by Dale Brown
“Sir?”
“Do you have that plan ready to move to likely drop zones?” Briggs asked. “I want to bag us some Russian drop planes.”
“Already got it laid out for you, sir.” Briggs saw the flashing information icon in his electronic visor and selected it. He saw a chart of the Chärjew area, with lines drawn to the northern quadrants, showing the movement and positioning of Briggs and his seven-man Tin Man commando team. Briggs was surprised to see that Wohl had suggested that Briggs himself be deployed to the southeast, to the spot farthest away — three miles away, on the other side of the airfield. “Uh, Sergeant Major — you put me on the southeast side? Why don’t you just suggest I deploy to Los Angeles or something?”
“Pardon me, sir,” Wohl growled. There was no question, even through the satellite datalink, that Wohl was pissed off. “Are you questioning my deployment strategy?” He sounded as if the very thought of Briggs’s doing that was too unbelievable to even imagine.
“I’m not questioning your strategy, Top, just the choice of men in each position.”
“You are referring to where I positioned you in particular, sir?”
“Damn straight I am. I’m the farthest away from the action! Why?”
“As I understand it, sir, you have just two options: You can accept the results of my years of expertise in planning such assaults, or you can reject my recommendations and plan your own.”
“Answer the question, Sergeant Major.”
“Yes, sir. First, you are the team leader, and you should not be stuck in the middle of the most likely focus point of the assault. Second, you are the oldest member of the team with the exception of myself — but your relative inexperience cancels out your age advantage.”
“That’s bullshit, Top—”
“Let me finish, sir. Third, I’m not convinced that the Russians’ main axis of attack will be from the north. I think they’d anticipate we’d set up the bulk of our forces to the north. I think there’s a very good possibility that they’ll try to set up a major flanking force to the southeast, then try a pincer move to either pin us down or push us across the border — or both. If they try that, I want you set up down there to alert us. Now, are there any more questions you have about my plan?”
“No, Sergeant Major, there aren’t,” Briggs replied. He still didn’t like being stuck the farthest away, but at least Wohl had some pretty good reasons for doing it. Besides, Briggs thought, Wohl was right: The Russians might just pull a sneaky end-around and try to pin the Tin Men in between two forces. “Good job. Deploy the team per your recommendations.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” He said “thank you” as if he really meant to say “fuck you,” but he did it in a nice way. Briggs knew that Wohl liked to be questioned about his plans and tactics, just to show that he knew much more than the officers he worked for knew. “Red Team, check your weapons and gear, lock and load, clear your jump paths, then move out.”
One by one the Tin Men started jet-jumping toward their planned positions. Hal Briggs couldn’t help it — he stood and watched as his men flew out of their places of concealment, their weapons at port arms and their equipment bags slung across their backs, with a not-quite-upright stance. They flew about thirty feet in the air, trading altitude for distance. At the apogee of their flight, they transitioned to a feetfirst fall, still at port arms. A second hiss of compressed air signaled when they were about to hit the ground as they used a shorter, less powerful burst of air to arrest their fall. They really didn’t need to stop their fall with their powered exoskeletons, which could dampen out the shock of the fall very well, but unless there were enemy soldiers nearby, they were instructed to use compressed air to slow their descent rate to avoid overstressing the exoskeletons. Each man flew about one hundred feet. Chris Wohl, the biggest man on the team, flew a bit less; Hal Briggs, the smallest man, usually flew the farthest.
If it weren’t so serious, Hal thought as he watched them jet-jump away, it would be comical. They almost looked like big gray fleas jumping across the desert. But they were going off to fight a vastly superior force that was undoubtedly coming to smash them. If they were successful, lots of Russians would die; if they were not, they would be captured and certainly taken to Russia for interrogation.
If they were smart, they’d be running north, to the relative safety of Uzbekistan.
“Are you having a senior moment, sir?” Chris Wohl radioed half angrily, half sarcastically. “Or do you feel like questioning my deployment plan again before you get your ass in gear?”
“Bite me, Sergeant Major,” Briggs said, the pride evident in his electronic voice. “I’m good to go.”
BATTLE MANAGEMENT CENTER, BATTLE MOUNTAIN
AIR RESERVE BASE, NEVADA
A short time later
“Sir, I think you should reconsider.”
Secretary of Defense Robert Goff shook his head. He was on the secure videoconference link with Patrick in the Battle Management Center, his image on one of the monitors at Patrick’s station. “It’s not going to happen, Patrick,” Goff said. “The president is pretty firm on this: He wants Maureen Hershel and President Martindale out of there and protected, your forces packed up and headed back to Battle Mountain, and that’s it. I’m sorry about your men aboard that tilt-jet aircraft, but the president doesn’t want any other action in Turkmenistan. If your men have the capability to get out of the area safely and make it into Uzbekistan, we have men and aircraft standing by to get you to Samarkand, and then we can airlift you home. It’s only — what, fifteen, twenty miles to get across the border? You guys should be able to do that in a few minutes, the way you move.”
“Sir, the Russians just bombed our position with fuel-air explosives,” Patrick argued. “We’re watching several more formations of jets, probably more heavy bombers followed by medium bombers, already inbound—”
“You told me that already, General,” Goff interrupted irritably.
“It’s only a matter of time before the Russians send in a ground-invasion force,” Patrick said. “They can take Chärjew with ease once they’ve flattened everything else.”
“That’s not our problem.”
“The Turkmen have voted to accept Jalaluddin Turabi as their armed-forces commander,” Patrick said. “He can organize the Turkmen army to hold off the Russian invasion—if we help them.”
“General…”
“If we don’t help them, sir, they’ll destroy Chärjew just like they wiped out Vedeno in Chechnya and Mary in Turkmenistan,” Patrick went on angrily. “Gryzlov will just keep launching bombers and sending in troops until he’s taken the entire country.”
“General, that’s enough,” Goff snapped. “The president has ordered you out of there.”
“But, sir…”
“Are you not hearing me, General? Don’t you get it? There’s no government in Turkmenistan anymore, Patrick — that’s been taken over by the Russians! Their army was led either by Russians or Taliban fighters — and now the Russians have executed their president. It won’t help your argument for the president, the Congress, or the American people to learn that the Taliban are now in charge of their military.”
Patrick fell silent. He knew there was no use in arguing any longer.
“Get your guys out of there, and do everything you need to do to protect Hershel’s return.”
“Yes, sir,” Patrick replied.
“Again, sorry about your tilt-jet crew, Patrick. The president and I will send our condolences to the families.”
“Thank you, sir.” Goff terminated the connection. Patrick threw his headset on his console desk and leaned back in frustration.
“Hal has redeployed his guys around Chärjew, waiting on the Russian airborne. He does not have permission to open fire yet,” David Luger, seated in the vice commander’s seat next to Patrick, said after a few moments’ silence. “It’s too hot to send in any special-ops guys there, if you’re thinking about an exfiltration, but the
y can hop on out of there pretty easily. Once they’re north of the Amu Darya River, they’re fairly safe — it’s a clear shot to the Uzbek border.”
Patrick was silent for several more long moments. He then pressed some buttons on his keyboard, calling up status reports on all of the men and women, aircraft, satellites, and weapons under his command. Several minutes later he put his headset back on. “Rebecca? Daren?”
“Go ahead, sir,” Rebecca Furness responded. “We’re both up.”
“I hope you two have had your crew rest.”
“Oh, shit — I don’t like the sound of that,” Rebecca responded.
“I’m in!” Daren Mace shouted happily. “What do you want destroyed, sir, and when?”
MILITARY COMMAND CENTER,
SIVKOVO, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Two hours later
“Eta lehchi chim dva paltsa abassat,” Colonel General Yuri Kudrin, division commander of the Second Bombardirovchnyi Aviatsionnaya Diviziya (Heavy Bomber Division), Engels Air Base, radioed with a laugh in his voice. “It was easier than pissing on two fingers, sir.”
Kudrin was the commander of the organization that held operational control of the Russian Federation’s heavy-bomber and support regiments west of the Ural Mountains: Tu-160 and Tu-22M bomber regiments and an Ilyushin-78 air-refueling regiment at Engels Air Base; one Tu-22M bomber regiment at Belaja Air Base near Kirov; one Tu-22M and one Tu-95 “Bear” bomber regiment at Razan Air Base southeast of Moscow; and one Tu-95 bomber regiment at Mozdok Air Base in Chechnya. He had planned this raid on Chärjew in record time, launched a large bomber force with minimal preparation and briefings, and had been wildly successful. Now he was ramping up his entire division at Engels, preparing to surge his bomber forces full speed to destroy any opposition in Turkmenistan.
“No fighters up there?” General Anatoliy Gryzlov asked. He was speaking with Kudrin via secure satellite link from the command center in the underground fortress at Sivkovo, southwest of Moscow, built only recently to replace the command center at Domededovo, which had been destroyed in a clash between Russian and Lithuanian bombers several years earlier. “Not even surveillance radar?”
“Not a squeak, sir,” Kudrin replied. “All of the sorties are back, and not one of them was highlighted — not even search radars. The only radars up at all were from units controlled by our ground forces in Mary.”
“Did the fighters keep up with you?”
“We had no problem with our fighter escorts,” Kudrin replied. “We took one squadron from the One-eighty-sixth Fighter Regiment at Astrakhan all the way to the launch point, but they were bored waiting for something to happen.”
“Any trouble from Baku radar?”
“We were never within their airspace, sir. We stayed out over western Kazakhstan and west of the Aral Sea, then a straight shot across Turkmenistan to Chärjew. No radar coverage in that area at all. We didn’t need electronic jammers.”
“What support do you need for the follow-on attacks, General?”
“Only one: more fighter protection for Engels Air Base, sir,” Kudrin said. “I’d like at least another air-defense regiment in the area, preferably using the civil airfield at Saratov. Engels is definitely full now: The second strike team will be over Chärjew in about two hours, and I’ve got a third team ready to launch in fifteen minutes, just before the first strike team lands at Engels. We’ve got over one hundred heavy bombers flying out of here now every ten hours.”
“All of your bombers are launching out of Engels?” Gryzlov asked. “Isn’t that risky? If the Americans attack, won’t that disrupt all your attack plans?”
“The Tu-22Ms already require one prestrike and one poststrike refueling launching out of Engels, sir,” Kudrin replied. “If they launched out of Ryazan or Belaya, we’d need to give them an extra prestrike refueling. Coordinating all those launch and rendezvous times became too time-consuming and cumbersome. Engels has plenty of fuel and weapons — all they needed were the airframes.”
“General, I didn’t put you in charge so you could cut corners and make life less time-consuming and cumbersome for yourself,” Gryzlov said. He didn’t want to sound too angry — Kudrin was one of his most experienced air force commanders — but this plan didn’t sound right at all. He had a very bad feeling about this. “If you need more tankers and more mission planners, ask for them. I don’t want to overload Engels’s resources, and I sure as hell don’t want all our bombers knocked out by one attack on one base.”
“Yes, sir.” Gryzlov heard a frantic passing and rustling of papers, then, “In that case, I’d like to gain the tankers and fighters from the Eight-fortieth Fighter Regiment at Lipeck and the Ninetieth Fighter Regiment at Morozovsk,” Kudrin went on. “I’ll deploy the Eight-fortieth to Morozovsk, and we can set up another air-refueling anchor near Volgograd for the Tu-22Ms coming from Belaya and Ryazan. The fighters can use the refueling anchor as well.”
“Now you’re saying what I want to hear, General,” Gryzlov said. Kudrin worried too much about the wrong things sometimes — but usually all he needed was a little push in the right direction and he was back in step. “Your request for those units is approved — you’ll have authorization to deploy those regiments immediately. You’re doing good work out there. Let me know if you need anything else.” There was no reply, just the clicking and beeping of digital static. Oh, well, Gryzlov thought, Kudrin wasn’t much of a chitchatter….
SOUTH OF ENGELS AIR BASE, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
That same time
Kudrin had hung up the phone in a hurry because, at that moment, he received the first warning that his base was under air attack.
“Search radar, SA-10, twelve o’clock, forty miles,” Daren Mace reported. “Coming quickly into detection range. Let’s step it on down, Rebecca.”
Rebecca pressed the command button on the control stick of her EB-1C Vampire bomber and spoke: “Terflew clearance plane one hundred feet.” The Terflew, or Terrain Following, system commanded the autopilot to fly lower until the aircraft maintained at just one hundred feet aboveground — less than a wingspan’s distance away. “Clearance plane set. How are we doing?”
“Shit, that SA-10 is going to nail us,” Daren said. The terrain in this area was completely and utterly flat, with only a slight rise north of the Volga River. Daren hit his command button. “Launch two TALDs.”
“Launch two TALDs, stop launch,” the computer responded. Seconds later two devices resembling large, fat lawn darts ejected from a bomb bay in the Vampire’s tail and began gliding away. The TALDs, or Tactical Air Launched Decoys, were small gliders with electronic emitters on board that, when activated, appeared as gigantic, slow-moving aircraft on an enemy’s radarscope.
“Still tracking us,” Daren said. “It’s got us and the TALDs together. Our trackbreakers can’t shake it.”
“Hang on,” Rebecca said. “Terflew off.” She jammed the throttles to full afterburner and hauled back on the stick. The Vampire bomber shot skyward at fifteen thousand feet per minute.
“That’s good… that’s all we need.” They were passing five thousand feet — way too high with an SA-10 in the area. “Rebecca, let’s get our nose down, we’re too high!”
“Warning, SA-10 height-finder, twelve o’clock, twenty-five miles,” the threat computer reported in a silky female voice. Seconds later: “Warning, missile launch, SA-10… warning, missile launch, SA-10!” The computer announced four more missile launches — an entire SA-10 launcher unit had just opened fire on them.
“Break right!” Daren shouted. Rebecca threw the Vampire bomber into a hard right turn. “Full countermeasures!”
“Countermeasures active,” the computer responded. From canisters in the tail, a bullet-shaped device unreeled itself at the end of an armored fiber-optic cable. The ALE-50 towed decoy was an external antenna for the Vampire’s jammers, designed to move the source of the bomber’s jammers away from the aircraft itself in case an enemy’s antiaircraft we
apons could home in on the jamming.
The first SA-10 missile went right for one of the TALDs and scored a direct hit. The other three SA-10 missiles guided right for the Vampire bomber. The defensive computer system released two more TALDs, and one SA-10 guided on it — it was too inviting a target to ignore. Flying at three times the speed of sound, the last two SA-10s were only seconds away from impact….
“Break left!” Daren shouted. Rebecca instantly reversed her turn, flying toward the oncoming SA-10 missiles. But because of the turn, the towed decoy slowed down and moved sideways, making itself an even larger target. Both SA-10s guided on this big fat target, one hitting the towed decoy and the other detonating as it hit the debris field of its brother.
“Give me a right one-eighty and let’s get away from here,” Daren said. He unreeled a second towed-decoy array as Rebecca turned south. “SA-10 radar still tracking, six o’clock, twenty-three miles.” The modern Russian SA-10 antiaircraft system could control as many as twelve four-missile launcher vehicles and engage up to six targets simultaneously with two missiles per target — they were definitely still not out of the woods. “Base, did you take a picture yet?”
“Got it coming in now,” David Luger responded from Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base. “The NIRTSats just downloaded the images. Stand by.” Days earlier Patrick McLanahan had ordered a constellation of NIRTSats — Need It Right This Second Satellites — inserted into a low earth orbit, designed to cover the region between Engels in Moscow — the largest bomber base in Russia and the origin of the air attacks against both Chechnya and Mary in Turkmenistan — and the Arabian Sea. Sixteen NIRTSats were launched four at a time from a rocket carried aloft by a modified DC-10 aircraft and inserted into their orbits. The TV-size satellites contained high-resolution synthetic-aperture radar sensors that could see and identify objects as small as an automobile from eighty miles in space. Sixteen satellites meant that one satellite passed over the area every three minutes.