by Dale Brown
That was okay. He would be happy to take the heat as long as they survived this encounter. “Get on oxygen,” he ordered the first officer. “Read me the emergency-descent and defensive-maneuvering procedures checklist.”
“SAM Flight One-eight-zero,” the first voice in broken English radioed on the bogus UHF frequency, “we show you in a left turn and in a steep descent. Is there a problem? Turn left direct Krasnovodsk as ordered.”
“Don’t answer him,” the captain ordered. The first officer was fumbling to put on his quick-don oxygen mask, a procedure that usually took less than two seconds. He’d never seen any grown man so scared before—and hoped he didn’t look that scared to him.
“Flight One-eight-zero, turn left immediately and level off. You are not cleared to descend yet.” The captain only pushed harder, increasing the descent rate. “Flight One-eight-zero, acknowledge. Do you read me?”
“Turn off the transponder,” the captain ordered. The first officer complied with shaking fingers. Only a “primary target,” their radar skin-paint, would appear on the controller’s radarscopes now.
All of the flight attendants’ station intercoms were beeping; small articles were floating around in the negative Gs as they quickly descended. “What do we do?” the first officer bleated. “What’s going on?”
“Ignore them. We’re diverting to Baku. Call it up on the FMS and give me a heading.”
Just then they heard, “Attention all aircraft, attention all aircraft, an air defense emergency has been declared. All aircraft are ordered to level off, decrease airspeed, and lower their landing gear immediately, or you will be considered a hostile enemy intruder. Repeat, level off, decrease airspeed, and lower your landing gear immediately. This is your final warning.”
The voice was coming over the assigned UHF frequency—in English. It was the same voice who’d been calling himself the Ashkhabad air-traffic controller.
“Full countermeasures!” the captain ordered. The C-32A had a suite of decoys and first-generation electronic trackbreakers to help defend the aircraft, but he knew they were strap-down, last-ditch gadgets only. The C-32 was unarmed and still virtually defenseless.
“SAM One-eight-zero, high-speed traffic at your seven o’clock, low, forty kilometers and closing fast.”
The captain turned left twenty degrees, trying to keep the newcomer from getting a clear look at their engine exhausts—if he locked on to their hot exhausts, they wouldn’t stand a chance. The sons of bitches . . . who the hell attacks unarmed aircraft?
“SAM One-eight-zero, target maneuvering, six o’clock, thirty kilometers and closing, almost at your altitude . . . SAM One-eight-zero, be advised, my radar is being jammed. Switching frequencies . . . Negative, negative, all frequencies showing heavy false target jamming. I am now painting multiple targets on my scope. I cannot provide further vectors. I cannot tell which is the real target. I am sorry, sir.”
The captain squeezed the mike button: “Ashkhabad Control?”
“Go ahead, SAM One-eight-zero.”
The captain looked at the first officer, gulped, then said, “Tell my wife I love her.”
“Roger, Sam One-eight-zero,” he heard through the growing static and squealing of the enemy’s jammers. “I’ll do it. God be with you.”
The Russian Federation’s MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter that had launched from Krasnovodsk Airfield several minutes earlier did so using light signals sent from a ramp supervisor’s vehicle instead of receiving radio signals from the control tower. It made no radio broadcasts and did not use its air-traffic-control transponder or encrypted identification beacons. It did not even use any external lights. Because the fighter carried no external fuel tanks—unusual for any Russian interceptor—and only two R-73 heat-seeking air-to-air missiles, it climbed quickly into the cold night air, reaching fourteen thousand meters’ altitude in less than three minutes.
The American aircraft was maneuvering, but it was a lumbering pig compared to the high-speed maneuverability of the MiG-29, and the pilot was able to get a solid infrared target lock-on inside thirty kilometers’ range—he never activated his attack radar at all. The R-73s were Russia’s most advanced heat-seeking missiles: highly maneuverable, able to be aimed by a helmet-mounted sight and launched from extremely high offset angles. They had over four times the range and twice the warhead size of any other heat-seeking missiles in the Russian arsenal.
The Russian pilot’s orders were specific: Kill this aircraft without appearing to attack it. He knew that Baku Radar Control would be tracking him and listening for any hint of weapon or radar lock-on, so he had to do this approach carefully. The R-73 was the perfect weapon for the job.
As ordered, the MiG-29 pilot flew behind the American aircraft, never pointing the fighter’s nose directly at it, never locking his attack radar on him or even turning it on. Using his helmet-mounted sight, the MiG pilot locked the R-73 missile’s supercooled seeker head on target when the American was over twenty-five kilometers distant and far off to the left—the MiG-29 was actually flying away from the American. Once he had a lock-on, he let the first R-73 fly. The missile shot off its launch rail, flew straight ahead for about a kilometer, then veered sharply to the left and started its pursuit. The pilot let the next R-73 go seconds later, then turned to the east. The MiG pilot still had never pointed his fighter’s nose at the American, and seconds after launch the MiG was far astern of the American. Normal air traffic routinely came closer than he had come to his American quarry.
Because he had never used his attack radar and therefore didn’t know the exact range to the target, the attack computer couldn’t give him a “time to die” countdown. The MiG pilot started to count to himself, estimating perhaps twenty seconds maximum missile flight time for the first missile. He pulled back the throttle and engaged the autopilot, then loosened his shoulder harness so he could look behind him. Even at well over thirty kilometers, he reckoned, he should be able to see the kill.
Sure enough, he saw a very bright flash of light off in the distance, followed by another seconds later. It was much quicker than twenty seconds, but he wasn’t exactly sure of his counting.
Good hit.
The pilot turned to the north slightly so he could watch for any sign of an explosion. He expected to see another burst of fire, followed by a trail of fire as the target went down. Any second now . . .
Seven |
OVER THE CASPIAN SEA
That same moment
Attack target one.”
“Attacking target one, stop attack,” the computer responded. A moment later the laser-radar array on the AL-52 Dragon airborne-laser aircraft instantly measured the distance to the target, then electronically measured the size of the target and moved the laser’s aimpoint to the aft one-third of the target, where the rocket motor was. Then a carbon-dioxide laser was fired through the main laser’s optics at the missile, which measured and compensated for atmospheric distortion by predistorting the mirror in the Dragon’s nose.
“Laser ready,” the attack computer reported moments later.
“Laser attack missile,” Major Frankie Tarantino responded.
“Laser attack, stop attack.” Next the big plasma-pumped, solid-state laser came to life. Pellets of deuterium-tritium plasma fuel were ignited by a dozen low-power lasers, creating a sphere of superhot plasma—atoms stripped of their electrons—exceeding the temperature of the sun itself. Confined, compressed, and then channeled by a magnetic field and by chambers made of walls of liquid lithium, the plasma energy was directed into a laser generator, which produced a laser beam over twice the power of any other airborne laser ever built. The laser beam was collimated, intensified through the laser tube running the length of the aircraft, reflected off the steerable/deformable mirror in the nose, and shot into space.
The AL-52’s aircraft commander, Air Force Colonel Kelvin Carter, didn’t see or hear a thing—no pulsing beam of light shooting off into space, no alien glow, no sci-fi warbli
ng sound—and all he felt was a slight rumbling under his toes as the massive deformable mirror turret moved, smoothly tracking the targets far off in the distance. When he looked over at the supercockpit display on the mission commander’s side of the instrument panel, all he saw was a spark of light, then detonation.
“Splash one Archer!” Zipper Tarantino exclaimed, patting the top of the glareshield of his beloved Dragon. He had just shot down a supersonic air-to-air missile fired from the Russian MiG-29 Fulcrum from over two hundred miles away in less than twelve seconds with two bursts of laser light. “Good Dragon.”
“Good shooting, Zipper,” Carter responded. Kelvin Carter, from Shreveport, Louisiana, had been one of the senior flight-test pilots at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center. Along with Patrick McLanahan and Nancy Cheshire, he knew more about the Megafortress series of bombers than anyone else, so he was the logical choice as the operations officer of the Fifty-second Attack Squadron at Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base, flying the incredible AL-52 Dragon.
As familiar as he was with the modified B-52 bombers that he’d helped develop at Dreamland, Carter was still amazed by the weaponry at his command: a two-megawatt, plasma-pumped, solid-state laser, the most powerful non-land-based, directed-energy weapon in the world. Seconds earlier, as he’d sneaked a peek at Tarantino’s wide-screen supercockpit display, he’d been looking at the telescopically enhanced image of a Russian air-to-air missile actually in flight. But almost as soon as the image had appeared on the screen, Tarantino had placed a set of crosshairs directly on the rear motor section of the missile—and then it was gone in a burst of fire.
The image then switched to the second missile and, with one command—“Attack target two”—Tarantino had initiated the attack sequence. Moments later the second AA-11 Archer air-to-air missile had disappeared in a ball of fire, well short of its prey: the U.S. Air Force C-32A VIP transport, carrying former president Kevin Martindale, Deputy Secretary of State Maureen Hershel, and their entourage.
Now the image in the full-color supercockpit display wasn’t one of a Russian missile—instead it was the image of a real live Russian fighter pilot, clearly visible in extraordinary detail through the cockpit of his MiG-29 Fulcrum jet fighter. Zipper could see the straps on the pilot’s oxygen mask, see the bulky helmet-mounted sight that controlled his air-to-air missiles, and even see that he was wearing a black turtleneck sweater under his flight suit.
“Hot damn!” Carter exclaimed. “You got the Russian pilot himself dead in your sights, Zipper. You’re clear to engage.” Tarantino then changed the laser’s aimpoint to the MiG’s left wing root, the spot where he knew an explosion would quickly and instantly send the fighter completely out of control. “Put the aimpoint back on the pilot,” Carter grumbled.
“What?” Tarantino asked.
“I said put the crosshairs back on that sumbitch.”
“Sir, it won’t matter—”
“Son, that bastard is looking over his shoulder, probably back to where he fired his Archers,” Carter said. “This bastard just shot at an unarmed, defenseless diplomatic aircraft. Fry his ass.”
Tarantino rolled the trackball aiming device smoothly until the pilot’s image was again centered on the supercockpit display, then locked it in. Carter followed the steering commands presented on his heads-up display; seconds later, they received a ready indication. Carter thought Tarantino might hesitate—but he didn’t. The crosshairs appeared, he saw a blinking l in the upper center of the display . . .
And seconds later the MiG-29’s cockpit canopy disintegrated. They watched in horrified fascination as the pilot’s head was jerked backward and his helmet, skullcap, and oxygen mask were ripped off by the sudden wind blast. For a second the Russian was able to pull back up and began fighting for control of his fighter—when Carter and Tarantino saw the Russian’s head, shoulders, and upper torso turn black, as if the pilot had instantly turned into a big lump of charcoal. Sections of his corpse started flying away in the slipstream, until moments later there was nothing left but unrecognizable pieces of his lower torso. Then the cockpit around the corpse burst into a bathtub of sparks and flame, milliseconds before a massive fireball erupted from behind the corpse and obliterated the image. When Tarantino zoomed out, all they could see were burning hunks of the MiG-29 fluttering through the sky.
“Jee . . . sus,” Tarantino breathed.
“I’ll bet he don’t feel much like a bad-ass aerial assassin now, does he?” Carter said. He looked at Tarantino, who was not moving, just staring at the supercockpit display. “Son, don’t you dare feel sorry for that rat bastard. Any man who can pull the trigger on an unarmed plane full of civilians deserves to get his ass cooked. And he sure as hell would’ve joyfully put two Archers into us if we let him get close enough.”
“I know it, sir,” Tarantino said. “But it doesn’t make killing a man any easier.”
“You’re not an airman—and you’re sure as hell not a man—if you agree to use your talent and skills to fly a mission to kill defenseless men and women,” Carter said. “Be thankful you ridded the world of a mindless bloodsucker like that. Now, pat your Dragon on the head like you always do, say thank you, and let’s find out how our folks are doing.”
Tarantino still didn’t move.
“Did you hear me, Zipper?”
To emphasize his point, Carter punched instructions into one of his multifunction displays. The beam-control telescope switched back to target number one: the C-32A VIP transport. The adaptive optics showed the plane in remarkable detail. Carter was even able to zoom in on the cockpit windscreens, showing both pilots working together, quick-don oxygen masks on, checklists out. The readouts still showed the plane in a descent, getting below Ashkhabad’s radar. “See that, Zipper? Our guys are still alive and still flyin’. You did good, son. You’re a defender, not a killer.” He put his gloved hand out and clasped Tarantino’s left shoulder, firmly but gently. “You gotta understand the difference, son. Otherwise you might as well not be wearin’ that uniform.”
He didn’t think Tarantino heard him, thought the kid might be heading toward the deep end—until he saw the young officer reach up and pat the glareshield. “Good Dragon,” he said in a strong, resilient voice. “Good Dragon.”
“There you go, son,” Carter said approvingly. Some guys never made it back to the world after scoring their first kill. He knew that Frankie Tarantino would—eventually—be okay. “There you go.”
NORTH OF THE CITY OF MARY
Daybreak that morning
Jalaluddin Turabi spooned the last of the rice into his mouth, pretending that its stale, bug-infested taste was really the savory juices from succulent lamb mixed with exotic Chinese spices. He knew he was the last man in his company to be fed, so that spoonful also marked the last of their rations. And he didn’t need to pick up his canteen to know that their water had almost run out, too. Damn it all, where in hell was their resupply flight? He knew that Aman Orazov was an incompetent asshole, but certainly even he could muster enough brainpower to load a few helicopters with supplies and fly it out here.
Abdul Dendara, Turabi’s first sergeant, stepped over a few moments later and began to speak, but Turabi held up a hand. “Let me guess: We just ran out of fuel for the power generator?”
“That ran out an hour ago, sir, remember?” Dendara replied. “We just ran out of water.” He took Turabi’s canteen and replaced it with another, which had about a liter of fluid in it. “You may want to pour it through your shirt first to filter it. It was the last drop from the metal emergency barrels we scrounged from Yagtyyol last night. I got out as much sand and rust as I could.”
“Thank you. Any possibility of getting more water from the city?”
“Power is still shut down—we can’t get water from the wells,” Dendara replied. “Unless General Zarazi can get the power turned back on from Mary, we’ve taken every drop of water from that entire town.” He paused, then added, “I can order
a patrol to start going house to house, looking for water. . . .”
“I already said no, Abdul,” Turabi said. “The people out here are suffering just as much as we are. If the homes are evacuated, you can take water from there—make sure every cistern, every shelf, every refrigerator, and even every toilet tank has been searched—but if the house is occupied, stay away from it. I’ll personally execute any man who disobeys my order. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll pass the word again.”
“Do that,” Turabi ordered. “Now, assuming our men hoarded half their normal daily ration of water, we should last—”
“Until tomorrow morning,” Dendara responded. “Then we’re out of war-fighting mode and fully into survival mode.”
Turabi checked his watch, then nodded. “We won’t wait until then. If we don’t get supplies within four hours, we’ll head back to Mary.”
“Very good, sir,” Dendara said.
When his first sergeant walked away, Turabi tried the radio. He knew he was ordered to maintain radio silence, but this was an emergency. Breaking off this scout patrol before discovering what the Russians might be up to was very dangerous. Abandoning it for the sake of a few hundred liters of water and diesel fuel from just a few kilometers away made even less sense. He keyed the mike: “Hawk to Condor. Come in.” No answer. He tried several more times—nothing.
Turabi took the canteen and drank the last of its contents, grimacing as he swallowed what tasted like welding beads. Shit, he thought, I’ll just as likely die of lead poisoning as I will from enemy action. He knew that hoarding water would do no good—in the desert, one rationed sweat, not water—but he knew also that desperate, scared men would save a liter or two of water on their persons.
He noticed Dendara come running a few moments later, and Turabi stepped quickly toward him. “What is it now, Abdul?”