Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (23 page)

 
          
Unlike
other aircraft flying so close to
Moscow
’s airspace, the Metyor-179 stealth bomber
did not use its transponder, the transmitter that alerted air traffic control
of its position, altitude, and airspeed: neither did Stoica and Yegorov contact
anyone on their radios, or check in with air traffic control or air defense
command headquarters. Once its long, spindly landing gear was up, the Mt-179
virtually disappeared.

 
          
The
Mt-179 Tyenee’s flight control computer, coupled with air data and fuel
sensors, leveled the stealth bomber at twenty- eight thousand feet—from now on.
the computer would automatically adjust altitude based on best range fuel bum
and aircraft gross weight, step-climbing as the aircraft got lighter, achieving
the perfect balance between the power needed to climb and the faster airspeeds
and lower fuel bum at higher altitude. It didn’t have to worry about
deconflicting itself with other aircraft, staying out of restricted airspace,
or getting permission to cross national boundaries: its collision-avoidance system
detected and displayed the location of any other transponder-equipped aircraft
so it could avoid them in time; and because no radars on the ground could
detect the aircraft, it was free to fly any course and any altitude the crew
chose. Stoica had to make a couple of precautionary turns in Moscow’s airspace
to remain clear of some commercial air traffic that might get too close, and a
few times they did get a solid “chirp” on their radar detectors, strong enough
to know they might have been detected—no stealth system was 100 percent
effective—but otherwise they proceeded on a direct “great circle” course to
their initial point. There was not enough air traffic around
Kiev
,
Bucharest
, or
Sofia
, the three largest cities on their flight
path, to worry about deviations.

 
          
During
the two-hour flight to their initial point, Stoica and Yegorov busied
themselves with checklists and updating their intelligence information. The
Mt-179 did not have a datalink system that automatically updated their attack
computers, as many American and some Western attack aircraft did. Instead,
ground technicians sent simple coded messages on a discreet, scrambled
satellite communications channel. The ground controllers received information
from commercial photoreconnaissance satellites, military’ communications taps
from Zhukovsky and other military sources that they could access, and even news
reports on television and on the Internet, then encoded the information and
transmitted it to the crew. The two crew members decoded the messages, then
made notes and symbols on their strip charts.

 
          
Near
Cluj
,
Romania
, the flight control computer commanded
Stoica to pull the throttles nearly all the way back to flight idle to save
fuel, and the Mt-179 Shadow started a shallow descent from about thirty-six
thousand feet. In idle power, the cockpit was very quiet. The two crew’ members
finished their checklists, took one last nervous pee into piddle packs,
tightened their restraining harnesses and lap belts, and refastened oxygen
masks and donned fireproof gloves. The action was about to begin

 
          
The
last item on the checklist: Stoica reached back over his right shoulder as far
as he could, and Yegorov reached forward and clasped his hand No words were
necessary. That was a tradition they'd started from the first day working
together on the Metyor-179 stealth aircraft.

 
          
But
then, they’d done it before every test flight; now, it was to say ‘‘good luck”
on their first strike mission.

 
          
As
they crossed western Bulgaria and into Macedonia, the radar warning receiver in
the cockpit of the Metyor-179 bleeped—but instead of the usual ground-radar S
symbol, they saw a “bat-wing” symbol with a circle inside it. “NATO AWACS radar
plane,
eleven o’clock
,
range forty miles,” Yegorov reported. “We’re coming into extreme detection
range now.”

 
          
“Here
we go,” Stoica said. “Prepare for attack.” From its v antage point thirty miles
east of Skopje, Macedonia, at thirty thousand feet, the NATO E-3A Airborne
Warning and Control System (AWACS) radar aircraft, using its powerful AN/APY-2
radar mounted within the thirty-foot rotodome atop its fuselage, could see any
normal aircraft flying inside Yugoslavia at any altitude and airspeed, as well
as monitor aircraft flying in most of western Bulgaria, Bosnia, parts of Croatia,
most of northern Greece, and parts of northern Italy.

 
          
Although
the Mt-179 was not a normal aircraft, Russian stealth technology such as was
employed on the Metyor-179 Shadow was not perfect, and the closer they got to
central
Macedonia
, the closer they got to the E-3 AWACS radar
plane. Soon, the radar warning receiver was bleeping almost continuously. They
did not want to waste fuel trying to circumnavigate the radar craft, and they
would waste even more fuel trying to duck down to low altitude too soon.

 
          
But
they were carrying the solution—the R-6Q defensive heat-seeking air-to-air
missiles.

 
          
“Acknowledged,
R-60s ready for launch," Yegorov reported. Stoica pushed the power up
until the Mt-179 had broken the sound barrier. Two minutes later, Yegorov said,
“Coming in to extreme launch range. Ready to uncage .”

 
          
“Uncage
missiles,” Stoica ordered. Yegorov hit a switch, which opened up a tiny
titanium shutter in the wing leading edge, uncovering the R-60’s heat-seeking
sensor. His mouth and throat were dry and his forehead damp from the
anticipation. In all his years flying for the Russian and Romanian Air Forces,
he had never fired an air-to-air missile in anger—now, as a civilian, he was
about to shoot down one of the biggest, most important support aircraft in the
NATO arsenal. A few moments later, they received a
shoot
warning light.
“Clear for launch,” Stoica said.

 
          
“Ready,
ready,
non.”
Yegorov hit the launch command button, and an R-60 missile
leaped out of the left-wing launch chamber. Seconds later, Yegorov fired a second
missile from the right. “Two missiles away. Bye-bye. Mr. AWACS plane.”

           
“O-1, this is C-l,” the senior
controller called on the ship's intercom. “We’ve got an intermittent unknown
target bearing zero-two-zero, range twenty miles, no altitude. Request
permission for beam-sharpening mode.”

 
          
The
operations crew commander of the sixteen-person NATO AWACS crew, a British
Royal Air Force colonel, called up the senior controller’s display on his own
station. The radar sometimes couldn't see small or weak targets very well until
they switched from long-range scan to short-range but high- intensity
beam-sharpening mode, which concentrated more energy on weaker targets.
“Clear,” the commander radioed back. “Crew, radar in narrow BIM, reconfigure.”
The rest of the crew needed to know when the radar was going to be switching
modes because they could be flooded with targets in seconds— everything from
birds to clouds to balloons could show on radar now, until the computer
“squelched" out slow-moving targets.

 
          
The
unknown target immediately popped into clear view. “Contact, bearing
zero-one-five, range nineteen miles, descending through angels twenty, airspeed
six-five-zero knots, negative IFF, designate as Hostile One. Hostile contact,
crew.”

           
“Can we get some patrol aircraft up
here to take a look?” the deputy commander, seated beside the commander on the
first console, asked.

           
“Patrol aircraft? What patrol
aircraft?” the commander said. “Our patrols packed up their kits and departed.
Thanks to the Americans, we have no air patrols over KFOR anymore.”

 
          
It
was true. A month earlier. President Thom of the
United States
had announced that the
United States
was pulling its ground and air forces out
of KFOR and sending them home. The only American forces in southern Europe
right now were Air Force E-3C AWACS radar planes, E-8A Joint STARS (Joint
Surveillance, Targeting, and Reconnaissance System) radar planes, and a
Navy-Marine Corps task force off the coast of Croatia in the Adriatic Ocean,
plus the Sixth Fleet still operating in the Mediterranean Sea. All other air
and ground forces, including almost ten thousand troops in
Kosovo
,
Macedonia
, and
Montenegro
, along with five thousand troops in
Bosnia
, were gone ...

 
          
...
and not just out of the Balkans, and not just back in the United States, but
gone:
the units had been disbanded, and the soldiers reassigned, offered early
retirements, or involuntarily separated from military service.

           
The
United States
was in the midst of a massive
demilitarization never seen before. Troops were being pulled out of
Europe
and
Asia
in staggering numbers. Billions of dollars
in military equipment was being sold, given to allied forces, or simply left in
place. Virtually overnight, American military bases in
Germany
,
Belgium
, the
Netherlands
, and
Norway
were empty. Military and civilian cargo
vessels were lined up in harbors all throughout
Europe
, ready to transport thousands of troops and
millions of tons of supplies and belongings back to
North America
.

 
          
The
European members of NATO and the non-N ATO members of KFOR vowed to continue
the United Nations peacekeeping efforts in Kosovo and the Balkans, but without
the
United States
, it seemed almost pointless. But the
European nations had been demanding a greater role in security missions in
Europe
, so few could really complain when the
United States
unceremoniously left the field and went
home—no one really expected it to happen so suddenly.

 
          
“Who’s
the closest air defense assets we can call on?” the commander asked.

 
          
“The
Three-thirty-fourth Fighter Squadron out of
Thessaloniki
,” his deputy said, punching up the unit’s
satellite and airborne telephone channels to its command post. “They have
cross-border air defense arrangements with
Macedonia
—they can scramble fighters and have them up
here in ten minutes.”

 
          
“Get
them up here straightaway,” the commander ordered. “Comm, C-l, broadcast
warning messages on all frequencies, get that hostile turned around. Notify
Skopje
and American Navy air traffic control about
an unknown target we have marked as ‘Hostile.’ ”

 
          
“And
if he doesn’t turn around?”

 
          
“There’s
not a bloody thing we can do about it,” the commander said. “We might be able
to convince
Italy
or
Turkey
to send a couple fighters up to take a look, but even they don’t want
to waste any fuel or air-frame time on anyone who’s not a threat to their
country. We just watch and—”

 
          
“Snap
target! Snap target!”
one of the radar technicians shouted. He immediately
marked the new high-speed target with a blinking circle symbol, then sent an
alert to every crew station. “Designate Highspeed One ... snap target, snap
target, a second high-speed target, designate Highspeed Two.”

           
“0-1, this is C-l,” the senior
controller on board the AWACS radar plane radioed on intercom to the operations
crew commander. “We’ve got target Highspeed One, climbing through angels forty,
range three miles and closing
fast,
speed eight hundred and increasing.
Highspeed Two is following the same track, two seconds behind Highspeed One.”