Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (50 page)

 
          
“I’ll
see to it, sir.”

 
          
“The
only matter we still need to discuss is what to do about my military officers
who plan and execute military operations in foreign countries without
permission,” the President said grimly. “That kind of insubordinate, illegal
bullshit
needs to be dealt with right away, once and for all. I hope I’m making myself
clear to everyone.”

Over southern
Russia

That same moment

           
The threat warning receiver was a
wild, confusing mixture of signals, and Gennadi Yegorov was having a tough time
sorting them out. “I can’t quite make out what all the fuss is about,” he said
to Ion Stoica. They were both listening intently to
Belgorod
Radar
Center
, trying to coordinate the flight paths and
defensive alignment of at least six Russian jet fighters and one SA-10 surface-to-air
missile site. “I can’t tell if they haven’t found the intruder, or if they’ve
found him but can’t lock onto him, or found him but aren’t authorized to
attack.”

           
Stoica, piloting the Metyor-179
Tyenee stealth fighter- bomber, readjusted his grip on the control stick and
worriedly shifted in his ejection seat. “I think we're too late,” he said.
“Whatever it was got away.”

 
          
‘Tm
not so sure,” Yegorov said. “I just heard another message about unidentified
aircraft heading southwest.”

 
          
“Well,
that’s right toward us,” Stoica said. “Let’s hope we get lucky. How’s the
infrared sensor this morning?”

 
          
“
Atleechna
,
” Yegorov said. “Better than usual—must not be very much humidity in the air.
Range is about sixteen kilometers.” He paused, listening to the busy, often
confusing cacophony of radio transmissions, then said excitedly, “There! A
traffic warning to another aircraft, unidentified intermittent radar target,
ten kilometers south of Boriskova, heading westbound, altitude unknown.” Stoica
banked hard left and headed for that spot. “Very indistinct radar fixes—he’s
less than thirty miles from the air defense radar site at
Belgorod
, but they can’t lock him up.”

 
          
“It
must be a stealth aircraft,” Stoica said. “Could it be an American stealth
aircraft?”

 
          
“They
can’t get a good fix on him—but the detection threshold is getting closer for
us the farther we head northeast,” Yegorov warned his aircraft commander.
“Thirty kilometers more and they’ll be able to see us.”

 
          
“Those
weapon pylons are as bad as radar reflectors,” Stoica said,

 
          
“That
answers our question—we wear pylons, and our stealthiness goes away,” Yegorov
summarized. “I suggest we go home and bring Comrade Kazakov’s plane back to him
before we dent a fender,”

 
          
“You
say we have thirty kilometers before we need to turn south again—let’s take
it,” Stoica said. “My dogfight antennae are going nuts. Whoever’s out there,
he’s close.”

 
          
“Did
I ever tell you what I think of your so-called dogfight antenn—” But Yegorov
stopped before finishing—because a target had just appeared on the infrared
search-and-track sen sor. “Wait a minute ... contact!” he crowed. “
Eleven o’clock
low, range unknown. Weak infrared return,
but it does not correlate to any other radar targets.” He reached up and patted
Stoica's shoulder. “I’ll never bad-mouth your antennae again.” “Congratulate me
later—let’s first see if we can eyeball this guy,” Stoica said. He offset
himself slightly south of the target.

           
“If we can see him on the IRSTS.
he's well within R-60 range,” Yegorov said. “I’m ready.”

 
          
“I’d
like to get a visual on him first,” Stoica said. “I don't want to waste any
missiles on just a cargo plane.”

 
          
“We’re
not on a mission, Ion—we're joyriding over
Ukraine
and
Russia
aboard a five-hundred-million-ruble stealth
fighter,” Yegorov told him. “We came here to see how close we can ' touch air
defense radars with loaded pylons aboard. We know now—not very close at all.
Let’s go home before we break something major.”

           
“We finally get a fix on this guy,
something it looks like the rest of the Russian Air Force could not do, and you
want to let him go and go back home?” Stoica said, with not a little humor in
his voice. “What happened to the bloodthirsty aerial assassin I met dropping
bombs on Afghan villages a few years back?”

 
          
“He
makes too much money and is too afraid of having his nuts cut off by his
gangster boss,” Yegorov said.

 
          
“This
guy shot down some fighters and helicopters,” Stoica reminded his backseater.
“If you tell me you’re not the least bit curious about who he is, we'll go
home.” There was no reply. “Ha! I thought so. Hang on!” Stoica began a gentle
left turn as the target began passing off their left side, beginning a tail
chase to better line up on the target’s hot engine exhausts.

 
          
“Sleeshkampabol'she,
” Yegorov said, as he studied the infrared image. “He’s a big one. Four
engines? I think he has four engines!”

 
          
“Four
engines—he’s got to be a stealth bomber!” Stoica said. “It doesn’t explain who
shot down the Russian aircraft, but this is a pretty big catch. We’ll deal with
his escort after we take this big bastard down. What do you say, partner?”

 
          
“I’m
with you,” Yegorov said excitedly. He entered commands into the weapon
computers and immediately received a
target lock
indication. “Two
external R-60s ready and in range. Your trigger is hot.”

           
“Missiles away!" Stoica lifted
the trigger guard off the control stick and squeezed the trigger. Two R-6Q
air-to-air missiles, one from each wing pylon, screamed off into space after
their quarry less than five kilometers away....

 
          
As
soon as the two R-60 missile motors ignited, a supercooled electronic eye in
the tail of the EB-1C Vampire bomber detected them and issued a
missile
launch
warning, and at the same time automatically ejected decoys and
activated the bomber’s electronic countermeasures system.
“Missile launch!
Break left! Now!"
Patrick shouted.

 
          
The
Vampire’s attack countermeasures systems were the most adv anced in the world.
Instead of simple chaff and flare decoy bundles, the Vampire ejected small
cylindrical gliders that carried wide-spectrum electromagnetic transmitters
that simulated the heat and radar signatures of a real plane. It also carried a
towed transmitter array from which all the radar jamming signals were sent—in
case the enemy launched home-on-jam weapons, the array would be destroyed, not
the Vampire.

 
          
But
the Metyor-179 was too close, and the decoys didn’t have time to power up to
full illumination. While the first R-60 missile missed by a few dozen yards,
the second R-60 did not. It briefly veered right after one of the decoys, then
turned back left toward the Vampire. As it passed over the tail, its proximity
fuse detected a near miss and detonated the seven- pound fragmentation warhead.
The high-energy burst of shrapnel blew the upper half of the EB-lC’s vertical
stabilizer completely away just above the horizontal stabilizer.

 
          
The
explosion twisted the bomber around like a corkscrew, nearly flipping it
completely inverted. Without a rudder, Rebecca had no roll or yaw stability.
They were at the mercy of fate. If the plane recovered, they were saved—if not,
their only chance would be to eject.

 
          
Somehow,
it corkscrewed back to level flight. They had lost two thousand feet of
altitude—Patrick found themselves just a thousand feet above ground. “Get the
nose up, Rebecca,” he warned. “One thousand AGL.”

           
“I got it,” Furness said. She had
almost no roll control at all, and she found herself muscling in more and more
left stick. “Elevens feel like they’re stuck in a right turn. I think it’ll
trim out... no, I can only trim part of it out. I've got limited pitch control,
too. Dammit, check my instruments.”

 
          
"‘Rudder
servo, elevon servo A, autopilot roll channels A and B, pitch servo A.
secondary hydraulics, tail radar, tail warning receiver, and towed
countermeasures arrays out,” Patrick said. “Looks like we got hit in the tail.
Engines, electrical, primary hydraulics, and computers are okay. Can you hold
it?”

 
          
“I
think so,” Rebecca cried. “Where in hell did he come from?”

 
          
“First
priority—get him off our tail,” Patrick shouted. “LADAR on!” The laser radar
immediately located the enemy aircraft less than three miles away. He touched
the enemy aircraft symbol on his supercockpit display. “Attack target.”

 
          
“
Warning
,
attack command received
.
stop attack
...
doors coming open
...” The forward bomb bay doors opened, and a single AIM-120 Scorpion AMRAAM
missile was ejected into the slipstream. After stabilizing for a few seconds,
its first- stage rocket motor ignited. It shot ahead of the Vampire bomber, then
executed a wide, looping “over-the-shoulder” flight path toward the Metyor-179
stealth fighter.

 
          
Normally
the missile relied on the Vampire’s tail radar for initial guidance to its
quarry. But with the aft-facing radar gone, the AIM-120 missile had only the
last known position, heading, altitude, and speed of the target for guidance.
As it approached the spot in space where the enemy aircraft should be, it
activated its own onboard radar and started to search.

 
          
“We
got him!” Stoica shouted. The sudden
POP!
of the R-60’s warhead
exploding and the brief trail of fire and burning metal were unmistakable.
“Stand by, I’m going to let him have a couple more. Here goes ...” Just then,
he saw a brief flash of light in the distance, like a fireworks rocket flying
sideways. “What the hell was that?”

           
“It!s a missile!" Yegorov
shouted. “Break right! Get out of here!"

           
Stoica did not hesitate. He threw
the Mt-179 stealth fighter into a hard-right ninety-degree bank turn, shoved in
full afterburner power, and pulled the control stick back to his belly. At the
same instant, Yegorov ejected decoy chaff and flare bundles. The emergency
maneuver worked. Without a reliable target position, the Scorpion’s onboard
radar locked onto the largest target it could find on its way down—the cloud of
fine tinsel-like chaff—and blew up harmlessly several hundred yards from the
stealth fighter.

 
          
“He
launched a missile at us!” Stoica shouted in utter shock. ‘That bastard
launched
a missile at us!"

 
          
“That’s
either the biggest fighter I've ever seen,” Yegorov said, “or American stealth
bombers now carry air-to-air missiles.”

 
          
“That
bastard is
dead!"
Stoica shouted. He rolled left and activated the
attack radar. This time, the enemy aircraft appeared on the screen immediately.
“Not so stealthy anymore, arc we? We
did
hurt you. Missiles aw—” But
before he could squeeze the trigger to launch two more R-60s, another missile
flew into the sky and arced back toward them. Stoica swore and executed a
hard-left break as Yegorov ejected chaff and flares from the right-side
ejectors. The second missile missed, but not by as much this time.

 
          
“Ion,
let’s get the hell out of here!” Yegorov shouted. “This son of a bitch can
shoot back at us!”

 
          
“I'm
not letting him go!”

 
          
“Ion,
stop it! You already nailed the guy. He’s bugging out. Let him go before he
gets off a lucky shot and nails
us."