by Dale Brown
“Acknowledged, cleared to land,” the pilot repeated. The young, easily excitable copilot looked immensely relieved—this had been one hell of a past couple days. It wasn’t just the attack against the United States that made it so amazing—the pilot still wasn’t convinced that that had been a wise move, but he had to give General Gryzlov credit for daring to twist the tiger’s tail like that.
No, not just to twist the tiger’s tail—to rip off the tiger’s legs and beat him with them!
What was really astonishing was the rapid and generational transformation of the Russian military, especially its air forces. No longer would Russia’s military strength rest with its ground and naval forces. The air forces had metamorphosed from a mere transportation-and-support group to a global, rapid-response, precision-striking force. Never before had the air forces been decisive in any battle—this was the first complete victory, and certainly not the last.
Yakutsk Air Base was the prototype of that incredible transformation. In the past, Russia had relied on enormous aircraft and many immense bases located throughout its vast territory to fuel its strike aircraft. Most of the bases east of the Urals had been abandoned, since most military leaders thought that the wastelands of Siberia represented more of an obstacle to be avoided or overflown rather than a target of conquest.
No longer. Aerial-refueling tankers ruled Siberia, and tankers led the way in this war against America and would lead the way for decades to come. With the fleet of late-model tankers Russia was developing, like this Ilyishin-78, the entire globe was truly within reach. There were a few bombers and fighters stationed at Yakutsk, as at every other Russian military base with enough concrete to park one, but here tankers ruled.
With Yakutsk’s tankers opening an air bridge between the bases in the west and North America, Russia finally had a chance to regain its rightful status as a world superpower. General Gryzlov—most Russian military officers still did not refer to him as “President,” believing strongly that it was more of an honor to be called by his military rank than by any political appellation—had to be one of the most visionary airpower leaders in history.
It appeared that the rest of the fleet had already returned from their missions—the ramp was choked with Il-78 and Tupolev-16 tankers, MiG-29 and MiG-23 fighter jets, and even several Tu-95 and Tu-22M bombers. There was a security vehicle parked right on the hold line at the approach end of the runway—rather unusual, but not unexpected with the heightened security. There didn’t seem to be too much activity elsewhere, except for a few roving security patrols, mostly wheeled armored personnel carriers with a large cannon or machine gun mounted on top.
“Check the runway status, copilot,” the pilot ordered.
“Da.” On the command radio, the copilot spoke, “Tower, braking action and runway visual-range report?”
“Runway visual range two thousand meters,” the tower operator reported. Then, hesitantly, he continued, “Caution, runway braking action khudshiy. I repeat, runway braking action khudshiy. Khudshiy!”
The Il-78 copilot stared at his pilot with a look of absolute horror. The pilot was concentrating on nailing this landing with the weather conditions worsening outside, so it took a few seconds for the message and the copilot’s stunned expression to register. “Uyedi na huy!” the pilot shouted. “Go around! Go around! Full power!” The copilot slowly but deliberately shoved the throttles up to full military power. The pilot pitched the nose to level, arresting their descent less than fifty meters aboveground. It seemed to take forever for the airspeed to come up, and for a moment the pilot was sure they’d stall and smack into the ground, well short of the runway.
But they were low on fuel, and gross weight was very low. Soon the airspeed started to increase as the engines spooled up to full power. Once they had reached best-angle climb speed, he carefully raised the nose, every nerve ending in his body alert to the possibility of an accelerated stall. When the vertical speed, airspeed, and altimeter needles all crept upward together, he ordered, “Gear up, flaps to twenty.”
“Who should I call?” the copilot yelled frantically. He was looking out the windscreen in a panic, trying to see anything that might indicate what the emergency was. “Who should I talk to?”
“Wait until I get the plane cleaned up, damn it!” the pilot shouted. “Flaps full up! Check igniters on and inertial separators deployed!” The copilot checked the switch positions, then nervously scanned out the windscreens for any sign of trouble. As soon as the plane was safely climbing and the gear and flaps retracted, the pilot banked steeply away from the airfield, expecting any moment to feel or hear an explosion.
As relieved as he’d been just moments earlier to break out of the clouds and see the runway, he was even more relieved when he finally reentered the clouds a few moments later.
Sorry about that, sir,” Ted Merritt radioed. He was stationed up inside the control tower cab at Yakutsk Air Base, along with a Russian-speaking Marine. Another Marine was tightly binding the Russian noncom’s hands behind him with plastic handcuffs—he was already facedown on the floor, gagged with a rag strapped around his mouth. “Looks like he used a ‘scatter’ code—first time I’ve heard one. I’ve got the tower operator secured now—we can’t trust him on the radios any longer. My corporal will do the radios from now on.”
“Roger that,” Colonel Hal Briggs responded. “That tanker’s not going far.” “Stand by,” he responded. “Break. Briggs to McLanahan. One got away at the last second. You got him, or do you want us to take him?”
Stand by, Dave,” Patrick McLanahan replied from aboard his EB-52 Megafortress, flying just southeast of Yakutsk. He briefly activated the Megafortress’s laser radar, which used laser emitters mounted on all sides of the aircraft to instantly “draw” a detailed picture of every object within three hundred miles of the bomber. He immediately spotted the retreating Il-78 tanker. Although it was not yet out of range of the weapons he carried aboard his bomber, his guys on the ground could do this job much better, and he could save his munitions. “McLanahan to Wohl,” he spoke, using his subcutaneous satellite transceiver to talk directly to his men at Yakutsk. “Sergeant Major, take it down.”
“Roger, sir,” Sergeant Major Chris Wohl responded. He, along with a four-man Marine fire team reinforced by a security team armed with M249 squad automatic weapons, had already set out sensors and mines around the base and were now guarding the main entrance, which was just a few kilometers from a major highway that led to the city of Yakutsk itself, just twenty klicks away. Two more fire teams were spread out around the perimeter of the base, accompanied by Bastian and Angel, while the last team was sent out to help secure the fuel depot and drive vehicles. “Angel, take it.”
“Copy,” Staff Sergeant Emily Angel responded simply. Like Wohl, she was wearing her Tin Man electronic battle armor, standing guard at the north side of the base. She already had her electromagnetic rail gun raised and, using her powered exoskeleton, effortlessly and precisely tracked the Russian aircraft. Moments after she responded, she squeezed the trigger. An eighteen-ounce titanium projectile sped out of the weapon with a muzzle velocity of over eighteen thousand feet per second, leaving a blue-orange trail of vaporized air behind it.
As usual, it appeared as if the projectile missed, and Angel took another shot a few seconds later. But the first shot did not miss. Instead of hitting the outboard engine on the left wing, the projectile pierced the engine’s pylon, severing several fuel, pneumatic, hydraulic, and bleed air lines. The Il-78’s pilot had no choice but to shut the engine down before it tore itself apart.
The second shot also did not miss. It traveled directly up the tailpipe of the inboard engine on the left wing, exactly where Angel had aimed. The projectile had already softened from friction as it traveled through the air, and flying through the nearly two-thousand-degree jet exhaust made it softer still—so when the practically molten titanium hit the engine’s combustion chamber, it completely disintegrated into a f
ist-size slug of metal that sped through the compressor section of the engine and spattered, shredding the compressor blades and instantly tearing apart the Soloviev D-30KP engine.
The Ilyushin-78 could fly very well on just two engines, especially at its light gross weight, but the pilot had to lower the nose to regain his lost airspeed, and he was hit at just over four hundred meters aboveground—there was no time to try to coax it back to flying speed. The pilot made the decision to pull the right throttles to idle and do a controlled crash landing. The Il-78 flew much better with the right engines pulled back to more closely match the destroyed left engines, so the pilot was able to pancake his tanker into the boggy tundra in an almost perfectly wings-level attitude.
“Splash one big-ass plane,” Angel reported.
“Good shooting, Angel,” Wohl said. “Take your fire team and check for survivors. Bring back the injured and nonresisters—deal with the others. We have enough captives here already.”
“Copy,” Angel said simply—she rarely said much more than that while wearing the Tin Man battle armor. She radioed her Marine fire team to pick her up in a Russian wheeled armored personnel carrier, and they drove quickly out to the crash site.
In thirty minutes she returned with all seven crew members, including one fatality and two injured in the crash. The conscious Russians were shocked to see the U.S. Marines at their air base in the middle of nowhere in Siberia, and even more amazed to see Angel in her Tin Man electronic battle armor.
But not as amazed as they were when they saw a weird-looking B-52 bomber on final approach to their runway. It was a B-52, but with a long pointed nose, angled downward like a supersonic transport’s so the pilot could see the runway better, and with a strange, angled V-shaped tail that looked almost invisible.
The B-52 stopped in less than half the length of the runway and quickly taxied to a designated parking spot, where fuel trucks were waiting. With the engines still running, the belly hatch popped open, and Patrick McLanahan and twelve more men and women stepped out. This EB-52’s crew compartment, which normally carried just two crew members, had been modified with bolt-in seats to accommodate six additional crew members on both the upper and lower decks. After stretching their cramped and aching muscles, the twelve maintenance technicians got to work refueling the Megafortress bomber.
“Dobro pozhalovat Yakutsk, General,” Hal Briggs said to Patrick when they met up at the base-operations complex at the foot of the control tower. Even in his own Tin Man battle armor, he was able to salute the general as he entered the building, then shook hands with him. He had a broad smile on his face after he removed his helmet and ran a hand across his shaved head. “I’ve been learning a little Russian just in case. Welcome to Camp Vengeance, sir.”
“Camp Vengeance? Excellent name.”
“One of the Marines named it—I think it’s damned appropriate.”
“I agree,” Patrick said. “Run down the situation here for me, Hal. We’ll blast off again as soon as we’re refueled, and we’ll set up air-base defense from the air and help escort in the other planes.”
“Roger that, sir,” Hal said. He led Patrick over to a large map of Yakutsk hanging on the wall behind the flight-planning desk. “We’re here in the base-ops buildings, which includes radar, communications, weather, and security forces. This west complex here is the main aircraft-parking area—eighteen hangars and a mass parking apron for about thirty heavies. We’ve moved all the Russian planes out of the hangars to make way for our guys, and we’ve got the captives housed in these two hangars, about two hundred or so.”
“Two hundred? We expected a lot more than that, didn’t we?”
“We made a decision and put all the troops we feel are noncombatant types in a separate hangar, under minimal guard,” Briggs said. “It’s a risk, but putting four or five hundred together is riskier. The hard-core security troops, fliers, senior officers, and noncoms are under close guard. Eventually the others will screw up enough courage to sneak out and try to free the others, and that’s when we might have to waste a few. Until we get more guys in here, that’s the best I can do.”
“How long can you hold out?”
“Twelve Marines to guard two hundred captives—I’d say so far it’s a fair fight, until the jarheads start getting real tired or the noncombatants start getting real stupid. So far it’s quiet. Mark Bastian is supervising. The sight of us in Tin Man getups really freaks ’em out, but it won’t take them long to get over their fear and start planning a breakout. Now that you brought some more aircraft techs, that’ll leave more of the Marines available for perimeter security and guard duty.
“We parked a few planes here and there outside base ops to make it look busy. There were a few bombers getting some work done in the east hangar complex—shut that down, captured a Russian colonel.
“Across the runway is the industrial area—storage, fuel tanks, physical plant, et cetera. Back here is the housing area, squadron ready rooms, and other support buildings. We believe that most of the place was pretty much closed down for the night, but in about an hour or so, the regular folks will start showing up, and then the shit will hit the fan. We’ve got ‘detour’ and ‘road closed’ signs up to try to get folks turned around, but that won’t fool ’em for long. Chris has set up mines and sensors around the perimeter, and the Marines are ready for a fight. They even brought a few unmanned recon planes to help themselves scan the perimeter. Those guys are damned good.”
Patrick nodded. It wasn’t much of a defense—their forces were stretched hair thin. But the Marines were accustomed to dropping into hot landing zones surrounded by bad guys and being asked to do the impossible with almost nothing. These twenty-first-century Marines had a lot more high-tech gadgets to help them, but it still came down to the basic task of sending a few brave fighters into the breach and hoping they utilized their skills, courage, and tenacity to the max. “Pass along my thanks to Lieutenant Merritt and the Tin Men for a job well done,” Patrick said. “Again, I have no intention of staying here a second longer than I have to.”
“Everyone else on time, sir?”
“So far,” Patrick said. “The MC-17 transports should be penetrating Petropavlovsk’s airspace any minute now, with Rebecca and Daren leading a three-ship Vampire escort team. By tonight, with some luck, we’ll be ready to start attack operations.”
Over the Bering Sea, East of Petropavlovsk
That same time
Time to go night-night, tovarich,” Daren Mace said. He touched his supercockpit display on the icon for Petropavlovsk’s surveillance radar and spoke, “Attack target.”
“Attack order received, stop attack,” the computer responded, and moments later Mace’s EB-1C Vampire bomber had fired two AGM-88 high-speed antiradar missiles at the ground radar. Soon the Russian long-range radar was off the air.
“The radar is down,” Daren reported. “The fighters will have to start finding targets on their own.” He entered a few more voice commands. “Jammers and countermeasures are active, and the MC-17 is going active as well.” Daren briefly activated his laser radar, which instantly “painted” a picture of the airspace around him. “Two fighters in the vicinity, eleven o’clock, thirty-five miles. They’re mine.”
Rebecca Furness glanced over at Daren’s supercockpit display on the right side of the Vampire’s instrument panel, which clearly depicted the tactical situation: They were flying twenty miles ahead of their charges, two MC-17 special-operations transport planes. Modified by the aircraft and weapons experts at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, the same unit that had designed and fielded the modified B-52s and B-1s, the MC-17s had sophisticated navigation and self-defense systems that allowed them to fly deep into enemy territory. Each was carrying seventy to eighty crew members, technicians, and security forces, plus a hundred fifty thousand pounds of ordnance, equipment, and supplies to support this mission.
Another EB-1C Vampire had launched two StealthHawks to attack Petr
opavlovsk; it was now standing by a couple hundred miles to the northeast, ready to recover and rearm them for follow-on attacks. Both StealthHawks were armed with a mix of antiradar and mine-dispensing standoff munitions that would destroy all of Petropavlovsk’s air-defense missile sites and, with luck, shut down the airstrip as well. A third Vampire was standing by with Longhorn missiles, heavier mine-laying munitions, and defensive air-to-air missiles, ready to rush in to completely shut down the base and help escort the MC-17s through to the Siberian coastline once the StealthHawks finished their attack runs on Petropavlovsk.
“Attack fighters,” Daren ordered.
“Attack order received, stop attack,” the computer responded. Moments later: “Forward bomb doors opening…Launcher rotating…Scorpion away.”
Suddenly the datalink from Petropavlovsk that was providing steering cues to the air-defense fighters was cut off. That happened frequently, especially if the enemy was jamming the radar. The antijam circuits would take over and change frequencies, and soon the datalink would be active again. The MiG-29’s fire-control system kept the target’s heading and speed in memory, providing an estimated position on the heads-up display, so if necessary the MiG pilot could simply—
“Zima flight, Zima flight!” the radio suddenly blared, startling the pilot. “The base is under attack! The airfield has been bombed, and the surveillance radar has been destroyed! Take over the—” And just then the transmission was cut off by loud squealing and popping on the UHF radio frequency.
The MiG pilot couldn’t help but think of his alternate landing bases: Magadan, their primary alternate, was over a thousand kilometers away, and Kavaznya, their emergency landing base, was not that much closer. They were already close to bingo fuel, and they hadn’t even launched any missiles yet! Almost time to activate his own radar and attack. He hoped his wingman was watching his fuel gauges. What in hell hit them? Was it a cruise missile?