Black Sea Affair (25 page)

But all that could wait. For now, this would be a ride home that he would enjoy. The first item on the agenda when he landed would be to call his bride Mary Frances and tell her how much he loved her.

Then he would ask to speak to his boy Michael and his girl Holly and he would tell him that he loved them too. Life was too short and too fragile, Captain A. J. Riddle had decided in the last fifteen minutes, not to pass up any opportunity to tell a loved one how much they are loved.

There may never be another chance.

With the hum of the wind rushing around his windshield at more than six hundred miles an hour, A. J. closed his eyes for just a few seconds of relaxation.

EC-2 Hawkeye

Codename Papa Bear

50 miles south of Kars, Turkey

The Navy Hawkeye flew in broad circles around the city of Kars, Turkey, where Navy Master Chief Rick Cantor kept his eyes glued to the radar scope showing air activity over the entire nation of Georgia, plus parts of Turkey, Armenia, and Chechnya.

From his duty station ten thousand feet above the Turkish landscape, Cantor's attention had been rivited on the missile exchange between the two Russian MiG-29s and the two United States Air Force F-15s.

Cantor was tracking the Eagles beginning their return flight to Incirlik when a blip reappeared on the radar screen that moments ago had disappeared.

The blip showed that one of the MiGs was alive and well. Apparently it had disappeared behind the turbulent explosion of the Stinger missile and somehow had momentarily dropped off the screen. Now the MiG was back and was making a run at the departing F-15s!

"Eagle Three! Threat. Two-two-zero. Eight o'clock. Ten thousand!"

F-15 Eagle

Codename Eagle Three

Master Chief Cantor's warning shot an electrical jolt through Captain Riddle. He looked down at his radar screen. The bandit had returned from the dead! The MiG-29 was chasing the two F-15s, and did not seem intent on stopping at the Turkish border!

"Eagle Four, Eagle Three! On my word, split!"

"Roger that!"

The splitting maneuver would force the bandit to commit to one Eagle or the other.

"On my mark . . . Now! Split!"

A. J. Riddle jerked his joystick to the left. Travis Martin jerked right. The F-15s cut away from each other, almost at forty-five-degree angles, as if splitting at the vortex of the letter
Y
.

The Eagles rolled and fired more popping flares from their bellies, streaking past like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

"Eagle Three. Papa Bear. Bandit broke left. He's on your tail."

"Roger that, Papa Bear."

Captain Riddle had a few more flares to fire, but after that, his ability to evade would depend on pure piloting skills.

The Eagles split in opposite arches, dropping several dozen smoking flares through the blue sky. The flares popped, each a fizzling fire streaking a trail of smoke across the sky to confuse enemy heat-seeking missiles.

"Eagle Three, what's your status?" A. J. heard Papa Bear's inquiry, but could not free himself to respond.

"Papa Bear. Eagle Four. Eagle Three has shifted. Off my nose."

A. J. heard Travis Martin's voice, but again could not respond. He had to focus on keeping his aircraft at such an angle that it would be difficult for an infrared missile launch.

"Eagle Four to Eagle Three. Bandit six o'clock. Eagle Three, break left!"

A. J. responded to his wing man's instruction by again jerking the stick hard left. The horizon spun like a spinning gyroscope. Shooting through the sky at six hundred miles per hour, in a belly-up position, he fired one more round of flares, and then peeled harder left.

"Papa Bear, he's giving me a good fight, " A. J. said, managing to get off a quick radio burst in the midst of the hard bank.

"Eagle Four. Papa Bear. What is Eagle Three's status?"

"Negative roll. Five thousand. Eagle Three is defending. Firing flares."

A. J. craned his neck around. The Fulcrum was behind him still, maybe within five hundred yards. Too close for a missile shot. This guy was going for machine guns!

"Eagle Three, Eagle Four!" Lieutenant Travis Martin's voice sounded in again. "Keep that turn going! Bandit! Six o'clock."

"Roger that, " A. J. said, pushing harder on the stick to the left. He battled the G-forces to look around again. The Red Baron was still at an angle, but was closing closer to a straight line. He remembered the intelligence reports that for close-in combat, the Fulcrum was rumored to be more agile than both the F-16 and F-15. No wonder this guy was trying to get in close. Plus the close distance made it too risky for Travis Martin to launch a missile at the Fulcrum for fear of taking out A. J. as well.

This guy was a shrewd fighter pilot, and had a bucketful of Russian testosterone.

"Eagle Three! Eagle Four! I've got shots in the air! Repeat, shots in the air!"

A. J. looked out to his right. White tracers flew through the air just past his right wing! This cat was already firing his thirty-millimeter cannon.

If the Russian straightened out that angle just a bit more, this party would be over. He had to try an evasive maneuver to get in behind the Russian and become the pursuer, rather than the pursued.

One thousand three, one thousand two, one thousand one.
A. J. yanked back on the stick and hit his afterburners. The Eagle stalled for a split second, and then shot toward the heavens. He put the Eagle in a reverse vertical loop, like riding the inside loop of a roller coaster. The horizon was rightside up, then standing on its end, then upside down, then standing on its end again.

The plane emerged from the loop and the horizon was in its proper place. The Eagle was now behind the Fulcrum.

"Yeah! Take that, Igor!" A. J. pushed down on the throttle. The Fulcrum might be more maneuverable, but the Eagle had the speed. The Fulcrum's jet engines were growing larger as the Eagle closed the distance.

The Fulcrum tried a quick left-turn belly roll. The Eagle matched the turn and the acrobatic roll. "Good try, but not good enough!"

Now the Fulcrum tried banking hard to the right. A. J. pushed his stick to the right, and the Eagle followed suit.

"Eagle Three. Papa Bear. What's your status?"

"Papa Bear. I've got him in my gunsights. He's pretty good, but I'm moving in for the kill." The horizon was at a forty-five-degree angle now, as the planes continued their hard bank to the right. The Eagle was inching closer. The Fulcrum was within a hair of A. J.'s gun sights.

A. J. flipped a switch and armed the Eagle's twenty-millimeter cannon with exploding shells.

"Papa Bear, I'm moving in for guns." A. J. gave his jet slightly more throttle. The angle closed some more. The Fulcrum was almost in the crosshairs . . . almost . . . getting closer . . .

A. J. squeezed the trigger of the six-barrel Gatling-style cannon. "I got shots in the air!" Tracers flew at the twin tailpipes of the Russian jet with twenty-millimeter exploding shells. Fire erupted in the Fulcrum's tailpipe and black smoke spewed forth immediately.

"Bull's-eye!" A. J. shouted, as the MiG started a downward streak. "Bull's-eye!" He repeated. "I got him!"

"Great work, boss!" Lieutenant Travis Martin said.

"Keep an eye on that plane, " A. J. said. This kill would be legitimate, if he had to keep shooting bullets into the falling wreckage all the way to the ground.
No more ghost planes resurfacing on radar. Not this
time, baby
.

"Eagle Three, Eagle Four. Bandit's dropping like a rock. I've got a parachute in the sky at two o'clock."

A. J. looked out and saw a white chute with a man dangling at the end.

"Mark position, " he said, then radioed the control plan. "Papa Bear, Eagle Three. We've got a downed Russian MiG and parachute at . . ." A. J. was shocked that the dogfight that had erupted over Tbilisi had spilledover the Turkish border. The Russian pilot, if he was still alive, would parachute into NATO territory. "Fifty miles east of the Turkish border."

"Eagle Three, Papa Bear. Copy that. We've got choppers in the area. Eagle Three, be advised the area is now free of bandits. Proceed as ordered, return to Incirlik."

"Papa Bear. Eagle Three. Roger that. We're coming home."

U.S. Army Apache helicopter

Fifty miles east of Arivan, Turkey

CW04 Adam Jackson, United States Army, sat in the cockpit at the controls of his Apache attack helicopter. He was hovering at five hundred feet over the snaky, mountainous road between the Turkish towns of Kars and Arivan.

Chief Warrant Officer Jackson had heard the radio traffic between the Navy EC-2 Hawkeye and the U.S. Air Force F-15 about the downed Russian jet. As soon as the transmission was complete, he spotted a white parachute, about two miles downrange, floating down toward the road just to his east.

Jackson pivoted the chopper on a stationary rotating axis in the air, dipped the nose, and flew toward the descending parachute.

"Papa Bear. Apache One. I have a visual on that parachute. Repeat, I have a visual on the parachute. He's coming down fifty miles east of Arivan. Looks like he may land on the main road."

"Apache One. Papa Bear. Proceed to landing site. Rescue downed pilot."

"Papa Bear. Roger that. Proceeding now."

Jackson pressed the aircraft's internal intercom system to the Apache's cargo bay.

"Ranger leader, be on alert. We've spotted the Russian pilot. He's coming down two miles downrange."

A voice came back through Jackson's headset. "Roger that, Apache One. Just get us into position and we'll take care of the rest."

"Roger that, Ranger leader. Stand by."

Jackson hovered for a moment. When the pilot hit the ground, Jackson nudged forward on the throttle. In a moment, he was hovering directly over the downed pilot, who was looking up, shielding his face from the chopper's downdraft. His clothes, hair, and downed parachute were blowing wildly in the wind.

"Ranger leader, we're at one hundred feet."

"Okay, Apache, we're good to go!"

Four one-hundred-foot ropes dropped from the chopper's cargo bay. A squad of U.S. Army Rangers, wearing camouflaged combat fatigues, shimmied down the ropes in groups of fours.

Jackson looked down. Six Rangers were already on the ground. They surrounded the Russian and pointed their M-16s at him from every direction. The Russian's hands were in the air. Jackson looked for a spot on the road, about a hundred yards downrange. He steered the Apache to just above the spot, and then set the chopper down on the road.

CHAPTER 15

Office of the Russian minister of defense
Red Square, Moscow

Three hours later

Giorgy Alexeevich Popkov, the Russian minister of defense, sat at his desk, alone, organizing papers for his meeting with President Evtimov. He knew what Evtimov would be looking for:

Bomb assessments.

Damage reports inflicted on Chechnya.

An update on NATO flights over Georgia and NATO troop movements in Turkey.

But mostly, the president's mind would be on one subject: plutonium.

He imagined Evtimov's grueling cross-examination in front of the rest of the cabinet: "What is the status of the plutonium? Do we have any leads on the plutonium? Have we found where they are trying to build the nuclear device? You are my defense minister, Giorgy Alexeevich. I hold you responsible for the success or failure of this mission."

How he dreaded it all.

Hot rumors floated around the political circles of Moscow that the defense minister's head would soon roll, that the president still seethed about the loss of the plutonium, that Popkov's head had not yet rolled only because of the influence of his old hunting and vodka-drinking friend, Sergey Semyonovich Sobyanin, who just happened to be the president's chief of staff.

But how much longer would Sergey Semyonovich stick his neck on the chopping block?

Giorgy Alexeevich needed positive news to carry to the president. Something. Anything. Perhaps an intelligence leak of sorts. Something that would suggest that the Russian Army was closing in on the stolen bounty.

The truth, however, was this. Russian ground and air forces were pounding Chechnya with unprecedented strength, but they were no closer to finding the plutonium than when this all started.

Why?

What could have gone wrong?

There was a knock on the door.

"Open."

Olga, his secretary of five years, stood in the doorway.

"Pardon me, Minister, " she said, "but General Ivanov is here to see you, sir."

General Alexander Ivanov was the military chief of the Russian Air Force. "I do not remember an appointment with Ivanov."

"You did not have an appointment, Minister. The general says it is an emergency."