The Kremlin Strike

by Dale Brown

  The Ranger soared off the ground and climbed into the fog. Its landing gear retracted and locked inside with a few muffled thumps.

  Vasey tweaked his stick to the left, banking slightly to the southwest. The navigation cues on the HUD stabilized. They were on course. Satisfied, he throttled back a little and squeezed a paddle switch on the stick. “DTF engaged, set for two hundred feet, hard ride.”

  With the terrain-following system in control, their aircraft descended again. It leveled off only two hundred feet above the fogbound sea. From now on, occasional activations of its radar altimeter would measure the distance between its belly and the waves below, confirming the information in the digital database.

  From her position in the right-hand seat, Nadia focused on the three waiting Iron Wolf drones. In sequence, she activated their autonomous programs. One by one, they sped down the runway, lifted off, and turned southwest to join up with the Ranger. One of the Coyotes took station off the XCV-62’s starboard wing. The second slid into place off their port wing. The EQ-55 Howler, with its radars and jammers still inactive, brought up the rear.

  Staying low, the whole formation flew on out over the Bering Sea at four hundred and fifty knots.

  CVN-76 USS Ronald Reagan, Southeast of Hokkaido, Japan

  Ninety Minutes Later

  Surrounded by six Arleigh Burke–class guided missile destroyers and two Ticonderoga-class cruisers, the huge Nimitz-class aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan turned smoothly into the wind. Under a cloudless sky, it was almost pitch-black. The waning quarter moon would not rise for another half hour or so. Despite the darkness, none of the nine American warships were lit up. They were operating under strict wartime conditions.

  Suddenly several tiny points of light appeared, then immediately shot down along the carrier’s deck and screamed into the sky. It was an F/A-18E Super Hornet launched by one of the Reagan’s steam catapults. Seconds later, another Super Hornet streaked aloft, visible only by its position lights. Launch after launch followed at regular intervals, using three of the carrier’s four catapults. As soon as each aircraft cleared the deck and configured for cruise, its regular position lights went out, replaced by night-vision-friendly position lights.

  Within fifteen minutes, twenty-four Super Hornets and two EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft were airborne. Those launched earlier in the cycle orbited some miles ahead of the carrier group, waiting for the rest to form up. With that accomplished, all twenty-six planes of the navy strike force turned and flew northwest toward Hokkaido.

  Police Station, Imeni Poliny Osipenko, Khabarovsk Region, Russia

  That Same Time

  Imeni Poliny Osipenko was a rural village on the left bank of the Amgun River, about eighteen kilometers north of the boundary of the Oldjikan State Nature Reserve. On either side of a two-lane paved highway, red- and blue-roofed houses, barns, and sheds lined dirt roads. Behind each little cluster of buildings lay fields sown in barley and wheat.

  Tired after a ten-hour drive from Komsomolsk-on-Amur’s Dzemgi Air Base, Russian Air Force Lieutenant Nikolay Khryukin parked his mud-spattered UAZ Hunter jeep and climbed out from behind the steering wheel. He looked around in bored disdain. Until now, the isolated hamlet’s only connection to the Russian Air Force was the fact that in 1939 it had been renamed after Major Polina Osipenko, holder of a women’s flight record and a Hero of the Soviet Union. What an honor, he thought cynically. It was probably just as well Osipenko had been killed in a plane crash before the politicians made her pay a visit to this one-tractor dump.

  Although the sun had only gone down a couple of hours before, most of the locals already seemed to be in bed, with all their lights off. Peasant farmers need to be up early to care for their crops, I suppose, Khryukin decided. He stretched his sore back and neck muscles and wished with all his heart that the local yokels had stuck closer to their dull labors—instead of scaring themselves half to death with nonsense and then screaming for help from the military authorities.

  Khryukin scowled. Apparently, a couple of days ago, some students and their teacher had stumbled back into town from a nature hike in the Oldjikan reserve with some lunatic story about finding evidence of a secret space alien landing. Their shrill request for an official investigation had been bucked up the chain to land on his commanding officer’s desk this morning. So naturally, Colonel Federov had picked his least favorite subordinate for this wild-goose chase . . . one Nikolay Khryukin. He was the 23rd Fighter Aviation Regiment’s meteorology officer, not an Su-35S combat pilot, and Federov harbored an instinctive dislike for those he considered “pencil pushers in uniform.”

  “Go up there and settle their nerves, Lieutenant,” the colonel had ordered offhandedly. “These so-called UFO objects are probably just the remains of a weather balloon, so you’re the expert. Besides, it won’t hurt the air force to build a little goodwill with the locals . . . and it won’t hurt you to get out and see more of this beautiful Motherland of ours.”

  Well, from what Khryukin had seen on his long, tedious drive to Imeni Poliny Osipenko along crappy roads, this part of the beautiful Motherland was trees, a lot more trees, swamp, and even more damned trees. With an audible sigh, he settled his high-peaked officer’s cap more firmly on his head and strode toward the police station.

  The sergeant on duty, a thickset man whose uniform was about a size too small for him, was only too happy to see him. “I know you think we’re probably crazy,” he confided eagerly as he led Khryukin down a narrow hall to a locked storage room. “I thought so, too, until I clapped my own eyes on what those kids found out in the middle of the forest.” He fumbled for his keys, opened the door, flipped on the overhead light, and then stepped aside. “But check it out for yourself, Lieutenant.”

  For a long moment, Khryukin just stood and stared at the strange artifacts the students had dug up. The most easily recognizable was the bundled remains of a large red-and-white parachute. No mystery there, he thought slowly. But what should he make of the other odd items, which included a man-sized suit of some peculiar shiny metal fabric and a helmet with a clear visor? Or that even weirder conical two-meter-wide shell covered in scorched and seared cloth on one side and some elastic substance on the other?

  And then the understanding of what he saw hit him with full force. He whirled on the police sergeant. “I need a phone connection to Dzemgi Air Base! Right now!”

  “See?” the policeman said, sounding pleased. “I told you it was aliens.”

  “It’s not aliens, you idiot!” Khryukin snarled at him. “Those things belong to an American astronaut!”

  Wolf Six-Two, over the North Pacific

  A Short Time Later

  Nadia Rozek glanced out the right side of the Ranger’s cockpit. The quarter moon hung there, just above the horizon. Its pale silvery light danced across the undulating surface of the ocean. She frowned. The moonlight was beautiful. But it was also dangerous, since that faint glow made it a bit easier for the enemy to spot her small group of jet-black aircraft as they darted in low over the water. It would have been marginally safer to make this flight into Russian territory on a moonless night. Unfortunately, the next such period was still several days away . . . and Brad was running out of time.

  A warning tone sounded in her headset. “Monolit-B surface search radar detected at one o’clock,” her computer reported. “Estimated range is one hundred miles and closing.”

  She punched up a menu on her threat-warning display and read through it quickly. “Nothing for us to worry about,” she assured Vasey. “This radar is assigned to the Russian K-300P Bastion coastal antiship missile battery on Matua.”

  Vasey nodded his understanding. The lethal, long-range supersonic ship-killing missiles of the Bastion battery they’d detected were intended for use against the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers and surface warships. They could not engage aircraft.

  Still, picking up that active Russian radar was a sign that they were standing into danger
. Twenty minutes ago, already seven hundred nautical miles from Attu, they had altered their heading by ninety degrees. Now they were flying northwest, on a course that would cross the volcanic Kuril island chain right at the midpoint between northern Japan and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.

  For the past several years, Gryzlov had been strengthening his garrisons scattered among the Kuril chain’s fifty-six mountainous islands—installing antiship batteries and antiaircraft missiles and radars at various places. His strategic goal was to seal off the Sea of Okhotsk and most of the far east region’s coast against intrusion by America’s naval forces. Fortunately, there were still a few weak spots in this island fortress barrier, at least for a small handful of stealth aircraft. The most powerful air search radars and long-range SAM units were based on the northernmost and southernmost islands, where they could protect Russia’s twin Pacific Fleet bases at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Vladivostok respectively. With a bit of luck and some help, the XCV-62 and its little flock of accompanying drones should be able to slide through where the enemy’s radar coverage was weakest, trusting to their stealth characteristics and nap-of-the-earth flight to avoid detection.

  An icon flashed on Nadia’s left-hand multifunction display. She tapped it. A message opened up on the screen: REAGAN AIR GROUP AT POINT DELTA. “Our American friends are ready to make their move,” she reported.

  Vasey smiled in satisfaction. “Well, God bless the U.S. Navy,” he said. He glanced at her. “Now to see if Gryzlov and his lads react the way you’ve hoped.”

  “They will,” she said confidently. “Who pays attention to the little flea when confronted by a snarling mastiff?”

  Thirty-Four

  Headquarters, 1529th Guards Air Defense Missile Regiment, Knyaze-Volkonskoye, Thirty Kilometers East of Khabarovsk, Russia

  That Same Time

  Colonel Vladimir Titov pondered the intelligence report just flashed from Moscow. A short time ago, one of Russia’s Kondor radar reconnaissance satellites orbiting high over the Pacific Ocean had spotted the U.S. Navy’s Ronald Reagan carrier strike group executing a sudden course change toward the south. Until then, the American ships had been steaming generally north at high speed. Why the abrupt U-turn?

  Struck by an unnerving possibility, he swung around to face one of the junior officers crowded with him into the mobile command center vehicle, a heavy-duty 8×8 Ural off-road truck. “Yvgeny! What is the current wind direction southeast of Hokkaido?”

  “A moment, sir!” The young lieutenant’s fingers darted across his keyboard. His fresh, unlined face wrinkled in concentration.

  Titov nodded in approval. Many of his peers despised younger officers for their fixation on computers and the Internet. In his view, they were foolish. The wiser course was to use this obsession for the benefit of the forces under their command.

  The lieutenant looked away from his screen. “Weather reports from Kushiro indicate the wind is from the south, sir.”

  Titov’s unnerving “possibility” crystallized into a certainty. That big American aircraft carrier had suddenly turned into the direction of the wind—which meant it had launched aircraft. He looked at another of his subordinates. “Alert all missile battalions, Major. The Americans may be coming our way—”

  “Sir! Early warning radar on Iturup, in the Kuril Islands, reports a large formation of high-speed aircraft bearing two-five-zero, relative,” his communications officer reported. “Direction of flight is three-zero-zero, absolute. Range four hundred kilometers. Speed eleven hundred kilometers per hour. Altitude unknown.”

  “Plot that contact!” Titov demanded.

  Titov leaned over the man’s shoulder and saw a set of blinking red icons flash onto the map almost dead center in the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Thank God for our new radar station in the southern Kurils, he thought. Any part of Hokkaido was far outside the effective range of his regiment’s own air surveillance radars. Based on their speed and observed direction of flight, this was almost certainly a formation of F/A-18E Super Hornet strike aircraft . . . and they were currently headed straight toward the city of Khabarovsk . . .

  Or more likely, his own surface-to-air missile battalions, he realized coldly, if Colonel General Leonov’s suspicion that the Americans were plotting an attack against the Vostochny Cosmodrome was correct. To have any hope of flying a bomber group far enough into Russia’s far east region to hit the launch complex, they would have to cripple its outlying surface-to-air missile defenses. He blessed the recent decision to reequip his regiment with the newer, longer-range, and more capable S-400 Triumf system, in place of its old, shorter-range S-300PS units.

  “Sound air-raid alert,” Titov ordered, forcing himself to sound calm and completely in control. If those F/A-18s were carrying standoff land attack missiles, such as the AGM-158B joint air-to-surface standoff missile, they would be in range to launch within twenty-five minutes. And any missiles they fired would strike home less than twenty minutes later. True, his new S-400 SAMs could theoretically reach out and destroy enemy aircraft, or even their air-launched weapons, much farther out. But that was only true for targets they could “see” on radar. Long before those American strike aircraft came within his reach, they were sure to drop back down to very low altitude . . . which would drastically decrease the distance at which the regiment’s search and fire-control radar systems could pick them up.

  No, he decided, this battle would almost certainly be fought at much closer ranges than the theoretical maximums for either side’s weapons. As it was, he was extremely fortunate that the enemy aircraft carrier had launched its attack planes so soon. By the time those Super Hornets were close enough to fire their standoff missiles, they should be very near the outside edge of their own effective combat range. They would be short on fuel, significantly reducing their ability to maneuver defensively against his S-400s, which ought to greatly increase his odds of scoring kills.

  Now that his subordinates were in action, Titov realized he had one further duty. He grabbed a secure phone and punched in the code for the National Defense Control Center in Moscow. “This is Colonel Titov with the 1529th Guards Air Defense Missile Regiment. I need to speak to Colonel General Leonov or his senior deputy immediately!”

  F/A-18e Diamondback One-Five, Reagan Air Group, over Hokkaido

  That Same Time

  Seen from ten thousand feet, Hokkaido was ablaze with light. A huge warm yellow glow marked the major city of Sapporo. Smaller radiances signaled the locations of other cities and towns scattered across the island. Thinner lines of light traced out a dense network of highways, roads, and rail lines.

  Commander Dane “Viking” Thorsen listened to the steady warble in his headset and checked his Super Hornet’s threat display one more time. It identified the enemy radar as a Nebo-M VHF-band air search system. Its signal strength and azimuth marked it as the Russian set deployed on Iturup, one of the Kuril Islands stretching northeast off Hokkaido’s coast. He smiled beneath his oxygen mask and keyed his mike. “D-Back One-Five to all D-Back, Talon, and Outlaw aircraft. We’ve baited the hook. Execute strike plan Delta.”

  Crisp acknowledgments returned.

  Thorsen dropped the nose of his F/A-18E. The navy strike fighter slid lower, losing altitude as it accelerated to more than six hundred and seventy knots. The other twenty-five aircraft in Reagan’s attack force followed him down.

  The warning tone in his headset cut off abruptly as they descended into the radar shadow cast by Hokkaido’s mountains and volcanoes. The Russian radar station on Iturup had lost contact.

  Four minutes later, flying at altitudes of less than five hundred feet, the swarm of navy planes streaked across the coast and out over the Sea of Japan. “Feet wet,” Thorsen reported laconically.

  They flew on for a while longer, closing fast on a predetermined point one hundred and sixty nautical miles from Russian territory. The masthead lights of fishing boats bobbed across the surface of the sea in front of them and th
en vanished astern.

  Thorsen kept his eyes moving between his fighter’s nav display and its threat-warning system. Winning tonight’s little game with the Russians would demand both absolute precision . . . and deception. He listened intently for the chirping sound that would indicate he was being painted by enemy radar. There was only silence. “Confirm naked,” he radioed.

  Affirmative replies flowed through his headset. No one else in the strike force showed any hostile radar warning receiver indications either. For the moment, they were effectively invisible. Seconds later, his F/A-18E reached the preset point. “Action Delta,” Thorsen ordered.

  He pulled back on the stick slightly, climbed a couple of hundred feet, and then toggled the weapons release. One after another, two small ADM-160B miniature air-launched decoys, or MALDs, fell away from under his Super Hornet’s wings.

  Immediately Thorsen broke hard left, clearing the way for the pilots in his wake to launch their own decoys. His wingman turned with him. Thirteen of the fighters in the two Super Hornet squadrons were carrying MALDs. The other eleven were armed for air-to-air combat—ready to engage only if the strike force was jumped by Russian aircraft, or if the enemy launched a retaliatory attack against the Reagan and its escorts.

  In pairs, the rest of the F/A-18Es reached the launch point, fired their MALDs, and rolled back toward Hokkaido. They were accompanied by the pair of EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft assigned to this mission.

  Behind the departing navy strike force, a flock of twenty-six tiny decoys arrowed onward toward the Russian coastline. Ultralight turbojet engines propelled them at close to six hundred knots. Programs were running in their onboard computers, counting down the minutes to activation. Once that happened, the decoys would begin mimicking the radar signatures and flight profiles of the Super Hornets and Growlers. Two of them were more advanced ADM-160C MALD-Js, equipped to act both as decoys and as radar jammers.