Kabalin mused for a few moments. ‘If I were flying that aircraft,’ he said, ‘I would want to clear this area as quickly as possible.’ He projected the Blackbird’s track down to the south-west and estimated distances to the edge of the CIS. ‘My guess is that they’ll try to turn to the west or north-west and break out into Finland. And most of our interceptors are holding to the south of the American’s track.’ He stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘Well,’ he said, and reached for a telephone. ‘We’ll have to do something about that.’
British Embassy, Sofiyskaya naberezhnaya 14, Moscow
‘What’s that?’ Erroll asked, pointing at the body. Running horizontally across the corpse’s chest, a few inches below the shoulders, was a thin and virtually straight line of light bruising.
‘I don’t know,’ Richter replied, looking carefully at the mark on the body. ‘Perhaps it was caused by the top of the steering wheel, but the line looks too straight to me.’ As Erroll replaced the safety pins, Richter asked how they’d identified the corpse.
‘No problem. Newman had been out somewhere and was driving to the Embassy when he ran into the back of a parked lorry loaded with steel girders. He had all his documents on him, and the Embassy pass on what was left of the windscreen. They cut him out, took him to hospital, confirmed he was dead and then called us.’
Richter nodded, and helped him push the tray back into the fridge. In the lift he asked where the death certificate was. ‘In my office,’ Erroll said. ‘Beaky – sorry, the First Secretary – handed the whole lot over to me as soon as he’d done his bit signalling the FCO, drafting the letter of condolence for the Ambassador to send and so on. Between you and me, he’s not too keen on the sight of blood. Even likes his steaks well done, if you know what I mean.’
Back in his office Erroll sifted through his pending tray and extracted a buff envelope. ‘Here we are. How’s your Russian?’
‘Sorry. Hardly a word,’ Richter replied, lying with a perfectly straight face.
‘OK, I’ll translate. This section here is “Cause of Death”, and it says, er, God, his writing’s awful. Ah, yes, “anterior of skull sustained violent impact resulting in numerous fractures, extensive bleeding and extrusion of” – what’s that? – “brain matter, with severance of spinal column”. I suppose “crushed head” would be a bit brief, wouldn’t it?’
‘I’ve never known a medical man use one word where six would do almost the same job,’ Richter said. ‘Can I take that certificate?’
Erroll frowned. ‘Afraid not. It’s going in the Diplomatic Bag tomorrow, but you can have a photocopy if that helps.’
Richter actually wanted neither the original nor a copy, but he said that would be fine, and asked if he could see the car immediately, and the apartment and Newman’s office straight after lunch.
‘Why the hurry?’
‘I’m booked on the British Airways flight back to London this afternoon.’
‘Oh, I see. Right, here’s the report of the accident, with an English translation, and I’ll have a copy of the death certificate ready for you this afternoon.’
Aspen Three Four
The cameras had started rolling at 1049, and they completed the run at 1112, just twenty-three minutes covering nearly seven hundred miles of Russian territory. At twelve minutes past eleven the mission was, in a tactical sense, complete, but they still had a long way to go.
Paul James calculated that they would cross the Russian frontier at 1122 just north of St Petersburg – this route would enable the Blackbird to exit into Finnish airspace as quickly as possible after completion of the mission – and then head west into the Gulf of Finland, which meant about another ten minutes of flying over hostile territory after the cameras and detectors were switched off.
‘Missile fire control radar! Green three zero. No classification.’
Once again the Blackbird lurched as full power was applied. With the surveillance run complete and tactical freedom restored, Frank Roberts was taking no chances, and as well as increasing speed he turned to port, away from the radar’s bearing, and climbed. At ninety-five thousand feet and just under Mach 3.1, the aircraft levelled out.
The missile didn’t appear, but Paul James called two further missile fire control radars, both ahead and to starboard, in the next three minutes. Each time, no missile appeared, but the port turns made by the Blackbird to evade took the aircraft progressively further to the south of the planned exit route.
‘I don’t like this. We’re being pushed around.’
‘More importantly, we’re getting pushed too far south,’ Paul James replied. ‘It’s time we got out of here. Turn starboard heading two nine zero.’
‘Roger that,’ Roberts replied, as he initiated the turn. ‘I get the feeling they’ve been trying to shepherd us towards something.’
He was right. The ‘something’ appeared two minutes and fifteen seconds later.
Chapter Three
Thursday
Voyska IA-PVO Unit, Arkhangel’sk, Confederation of Independent States
‘It’s turning, Colonel,’ Lieutenant Vetrov said. ‘We have forced the American down to the south, almost as far as Vologda, but now he’s turning to the west.’
‘Can the Moscow interceptors catch him?’ Kabalin demanded.
Vetrov switched in the predict vectors, then shook his head. ‘The easterly pair definitely can’t,’ he replied, ‘and the pair to the west are MiG–29s. They can’t hope to catch the American spy-plane in a tail-chase.’
‘Privalov,’ Kabalin ordered, swinging round in his seat, ‘take control of the Minsk MiG–31s. They’re all we have left. For all our sakes, they had better not fail.’
British Embassy, Sofiyskaya naberezhnaya 14, Moscow
In one corner of the parking area behind the Embassy building was a green tarpaulin loosely covering a crumpled wreck. It was just about possible to identify it as a small and somewhat elderly VAZ (Volzhsky Avtomobilny Zavod), or Lada as they are known outside Russia. It was about two-thirds as long as it should have been. The bonnet and front wings were crumpled and buckled backwards, the front tyres were slashed and torn on the ruined wheels, and the windscreen was smashed. The driving compartment and front end were blackened by fire. Both doors had apparently been immovably jammed shut in the crash, as the driver’s had been cut open, probably by an air-driven ripper gun, to get at the interior.
Like most old cheap Russian cars, it had only lap seat belts, which explained why the occupant had suffered such horrendous damage to his face and head. With the belt done up, the impact would have swung his body violently forward and downwards, pivoting at the hips, and causing his head to strike first the top of the steering wheel and then, if the impact had been violent enough, the top of the dashboard. The rib and clavicle fractures had undoubtedly been sustained by the impact of the torso with the steering wheel on its rigid column.
Richter looked carefully at the floor, and at the pedals. The former was buckled very badly, and the brake, clutch and accelerator pedals were twisted and bent. This was exactly what he had expected from the external damage to the front end of the vehicle, but not at all what would be indicated by the lack of lower limb fractures on the body. The logic was simple enough; if the driver had been intending to kill himself, he would have had his foot hard on the accelerator pedal. If he hadn’t been on a suicide trip, he would have been pressing the brake pedal as though his life depended on it. In either case, he would have sustained at least one fracture or dislocation in his right leg.
The fact that there were no fractures meant that the man’s feet were clear of the pedals at the moment of impact, which made no sense at all. Or, rather, it made no sense when taken in conjunction with the accident report. It actually made excellent sense to Richter. He straightened up from the wreck, made several notes in his small book, mainly for Erroll’s benefit, took down the registration number and put the book away.
‘It’s not surprising poor old Newman died in th
at, is it?’
‘It was not,’ Richter said, choosing his words carefully as they walked together back towards the Embassy building, ‘a survivable accident.’
Aspen Three Four
‘Radar contact. Green one five at sixty-five. Closing rapidly.’
‘Oh, fuck.’
‘No emissions, no classification, high speed. Broad spectrum jamming on; ECM on.’
‘Turning away. Keep talking.’
‘Stop the turn. Second contact. Red two zero at sixty-two miles. High speed, heading towards. No emissions. Probably two Foxbats, still under ground control. Both are high, above sixty. Contact to starboard designated Bandit One, contact to port Bandit Two.’
The SR–71A had turned to port, but Frank Roberts now straightened out and dived, picking up speed. The aircraft reached Mach 3.2 as it passed seventy-five thousand feet.
‘Bandit One green two zero at fifty-six miles, indicating sixty-five thousand; Bandit Two red one zero at fifty miles and sixty-two thousand. Both Bandits now on intercept courses, obviously still under ground control and – wait! Zaslon radar emissions detected from both contacts! Both MiG–31 Foxhound.’
‘Shit, that’s all we need. Remind me – what are they carrying?’
‘Probably four AA–9 Amos and either two AA–7 Apex or four AA–8 Aphids each.’
‘What’s the optimum engage range?’
‘The Apex and Aphids aren’t a problem, but the Amos has a range of sixty miles, with snap-up capability. The missiles are semi-active radar homing. Bandit One now green two five at fifty, level at sixty-five; Bandit Two still red one zero at forty-five, climbing slowly.’
The Blackbird was passing sixty thousand feet in a thirty-degree dive. Boxed-in by the Foxhounds, the one thing Roberts could not do was turn away. That would have turned the aircraft back towards the east, and safety lay only to the west, and it would also have slowed the Blackbird significantly, making it an easier target for the missiles carried by the Foxhounds. With no self-defence capability apart from the sophisticated ECM systems, he had to rely on superior performance – superior both to the Foxhounds and to their weapons.
‘Bandit One green two seven at forty-five; Bandit Two red one zero at forty. Both now descending to follow us. Not too low, boss, we’re getting close to SAM engage limits.’
In fact, the Russian SAM–5 has a maximum ceiling of 125,000 feet – thirty thousand feet higher than the Blackbird’s operational ceiling – and can carry a small thermonuclear warhead designed to destroy enemy bombers and missiles within about one hundred miles of the point of detonation. But this lethal missile has only ever been deployed in relatively small numbers around particularly sensitive sites, and the Blackbird’s mission planners had calculated a route which avoided all known SAM–5 sites by at least one hundred miles. What Paul James was more worried about were the short-range conventional surface-to-air missiles which were scattered like confetti across the whole of the Asian landmass.
‘We’re getting out of here right now.’
The Blackbird was indicating Mach 3.3 and passing fifty thousand feet as Frank Roberts initiated the climb. His tactic was simple. The Foxhound is known to have impressive high-altitude capabilities, but due to its reliance upon conventional aerodynamics and relatively unsophisticated engines, it is not particularly agile at high altitudes. In particular, climbing turns tend to bleed off speed very rapidly.
In contrast, the Blackbird is comparatively agile and, having induced the Foxhounds to follow him down – as he had known they would have to if they were to get the SR–71A within their missile engagement limits – Frank Roberts now hoped the Blackbird’s superior climbing ability would get him above and beyond the Foxhounds and out of range.
‘Bandit One green three zero range thirty-five, five thousand below; Bandit Two red one five at range thirty, three thousand below. Both turning and climbing to follow.’
Voyska IA-PVO Unit, Arkhangel’sk, Confederation of Independent States
There was near-silence in the operations room, just a murmur of voices from the group of officers clustered around the three main consoles, but the tension was almost palpable.
‘Interceptor Eight reports that the American is climbing,’ Lieutenant Privalov said.
‘The Americans are good,’ Kabalin said, almost approvingly. ‘You can see their strategy. They force our interceptors to follow them in the dive and then they climb so our aircraft lose speed. But we’ll have them yet. Don’t try to match the American aircraft. Give the MiG–31s vectors for the target’s predicted track and authorize immediate release of their missiles as soon as they achieve target acquisition.’
Normal PVO intercept procedure is for the ground controllers to retain control of their interceptors until the pilots report weapons lock.
Privalov nodded and concentrated on his screen display, vectoring the aircraft into the optimum positions for missile engagement. Then he straightened and half-turned from the screen. ‘Colonel, Interceptor Nine reports missile lock.’
British Embassy, Sofiyskaya naberezhnaya 14, Moscow
‘Well, apart from showing you Newman’s office and his apartment, is there anything else we can do for you?’
‘A lift to the airport would be appreciated, but if it’s any trouble I can take a taxi.’
‘No trouble. Beaky said I was to assist you in any way that I could, or words to that effect. I can pick you up from your hotel after lunch, go to Newman’s office and apartment and then straight to the airport, if you check out of the hotel first. What time’s your flight?’
Richter pulled a ticket out of his jacket pocket and consulted it. ‘It’s the British Airways flight out of Sheremetievo at around six.’
‘OK, bearing in mind that Russian bureaucracy means you’ll have to check in at least two hours before departure time, how about having an early lunch at your hotel, and I’ll collect you at, say, twelve thirty, and we can go straight to the apartment from there?’
‘Suits me. I’m at the Budapesht.’
‘Do you need a lift there now?’ Erroll asked.
‘Thank you, no. It’s not that far. I’ll see you in an hour and a half or so.’
Aspen Three Four
‘Bandit One is green three zero at thirty, six thousand below; Two is red one five range twenty-five, five thousand below. Both turning north-west.’
‘We’ll go right between them. At first missile release, we’ll head for the one that didn’t fire and power-dive towards it.’
‘We’ll do what?’
‘Figure it out. Once one gets a weapons lock on us, heading straight for the other ’hound might bring it within the missiles’ radar acquisition range.’
‘Yeah, and it might not.’
‘You got any better ideas?’
Paul James was silent for a couple of seconds. ‘Guess not.’
The SR–71A is called the Blackbird because it appears black – although in fact it’s a very, very dark blue – but the colour and type of the fuselage finish was not selected at random; it is an anechoic coating that absorbs radar energy. This, allied to the fact that radar waves are reflected best off a flat surface, and the Blackbird has hardly a flat panel anywhere, means that the aircraft has a very poor radar signature, especially from the front. By heading directly towards the second Foxhound, Frank Roberts hoped to prevent the Russian pilot obtaining missile lock, which would effectively disarm him.
‘Both Bandits climbing rapidly. We’re still being illuminated by fire-control radars from both. I have full counter-measures engaged.’ The closest Foxhound fired almost immediately. ‘Bandit Two – missile release. Two birds.’
AA–9 Amos radar-guided missiles are of the fire-and-forget type; the weapon is targeted by the interceptor and released when target lock has been achieved. Once fired, the missile has its own internal radar, but can also be guided by the massive Zaslon phased array radar carried in the nose of the Foxhound.
The Blackbird turned rapidly
to starboard and picked up speed in the descent as Frank Roberts aimed the aircraft directly at Bandit One.
‘Bandit One on the nose at eight, two thousand below and turning. Keep going like this and he’ll be close enough to take us out with a twelve-gauge shotgun.’
‘Yeah,’ Roberts said, ‘but only if he’s got one. Where are the birds?’
‘Now red four zero at ten, turning to follow. Bandit One dead ahead at three, one thousand below. He’s lost radar lock. Two is at red three zero range twenty, same level.’
As James spoke, the first missile detonated, followed almost immediately by the second one, the flashes clearly visible, although the noise of the explosion was inaudible. But at a range of less than a mile, the Blackbird kicked and bucked from the blast wave.
Roberts eased back on the control column and the Blackbird began to climb. From the tiny starboard-side armoured window, Paul James saw the Foxhound designated Bandit One flash past – a barely visible streak of grey against the blue sky, less than half a mile away.
‘Good thinking, boss,’ James said, admiration mingled with relief in his voice. ‘Bandit Two must have used the command detonation on the birds to avoid taking out his wingman. Now I suggest you get us the hell out of here before Bandit One decides to join the party.’
‘Roger that.’
The Blackbird was holding a little under Mach 3, and was passing seventy thousand feet in the climb. ‘Bandit Two now outside engage range. Bandit One directly astern, range five miles, eight thousand below and in a max rate climb, following us. He now has radar lock. Prediction is he’ll try for a tail shot any time now.’
Voyska IA-PVO Unit, Arkhangel’sk, Confederation of Independent States
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