by Dale Brown
“Thanks, boss,” Rebecca said. “We’ll stay on patrol while you guys land and reload.”
“I’ll send the Dragon down to have the laser looked at,” Patrick said, “but we’re not going to land. I’m going to air-refuel the rest of the package and press on.”
“But you were ordered to land, boss.”
“And I fully intended to comply—until Gryzlov tried a sneak attack on Eareckson,” Patrick said. “Our mission is back on. I’m going to take the fight to Gryzlov and make him negotiate—with the barrel of a gun pointed right in his face.”
Ryazan’ Alternate Military Command Center,
Russian Federation
That same time
President Anatoliy Gryzlov, seated in the center of a raised row of seats behind Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Stepashin and his senior aides, could immediately see that something had happened. The staff officers with the headsets listening to reports had suddenly stiffened, then looked furtively at Stepashin, then quickly turned away before they were noticed; the technicians working on the grease boards froze, looked at their symbols with angst, then stepped away from the boards as if unsure what to do. “What has happened, General?” he asked.
“I…er, reports are still coming in, sir,” Stepashin stammered.
“Damn it, Stepashin, what happened?” Gryzlov thundered. Heads snapped up at the command, then lowered quickly back to consoles and papers.
“One of our flight leaders of the Shemya attack force reports that he has lost contact with…with all of the other flight leaders,” Stepashin said. “Flight Six is leading his group plus five stragglers back to their poststrike base at Petropavlovsk.”
“One flight plus five…nine aircraft?” Gryzlov exclaimed. “We sent twenty-four planes on that strike mission!” Stepashin could do nothing but nod. “Was Eareckson destroyed?” Stepashin didn’t need to respond to answer the question. “Was Eareckson even hit?” Stepashin shook his head. “Damn it, General, I thought we had intelligence that said there were no aircraft except a few tankers and transport planes at Eareckson—probably an advance force preparing for the arrival of a large number of aircraft, but certainly not a base-defense force. What in hell happened?”
“Our flight leader said they were intercepted by air-defense aircraft firing air-to-air missiles, some with nuclear warheads,” Stepashin said.
Gryzlov was about to continue his tirade but stopped short. “Nuclear weapons? I don’t think so,” he said. He shook his head, thought for a moment, then nodded knowingly. “No, I think what the squadron encountered was McLanahan’s attack force of Megafortresses and Vampires and his other high-tech aircraft. It was just plain bad luck, Nikolai. Either McLanahan’s forces were deploying to Eareckson or President Thorn really did order those planes to return to Eareckson, and McLanahan was obeying his order—rather uncharacteristic of him. They may have even used one of their plasma-yield weapons when they found they were in danger of being overrun—one detonation could have easily destroyed a close formation of MiGs.”
The Russian president shook his head, and Stepashin was surprised to see a smile creep across his face. He lit up a cigarette, the same crocodile smile still on his face, although his voice was now seething with anger. “You know what else, Stepashin? We will never get a phone call from Thomas Thorn. He will never accuse us of breaking the agreement or even acknowledge that anything untoward happened. If he didn’t realize it before—and I’m positive he was sincere when he said he would recall McLanahan’s forces in the interest of peace—he knows it now: The fight is on.”
“What do you want to do, sir?” Stepashin asked.
“McLanahan will come now—no doubt about it,” Gryzlov said. “It could happen at any time. Start a watch from the last report from our MiG bombers, set aside enough time for McLanahan to refuel those forces at Eareckson and rearm the ones that expended weapons, and then compute flight time to Vladivostok, Petropavlovsk, Kavaznya, or Anadyr—that is how long you have to get your air-defense forces in place. Whatever he has in mind, he’ll come, and he will come hard and fast.”
9
Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka Peninsula, Eastern Russia
The next evening
The direct-line phone was one of those hot-line connections that would ring continuously until answered, which meant that the call was from headquarters. The sector commander fairly lunged for the phone, snatching it up as fast as he could; he didn’t even bother to say anything as he did, because he knew that the caller would start the conversation right away.
“Report, Major,” the voice of the regional air defense commander said over the secure line from his office at the Far East Military District Air Defense Headquarters at Petropavlovsk Naval Base on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
“Target S-3 is still heading three-zero-zero true, altitude twelve thousand meters, speed five-seven-nine kilometers per hour, no evasive maneuvers, sir,” the sector commander responded. He had reported the contact moments after it appeared, so he knew that headquarters had been alerted—and no doubt the air-defense commander of Pacific Fleet, based at Vladivostok, would be listening in, too. “No reply to our warning broadcasts.”
“Any jamming signals?”
“None, sir.”
There was a long pause. The regional commander knew exactly what air-defense assets he had and their capabilities—undoubtedly he was going over this engagement in his head right now:
Primary among Petropavlovsk’s defenses was the Antey S-300V1 surface-to-air missile system, the world’s best long-range antiaircraft missile system. An entire S-300 brigade was situated at Petropavlovsk, one of Russia’s largest and most important Pacific naval and air bases, with almost two hundred antiaircraft and anti-ballistic-missile rounds deployed between six launcher sites around the sprawling base complex on the southeast corner of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Normally, the S-300 missiles had a nominal range of only one hundred kilometers, but against slow, high-altitude, nonmaneuvering targets such as this one, they had a maximum effective range of almost double that—the unidentified aircraft was already within the S-300’s lethal range.
It was not the only missile site on the Bering Sea. Another S-300 brigade was stationed at Ust’-Kamcatsk, three hundred kilometers to the north; another at Ossora; and yet another at Kavaznya, the site of Russia’s newest long-range anti-ballistic-missile laser system, still several years from completion but proceeding despite the country’s financial woes. Kavaznya was being rebuilt on the site of an old Soviet research facility that was suddenly and mysteriously destroyed in the late 1980s, before the fall of the USSR. The official explanation was that the original site was destroyed when an earthquake ruptured the containment building of the nuclear plant there, causing a catastrophic explosion.
But local Eskimo and Aleut folklore claimed that the laser facility was destroyed by an American air raid using, of all things, a lone 1960s-era B-52 bomber. No one believed that outlandish story, even though the rumors still persisted after almost two decades.
But it didn’t matter right now, because Moscow had ordered that the fighters, rather than the long-range surface-to-air missiles, handle any intruders. A squadron each of MiG-27 and MiG-29 fighters had been deployed to Petropavlovsk since the initiation of hostilities less than two days ago. Four flights of four fighters were assigned a wedge of airspace about four hundred kilometers long. One fighter was airborne continuously; the others would launch as necessary, usually one more fighter upon radar contact by the first fighter and the last two if multiple targets were detected. Two full flights were held in reserve, but in this deployment no one was considered off duty—all air and ground crews were either on crew rest, ready to be called up, or ready to respond. Other air-defense units were based at Magadan and Anadyr and could be called into service if any intruders made it past the outer defenses.
Petropavlovsk also had a squadron of twelve Tu-142 long-range maritime-reconnaissance planes—upgraded Tu-95 Bear bombers designated for
antiship, antisubmarine, long-range sea patrol, and electronic-warfare duties. Six bombers were flying at all times on thousand-kilometer-long patrol legs. The bombers had already attacked two vessels, assumed to be intelligence-gathering ships, that refused to turn away from Petropavlovsk.
Yes, the ships had been in international waters—but this was war. They obeyed orders or suffered the consequences. It was the same with this newcomer, the sector commander thought. He was either a hostile or an idiot if he kept on cruising closer to one of Russia’s most important bases. Whichever was the case, he had to die: If he was hostile, he had to be stopped before he attacked; if he was an idiot, he had to be killed before he was allowed to breed.
The Pacific Fleet was one of the most powerful of the Russian navy’s arms, with almost two hundred surface ships, strategic ballistic-missile submarines, and nuclear and nonnuclear attack submarines. Whatever targets the fighters could not get, the SAMs and sea-based antiaircraft units would. But the fighters would not miss.
“Am I clear to engage unidentified aircraft, sir?” the sector commander asked. Even though Russia was excluding aircraft and vessels out to three kilometers, this newcomer had already made it in to two-fifty. The range of the American conventional air-launched cruise missile was over eight hundred kilometers, and the nuclear-armed version was well over four thousand kilometers, so if it was a warplane armed with either weapon, it would have already attacked. The Americans’ next most powerful air-launched weapons—the air force’s AGM-142 TV-guided rocket-powered bomb and their navy’s turbojet-powered Short-range Land Attack Missile-Extended Range—both had a maximum range of about two hundred kilometers, so this unidentified aircraft had to be stopped before it got within range of those two weapons.
“Authorized,” the regional commander said. “Get your fighters airborne, and destroy any target immediately, from long range.”
The surveillance radar at Petropavlovsk had a range of well over five hundred kilometers, and the unidentified aircraft had been spotted cruising in at high altitude at just over four hundred kilometers. The MiGs accelerated to Mach 2. They didn’t need their radars yet—they were receiving datalinked signals from Petropavlovsk showing them exactly where the enemy aircraft were, and once they were within missile range, they could attack without ever revealing themselves. Textbook engagement so far.
But Moscow said they would not be alone: The Americans had stealth aircraft up here, and the word from air force headquarters was that some of them could launch air-to-air missiles. The best tactic, Moscow said, was to rush any aircraft that was detected at high speed with as many fighters as possible, engage at maximum range, get away from the area right after missile launch using full countermeasures, then reengage from a completely different axis of attack.
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.”
