by Ian Slater
But if in Whitehall the growing fear of the Allies was evident in the cold statistics on the computer screens and by the tiny models representing the growing number of convoy ships sunk, then for the Allied submarine commanders like Robert Brentwood, a thousand feet or more beneath the surface of the Atlantic, the danger took on an infinitely more palpable, if invisible, reality.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Hawaiian Islands
The Fijian trawler MV Vanuatu was manned by East Indian Fijians with long memories of Colonel Kabuka’s coup d’état of 1987 when the Fijian-run military overthrew Her Majesty’s duly elected government in the South Seas island. Indian journalists were imprisoned, and the ever-present hostility of the native Fijian population against their fellow East Indian citizens was as palpable in the balmy air as the humidity that hung so oppressively over Suva Bay. Paradise had lost its innocence forever after the coup, and into the void created by the condemnation issued from Her Majesty’s government, the Russians had come, bearing aid. In return, the Russians received not only fish treaties but also the right to visit and use Fijian port facilities for repairs to the huge Soviet trawler fleet whenever “necessary.”
At one stroke the Soviets in the eighties had extended the KGB’s and MVD’s intelligence-gathering facilities halfway around the world to the South Seas — hitherto the American navy’s domain.
And so it was that the MV Vanuatu, ostensibly a Fijian trawler but in reality under subcontract to the Russian merchant marine, operating between the Ellis Islands group and Hawaii, was in Honolulu when Freeman’s 747 landed. Still, the Indian operatives aboard the trawler wouldn’t have learned of his presence but for one of the civilian ground crew from Honolulu’s airport grouching in the Reef Bar about missing the first round of poker because he’d had to work overtime “juicing up” some bigwig’s “flying lanai.”
“Some politician’s freebie,” suggested one of the players, another mechanic, making like a high roller, ordering mai-tais all round.
“Nah,” said the airport mechanic. “Wasn’t politicians. They hit the tarmac soon as they land. Suck in their gut, leis all around them, and big smiles for the Advertizer. These guys wouldn’t even leave the plane when we were pumping ‘er full of Avgas.”
It wasn’t much to go on for one of the Vanuatu’s crew sitting at the bar, knocking back his fourth Bud, but it was enough for Vanuatu’s skipper to pass it along via “fish talk.” This innocuous plain-language transmission, full of information about sea conditions, movements and depth of schools of fish, was relayed from one trawler to another as far as the South Korean and Japanese trawler fleets plying the Tsushima Straits off Japan’s southern island of Honshu. By the time Freeman’s plane reached Tokyo’s Narita Airport — Osaka ruled out because of fog — a South Korean trawler, manned by North Korean illegals, all with bona fide ROK papers, had sent a fake SOS of predetermined coordinates. The rescue hovercraft of the Japanese defense forces, taking the message as a genuine distress call, ended up on a wild-goose chase and assumed the boat had sunk when they reached the area and found no sign of the vessel.
The coordinates, a number-for-letter code, alerted Soviet operatives from Japan to Vladivostok and Khabarovsk that the Americans’ VIP plane was at Narita.
In order that there would be no possibility of either Soviet or Chinese radar-guided, surface-to-air missile batteries along the Yalu and Tamur firing at the Soviet mission’s aircraft as they headed south, a secret message in “four group, number-for-number” code went out from STAVKA Moscow HQ to Far Eastern TVD HQ Khabarovsk — for repeat to the Soviet Embassy in Beijing. The message, mainly for the benefit of the Chinese, was to inform all AA batteries that in the next twenty-four hours, Soviet fighters would be in Manchurian air space and were not to be fired upon.
The message was intercepted by U.S. intelligence satellite K-14 in geosynchronous orbit over the South China Sea, but as the STAVKA’s code had not been broken, the number series transcript of it was filed — to add to the voluminous piles of other intercepts, which included everything from military traffic to civilian traffic between the United States, Canada, and Asia. Even if the code had been cracked by U.S. intelligence, the chances of it being brought immediately to SACPAC HQ in Tokyo were fifty-fifty due to what insiders habitually called the PHS, or Pearl Harbor Syndrome, referring to the avalanche of information which might contain what you want to know but which, even with computers working flat out, takes hours, often days, to process.
* * *
“I assume we don’t have to stop at Matsue?” Freeman asked Norton as their car drove across from the secluded VIP lounge at Narita to the Boeing. “We can go straight through to Seoul.”
“Yes, sir, and in the morning we fly up to Pakchon — it’s only about thirty miles from the front.”
“Front the front! It will be the front if Creigh doesn’t pull himself together.”
As the car drove across the runway, a dull, thudding sound came from underneath as the clacking of the tires on the cement seams was muffled by the car’s heavy armor-plated chassis. “Those fighters. Remember to have them go off a half hour before us.”
“It’s all arranged, sir. Don’t think there’ll be any problem. Overcast above the Sea of Jap— sorry, sir, over the East Sea. That’ll help hide the big bird. And so far, security seems to be holding up.” By way of underscoring his point, Norton reached forward and took a copy of Stars and Stripes from the pocket by the jump seat. “Here’s a photo of you inspecting the forward troops around Warsaw. You were in Washington at the time.” The headline ran.
FREEMAN CROSSES BORDER — TAKES BREST
DRIVES ON TO MINSK
The look-alike, Freeman had to admit, was very convincing and well rugged up, the military scarf speckled with snow, bundled high against the cold — and close-up shots.
“Yes,” agreed Freeman, obviously pleased, if not by the deception, then by the paper’s announcing to the world at large that his American-led NATO armored column had succeeded in breaking through and were now engaging the Russians on their own soil. Nevertheless, he uncharacteristically intoned a caution. “But can we hold them, Dick?” He paused and put down the paper. “By God, I told my men I don’t want to ever hear we’re holding anything, and last report I get is we’re grinding to a stop, ‘consolidating,’ because Russian subs have been chopping up our Atlantic supply line. We’ve gotta have more gas, Jim, more food, munitions — more of everything before those bastards in Moscow can organize a counter attack. More battles in history have been lost by overextended supply lines than for any other reason.”
“The Russians are stuck, too. General. Snow is neutral.”
“The hell it is. For the Russians it comes with mother’s milk.”
“Maybe, sir, but the fact of the matter is, they are digging in for the moment.”
Freeman nodded, pulling up his coat collar and tightening his belt as he walked unhurriedly in the pouring rain to the plane. “Stuck! But for how long. Jim? Russia’s vast, all right, but their supply problems are still not as rough as ours. We can blow up their rail tracks. They fix them. We blow them up again, they can use horses to haul supplies if necessary. But we have to cross an ocean.” Deep in thought, the general walked up the stairs to the plane. “You know the greatest surprise in this war, Jim?”
“What’s that. General?”
“All the experts said that there would never be trench warfare again because it would be a war of mobility — the fastest-moving war men had ever seen. Fact is, soldiers have never been worn out physically and mentally as fast before — all because of this mobility. At this point in history, both sides are exhausted.” Colonel Norton thought it impolitic to remind the general of what he had said earlier about stress being an excuse for cowardice. Geniuses, he figured, had the right to be inconsistent.
“We’ve got to surprise them, Jim. Somehow we have to—”
“Merlin?” proffered Norton, referring to the plan the gener
al had been working on, a plan so secret that only he, Norton, and his G-2 knew about it.
Freeman shook his head. “Our boys aren’t ready yet, Jim. God knows I’m not known for overcaution, but we’d only have one shot at it. Besides, it’s a last-ditch scenario. Don’t want to use it until I absolutely have to. First let’s try to untie this logjam in Korea, beat the Chinese and North Koreans back over the Yalu. If we do that, we can take pressure off our boys around Brest while our jokers figure out what the hell is going on with our convoys. Something screwy going on with the Russian subs. Well,” he sighed, “at least the Russians don’t seem to know I’m over here.”
“No, sir. Flying over the East Sea’s going to be the most restful part of the trip.”
“Good. I sure as hell could use the sleep.”
As the general buckled up, the Boeing’s jets screaming into high pitch, Norton was called up to the communications console. Moments later, he walked back through the eerily lit alley of winking consoles and computers and handed Freeman a top secret message of unconfirmed gas attacks by PLA— Communist Chinese — forces against several South Korean positions across the Yalu.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The twin-finned MiG 29-A, NATO designation Fulcrum A, was not only top of its class; some NATO pilots believed it to be the best fighter in the world, smaller than the Tomcat, more powerful than the F-18. In ready rooms all along the NATO front, Allied pilots held that, were the Soviets allowed time to produce enough of them, the Allies would no longer have the edge in the European war.
Sergei Marchenko, holder of the Order of Lenin, Hero of the Soviet Union, and Distinguished Flying Medal for his actions both at Fulda Gap at the war’s beginning and later over the Aleutians, where his MiG-27 Flogger D had downed, among others, Frank Shirer’s F-14 Tomcat and where, in turn, Marchenko himself had been downed, snatched from the freezing Bering Sea with only moments to spare, was known by sight to all civilian and military personnel at the huge Khabarovsk air base. Yet he was not liked — there was a hardness about him that was off-putting — a brutal streak, some said. But as a pilot, it was said he had no equal.
In a world of high-tech millisecond avionics, Marchenko’s fame — his ability to make split-second decisions and his extraordinary skill at handling the Fulcrum — had spread throughout the armed services. Not only was he recognized as a natural in the air, but it was common knowledge that despite the best possible connections in Moscow, he had proven himself as an ordinary soldier in the blood and dust of the boynya— “abattoir”—of Fulda Gap, where the sun itself had been obscured by the massive clouds of exhaust, dust, and shellfire from the massed American and Russian armor locked in battle. And even those who saw the killer too often in his eyes acknowledged that, unlike the sons of other important men, he had not placed himself within the highly protected walls of the Kremlin, in the STAVKA’s HQ as an officer, but had volunteered for frontline duty in the Far Eastern TVD. Despite this, he remained a loner, occasionally sociable in the mess and ready room, but always holding something in reserve. The cold, hard streak, which some claimed verged on the sadistic, didn’t show itself, however, until he was in aerial combat.
Among the ground crew he was known as “Nemignuvshiy”—”No Blink”—a reference to the story that had been passed on from his training days after he’d moved out of the two-seater L-29 jet trainers at the Yuri Gagarin Academy, qualifying for MiG-21s at the Gagnon Higher Aviation Academy. They had been readying for an air race at the end of the course to test them before they could go on to fly the top-of-the-line fighters. The test, in MiG-23s, involved a low-level half roll and loop, then a return to level flight over the academy’s airfield prior to receiving the coveted wings to go with the green “CA” shoulder boards. Before the race, the pilots, six of them including Sergei Marchenko, had walked, as was customary, through the maneuvers on the chalk lines outside the academy’s glass-and-cement tower. Even then one of the instructors had remarked on Marchenko’s total concentration while the other cadets occasionally glanced at one another, to see how the others were doing, indulging in a joke or two as they slowed the walk to avoid near misses.
The six went up, moving off two at a time, the MiG-23s’ Tumansky R-29s on full afterburner, swing wings at sixteen degrees, the MiGs gaining altitude, retracting landing gear, extending the dorsal fin and spreading wings to forty-five degrees. The fighters formed a six-plane perfect diamond, performed one thundering low-level pass over the field, separated, and climbed for the ten-thousand-foot ceiling, the training video camera in each plane, mounted beneath the sight for later replay, already whirring, the instructors in the tower listening closely to the chatter for any sign of hesitancy. All six MiGs then came in for the low roll under Mach 1 but in excess of six hundred miles per hour, where a split-second mistake would put them into the ground.
They came out of the half roll in unison and were into the second half of a loop. There was a cry from one of the pilots at the apogee of the roll. The instructor’s shouted correction from the tower came too late — the MiG-23 a ball of fire in the birch trees on the eastern edge of the runway. In that moment, as the videotapes of the remaining five planes later showed, only one pilot, Sergei Marchenko, hadn’t looked down at the crash but, in that instant, had exerted maximum throttle — and won.
* * *
Zipping up his G suit, Marchenko said nothing as the other pilots on the mission talked animatedly among themselves, most, he noticed, strictly observing the ritual of zipping up either right or left boot first. To Marchenko it didn’t matter. Their rituals to him were those of juvenile superstitions, of talismans, lucky numbers, obsessions held as tightly as American baseball players who, an instructor had once told him, often favored the same pair of socks or undershirt as being “lucky” for their game. Marchenko viewed such rituals with the same contempt as he did belief in God. It was all voodoo. The only belief one could rely on was the belief in oneself, in one’s own precision and ability — the best talisman being the sure knowledge that you could do it — and win.
Marchenko saluted his ground crew captain, the man barely visible in the dim red night light by the plane’s ladder, and lowered himself into the Fulcrum’s cockpit, pulling on the skull cap, followed by his dark-visored helmet, and a metamorphosis took place. Man is a natural killer, his father had told him. Regrettable but true. The best warriors knew this. Caldwell, the Australian ace who in World War II shot German pilots in their parachutes after he’d let one go and seen the German kill his best friend the next day, knew it. And so did the great American aces of the Vietnam War. There was no glamour. There was only precision and death. In the Fulcrum his precision and the cruel beauty of the Mikoyan fighter met and fused as one.
He could perform a hammerhead stall/tail slide under a mere three thousand feet, then go straight, and he meant straight, into an eighty-five degree climb, the combined eighteen-thousand-pound thrust of the twin Tumansky R-33Ds shifting the metallic, honeycombed, and plastic composite machine from “reduce thrust” to “idle,” back to “flat out,” without the engines so much as missing a beat. For Marchenko, the Fulcrum’s thrust/weight ratio, greater than one, was velichestvennoe—”sublime”—and it made the Fulcrum not only a superb fighter but an ideal interceptor as well.
His Fulcrum, a large 9 painted on the starboard jet’s box intake, with its slogan “Ubiytsa Yanki’ “—”Yankee Killer”—next to the blue-beige winged insignia of the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau, rose with the eight other MiG-29s into the zero visibility above Vladivostok, crossing the Soviet-Chinese border, heading south over China’s north-easternmost province of Heilongjiang.
En route to the planned intercept of the American-fighter-protected 747 believed to be carrying the American general Douglas Freeman, strict radio silence was observed. No active radar, which might be picked up by U.S. fighter cover over the Sea of Japan, was permitted. Only passive radar could be used to receive advance warning of the American presence.
The American fighters, Marchenko knew, would no doubt be doing the same, but once contact with them was made, six of the Fulcrums would peel off to the southeast to engage the largest group of the American fighter cover. The remaining three Fulcrums, Marchenko leading, would ignore all else, staying low, in the sea scatter, in hope of hiding themselves from American radar, their sole target the largest blip recorded by Vladivostok Control, the latter coordinating the Soviet-Chinese ground radar network as well as the offshore buoy-mounted radar.
Once they picked up the 747, Vladivostok Center would send a burst transmission, vectoring the 747’s position relative to the Fulcrums. Only nearing the vectored point of intercept would the MiG-29s’ look-down, shoot-down radar, with a range of sixty-seven miles, be turned on for the attack.
Climbing, then diving at Mach 2.8, over three thousand kilometers per hour, loaded with six pylon-mounted Alamo air-to-air missiles apiece and fully drummed thirty-millimeter gun beneath the left wing, Marchenko’s Fulcrum and the other two following him in arrowhead formation would close the sixty-seven miles to the 747 in two minutes, plus or minus fifteen seconds. Only then, Marchenko had told the other two pilots, would each plane’s IRST — infrared search and tracking — dome, mounted high on the starboard side of the Fulcrum’s nose, be switched on to pick up the 747’s exhaust lest the Boeing’s formidable jamming capability scramble any of the Fulcrum’s avionics, including the multimode nose radar and the Sirena 3 radar warning receivers.
