On the third mission of the day, Major Yan Chernov led his wingman, Major Vasily Pervushin, back to the truck convoy on the river road from Khabarovsk. Chernov was the commander of the 556th Fighter Squadron based at Zeya. He and his wingman were flying the only two operational aircraft. The enlisted men had been laboring for days to drain the water from the fuel-storage tanks, then transfer the remaining fuel by hand into the planes. There was no electricity at the base, so the job was herculean, involving hand pumps, fifty-five-gallon drums, and lots of muscle. Chernov did not think there were any cluster bombs on the base, but while he was airborne on the first strike, his ordnance NCO found some in an ammo bunker that was supposed to be empty. The bombs were at least twenty years old. Still, they were all the Russians had for ground attack, so they were loaded on the planes. Just now, he and Pervushin, his second in command, raced southeast a hundred feet or so above the ground. Chernov was watching for vehicles off to the left, along the river road. The two Sukhois were indicating 525 knots, 85 Mach, which was about as fast as it was safe to carry the bombs — they were not supersonic shapes. The treeless plain raced under the Sukhois, almost as if the fighters were motionless in space and the earth was spinning madly beneath them. The illusion was very pleasant. There, at ten o’clock, on the horizon: a plume of dust. This morning they had made two passes over the target convoy, the first from the northwest, the second from the southeast. This time Chernov and Pervushin had planned to approach from the southeast and drop the bombs on the first pass. Since they had the ammo in the guns, they wanted to make a second pass, quickly, and the quickest way was a hard turn, then back down the trucks from the northwest to the southeast. Chernov pointed to the dust, made sure Pervushin nodded his understanding. This convoy was farther northwest than the one they had attacked that morning. The ECM gear was silent. Not a peep of an enemy radar. These Japanese, running truck convoys without air cover … There could be air cover, of course, running high with their radars off. Chernov glanced up into the afternoon haze, looking for tiny black spots against the high cloud. Nothing. Not seeing them didn’t mean they weren’t there. It simply meant you hadn’t seen them. The dust was passing behind his left wing when he motioned for Pervushin to drift out farther. Satisfied, he began a shallow turn. He wanted to be wings-level over the road for several miles before he reached the convoy to give himself and Pervushin time to pick out targets. Turn, watch the ground racing by just beneath the plane, keep the wings at no more than ten degrees of bank, and glance up occasionally, look for enemy fighters. Watch the nose attitude, Chernov! Don’t fly into the ground. He reached for the armament panel. Bombs selected. Fusing set. Interval set. Master armament switch on. Wings level, Pervushin was well out to the right, dropping aft. He would follow Chernov in a loose trail formation. Five hundred twenty-five knots … Chernov let his plane drift up until he was about three hundred feet above the ground. After the clamshell fuselage of the cluster bomb opened, the bomblets needed to fall far enough to disperse properly.
Trucks. A row of them. They appeared to be racing toward him, but he was the one in flight. As Tail-end Charlie disappeared under the nose, Chernov mashed the pickle button on the stick. He could feel the thumps as the bombs were kicked off, all six of them in about a second and a half. Chernov held the heading for another three seconds, then rolled into an eighty-degree angle of bank with G on and held it for ninety degrees of heading change. Now he rolled the other way and turned for 270 degrees. He watched the gyro swing, concentrated on keeping the nose above the horizon. With his left hand, he flipped switches on the armament panel, enabling the gun. Wings level again, the Russian pilot was almost lined up on the trucks, four of which were obviously on fire. He stabbed the rudder and jammed the stick forward, pointing the nose, then eased the stick back ever so slightly. Squeeze the trigger, squint against the muzzle flashes as the vibration reaches him through the seat and stick, walk the shells through the target truck. Then another. In four seconds his shooting pass was done, enough time to aim at two trucks; then Chernov was pulling G to get the nose above the horizon and rolling hard right to avoid ricochets. With a positive rate of climb, in a right turn, he raised the nose a smidgen more, twisted in his seat and glanced back over his right shoulder. Horror swept over him. A gun, on a truck, shooting, a death ray of tracers … Pervushin, on fire, rolling hard left, nose dropping … A tremendous explosion of yellow fire as Pervushin’s Sukhoi fighter flew into the ground. No parachute visible. Yan Chernov tore his eyes away and checked his nose attitude. He was still climbing. Damnation!
“Sir, where’s Major Pervushin?” the NCO asked Yan Chernov after he raised the canopy and shut down his engines at the Zeya Air Base. “Dead.”
“Fighters?”
“A gun. One gun. On a truck.”
“Could he have …”
“His wife is at Dispersal, sir. The trucks carrying the families won’t leave for a while, so she came here to wait for him.”
Chernov sat in the cockpit letting the wind dry his face and hair. He was exhausted. Finally he made himself look in the direction of the dispersal shack, a large one-room wooden-frame building on the edge of the concrete. She was standing outside, shading her eyes against the sun, looking this way. The wind was whipping at her dress. Chernov couldn’t do it. It was his duty, but he couldn’t. “Sergeant.”
“Yes, Major.”
“Go tell her.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Zero pulled hard to bring his nose around, setting up a head-on pass. Dixie Elitch horsed her airplane to meet him head-on, trying to minimize the separation and give her opponent as small an angle advantage as possible. Alas, the Japanese pilot’s nose lit up; cannon shells reached for her in a stream, as if they were squirted from a garden hose.
“These guys got fangs and will bite you good if you let them,” said the male voice in her earphones. That was Joe Malan, who was back there with the simulator operator, no doubt enjoying himself immensely.
Dixie put on the G to escape the shells. She fully intended to pull right into the vertical, but Malan read her mind. “If this guy follows you up, you’re going to give him another shot. You really don’t want to be out in front of one of these people. Are you suicidal?”
By the time he finished speaking, she had unloaded the plane and rolled it 270 degrees. Now she laid the G on. Smoothly back on the stick, right up to nine G’s on the HUD. In a real F-22, her full-body G suit would be fully inflated, but the simulator didn’t pull Go’s. It did roll and pitch in a sickeningly realistic manner, however, so the cockpit smelled faintly of stale vomit. So did real cockpits.
She came around hard, turning at thirty-two degrees per second with the help of vectored thrust. No other plane in the world could turn like that, even the Zero.
Unfortunately the Zero had not been standing still or plodding along straight while he waited for her to finish her turn. She craned her head, looking for it.
“No, damn it,” Malan said in her headphones. “Look at your displays. The infrared sensors are keeping track of this guy. What does your computer tell you?”
“He’s high and right. I’m in his left-rear quarter.”
“Pull up and shoot.”
Dixie kept the nose coming. The missile-capability circle came into view on the HUD. As the red dot centered in the circle, she heard a tone, almost a buzz, indicating the heat-seeking Sidewinder missile had locked on. She squeezed off the missile, which roared away from her right wingtip. A flash. “Got “im.”
She relaxed the G. “Okay, let’s go back to base, shoot an instrument approach. Remember, in combat you must let the computer help you. The computer is your edge. The computer will keep you alive.”
She wiped the sweat from her face and grunted.
“The computer is the brain of the plane. You’re just the loose nut on the stick.”
“Yeah.”
When the session was over and she was standing on the floor under the simulator, Joe Malan
replayed her mission on a videotape. He had just started the tape when Bob Cassidy came in, stood behind Dixie, and watched silently.
“He came in so fast from the front I couldn’t get a missile shot.”
“He was inside the envelope,” Malan said. “Did you try to switch to the gun?”
“Never occurred to me,” she admitted.
“I don’t think you could have gotten the nose over quickly enough for a shot. You had only about three-quarters of a second, maybe a second. You must ensure you don’t cross his nose, give him a shot at you. That is critical.”
“Yes, sir,” Dixie Elitch said.
“Even in a no-radar environment, this guy is making a lot of heat. Your IR sensors will pick him up; the computer will identify him, track him, show you his position at all times. Don’t go lollygagging, cranking your head around to try to track him visually. Keep focused on those displays, keep flying, and take a shot when you get one. While you’re engaged with this guy, somebody else might be sneaking up to put a knife into you, so kill him as quickly as possible.”
“Okay.”
“Go get some rest. See you back here at eleven tonight. Tonight, we’ll do two bogeys at a time.”
“Terrific.”
As Dixie went through the classroom area, Aaron Hudek passed her on his way to the simulator. “Stick around, babe,” he said, “and see how it’s done.”
“Watching people get zapped in that thing nauseates me,” she shot back.
At the instructor’s console of the simulator, Bob Cassidy asked Joe Malan, “How is she doing?”
“Pretty good. Picks it up quick. All these kids do. The speed with which they absorb this stuff amazes me.”
“Video games. A lifetime of video games.”
“All life is a video game to this generation. Hudek is next, then you.”
Aaron Hudek was standing beside them. “Make yourself comfortable, Colonel. I’ll show you how it’s done.” The humble one grinned. Cassidy snorted. “I can talk it and walk it, Colonel.”
“I hope.”
“Just watch.” Hudek went up the ladder toward the cockpit, which stood almost ten feet off the floor on massive hydraulically actuated arms. “I like Fur Ball’s brass,” Malan muttered. “I’ll like it too, if he can fly.”
Hudek could. Malan started with in-flight emergencies and Hudek handled them expeditiously, by the book. Interceptions were no problem, nor were dogfights where he bounced his opponent. After three of those, he was bounced by a single opponent. He quickly went from defensive to offensive and shot the opponent down. The second opponent was wiser, more wily, but Hudek was patient, working his plane, taking what the opponent gave him, waiting for his enemy to make a mistake. “He’s damned good,” Malan told Bob Cassidy, who was watching Hudek’s cockpit displays on the control panel in front of Malan. “Maybe the best we have.”
A simulator was not a real airplane, nor were the scenarios very realistic. They were merely designed to sharpen the pilots” skills. “The problem,” Cassidy told Malan, “is going to be getting close enough to the Zero to have a chance at it. In close, with smart skin and infrared sensors, the F-22 has the edge. Getting there is going to be the trick.”
“I thought you said the F-22’s electronic countermeasures would allow us to detect the Zero before it could see us on radar?”
“Theoretically, yes. Say it works — you know the enemy is there, but his Athena protects him from your radar. You can’t shoot an AMRAAM— it won’t guide. How do you get in to Sidewinder range?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’d better figure that out or we’ll be ducks in a shooting gallery.”
The following day was even more frustrating for Yan Chernov than the previous one. Everything that could go wrong did. Electricity to the base was off; fueling had to be done by hand; only three airplanes were flyable — three out of thirty-six. The others had mechanical problems that the men were trying to fix, or had been scavenged for parts to keep the other planes flying. One of the three was fueled and armed. Chernov intended to use it to give the Japanese some grief. The 30-mm cartridges for the cannon were so old that some of them had swelled; these defective cartridges would jam the gun when they were chambered, so all the cartridges had to be checked by hand with a micrometer, the defective ones thrown away, then the good ones loaded by hand into the linkages that made them into a belt. At last, the belt went into Chernov’s plane. After all that, four AA-10 missiles were loaded onto the missile racks. Chernov suited up, strapped in, then tried to start the engines. The left engine wouldn’t crank. Another hour was wasted while mechanics changed the starter drive. Chernov went back to the dispersal shack and tried once again to call regional military headquarters. At least the telephones worked. But no one answered the ringing phone at regional HQ. The phone just refused to ring at the GCI site in this sector. Maybe the lines were down somewhere…, or perhaps the Japanese had fired a beam-rider antiradiation missile at the radar to knock it off the air.
Chernov went out onto the concrete ramp and sat down in the shade of a wing so he could watch the mechanics work. He had a lot of things on his mind: antiradiation missiles, telephones that didn’t work, Japanese soldiers, and a dead pilot. To resist a Japanese attack on the base with a few dozen men would be suicidal. He had ordered the base personnel to leave, taking all the military families with them. In the absence of orders from higher authority, the responsibility was his. Oh well, he would probably be dead in about an hour, so what did it matter what the Moscow bureaucrats thought when they got around to wondering why the antiaircraft guns at the Zeya Air Base were not manned. He was nervous. Maybe a little scared. He had never been in combat before yesterday. The action then hadn’t taken the edge off. His stomach was nervous, his hands sweaty. He was having trouble sitting still. Today, he knew, there would be Zeros. There should have been Zeros yesterday. He could do it, though. He told himself that over and over. He was a professional. He had a good airplane; he knew how to use it. The odds were against him. One plane against…, how many? An air force. Their ECM gear would pick up his radar … He would leave it off, he decided. Eyeball-to-eyeball would be his best chance. Maybe his only chance. “Major, what if the Japanese attack?”
One of the mechanics was standing in front of him, holding a wrench, examining his face with searching eyes. “You’re sitting under the biggest target on the base, the only armed fighter.”
“All these planes look good from the air,” he replied, gesturing toward rows of Sukhois and Migs parked in revetments. The mechanic rejoined the others. Chernov stretched out, using his survival vest for a pillow, and watched the sky. The sun was shining through a high cirrus layer. There were scattered clouds at the middle altitudes. The clouds subdued the light, made the sky look soft, gauzy. Yan Chernov took a deep breath, tried to force himself to relax. Finally the mechanics came to him. “We’re finished, sir.”
“Good. Very good.”
“It should work.”
“Yes,” he said. “What do you want to do, Major?” the crew chief asked.
“Help me strap in. Have the men work on getting another plane fueled. Arm it. Check the ammo, load four missiles. If there is time this evening, I will take it up.” If he was alive this evening, that is. “Some of the other pilots want to fly.”
Chernov had no orders to launch strikes on the Japanese. He had already lost one man. Russia might need these men later. No sense wasting them. This time the left engine started, as did the right. When the ordnance men and mechanics were satisfied, Chernov gave the signal for the linesmen to pull the chocks. They did so, and he taxied. He made no radio calls. He didn’t turn on the radar or the radio. The ECM panel received careful attention, however, and he tuned the volume so he could hear the sound of any enemy radar the black boxes detected. He taxied onto the runway, stopped, and quickly ran through his preflight checks. Satisfied, he released the brakes as he smoothly advanced the throttles to the stops, then lit the
afterburners. The heavy Sukhoi accelerated quickly. Just seconds after the plane broke ground, Chernov came out of burner to save fuel. Airborne, with the gear up and flaps in, Yan Chernov pointed the fighter southeast, down the Amur valley. He leveled at twenty thousand feet and retarded the throttles to cruise at.8 Mach. The afternoon was getting late. The rolling plain below looked golden in the summer haze, like something from a fairy tale. Here and there were clumps of trees, pioneers from the boreal forest to the north, trying to make it in low places on the prairie. Occasionally a road could be discerned through the haze, but no villages or towns. The haze hid them. Chernov turned on his handheld GPS, a battery-powered Bendix-King unit made in America and sold there for use in light civilian airplanes. Within seconds, his position came up on the unit. He keyed in the lat-long coordinates of the Svobodny airfield and waited for a direction and distance. There!
Fortunes of War Page 17