Fallout

by James W. Huston

  “You’ve got to stop them!”

  “I’ll see what I can do, but I am not optimistic.”

  “Then you’ll have to get the other Indian fighters to go after the two MiGs as well.”

  “To shoot down our own airplanes? How would they know which one had this Russian in the plane?”

  “They wouldn’t. They might have to take both of them out. Look, we have to stop Khan. If he succeeds, there will be a nuclear war, and you know it.”

  Sunil was silent. “I will go there myself and inform your pilot. I will let him decide.”

  “You must hurry!”

  28

  The ring was amplified and broadcast by a PA system throughout the small area. Luke’s heart pounded in his chest as he sat up straight and watched the ground crew scurry around. The officer in charge of the ground crew held the phone to his ear, spoke quickly back, then put it down. He ran to Luke’s ladder and climbed up to talk to him. “One of our border guards reported that a flight of jets just flew over him at very low altitude. Very fast.”

  “Pakistani?” Luke asked as he tightened his lap belts. He looked up at lights from a helicopter that was approaching from the east. The craft’s anticollision lights intruded on the otherwise pitch-black sky.

  The Indian officer gazed at the helicopter with a puzzled expression, then replied, “Has to be. We aren’t flying anywhere near there. They are on their way.”

  “Your airborne radar planes didn’t see anything?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I am just telling you what they told me.”

  “Where are they?” he asked, trying to disguise the unsteady voice he heard in his own head. The helicopter continued to approach, making conversation harder.

  The officer handed him a chart and shone a flashlight on it. “They were coming through a small pass . . . here.” He pointed.

  “That’s about two hundred miles from here. Heading?”

  “He couldn’t tell. But he estimated southeast.”

  “Let’s go!” Luke said. “Get this info to—”

  “He already has it.”

  “Then let’s get on with this,” Luke said, starting to envision a low-level intercept at night. Khan clearly had night-vision goggles and knew how to use them. Luke hadn’t even thought about asking for goggles.

  Luke was about to close his canopy when out of the corner of his eye he saw a figure jogging toward him from the helicopter. Suddenly Vlad scrambled down from his cockpit with something in his hand. He ran and caught up with the man from the helicopter, who turned slightly to talk to Vlad. The red rotating beacon caught the side of his face; Luke could tell it was Sunil. Strange, Luke thought. What’s he doing out here?

  He waited to start his engines. They finished their conversation, and Sunil turned toward Luke. He waved, and Luke waved back. Sunil turned and ran back to the helicopter, which was quickly airborne again.

  Vlad ran around to the port side of the MiG and scurried up the ladder. As Vlad reached the cockpit level, Luke got a glimpse of what was in Vlad’s hand—something long and sharp and metal. His heart jumped. All his doubts about Vlad came flooding back, all Brian’s doubts, all Katherine’s unwillingness to take Vlad at face value. Luke saw it all before him, as he envisioned himself at Vlad’s mercy beneath a tree in Nowhere, India. He was still strapped in and had no chance to do anything about it if Vlad meant him harm.

  Vlad stood next to Luke and leaned over toward him. He grabbed Luke by the helmet and pulled him toward himself. Vlad brought his left hand up and showed Luke he had a screwdriver in his hand. He said loudly through Luke’s helmet, “I am going to use this. Don’t tell our Indian friends. In the left wheel well of our airplanes is a small box that I will open. It will set our engines on their war mode. Hotter temperatures and more thrust. It will give us all the thrust this engine was intended to put out. Don’t tell them, because it will probably also ruin the engines!” Vlad smiled a huge, energetic smile.

  “What was Sunil doing here?”

  “Don’t worry about it. It was about me. I explained everything to him about what we are doing.”

  “But he was headed over here.”

  Vlad nodded with understanding. “He thought I was in this airplane.”

  Luke watched him disappear into the left wheel well, then reemerge after thirty seconds. He gave Luke a nod and a thumbs-up as he ran back toward his own airplane.

  Luke quickly lowered the canopy. He shook his head as the first thought that came to him was that Vlad had somehow disconnected the left landing gear or released a fitting in the hydraulic system. As soon as he got up to speed, the MiG would lose the left strut and veer off the road, killing him. He was angry at himself for not trusting Vlad but unable to rid himself of lingering doubts.

  He turned on the electrical power from the battery and quickly switched on the auxiliary power unit. It began turning his number one engine as the Indian ground crew watched. Two men stood to the left of the MiG with fire extinguishers in their hands, and a plane captain stood in the grass directly in front of Luke. Luke squinted to see him and realized that his windscreen was covered with mist. Great weather brief. He glanced up at the sky but couldn’t see it through the darkness and the tree covering him.

  As the engine turned, Luke watched a man by the road working with a box that had a long electrical line coming from it. It clearly wasn’t responding as he would like. He adjusted something, and suddenly the highway was lit by a mile-long string of lights on either side, creating a rough, wet, uneven, poorly maintained runway. It was the very kind of strip the MiG-29 was designed to operate from.

  The first engine roared to life, and the fuel flow, turbine inlet temperature, and RPM climbed into normal ranges. He deselected the auxiliary power unit and quickly did a cross-bleed start of the number two engine, redirecting some of the jet air from the first engine across to the second engine to get its turbine spinning. He watched the RPM of the first engine dip slightly as the second began to turn. As soon as the second engine reached 10 percent RPM, he pulled its throttle off the stops, automatically lighting the engine off. The RPM jumped to 65 percent, idle, and he deselected cross-bleed. He turned on all the electronics and prepared to taxi.

  The plane captain began signaling for the preflight checks—flaps, control surfaces, and the like. Luke was having none of that and shook his head vigorously. He had to get in the air.

  Luke signaled to the plane captain to pull the chocks away from the wheels, and the plane captain signaled the men on either side of Luke’s MiG. They removed the large wooden blocks in front of the oversize tires. Luke switched on his taxi light, advanced the throttle, and the MiG-29 rolled down the grass toward the road thirty yards ahead. The MiG drew in the night air from the louvers that were open on the shoulders of the airplane. The large intakes that would feed the hungry engines with the air it needed while airborne remained closed, to avoid sucking anything off the ground and damaging the turbine blades.

  Luke looked to his right and saw the light on the nosewheel of Vlad’s MiG bouncing as he taxied forward from his position. As Luke headed toward the road in the pale moonlight that fought its way through the mist, the Indian ground crew saluted him. He returned their salute and turned on his radio. They had agreed to keep their radio communication to a minimum, and only on the frequency that Luke alone would choose.

  Luke pondered the idea of taking off from a state highway in the night to intercept an F-16 without the use of any ground or airborne early-warning radar to help him run the intercept. He tried not to think too hard about the fact that the only information they had on Khan’s whereabouts was from a border guard. The heading information they’d received was marginal at best, but Luke could imagine the heading, or calculate it, if Khan headed directly for his target. If he didn’t, Luke knew he would never find him.

  Luke scanned his engine instruments, glowing in the dark cockpit. He turned his MiG to face down the makeshift runway. He looked ahead of him at t
he narrow road with the lights on either side. It was slightly downhill and curved to the right in the distance where the lights stopped. The lights rose up and down with the road. It gave Luke the impression of trying to take off from a piece of bacon.

  He advanced his throttles and moved forward slightly, trying to point his MiG exactly down the center of the road. Then he glanced into his rearview mirror. Vlad was directly behind him. Luke looked at the clock on the dash and knew he had to go. He pushed the throttles to full military power, waited until 100 percent RPM was generated in each engine, did a quick check of the engine instruments and flight controls, and released the brakes on the Fulcrum. The plane sped down the road, the lights disappearing under its wings one by one. The bulbs reflected their white light off the inside of Luke’s canopy as if he were dashing into a movie theater.

  The MiG accelerated through eighty knots, then one hundred. The road dipped and the nose gear compressed but threw the Fulcrum’s nose back up as it headed out of the dip. The airplane almost had enough air over its wings to fly, and the impulse of climbing the small hill nearly threw the Fulcrum into the air before Luke was ready. He pushed the stick forward and held the Fulcrum on the ground waiting for the proper rotation speed.

  The curve in the road was coming up too quickly. He knew he had to be airborne before he reached it. He had disabled nosewheel steering and was able to keep the MiG on the road only by using the rudder pedals to control the big rudders behind him. He put in more rudder and checked his airspeed. He was passing through 135 knots. He hated the idea of taking off with rudder input, but he was afraid of losing control around the turn.

  He pulled the stick back smoothly, and the Fulcrum’s nosewheel came off the road. The louvers closed and the large engine intake doors opened, sucking in the fresh, moist air. The nose dipped, Luke trimmed it out, and the MiG lifted off. Luke could suddenly feel the crosswind he hadn’t even been aware of, having attributed all the side force to the curve. The rear wheels lifted off, and Luke felt himself drifting hard left over the road. He pushed the stick to the right and pulled back on the nose to climb over obstacles, the invisible trees and bushes and wires that surrounded the area. He wanted to get away from the earth as rapidly as he could. He punched in a little afterburner to climb faster, then immediately deselected it to save gas. He raised his flaps, sucked up the landing gear, and pulled away from the road and Vlad behind him.

  Vlad released the brakes on his Fulcrum as soon as the lights on Luke’s airplane showed him airborne. He rolled down the undulating road, acutely aware of the crosswind he’d seen Luke’s plane absorb. He gave himself a little afterburner just before liftoff to avoid the curve he’d seen Luke fight. He was promptly airborne, and he rendezvoused with Luke at five thousand feet over the local navigation aid they had agreed to use.

  Luke and Vlad kept their radars off. They knew they had to make the intercept without any help from a ground controller. They would get course corrections if absolutely necessary, but they wanted any communication kept to a minimum to avoid detection.

  Luke steadied on a heading of 220 to take them fifty miles ahead of Khan’s expected course. He suddenly realized he had no idea how many airplanes were with Khan. The border guard had simply said “airplanes.” That could mean two, or four, or six. It would be a rare person indeed who could distinguish the sound of two low-flying jets from that of three or four, especially if they flew directly overhead with their lights off.

  Luke increased his throttle until it was at the stops. He pulled back on the stick and climbed to ten thousand feet to save gas and have a better chance of detecting the low-flying Pakistanis with his infrared system.

  Luke knew the sensitivity of the F-16 radar-warning indicator much better than Vlad did. He wasn’t about to hand Khan any advance warning by giving him a radar strobe from his MiG. Even a passing hit would alert Khan that MiGs were airborne. Luke didn’t want Khan to have any idea they were coming until they were on top of him.

  Luke turned up the screen of his infrared detector to see the green against black clearly. It didn’t transmit anything, it just detected heat sources. He had practiced with it on almost every hop at the Nevada Fighter Weapons School. He found it easy to use and loved the idea of a totally passive intercept, where he would shoot down another airplane without even turning on his radar, without the other pilot even knowing he was nearby. It was a device few American fighters had. The F-16 had no infrared search-and-track system for air-to-air use, nor did the F/A-18 that Luke had spent most of his time flying.

  He checked the status of the two Archer and two Alamo missiles he was carrying. It was a decent load, but he would have preferred to carry four Archers. “Spread,” Luke transmitted. Vlad took combat spread, a mile to Luke’s right. They climbed to ten thousand feet, high enough to hear the chatter on the air-control frequency. The ten Indian MiG-29s Prekash had ordered to defend the nuclear plant were now airborne and flying low combat air patrol near the plant. Other airborne early-warning aircraft were searching for Khan and broadcasting everything they thought would help identify them to the fighter patrol. Luke was sure somebody would be monitoring the Indian radio channels and fighter control to alert Khan of any developments. Khan would receive any such intelligence over his own radio without disclosing his own position.

  Luke checked his chart again and turned toward Pakistan. Vlad was a mile to his right, slightly above him in combat spread. Luke studied the IR image and saw nothing that resembled an airplane. He didn’t have much range with the IR system, but he refused to turn on his radar and give himself away.

  He looked out toward the dark land below. He could barely see the ground. There were a few headlights on the invisible roads. The waning moon provided some illumination, but not enough to navigate by.

  Luke figured they’d beaten the F-16s to this point on their flight path by ten minutes. He turned outbound and headed toward the pass where the guard had heard the fighters. If his estimates were right, he had less than five minutes until he would be on top of the F-16s.

  Vlad was getting antsy. “Nothing.”

  “Ditto,” Luke replied.

  Luke suddenly saw a flash on the left side of his infrared screen. Something very hot was fifteen or twenty degrees below the horizon and far to his left. “Hard left!” he transmitted as he threw his stick to the side and rolled his Fulcrum into a ninety-degree angle of bank in the darkness. He headed left and down as his IR system continued to search for and reacquire the target. Luke couldn’t see anything and wondered if he’d deceived himself into thinking he’d seen a return. He searched higher and lower. Still nothing. His speed passed through 550 knots as he passed through five thousand feet toward the ground. He rolled out of his turn and pointed at where he thought the targets should be. He couldn’t find any signs of any airplanes at all.

  He began to doubt himself even more when suddenly he had a strobe, a hint of an IR return on his screen, still to the left and down. Then a second, then a third hit. It had to be them. They were low, and less than ten miles away, still far to his left. If he hadn’t caught the initial return, they would already be past him. He would never have seen them.

  He pulled into the targets in a descending left turn and accelerated. He tweaked the controls on the IR system to separate out the bogeys. He tried to remember the minimum safe altitude of the area to avoid flying into a hill or antenna tower, but couldn’t remember what it was.

  Luke heard a buzz in his helmet—the sound of an F-16 radar on his radar-warning receiver. He had a strobe from his one o’clock position, just to the right of his nose. “I’m getting tickled,” he transmitted ominously to Vlad.

  “So am I.”

  “I’m going active.” Luke threw on the switch for his radar and turned the powerful MiG-29 radar toward the targets tearing across the Indian countryside. He quickly located them and locked up the lead to concentrate the radar’s total energy on that one airplane. He was doing 620 knots. Luke was stunned.
The altitude readout showed “zero” feet, so low that the radar couldn’t tell they weren’t on the ground. Night-vision goggles, Luke concluded. That gave them a big advantage he hadn’t anticipated.

  He broke lock on the radar and went into track-while-scan. He saw two other targets immediately, and then a third came up tentatively on the screen. Abruptly the third target started turning toward him and coming up after him. Luke hesitated as he suddenly realized that Khan had done the very thing Luke had told him not to do—he’d brought fighter escort. Two light F-16s, unencumbered with fuel tanks or bombs, peeled off Khan’s formation to come after Luke and Vlad.

  They had speed, they had good position, and they had American forward-quarter-firing AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles. Luke knew they had to act immediately or they would be dead. “Two free fighters coming up after us, Vlad. I’m going low.”

  “Roger. I’m going up, then. Over,” Vlad responded quickly.

  They extinguished their anticollision lights.

  Luke pushed the nose of his MiG-29 over, to pass by the climbing F-16s and race toward Khan. The lead F-16 anticipated his move. Luke suddenly had an F-16 radar locked on him from the right side of his MiG. Luke had to turn into him to defend himself or he would never be able to intercept Khan. But if he did, Khan would slip away to his left. Luke had no choice.

  He brought the Fulcrum around hard right and looked up through the windscreen with his helmet-mounted sight toward where the F-16 should be. He couldn’t see him in the pitch-black sky. Luke tried to get the Archer missile to search for it, to give him the growl he yearned to hear, but there was no sound at all from his heat-seeking missiles.

  He strained against the high G forces as he continued around to the right. He slaved his radar to the right toward the F-16, but still nothing. He still had a hard strobe on his radar-warning indicator. The F-16 had him locked up. Luke dumped some chaff to try to break the radar lock but had no success. He was trapped. The F-16 was coming uphill at him. It had a radar lock and almost certainly a sweet infrared shot. Luke had nowhere to go. Suddenly he remembered to activate the electronic jammers in the hump of his MiG, the jammers designed and installed just to defeat American-built radars. He reached and quickly threw the switches. He waited for the flash of the AIM-9 missile coming off the rail, but so far he had seen nothing. Then the F-16 radar was gone, deceived by the electronics of the MiG. Luke grunted. Good old Russian engineering.