Plan of Attack

by Dale Brown

  “Yes, General? What is it?”

  “I want…those planes ready for my crews in one hour.”

  “I told you, General, it won’t happen,” Shrike said. “You need the proper—”

  “Damn it, Colonel, you do as I goddamned tell you to do!” Luger suddenly blurted out. “You don’t need authorization to fuel those planes and open the fucking hangar doors, and you don’t need authorization for an R&D team that already has clearance to both the aircraft and the facility to arrive there. I’ll get all the other authorizations. Now, move those planes like I told you to do, or I will nail your ass to my front gate, warning all you other insubordinate assholes not to mess with me!” And he disconnected the line.

  When he looked up, he saw most of his senior officers—Rebecca Furness;Colonel Daren Mace, her ops officer; Colonel Nancy Cheshire, commander of the EB-52 Megafortresses and the AL-52 Dragons of the Fifty-second Bomb Squadron; and Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Hellion, commander of the EB-1C Vampire bombers of the Fifty-first Bomb Squadron—staring at him as if he had grown an extra head.

  “What are you standing around for?” Luger snapped. “I want the Alpha force ready to launch into the Foxtrot One airborne-alert area in one hour, and I want the rest of the force on the roof and ready to fly in two hours. Nancy, get your Dragon crews loaded up on a KC-135 and ready to fly to Dreamland to get the birds ready for combat operations.”

  “Are you serious, sir?” Nancy Cheshire asked incredulously. Cheshire was a veteran Dreamland test pilot and one of the original program directors of both the EB-52 Megafortress airborne battleship and the AL-52 Dragon airborne laser, both modified B-52 bombers. “We’re going into combat even though we haven’t been recertified?”

  “Not quite—I said I want all our planes ‘ready’ to go into combat,” Luger said. “But I’m authorized to do everything necessary to have my force survive an attack against the United States, and that’s what I plan to do.”

  “What attack against the United States?” Cheshire asked.

  “The one that very well could be happening right now—if what Patrick thought might happen really does happen,” Dave said. “I’ve got a feeling he’s correct. And if he is, I don’t want my planes sitting around here on the ground like wounded ducks. Let’s roll, folks.” He paused, then said, “Duty Officer, get me General Muskoka’s office at Langley right away—urgent priority.”

  Clear, Alaska

  A short time later

  The Tupolev-160 supersonic bombers accelerated to twelve hundred kilometers per hour and climbed slightly to five hundred meters above the ground shortly before crossing just north of Wolf Mountain in central Alaska. They received a READY indication moments later, but the navigator/bombardier knew well enough to wait until the designated launch point, because his Kh-15 missiles would lose valuable range if they had to climb over or circumnavigate the mountain.

  At the preplanned launch point, the bombardier flipped a switch from SAFE to COMMIT, which started the Kh-15 missile countdown. The Tu-160’s attack computers immediately downloaded navigation, heading, and velocity information to the missiles, which allowed the missiles’ gyros to perform their final transfer alignment to prepare them for flight. As soon as the missiles reported ready, the aft bomb-bay doors flew open, and four Kh-15 missiles were ejected down into the slipstream, one every fifteen seconds. Each one fell about a hundred meters in a slightly nose-low attitude while the air data sensors sampled the air, computed roll and bank velocities, set the rear fins for stabilization, and then fired its first-stage solid rocket motor. The Kh-15 shot ahead of the bomber in the blink of an eye, sped ahead for a few kilometers, then started a fast climb. The second Tu-160 fired four missiles from its rear bomb bay as well.

  In fifteen seconds the missiles were at twenty thousand meters’ altitude, where they began to level off as the second-stage motor ignited. They cruised at twice the speed of sound for another forty-five seconds, then started a descent. Their precision inertial accelerometers kept them on course for their target, now less than eighty kilometers away.

  Like Shemya, Clear Air Station in central Alaska was a rather isolated location that was growing in importance and development with the advent of the Aerospace Defense Command’s ballistic-missile defense system. Along with the existing Ballistic Missile Early Warning System radar, Clear Air Station hosted civilian air-traffic-control radars and NORAD surveillance radars. As part of the national missile-defense system’s expansion, the Air Force was also constructing a Battle Management Command and Control Center and an In-Flight Interceptor Communications System, plus eight silos, each housing four ground-based interceptor (GBI) rockets, spread out over eight hundred acres. The rockets were modified Minuteman II ballistic missiles fitted with a kill-vehicle warhead, designed to track and destroy ballistic-missile warhead “buses” outside Earth’s atmosphere. Three hundred military and over five hundred civilian contractors and construction workers lived and worked at the base.

  Clear Air Station was definitely a “soft” target—perfect prey for the Kh-15 missiles.

  In less than two minutes from launch, the first Russian attack missile reached its target. When the Kh-15 missile was still a thousand meters aboveground, its warhead detonated. The fireball of a one-kiloton thermonuclear device was very small and barely reached the ground, but the shock and overpressure of the explosion were enough to destroy every surface structure within four kilometers of ground zero. Every fifteen seconds another explosion ripped across the Alaskan wilderness, burning, crushing, or sweeping away buildings, radar antennae, and trees—and killing every living thing standing within a sixteen-square-kilometer area.

  Each bomber’s third and fourth missiles were fitted with a deep-penetrating warhead and a delayed-action fuze and programmed against the ground-based interceptor silos. Although these were not as effective as the air-burst warheads programmed against aboveground targets, over half of the thirty-two GBIs were destroyed by the burrowing Kh-15 nuclear warheads.

  For the alert force, for the alert force, scramble, scramble, scramble!”

  The radio announcement came as a complete surprise. The four F-16C Fighting Falcon alert crews were inside the ramp-maintenance supervisor’s truck, sipping coffee while they reviewed their jets’ Form 781 maintenance logs prior to accepting the aircraft for alert status. Coffee cups dropped to the floor, and confused, scared eyes turned to each other inside the truck.

  “Holy shit!” one of the younger pilots shouted as they all collected their flight gear. “What do we do?”

  “Get your ass airborne, that’s what!” answered one of the other pilots, the flight commander. “Get rolling as fast as you can!” He dashed for the door, hoping like hell the others were right behind him.

  The alert ramp at Eielson Air Force Base was in a state of slight dis-array. With the two alert aircraft airborne in support of the newly established air patrols over northern Alaska, the wing was still in the process of preparing more aircraft for alert. The Third Wing at Eielson kept two F-16s interceptors in preload status, ready to be armed and fueled, but with no crews assigned, in support of the air-sovereignty mission for Alaska. Normally it took anywhere from one to three hours to get the preload birds ready to fly, but in this heightened state of alert, with the alert aircraft suddenly committed to fly airborne patrols, the two preload aircraft were almost ready, and two more F-16s were less than an hour away from ready-five status as well.

  The four aircraft being preflighted were in alert shelters, with both forward and rear doors open and with many different teams of maintenance technicians inside checking systems and running checklists. The crew chiefs were furiously racing around their aircraft, yelling at the maintenance teams to finish up and get out of the hangars, removing streamers and plugs, and closing inspection and access panels. Their pre-cocking checklists were not yet complete, so they had to be sure that all steps in several other checklists were done, as well as the “scramble” checklist itself. T
he pilots did the same, following right behind their crew chiefs, running several checklists simultaneously in a mad dash to get their jets ready to fly. But in less than ten minutes, pilots were climbing inside the two ready-five interceptors, and soon engines were started, the taxiways cleared, and the two Falcons started taxiing to the active runway.

  But they would not make it airborne.

  Two minutes after the last warhead detonated over Clear Air Station, the Tu-160 Blackjack bombers screamed overhead, continuing their missile run. With the NORAD and FAA radars down, they would be virtually invisible as they pressed their attack. Five minutes after passing over Clear, the Tupolev-160 bombers were in position to begin their second missile run.

  Each bomber launched four missiles against three separate target areas around the city of Fairbanks, Alaska: Fort Wainwright, Eielson Air Force Base, and Fort Greely. Like Shemya and Clear, all these three locations had components of the new ballistic-missile defense system under construction; in addition, Eielson was the location of the Alaskan battle-management headquarters, which was a mirror to the main command headquarters located in North Dakota. All eight missiles were bunker-buster weapons, designed to explode deep underground—but the blast effects were more than powerful enough to heavily damage all three military bases.

  As soon as the two Russian bombers launched the remaining weapons in their aft bomb bays, they headed southwest across Alaska, staying clear of the radar sites around Anchorage, Bethel, and Dillingham. In twenty minutes they were feet-wet over the Bering Sea. Two F-15C Eagle fighters launched from Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage to pursue, but they never got within range to spot them at low altitude.

  And the Russian bombers still were not finished with their attacks.

  Aboard the Russian Tupolev-95MS Bear Bomber

  A short time later

  Feet dry, crew,” the navigator radioed. “Ninety minutes to launch point.”

  Leborov was in the middle of his attack briefing when the navigator gave his report. The cabin got instantly quiet. They still had a long way to go before this part of their mission was over, but actually making it into North America was simply an incredible feat in itself. Even the most optimistic planner gave them a one-in-ten chance of getting this far—and, as far as Leborov could tell, every Tupolev-95MS in his formation that had completed an air refueling had made it. The old rattle-traps had done their jobs nicely so far.

  The Tupolev-22M bombers had done their job admirably, too. They had created a curtain of electronic jamming that screened the attack force from detection until their long-range Kh-31 antiradar missiles were in range to destroy the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s North Warning System radar sites. As far as he could tell, they had lost just six -22Ms, and no -95Ms.

  “R…roger, nav,” Leborov responded after a few moments. “Station check, crew.” Each one of his crew members responded with his crew position and then performed the routine check, which included switches, oxygen, safety equipment, lights, radios, and required logbook entries. They had done a station check just a few minutes earlier, but doing that simple yet important task, Leborov hoped, would get their minds back on the mission and away from the danger they were continuing to fly into.

  When everyone had finished, Leborov went on, “Okay, crew, let me get through this damned briefing, and then you can have some quiet time to yourselves before we do our thing.

  “After weapon release we’ll head directly west toward the Rocky Mountains, then northward along the military crest to evade any surviving radars. We still have all of our antiradar missiles on board, so we’ll attack and destroy any military radars we encounter, such as AWACS, fighter-intercept, or fire-control radars, and secondarily any ground-surveillance radars. If possible, we’ll retain any unused weapons for force reconstitution.

  “Our primary forward landing base is Norman Wells, which is located on the Mackenzie River west of Great Bear Lake—in fact, we’ll be flying close to it on our inbound leg. We have SPETZNAZ commandos and mechanics on the ground waiting for our signal to help us refuel—”

  “Has that been confirmed, sir?” the flight engineer cut in. “Are they really there?”

  “They were in place when we departed, but we haven’t heard a thing since,” Leborov responded. “We won’t know for sure until we’re getting ready to land. If we get no word from them, we’ll decide what to do as a crew—either land and attempt a refueling ourselves, land and abandon the plane, bail out and crash the plane, or risk flying across Alaska attempting to make it back into eastern Siberia.” Again the crew got very quiet. “Anyway, as soon as possible, we’ll take on as much fuel at Norman Wells as we can and, as the Americans say, ‘Get out of Dodge’—whatever the hell that means. We then will try to make it past any American fighter patrols and across to any friendly base. Anadyr is the primary recovery base. If we top off our tanks at Norman Wells, we will have enough fuel to make it all the way to Novosibirsk or Petropavlovsk with no problems.

  “Weapon-disposal procedures: If we have any of the Kh-90 weapons still on board, and we can’t launch them against secondary targets, we’ll take them with us,” Leborov went on. “If there is any danger whatsoever of their falling into enemy hands, we’ll jettison them safe over isolated enemy territory, open ocean, or ice pack. If we’re on the ground, we’ll jettison them prearmed on the ramp—they won’t detonate, and they’ll be useless after their chemical batteries run out. Lastly, if the weapons cannot be jettisoned at all, our only option is to bail out of the aircraft and let the weapons crash with the plane. If we do make it on the ground, under no circumstances shut down power to the weapon-arming panel. I will stay in the pilot’s seat, and I will have full authority on whether to retain or jettison the weapons. Bottom line: We don’t let viable nuclear weapons fall into enemy hands. Of course, none of this applies to the Kh-31s, since they are nonnuclear.

  “Survival and evasion: If we are forced to bail out, crash-land, or ditch, it is each individual crew member’s responsibility to survive and to make your way to a designated recovery or exfiltration point. Our poststrike exfiltration zones are near Norman Wells, Pine Point, Inuvik, Prince Rupert, Whitehorse, and Fort Nelson. If you don’t know how to get to them by now, you had better learn fast, because we’re destroying all maps after we launch our missiles. You are all well trained in cold-weather survival, and I should think our chances of surviving off the land and making it to one of the planned exfiltration points is very good. Try to link up with one of the others if possible, but don’t travel together unless you need assistance. The exfiltration points will be visited from time to time by friendly forces, hired escorts, or SPETZNAZ combat-rescue teams, as conditions warrant, so sit tight once you make it to an exfil point, and look out for your contact. Most of all, remember your training and keep acool head.

  “Resistance and escape: If you’re captured, remember that your first and foremost responsibility to your crew and your country is to survive; second, to resist to the best of your ability giving up vital state secrets; and third, to escape, so you can return to friendly forces and fight again. You must protect your fellow crew members and support your country, but if you feel you will be killed if you do not talk, then talk—but say as little as possible. The Canadians and Americans are generally not considered brutal captors, but the outposts and field-intelligence officers will be the most unpredictable, and of course we’ll have just launched nuclear weapons against them, so they’re likely to be very, very angry.

  “If necessary, give them the most minimal information possible—name, rank, serial number, and date of birth—then beg for mercy. Try anything and everything to avoid being abused, tortured, or interrogated: Remind them of their legal responsibilities, speak about the Geneva Conventions, ask to talk to the Red Cross, plead with them to be fair and humane, tell them you are a family man, pretend you’re injured, blah blah blah, and they will likely not hurt you. This is no time to be a hero and get yourselves maimed.
Remember, we are not talking about the Chechens or the Afghans—the Americans and Canadians respond to pleas for help. Again, rely on your training and keep a cool head, and you’ll come out of it okay. Hell, you might even star on one of their television reality shows, sign a Hollywood movie deal, marry Pamela Anderson, and get famous defense lawyer Johnny Cochran to represent you in court within a day or two.” That got a laugh that Leborov could hear even in the noisy cabin.

  “If you escape, your chance of finding support from the civilian population is unknown,” the aircraft commander went on. “You may encounter some Russian-speaking individuals, but don’t assume they are pro-Russian. Generally, people who live in the Arctic, as in Russia, support strangers they find in the wilderness—it is an unwritten code for those who live in inhospitable regions. Still, it is best to stay away from strangers and make contact only if your situation becomes desperate. We assume you’ll be treated as an evading combatant as defined in the Geneva Conventions; as such, remember that if you kill a civilian while evading or in custody, even if you are being pursued by armed individuals or are being mistreated or tortured, you may be subject to the death penalty, even though Canada does not have it. Is that understood?”

  Leborov asked for questions. They discussed this and that, mostly the weather and ground conditions in northern Canada and a little about their poststrike refueling base. Norman Wells was in the heart of Canada’s vast western oil fields, so there was a lot of jet traffic and a lot of aviation fuel stored there. It was doubtful they’d be able to steal enough gas for all twenty-one Tupolev-95 bombers to refuel—in that case they’d pick the best planes, fill them up with crew members, and take whomever they could. The SPETZNAZ commandos would be exfiltrated by submarine from Mackenzie Bay, so some of the crew members could go with them if they chose.