Once again Harris looked at his wingman, then squinted his eyes into the distance. They were flying above a broken layer of clouds, but here at 30,000 feet the visibility was nearly unlimited. Harris figured he should be able to see the Cowboys when they were about twenty miles away. Once he got a good positive visual identification, he could move in for a closer look.
“Dagger, I now have you eight-zero miles from the Unknown Cowboys, twelve o’clock and closing. They are riding at two- three thousand feet. Call visual on the Cowboys.”
Les acknowledged the controller with a simple “Rog,” then focused his attention back to his radar. The Cowboys were just beginning to show up on his screen. He confirmed their position, altitude, and airspeed, then pumped on his control stick several times. His wingman noticed Harris’s horizontal stabilizer as it fluttered up and down in the air. This was the signal for him to move out and away from Harris to a tactical position three hundred feet behind and slightly above his leader. From there, the wingman could monitor his own radar while still protecting his leader.
Harris then switched his transmitter over to guard frequency and clicked the button to his radio.
“Unknown Cowboy, Unknown Cowboy, this is Landmass Dagger broadcasting on 243.0. How do you read?”
By adding “Landmass” to his call sign, Captain Harris had identified himself with the internationally accepted term for U.S. air defenses. He waited several seconds for the bombers to respond, then broadcast the same message again. After a short pause, the Russian pilot replied in broken English.
“Landmass Dagger, Landmass Dagger, this is Losko six-six-seven. Go ahead.”
Harris quickly looked down at a small notebook of classified code words that was strapped to his leg. He thumbed through it very quickly until he found the call sign “Losko.” According to his notebook, “Losko” was the call sign for the Russian Blackjack bomber. That was what Darkhorse had told him the bogeys were. So far, so good, he thought.
Harris keyed his microphone switch once again. “Losko, you are approaching United States airspace. Recommend you turn left, heading one-eight-zero. Copy?”
“Negative, Landmass Dagger. We are in international airspace. We have not penetrated your Air Defense Zone. Do not attempt to interfere.”
This time Capt Harris didn’t reply. Instead he rocked his wings several times. Within seconds his wingman had moved back into a tight position, his wing tip just three feet from his leader. While Harris was waiting for the other F-16 to move back into position, he checked his radar once more. The Blackjacks were now less than thirty miles away. They appeared as two small boxes, moving down from the top right-hand corner of his screen. They had not changed their altitude, but they had picked up their airspeed. They were now cruising at over five hundred knots.
Harris turned his head slightly to look at his wingman. The two fighters were so close that Harris could read the letters on his wing-man’s name tag. Harris raised his hands into a fist, shook it slightly, then extended three fingers toward the sky.
Almost immediately his wingman banked his fighter up and peeled away from him, then rolled into a dive. Harris watched for a moment as the other F-16 accelerated earthward, then leveled off just above the tops of the clouds. Not until then did Harris pull back gently on his stick. His own F-16 began to climb, and he was soon level at 36,000 feet.
He and his wingman had now sandwiched the Russian bombers between them. They would continue on this heading, flying straight toward the Blackjacks. Once the two bombers had passed underneath him, Harris would roll inverted and pull into a dive, at the same time reversing his course. As he was doing this, his wingman would be pulling into a steep climb. When they had both rolled out and leveled off, they would be at 23,000 feet, the same altitude as the bombers. They would also be heading in the same direction. The F-16s would then move slowly forward until they were abeam the Blackjacks, one fighter on each side, five hundred feet out from their wings.
From here they could monitor the bomber’s intentions. This was the standard intercept position. It was designed to provide for the safety of all of the aircraft while at the same time allowing the fighters to defend their country’s borders.
As the four aircraft quickly closed the remaining gap that separated them, Captain Harris got on his radio to Darkhorse. “Daggers are turning on railroad,” he said as he watched the targets on his radar.
“Roger, you’re cleared on railroad. Call when bingo fuel,” the ground radar controller replied.
By “turning on railroad,” Harris had advised Darkhorse that he and his wingman were going to maneuver in on the bombers. Once “railroad” was initiated, the controller then accepted the responsibility of clearing any civilian air traffic that might be in the way of the intercept. This would allow Harris and his wingman to change their altitude and airspeed without prior coordination with Air Traffic Control. It basically gave them carte blanche to go where they wanted, when they wanted, and at any speed they required. The controller would vector other traffic away, allowing the fighters to focus on the target.
“Bingo fuel” meant the controller wanted to know when the fighters were running low on gas. That way she could begin to coordinate for other F-16s to come out and continue to escort the bombers, assuming that they hadn’t turned around by that time.
Just then Harris caught a glimmer in the distance. He scanned the airspace in the general direction of the flash that had caught his eye. Then he saw them, two dark shadows in close formation, 14,000 feet below him. They were still about twelve miles out. He kept them in sight as they closed the distance between them. When the Blackjacks had passed underneath, he rolled his fighter inverted and watched the bombers for just a second while he hung upside down in his seat.
Then with a short, “Daggers push ... now” he declared the intercept on. Pulling back on his stick, his fighter began to pull down into a steep dive. He allowed the F-16’s nose to track earthward for a few seconds, building up speed in his dive.
At 520 knots he began to pull back hard on his stick. He felt his G-suit compress tightly around his abdomen and thighs in an effort to keep as much blood as possible from draining from his head. Harris strained against the force of the Gs as he pulled the nose of his fighter back up to the horizon. He glanced at his radar once again to check the position of his wingman, already in his climb.
Harris rolled out level, not more than four hundred feet from the bombers. He glanced over to see that his wingman was already in position, directly across from his leader.
“Landmass Dagger, we have you off our wing. Push back. I say again, push back. You are violating our space.”
Harris didn’t acknowledge, but he did pull out a little on the bombers. He positioned himself 1,000 feet off of their left wing. He pulled up twenty feet above the Russian aircraft so that he could look across at his wingman, who had also pulled back slightly from the Blackjack’s right wing. This was where they would stay.
They didn’t plan to converse with the bombers any further. So long as they continued to maintain this distance from U.S. airspace they would just hang out, watching them as they plodded along.
It was only a few minutes later that the bombers were ready to turn around. They had seen what they wanted to see. There wasn’t much use in pressing any further now that they had a chance to evaluate the Americans’ air defense capabilities.
So, without announcing their intentions, the bombers began a gentle left hand turn to the north. The F-16s stayed in the same position on their wing all through the turn. They would stay with the Blackjacks as they tracked up the coast until they had passed north of the coast of Maine.
As the Russian bombers began to fly to the north, Harris and his wingman faded back in their positions until they were a little more than a mile behind them. From here they would watch the bombers retreat.
Harris glanced down to check his fuel. He had just under 2,300 pounds of gas. Plenty to stay with the Blackjacks for another eigh
t or ten minutes, then they would have to head back to basco But he wouldn’t call for any other fighters to come and escort the bombers. By the time Les was out of fuel, the Blackjacks would almost be out of U.S. airspace. It wouldn’t be worth it to scramble two more fighters to escort the bombers for less than one hundred miles.
Harris then took a glance at his wingman as they both faded back from the bombers. They dropped back to two-mile spacing. With two miles between the two formations, Harris felt comfortable enough to take care of some paper work. He knew that when he got back to base his commander and the intelligence branch would want a full report on the intercept. He would need to have good notes if he wanted to remember the details. He reached down to write a few quick lines on the kneeboard that was strapped to his leg.
He was just beginning to write when a blazing flash of yellow caught his eye. He dropped his pencil into his lap and looked up very quickly. The flash was extremely bright and he knew immediately that something was wrong.
As Harris looked forward through his canopy, he sucked in a short gasp of air. A knot of fear began to tighten in his throat as he searched the sky up ahead.
A thick cloud of black smoke and a rolling ball of fire was billowing up through the sky. Tiny black pieces of metal composites were beginning to bounce off of his canopy as he flew through a thin cloud of debris. He frantically searched for the two Russian bombers. He peered through the cloud of black smoke and scattering wreckage to see a single Blackjack as it began to frantically jink and dive through the air.
“Landmass Daggers, hold your fire! Daggers, Daggers, hold your fire! We pose no threat. We are retreating. We are unarmed. Withhold your fire!”
Captain Les Harris reached up and tore off his oxygen mask as he watched the falling debris. He swore and cursed and screamed at the empty air. He knew that somewhere in the scattering pieces of metal were the remains of four Russian aviators. He began to circle the wreckage as it tumbled through the air, hoping against hope that he might see a chute. But nothing was there. Only the smoke and falling debris.
Three minutes later, black and charred pieces of the Blackjack bomber finally began to splash into the North Atlantic.
TWENTY-TWO
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KIRGHIZIAKN, UKRAINE
THE LARGEST MILITARY SUPPLY CENTER IN THE UKRAINE WAS VERY BUSY. Thousands of tons of war-fighting equipment was being prepared for shipment to the Ukrainian border, now simply referred to as the “Front.” Seven thousand men worked under the blanket of darkness, packing the pallets of the food, ammunition, medicine, clothing, tents, paper, and weapons that were desperately needed to assist the Ukrainian army in their efforts to repel the Russian invasion.
Because these supplies were so critical, Kirghiziakn was the most highly defended target in the Ukraine. No less than thirty-seven anti-aircraft guns surrounded the massive complex. Nine different surface-to-air missile batteries formed a protective ring around the center. This protective bubble extended outward from the heart of the complex for eighty-six kilometers and reached skyward to 70,000 feet. The SA-10 and SA-12 surface-to-air missiles were capable of shooting down everything from fighters to cruise missiles.
Six SU-27 Flankers circled over Kirghiziakn in combat formation, ready to repel any Russian attack. Tucked inside their tiny cockpits, the Flanker pilots were nervous. Their eyes were constantly moving, darting from their cockpit to the sky, to the ground. But it wasn’t the fear of Russian fighters that had them scared. So far, the Russians had chosen to leave Kirghiziakn alone. It was the fear of their own missiles and anti-aircraft guns that made them jumpy. Over the past twelve hours, two Ukrainian fighters had been shot down by friendly fire, one by a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile, another by a barrage of 57mm anti-aircraft shells.
Two combat kills upon their own forces were far too many. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen again. So the Flanker pilots were very alert. None of them wanted to be kill number three.
The night was very dark. The little light that did reflect from the quarter moon was completely absorbed by a thick overcast of snow clouds well before it could begin to illuminate the frozen ground. The city of Kiev, thirty kilometers to the east of Kirghiziakn, was completely black. Every exterior light, from street lamps to front porch light bulbs, had been turned off in an effort to make it more difficult for the Russian bombers to find their targets.
Winding through the darkness was a four-lane highway. It extended west from the center of Kiev to Kirghiziakn, then turned northeast and made its way through the flat grasslands of northern Ukraine toward the Russian border.
A long stream of supply trucks drove along the highway in the darkness. They, too, had turned off their lights in an effort to be less of a target. Nothing would tempt the Russian fighter-bombers like a convoy of supply trucks on their way to the Front. So the trucks drove in complete darkness, their drivers peering through their night vision goggles, watching the tail of the truck up ahead, hoping that no one came to a sudden or unexpected stop.
Kirghiziakn was a huge complex of mile-long warehouses, narrow alleys, and squat administrative offices. High razor-wire fences and guard towers surrounded the complex to protect its cache of food, medicine, and military supplies from the outside world. Most of the materials were stored in long wooden warehouses. Some were kept in more modern brick storage units. But a very small percentage of the materials that were stored inside Kirghiziakn required much tighter security than a simple warehouse had to offer.
This was where the bunkers came in. Inside the wire fences that surrounded Kirghiziakn were twenty-three semi-buried bunkers, their thick cement frames protruding just a few feet above the ground. At one time, these bunkers had been used to protect nuclear bombs and missiles. But the Ukrainian military had ceded their nuclear weapons to the international community several years before. Since then, the contents of these bunkers had been kept a very well-guarded secret.
At 2100 hours, a small covered truck pulled up to one of the bunkers. As the truck coasted to a stop, the bunker’s huge steel doors began to roll open. Three soldiers emerged from the bunker, their submachine guns flung across their backs. They wore white winter overcoats on top of thick, white woven pants. On their feet were Liata, very expensive winter boots that could only be purchased in Italy. The men were all Ukrainians, though most of them were Russian by birth. None of the men wore any rank or insignia. None of them carried any identification.
The men helped to guide the two-ton truck as it backed down the narrow incline that led into the bunker. When the truck was safely inside, the doors were rolled tightly closed.
The men worked quickly. Setting their machine guns aside, they stripped off their heavy overcoats and began to don their gear; heavy insulated pants, long rubber gloves, thin latex hoods, and alien-like face masks with dark protruding eyes.
In the back of the bunker was a single pallet loaded with eight small blue drums. Working together, the men started to load the drums on the back of the truck. Their pace was agonizingly slow. Every movement of the drums was very deliberate. Very careful. Every move was planned and calibrated to ensure that the drums weren’t knocked or jostled in any way.
The drums were placed onto a special platform that had been installed in the back of the truck. It was suspended above the bed on a complex series of springs and shock absorbers, isolating the platform from the bumps that it would encounter along the road.
Within an hour, the drums had all been loaded. One of the men started the truck’s engine while two others rolled back the bunker doors. The truck pulled out of the bunker and into the cold night air. Ten minutes later, it had joined another convoy of supply trucks that were making their way to the Front.
AKHTRYKA, UKRAINE
Boris Yershov switched on his landing light as he searched through the fog and darkness for his landing pad. But the bright light couldn’t cut through the fog. Instead, it spread and reflecte
d around him, engulfing him in a billowing world of white clouds and wispy darkness, making it even more difficult to see.
Yershov quickly reached up and turned his landing light back off. He gently tugged up on his collective while at the same time pulling back on the stick. His helicopter stabilized in a hover above the high and blowing trees. The downdraft from his rotors stirred the treetops into a constant dance of motion, pushing their branches outward and washing the snow from their bristled leaves.
Directly below him, Yershov could barely make out the shape of a huge inverted Y. It was made up of a string of small lights and was suppose to direct him downward as he attempted to land in the clearing that had been cut through the trees.
But the clearing was small. Very small. He stabilized the helicopter in high hover directly over the clearing, then pushed against his right foot pedal. The helicopter began to slowly spin, giving Yershov a chance to survey the site.
The clearing was probably big enough—but barely. Yershov aligned his helicopter with the hole, then slowly lowered the collective and began a gentle descent, slipping downward through the blanket of fog.
After settling onto the thin layer of snow, Yershov brought his engine to idle and looked around him. Not a soul was in sight. He began to wait. His rotors created a dull woop, woop as they slapped through the cold, dense air.
Someone should have been here to meet him. He checked his watch once again. As he held his wrist up to the faint lights of his cockpit, he noticed his trembling hands. It had been a long time. Not since his combat days in Afghanistan had he felt the strain and excitement of a mission.
Yershov peered through the darkness once again to see three distinct shadows moving toward him through the trees. Billowing ponchos flapped in the wind. Dark masks with huge, bug-like eyes glinted in the darkness. Yershov recoiled at the sight. Chemical warfare suits! That was bad. Very bad. Something deadly must be floating through the air. Something evil and painful. Something silent, yet toxic. The invisible death. A gas that could suck the breath from his body, or a slimy film whose smallest touch would poison his blood.
Shattered Bone Page 22
