by Bart Gauvin
“We’ve got a chilly morning out there, twenty-eight degrees with moderate winds from the northwest. Heavy cloud cover, sea state three, with a chance of isolated snow and sleet over the water.”
Transitioning away from the weather he went on, “The cutter Dallas is outbound for a four-day fisheries patrol and will be out of our area in about four hours. We have Tahoma inbound from Kittery, Maine. She’ll be tying up at Governor’s Island for some maintenance later today. Patrol boat Adak has duty off Staten Island this morning. For air support, we have…” The officer went through the drill, listing each resource at the Coast Guard’s disposal in and around the New York Harbor area. The incoming shift, and their leader, USCG Commander Jim Ingalls, listened with the boredom that comes with routine until—
“Wait a minute,” Ingalls interrupted, “say that again? The Air Force is doing what?”
The briefer paused and looked back down at his clipboard. “Oh yeah,” he said, “I forgot to mention this at the beginning. We got word a few hours ago that we’re at DEFCON Four. No real change for us, just keep our eyes and ears open more than normal. The Air Force has an AWACS bird up patrolling south of Long Island and the Air National Guard has some fighters up as well.”
“DEFCON Four?” Ingalls asked, surprised, “that’s a big deal, Hank. Any instructions come with it on what we’re supposed to do?”
“Nope,” answered Hank, eager to finish up his shift and get home, “just ‘assume DEFCON Four,’ that’s what it says, Jim.”
“Okay,” Ingalls said, not completely satisfied.
“For surface traffic,” Hank went on, “today we have six outbound, four transiting, and nine inbound. The biggest inbound is the cruise ship SS Queen Elizabeth 2, finishing up a trans-Atlantic crossing. She’s southeast of Long Island right now. The most concerning outbound is that Bulgarian deep-sea trawler, the,” Hank checked his clipboard, “the Trogg, that’s been dragging her feet in port for repairs the last few days. Oh, and there’s one of those Soviet intelligence-gathering ships, the Kursagraf, making its way up the Jersey Shore, staying just outside our twelve-mile territorial waters. Standard snooping stuff. She’s under Algerian registry and flying the Finnish flag, but we know she’s Soviet.”
Ingalls nodded. “Nothing we can do about that,” he said. “Dallas is keeping an eye on her?”
Hank nodded the affirmative.
Ingalls went on, “Can we have the Port Authority board that trawler, the Trogg you said? Check for contraband or something?”
“I don’t see why not,” Hank smirked, and nodded to one of the other watch officers, who made the radio call while the briefing continued. Then Hank went on, “Other than that, normal small boat traffic expected during the day, normal Sunday air traffic out of JFK, La Guardia, and Newark, and we can expect the pleasure seekers and flying schools to have their small planes airborne in the next couple of hours. Questions?”
Ingalls had lots of questions, especially about this DEFCON Four business, but it was clear Hank didn’t have the answers, or the patience to answer. He shook his head. “No. Head on home, Hank. We’ve got the Sunday shift. Should be quiet as usual. I hope.”
0640 EST, Sunday 13 February 1994
1140 Zulu
Near Asbury Park, New Jersey, USA
The farmer sat in his beat-up Chevy pickup. His breath was white in the cold of the pre-dawn light, the truck’s idling engine loud in the damp, icy air. Sipping a mug of coffee to fend off the cold he was feeling in his bones, the old man watched the first of three small planes bump down to the end of the long-abandoned grass runway to start its takeoff run. The three aircraft—two single-engine Piper Cherokees and a twin-engine Beechcraft—had been occupying the abandoned airfield’s lone dilapidated hangar, which had been used as a barn until recently. This morning was the first time that the farmer had seen all three pilots arrive at the same time.
This small, rural plot of land in eastern New Jersey had once been known as the Asbury Park Neptune Air Terminal. It had been a popular hub for skydivers, novice fliers, and vintage aircraft enthusiasts before high taxes had forced its closure more than two decades before. The farmer had bought the land in the hopes of turning some of the old grass runways and taxiways towards crops, but rains often flooded the low-lying areas, including the runway, and in the end he’d been saddled with the same tax burden that had doomed the air terminal, without much agricultural production to show for it. Even his secondary reason for buying the airstrip, a desire to fly his own Cessna 172 aircraft on occasion without needing to pay the airport fees, had failed when his eyesight had begun to go.
Thus, when the strange man with a foreign accent had approached him three weeks ago and offered to rent the old hangar for a handsome sum, the farmer jumped at the opportunity. The money had duly been deposited in the farmer’s nearly empty bank account, and a couple days later the planes had arrived, bouncing down onto the old runway that now ran through a low canyon of new growth trees. Not until last night had the farmer considered that the FAA or someone else in the government might be interested in planes taking off from his farmland, and he’d come down here this morning to see if he could clear up the issue with the pilots.
Unfortunately, he was too late for conversation. The three planes’ engines were already coughing to life, propellers spinning in the early morning light, when he pulled up in his trusty pickup. Well, the farmer considered, as long as nobody asks any questions…what people don’t know can’t hurt ’em. He sat back to watch the takeoff not realizing how wrong he was.
The old man reached down to turn on his radio, tuning in to one of the few country music stations in this decidedly un-country part of the US as the Beechcraft’s engines howled to max. The plane started its takeoff roll, gaining speed as it traveled down the runway. When it passed in front of the farmer’s truck, a loud burst of static came through his radio speakers, drowning out the crooning sounds of his country music. That’s odd, he thought, turning the volume down and then back up as static receded.
The first plane was just winging into the air as the second began to roll. The static blaring inside the truck each time one of the two Piper Cherokees took off. Must be some sort of transponder, thought the farmer. As the third aircraft rolled past him, he noted the tail number: 216R. He watched this plane as it climbed into the air and then banked left before settling into an easterly course, flying into the gray light of the winter dawn.
The three aircraft each took a different course, all flying generally east, until they crossed the Jersey Shore and went “feet wet” over the cold, gray waters outside the broad, natural entrance of New York Harbor.
CHAPTER 46
1448 MSK, Sunday 13 February 1994
1148 Zulu
USS New York City (SSN 696), western edge of X-Ray Station, eighty miles west of USS Connecticut, Barents Sea
GOD HELP US, thought Captain Alan Jones.
The half-prayer sprung from his half-remembered childhood, enduring long, cold services in his family’s drafty Catholic parish in Cape Cod.
“Con, sonar,” came the latest call from the sonar room, “new contact near aboard, active sonobuoy bearing zero-seven-seven! Designate this contact as Alpha Two-Two.”
Jones, USS New York City’s shave-headed skipper, winced. He and his boat were in a bad spot, and he knew it. The waters of the Barents Sea were already claustrophobically shallow for big nuke-boats like his Los Angeles-class submarine, and his proximity to the Soviet coast of the Kola made it even more so.
“XO,” Jones said, tension creeping into his voice as he walked over to his executive officer standing at the map table, “what’s the plot look like?”
“Not good, Captain,” was the response. “That makes four active buoys in the last half hour,” the officer moved his finger to the map, indicating locations, “this latest contact makes two to the east, one directly nor
th, and the fourth is to our south. Along with that dipping sonar that’s been working to the west, we’re pretty well boxed in.”
“What about surface contacts?” asked the captain.
The XO traced his finger across the chart to the southeast of the line marking the sub’s course. “Sir, we’re tracking four skunks right now, bearing is about zero-eight-zero. They’re in a group, diamond formation. One is a Grisha-class frigate for sure, one may be a Pauk, but no ID on the other two yet. They’re closing on our location at twenty-two knots.” That was an ASW hunter-killer group if he’d ever seen one, thought the captain. Looks like they know where we are.
“What about that Victor we got a sniff of a few minutes ago?” prompted Jones, asking after a faint submarine contact the sonar room had reported to their east.
The XO shook his head, saying, “We lost him. He was closing in our direction, doing about twelve knots. Assuming no change in course or speed, he should be right here.” The XO pointed to a spot very close to theirs.
Aircraft, surface ships, and a submarine all hunting us, Jones considered. How am I going to get us out of this one? The skipper wiped his brow. He’d been in some tense spots before, but he’d never been boxed in and hunted like this, never seen the Russians put so many resources into such a small space. They can’t be doing this everywhere, can they? Did we stumble into some sort of major exercise? The DEFCON Four warning, however, indicated that they should expect some trouble. Regardless, he thought, settling on a course of action, this is too much trouble already. We need to get out of this fix.
“We’ll bring her up into the layer.” he announced. “Helm, make your depth one-five-zero feet, speed six knots, course three-two-zero. We’ll try and squeeze between that northern buoy and the dipping sonar, see if we can get out of the way of that ASW group.”
1553 MSK, Sunday 13 February 1994
1253 Zulu
TAKR Baku, Barents Sea, forty miles northwest of USS New York City
“Contra-Admiral!” the communications officer called to Ivanenko over the low thrum of the carrier’s engines as Ivanenko’s task force accelerated west through gray seas under a canopy of mottled white clouds and ice-blue sky. “Hunter Group V reports that Submarine Contact Two has changed course to the north. They are shifting a helicopter to try to close the perimeter, but the group captain worries he may lose the contact if the submarine shoots the gap.”
Ivanenko looked at his watch and fretted. So close! Don’t lose them now! “What of Submarine Contact One?” Ivanenko asked tensely. He referred to the submarine their helicopter had detected to the north.
The staff officer responsible for ASW spoke up, “Our helicopters are maintaining faint contact, tovarich Admiral, but we have lost him several times. These American submarines are very difficult to detect, let alone track.” It was the wrong thing to say, and the staff officer knew it, before the words were even out of his mouth.
Ivanenko fixed the man with his gaze and said icily, “I know that, you fool. Why do you think we have every seaworthy patrol craft in the fleet out here looking for them? Why do you think we have every airworthy patrol aircraft up hunting them?”
The man wilted under Ivanenko’s stress-induced assault.
The contra-admiral looked at his watch again and came to a decision. Attacking a few minutes early won’t matter now, and it may prevent us from losing the prey, he reasoned. He had the authority to do so straight from Marshal Rosla. Looking back up at the staff officer he ordered, “Tell our ASW screen and Hunter Group V to engage the contacts.”
The officer blinked, “Sir?”
“Tell the group captain,” Ivanenko said slowly, enunciating every word, “to destroy those two American submarines. We are at war, tovarich, though you may have been too slow to realize it until now.”
CHAPTER 47
1555 MSK, Sunday 13 February 1994
1155 Zulu
Crane Flight, Over the Gulf of Motovsky, Norway-USSR Border
MAJOR SASHA MITROSHENKO of the Soviet Air Force, called the VVS, or Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily in Russian, concentrated on keeping his light-gray twin-engine Sukhoi Su-27 air superiority fighter level. He was flying three hundred meters above the choppy, gray waves of the Barents Sea, and the wind fought him for every knot. He had just led his tight formation of eight fighters, callsign “Crane,” in a gentle, low altitude turn to the west after taking off from their base at Kilp Yavr on the Kola Peninsula a few minutes ago. The pilot’s concentration, however, did not prevent him from savoring the raw power of the engines pushing his sleek fighter forward at over five hundred knots.
Mitroshenko was intensely proud of his bird, and of his elite position within the VVS. Being selected to fly one of the Su-27s, codenamed “Flanker” by westerners, was a mark of the service’s regard for his skill as a fighter pilot. The advanced Sukhoi interceptor had been designed to challenge the American F-15 Eagle, supposedly the best air superiority fighter in the world, for control of the sky. We will have to test that theory soon enough, won’t we? he thought with grim excitement.
Not yet, though. Right now, the advanced Soviet fighters and their pilots would be opposed by a small number of piddly single-engine Norwegian F-16s. Ten to twelve at most was the estimate in the mission briefing. Those Norwegians jets are out of date and out of time, he thought, feeling ever more the predator. His flight, and a second flight of eight more Su-27s crossing the frontier further south near the Finnish border, would swat the F-16s from the sky. Their real mission, however, was blinding the NATO defenders in the critical opening moments of the offensive by shooting down the AWACS airborne radar aircraft that was now circling off the northwest coast of Norway.
Pulling back on his stick slightly, he gained elevation as he and his seven compatriots flashed over the barren, white Rybachy Peninsula, their last terrain checkpoint before they were committed. They were paralleling the north coast of the Kola on a heading that would take them over the east-facing Vaӧrd to hide his low-flying jets from NATO radars until the last possible moment.
The snowy western coast of the Rybachy Peninsula flashed by underneath, yielding once again to the dark waters of the Barents Sea. Mitroshenko’s pulse quickened as he keyed his radio and said, “Crane, this is Crane Lead, final checkpoint. Three minutes.”
1257 CET, Sunday 13 Feb 1994
1157 Zulu
Viper Two-One, over Banak Air Station, Lakselv, Finnmark, Norway
“Viper Two-One, this is Magic,” Jan Olsen heard the controller on the AWACS call through his helmet speakers, “you have multiple bandits heading your way. Bearing one-one-two degrees true from your location, range eight-five miles, speed five hundred-plus, angels one. You are clear to engage if they cross the border. Over.” The E-3 Sentry’s large, rotating radar had detected multiple unidentified contacts to the east of Olsen’s position. “Angels one” signifying that the contacts were at approximately one thousand feet of altitude. The disturbing message was delivered in the emotionless monotone practiced by crewmen of control aircraft, meant to calm nerves in stressful situations. Situations like this, Jan thought.
“Roger, Magic,” he responded, “turning to intercept.” Olsen then keyed his radio again, calling his wingman, whose jet he could see several dozen meters off his wing outside his bubble canopy, and saying, “Viper Two-Two, hard-right zero-nine-zero, dropping to angels ten. Switches hot,” this referred to the arming switches for six AIM-9L Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles attached to his wings, “on my mark…Execute!”
My God, this might be the real thing, Olsen thought, as he banked his nimble F-16 “Falcon” to the east and dove, settling onto a reciprocal course to the oncoming Russian jets.
“Bjorn,” Olsen said, calling his wingman again, “it looks like they’re coming up the Varangerfjӧrd. We’ll do it like we talked about this morning. Follow me down.” He heard two clicks over the ra
dio as Bjorn acknowledged without speaking. Jan’s right hand applied slight forward pressure to the video-game-like sidestick to put his jet into a shallow dive. He watched the cockpit dials spin downward with the altitude while also scanning the sky ahead through the glass of his heads-up display and canopy.
As the two Norwegian F-16s closed with the approaching bandits, Olsen heard the AWACS controllers ordering, “Viper Base, Viper Bases Two, Three, and Four, this is Magic, scramble ready flights,” instructing all the ready F-16s sitting on the tarmac, dispersed to fields around Northern Norway, into the air. The controller continued, giving orders to the other pairs of F-16s west of Olsen, “Viper One-One, vector zero-four-five, angels thirty. Viper Two-Three, support Viper Two-One…”
This is the real thing! Olsen realized, as the controllers in the E-3 calmly began to maneuver the Norwegian jets into position to parry the coming blow. Viper Two-Three, the flight of two F-16s patrolling over the North Cape to the north of Banak, would come south to support Olsen’s flight, while the two Falcons of Viper One-One moved to intercept a southern group of bandits that had just appeared on the Sentry crew’s radar scopes.
Across Northern Norway, pairs of F-16s converged on the two groups of bandits hurtling towards the frontier. The Norwegian pilots, excepting Olsen and Bjorn, kept their fighters at high altitude, while the Russians hugged the wavetops of the Barents Sea and the rugged arctic snowscape of the Kola. In the north, Viper Two-Three was replacing Olsen’s flight over Banak, directly in the path of the first group of bandits, while Olsen and Bjorn went into a steep dive for the deck, heading east.
“Magic, this is Viper Two-One,” Olsen said, tension giving his voice an edge as he bottomed out his dive, two hundred feet above the tundra, “range to those bandits?” They were speaking in English, standard practice when dealing with the multinational crews aboard the NATO AWACS.