by Dale Brown
But rather than feel threatened, the countries saw this as an advantage. Fighting between the government and gunrunners or drug dealers had all but vanished-the Russian army was ruthless in pursuing anyone even suspected of illegally crossing the borders, selling drugs, or trying to re-arm rebel forces anywhere in the Balkans. Incidents of clashes between Serbs and other ethnic groups in the Balkans, and between the various religious factions, had all but ceased as well. The Balkans
were actually enjoying the first real semblance of peace since the bad old days of Marshal Tito.
True, there were always large numbers of Russian or German transport planes on almost every large airport in several major cities in the Balkans, or
a Russian or German attack helicopter flying overhead all the time. This made many folks nervous, especially the older generations, who could still remember World War 11. Whereas a few months earlier Pavel Kazakov had been reviled and pursued throughout Europe-he was still under indictment for narcotics trafficking and other violent crimes in twenty-three countries around the worldtoday he was being lauded as some sort of savior, a dashing entrepreneur rescuing the poorest nations in Europe from abject poverty. He was sponsoring drug-eradication programs in several dozen nations around the world-this from the man who had perfected the art of drug smuggling in Europe to a fine art, whom some had once accused of pumping heroin through his pipelines instead of oil.
But no one could doubt that their presence was benefiting everyone. The bottom line: everyone seemed to be getting rich from the oil. What was there not to like?
"A sort of eco-terrorist thing?" the skipper asked, immediately aware that it was his responsibility-not to mention in his, and his family's, best interest-not to screw this up. He shook his head when the intel officer nodded. "Ni kruti mn'e yaytsa, " he said with disgust.
"The tanker has an alternate control center on the second floor of the superstructure," the chief engineer's mate said, producing a faxed sketch of the tanker. "If we shell the bridge, even destroy it, we can still control the ship from there. The terrorists are very likely up on the bridge-we're bound to nail a few of them there."
"All fight," the captain decided. "We close the distance until we can get within pinpoint firing range of the tanker, then shell the superstructure only, staying away from the alternate control center, the rudder, and the propulsion system. Weapons, what range would that be?"
"We should use the optronic sights and laser rangefinder,"
he suggested. "In this weather, in these conditions, we should close to at least fifteen kilometers."
"Very well," Boriskov said. "Just before we start shelling the superstructure, we'll launch the air and surface assault craft. Coordinate your shelling with the assault" The officers nodded their heads in agreement. "Loshka gavna v bochki m'oda. There's still a spoonful of shit in the honey barTel. What about the Sukhoi-24 and Tupolev-95 attacks? What hit them? Any ideas?"
"No idea, sir," the TAO replied. "We're just now within radar range of the area where they were hit. We've been monitoring Turkey's air traffic control network, and there's no sign of any attack aircraft launching from there."
"I don't think Turkey would be stupid enough to interfere with this incident," the captain said. "It doesn't make senseTurkey helping a bunch of idiotic terrorists trying to hijack an oil tanker. Where do they think they are going to go? We'll put a stop to this in no time."
Codlea, Bulgaria That s=e time
"Wake up!" Fursenko shouted wildly. "Wake up, damn you, or he'll kill us all!" He could smell alcohol, and beads of sweat popped on the back of his neck.
Ion Stoica's head felt as if it was going to explode, and his mouth and tongue felt as dry and as rough as sandpaper. He rolled wearily onto his side. "What in hell do you want, Fursenko?"
"One of Metyor's oil tankers in the Black Sea is under attack," Fursenko exclaimed. That got Stoica's attention. "Someone has hijacked it! Comrade Kazakov wants you to launch immediately!"
Stoica struggled to his feet, put on his flight suit over a pair of lightweight cotton underwear, stumbled into his boots, and headed out of his room in a small building adjacent to the main hangar. That little wooden building had been his home now for over eight months. Up until three months before, he had had to share it with Gennadi Yegorov, his weapons officer aboard the Metyor Mt- 179 stealth fighter, but he'd finally convinced him to get his own place. Yegorov had made up a place over the main hangar-the noise from the aircraft maintenance crews below didn't bother him.
They made their way across the dark dirt streets toward the security checkpoint to the main hangar where the Mt- 179 Tyenee had been stored. Except for just a few test flights, they hadn't flown the bird too often. NATO and Romanian
air patrols had come fairly close to the base, but the Mt- 179 had been able to dispatch them quickly and easily.
"You've been drinking!" Fursenko said, horrified, as they passed through the outer security post.
"Screw you, Doctor," Stoica said. "I've been holed up in this place for over half a year with no leave and no time off. The food is lousy and I haven't seen a woman worth fucking in three months. I bought some homemade wine from one of the locals, and if I'd had a chance to drink some then, I probably would've fucked the old hag. Now shut up. You're making my head hurt."
Yegorov was already inside, drawing on a chart of the Black Sea and northern Turkey. The guy was unreal, Stoica thoughtnoise, loneliness, quiet, and deprivation didn't bother Yegorov one bit. He didn't smoke, drink, play cards, or party like the others assigned here. He had a lot of male friends in the maintenance department-maybe Gennadi was curing his loneliness with some late-night visits to the maintenance group's barracks. Maybe that's why he'd agreed to relocate to over the maintenance hangar.
"Ion's here, sir," Yegorov said to a speakerphone.
"Nice of you to join us, Stoica," the sneering voice of Pavel Kazakov came over the speaker.
"Sorry, sir. I came as soon as I heard." He stopped himself from making an obscene gesture to the speakerphone, motioned to a maintenance officer for coffee, and pulled out a cigarette from a flight suit pocket. "Some retards are attacking one of your tankers?"
"A group of terrorists-the exact number is unknown, but around eight to twelve-fast-roped onto the tanker Ustinov a
couple hours ago," Yegorov summarized. "They have shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles and have shot down a Navy helicopter. The tanker is heading south into Turkish waters, destination unknown."
Stoica shook his head, totally confused. He took a big sip of coffee. "So what are we supposed to do?"
"Two Russian maritime patrol aircraft, a Sukhoi-24 and Tupolev-95, were attacked by an undetected aircraft en route to the tanker," Yegorov explained. "Mr. Kazakov believes sorneone-NATO, the Americans, or perhaps the Turks-have sent stealth aircraft into the area to keep the Russian aircraft away. He wants us to investigate. Tonight."
"Yes, sir," Stoica said, trying to sound enthusiastic. "If someone's up there, we'll nail his ass to the wall." He turned to the maintenance officer. "How long before we are ready to fly?"
"About twenty minutes, sir," the officer said. Stoica nodded, inwardly groaning. It was going to take him a lot longer than that to sober up. Maybe coffee and some one-hundred-percent oxygen would help.
"There is a Russian destroyer pursuing the tanker, getting ready to land some naval infantry on the tanker to recapture it," Kazakov said. "If there's another aircraft out there, I want you to get it. Don't let anyone get a shot off at either the tanker or the destroyer. I want that tanker recovered intact and the oil safe. Do you understand?" The line went dead before anyone could respond.
Stoica finished the coffee with a gulp. "Good luck to you, too, sir," he muttered sarcastically.
Aboard the Russian Federation Navy destroyer Besstrashny A short time later
With the captain back on the bridge monitoring the attack, their plan got under way. The tactical action officer (TAO) fed in informa
tion from his India-band surface-search radar when it came within range, followed by more precise targeting infor-
mation from its optronic telescopic night sight and laser rangefinder. The tanker was on a constant heading and speed, so targeting was easy. "Bridge, combat," the TAO radioed,
11 we've got a clear sight of the target, Captain."
The captain got up, went to the aft part of the bridge, and checked the repeaters of the targeting screens from the Combat Information Center. The sights were
clearly locked on the upper portion of the large white superstructure. "Very well. Range?"
"Twenty-one kilometers, sir."
"Any change in target heading or speed?" "No, sir."
"Any other aircraft or vessels nearby?"
"No vessels within ten kilometers of the tanker, sir. All of the vessels nearby have been accounted for. No threat to us." "Very well. Launch the surface and air attack teams." A
small team of six Russian Federation Naval Infantry commandos were launched aboard the Besstrashny's Ka-27 helicopter and sent to try to secretly board the tanker; at the same time, they loaded a launch with two dozen Naval Infantry commandos to attempt a raid from the sea.
When fifteen kilometers out, the stem section of the tanker was in clear sight on the optronic monitors. "Still no change in target heading or speed," the TAO reported. "It looks like it's simply going to ground itself on the northern Turkish coast, about halfway between the Turkish naval base at Eregli and the coastal resort city of Zonguldak."
"Any oil facilities there?" the skipper asked his intelligence officer. "Any way the Turks can off-load the oil?"
"You mean, steal it?" the intel officer asked incredulously. "Just answer the damned question."
"Zonguldak is a coastal residential, resort, and university town," the intel officer said. "Large desalinization plant, large nuclear-power-generating facility there, but no oil refineries or oil off-loading or transshipment facilities."
"A nuclear power plant, eh?" the captain mused. "Is it on the coast?"
"It's about twenty kilometers south of the projected impact area and about two kilometers inland, closer to the naval base."
The captain was still considering the eco-terrorist angle, but it was starting to distract him, and he didn't need that right now. "Comm, Bridge, send one last message to fleet headquarters, requesting permission to begin our operation."
A few moments later: "Bridge, Comm, message from Fleet, operation approved, commence when ready."
"Very well." He picked up the ship's intercom. "All hands, this is the captain. We will commence attack operations immediately." To the officer of the deck, he ordered, "Sound general quarters." The alarms and announcements began, and the captain was handed his helmet, headphones, and life jacket. "Release batteries. Commence. . ."
"Bridge, Combat, high-speed air bandit, bearing zero-fivezero, range three-two kilometers, low, heading southwest at nine-two-zero kilometers per hour!"
"Byt v glubokay zhopi, there's our mystery attacker," the captain swore.
"Recommend heading two-thr-ee-zero, flank speed, and canceling the attack on the tanker, sir," the executive officer said. "My orders are to stop those terrorists from taking that
tanker into Turkish waters," the captain said. "Maintain course and speed, stand by to open fire."
"He's not turning," the satellite surveillance officer reported. "Increasing speed to twenty knots."
"Looks like he's not going to break off his attack on the tanker," Jon Masters said. "We might be too late."
"Not yet," David Luger said. "I'll push AALF up and take it down, and let's see what he does.
Masters and Luger, along with a team of technicians, were aboard Sky Masters Inc.'s DC- 10 carrier aircraft, orbiting sixty miles north near Ukrainian airspace. The satellite images they were viewing came from a string of six small imaging reconnaissance satellites called NIRTSats (Need It Right This Second satellites), launched earlier by Masters specifically for this operation. The satellites, beaming their signals to a geosynchronous relay satellite that then sent the images to the DC-10
launch aircraft, would provide continuous images of the entire Black Sea region for the next week.
Luger happily entered commands into a keyboard. Fifty miles to the south, a small aircraft began a steep dive and accelerated to almost the speed of
sound. The small aircraft was called "AALF," an acronym that stood for Autonomous Air Launched Fighter. Launched from the DC- 10, AALF was a sophisticated, high-speed, highly maneuverable cruise missile with a brain. AALF was not steered like other unmanned aerial vehicles. It was simply given a task to do, and AALF would use its neural computer logic functions, combined with sensor and preprogrammed threat data, to determine its own way to accomplish the mission. David Luger simply acted as the coach, telling AALF what they wanted it to do. After it had been first launched from the DC- 10, AALF had been ordered to be an interceptor, and it had sneaked up on the Sukhoi-24 and Tupolev-95 aircraft and attacked them with internal Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.
Right now, Luger wanted AALF to pretend it was a seaskimming antiship missile. AALF descended until it was less than two hundred feet above the Black Sea, then accelerated to six hundred miles an hour and headed for the destroyer Besstrashny, making an occasional zigzag pattern as a sophisticated antiship missile would do. The Besstrashny responded as expected, turning hard to starboard to present as small a target to the incoming missile as possible and also to bring its aft
130-millimeter dual-purpose guns and aft SA-N-7 antiaircraft missiles to bear.
Then, just before AALF flew within gun range, it turned away, staying outside maximum gun range. The crew of the Russian destroyer couldn't ignore the threat, so they kept on maneuvering to keep its stem to the missile in case it started another attack. As it did, the tanker Ustinov sailed farther and farther away, well out of gun range now. The Ka-27 helicopter with its commandos on board had no choice but to turn around-they could not risk facing more shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles without some sort of covering fire to help screen their approach. The launch carrying two dozen naval in-
fantry commandos continued their approach, easily overtaking the much slower tanker.
"See 'em yet, guys?" Luger radioed. He was watching the launch's approach on the satellite surveillance video. "About four miles dead astem, heading toward you at forty knots."
Patrick McLanahan deactivated his helmet's electronic visor. He and Hal Briggs were wearing the electronic body armor and had led the assault on the tanker. The armor had originally been developed by Sky Masters Inc. as a lightweight protective anti-explosive sheathing inside airliner's cargo compartments. But the material, nicknamed BERP (Ballistic Electro-Reactive Process), had been adapted for many other uses, including strong, lightweight protection for special operations commandos. Patrick picked up the electromagnetic rail gun rifle and steadied it or the safety rail of the starboard pilot's wing. He searched, using his helmet-mounted imaging infrared sensor, positioned the rifle, then activated the rifle's electronic sight. "Contact," he radioed back to Luger. "Brave boys. They keep on coming, even though their cover is completely gone."
"Don't let them get within mortar or antitank range, Muck." "Don't worry, Dave," Patrick said. He aimed his rifle and fired. A streak of blue-yellow vapor ripped through the night sky, followed by a supersonic CCRRAACCKK! as loud as a thunderclap. The sausage-size hypersonic projectile pierced the front of the launch, passing between the launch captain and helmsman and barely missing one commando, before passing through the deck, right through the diesel engine, out the bottom near the stem, and through one hundred and fifty feet of seawater before burying itself seventy-five feet in the bottom of the Black Sea. The launch's engine sputtered, coughed, and died within seconds. The automatic bilge pumps activated as the water in the bilges started to get deeper. Soon, the commandos and the crew were scurrying for life preservers.
"Target neutralized," Lu
ger radioed. "He's dead in the water. Good shooting, Muck. I'm going to recall AALF for refueling. That destroyer won't be back in gun range before AALF gets refueled."
"Roger," Patrick responded. "We're working on rigging auxiliary control for remote operation. Stay in touch. You should be expecting company any minute."
"We're ready for them. Texas out." Luger entered commands into the computer.
AALF stopped making false attacks on the Russian destroyer Besstrashny and headed back to the DC- 10. It automatically began an approach behind the launch aircraft. Luger extended a refueling probe, much like a U.S. Air Force KC- 10 Extender tanker, and, using its onboard radar as well as following laser steering signals from the DC- 10, AALF flew itself toward the refueling probe. A small receptacle popped open on the upper portion of its fuselage, it guided itself into position, and the drone flew itself into contact with the probe. Mechanical clamps secured the drone onto the probe, and it began taking on jet fuel directly from the DC- I O's fuel tanks.
But while AALF was attached to the DC-10's refueling probe, the crew was in its most vulnerable position-and AALF's approach had been watched and plotted by Russian ground-based and airborne radars. Minutes after AALF attached itself to the probe, threat-waming receivers on board the DC- 10 bleeped to life. "Russian MiG-27s, bearing zero-sevenzero, forty-seven miles, coming in fast!" the sensor technician shouted. "We've got company!"
"I'm detaching AALF and sending it after them," Luger said. "Jon, tell the flight crew to get us out of here ASAP." Luger entered instructions into AALF's computerized brain, and the little craft detached itself from the refueling probe, drifted behind and away from the DC- 10, then turned and flew toward the oncoming MiGs. The DC- 10 turned northwest and headed for the Ukrainian coast.