Orbital: This is the Future of War (Future War Book 3)

by FX Holden

  The problem of how to react to the arrival of the Azov was beyond Amir Alakeel’s pay grade. His task for the day was to play bodyguard to the Sahm aircraft currently patrolling the Saudi southern border zone between Dammam, near Bahrain, and Mecca on the west coast, with Riyadh lying right in the middle of the patrol area. It was a mind- and back-numbing four-hour escort duty, meeting with the F-15SA at 40,000 feet and then making four 600-mile racetrack circuits from coast to coast, each lasting an hour, before a new F-15 and its escort joined the circuit, and Alakeel’s flight of two F-35s could return to its Dhahran base.

  They were constantly updated regarding commercial and military aircraft movements during the patrol, and so there was rarely any tension to alleviate the boredom, even when they were approaching the east coast closer to Iran. The Royal Saudi Air Force now had standing air defense combat patrols flying up and down its eastern coast facing Iran, so even if there was an Iranian incursion, it wouldn’t be Alakeel’s flight which was called upon to intercept it.

  He was a dog walker. Walking a high-altitude supersonic dog, but still, a dog walker.

  He ran his eyes around his cockpit, checked the skies, flexed his muscles and rolled his head to keep his neck from stiffening up. His flight was slightly above the F-15 and about a mile ahead of it. With the sun in his eyes and the sky darkening behind him, he couldn’t eyeball it, but his tactical screen told him it was there. His F-35s were just about at their maximum service ceiling of 50,000 feet, though the F-15SA had plenty of headroom, with a ceiling closer to 60,000 feet.

  His call sign on this flight was Albayj, or ‘beige,’ which he felt described the duty perfectly.

  Until the flight controller for the Southern sector, orbiting in a SAAB 2000 aircraft just north of Riyadh, broke into his thoughts in an urgent burst of static. “Albayj One, Sector Control, we have possible unidentified aircraft approaching Saudi airspace on an intercept course for your patrol. Vector 279 degrees and report any contacts.”

  Alakeel switched his sensor suite from passive to active, scanning the sky ahead of him with his phased array radar. He saw nothing. His eyes flicked to his threat monitor, then he checked his wingman, the newbie, Zedan, was following him as he swung around. If the SAAB had a target, it should be sending the data through to them. “Sector Control, Albayj One. Turning to 279. I see nothing on radar or infrared, nothing on my tac monitor.”

  They were approaching the last eastward leg of the patrol, after three and a half hours, with the sun setting ahead of him and the lights of Mecca and Jeddah just starting to glow on the horizon. Enemy aircraft approaching from the west? That way lay Sudan, Eritrea … Egypt.

  “I don’t have a solid vector for you, Albayj flight,” the sector controller said. “We got a couple of returns on the low-frequency array in Jeddah two minutes ago and nothing since. Investigate and report. I am vectoring support to your location.”

  Stealth fighters. Had to be. And there was only one other nation fielding stealth fighters in the region right now.

  “Zedan, are you radiating?” Alakeel asked.

  “Yes, Captain,” the man replied. “No targets.”

  “Shut down, go passive. I’m betting it’s those bloody Egypt-based Mig-41s, trying to test us out. They have the legs to reach this far south, and the ceiling to be able to follow that F-15 all the way up to 60,000 feet if they want to. If I was Ivan, and I was going to push this patrol to see how we’d react, that’s the machine I’d do it with.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “I want you to stay on this heading, increase separation to two miles. I’ll keep searching with active array, but there’s no point both of us lighting up the sky telling the Russians where we are. Arm short-range air-air, synch targeting with me and stay alert.” He called up the F-15, which would have been listening in on the conversation between Alakeel and the controller. “Albayj Three, Albayj One.”

  “Receiving, Albayj One.”

  “Turn to zero nine zero until we have investigated the contact,” Alakeel ordered. Unlike the F-35s, the F-15 was not a stealth aircraft. It was a big, lumbering ‘shoot me’ sign in the sky, and a 5th-generation fighter like the Mig-41 would have no trouble seeing it barreling through the air at 40,000 feet. He wanted it headed safely back to Riyadh if the contact turned hot.

  “Roger, Albayj One, turning to zero nine zero, altitude 40,000,” the F15 pilot replied and Alakeel watched with satisfaction as the icon for the aircraft quickly peeled away.

  A chime sounded in his helmet. His infrared sensors had picked up a contact. That meant it was close. He firewalled his throttle and turned toward the contact. “Albayj Two, Albayj One, I have a contact at 310 degrees, altitude 50,000, turning to intercept, do you copy?”

  Zedan’s high-pitched voice replied immediately. “I have it onscreen, Captain. Do you want me to … missile alert. Evading!” the man yelled.

  Alakeel cursed. They had been jumped. He had just one contact on his screen but assumed the Russians would send more than one fighter. But one contact was better than none. He armed his Sidewinders and locked up the target, five miles distant and still invisible to the eye. His Rules of Engagement were clear. He was authorized to return fire if fired upon by an unidentified aircraft. “Fox One,” he called, as two of the short-range missiles dropped out of his weapons bay and streaked up into the night sky. “Albayj Three, we are engaged with enemy aircraft. Bug out,” Alakeel called, panting as the pressure of his sudden acceleration toward the contact pushed against his chest, making it hard to breathe. “Sector Control, requesting support…”

  “Albayj One, this is Three, bugging out.”

  “Albayj One, Sector. Vectoring support to your position. Eight minutes.”

  Eight minutes? They could be dead by then. In the dark above, he saw an explosion. Too big to be just the proximity warhead on his missile detonating. Sure enough, the contact on his screen winked out. “Splash One Mig. Albayj Two, report.” He could see from his situational monitor that his wingman was now ten miles away, down to 30,000 feet and turning hard.

  He had nothing else on his radar screen, nothing on infrared. Could they possibly…

  “Albayj One, I am still engaged with enemy fighters. I have nothing on optical, infrared or radar,” Zedan yelled, desperation in his voice. “Low on chaff and flares. Heading for the deck.”

  “Steer on me, Zedan,” Alakeel called. “I’ll try to get a fix on the dogs.” He swung his machine around to point it straight at Zedan’s aircraft but didn’t follow the man down. He kept his nose pointed at the sky above because he knew that was where the Mig-41 liked to hunt. But his tactical situation display stayed ominously empty.

  “Albayj Three, Sector Control,” the SAAB 2000 broke in. “Ballistic missile alert, repeat, ballistic missile alert. Estimated target, Riyadh. Estimated impact twelve minutes. Patching coordinates through. Immediate intercept, please confirm.”

  “Sector Control, Albayj Three, intercepting.”

  Alakeel was entering a potentially fatal data overload state. He was working his phased array, trying to get a radar lock on one of the Mig-41s, at the same time flicking his eyes to his helmet-mounted display watching his airspeed and angle of attack, looking for radar or infrared alerts, swiveling his head to scan the sky for telltale exhaust flares or the glint of light off metal or glass, or worse, the flare of a missile launch. Listening for warning tones, radio calls, missile alerts. Zedan yelling again. He … how…

  Alakeel froze. Figuratively, but effectively. His mind went blank. His muscles locked solid. He couldn’t focus on the radar screen in front of him, his fingers – which had been trying to fine tune the array to detect the Mig fighters he knew were out there – were suddenly unfeeling. He heard radio calls in his ears, but they made no sense. Time stood still.

  A ballistic missile strike on Riyadh? Nuclear or conventional? He shook his head, trying to focus on the here, the now. But it all seemed suddenly surreal. Somewhere to his east the F-
15SA Advanced Eagle would be rocketing into the sky on afterburner at 1.2 times the speed of sound. Its single Sahm missile would have been programmed with the coordinates downloaded from the SAAB. As the Eagle reached the top of its climb at 60,000 feet and hung there at the edge of space, it would release the three-stage missile. The first stage two-pulse solid-propellant rocket engine would boost it away from the Eagle even as the fighter was toppling nose-down back toward the earth. The second stage would ignite, powering the missile toward an intercept at 15,000 miles an hour. The third stage was a rocket-boosted Miniature Homing Vehicle or MHV. Before it separated, the MHV was spun up to 30 revolutions a second and pointed at the target, which should now be visible to the missile’s infrared sensor. After it was sent on its way, 64 vectoring thrusters arranged around the MHV were used to keep the target centered in the view of the infrared sensor until the missile connected with the target.

  Which should only be there if the THAAD missile had failed to destroy its target, or there had been too many for the THAAD system to cope with, or…

  Alakeel was brought back to reality by the insistent chime of his radar warning receiver. It was sounding an alert, indicating a Mig-41 targeting radar was actively searching for him, but hadn’t yet got a lock. Before he could do anything else, he had to fight his way out of the dogfight he was in himself. He oriented his infrared seeker on the bearing of the enemy radar signal and it pinged a new target, two miles west of Zedan and 20,000 feet above him. Before he could even react, his combat AI had armed and fired two Sidewinder missiles at it, as it was programmed to do when combat had already been initiated. Fox One, Fox One, it announced with digital calm.

  “Albayj One!” his wingman called, suppressed panic in his voice. “I took a hit. Starboard wing control surfaces not responding. Damage to avionics and countermeasures. I am at 500 feet with a Mig-41 on my tail.”

  Alakeel grunted with satisfaction when he saw an explosion in the sky above, and the infrared target in his helmet-mounted display was replaced with a cross. “Your pursuer is down, Albayj Two,” he said. “Do you have control of your machine?” Alakeel asked urgently. They might have dealt with the Mig-41 attack, or there might be others out there. He had no way of knowing. He checked his tactical display, put his aircraft on an intercept course for his wingman. “Stay low, focus on keeping your machine in the air. Turn to … zero four three … put down at Medina.”

  “Yes sir, making for Medina,” Zedan said, his voice a pitch higher than usual.

  Alakeel keyed his mike. “Southern Control, I have no further contacts. Please alert Medina air traffic control and request an emergency landing. Albayj Two is…”

  “Albayj One, Southern Control. We have been monitoring the engagement and your comms, Albayj One,” the controller interrupted. “We have alerted Medina. You are cleared for an emergency landing.”

  “Thank you, Control. One out.” Alakeel switched to his wingman’s channel. “What’s your status, Lieutenant? Talk to me all the way in.”

  There was a click, some static, and the sound of the man breathing heavily. It told Alakeel all he needed to know.

  The lights of the highway crossroads town of Mahd Al Thahab flashed by underneath him as he closed to within a hundred feet of his wingman’s stricken fighter and eased up beside it. A huge spray of fuel was trailing behind the wounded Lightning, obscuring his view, but then suddenly it cleared and he could see what had happened to the big fighter.

  Allah yahminana, he thought, looking over the damage. Where is the wing?!

  He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Where the F-35’s right wing should be was just a torn stump of flapping metal, spewing fuel. Zedan might not have seen it yet. In fact, he almost certainly hadn’t, or he would already have ejected.

  God protect us, Alakeel muttered again. Then he checked his tac display was clear of threats and reached for his mike. “Alright, Zedan, you have lost part of the starboard wing.” Part of it? He’d lost two-thirds of it.

  “I should eject!” the Lieutenant replied. “It’s yawing to port and I am barely able to keep it from rolling on me.”

  “You will not eject,” Alakeel said abruptly. “The flight control computer is automatically compensating. If it wasn’t, you’d already be hanging from a chute.”

  “I have my stick hard over,” the other pilot replied, then started yelling. “If I let it go, it rolls left!”

  “Lieutenant Zedan, you will not eject yet, that is an order,” Alakeel said firmly. He could see Medina airfield on the horizon now. “You will make your approach. You will keep your airspeed above two hundred knots as you cross the threshold. Is that clear, two hundred knots.”

  More panting. Alakeel could imagine the man, sweat streaming down his face, one hand on the stick, the other on the ejection handle, fighting on two fronts; to keep his machine in the air and to resist the urge to just punch out. Every Saudi F-35 pilot had been through the USAF Fighter Tactical Strengthening and Sustainment program, or FiTSS. Alakeel remembered a critical part of it now, a tip for calming the mind.

  “Zedan, I want you to call up the emergency landing checklist,” he said. “Put it up on your main display and walk me through it as you check it off, alright?”

  “I … yes, Captain,” the young pilot responded.

  Alakeel contacted the Medina tower, called in their emergency again and confirmed they were ready to receive the stricken fighter. Looking at it again, he marveled at how it was still flying. But a large part of the F-35’s aerodynamic lift was provided by the aircraft body and its huge air intakes – it must be those keeping it in the air, because it certainly wasn’t the stub of a wing.

  He could hear Zedan’s voice catching as he worked through his checklist, with Alakeel repeating every element after Zedan, with as calm a voice as he could muster, until they got to the end and the long runway at Medina appeared on the horizon. “Good job, lad. You aren’t the first to land a jet fighter on one wing, you know. Wheels down. That’s it, lad. A bloody Israeli did it back in the last century, you know that? He was in an F-15. And he didn’t have fly by wire or digital landing aids, Zedan.” Alakeel realized he was sweating too, and wiped his neck with a glove. “You going to punch out and let the bloody Israelis keep that record?”

  “No, sir,” the man said.

  “Good. I’ll follow you down. Now at that speed you’re going to hit hard. Cut your engine the second you’re down – you’re going to pull up in a cloud of fumes, okay? And resist the urge to toe the brakes too hard. Just bring her gently to a stop like a…”

  “Captain, sir, I need to concentrate,” the panting man said.

  Zedan was right, of course; Alakeel was speaking as much to calm himself as he was his wingman. He looked ahead. It seemed they were floating down toward the runway, but his airspeed indicator told him another story. At two hundred and sixty knots, they were making their approach at nearly twice normal landing speed for an F-35, but Alakeel was worried that any slower, and the stricken Lightning would stall. Alakeel’s machine hit 500 feet and a warning sounded in his ears. Terrain, pull up. Terrain, pull up. He flattened out and the warning stopped, but Zedan’s fighter dropped below and behind him. He lowered a wing and kicked in a little rudder to keep it in view.

  The Lightning flew low and fast across the threshold to the runway. Alakeel saw fire trucks and an ambulance lined up to one side. Then the machine dropped, Zedan cutting his throttle early – afraid of fire, afraid of running out of runway. His machine slammed into the tarmac, shearing off the portside wheel strut, sending it down onto its belly, port wing scraping along the runway in a shower of sparks that…

  “Punch out!” Alakeel screamed.

  With an audible whoomph, the fighter exploded.

  Alakeel turned quickly away, eyes fixed on the horizon ahead of him. He reached for his mike. “Medina Tower, Albayj One,” he said, voice empty. “Albayj Two is down, aircraft on fire. Runway 17 at Medina unusable. Requesting permission to lan
d on 36.”

  There was a momentary pause, and then the Medina Tower came back. “Albayj One, Medina. Vector one eight five, 5,000 feet, you are cleared in on runway 36.”

  Alakeel bit down the bile rising in his throat, confirmed his landing instructions, and as he swung around to start his landing approach, he switched to the frequency for the SAAB 2000 airborne controller.

  “South Sector Control, Albayj One,” Alakeel said. “What was the result of the Sahm launch?”

  “Successful interception, Albayj One. Iran fired three missiles. One was intercepted by THAAD, and one by your F-15, Captain,” the controller said. “The third got through but was hit by a Patriot or Oerlikon over Riyadh.”

  Alakeel felt his throat tighten. “Nuclear or conventional?”

  “Probably conventional,” the controller replied. “Missile Defense is calling it a medium-range Khorramshahr. Debris hit the Ritz Carlton Riyadh, beside Al Yamamah Palace. No casualty count yet.”

  “Thank you, Control, Albayj One out.” He bit his lip in thought and sighed. As he slid down the glidepath toward the runway, he wasn’t thinking about the body count in Riyadh, not yet. He was thinking of a single death. Zedan was just a kid; a twenty-three-year-old boy from Wadi-ad-Dawasir who had collected bird feathers from the Bani M’aradh Wildlife Sanctuary as a boy and dreamed of flying fast jets. And he’d died in a ball of fire with tears in his eyes.

  They had made the Russians pay for their failed attempt to disrupt the Sahm launch, and Peace Shield had worked. Would it have worked against a nuclear missile, set for airburst above the city? Would it have worked if the Russians had succeeded in taking down his F-15? Probably not.

  He’d likely claim two of the Russian Mig-41 fighters destroyed, but had no idea how many they had sent against him. As was often the case in modern warfare, he had not once laid eyes on the enemy he was shooting at, and would never know who had killed Hatem Zedan.

  At the thought of the young man’s death, Alakeel hammered the stretched acrylic bubble over his head and howled at the uncaring night sky.