by F X Holden
They had wasted valuable time. Bunny turned to Rodriguez, about to say something when a huge explosion threw them off their feet and fire roared out of the chute.
Bondarev never saw his machine hit the cliff. He had centered the nose of the Sukhoi just above the hole in the cliff face to allow for the last few feet of descent. He’d judged it was 500 feet above sea level, or about 500 feet below his safe ejection height. About a hundred feet from the cliff face, he pulled the ejection lever. His canopy flew away and the ejection gun hammered his seat out of the cockpit, then a rocket booster blasted him into the cold air at 200G per second. In any ejection there was a one in three chance the pilot would break their back, but when the alternative was to end as a red smear on a cliff face in the middle of the Bering Strait, it wasn’t something Bondarev had even thought about. His immediate problem was whether his chute would even deploy in time to retard his fall at this low altitude. The Sukhoi was equipped with a ‘zero-zero’ ejection system, designed to be safe even if the pilot ejected at zero altitude, zero speed, but while he was about 500 feet above the sea he was still ejecting below ground level if you counted from the top of the cliff face.
The solid fuel rocket boosters on the bottom of his chair burned white hot for 0.2 seconds, lifting him 200 feet into the air over Little Diomede. Having taken altitude data from the dying Sukhoi, the seat computer calculated it should dump the chair immediately and deploy both the drogue and main parachutes. Bondarev was still moving forward at about 500 miles an hour as he started to drop!
He felt himself being jerked out of the chair - if his back hadn’t been broken by the kick out of the cockpit, there was another chance it would be snapped by the chute deploying - and he saw the lip of the cliff face disappear below him in a blur. He was still wearing his helmet, so he registered the explosion of his aircraft as a bright flash somewhere below his legs, but didn’t hear it; then his chute opened and swung him forward like a child on a swing. His legs kicked out in front of him and then he swung back down, the black rock and ice of the island rushing up to meet him. He braced for a hard impact, but the ground was a little further away than he had first sensed. A second went past, then another, then he hit … hard!
Colonel Artem Akinfeev, Bondarev’s second in command and leader of the Mig-41 Oak squadron had heard his COs shouted missile warning as he came under attack over Little Diomede but he hadn’t acted on it. It wasn’t that he doubted the sanity of the order, questioned the tactical wisdom of committing his aircraft before the source of the threat was identified, or was arrogantly overconfident about the capabilities of his Gen 6 Mig stealth fighters.
He hadn’t heeded Bondarev’s warning, because by the time he could have reacted he was already dead.
Having dispatched most of Bondarev’s squadron the remaining S-FAD had immediately moved to engage the incoming Sukhois and Migs. An American missile had struck his machine from a low portside aspect, detonating inches from his fuel tanks, causing an explosion that incinerated both the Mig and Artem Akinfeev in milliseconds. Akinfeev’s wingman, Lieutenant Igor Tzubya, had also heard Bondarev’s warning but luckily he had time to respond and had evaded the missile that had been aimed at him.
“Oak 4 to Birch leader, we are engaged over target,” he said to the Okhotnik commander, pushing his machine down to sea level to try to recover stealth capability as his sensors showed American Aegis ground-air and Fantom air-air radar sweeping across the skin of his fighter. “Hold your current position, do not approach the target. Repeat, do not approach.”
Igor Tzubya’s call sign was ‘Yeti’ because of his coolness under fire, and he showed it now, his voice giving no sign of the stress he was feeling, either mental or physical. As he recovered his stealth profile he swung his aircraft around toward the source of the Aegis radar and was looking for a surface ship when far ahead of him, he saw two sea-launched missiles leap from the empty water. A submersible anti-air system! He had no air-ground weapons other than his guns, but he knew exactly how to respond. He locked the rough position of the S-FAD on his nav system and sent the data to the other Russian aircraft.
“Oak squadron, get down on the deck,” he said. “We’re being targeted by sub-launched missiles. Converge on my coordinates!” Tzubya commanded. Tzubya and his men were trained in how to counter an S-FAD attack. The S-FAD had to be stationary to launch and the trick was to stay as close to the launch point as possible. After clearing the surface of the sea and being kicked out of their canisters the SM-6/E missiles would accelerate straight up and then start homing on their targets, but if the targets were below them and close, the American missiles would be forced to try a radical 180 degree reverse to get back down to sea level to hit a circling aircraft. It was a maneuver they weren’t optimized to achieve and the chances of a miss were greatly improved.
Assuming there was only one S-FAD out there firing at them, of course!
He had no option. In moments he was joined by the remaining five fighters of Oak squadron and they began tight banking turns over the last known position of the S-FAD. He tried desperately to get a visual on the submersible drone but that was impossible. The water below glittered with sunlight, the reflections blinding.
“Missile launch!” one of his men called and he saw to port one of the missile canisters exploding out of the water, the rocket booster igniting and sending the missile out of sight overhead.
“Hold your positions unless they get a lock!” he called sternly, knowing the pressure to break away would be almost irresistible to many pilots.
He counted the aircraft swimming through the air behind him. So few. But that must mean the enemy S-FAD was growing short on missiles.
He just had to hold his nerve!
If Rodriguez and Bunny had been in any doubt about whether there was a war going on outside, it disappeared in the gout of flame that spewed out of the chute at the end of the catapult. Having been standing off to one side, locking the wings of the disabled Fantom, the flame spewed out of the chute between them and they scrambled aside, Rodriguez on all fours, Bunny almost comically crabbing backward on her butt.
What saved them from almost certain immolation was that Bondarev’s Sukhoi had struck the cliff face about six feet over the chute. Smashing into the rock, its fuel tanks had ruptured and spewed flaming fuel into the chute, but the plane itself had simply pancaked into the cliff above the chute, exploded with huge force as its ammunition and fuel detonated, and then dropped to the rocky beach below.
Ironically, the smoking wreck served to obscure the chute from anyone who might have been looking for it from the air or sea.
When the fire subsided, Bunny stuck her head up and peered down the chute, still seeing unobstructed daylight ahead. “Missile, you think?”
“Had to be,” Rodriguez agreed. “But they missed. Come on, we can’t expect they’ll keep missing. And you can bet it’s just a matter of time before they’ll dropping some heavy harm on that cave mouth. Let’s hustle!”
Having installed the new fuel cell and locked it down, they booted up their last drone without any further drama and got it ready to launch. Rodriguez had no way of knowing how many of their fighters out there were still operational, but they had now put two electronic-warfare aircraft and five armed with A2A in the air. If the S-FADs had done their job, and each Fantom just killed two Russians each, they would have accounted for the best part of a full enemy squadron. That would have to hurt. She checked her panel. Oh what now!?
She deciphered the data on her screen. “Cat is overheating,” she told Bunny. “We can push it, risk that it seizes, or wait and let it cool.”
“How long?”
“Ten … nine minutes.”
At that moment they heard a mighty crash outside as something, probably one of the combatants, smashed into the water in the harbor outside the cave mouth.
“We might not have ten minutes,” Bunny said. “I say take the shot, even if the damn thing blows up.” Her words were all fi
re and brimstone, but Rodriguez could see the woman was about to pass out if she didn’t kill herself with overexertion first.
“I’ll see if I can bypass the Cat safety lock,” Rodriguez said. “You run up to the trailer, try to get a read on what is happening out there. Grab some electrolytes, then get back here.”
“Yes ma’am,” Bunny said, without hesitation. She wanted to know what was happening above the Rock just as much as Rodriguez did. Rodriguez noticed she didn’t run over to the trailer, but moved with a shuffling jog.
With a heavily armed enemy circling outside, the cavern under the Rock seemed smaller to her now than it ever had before. The wet stone ceiling lower, the rippling water in the Pond more threatening. She realized screens full of menus and commands were just cycling unheeded in front of her on the shooter’s control panel and she forced herself to focus. They just needed to get their last Fantom away. Then they could rest … forever if need be.
Bondarev hit the hard ice covered rock and rolled. As he tumbled he tried to keep his head and his arms tucked in, but his head took a heavy blow that made him see stars even through the helmet. When he stopped rolling, he tried to stand, but found he couldn’t balance, even to get up into a crouch. Brain injury, something told him. Concussion. Take it easy. No one is shooting at you down here.
He decided to lie still where he had landed, knees curled up to his chest. He pulled his parachute up around himself to keep warm, felt down to his trouser leg and triggered his emergency beacon. No rescue could come until the area was secure, but at least aircraft above would know he was down and still alive!
Which, miraculously, he seemed to be. He gingerly rolled one foot, then the other, to test for a broken ankle. The same for his wrists and hands. He knew he might not feel any pain for a few minutes, the amount of adrenaline that had to be flowing, but it seemed he had gotten down in one piece. He still had spots in front of his eyes when he opened them, and a massive headache, but no pain in his back, no splintered bones.
He was, however, lying on the stone and ice roof of an enemy airbase in the middle of a shooting war and if his pilots could secure the airspace over the island there would be an air strike blowing in any minute now.
Gathering himself, he rolled into a crouch. About two hundred feet to his left he saw what must have been the remains of the American radome. It was nothing more than blasted metal stumps and rough foundations but it offered the only potential shelter on the whole rock, in case any of the incoming Russian munitions went high.
He looked up at the clear blue sky, could see some contrails, and far away, a burning machine falling from the sky. He had no idea if it was American or Russian. But judging by the first ten minutes of the battle, he wasn’t hopeful. It was the first time he had ever gone up against an autonomous sub-launched air defense system.
And it had kicked his human ass.
Yevgeny Bondarev might have been more cheerful if he could have seen the data Bunny was running as she chugged a bottle of non-carbonated energy drink. The screen told its story in a format she could digest in seconds, but she kept looking at it for as long as it took her to finish the pint of fluid she was throwing down.
Skippy, the Fantom in the bay, had been linked into the hex data feed and was tracking the aircraft overhead. It had faithfully recorded every kill and loss. She looked at the data in disappointment. The S-FAD ambush had claimed just 14 aircraft for its 24 missiles. There were still 4 Russian fighters, all 6th generation Mig-41s, reforming south of the Island. They were not giving up.
She put down her empty bottle, reached to take one for Rodriguez, and saw a group of new icons appear on the screen at the absolute limit of Skippy’s range, about twenty miles out. They flickered in and out, indicating they were stealth aircraft, but the AI was confident enough it could identify them from their radar and signals cross sections.
Nine Su-57s in the company of Okhotniks. Six of them! They were spearing straight toward Little Diomede, and that could only mean one thing. She touched the comms button on her helmet. “Boss, I got mud movers inbound! I’m going to stay in the trailer, make sure my formation has its head in the game, OK?” she called urgently.
“Acknowledged. Keep them out of our backyard O’Hare, I’m still working on this Cat.”
“Yes ma’am.” Bunny pulled off her plane captain helmet, jammed on her virtual-reality rig and plugged it in. Bunny’s hex, holding low and optimized for stealth north of Little Diomede was programmed with priority targets and a 20-mile defense perimeter around the island it was tasked to defend. Knowing that pilot kills hurt more than drone kills, Bunny had programmed her Fantoms to seek out and attack Su-57 or Mig-41 aircraft first and foremost. Each Fantom was armed with eight Cuda medium-range missiles – 40 in total. Her aggressor algorithm gave the three lead aircraft in the formation the role of engaging first, and as soon as Tzubya’s reformed flight of four Mig-41s entered the kill zone south of Little Diomede – their own radars marking their place in the sky like neon lights - they were immediately locked with eight Cudas, two per aircraft.
No! She needed to re-task them to stop the ground attack Hunters! Right now they were the biggest threat to Rodriguez and O’Hare.
She was too slow. Homing on the Russian Migs targeting radars, her Fantoms let fly with a volley of Cudas and the sky south of Little Diomede was suddenly a mosaic of contrails.
“Fantoms! Missiles inbound.” Tzubya called in an emotionless voice. One, two… five… he quickly counted five drones and near twice as many missiles headed for his formation. The American aircraft were nearly 30 miles out, hiding down low in the wave clutter. One of the returns on his tracking screen suddenly turned solid and quicker than he could think himself, a K-77M missile leaped off his rails toward the target. A second missile was fired by one of his wingmen but his systems were showing heavy jamming and the Russian missiles lost their lock almost immediately. He had to get within optical guidance range!
At least two incoming missiles appeared to be targeting his aircraft. Damn, damn, damn. He looked to his right and saw he still had a wingman with him. Then he saw a flash of fire, the white cloud of a missile impact beside him and he rolled instinctively away from the explosion as his wingman detonated in a ball of flying metal.
No, not a missile. The US missiles were still closing, two seconds to impact. A glint caught his eye and looking to port he saw a lone Fantom pull out of a screaming dive above the water and climb away, trying to regain altitude. Ignoring the missile warnings, he flung his own machine onto its wing and tried to lock the US aircraft up. He had to override his combat AI as it fired countermeasures and tried to assert control in the face of imminent destruction from the incoming US missiles, but he grunted in satisfaction as he turned inside the fast-moving Cudas and both detonated harmlessly behind him. As the enemy aircraft reached the top of its zoom climb he got an optical lock on the US fighter that had taken his wingman out with its guns. He got a firing tone. His thumb reached for the missile release…
As he was about to jab down on the button, tracer flashed over his wing. One of the damned winged hell-hounds had gotten behind him! Cursing, he broke hard left and dived for the sea.
“Oak 4 to Birch leader, we are engaged over target,” he said, wrenching his machine into a flick roll to avoid a line of tracer fire from the drone behind him. The missile warning screaming in his ears stopped. The inferior American missiles had lost their lock. He stopped his roll, reversed it, and pulled his machine into a screaming starboard climbing turn. He had little chance of out-maneuvering the American drone, but his Mig had a trick up its sleeve that set it apart from 5th Gen fighters like the Su-57 or Fantom. If he lived long enough to use it. More tracer fire flashed over his canopy as he jinked. “How far out are you?” he called to the Su-57 pilot shepherding the Okhotniks to the target.
“Birch leader Oak 4, we are at ingress waypoint, twenty miles out,” the voice of the commander of the Okhotnik flight replied. “We have Poplar sq
uadron with us, ten minutes from release point.”
“Spruce flight is down, Oak leader is down, Oak flight of three remaining, I am lead,” Tzubya said. “We’ll occupy the American CAP,” he said, rolling his machine on its axis and pulling it into a power climb. “I authorize ingress of Birch aircraft.”
“Roger Spruce 4,” the Birch flight leader said. “We are merging. I am showing two to four bogeys over the target, confirm?”
In any other aircraft, pulling up into a spiraling climb with an enemy on his six would have been suicidal. He felt his airspeed bleeding away despite his powerplant being at full thrust. In his rear aspect camera view he saw the US Fantom closing, firing in short controlled bursts. But at that moment a laser tone sounded in his ears. The anti-missile laser mounted in the rear of his Mig had finally got a lock on the Fantom behind him. As soon as it locked it fired automatically, a noiseless, recoilless pulse of focused energy that burned through the nose of the pursuing drone, melted vital components to slag, and sent it spinning out of control toward the sea.
“Splash one! Estimate four to six remaining,” Tzubya said. As he tried to digest the data on his tactical display he heard a scream over the radio and saw another Russian icon disappear. He brought his machine around and tried to get a lock on another American aircraft, knowing in his guts that the approaching Sukhois would not arrive in time.
In her trailer, Bunny saw she now only had four birds in the air – three with Cudas, one guns only electronic-warfare machine. She had accounted for five Migs. Between the S-FADs and her Fantoms that gave about 19 US kills for three losses. The threat board showed a large Russian force of air and ground attack aircraft moving in. It was time to get her babies to safety. But there was one Mig in range and she still had ordnance. She had to save some missiles for the ingress to Nome in case the drones were intercepted on their way home but she issued a command to her remaining A2A armed fighters to volley half their ordnance and then head for the deck and bug out for Nome.
