B00DSDUWIQ EBOK (22 page)

“Not
without Orlov. I didn’t come all this way to leave him stranded here… I need to
think…” Fedorov began pacing, head down as he stared at his feet, hand rubbing his
brow. He had to sort this out and come up with some reasonable plan here, but
what should they do? First, find Orlov. The journey had taken them far longer
than he hoped, and they were late. Orlov reached Kizlyar on the first of October,
but every report he had heard as they drew near the Caspian region indicated
the Germans were very near that place and it was now the front line in the war
to control the oil. Hitler was hell bent on getting to Baku. The oil wars start
here and they will continue for the next eighty years.

Orlov
might still be there at Kizlyar, or somewhere south of that location. They had to
get within five kilometers of him if his service jacket was switched off. That
might make for a long and difficult search now. What they needed was a
helicopter….And they had one, sitting right on top of the
Anatoly Alexandrov
.

“We’ll
have to use the Mi-26,” he decided.

“What?
They’re supposed to take off for the Pacific coast as soon as possible. Volsky beat
that into my head before I left.”

“That
may be so, but we need the helicopter to look for Orlov first. Trying to put men
ashore to search for him on land will be too risky.”

“But
we have no fuel for that,” Dobrynin objected

 “I
understand the situation,” said Fedorov, “but we need Orlov. We can’t leave without
him so we’ll have to find the fuel, one way or another.”

“Are
you ordering me to commit the Mi-26 to this operation, Mister Fedorov?”

Fedorov
looked at the Chief, respecting him greatly. “I will take full responsibility, Dobrynin.
The decision is mine. You’ve done everything Volsky asked of you, but I want to
get Troyak and Zykov on that helo and do a night search below 3000 meters. It’s
the only way we can locate Orlov’s jacket signal. We had hoped to be at Kizlyar
before he got there, but we’re late. There’s no other way now. We leave
tonight.”

“Well
what am I supposed to do while you go off looking for Orlov? I was supposed to rescue
you
, Fedorov!”

“And
you have. Your mission will be the same, Chief. Just hold the fort and protect the
Anatoly Alexandrov
at all costs until we get back. In the meantime, we
can save on fuel if we offload excess storage on the helo and fly lighter. We
can always load it back again when we return.”

“If
you return. What do I do if we lose your
signal locator?”

“We’ll
be fine. It will be dark. Troyak will be with me, and I’ll take some Marines.”

“Plenty
of those around.”

“Exactly.
We’ll sweep the area around Kizlyar first, then work south over the Terek and along
the roads to Makhachkala. It’s just a couple hundred miles in all. We should be
able to pick up his signal very quickly.”

“Then
what?”

“We’ll
have to see. If Troyak thinks we can get him, we’ll land. If the situation is more
difficult, we’ll return here and go in with more force. The quicker we do this,
the better. I’d prefer to keep things very quiet.”

“Well
that big monster on the roof makes a good deal of noise, Fedorov.”

“Yes,
but the road hugs the coast and runs right near the shore in many places. We can
be two or three kilometers off the coast and flying low enough so we still can
pick up that signal. It will work. I’m sure of it.”

“Very
well,” Dobrynin could see that the young officer had made up his mind. “You rank
me by several levels, Fedorov. I have my orders from Volsky, but your decision
will supersede that here in the field. Just remember one thing—every minute we
waste flying around here is one minute less for the long journey east. You say
it’s just a couple hundred miles? We may wish we had those miles once the Mi-26
heads east to look for
Kirov
. You wanted to know why Karpov didn’t hear
anything? Perhaps this is why. Perhaps the Mi-26 never has the fuel to get to
the coast.”

Fedorov
shrugged. He knew that Dobrynin was correct, and perhaps he was being foolish here,
but some inner hunch still warned him not to leave Orlov behind.

I’ve
got to find him, one way or another. And then I’ve got to find a way to get to Karpov
three years hence, because if I don’t, I think I know exactly what he will do
with those three ships. And God help the world if I’m right.

Part VIII

Twilight

“The pale stars
were sliding into their places. The whispering of the leaves was almost hushed.
All about them it was still and shadowy and sweet. It was that wonderful moment
when, for lack of a visible horizon, the not yet darkened world seems
infinitely greater—a moment when anything can happen..”

―
Olivia Howard Dunbar

Chapter 22

Tech
Sergeant Jason Banks watched the big planes
roll out of the hangers onto the tarmac at Anderson AFB, pleased that his
morning’s labors were done and the torch would now be passed to the pilots in
the planes. The strike had been postponed when the sirens signaled air alert some
days ago. The island base personnel had quickly moved to air defense shelters
and the newly deployed THAAD missile system was engaging targets unseen in the
skies above. This time it was North Korea pressed into useful service as an
attack dog by Beijing, launching Musudan missiles more as another warning to the
Americans to stay out of the deepening fight over Taiwan than anything else.

THAAD
got the first missile aimed at the island, fired to test exactly what altitude the
US might make a successful interception. The second missile barely got off its
launch pad before being lazed by a secret weapon the US had moved into Kadena
for just this purpose. Then another debate ensued over what to do about the
situation, and it was one the Air Force General Lane eventually won. The US was
moving at the speed of a democracy, which was lethargic at times, and the situation
had not yet worsened enough to compel them to act in a more urgent manner. Two
long days later Lane obtained permission to finally get a retaliatory strike
package airborne with the B-2s, and Jason Banks was back in business.

The
six B-2s were an awesome sight together like this, the broad swept wings of black,
saw tooth tail, and porpoise hump noses making them look surreal at certain
angles, like ships from another world. His men were finished with their loading
and maintenance, and the torch he had handed off was the X-51C, a hypersonic
stealthy cruise missile dubbed the
WaveRider,
scheduled for delivery
that morning to three very special sites on the Chinese mainland. If China
wanted to take out American satellites, the response would be to prevent them
from ever launching satellites of their own.

The
first targets on the list that morning were the satellite launch centers at Taiyuan
and Jiuquan, and the Guangde rocket launch site west of Shanghai, respectively
known as Base 25 and Base 603. These targets were within 500 kilometers of the
coast and could be struck by B-2s over the South or East China Seas. Three B-2s
would be assigned to each target and Banks watched them take off, glad a little
payback was heading east while the base still intact.

Someone
took a pot shot at us, he thought, but THAAD was good enough to knock whatever they
sent our way down. Now we return the favor. Those bad boys will be up in ten
minutes, and this is probably the last any human eyes will see of them until
they return. The
Spirits of
Missouri, California, South Carolina,
Washington
and
Texas
were already up,
Spirit of Kansas,
his
home state, was the last in the line, the one new plane that had joined the B-2
wing to replace the bomber by that very same name that had been lost on this
airfield in a takeoff crash in 2008.

It
was a $1.4 billion dollar mishap that day, not including the “classified material”
the
Spirit of Kansas
had been carrying that also went up in smoke when
the big plane came down. The official “findings” on that crash attributed it to
three improperly calibrated pressure transducers that resulted in faulty data
sent to the flight control computer. The plane went into a stall on takeoff,
its wing dipped and hooked the ground, and that was that.

Don’t
crash again, baby, he whispered as the
Kansas-II
began to put on power. He
stood and watched the running lights wink as the plane taxied. Three minutes later
the roar of the engines told the tale. The “Bats” were all airborne now, their
bellies full of high tech death and destruction. After achieving altitude, the
formation would cruise north over Rota and Tinian in the Marianas where they
would then turn northeast and head for Kadena AFB on Okinawa to meet some very
special friends.

The
US was taking no chances with its precious B-2s. They would soon be joined by the
94th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron flying F-22
Raptors
in escort for
the sortie into the East China Sea. Six fighters would be up that morning to
join the party, and Flight Lieutenant William Hitchcock was in one of them.
With a vintage name like that his mates had naturally taken to calling him
“Wild Bill” and he lived up to the handle well enough as a daring and highly
skilled pilot.

Hitchcock
was still trying to shake that nagging cough that was just part of the job insofar
as the F-22 was concerned. The pilot’s oxygen system has been buggy throughout
the life cycle of the aircraft, but no matter what they did to try and correct
the problem, the well known “Raptor cough” persisted, resulting from breathing
high concentrations of oxygen enriched air while accelerating through multi-G
force maneuvers. When you could fly higher and faster than most anything in the
sky, there were a few tradeoffs that you just lived within the service. Wild
Bill had no regrets.

An
hour later he was up at altitude and waiting for his charge. Perhaps the most capable
fighter in the world, the unique radar scattering shape of the plane combined
with the radar absorbing materials used in its construction made it extremely
stealthy. Finding it in the sky on radar would be much like trying to track a
pea flying at several thousand miles per hour. The APG-77 radar system was also
very stingy with the energy it used, activating to find potential threats
without also revealing the position of the
Raptor
. At the same time its
ALR-94 radar warning sensors could silently detect other radar-using targets at
very long range. It was the same basic calculus of air combat—see the enemy
first and kill the enemy before he sees you.

Radio
silence was also a part of the job like this, but Wild Bill didn’t mind. He enjoyed
the quiet solitude of soaring at 40,000 feet through the early hours of dawn.
The bombers were below them, lumbering along under the careful watch of the
Raptors
.
An E-3 Sentry was also up that morning for long range radar coverage in case
the Chinese had any surprises in store for the package. Hitchcock didn’t expect
any trouble, particularly this far out from the Chinese mainland, but as chance
would have it, trouble was on its way. His data link from the E-3 soon
indicated a number of airborne contacts inbound and they were ordered to
engage.

The
Raptors
began to accelerate rapidly, streaking away from the subsonic B-2s
as they went into supercruise mode, their radars searching the skies ahead. It
looked like quite a reception committee, and the only thing that Hitchcock
could think of at that moment was how in hell the enemy had managed to locate
them.

The
truth of the matter was that the Chinese had
not
located them. They were
simply flying a mission of their own, targeted at Taiwan again with two squadrons
of J-12 fighters led by a squadron of their premier stealth strike fighters,
the formidable J-20. There were eighteen planes in all, and they were intending
to strike an airfield near Taipei as a follow on to the highly successful
ballistic missile strikes of the previous days. To the
Raptor
pilots it
looked like someone had given away the game and they assumed the B-2s had been
targeted for interception. But the Chinese hadn’t seen a thing that morning. It
was all happenstance that was about to become an lightning fast air duel
between the best fighters each side possessed.

The
odds appeared very steep to Wild Bill at first blush. He was tracking eighteen enemy
fighters, and the
Raptors
of the 94th were outnumbered three to one. No
strangers to combat, the 94th was one of the oldest active squadrons in the US
Air Force. Their legacy dated back to 1917 when they first flew SPADs in the
First World War. Over the years they had flown P-38s in WWII over North Africa
and Italy, and eventually moved on through the evolving chain of fighter designs
to the F-15A
Eagles
before being upgraded to the deadly
Raptors
. Now
they were about to prove their worth and throw their hat in the ring, as true
to their squadron insignia.

With
high value strike assets close at hand, the
Raptors
needed to get at the
enemy quickly, and the talons they would use were the latest air-to-air missile
the US had deployed to date, the AIM-120D. Each plane carried four of these longer
range missiles in the central internal weapons bay, along with two shorter
range AIM-9M/X Sidewinders in smaller internal bays to either side. They would
fire immediately, while the action still remained well beyond visual range, and
see if they could thin the enemy ranks.

The
fighters surged ahead, their central bays opening for only one brief second to fire,
and then they peeled off on a new vector, ready to fire again. The Chinese
never saw them coming, and it was not until the first three J-20s detected the
AAMRAMs coming in for them that the jig was finally up. All three died before
they could do anything about it, but the word was out and the other planes were
breaking formation, jettisoning external fuel tanks to go stealthy, and sweeping
away in all directions. They scattered into the azure blue sky climbing as
their afterburning turbofans burned with yellow, hot fire.

The
Chinese tactic when surprised was to get high, using their incredible service ceiling
of over 65,000 feet to gain advantage. Two J-20s were climbing, but the
Raptors
were already up there watching like supersonic birds of prey, and their second
salvo was in the air before the first of the J-20s even got a fleeting ghost of
a radar lock on them. The pilot knew he had been targeted, but he still managed
to get off two PL-12 missiles in reprisal. Then he died a flaming death along
with three more comrades in the older J-12s.

Hitchcock
was warned of the incoming missiles by his ALR-94 radar. The Chinese Missiles were
climbing up for him, aiming at a point in the sky they calculated the
Raptor
might be in a few seconds time, but Hitchcock made sure his plane wasn’t there.
The
Raptor
was capable of some very extreme supermaneuvers, with thrust vectoring
and attitude control well beyond normal aerodynamic limits of most aircraft.
The PL-12s would not find him that day. With four of the six J-20s down and no
situational awareness of where the enemy was, the rest of the J-12s wanted no
part of the action. They were trained as fighter bomber pilots, with very
limited air-to-air combat training, so they turned and broke for the coast at
high speed.

The
last J-20 was stubborn that day. The plane was close enough to see Hitchcock’s
Raptor
visually and thought it would tip its nose up and get off a missile shot. Wild Bill
would have nothing of that. He executed a Herbst maneuver decelerating rapidly
as he increased his angle of attack to a stall, utilized his thrust vectoring
engines to maintain control, coned over to a new flight direction that pointed
his nose right at the enemy plane. Then he poured on the power. The Chinese
pilot could not maintain his lock, and in that brief interval Hitchcock fired a
Sidewinder
that went hissing out after the enemy.

Wild
Bill was two for two, and the B-2s slipped quietly through the contrail torn skies
en route to their launch position. Then their bellies opened to send the X-51Cs
roaring to the attack, accelerating through Mach 4 and beyond Mach 6 in a
matter of minutes. The
WaveRiders
were on their way.

Three
bombers fired six missiles that would take out the satellite control center a few
miles southeast of Ningwu, the telemetry station north of Wuhai, the technical center
where long lines of men sat in pale blue uniforms and caps as they attended to
their monitors, and finally the launch pad facilities themselves. The second
triad would target the launch control headquarters at Taiyuan Satellite Launch
Center. In each group, one plane was held in reserve, leaving four missiles
available for any target of opportunity.

The
strike went off without a hitch, with all four missiles from the lead bombers finding
their targets. This left the two reserve planes free to penetrate a little
further and go for the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, or Base 27. The
Raptors
hung around long enough to be certain there were no further threats to the big bombers,
even after the B-2s had crossed into Chinese airspace. They remained undetected
until they delivered their high tech package and turned for home. When they
were done, the People’s Republic of China had lost, its ability to put a satellite
in orbit in one fell stroke.

They
were not happy about it.

Within
hours orders went out on a very secure channel to a submarine that had been hovering
silently off the West coast of the United States. The message they would
deliver by return mail would have dramatic implications and tip the world just
one step closer to the mayhem and destruction of all out nuclear war.

* * *

Robert
passed a restless night in the
Quantum Sleeper
, and spent all the next day
haggling with his broker to see if he could salvage anything from the collapse
of Goldman the previous day. By sunset he had given up his mind returning again
to that list he had been working on. The news had been bad, and something told
him it was going to get worse very soon. The TV kept on with the latest updates
on the missile strikes against the Chinese mainland. The more he listened, the
more he felt the compelling urge to lay in some supplies before the store
shelves were stripped completely bare. Finally he started to move, and he was
heading down the stairs when it happened.