Warrior Class

by Dale Brown

  tack!" The group of about one hundred engineers, technicians, support crews, and administrators broke out into furious applause and cheers.

  Maybe the old fart did have some purpose in his life, Pavel thought.

  Ion Stoica, the chief test pilot at Metyor Aerospace, and his systems officer,

  a Russian ex-fighter pilot named Gennadi Yegorov, quickly boarded the Metyor-179 stealth fighterbomber and performed their power-off, power-on, and beforeengine start checklists. The interior of the aircraft hangar was then darkened, the doors rolled open, the aircraft was towed outside, and the engines started. All of the checklists took just a few minutes, because they were all computerized-the crew members had only a few checklists that they themselves had to perform to verify the computer's integrity.

  Now they sat to wait for the signal to depart.

  Zhukovsky Air Base east of Moscow was an active Russian Air Force military airfield, with several squadrons of Tu-95 Bear and Tu-22M Backfire heavy bombers located there, along with several types of trainers, transports, and other support aircraft. Maintaining secrecy at such a base was not difficult, although it was by far a top-secret facility. The airfield lights were always extinguished before any aircraft launch at night to hide the type and number of aircraft departing-a standard Soviet-era tactic, even in peacetime. Although the main base complex was close by on the north side of the runway, and a small housing area a few kilometers to the southeast, the runway itself was fairly isolated. No one could see the runway complex at night except the control tower personnel and security patrols that ringed the runways during every launch to keep away prying eyes.

  About three hours before sunset, two Tu-22 Backfire bombers began to taxi toward the active runway on a scheduled training mission from the main secure parking ramp, east of the Metyor facility. Backfire bombers always did all missions in pairs, from takeoff to touchdown, and so both bombers taxied into position at the end of the runway, staggered so their wingtips were less than fifty feet from one another. Behind them on the hold line was an old Ilyushin- 14 twin-piston trans-

  port plane, nicknamed Veedyorka, "The Bucket." Even though the plane was almost fifty years old, it was a rather common sight on most Russian airfields, shuttling parts and mail on short hops from base to base throughout the Commonwealth. It seemed quite comical to see one of Russia's most advanced aircraft, the Backfire, sharing a runway with one of Russia's most low-tech birds.

  After extending their variable-geometry wings to full takeoff extension, the Backfire bombers began their takeoff roll. The leader plugged in full afterburner and released brakes, shooting a plume of fire and clouds of thick black smoke behind him. Exactly six seconds later, the wingman plugged in his afterburners, and ten seconds after his leader, released brakes and shot down the runway after his leader. The clouds of black smoke in their wakes seemed to make the night even darker, despite the bright afterburner plume they trailed. When they reached midfield, not yet airborne but close to rotate speed, the 11- 14 Bucket taxied forward to the end of the runway. It was required to wait two minutes after the Backfires departed because the wingtip vortices of the two departing supersonic Backfires could easily flip the old transport over.

  It never made it to takeoff position. Something happened. The tower controllers noticed a bright spark on the right engine, followed by a flash of fire on the ground, followed a few seconds later by a tremendous explosion as the right engine exploded. The right-wing fuel tank ruptured, sending hundreds of gallons of avgas pouring onto the ramp. The transport was ablaze in less than twenty seconds. The tower controllers immediately hit the emergency alarm, which activated the lights at that spot on the runway and called out the base fire department. Security and rescue crews began to respond immediately.

  In the sudden confusion, no one on base noticed when a thin, black, almost invisible aircraft taxied out along a midfield taxiway near the Metyor Aerospace facility, pulled onto the active runway, and began its takeoff roll. The smoke from the departing Backfire bombers partially obscured it, but anyone else who might have noticed it depart in the confusion of the fire at the other end of the runway would've thought it was

  a third Backfire bomber. They may or may not have noticed that the third aircraft used only minimum afterburner power, no taxi lights, no anticollision lights, and no position lights during its takeoff run. Since it started its rolling takeoff run near midfield, it needed every remaining foot of Zhukovsky's

  fifteenthousand-foot-long runway before it left the ground, but once airborne, it climbed faster than the Backfires and quickly disappeared into the dark.

  Unlike other aircraft flying so close to Moscow's airspace, the Metyor- 179 stealth bomber did not use its transponder, the transmitter that alerted air traffic control of its position, altitude, and airspeed; neither did Stoica and Yegorov contact anyone on their radios, or check in with air traffic control or air defense command headquarters. Once its long, spindly landing gear was up, the Mt- 179 virtually disappeared.

  The Mt- 179 Tyenee's flight control computer, coupled with air data and fuel sensors, leveled the stealth bomber at twentyeight thousand feet-from now on, the computer would automatically adjust altitude based on best range fuel bum and aircraft gross weight, step-climbing as the aircraft got lighter, achieving the perfect balance between the power needed to climb and the faster airspeeds and lower fuel bum at higher altitude. It didn't have to worry about deconflicting itself with other aircraft, staying out of restricted airspace, or getting permission to cross national boundaries: its collision-avoidance system detected and displayed the location of any other transponder-equipped aircraft so it could avoid them in time; and because no radars on the ground could detect the aircraft, it was free to fly any course and any altitude the crew chose. Stoica had to make a couple of precautionary turns in Moscow's airspace to remain clear of some commercial air traffic that might get too close, and a few times they did get a solid "chirp" on their radar detectors., strong enough to know they might have been detected-no stealth system was 100 percent effective-but otherwise they proceeded on a direct

  11 great circle" course to their initial point. There was not enough air traffic around Kiev, Bucharest, or Sofia, the three largest cities on their flight path, to worry about deviations.

  During the two-hour flight to their initial point, Stoica and

  Yegorov busied themselves with checklists and updating their intelligence information. The Mt- 179 did not have a datalink system that automatically updated their attack computers, as many American and some Western attack aircraft did. Instead, ground technicians sent simple coded messages on a discreet, scrambled satellite communications channel. The ground controllers received information from commercial photoreconnaissance satellites, military communications taps from Zhukovsky and other military sources that they could access, and even news reports on television and on the Internet, then encoded the information and transmitted it to the crew. The two crew members decoded the messages, then made notes and symbols on their strip charts.

  Near Cluj, Romania, the flight control computer commanded Stoica to pull the throttles nearly all the way back to flight idle to save fuel, and the Mt- 179 Shadow started a shallow descent from about thirty-six thousand feet. In idle power, the cockpit was very quiet. The two crew members finished their checklists, took one last nervous pee into piddle packs, tightened their restraining harnesses and lap belts, and refastened oxygen masks and donned fireproof gloves. The action was about to begin.

  The last item on the checklist: Stoica reached back over his right shoulder as far as he could, and Yegorov reached forward and clasped his hand. No words were necessary. That was a tradition they'd started from the first day working together on the Metyor-179 stealth aircraft.

  But then, they'd done it before every test flight; now, it was to say "good luck" on their first strike mission.

  As they crossed western Bulgaria and into Macedonia, the radar warning receiver in the cockpit of the Metyo
r- 179 bleeped-but instead of the usual ground-radar S symbol, they saw a "bat-wing" symbol with a circle inside it. "NATO AWACS radar plane, eleven o'clock, range forty miles," Yegorov reported. "We're coming into extreme detection range now.'9

  "Here we go," Stoica said. "Prepare for attack." From its vantage point thirty miles east of Skopje, Macedonia, at thirty thousand feet, the NATO E-3AAirborne Warning and Control

  System (AWACS) radar aircraft, using its powerful AN/APY-2 radar mounted within the thirty-foot rotodome atop its fuselage, could see any normal aircraft flying inside Yugoslavia at any altitude and airspeed, as well as monitor aircraft flying in most of western Bulgaria, Bosnia, parts of Croatia, most

  of northern Greece, and parts of northern Italy.

  Although the Mt-179 was not a normal aircraft, Russian stealth technology such as was employed on the Metyor-179 Shadow was not perfect, and the closer they got to central Macedonia, the closer they got to the E-3 AWACS radar plane. Soon, the radar warning receiver was bleeping almost continuously. They did not want to waste fuel trying to circumnavigate the radar craft, and they would waste even more fuel trying to duck down to low altitude too soon.

  But they were carrying the solution-the R-60 defensive heat-seeking air-to-air missiles.

  "Acknowledged. R-60s ready for launch," Yegorov reported. Stoica pushed the power up until the Mt-179 had broken the sound barrier. Two minutes later, Yegorov said, "Coming in to extreme launch range. Ready to uncage.99

  "Uncage missiles," Stoica ordered. Yegorov hit a switch, which opened up a tiny titanium shutter in the wing leading edge, uncovering the R-60's heat-seeking sensor. His mouth and throat were dry and his forehead damp from the anticipation. In all his years flying for the Russian and Romanian Air Forces, he had never fired an air-to-air missile in anger-now, as a civilian, he was about to shoot down one of the biggest, most important support aircraft in the NATO arsenal. A few moments later, they received a SHOOT warning light. "Clear for launch," Stoica said.

  "Ready, ready, now." Yegorov hit the launch command button, and an R-60 missile leaped out of the left-wing launch chamber. Seconds later, Yegorov fired a second missile from the right. "Two missiles away. Bye-bye, Mr. AWACS plane."

  "0- 1, this is C- I," the senior controller called on the ship's intercom. "We've got an intermittent unknown target bearing

  zero-two-zero, range twenty miles, no altitude. Request permission for beam-sharpening mode."

  The operations crew commander of the sixteen-person NATO AWACS crew, a British Royal Air Force colonel, called up the senior controller's display on his own station. The radar sometimes couldn't see small or weak targets very well until they switched from long-range scan to short-range but highintensity beam-sharpening mode, which concentrated more energy on weaker targets. "Clear," the commander radioed back. "Crew, radar in narrow BIM, reconfigure." The rest of the crew needed to know when the radar was going to be switching modes because they could be flooded with targets in secondseverything from birds to clouds to balloons could show on radar now, until the computer "squelched" out slow-moving targets.

  The unknown target immediately popped into clear view. "Contact, bearing zero-one-five, range nineteen miles, descending through angels twenty, airspeed six-five-zero knots, negative IFF, designate as Hostile One. Hostile contact, crew."

  "Can we get some patrol aircraft up here to take a look?" the deputy commander, seated beside the commander on the first console, asked.

  "Patrol aircraft? What patrol aircraft?" the commander said. "Our patrols packed up their kits and departed. Thanks to the Americans, we have no air patrols over KFOR anymore."

  It was true. A month earlier, President Thorn of the United States had announced that the United States was pulling its ground and air forces out of KFOR and sending them home. The only American forces in southern Europe right now were Air Force E-3C AWACS radar planes, E-8A Joint STARS (Joint Surveillance, Targeting, and Reconnaissance System) radar planes, and a Navy-Marine Corps task force off the coast of Croatia in the Adriatic Ocean, plus the Sixth Fleet still operating in the Mediterranean Sea. All other air and ground forces, including almost ten thousand troops in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Montenegro, along with five thousand troops in Bosnia, were gone ...

  . . . and not just out of the Balkans, and not just back in the United States, but gone: the units had been disbanded, and the

  soldiers reassigned, offered early retirements, or involuntarily separated from military service.

  The United States was in the midst of a massive demilitarization never seen

  before. Troops were being pulled out of Europe and Asia in staggering numbers. Billions of dollars in military equipment was being sold, given to allied forces, or simply left in place. Virtually overnight, American military bases in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway were empty. Military and civilian cargo vessels were lined up in harbors all throughout Europe, ready to transport thousands of troops and millions of tons of supplies and belongings back to North America.

  The European members of NATO and the non-NATO members of KFOR vowed to continue the United Nations peacekeeping efforts in Kosovo and the Balkans, but without the United States, it seemed almost pointless. But the European nations had been demanding a greater role in security missions in Europe, so few could really complain when the United States unceremoniously left the field and went home-no one really expected it to happen so suddenly.

  "Who's the closest air defense assets we can call on?" the commander asked.

  "The Three-thirty-fourth Fighter Squadron out of Thessaloniki," his deputy said, punching up the unit's satellite and airborne telephone channels to its command post. "They have cross-border air defense arrangements with Macedonia-they can scramble fighters and have them up here in ten minutes."

  "Get them up here straightaway," the commander ordered. "Comm, C- 1, broadcast warning messages on all frequencies, get that hostile turned around. Notify Skopje and American Navy air traffic control about an unknown target we have marked as 'Hostile.' "

  "And if he doesn't turn around?"

  "There's not a bloody thing we can do about it," the commander said. "We might be able to convince Italy or Turkey to send a couple fighters up to take a look, but even they don't want to waste any fuel or air-frame time on anyone who's not a threat to their country. We just watch and--2'

  "Snap target! Snap target!" one of the radar technicians

  shouted. He immediately marked the new high-speed target with a blinking circle symbol, then sent an alert to every crew station. "Designate Highspeed One ... snap target, snap target, second high-speed target, designate Highspeed Two."

  "0-1, this is C-1," the senior controller on board the AWACS radar plane radioed on intercom to the operations crew commander. "We've got target Highspeed One, climbing through angels forty, range three miles and closingJast, speed eight hundred and increasing. Highspeed Two is following the same track, two seconds behind Highspeed One."

  "Missile attack!" the commander shouted. "Missile evasion tactics, now! Shut down the radar! Countermeasures ready!" He punched the HOT button on his intercom panel so he could talk to both the ops crew and flight crew. "Missile attack, missile attack, pilot, turn ninety left and descend to angles onezero now." At the same time, the crew defensive systems officer began sending out radar and infrared jamming signals and ejecting chaff and flare bundles, trying to spoof and decoy the incoming missiles.

  But it was far too late-once the R-60 missile locked on, there was little a big aircraft like an E-3 AWACS could do to evade it. The missiles plowed into the aircraft with a direct hit, the first missile into the rotodome and the second missile into the forward fuselage section.

  He could see it all clearly right in front of him, even though it was over three miles away: the decoys flying out of the AWACS plane, the flares a hundred times brighter and hotter than the aircraft; the AWACS plane trying a steep turning descent, one that the crew had obviously practiced before but still
looked so steep and fast that it was doubtful if the crew could have pulled out of it even if they survived the missile attack; then the twin streaks of light, the huge blossoms of flames, the pieces of the jet flying apart, and the rolling, tumbling mass of burning metal and jet fuel on its final flight, straight down.

  "Target destroyed," Yegorov reported.

  "I see it," Stoica gasped. "My God. How many?"

  "Twenty crew members. Sixteen operations, four flight." Stoica switched the multifunction display to another mode

  so he wouldn't have to watch the plane bum on the ground. "They should have gone home when the Americans did," he murmured. "Leaving an AWACS radar plane

  up here, all alone, with no air cover? It was suicidal."

  "It was homicidal-and we did it," Yegorov said. "But we've got a job to do, just like they did. Business is business." The Mt-179 Shadow headed southwest, still in a shallow,

  high-speed descent. As they approached the Yugoslavian republic of Kosovo, Stoica increased his descent rate until they were at five hundred feet above the ground at six hundred knots airspeed. Ground radar coverage was much better in United Nations-patrolled Kosovo, and they had to be at terrainmasking altitude long before they reached the radar pickets. Using the infrared scanner, Stoica could easily see all the terrain even in pitch darkness. Ten minutes later, they crossed the Albanian border and swept down the gently rolling hills across the Drin River valley to the town of Kikesi I Ri, or New Kukes, in northeastern Albania.

  New Kukes was a relocated town, built by the Albanian government only thirty years earlier with Soviet assistance; the old town had been deliberately flooded after construction of a hydroelectric power-generating dam on the Drin River. The Drin River valley is narrow and hilly, with what seems like a perpetual foggy haze obscuring the ridges and mountain tops nearby. The native population of twelve thousand had swelled to over one hundred thousand with Kosovo refugees, although that number had decreased to just a few thousand refugees since KFOR had established its peacekeeping force in 1999 and allowed the refugees safe passage across the border. The huge Kukes carpet factory employed nearly a thousand workers, and the copper and chromium mines in the region employed another few thousand. But by far the biggest employers in the region were the black-market weapons salesmen, the Albanian Mafia, the drug lords, and the prostitutes, preying on the refugees and supporting ethnic Albanian Kosovar freedom fighters in their continuing struggle to form an independent Muslim nation in Kosovo.