Flame Out c-4

by Keith Douglass

  The flare he saw under the MiG’s port wing was a missile launch, probably an AA-8 Aphid heat-seeker. “Break left! Kos, break left!”

  “Can’t do it, Skipper!” Koslosky replied. Then his voice rose. “Wild Card! Eject! Ej-“

  The missile hit the Tomcat before Koslosky could finish. Coyote turned his head as the explosion ripped the plane apart, feeling sick.

  “Oh, God,” he heard Nichols say behind him.

  “Save it. I want that bastard!” Teeth clenched, Coyote wrenched his stick over and started after the Fulcrum.

  0918 hours Zulu (0818 hours Zone)

  Tomcat 204 Ajax Flight

  “Lead MiG’s climbing fast, Batman. Looks like he wants to loop in and nail Coyote.”

  “Not if we get there first, he won’t.” Batman shoved the throttles all the way forward and thumbed his selector switch. Sidewinders were their best bet for these conditions.

  Behind him he heard Malibu on the radio channel back to the Jefferson. “Dragon’s Lair, Dragon’s Lair, this is Ajax Two-oh-four. We are engaging. Repeat, we are engaging.”

  Once Batman would have felt satisfaction at those words. Now he knew nothing but a cold gnawing in his guts. They had crossed the line.

  0918 hours Zulu (0818 hours Zone)

  Tomcat 201 Redwing Flight

  “Come on, you bastard,” Coyote muttered. “Come on.” The lock-on tone was loud in his ears. “I’ve got tone!” He hit the firing stud. “Fox two! Fox two!”

  “He’s jinking!” John-Boy said.

  The MiG banked and dropped fast, and the heat-seeker flashed past. “damn!” Coyote felt his fist tightening around the stick. That MiG driver was good … and he himself had been just a little too quick off the mark.

  “Easy, Coyote,” Nichols told him. “What’re you always telling us? Fly with your head …”

  Grant gave a short nod and forced himself to cool off. There was little room for the aggressive hot-dogging so beloved by Hollywood in a real ACM situation. It was the cool hand, the technician who knew precisely what his aircraft could do and was willing to take it to the edge of the envelope, but never beyond, who scored.

  Ahead the MiG started a tight turn to the left, the kind of nimble maneuver the smaller Soviet fighters were particularly good at. Coyote pulled back on the stick, bringing the Tomcat’s nose up into a steep climb to bleed off airspeed and keep from overshooting the target plane. He rolled left, almost standing the F-14 on its wing so he could keep the MiG in sight, then dropped his nose and started diving. The high yo-yo was one of the classic fighter moves, and this time it went off with textbook precision. The Tomcat settled in squarely on the MiG’s six. The reticule centered on the enemy plane. “Tone! I’ve got tone!” He fired his second Sidewinder. “Fox two! Fox two!” It raced toward its target trailing smoke and fire.

  0919 hours Zulu (0819 hours Zone)

  CIC, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

  Northwest of the Outer Hebrides

  “Goddamn them!” CAG Stramaglia exploded. “What the hell is happening up there?”

  He had listened to the radio traffic in disbelieving horror as the situation had unfolded. From that first call of “I’m hit!” it had taken almost no time at all for a full-fledged aerial battle to erupt.

  “Sir?” A young crewman was looking up from one of the consoles at him. “Sir … it’s the admiral.”

  He picked up a handset. “Admiral. Stramaglia here.”

  “What’s the situation, CAG?” Tarrant’s voice was level but strained.

  “We don’t know what started it, Admiral,” Stramaglia said carefully. “But the Bear and one of our planes are both out of action, and the rest are in a furball.”

  “Goddamn,” the admiral said, echoing Stramaglia’s feelings. There was a pause. “All right, CAG. Pull those Tomcats out of there. Fast. There’s going to be hell to pay for this one.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” he answered slowly.

  He replaced the handset and reached for the radio microphone.

  0919 hours Zulu (0819 hours Zone)

  Tomcat 201 Redwing Flight

  The Russian tried to evade again, but this time the Sidewinder got a piece of him. Coyote watched as the MiG started coming apart. Somehow the pilot had time to eject.

  “Splash one!” John-Boy said.

  “Good chute! I’ve got a good chute from the Soviet!” Coyote added.

  His threat warning buzzed. “The other guy’s coming down on us,” Nichols announced. “He’s at five o’clock!”

  “Fox two! Fox two!” That was Batman’s voice, announcing another Sidewinder attack. Coyote threw his plane into a sharp right turn, hoping that even if the missile didn’t tag his opponent it would at least keep the Russian busy enough to allow him to turn the tables.

  “No good! Missed the bastard!” That was Malibu, sounding distinctly unlike a laid-back surfer now.

  “Where is he, John-Boy?” Coyote asked. He scanned the sky through the canopy, searching for the MiG. “I’ve lost him.”

  “One o’clock! One o’clock high!” Nichols shot back.

  Coyote spotted the MiG. “All right, Ivan, I’m tired of this game.” He pulled back on the stick and went to full afterburner. “Batman, let’s nail this sucker so we can go home!”

  “Ninety-nine aircraft! Ninety-nine aircraft!” That was CAG’s voice giving the code that signaled the message was for all planes. “Break off and RTB. Repeat, return to base!”

  “Is he kidding?” Lieutenant Baird asked. “Five to one odds and he wants us to run?”

  “I think there was an up gripe about my radio in the last maintenance log,” Sheridan added rebelliously. “I’m having a lot of trouble reading them back at home plate.”

  “All aircraft return to base. Acknowledge.” Stramaglia sounded insistent … angry. But whether it was at the grumbling or at the orders he was required to give, Coyote couldn’t be sure.

  “You heard the man,” Coyote said. “Break off! Break off! Herd them out of here, Batman! I’ll stay on him until you’re clear.”

  “Roger, Two-oh-one.” Even Batman, who should have known better, sounded like he was plotting mutiny. But the dots representing Ajax Flight on his VDI were turning away, heading back toward the carrier. That left only the MiG to worry about.

  He almost hoped the Russian would give him an excuse to finish the job.

  0920 hours Zulu (0820 hours Zone)

  Misha Leader

  South of the Faeroe Islands

  Captain Second Rank Terekhov gaped at his radar display, unable, unwilling to believe what it showed. Why were the Americans breaking off? They’d outnumbered him, out gunned him. Yet at the moment when they could have destroyed his aircraft four of them had turned away, and the fifth was doing nothing to close in for a kill.

  “Cossack, this is Misha,” he said on the carrier control frequency. “Enemy has discontinued action. Request instructions. Over.” Part of him was afraid the carrier would order him to attack, another part wished that they would. To return home now would be to face punishment … disgrace. Better, perhaps, to follow Nickolaev.

  “Misha, Cossack,” the reply came back quickly. His controller sounded almost as shattered as he felt. Not surprising, in view of what had just happened. For all the smug confidence of the High Command, it seemed the Americans were adopting an aggressive posture after all. “Return to base.”

  “Acknowledged, Cossack.” He glanced at his fuel gauge. “I will need in-flight refueling to reach you.”

  “Understood. A tanker will rendezvous. Cossack out.”

  He watched his radar screen carefully as he turned for home, but the lone American fighter continued to circle as before. Terekhov shook his head in wonder. Why hadn’t the Americans followed through on their advantage? Why was he still alive?

  CHAPTER 10

  Wednesday, 11 June, 1997

  1118 hours Zulu (1318 hours Zone)

  The Kremlin Moscow, RSFSR

  It was
an opulent room, with wood paneling and a thick carpet, heavy brass lamps gleaming with polish, masterpieces hanging on each wall. The inner sanctum of the Kremlin was a place of power, a sharp contrast to the dirty streets and impoverished, hungry people beyond the ancient stone walls.

  General Vladimir Nikolaivich Vorobyev wasn’t listening to the GRU colonel who was finishing the summary of the situation in Scandinavia and the Norwegian Sea. He had seen the report before the meeting convened. Vorobyev was concerned now not with information but with analysis … a quick judgment of how his colleagues might react to the latest news. The coalition of military, KGB, and hard-line party men who had asserted control over the Soviet Union in the wake of the assassination in Oslo was fragile at best. Most of the ten men in the lavish conference room hated most of the others … and each one had his own agenda, his own plans for how to isolate the others and consolidate power.

  That was neither unusual nor alarming. It was rivalries and hatreds that supplied the checks and balances that had kept the system running for many long years. He knew how they felt about each other, about him. Everything was factored into his plans.

  Let them hate me, so long as they fear me. He remembered that the saying was reputed to have been a favorite phrase of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. Inwardly Vorobyev smiled. What would his good Communist ministers think if they knew he was comparing himself to a Caesar?

  “Again and again we were assured that the Americans would not become involved!” That was Ubarov, the newly “elected” President, a stolid, unimaginative man who looked and sounded like Khrushchev but had more of the personality of a Chemenko, a compliant mouthpiece who would do as he was told. Ubarov was being surprisingly vocal today. Perhaps he feared the West more than he feared Vorobyev. Or perhaps one of the other power brokers in the room had primed him beforehand.

  That was a mistake Comrade President Vasily Fyodorovich Ubarov would make only once.

  The GRU man looked unhappy and glanced toward Vorobyev, but the general merely leaned back in his seat and watched the others thoughtfully.

  “If the military had played its part properly, they would not have become involved.” Aleksandr Dmitrivich Doctorov favored Vorobyev with an oily smile. He was the head of the KGB and thus the closest thing to an ally the general had in this room. The KGB had regained much of the power that had been stripped away from the organization in the wake of the failed coup against Gorbachev by the “Gang of Eight,” and Doctorov wielded considerable power. His role in the elimination of Ubarov’s late unlamented predecessor had been crucial, but the army and the KGB still needed each other while the new regime was consolidating its power base. Still, old rivalries ran deep, and the alliance would last no longer than absolutely necessary. “Perhaps we should be concerned with the judgment of our good Admiral Khenkin?”

  Vorobyev toyed for a moment with the idea of following Doctorov’s lead and making Red Banner Northern Fleet’s commander in chief a convenient scapegoat. But the navy was still too important to Operation Rurik’s Hammer to risk the turmoil Khenkin’s disgrace would cause. They needed Khenkin to make the plan work.

  But of course if Vorobyev backed Khenkin now and there were more failures, Doctorov would have the general neatly boxed in. That was an accepted part of the game of politics in the Kremlin, and Doctorov was a master player. The KGB chief was the sort of man who paid far more attention to his personal position and security than he did to trifling issues of victory and defeat. It was that kind of mentality that had hamstrung the Politburo throughout most of the Cold War and made the reforms of Gorbachev inevitable. But the cures embraced by the reformers had been worse than the disease they were meant to combat, and Vorobyev was willing to tolerate Doctorov as long as the Union could be returned to its old status as a superpower.

  “I think the admiral can be considered blameless in this matter,” Vorobyev said smoothly. “This looks more like an accidental escalation. Khenkin’s predictions are rarely wrong, but no one can allow for the tensions of the moment. The Americans fired … but we have no way of knowing if it was premeditated or simply a tactical miscalculation.”

  “Surely you are not suggesting we ignore the matter?” Foreign Minister Anton Ivanovich Boltin looked shocked. “Whether the cause was an error or some deliberate Western policy, shots have been fired. The Americans will not ignore that. Not this time.” He paused. “This is not so much a military failure as one of intelligence, though. Surely there were signs that the Americans might be pushed into action.”

  Vorobyev studied the Foreign Minister thoughtfully. He had been a reasonably loyal member of the old cabinet, compliant with hard-line policies but apparently close to the President. He was known as a good Party man, but first and foremost as a survivor. Now he seemed to be siding with the military against the KGB, and when a skilled fence-sitter came out clearly on one side or another of a Kremlin power struggle, it was a good indication of where the power lay. There were many lingering resentments between the Party and the KGB. It was hard to forget the days when the KGB had allowed the reformers to consolidate power and outlaw the Party altogether.

  “I did not say that we would ignore the situation,” Vorobyev said, carefully ignoring the barbed comment about intelligence failures. He was glad to know the military was still on top in the new power structure, but he didn’t intend to allow rivalries to come out in the open just yet. “Obviously, with tensions as high as they are now there is no question of trying to smooth this matter over with the Americans. Their neutrality would not have lasted much longer in any event. Norway is an old ally of theirs and we were lucky to get as much time as they have given us.”

  Boltin nodded thoughtfully. “True enough. In that much, at least, the KGB’s predictions were accurate.” He favored Doctorov with a venomous look, and there were scattered nods around the table from some of the other politicians.

  “Yes, we all owe the Committee for State Security a vote of thanks for their masterful analysis of the West’s situation,” Vorobyev interjected quickly before the KGB chief could react to Boltin’s thinly veiled insult. He needed Doctorov’s good will more than the Party’s, at least for now, and they couldn’t afford to waste time or effort in internal squabbles. The new government’s control over the Soviet Union was still tenuous at best, though the mobilization against the “possible spread of Western anarchy” was rapidly allowing the Red Army and the KGB to deploy enough strength to dominate key areas. “We always knew that there were risks involved in Rurik’s Hammer, that there were some elements we would not be able to control. Neither the KGB nor Admiral Khenkin can be held responsible for what the Americans choose to do.”

  “But what do we do?” Ubarov demanded. “War with the Americans was never a part of the plan.”

  “Not an all-out war, no.” Vorobyev smiled. “It is in no one’s interest for the nuclear missiles to fly. I believe the Americans will feel that as strongly as I do. The important thing now is to hold them at arm’s length while we complete the conquest of Scandinavia. At that point they will be in the unenviable position of choosing between an unacceptable escalation or a stalemate. While we, on the other hand, will be poised to dominate Europe from our new flanking positions.”

  “Hold them at arm’s length,” Doctorov mused. “Then you mean to strike at the carrier battle group? No other American force is in a position to intervene.”

  “There is one other that must be cleared in order to isolate the battle group,” Vorobyev said. “In fact, a determined strike on this target could well discourage them from further adventures within our exclusion zone.” He smiled. “I am recommending that we introduce Plan North Star immediately. At the same time it would be wise to begin harassing the American ships … perhaps a few of our attack submarines would be well employed in this. After North Star has been resolved we will evaluate the situation and decide what else needs to be done.”

  He saw heads nodding across the table, and his smile broadened. They had a tiger
by the tail in Scandinavia. Rurik’s Hammer had to succeed if the Soviet Union was to regain power in Europe. This time it would be the Germans and the British who would have to come begging to Moscow for the very right to survive! Every one of those men knew that there was no going back now.

  And as long as Rurik’s Hammer was in motion, they needed Vorobyev. While Doctorov maneuvered and Ubarov trembled and the rest tried to predict the outcome and make the right political choices, it would be the army that solidified its power base and made sure that the Rodina would never again be humbled by the West.

  1145 hours Zulu (1045 hours Zone)

  Viking 704

  West of the Shetland Islands

  The S-3B Viking banked left and settled onto a new heading, but as far as Magruder was concerned it might as well have been holding steady on an endless flight to nowhere. Outside was the same monotony of cloud and sea, with little prospect of a break in the routine. It was a common belief among fighter pilots that the men who flew ASW missions slept through their flights and returned home with numb asses, and Tombstone was beginning to believe it.

  For a Tomcat pilot, Tombstone told himself, a desk job at the Pentagon was a taste of Hell … but the cockpit of an S-3 was Purgatory, pure and simple.

  The Viking was an amazing aircraft. That much he was willing to concede. Handsome, high-winged, with fine lines and an aerodynamic design that made it a dream to fly, the S-3 had only one thing in common with the F-14 he knew so well. Both were dedicated weapons platforms, mounting sophisticated equipment and electronics all concentrated on fulfilling one purpose and one purpose only.

  In the case of the Viking that purpose was submarine hunting, a job the aircraft performed splendidly. Magruder couldn’t argue with the versatility of the machine or with the skill and dedication of the three other men aboard, all experienced sub-hunters from the VS-42 squadron, the King Fishers.