength and endurance. It was no surprise to Chris Wohl that the winner was a woman.
“Bite me, Angel,” Bastian said, but he gratefully accepted her help as he began cleaning. They all helped because they knew that, but for the grace of God, they could’ve been the ones who’d thrown up in their helmets.
The four members of the Battle Force team were aboard an MQ-35 Condor special-ops infiltration/exfiltration aircraft. They had just been dropped about eighty miles east of the Kamchatka Peninsula over the Bering Sea from an altitude of thirty-six thousand feet from inside an unmanned EB-52 Megafortress bomber. Briggs, who flew on the first Condor flight over Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, was ready for the gut-wrenching descent after dropping from the bomb bay, but no one else on board had ever had that experience before — and no amount of briefing could prepare someone for it.
“Condor, Control, you are at best glide speed,” Major Matthew “Wildman” Whitley, the remote piloting technician controlling the Condor from Battle Mountain, reported. Matt Whitley of the Fifty-second Bomb Squadron was one of the first technicians, or “game boys” as they were called, trained at Battle Mountain to fly the Megafortresses, Condors, and the other experimental aircraft without first being a pilot — his background was in computer-simulation programming. He was proud of his accomplishment, and he was looked up to by all of the other nonrated fliers in the unit as a junior god.
“How’s everybody doing?” asked Brigadier General David Luger, commanding the Air Battle Force from the Battle Management Center at Battle Mountain.
“Except for one smelly helmet, fine,” Briggs reported.
“They let us get an extra sixty miles closer to the coast than we figured,” Wilde said. “We can use every mile we can get.”
“How are we looking, Matt?” Briggs asked.
“Stand by.” He checked the computer’s flight plan, which updated their flight profile constantly, based on glide performance, winds, air temperature, and routing. “Right now we’re looking at a six-one glide ratio — six miles for every thousand feet. That means if we descend you down to ten thousand feet, you can glide for about one hundred and fifty miles, or one hour flight time, before we have to fire up the engine. That will put you roughly over the Central Kamchatka Highway just west of Mil’kovo. Then it’s a thousand-mile cruise into Yakutsk on the turbojet, or about three hours.
“You’ll have less than ten minutes of fuel remaining — if everything goes to plan. Any shift in the winds, ice buildup, or malfunctions can put you on the wrong side of the fuel curve fast. We’ll keep you up as high as we can, but as soon as you leave Magadan’s radar coverage you’ll be in Yakutsk’s, so we’ll have to contend with that. At ten thousand feet, you can glide for another sixty miles once the engine quits, so that’s probably all the reserve you’ll have.”
“Sounds lovely,” Briggs said wryly. “What are the bad guys up to?”
“The threat situation looks about the same as before,” Luger responded. “Numerous fighter patrols all around you. The Russians have set up a picket of patrol and warships every fifty to seventy miles across the Sea of Okhotsk. We’ll reroute you around the ones we detect, but be prepared to do some more gliding down to lower altitudes if necessary. They’re being very careful and not radiating with anything but normal surface-and air-search radars. Long-range surveillance radars at Petropavlovsk, Yakutsk, Komsomol’sk, and Magadan are active, but all of the previously known SA-10 and SA-12 sites along the coast are silent. They’re not exposing any of their air-defense stuff, which will make it harder for us to target them.”
“Was this supposed to cheer us up, Dave?”
They proceeded in silence for the next hour, but the tension built up quickly and precipitously as they cleared the coastline of the central Kamchatka Peninsula and approached the engine-start point. “Okay, crew, listen up,” Briggs said. “The emergency-egress procedures are as briefed: If the engine fails to start, we’ll turn south and continue our glide to the planned emergency landing zone along the Central Kamchatka Highway. We then make our way to Petropavlovsk and wreak as much havoc there as we can from the ground. There are no plans at this time for anyone to rescue us, so we’re on our own. Our mission will be to disrupt air-defense and surveillance operations on the Kamchatka Peninsula in order to offer follow-on forces an easier ingress path. Questions?”
“Has the engine ever not started, sir?” Angel asked.
Briggs turned to glance behind him, then replied by saying, “Are there any other questions?” Not surprisingly, there were none.
“Coming up on engine start,” Whitley reported. “Stand by…. Engine inlet coming open…inlet deicers on…starter engaged…fifteen percent RPMs, igniters on, here comes the fuel…. Stand by…. Ignition, engine RPMs to thirty…thirty-five…” Suddenly the engine’s whirring sound stopped. “Igniters off, fuel off. We got a hot start, guys. The engine inlet might be blocked with ice.”
The crew felt the Condor turn, and shoulders slumped. “Okay, guys, here’s the plan,” Dave Luger said. “We’ve turned you southbound on the planned emergency routing. We’ve got to wait three minutes before we can attempt another start. You’ll lose about two thousand feet altitude and go about twenty miles. We’ll keep the inlet deicers on longer in case we got some ice restricting airflow for the three minutes, then try one more restart. We might have time for another restart if the second one doesn’t work, if the battery doesn’t run out with all the starter activations. We—”
“Caution, airborne search radar, seven o’clock, sixty-five miles,” came a computerized voice — the threat-warning receiver.
“Petropavlovsk — the fighter patrols,” Luger said. “They’ve got fighters everywhere. Hopefully they’re looking out over the ocean and not up the peninsula. We should be—”
“Warning, airborne search radar and height finder, seven o’clock, sixty-four miles.”
“How about we give that engine restart a try now, Dave?” Hal Briggs suggested nervously.
“I think that’s close enough to three minutes,” Dave said warily. “Starter on, igniters—”
“Warning, radar lock-on, MiG-29, eight o’clock, sixty miles.”
“C’mon, baby, start,” Matt Whitley breathed “Time just ran out.”
Six Hundred Miles North of the Condor,
Over Far Eastern Siberia
That same time
Control, Yupka-Three-three flight has radar contact on unidentified air target, five-zero kilometers, low,” the lead Mikoyan-23B pilot reported.
“That’s your target, Three-three,” the ground-intercept controller said. “No other targets detected. Begin your intercept.”
“Acknowledged. Wing, take the high CAP, I am turning to intercept.”
“Two,” the pilot of the second MiG-23B responded simply. His job was to stay with his leader and provide support, not chat on the radios.
Based out of Anadyr, the easternmost military air base in Russia, the MiG-23B Bombardirovshchiks were single-seat, swing-wing, dual-purpose fighter-bombers, capable of both medium-range attack and air-interceptor missions. All interceptor-tasked MiG-23s based at Anadyr were armed with twin twenty-three-millimeter cannons in the nose with two hundred rounds of ammunition, two R-23R radar-guided missiles on fuselage hardpoints, two R-60 heat-seeking missiles on wing pylons, and one eight-hundred-liter external fuel tank.
The thirty-eight bomber-tasked planes at Anadyr had different weapon loads: three external fuel tanks on the fuselage hardpoints for extra-long range — plus two RN-40 tactical nuclear gravity bombs on the wing stations, each with a one-hundred-kiloton yield. If the United States tried to attack Russia, their orders were to launch and destroy military targets throughout Alaska and Canada. The fighter-equipped MiGs were there to hold off an attack by either American planes or cruise missiles long enough for the bombers to launch and get safely away from the base.
This unidentified radar
contact may have been a prelude to such an attack, which was why nerves were on edge all over the district. The first counterattack by the United States had to be blunted at all costs, and the MiG-23s at Anadyr and the MiG-29s at Petropavlovsk were the first lines of defense against the expected American attack.
The lead MiG pilot kept his PrNK-23N Sokol attack radar on long enough to get a firm idea of the unknown aircraft’s position in his mind, flicked it to STANDBY so his radar wouldn’t give away his position, then rolled right and started a descent into firing position. The target was moving slowly, far more slowly than a jet-powered aircraft. It was also flying at extremely low altitude, barely two hundred meters above the coastal mountain range. It was too dark to be able to see it, so a visual identification was not going to happen.
It was far too late for that anyway — this guy was already well inside Russia’s borders and was not squawking any identification codes. An intruder, no doubt about it. He was going down in flames.
The MiG-23 pilot rolled out and continued his descent. He wished for night-vision goggles so he could see the rugged terrain below, but those were luxuries left for the MiG-29 pilots and the bombers, not the old fighter guys. The pilot had already checked his minimum terrain-clearance altitude, which would keep him safe within a fifty-by-fifty-kilometer box — plus, he added a few dozen meters’ altitude as an extra safety measure “for the wife and kids,” as he and his fellow fighter pilots liked to say. He would be low enough to lock on to and engage this target and still clear the terrain.
As he continued in on his intercept run, the MiG pilot activated his ship’s TM-23 electro-optical sensor, and a blip appeared right away, exactly where he thought it would. The sensor did not display an image of the target, just a simple dot on a screen when a bright or hot object was detected; once locked on, the system fed target bearing and altitude to his fire-control computer, allowing him to give his air-to-air missiles almost all the data they needed to attack.
