Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 5 - Red Horseman

by Red Horseman (lit)

  He found the place. A steel pin protruded from the hole.

  He tried to pull it out with his fingers.

  Nope. It was in there to stay.

  Someone hammered this steel rod into that hole. Oh, the ejection seat would still fire, but the drogue chute would not deploy and so the main chute would stay in its pack as he sat in the seat waiting, all the way to the ground.

  Jake Grafton climbed back down the ladder to the concrete. Spiro Dalworth was standing there with the Russian lieutenant, the only officer on the base who had talked to them.

  "Spiro, tell this clown to take me to the base commander." Dalworth fired off some Russian. When it didn't take, he repeated it.

  The Russian pilot's eyes got large, but he whirled and started walking.

  Jake Grafton and Spiro Dalworth stayed two steps behind him.

  The base commander had his office in a crumbling concrete building with the Russian flag on a pole out front. He was a rotund individual with a lot of gold on his epaulets.

  A general, probably.

  "Someone sabotaged my airplane, hammered a steel pin into the ejection seat so that it will not function properly.

  Tell him." Dalworth did so. The general looked skeptical.

  "I want two different airplanes. And I want his people to arm them while we watch." This time the general fired off a stream of Russian and gestured widely.

  "He says that you are mistaken. You know nothing of this airplane, which is a fine airplane.

  Combat-tested in Afghanistan. His men are all veterans and take excellent care of their equipment. This is a front-line fighting unit, not-was "Pick up his telephone. Call the Kremlin in Moscow.

  Ask for Yeltsin." To his credit, Dalworth didn't hesitate.

  He reached for the telephone as if he were going to order a pizza. When he asked the operator in Russian to get him the Kremlin operator, the general came out of his chair with a bound.

  Jake was ready. He pulled the.357 Magnum revolver from his armpit holster and fired a round through the top of the general's desk. The gun went off with a roar that the walls of the room concentrated into a stupendous, soulo.

  numbing thunderclap. The bullet punched a nice hole in the top of the wooden desk and a long splinter came loose.

  Dalworth almost dropped the telephone.

  The general froze, staring at Jake, who looked him straight in the eye as he returned the Pistol to the holster under his leather flight jacket.

  The door flew open and a soldier with a rifle appeared.

  Dalworth said something to the general and made a shooing motion to the soldier, who finally backed out of the room and closed the door., Dalworth started talking on the telephone. After three or four sentences and a wait, he looked at Jake expectantly.

  "Tell them that this general doesn't understand that he is to cooperate." "Tell them that the two airplanes he wants us to fly have been sabotaged." "Tell them that I want two good airplanes armed to the teeth, and I want them now, as President Yeltsin promised the president of the United States." Dalworth translated each sentence in turn and listened a moment, then held out the instrument to the Russian general, who accepted it reluctantly.

  When the general finally hung up the phone, he stood, straightened his uniform jacket as he snarled something at Dalworth, jerked his hat on and headed for the door.

  "We are to follow him, Admiral. From what I could tell, he was bluntly told to cooperate or face the music." Jake grunted and strode after the general.

  The Russian general stood in the middle of the parking mat and gave orders fast and furiously.

  He pointed, first at the planes Jake and Rita were to fly, then at the row of Su-25's still sitting in their revetments.

  The general was in fine form, with officers and enlisted saluting and trotting obediently when Rita approached Jake.

  She held out her hand. In it were five coins, rubles.

  "I found these glued to the stator blades inside the intakes of the plane I was to fly.

  Jake nodded. The coins would have stayed glued while the engines were at idle, but when the engines were accelerated to full power for the takeoff roll the coins would have come unstuck and been sucked through the compressors which would have started shedding blades seconds later.

  The predictable result would be catastrophic engine failure and perhaps fire just as the aircraft lifted from the runway with a full load of weapons. It would be a spectacular way to die.

  The airplane switch took an hour. New planes were pulled forward with a tractor and topped off with fuel. Two arming crews took the 250-kilogram bombs off the sabotaged planes and manhandled them onto the racks of the new ones.

  Another arming crew serviced the 30mm cannon on each plane with belts of ammo. While all this was going on, Rita inspected each aircraft, examined the fuses on the bombs, looked at each arming wire.

  She was still at it when the general I told Dalworth the planes were ready, and he translated this message for Jake; Grafton turned his back on the airplanes and stood looking toward the office building. The telephone lines went to a pole that also carried the lines from the hangars. These lines went off to the east until they disappeared behind some buildings that looked like enlisted bar-racks.

  Above them clouds floated southeast. Patches of blue were visible in the gaps. The clouds were puffy, full of moisture.

  When Rita was finished, she came over to Jake.

  "Whenever you're ready, sir." The Russians had G-suits, torso harnesses, oxygen masks and a variety of helmets arranged upon the hood of a tractor. The two fliers donned the flight gear carefully and tried on helmets until they found ones that fitted snugly.

  "I'll lead," Jake told Rita. "You follow me as soon as I begin my takeoff roll and rendezvous in loose cruise. I want you above me. We'll spend the day below two hundred feet and only climb when the target is in sight. The radio has four channels-we'll use channel one. Get a radio check on.the ground and then stay off the radio except for emergencies.

  "When we're airborne, I'm going to arm my gun and shoot out the telephone box on the edge of the base. Once you arm your weapons, don't de-arm them. Our old equipment would always chamber a round on arming and leave the round in the chamber when you disarmed it, so the gun jammed the second time you hit the arming switch. I don't know how these guns are wired but let's take no chances." "Yessir." "Got any advice on how to fly this thing?" s "Be smooth," Rita Moravia said. "Let the plane fly itelf. No sudden control inputs--don't force it to do anything. Stay in the center of the performance envelope as much as possible. Visually check every switch before you move it. Be ready every second. Don't ever relax." "You got your mil setting for the bombsight?" "One hundred ten mils." "Okay. "Rita, if anything happens to me, bomb that missile storage hangar. No matter what." "Aye aye, sir." She said it matter-of-factly, without inflection.

  Jake Grafton wanted to ensure that he was properly understood. "I guess what I'm trying to say is, do whatever you have to do to destroy those missiles." "I understand.

  He examined her face. She was a beautiful woman, but right now she wore a look of confidence and determination that would have set well on any man Jake had ever flown with. Satisfied, Jake turned to Dalworth.

  "Stay with the helicopter. Don't let the pilot wander off.

  Wave money at him if you have to. And don't let anyone here touch that machine. If we aren't back in three hours, get the hell out of Dodge.

  "Aye aye, sir." "Let's get at it," Jake Grafton muttered to Rita as he pulled his helmet on.

  "Oh, Admiral," Rita said. "Thanks." Jake looked at her, not quite clear on what she meant.

  She drew herself to attention and saluted.

  He nodded at her and a puzzled Spiro Dalworth and, with his charts in one hand and his oxygen mask in the other, walked toward his plane.

  JAKE'S AIRCRAFT DIDN'T WANT TO COME UNSTUCK FROM the runway. With the engines at full power it was accelerating nicely, but the nose wheel remained firmly pl
anted. He tugged experimentally on the stick.

  The trim! He had guessed at the takeoff setting. He blipped the trim button on the stick with his thumb and eased the stick back. Now the nose came up. And the mains were off. He was flying.

  The wings rocked and he overcontrolled with flaperons as he reached for the gear handle.

  It wouldn't move. He pushed it in, then pulled it out.

  Now it moved. Had to be ulled.

  Trimming nose down, airspeed increasing. Gear indicates up. When he felt comfortable he looked for the flap handle, then moved it to the up position.

  Here they come.

  At a thousand feet he retarded the throttles some, lowered the nose a little and dropped the left wing about fifteen degrees. The plane stabilized in a level left turn. No warning lights, no gauges with pegged needles. He hit the switch to segment the hydraulic system.

  He glanced over his shoulder and caught sight of Rita's plane.

  His aircraft was decelerating. Not enough power. He added a little, readjusted his nose attitude, cursed himself for being so far behind the plane.

  His oxygen mask didn't fit right. It was leaking oxygen around his cheeks, making flatulent noises that he could hear above the background roar of the engines.

  He tried to tighten the retaining straps with his left hand, and finally gave up.

  Another glance at Rita, who was turning with him and closing.

  She's a good stick. Don't worry about her. Fly your own plane.

  When Rita was stabilized behind him and out to the right side, Jake began looking at the ground. The base was small by U.s. standards, the buildings grouped tightly together, probably to keep everything within walking distance. Surrounding it were miles of forests.

  There was the telephone line leading off, and there by the road intersection, wasn't that some kind of junction box mounted on that pole?

  He reversed his turn, and when the plane stabilized, reached for the master armament switch. He lifted it. There was no locking collar like U.s.

  planes possessed. Now the gun switch.

  As he turned it on he felt a thud. That would be the gun charging. He hoped. Bombsight on, reticle lit. What had that Russian pilot said?

  Ten mils deflection for the gun? He twisted the adjustment knob.

  Now into a left turn, looking again for the road intersection. It was several miles away off the left wing, slightly behind it, so he turned steeply to get the nose around.

  More power in the turn, as the wings come level back off some. This will be a nice slow pass, plenty of time to aim.

  He was too fast. Throttles back more, nose down a smidgen and trim.

  He concentrated on finding the pole in the bombsight.

  Small target. Too goddamn small.

  There!

  Damn, he was too close. He slewed the nose a tad with rudder, adjusted the nose attitude with stick, then quickly centered the rudder and squeezed the trigger.

  The gun vibrated hard and he saw the muzzle flashes through the sight.

  At night the muzzle blast would be blinding. Now off the trigger and stick back smartly. With the nose well above the horizon he rolled the plane ninety degrees and looked. Careful, boy, you're carrying a hell of a load low and slow!

  Pole and box down!

  Level the wings... raise the nose. More power.

  Safely away from the ground, let's turn on course 130.

  He craned his neck. Rita was back there, stepped out and up. As he watched she eased in a little closer and gave him a thumbs up.

  Okay!

  Airborne and still alive. Okay!

  The two Su-25's soon left the last of the forest behind and found themselves over the steppe. Jake had descended to about two hundred feet above the rolling terrain, which meant that he was constantly jockeying the stick and adjusting the trim as the plane rose and fell with the land contours. Below them the grass spread from horizon to horizon, broken only by stands of wheat and an occasional dirt road.

  This broad valley of the Volga had been peopled since ancient times, yet now the fallout would deny it to future generations. The enormity of the Serdobsk tragedy intruded into Jake's thoughts even as he worked on holding course and altitude.

  Farther south, below the radioactive fallout zone, stood the city of Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, the city built in the 1.920's and 1930's as a civic monument to the new Communist way of life. In the last half of 1942 it had been the site of the stupendous battle with the German army that marked the turning of the Nazi ride. The battle destroyed Stalin's city, of course, and nearly everyone in it. When the Red Army counterattacked and trapped the German Sixth Army, Hitter sacrificed over a quarter million men rather than give up that pile of rubble.

  Stalingrad, that shattered monument to a generation sacrificed in a titanic struggle between two absolute despots, was rebuilt after the war.

  Soon the radioactive particles and mud carried by the Volga would make the city a deathtrap once again.

  He had loved this type of flying when he was.

  younger.

  Racing low across open country, working the stick and throttles to make the airplane dance gracefully, sinuously, in perfect rhythm with the rise and fall of the land-this was flying as it ought to be, a harmonious mating of man, machine and nature.

  Today the magic of it never occurred to him. He was thinking of shattered dreams and tyrants and a people poisoned as his eyes scanned the terrain ahead and occasionally flicked across the instrument panel.

  On one of these instrument checks his eye was caught by a light, a small bulb that flicked on, then off, then on again.

  He looked carefully, identifying it. He was being painted by a fighter's radar. Perhaps they had not located him yet, but the fighters were looking.

  Damn!

  He and Rita were flying two subsonic attack planes, and somewhere up there above the clouds fighters were stalking them. Oh, yes, they're after us. Jake Grafton assumed the worst. That was the only way to stay alive. Automatically he tugged at the straps that held him to the ejection seat, tightening them still more.

  Without warning the warplanes crested a low rise and the great river lay before them, with clouds and swatches of blue sky reflecting on its wide, brown surface.

  The planes cleared a power line and then shot out over the water. The sky reflections on the water drew Jake Grafton's eyes upward. He scanned, and saw contrails.

  two pairs. In seconds the eastern shore swept under the nose and Jake Grafton eased into a gentle climb to stay just above the rising land.

  Contrails in pairs... they could only be made by fighters in formation. Fighters. Looking for.

  his This eastern shore of the Volga was heavily eroded into combled pop corrugated ravines and streambeds. Jake Grafton picked a decently large creek and dropped into the valley it had cut flowing west toward the river.

  He was down here in the weeds hiding from radars that sat on the surface of the earth. These radars would provide vectors to the fighter-interceptors when they found him. If he stayed below their horizon, they couldn't.

  But fighters aloft-the new generation of Soviet fighters possessed pulse Doppler radars that allowed them to look down and identify a moving target amid the ground clutter.

  And the new missiles would track a target in the ground clutter.

  "Look-down, shoot-down" the techno-speak guys called it.

  The light blinked on and off several more times.

  What's the worst airplane that could be up there?

  The MiGo-29? It was sure deadly enough, but no.

  The absolute worst plane that he could think of was another masterpiece from the design bureau of Pavel Sukhoi, the Su-27 Flanker.

  Designed in the mid-1980's to achieve air superiority against the best planes the West possessed, the Su-27 was thought by some Western analysts to be able to outfly the F-14, F-15, F-16 and F-18, plus every fighter the French, British and Germans have-all of them.

 
If those were Flankers up there, they were probably carrying AA-10 "fire and forget" antiaircraft missiles with active radar seekers.

  And a missile could be on its way down right now.

  He lowered the nose and dropped to fifty feet above the rocky creek.

  Rita was still with him, in tighter now, only forty or so feet away and a little behind.

  The warning light was on steady.

  They've found us. Missile to follow. Or a lot of missiles.