Foxbat

by James Barrington

Slavgorod North’s commanding officer, a Russian Air Force colonel named Denikin, didn’t look pleased to see them. Bykov had called him from the An-72 shortly after they took off from Bolshoye Savino, and clearly the prospect of a GRU general with an unnamed but obviously non-Russian ‘assistant’ poking around his airfield didn’t appeal to him.

  ‘We’ll need to speak to the crew of that Ruslan you’ve got parked on the airfield,’ Bykov informed him, ‘but first I want to check all your transit and aircraft movement orders.’

  ‘Very well,’ Denikin said stiffly, and gestured for them to follow him. He led the way into the Operations Room, a large square space with staff working at benches along the walls, and across to a plotting table. There he pulled two loose-leaf binders from a shelf and opened them. ‘This folder contains all the movement orders we’ve received during the last two months, and these ones here are the transit orders for the same period. May I ask what you’re looking for?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bykov said, bending over to study the binders. ‘We’re investigating unusual aircraft movements. Has Slavgorod North been involved in any deployment of fighters or interceptors heading east?’

  ‘Of course.’ Denikin nodded immediately. ‘This is a staging airfield. We’re regularly refuelling aircraft in transit.’ He reached for the transit orders binder, flicked through the pages until he found what he was looking for, and pointed. ‘Here, for example: five days ago one Sukhoi Su-27 and two Su-24s staged through here. And this order is for two MiG-25s that arrived from Bobrovka two weeks ago. They were re-fuelled, and the pilots stayed here overnight, then they left the following morning.’

  ‘Where’s Bobrovka?’ Richter asked, ‘and where were they going when they left here?’

  Denikin glanced questioningly at Bykov, who gave a slight nod. ‘Bobrovka’s near Kinel, in Samarskaya, and from here the two interceptors were going on to Domna,’ Denikin replied, after glancing down at the page in the binder. Richter still looked blank, so the colonel walked across to a wall map showing the entire extent of the Asian landmass and picked up a wooden pointer.

  ‘That route took the aircraft in a more or less straight line across Russia from west to east,’ he said, indicating each base in turn.

  ‘What was their ultimate destination?’ Bykov asked.

  ‘Chuguyevka. We weren’t informed of their original airfield of departure, only that they were routing to us from Bobrovka. From here, they flew to Domna, then Komsomolsk-na-Amur and on to Chuguyevka.’ Denikin’s pointer traced the remainder of the route across the continent.

  ‘That’s one of our easternmost MiG-25 bases,’ Bykov explained for Richter’s benefit. ‘It’s not far from Vladivostok, sandwiched between China and the Sea of Japan. I think it’s usually indicated on American charts as Bulyga-Fadeyevo.’

  ‘I know where it is,’ Richter confirmed. ‘We talked earlier about Viktor Belenko, if you recall.’

  A look of pain flashed across Denikin’s face at mention of the renegade Foxbat pilot’s name. Clearly that defection was still something of a sore point in the Russian Air Force, even forty years later.

  ‘Have there been any other movements of MiG-25s through Slavgorod?’

  Denikin flicked back through the binder and found transit orders for three more pairs of Foxbats, all following broadly the same route across the CIS, and all with Chuguyevka listed as their ultimate destination.

  ‘How many MiG-25s should there be in total at Chuguyevka?’

  ‘The resident squadron is 530 IAP,’ Denikin said, ‘and they fly a mixture of MiG-25s and MiG-31s. I don’t know what their normal strength is, but probably around thirty-five to forty aircraft.’

  ‘Very well,’ Bykov said. ‘We’ll need copies of all the movement and transit orders relating specifically to MiG-25s for the last six months. Please organize that immediately.’

  Denikin saluted briskly, called one of the operations staff over to the plotting table and began briefing him. Bykov motioned Richter to one side of the room, out of earshot.

  ‘Those documents look authentic to me, which probably means something’s going on in Moscow that I don’t know about. I’ll need to check the audit trail of each order and find out who issued the original instruction, and that’s going to take time. It looks like whoever’s stealing our aircraft has a very senior officer working for them, probably at Arbat Square.’

  He was referring to the location of the Russian Ministry of Defence in downtown Moscow.

  Richter gazed at him thoughtfully. ‘You’re probably right. And as all the MiG-25s we’ve seen any details of are ending up at Chuguyevka, their final destination has to be North Korea. Nothing else makes sense. If they were going to China, they’d track east or south-east from Domna, and certainly wouldn’t go anywhere near Komsomolsk or Chuguyevka. Both Japan and South Korea are American allies, and if they wanted fighter aircraft they’d buy something made by Northrop or McDonnell Douglas, not old-fashioned MiGs. North Korea’s the only destination that makes any sense.’ He paused, then continued. ‘And there’s something else.’

  Bykov nodded, following his train of thought. ‘The North Koreans have a nuclear capability. Their possession of atomic weapons, plus these MiG-25s, and their rocky relationship with South Korea, make a very worrying combination. Investigating the mechanics of how they organized this will have to wait. You’d better talk to your people back home, and I must go straight back to Moscow.’

  ‘Is there anything else, General?’ Denikin asked, walking over towards them.

  Bykov shook his head, but Richter had one more question. ‘We’re going to have to leave here shortly, Colonel, so we won’t have time to talk to the crew of the Ruslan. What’s that aircraft doing here?’

  ‘Just like most of the aircraft we handle, it’s staging through. It’s a regular run, carrying spares and replacement parts.’

  ‘Spares for what exactly, Colonel? And where’s its destination?’

  Denikin smiled slightly. ‘Chuguyevka, as a matter of fact, and its cargo is MiG-25 and MiG-31 parts for 530 IAP.’

  ‘Thank you, Colonel.’ Richter turned and followed Bykov out of the Operations Room. ‘Cheeky bastards,’ he muttered, as they headed down the corridor together. ‘My bet is that most of the MiG-25 stuff on that Ruslan will be smuggled straight out of Chuguyevka, down to Vladivostok, loaded onto a ship and taken down the coast to Ch’ŏngjin or some other North Korean port. This has been altogether a really slick operation.’

  While Bykov found an internal telephone to order a car to take them back to the Antonov, Richter pulled out his Enigma mobile phone, checked the signal, then dialled Hammersmith. The T-301 offers military-level encryption to both parties of a conversation, as long as they’re both using Enigmas or something compatible, but it looks pretty much like any other mobile.

  When the Duty Officer answered, Richter gave him a brief summary of what he’d discovered so far.

  ‘Wait one.’

  Thirty seconds later Simpson was on the line. ‘Are you sure about this, Richter?’

  ‘Depends what you mean by “this”. I’m certain that the Russian Air Force has lost a bunch of Foxbats, yes. The route we’ve been tracking across Russia suggests that the client state is North Korea. What I don’t know is what the men in Pyongyang intend to do with their new toys, but they wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble just to stand around and admire them. I’m also worried about those truckloads of Acrids stolen in Bulgaria. I’d lay money that, no matter where they are now, the ultimate destination of those missiles is North Korea.’

  ‘I tend to agree. The question is, what do we do about it? Is this just the North Koreans upgrading their air force with a bunch of old Russian interceptors, or is it something more than that?’

  ‘It has to be more devious. If they wanted newer aircraft than they’ve got already, they could have bought them openly. Plenty of nations are happy to deal with Pyongyang if there’s a decent profit involved. And why choose Foxbats, which are old a
nd difficult to fly and, according to Bykov, were designed from the start to intercept ICBMs? I’m thinking that might suggest North Korea is preparing to get involved in a nuclear exchange, and they’ve acquired those MiGs as a last-ditch defence against nuclear retaliation.’

  ‘But against who?’ Simpson was openly sceptical. ‘The South Koreans don’t have any nukes, and I really don’t see even those idiots at Pyongyang trying to take on either China or Russia. And, no matter what missiles they use, most of America is well out of range.’

  ‘Agreed, but if the North Koreans invaded the South, the American cavalry would have to come galloping to the rescue – and they’ve got plenty of buckets of instant sunshine.’

  ‘Don’t be flippant, Richter. I don’t believe the Yanks would initiate a nuclear exchange. They’d rely on conventional forces.’

  ‘I know,’ Richter agreed. ‘But suppose the South Korean forces get pushed back further down the peninsula by an initial advance from the north. That’s always been acknowledged as a possibility because of the sheer size of the DPRK armed forces. Oplan 5027 – that’s the basic warplan the American and South Korean combined forces would follow to counter an invasion – admits that, if the North Koreans use blitzkrieg tactics, they could overwhelm the Southerners’ defences.

  ‘But conventional wisdom suggests that even if the NKs managed to advance a long way into the South, they haven’t got the resources available to consolidate any territory they’d capture. The Americans would send reinforcements and those, combined with the South Korean forces, would push the invaders back to the north of the DMZ.’

  Richter paused for a few moments, still working things out. ‘But what if the North Koreans have a different agenda? What if, once they’ve established themselves in the South, they threaten to nuke any US reinforcements being shipped in, or any build-up of local forces that might oppose them? That would cause a stalemate, and if the Americans couldn’t send back-up forces to South Korea safely, they’d be left with only two options. They could simply abandon South Korea, which isn’t really an option at all. Or they’d need to escalate the conflict with surgical nuclear strikes on North Korea’s army, its airfields, or even Pyongyang itself. So that could be the nuclear exchange the DPRK is anticipating.’

  ‘I still don’t believe the Americans would resort to the use of nuclear weapons – but you do make a persuasive case, Richter.’

  ‘A lot depends on what the Yanks have got in the area already. I’ve no clue about US force dispositions, but you should be able to find that out from Washington. If the nearest American carrier battle group is off the Korean Peninsula, I don’t think there’d be a problem. If it’s parked in Pearl Harbor, there might be.’

  ‘I’ll check, and get the wheels turning across the pond.’

  ‘What do you want me to do? Come back to London?’

  Simpson didn’t respond for a few moments. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘It might be useful to have you there on the scene, so to speak. Get yourself out to Seoul and make your number with the National Intelligence Service people. I’ll . . . Wait.’

  The phone was put down in Hammersmith and Richter heard a faint swishing sound that was probably a mouse rolling over its mat and then a few clicks as Simpson pressed buttons. Then he heard a muttered curse and what sounded like an exceptionally angry click. Richter’s superior had been a late and very reluctant convert to computers, and so there had been a PC terminal in his office for only about three months. He still wasn’t very good with it.

  ‘Here it is,’ Simpson said, picking up the phone again. ‘The man in charge is named Bae Chang-Su. I’ve never met him, but by reputation he’s something of a martinet – even worse than me. I thought I’d save you the trouble of pointing that out, Richter,’ Simpson added waspishly. ‘His number two is Kang Jang-Ho. I’ll contact Bae and tell him you’re on your way. Let us know when you get there.’

  ‘Right.’ Richter ended the call and walked over to where Viktor Bykov was waiting for him beside a dark blue car, flicking through copies of the movement orders. In the distance, he could hear the sound of the Coaler’s engines spooling up.

  Office of the Associate Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, Virginia

  Richard Muldoon sat down at the conference table and opened a red folder. ‘Our second rescheduled Keyhole bird has taken some more pictures,’ he began, and passed a sheaf of photographs across the table to Walter Hicks.

  ‘Talk me through them, Richard.’

  ‘N-PIC have sent over a dozen pictures, fully annotated. There are five aircraft on the taxiway, heading for the end of the runway, presumably preparing to leave T’ae’tan for some other base. From the paint jobs and markings we’ve confirmed that these aren’t the same ones we saw in the first set of images, so that means the DPRK has at least ten of these aircraft.’

  ‘Right,’ Hicks said, scanning the pictures. ‘And how many could they have in total?’

  ‘Frankly, we’ve no idea, as we don’t know the size of the new hangars they built at T’ae’tan. If they excavated deep enough into the hillside, each could hold maybe ten or fifteen aircraft the size of a Foxbat, but it’s a flexible feast. They’ve still got some F-5 fighters there at the airfield, and they’re parked in hangars as well. So the numbers could range from the ten we already know about up to maybe forty or fifty maximum.’

  ‘Any way we can refine that?’

  ‘Not unless they happen to move more of the aircraft while one of our birds is overhead. We’ve no assets on the ground that I know of, and I don’t think flying a reconnaissance aircraft over North Korea would be too smart an idea. Even if we pulled a U-2 and flew that, I doubt we’d gather any useful data. The hangar doors are probably kept closed except when they’re manoeuvring aircraft, and even if they were open there’s a limit to what we’d be able to see because of the overhang of the hillside.’

  Hicks pulled out a pack of small cigars and put them on the table beside him. ‘What about sending in a Predator?’ he asked.

  ‘The same arguments, really. Unless we had one flying right past the hangar doors just when they opened them, the same limitations would apply. The Eighth Army already has several Shadow UAVs operating over the Demilitarized Zone. They’re pure reconnaissance drones, and their main task is monitoring North Korean activity close to the DMZ. They’ve overflown nuclear sites and airfields, but only occasionally, and as far as I know they’ve never detected anything particularly useful. It’s also worth stating the obvious, that if we did fly a Predator over T’ae’tan at low level, the North Koreans would probably shoot it down, and then they’d know for certain we were on to them.’

  ‘Yeah, I see what you mean. So the short version is that we know the DPRK has a minimum of ten Foxbats, and maybe as many as fifty, but we still don’t know why they’ve got them. Did the N-PIC analysis of the pictures identify anything else?’

  ‘Yes.’ Muldoon nodded. ‘There’s a road convoy of eight trucks leaving T’ae’tan, all about three tons. They look like standard army lorries. Obviously we can’t be certain what they’re carrying, but we can guess because N-PIC knows exactly where they’re heading.’

  ‘How come?’ Hicks asked, selecting a cigar and carefully lighting it.

  ‘Two subsequent Keyhole passes showed the same vehicles heading for Nuchonri. If the North Koreans are planning some kind of action against the South, dispersal of those Foxbats to several different airfields makes sense. In which case, logic suggests the trucks are probably carrying spares and munitions for the same aircraft.’

  Hicks stared down at the images for a minute or so, drawing slowly on his cigar, then he gathered the photographs together and passed them back across the table.

  ‘Forget the hard evidence. What’s your gut feeling about this, Richard? What do you think the North Koreans are planning?’

  ‘I really don’t know, but I don’t like it. I don’t, too, like the fact that they’ve got hold of an unknown number of
Foxbats, and I particularly don’t like knowing that they managed to sneak them into the country without being detected – by us or by anyone else. But I think what worries me most is the truck convoy. That suggests T’ae’tan might have been used as the base for training and so on, but now the assets are being dispersed because the North Koreans are almost ready to launch whatever plan they’ve been hatching.’

  Hicks nodded slowly, stood up and walked across to his desk. He picked up the internal phone and ordered coffee for two, then came and sat down again at the conference table.

  ‘What did the DNI think?’ Muldoon asked.

  ‘The Director of National Intelligence is a diplomat, not an intelligence professional, and it doesn’t help, either, that he’s an idiot,’ Hicks said, now treading familiar ground. ‘In fact, he knows as much about intelligence analysis as I know about the dark side of the moon. He thinks we’re overreacting, and it’s just a coincidence that the DPRK has bought itself a bunch of Foxbats. He actually believes Pyongyang is just re-equipping its armed forces.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it,’ Hicks confirmed.

  Muldoon opened his mouth to reply, then closed it on hearing a double knock on the door. A young blonde girl walked in carrying a tray of coffee. She placed it on the conference table, smiled at them both, and left.

  Hicks reached over and pulled the tray towards him. ‘So what’s your recommendation?’

  ‘If the DNI won’t do anything, we won’t be able to pass it up the line to the White House or across to the Pentagon – or not officially, anyway. I mean, I can make some calls, give some people a heads-up on what we’ve seen, but that’s about all. But I do think we should watch the situation, and it wouldn’t hurt to find out what assets we have located in the area. I know what military forces we have in South Korea, but I’d like to know what the Navy’s got thereabouts, and what other battle groups could get there inside a week.’

  ‘That’s not really within our terms of reference, Richard, but if this does blow up in our faces, some wise-ass is bound to ask why we didn’t know, and it would be nice to have our answer ready. I’ll make a couple of calls to the Pentagon, try to shake a few trees over there.’