“Very well,” Dobrynin could see that the young officer had made up his mind. “You rank me by several levels, Fedorov. I have my orders from Volsky, but your decision will supersede that here in the field. Just remember one thing—every minute we waste flying around here is one minute less for the long journey east. You say it’s just a couple hundred miles? We may wish we had those miles once the Mi-26 heads east to look for Kirov. You wanted to know why Karpov didn’t hear anything? Perhaps this is why. Perhaps the Mi-26 never has the fuel to get to the coast.”
Fedorov shrugged. He knew that Dobrynin was correct, and perhaps he was being foolish here, but some inner hunch still warned him not to leave Orlov behind.
I’ve got to find him, one way or another. And then I’ve got to find a way to get to Karpov three years hence, because if I don’t, I think I know exactly what he will do with those three ships. And God help the world if I’m right.
Part VIII
Twilight
“The pale stars were sliding into their places. The whispering of the leaves was almost hushed. All about them it was still and shadowy and sweet. It was that wonderful moment when, for lack of a visible horizon, the not yet darkened world seems infinitely greater—a moment when anything can happen..”
― Olivia Howard Dunbar
Chapter 22
Tech Sergeant Jason Banks watched the big planes roll out of the hangers onto the tarmac at Anderson AFB, pleased that his morning’s labors were done and the torch would now be passed to the pilots in the planes. The strike had been postponed when the sirens signaled air alert some days ago. The island base personnel had quickly moved to air defense shelters and the newly deployed THAAD missile system was engaging targets unseen in the skies above. This time it was North Korea pressed into useful service as an attack dog by Beijing, launching Musudan missiles more as another warning to the Americans to stay out of the deepening fight over Taiwan than anything else.
THAAD got the first missile aimed at the island, fired to test exactly what altitude the US might make a successful interception. The second missile barely got off its launch pad before being lazed by a secret weapon the US had moved into Kadena for just this purpose. Then another debate ensued over what to do about the situation, and it was one the Air Force General Lane eventually won. The US was moving at the speed of a democracy, which was lethargic at times, and the situation had not yet worsened enough to compel them to act in a more urgent manner. Two long days later Lane obtained permission to finally get a retaliatory strike package airborne with the B-2s, and Jason Banks was back in business.
The six B-2s were an awesome sight together like this, the broad swept wings of black, saw tooth tail, and porpoise hump noses making them look surreal at certain angles, like ships from another world. His men were finished with their loading and maintenance, and the torch he had handed off was the X-51C, a hypersonic stealthy cruise missile dubbed the WaveRider, scheduled for delivery that morning to three very special sites on the Chinese mainland. If China wanted to take out American satellites, the response would be to prevent them from ever launching satellites of their own.
The first targets on the list that morning were the satellite launch centers at Taiyuan and Jiuquan, and the Guangde rocket launch site west of Shanghai, respectively known as Base 25 and Base 603. These targets were within 500 kilometers of the coast and could be struck by B-2s over the South or East China Seas. Three B-2s would be assigned to each target and Banks watched them take off, glad a little payback was heading east while the base still intact.
Someone took a pot shot at us, he thought, but THAAD was good enough to knock whatever they sent our way down. Now we return the favor. Those bad boys will be up in ten minutes, and this is probably the last any human eyes will see of them until they return. The Spirits of Missouri, California, South Carolina, Washington and Texas were already up, Spirit of Kansas, his home state, was the last in the line, the one new plane that had joined the B-2 wing to replace the bomber by that very same name that had been lost on this airfield in a takeoff crash in 2008.
It was a $1.4 billion dollar mishap that day, not including the “classified material” the Spirit of Kansas had been carrying that also went up in smoke when the big plane came down. The official “findings” on that crash attributed it to three improperly calibrated pressure transducers that resulted in faulty data sent to the flight control computer. The plane went into a stall on takeoff, its wing dipped and hooked the ground, and that was that.
Don’t crash again, baby, he whispered as the Kansas-II began to put on power. He stood and watched the running lights wink as the plane taxied. Three minutes later the roar of the engines told the tale. The “Bats” were all airborne now, their bellies full of high tech death and destruction. After achieving altitude, the formation would cruise north over Rota and Tinian in the Marianas where they would then turn northeast and head for Kadena AFB on Okinawa to meet some very special friends.
The US was taking no chances with its precious B-2s. They would soon be joined by the 94th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron flying F-22 Raptors in escort for the sortie into the East China Sea. Six fighters would be up that morning to join the party, and Flight Lieutenant William Hitchcock was in one of them. With a vintage name like that his mates had naturally taken to calling him “Wild Bill” and he lived up to the handle well enough as a daring and highly skilled pilot.
Hitchcock was still trying to shake that nagging cough that was just part of the job insofar as the F-22 was concerned. The pilot’s oxygen system has been buggy throughout the life cycle of the aircraft, but no matter what they did to try and correct the problem, the well known “Raptor cough” persisted, resulting from breathing high concentrations of oxygen enriched air while accelerating through multi-G force maneuvers. When you could fly higher and faster than most anything in the sky, there were a few tradeoffs that you just lived within the service. Wild Bill had no regrets.
An hour later he was up at altitude and waiting for his charge. Perhaps the most capable fighter in the world, the unique radar scattering shape of the plane combined with the radar absorbing materials used in its construction made it extremely stealthy. Finding it in the sky on radar would be much like trying to track a pea flying at several thousand miles per hour. The APG-77 radar system was also very stingy with the energy it used, activating to find potential threats without also revealing the position of the Raptor. At the same time its ALR-94 radar warning sensors could silently detect other radar-using targets at very long range. It was the same basic calculus of air combat—see the enemy first and kill the enemy before he sees you.
Radio silence was also a part of the job like this, but Wild Bill didn’t mind. He enjoyed the quiet solitude of soaring at 40,000 feet through the early hours of dawn. The bombers were below them, lumbering along under the careful watch of the Raptors. An E-3 Sentry was also up that morning for long range radar coverage in case the Chinese had any surprises in store for the package. Hitchcock didn’t expect any trouble, particularly this far out from the Chinese mainland, but as chance would have it, trouble was on its way. His data link from the E-3 soon indicated a number of airborne contacts inbound and they were ordered to engage.
The Raptors began to accelerate rapidly, streaking away from the subsonic B-2s as they went into supercruise mode, their radars searching the skies ahead. It looked like quite a reception committee, and the only thing that Hitchcock could think of at that moment was how in hell the enemy had managed to locate them.
The truth of the matter was that the Chinese had not located them. They were simply flying a mission of their own, targeted at Taiwan again with two squadrons of J-12 fighters led by a squadron of their premier stealth strike fighters, the formidable J-20. There were eighteen planes in all, and they were intending to strike an airfield near Taipei as a follow on to the highly successful ballistic missile strikes of the previous days. To the Raptor pilots it looked like someone had given away the game and they
assumed the B-2s had been targeted for interception. But the Chinese hadn’t seen a thing that morning. It was all happenstance that was about to become an lightning fast air duel between the best fighters each side possessed.
The odds appeared very steep to Wild Bill at first blush. He was tracking eighteen enemy fighters, and the Raptors of the 94th were outnumbered three to one. No strangers to combat, the 94th was one of the oldest active squadrons in the US Air Force. Their legacy dated back to 1917 when they first flew SPADs in the First World War. Over the years they had flown P-38s in WWII over North Africa and Italy, and eventually moved on through the evolving chain of fighter designs to the F-15A Eagles before being upgraded to the deadly Raptors. Now they were about to prove their worth and throw their hat in the ring, as true to their squadron insignia.
With high value strike assets close at hand, the Raptors needed to get at the enemy quickly, and the talons they would use were the latest air-to-air missile the US had deployed to date, the AIM-120D. Each plane carried four of these longer range missiles in the central internal weapons bay, along with two shorter range AIM-9M/X Sidewinders in smaller internal bays to either side. They would fire immediately, while the action still remained well beyond visual range, and see if they could thin the enemy ranks.
The fighters surged ahead, their central bays opening for only one brief second to fire, and then they peeled off on a new vector, ready to fire again. The Chinese never saw them coming, and it was not until the first three J-20s detected the AAMRAMs coming in for them that the jig was finally up. All three died before they could do anything about it, but the word was out and the other planes were breaking formation, jettisoning external fuel tanks to go stealthy, and sweeping away in all directions. They scattered into the azure blue sky climbing as their afterburning turbofans burned with yellow, hot fire.
The Chinese tactic when surprised was to get high, using their incredible service ceiling of over 65,000 feet to gain advantage. Two J-20s were climbing, but the Raptors were already up there watching like supersonic birds of prey, and their second salvo was in the air before the first of the J-20s even got a fleeting ghost of a radar lock on them. The pilot knew he had been targeted, but he still managed to get off two PL-12 missiles in reprisal. Then he died a flaming death along with three more comrades in the older J-12s.
Hitchcock was warned of the incoming missiles by his ALR-94 radar. The Chinese Missiles were climbing up for him, aiming at a point in the sky they calculated the Raptor might be in a few seconds time, but Hitchcock made sure his plane wasn’t there. The Raptor was capable of some very extreme supermaneuvers, with thrust vectoring and attitude control well beyond normal aerodynamic limits of most aircraft. The PL-12s would not find him that day. With four of the six J-20s down and no situational awareness of where the enemy was, the rest of the J-12s wanted no part of the action. They were trained as fighter bomber pilots, with very limited air-to-air combat training, so they turned and broke for the coast at high speed.
The last J-20 was stubborn that day. The plane was close enough to see Hitchcock’s Raptor visually and thought it would tip its nose up and get off a missile shot. Wild Bill would have nothing of that. He executed a Herbst maneuver decelerating rapidly as he increased his angle of attack to a stall, utilized his thrust vectoring engines to maintain control, coned over to a new flight direction that pointed his nose right at the enemy plane. Then he poured on the power. The Chinese pilot could not maintain his lock, and in that brief interval Hitchcock fired a Sidewinder that went hissing out after the enemy.
Wild Bill was two for two, and the B-2s slipped quietly through the contrail torn skies en route to their launch position. Then their bellies opened to send the X-51Cs roaring to the attack, accelerating through Mach 4 and beyond Mach 6 in a matter of minutes. The WaveRiders were on their way.
Three bombers fired six missiles that would take out the satellite control center a few miles southeast of Ningwu, the telemetry station north of Wuhai, the technical center where long lines of men sat in pale blue uniforms and caps as they attended to their monitors, and finally the launch pad facilities themselves. The second triad would target the launch control headquarters at Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. In each group, one plane was held in reserve, leaving four missiles available for any target of opportunity.
The strike went off without a hitch, with all four missiles from the lead bombers finding their targets. This left the two reserve planes free to penetrate a little further and go for the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, or Base 27. The Raptors hung around long enough to be certain there were no further threats to the big bombers, even after the B-2s had crossed into Chinese airspace. They remained undetected until they delivered their high tech package and turned for home. When they were done, the People’s Republic of China had lost, its ability to put a satellite in orbit in one fell stroke.
They were not happy about it.
Within hours orders went out on a very secure channel to a submarine that had been hovering silently off the West coast of the United States. The message they would deliver by return mail would have dramatic implications and tip the world just one step closer to the mayhem and destruction of all out nuclear war.
* * *
Robert passed a restless night in the Quantum Sleeper, and spent all the next day haggling with his broker to see if he could salvage anything from the collapse of Goldman the previous day. By sunset he had given up his mind returning again to that list he had been working on. The news had been bad, and something told him it was going to get worse very soon. The TV kept on with the latest updates on the missile strikes against the Chinese mainland. The more he listened, the more he felt the compelling urge to lay in some supplies before the store shelves were stripped completely bare. Finally he started to move, and he was heading down the stairs when it happened.
The lights winked in their recessed overhead spot wells, and then went out. The ongoing babble of the TV where he had been watching the breaking news went silent. The screen was suddenly phosphor TV black. He reached for his iPad, realizing the Internet was down as well. Ten seconds passed…a minute… It was the strangest feeling in the world—no power. No lights, camera, action. No TV and radio. No Internet.
Food and Gasoline….That was the ticket now. That and the hundred items list he had started working on last night, the ones to disappear first from store shelves in a time of grave national crisis. He went to the window and looked out to see if he could see any signs of other folks in the neighborhood with electricity, but all was dark and quiet in the early morn.
He had been through power failures before, but something about this one, coming as it did on the heels of that morning news feed, gave him the shivers. He decided to send an email to his buddy Aaron. If the cell system was still up he might get it. He’d make it short, just a quick text message: WTF?
But the message never got through because his phone was dead. That was odd, he thought. I charged the damn thing just last night in the Quantum Sleeper. I still have near 100% battery now.
The minutes passed and the sweat on his brow was challenging that stay fresh feeling he was supposed to have all day from his shower. Liz was already yapping at him to call PG&E and see how long it would be before they had the power up. His cell phone was wacky, so he reached for the land line, surprised to find that it was also dead.
Power down, phones dead, Internet gone, no TV. The advertizing had finally stopped. In effect, the entire substance of his life was now toggled OFF. He couldn’t even play his Yamaha keyboard for musical distraction because he upgraded last year and this model didn’t run on batteries.
Holy Freakin’ Dodge!
Robert grabbed his car keys and was out the front door in a flash. “Be back soon!” he yelled to Liz, seeing she was using the power failure to abandon the morning laundry and head out to the swimming pool to lounge about.
Yet lounging about was the last thing on Robert’s mind just then. His worries about his s
tock in Goldman had vanished; his fretting over the mortgage and credit cards was up in smoke. Now all he cared about was getting to an ATM and pulling out as much cash as he possibly could get his hands on. But the power was down…If this was more than a local outage then how would the ATMs work? If he went in to see a teller how would they call up his account info? How would they even cash a check?
Something told him that the banks were going to be closed anyway. So, as he slipped into the front seat of his Lexus he had already changed his mind and determined to head for the nearest supermarket for food. They had ATMs there too. Yes…Food and water was top of the list now. That was the smart play. Food and water would keep the Quantum Sleeper functioning as a safe bedroom bunker, and they could go easy on the battery and stretch it out as long as possible—stretch that 8 hour emergency battery life into eight days if they just powered on for an hour a day.
There was no way he could think beyond that. Eight days without electricity was more desolation and denial than he had ever experienced in his life, because he lived in that lucky 50% of the planet that was plugged into the grid. It had taken humanity millions of years to reach that dubious statistic, when 50% of earth’s population had achieved access to electricity in the year 2005 and Robert was going to find out just how the other half of the planet was living in short order.
He put the key into the ignition went to start his mid-sized sedan—great mileage, always reliable; bought for nothing down and low easy payments after a song and dance at the bank.
Nothing happened. It was dead.
WTF?
* * *
The meeting in the White House Situation Room was ready to adjourn. Leyman had the recommendation of both Admiral Ghortney and General Lane—follow up the successful B-2 strikes with the B-1s and then move in the carriers to restore order over Taiwan. They would take the fight to the enemy now.
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