by Tom Clancy
By that time the Denver FBI had a pair of men entering the KOLD building. They laid down the law to a news crew that protested about the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which argument carried less weight than the men with guns who shut the power down to their transmitter. The FBI agents at least apologized as they did so. They needn’t have bothered. What had been a fool’s errand from the beginning was already an exercise in futility.
“So, what the hell is going on?” Richards asked his staff.
“We have no idea, sir. No reason was given for the alert,” the communications officer said lamely.
“Well, it leaves us between two chairs, doesn’t it?” This was a rhetorical question. The TR battle group was just passing Malta, and was now in range of targets in the Soviet Union. That required “The Stick’s” A-6E Intruders to take off, climb rapidly to cruising altitude, and top off their tanks soon thereafter, but at that point they had the gas to make it all the way to their targets on or near the Kerch Peninsula. Only a year before, U.S. Navy carriers, though carrying a sizable complement of thermonuclear bombs, had not been part of the SIOP. This acronym, pronounced “Sy-Op,” stood for “Single Integrated Operations Plan,” and was the master blueprint for dismantling the Soviet Union. The drawdown of strategic missiles—mostly land-based ones for the United States—had radically reduced the number of available warheads, and, like planners everywhere, the Joint Strategic Targeting Staff, co-located with headquarters SAC, tried to make up for the shortfall in any way they could. As a result, whenever an aircraft carrier was in range of Soviet targets, it assumed its SIOP tasking. In the case of USS Theodore Roosevelt, it meant that about the time the ship passed east of Malta, she became not a conventional-theater force, but a nuclear-strategic force. To fulfill this mission, TR carried fifty B-61-Mod-8 nuclear gravity bombs in a special, heavily-guarded magazine. The B-61 had FUFO—for “full fusing option,” more commonly called “dial-a-yield”—that selected an explosive power ranging from ten to five hundred kilotons. The bombs were twelve feet long, less than a foot in diameter, weighed a mere seven hundred pounds, and were nicely streamlined to cut air resistance. Each A-6E could carry two of them, with all of its other hard-points occupied by auxiliary fuel tanks to allow a combat radius of more than a thousand miles. Ten of them were the explosive equivalent of a whole squadron of Minuteman missiles. Their assigned targets were naval, on the principle that people most often kill friends, or at least associates, rather than total strangers. One assigned SIOP mission, for example, was to reduce the Nikolayev Shipyard on the Dniepr River to a radioactive puddle. Which was, incidentally, where the Soviet carrier Kuznetzov had been built.
The Captain’s additional problem was that his battle group commander, an admiral, had taken the chance to fly into Naples for a conference with the Commander of the United States Sixth Fleet. Richards was on his own.
“Where’s our friend?” Roosevelt’s CO asked.
“About two hundred fifty miles back,” the operations officer said. “Close.”
“Let’s get the plus-fives right up, skipper,” Jackson said. “I’ll take two and orbit right about here to watch the back door.” He tapped the chart.
“Play it cool, Rob.”
“No sweat, Ernie.” Jackson walked to a phone. “Who’s up?” he asked the VF-1 ready room. “Good.” Jackson went off to get his flight suit and helmet.
“Gentlemen,” Richards said as Jackson left, “since we are now east of Malta, we are now part of the SIOP, therefore a strategic and not a conventional asset, and DEFCON-TWO applies to us. If anyone here needs a refresher on the DEFCON-TWO Rules of Engagement, you’d better do it fast. Anything that might be construed as a threat to us may be engaged and destroyed on my authority as battle group commander. Questions?”
“Sir, we don’t know what is happening,” the ops officer pointed out.
“Yeah. We’ll try to think first, but, people, let’s get our collective act together. Something bad is happening, and we’re at DEFCON-TWO.”
It was a fine, clear night on the flight deck. Jackson briefed Commander Sanchez and their respective RIOs, then the plane captains for the two Tomcats sitting on the waist cats walked the flight crews out to them. Jackson and Walters got aboard. The plane captain helped strap both in, then disappeared downward and removed the ladder. Captain Jackson ran through the start-up sequence, watching his engine instruments come into normal idle. The F-14D was currently armed with four radar-homing Phoenix missiles and four infrared Sidewinders.
“Ready back there, Shredder?” Jackson asked.
“Let’s do it, Spade,” Walter replied.
Robby pushed his throttles to the stops, then jerked them around the detent and into afterburner, and signaled his readiness to the catapult officer, who looked down the deck to make sure it was clear. The officer fired off a salute to the aircraft.
Jackson blinked his flying lights in reply, dropping his hand to the stick and pulling his head back against the rest. A second later the cat officer’s lighted wand touched the deck. A petty officer hit the firing button, and steam jetted into the catapult machinery.
For all his years at this business, his senses never quite seemed to be fast enough. The acceleration of the catapult nearly jerked his eyeballs around inside their sockets. The dim glow lights of the deck vanished behind him. The back of the aircraft settled and they were off. Jackson made sure he was actually flying before taking the aircraft out of burner, then he retracted his gear and flaps and started a slow climb to altitude. He was just through a thousand feet when “Bud” Sanchez and “Lobo” Alexander pulled alongside.
“There go the radars,” Shredder said, taking note of his instruments. The entire TR battle group shut down every emission in a matter of seconds. Now no one would be able to track them from their own electronic noise.
Jackson settled down. Whatever this was, he told himself, it couldn’t be all that bad, could it? It was a beautifully clear night, and the higher he got, the clearer it became through the panoramic canopy of his fighter. The stars were discrete pin-pricks of light, and their twinkling ceased almost entirely as they reached thirty thousand feet. He could see the distant strobes of commercial aircraft, and the coastlines of half a dozen countries. A night like this, he thought, could make a poet of a peasant. It was for moments like these that he’d become a pilot. He turned west, with Sanchez on his wing. There were some clouds that way, he realized at once. He couldn’t see all that many stars.
“Okay,” Jackson ordered, “let’s get a quick picture.”
The Radar Intercept Officer activated his systems. The F-14D had just been fitted with a new Hughes-built radar called an LPI, for “low probability of intercept.” Though using less power than the AWG-9 system it had replaced, the LPI combined greater sensitivity with a far lower chance of being picked up by another aircraft’s threat receiver. It also had vastly improved look-down performance.
“There they are,” Walters reported. “Nice circular formation.”
“They have anything up?”
“Everything I see has a transponder on.”
“‘Kay—we’ll be on station in another few minutes.”
Fifty miles behind them, an E-2C Hawkeye airborne-early-warning bird was coming off the number-two catapult. Behind it, two KA-6 tankers were firing up, along with more fighters. The tankers would soon arrive at Jackson’s station to top off his fuel tanks, enabling the CAG to stay aloft for four more hours. The E-2C was the most important. It climbed out at full military power, turning south to take station fifty miles from its mother ship. As soon as it reached twenty-five thousand, its surveillance radar switched on, and the onboard crew of three operators began cataloging their contacts. Their data was sent by digital link back to the carrier and also to the group air-warfare officer aboard the Aegis cruiser, USS Thomas Gates, whose call sign was “Stetson.”
“Nothing much, skipper.”
“Okay, we’re on station. Let’s o
rbit and searchlight around.” Jackson turned his aircraft into a shallow right turn, with Sanchez in close formation.
The Hawkeye spotted them first. They were almost directly under Jackson and his two Tomcats, and out of the detection cone of their radars for the moment.
“Stetson, this is Falcon-Two, we have four bogies on the deck, bearing two-eight-one, one hundred miles out.” The reference was for TR’s position.
“IFF?”
“Negative, their speed is four hundred, altitude seven hundred, course one-three-five.”
“Amplify,” the AWO said.
“They’re in a loose finger-four, Stetson,” the Hawkeye controller said. “Estimate we have tactical fighters here.”
“I got something,” Shredder reported to Jackson a moment later. “On the deck, looks like two—no, four aircraft, heading southeast.”
“Whose?”
“Not ours.”
In TR’s combat information center, no one as yet had a clue what was going on, but the group intelligence staff was doing its best to find out. What they had learned to this point was that most satellite news channels seemed to be down, though all military satellite links were up and running. A further electronic sweep of the satellite spectrum showed that a lot of video circuits were unaccountably inactive, as were the satellite phone links. So addicted were the communications people to the high-tech channels, that it required the services of a third-class radioman to suggest sweeping shortwave bands. The first they found was BBC. The news flash was recorded and raced into CIC. The voice spoke with the quiet assurance that the British Broadcasting Corporation was known for:
“Reuters reports a nuclear detonation in the Central United States. The Denver, Coloraydo”—the Brits have trouble pronouncing some American state names—“television station, KOLD, broadcast via satellite a picture of a mushroom cloud over Denver, along with a voice report of a massive explosion. Station KOLD is now off the air, and attempts to reach Denver by telephone have not yet been successful. There has as yet been no official comment whatever on this incident.”
“Holy Christ,” someone said for all of them. Captain Richards looked around the room at his staff.
“Well, now we know why we’re at DEFCON-TWO. Let’s get some more fighters up. F-18s forward of us, -14s aft. I want four A-6s loaded with B-61s and briefed on SIOP targets. One squadron of-18s loaded with antiship missiles, and start planning an Alpha Strike on the Kuznetzov battle group.”
“Captain,” a talker called. “Falcon reports four inbound tactical aircraft.”
Richards had only to turn around to see the main tactical display, a radarscope fully three feet across. The four new contacts showed up as inverted V-shapes with course vectors. Closest point of approach was less than twenty miles, easily within range of air-to-surface missiles.
“Have Spade ID those bandits right now!”
“... close and identify,” was the order from the Hawkeye control aircraft.
“Roger,” Jackson acknowledged. “Bud, go loose.”
“Roger.” Commander Sanchez eased his stick to the left to open the distance between his fighter and Jackson’s. Called the “Loose Deuce,” the formation enabled the aircraft to be mutually supporting and also impossible to attack simultaneously. As he split off, both aircraft tipped down and dove at full dry power. In a few seconds they were through Mach-One.
“Boresighted,” Shredder told his driver. “I’m activating the TV system.”
The Tomcat was built with a simple identification device. It was a television camera with a ten-power telescopic lens that worked equally well in daylight and darkness. Lieutenant Walters was able to slave the TV into the radar system, and in a few seconds he had four dots that grew rapidly as the Tomcats overtook them. “Twin rudder configuration.”
“Falcon, this is Spade. Inform Stick we have visual but no ID, and we are closing.”
Major Pyotr Arabov was no tenser than usual. An instructor pilot, he was teaching three Libyans the intricacies of night overwater navigation. They had turned over the Italian island of Pantelleria thirty minutes earlier, and were now inbound for Tripoli and home. Formation flying at night was difficult for the three Libyans, though each had over three hundred hours in type, and overwater flying was the most dangerous of all. Fortunately they had picked a good night for it. The star-filled sky gave them a good horizon reference. Better to learn the easy way first, Arabov thought, and at this altitude. A true tactical profile, at one hundred meters and higher speed on a cloudy night could be exceedingly dangerous. He was not any more impressed with the airmanship of these Libyans than the U.S. Navy had been on several occasions, but they did seem willing to learn, and that was something. Besides, their oil-rich country, having learned its own lessons from the Iraqis, had decided that if it were to have an air force at all, it had better have a properly trained one. That meant the Soviet Union could sell a lot more of its MiG-29s, despite the fact that sales in the Israel area were now severely curtailed. It also meant that Major Arabov was being paid partly in hard currency.
The instructor pilot looked left and right to see that the formation was—well, not exactly tight, but close enough. The aircraft were behaving sluggishly with two fuel tanks under each wing. Each fuel tank had stabilizing fins, and looked rather like bombs, actually.
“They’re carrying something, skipper. MiG-29s, for sure.”
“Right.” Jackson checked the display himself, then keyed his radio. “Stick, this is Spade, over.”
“Go ahead.” The digital radio circuit allowed Jackson to recognize Captain Richards’ voice.
“Stick, we have ID on the bogies. Four MiG-two-niners. They appear to have underwing cargo. Course, speed, and altitude unchanged.” There was a brief pause.
“Splash the bandits.”
Jackson’s head snapped up. “Say again, Stick.”
“Spade, this is Stick: Splash the bandits. Acknowledge.”
He called them “bandits, ” Jackson thought. And he knows more than I do.
“Roger, engaging now. Out.” Jackson keyed his radio again. “Bud, follow me in.”
“Shit!” Shredder observed. “Recommend we target two Phoenix, left pair and right pair.”
“Do it,” Jackson replied, setting the weapons switch on the top of his stick to the AIM-54 setting. Lieutenant Walters programmed the missiles to keep their radars quiet until they were merely a mile out.
“Ready. Range is sixteen-thousand. Birds are in acquisition.”
Jackson’s heads-up display showed the correct symbology. A beeping tone in his headset told him that the first missile was ready to fire. He squeezed the trigger once, waited a second, then squeezed again.
“Shit!” Michael “Lobo” Alexander observed, half a mile away.
“You know better than that!” Sanchez snarled back at him.
“Sky is clear. I don’t see anything else around us.”
Jackson closed his eyes to save as much of his vision as possible from the yellow-white exhaust flames of the missiles. They rapidly pulled away, accelerating to over three thousand miles per hour, almost a mile per second. Jackson watched them home in as he positioned his aircraft for another shot if the Phoenixes failed to function properly.
Arabov made another instrument check. There was nothing unusual. His threat receivers showed only air-search radars, though one reading had disappeared a few minutes earlier. Other than that, this was an exceedingly routine training mission, proceeding straight and level on a direct course toward a fixed point. His threat receivers had not detected the LPI radar which had been tracking him and his flight of four over the past five minutes. It was able, however, to detect the powerful homing radar in a Phoenix missile.
A bright red warning light flashed on, and a screeching sound abused his hearing. Arabov looked down to check his instruments. They seemed to be functioning, but this wasn’t—his next move was to turn his head. He just had time to see a half-moon of yellow light and a gho
stly, starlit smoke trail, then a flash.
The Phoenix targeted on the right-hand pair exploded just a few feet from them. The one-hundred-thirty-five-pound warhead filled their air with high-speed fragments which shredded both MiGs. The same happened to the left-hand pair. The air was filled with an incandescent cloud of exploding jet fuel and airplane parts. Three pilots were killed directly by the explosion. Arabov was rocketed out of the disintegrating fighter by his ejection seat, whose parachute opened a scant two hundred feet over the water. Already unconscious from the unexpected shock of ejection, the Russian Major was saved by systems that anticipated his injuries. An inflatable collar held his head above water, a UHF radio began screaming for the nearest rescue helicopter, and a powerful blue-white strobe light started flashing in the darkness. Around him were a few thin patches of burning fuel and nothing else.