by Dale Brown
Just then a bat-wing symbol—an inverted V—appeared at the bottom of the threat scope—and it stayed there. “Shit, we picked up a fighter,” Mace cursed. “Fine time for the MiGs to bug out.” Just then two more bat-wings appeared on the RHAWS scope, this time at the top—and then two more appeared, off to the right near the top. “Crap, we got fighters all around us. Jammers coming on. Step on it, Rebecca.”
As Mace selected the trackbreaker buttons again, Furness pushed the power back up to military power and swept the wings back to 72.5 degrees. She was sure she would not move the throttles or wings again until they were out of Russia.
A diamond symbol danced around the bat-wing symbols on the RHAWS, denoting the most serious threat—the fighters behind were gaining fast, while the ones ahead were closing slowly, as if circling above them, getting ready to swoop down for the kill. Mace reported: “The guys on our tail are closing … coming up on the turnpoint, next heading zero-two-three, safe clearance altitude one thousand feet … one minute to turn, I got a watch running … I got high towers left of the turnpoint, two hundred twenty and eight hundred and fifty feet tall … power line after we roll.”
Suddenly they got a red MISSILE LAUNCH and IRT warning lights, and a hard, fast warning tone—the infrared detection system detected the flare of a missile’s rocket motor igniting—and they could see the glare of decoy flares dropping behind them as the aircraft defense system automatically ejected chaff and flares. “Missile launch!” Mace shouted. “Break right!”
Rebecca jammed the control stick to her right knee, rolled into a 90-degree bank turn, pulled on the stick until their chins were forced down onto their chests from the G-forces, then relaxed the pressure on the stick and rolled out, ready at any time to do another break if necessary. The terrain-following radar system faulted and tried to fly them up when Furness exceeded 40 degrees of bank, and the TFR warning lights were still on even after she rolled out. “I got a problem with the TFs, climbing to SCA,” she said. With the little finger of her left hand, she depressed the paddle switch to keep the terrain-following radar from trying to do an emergency fly-up, started a gentle climb to the safe clearance altitude for the segment of the route, and reached down to the TFR control panel to recycle the TFR mode switches.
Meanwhile Mace was frantically searching the skies behind them for any sign of a missile launch. It would be nearly impossible to see, but… “There!” he shouted, pointing above and to the left. “I see two missiles! I—”
Suddenly they saw a ball of fire erupt in the sky ahead, and there was a lot of joyful shouting on both the UHF emergency channel and the scrambled VHF interplane channel.
“What in hell … ? Who is that … ?” he asked.
“It’s the Ukrainian MiGs,” Furness said. She was still recycling the TFR switches—both yellow TFR FAIL warning lights were on. “They didn’t leave us—damn, they just shot down a Russian fighter. Call up the next point.”
Mace sequenced the navigation computer to the next turnpoint and they headed north. “I got search radars at eleven and one o’clock, and bat-wings all over the damned place,” Mace said. “I don’t know which is which—they’re all bad guys now as far as I’m concerned. Twelve minutes to the initial point. I’m doing a prelaunch check.” He configured his weapon release switches, placing the bomb door mode switch to AUTO—and left it there this time. He wasn’t going to try to withhold anything this time.
Coming up to the next turnpoint, he checked offset aimpoints in his radarscope. “I got a problem—radar pedestal looked like it crashed,” he said. “That last break must’ve jammed something. I’m resetting my radar.” He hit the ANTENNA CAGE button, which should have moved the attack radar dish to its straight-ahead position—it stayed rolled over to one side, producing only a streak of light in his radarscope. He turned his system to STANDBY, waited a few seconds, then back to XMIT—no change. He shut the system completely off, waited ten seconds, then turned it back to STANDBY—still nothing. “Shit, the attack radar pedestal is jammed.”
“That means the terrain-following radar is out too,” Furness said. “Fuck, we’re stuck at SCA.”
Mace rotated the TFR mode switches to SIT, which would give them a profile-only view of terrain ahead—it was the only radar they had working now. Without the TFRs or the attack radar, they could not safely descend below the safe clearance altitude. “Christ, what a time for the system to crap out.”
The S symbol at the ten o’clock position suddenly changed to a 10, and they heard the fast, high-pitched warning tone of an imminent missile threat: “SA-10, ten o’clock—the Kaluga site came up on us,” Mace said as he depressed the trackbreaker switchlights to turn the jammers on again. “Come left and let’s get that sucker.” Mace made sure his AGM-88C HARM antiradar missiles were powered up and ready. The Vampires did not carry a Tactical Electronic Reconnaissance sensor pallet in the bomb bay—they had a very different load in the bomb bay that night—so the HARM missiles had to find, identify, and process their own attack information, which took much longer than normal.
Furness made the turn, aiming the HARM missile at the SAM site … and the MISSILE LAUNCH warning lights came on.
“Missile launch!” Mace cried out.
“I see it, I see it!” Furness shouted. “Chaff—now!”
Mace pumped out two bundles of chaff and Furness banked hard left. The XMIT lights on the forward trackbreakers were on, trying to jam the uplink signal steering the missile. The SA-10 missile turned right to follow them.
“Chaff!” Furness shouted again, then threw the bomber into a hard right break. Mace pumped out extra chaff, two bundles at a time.
The SA-10 banked left in response—it wasn’t being jammed. It was locked on solid and tracking them all the way. Rebecca had to sweep the wings forward to 54 degrees, then 36 degrees to keep from stalling … she had no more airspeed to do another break to get away from this missile.
Furness and Mace saw a huge fireball pass overhead and then heard on the interplane frequency, “Magnum, Thunder One, magnum. Hang in there, guys.” Hembree and Tobias in Thunder Two had launched a HARM missile at the SA-10 site, right over their heads. They had to keep on jinking for another few seconds.
“Vertical jink, Becky,” Mace shouted. “Go vertical!”
Furness shoved the control stick forward with all her might, descended three hundred precious feet—leaving them no more than one hundred feet between them and the highest terrain in the area, although they could see nothing ahead of them and could hit the ground at any second—then hauled back on the stick with both hands. Mace kept on pumping out bursts of chaff. When Furness looked up, she saw the SA-10’s burning rocket motor, the only light she could see except for the stars caused by her pounding heart and straining muscles.
Simultaneously, the 10 symbol on the RHAWS scope disappeared as the HARM missile hit the SAM site—and the SA-10 missile self-destructed less than one hundred feet behind them.
The shock wave from the SA-10’s 280-pound warhead was like a thunderclap right outside the cockpit canopy. The MASTER CAUTION light came on, big and bright, right in front of Rebecca’s terrified eyes. “What have I got, Daren?” she shouted as she punched the light off with a quick two-fingered stab.
Mace checked the caution light panel on the lower left instrument panel. “Rudder authority light … TFR lights … oil-hot light on the left engine,” he said. “We might have an oil leak.” He shined a small flashlight that he kept clipped to his flight suit pocket on the oil pressure gauges. “A little fluctuation on the left engine, but it’s still in the green. I think we can make it.” He checked the other gauges. “Aft-body fuel quantity is fluctuating—we may have taken a hit in the aft-body tank. Fuel distribution caution light. I’ll switch fuel feed to the forward-body tank or else we’ll be nose-heavy when the aft body drains out. Generator panel’s okay. Let’s get ready for that other SAM site to the right of track. Watch your altitude—one hundred feet low.”
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br /> Rebecca pulled back on the stick to correct her altitude and found it took more force than normal to move it. “Stick’s getting heavy already,” she said as she fed in more trim. She rolled out of her turn with the steering bug centered, then reengaged the autopilot—but seconds after clicking it on, it kicked off again, and the bomber nosed lower. “Dammit, autopilot won’t hold it.” She cursed, grabbing the stick and feeding in more nose-up trim. “This thing better hold together—I don’t want to punch out of two Vampires in one deployment. They won’t renew my union card then.”
The search radar at two o’clock suddenly turned to an “8” indication, but they were lined up and ready for it.
“I’m tracking the ‘Land Role’ radar,” Mace said. “Processing … locked on. Ready to launch … now.” Seconds later they fired their first HARM missile at the missile site … and nothing happened. The 8 indication on the RHAWS disappeared, only to reappear a few seconds after the missile should have hit.
“Two, can you get that sucker for us?” Rebecca radioed on the scrambled VHF channel.
“We got it, lead,” Hembree replied. “Magnum …” But just as he said the word, they got a MISSILE LAUNCH warning, and they could see four missiles ripple-fire into the sky and arc out toward them. “Missile launch!” they heard Hembree shout on the radio. “I’ll go right, lead.”
Rebecca hit the afterburners and swept the wings back to 54 degrees. “Chaff!” she shouted, and she banked hard left—she tried to break, but she didn’t have the strength to pull the control stick over the heavy nose-low loads until Mace got on his control stick with her, pulling with his left hand while ejecting chaff with his right. Their break was only half the authority of a full-power break, but they quickly ran out of airspeed and had to stop. Their airspeed was down to half normal speed, and nothing else except 24-degree wing sweep would keep the angle of attack in the normal range. Furness pulled the throttles back to military power, and with the wings at 24 degrees they could get 350 knots and six alpha—slow and sluggish, but still flying.
“I don’t see the missiles anywhere—” Then, far off to the right behind the right wing, he saw a blazing streak of fire fly into the earth and explode, illuminating the snowy ground for miles in all directions. “God, somebody got hit!” Mace screamed. “Thunder Two, do you read me? Thunder Two … ?” There was a long, terrifying pause—no reply. “Thunder Two, respond!”
“I copy, lead,” Hembree replied. “It was one of the Ukrainians. Thunder Ten, do you copy me? Over.”
“Yes, I hear you,” Pavlo Tychina, flying the lead Su-17, radioed back. “It was my wingman. I did not see the missiles coming until they hit him.”
“We’re IP inbound,” Mace reported solemnly. “Coming up on the missile launch point in four minutes.”
“Okay, Two, we’ve got a forward CG problem, and we’re barely maintaining three-fifty. Dick, you wanna do the honors? You got the lead. I got one HARM left. I’ll cover your butt.”
“I got the lead,” Hembree replied. A few moments later, Hembree said on the channel, “Fence check, Thunder Flight. Arm ’em up, lead is hot.”
“God, this is it,” Furness muttered. She made sure her flight suit sleeves were rolled down, her zippers zipped up, her helmet and oxygen mask on tight, and her shoulder harness as tight as she could make it. Mace did the same, then checked Rebecca. They then pulled their flashblindness curtains and canopy screens closed, turned on all the interior lights full bright, and turned the cockpit pressurization to COMBAT. She lowered her PLZT (Polarized Lead-Zirconium-Titanate) antiflashblindness goggles in place on her helmet and activated them. “I’m ready, Daren,” she said. She looked at her partner after he lowered his goggles in place. “My God, you look like the Fly.”
“I feel like it’s déjà vu all over again,” he replied. He checked the RHAWS scope. “Search radars at one o’clock, Rebecca—that’s Moscow. Two minutes to launch point.”
“I think we’ve gotta be crazy, Daren,” Rebecca said. “I mean, I can hardly think … I can hardly breathe. How can anyone do this? How can anyone launch a nuclear weapon?”
“Part of the fucking job. SA-10 coming up,” Mace said. “Give me 10 degrees left and we’ll launch our last HARM.”
Furness made the turn, the missile processed and computed its target, and they let it fly. The launch and destruction of the SA-10 SAM site was anticlimactic, almost boring. “Two weeks ago, the idea of launching so many HARMs would have been overwhelming,” she said. “Now it feels as if I just shot a spitball compared to what we’re about to do.”
“SA-10’s down,” Mace reported. “One minute to launch point. Missiles powered up and ready.”
Rebecca clicked on the interplane channel. “Godspeed, Thunder,” she radioed.
“To you too, Thunder,” Hembree replied. “Over and out.”
“Thirty seconds. Prelaunch checks complete, doors in MANUAL, center up the steering bars, Becky.” The Vampire banked slightly to the right, then leveled out. “Twenty seconds …”
“Missile away, Thunder One,” they heard Hembree say. The first missile was on its way to its target—it would hit about half a minute before their own.
“Can’t get a final radar launchpoint fix … I hope the system’s running tight enough with GPS,” Mace said, his voice still carrying a sharp, determined edge. “Search radar, twelve o’clock … that’s Domodovedo. They’re trying to pick up Dick Hembree’s missile. They got an SA-17 system but it’ll be too late—”
“Daren!”
“It’ll be all right, Rebecca. Let’s do it and get it over with.” He flicked the bomb door switch to OPEN. “Ten seconds … doors coming open …”
Rebecca gripped the control stick and throttles as tightly as she could, waiting for the wrath of God to hit. Something is going to happen, she thought. She was sure of it. No supreme being was going to allow any human to unleash this much destructive force on—
“Missile away, Rebecca,” Mace said as he mashed the pickle button and started a stopwatch. She could feel the three-thousand-pound missile leave the bomb bay, and suddenly her stick felt lighter and control returned. “Left turn, heading two-five-nine, let’s get the hell out of here.” Rebecca swept the wings back to 72.5 degrees as she cranked the Vampire bomber around and accelerated away from Domodedovo. “Missile-one flight time thirty seconds, impact in thirty seconds.” Their speed was building slowly, but they would be over forty miles away from the target when the missiles hit.
“Coming up on missile-one impact … now.” Rebecca could hear a loud roaring in her ears—her heart was pounding blood against her eardrums like a jackhammer. Daren glanced into his radarscope and turned a switch. “I’ve got video from the AS-13 missile,” he said. He grasped the tracking handle and gave it a few nudges to the right. “I think I see Malino Airfield—I’ll try to set this thing in there.” Malino Airfield was a small fighter base outside Domodedovo. “Hey, these Ukrainian missiles work pretty well.”
Rebecca shook her head, wondering how he could be so flip at a time like this. Just before launch, the order for them to fire the nukes was recalled. It seemed the President had had a politically expedient change of heart. Or the Steel Magnolia did. Anyway, the nukes were still going to go off … it was just that the President had decided, and the Ukrainians agreed, that the Ukrainians would do the dirty deed. Which was why she and Mace were now carrying Ukrainian weapons, and the Ukrainians were carrying the American nukes. “Daren—how can you joke about something like this when you know what’s about to … happen?”
Mace ignored her. “Impact,” he said. “Direct hit on the terminal building. Should be plenty of fragments to find.” He shut off the attack video system, sat upright, and pulled his shoulder harness tight. “Okay, to answer your question: you have to joke about something like this. You think too much about it, well, then you really have doubts. But, Rebecca, this whole mission is a joke, anyway. Leave it to the President to wimp out again. Letting the Ukraini
ans fight our battle for us is going to make us the laughingstock of the world. But it’s what our beloved commander in chief wants … or his wife does, anyway. Actually, it’s a pretty shrewd political move: the President’s getting to knock out Velichko and cover his ass at the same time. Nobody can say we launched the nukes, which is a lot more palatable to his liberal constituency than actually doing it. Boy, I bet Eyers was ready to spit bullets. They’ve robbed him of his chance to play John Wayne.”
Furness sighed. “Well, as much as I like Pavlo and the Ukrainians, I’m frankly glad they’re cooking them off. After all, it’s his homeland and his fight. He might as well have the chance to finish it.”
The system was running perfectly, Pavlo Tychina thought. The AN/AQQ-901 electronic interface pod, mounted on his left fuselage pylon, had taken several GPS satellite updates in the past few minutes and had made its final position update. The Doppler radar velocities compared favorably—the system was tight.
Tychina did not need to refer to a checklist—the switches had been configured for him, the computers were in command. The unlock and weapon prearm codes had been entered in for him by Colonel Mace before takeoff—even though they were now allies, no American was going to allow foreign officers any access to classified codes and arming procedures. It was just as well. Pilots should be pilots, not locksmiths.
They had fought their way past the best of Russia’s defenses and sacrificed many good pilots and aircraft for this moment. The war had come full circle. Like the mythical Phoenix of his nickname, his life had begun in the radiation-fuel fires of L’vov Air Base, and it was about to end in those same nuclear fires again, this time over the capital city of his enemy. His eyes sought out the control indicator—and just as he focused on it, he saw the MISSILE POWER light begin to blink as the AGM-131 Short-Range Attack Missile he carried on his right fuselage pylon received its final navigation-data dump from the AQQ-901 pod, performed a complete self-test, sampled the air outside the Sukhoi-17 bomber, quickly tested its stubby control surfaces, decided it was ready to launch, then dropped clear of the fuselage.