Arctic Storm Rising

Twenty-Six

One after another, two twin-tailed Su-35S fighters belonging to Russia’s Twenty-Third Aviation Regiment sped down a snow-covered runway and lifted off into the hazy morning sky. Each aircraft was configured for long-range flight, equipped only with two external fuel tanks, a single pair of K-74M short-range heat-seeking missiles, and two KAB-500L laser-guided bombs. Streaking low over a stark white coastal plain, they flew northeast past a white radar dome sited on the lower slopes of Gora Sovetskaya, Wrangel Island’s tallest mountain. The sleek jet fighters were camouflaged in jagged bands of white, light gray, and dark gray that blended with the bleak, ice-covered ocean ahead.

Aboard the lead Su-35S, Major Vadim Kuryokhin keyed his mike. “Moscow Operations Control, this is Polet Telokhranitelya, Bodyguard Flight. We’re airborne and proceeding immediately to Rendezvous Point Alpha.”

There was a short delay while his signal was relayed to Lieutenant General Rogozin, still deep underground in the Sharapovo command bunker. Then the general’s voice came back through Kuryokhin’s headset. He sounded strained. “Bodyguard, this is Moscow Ops Control. Prospector and Mother Hen are in position at the rendezvous point. Good luck. Remember your mission. And remember your rules of engagement. Under no circumstances, repeat, under no circumstances are you to fire first at any American aircraft. Is that understood?”

“Message clearly understood, Ops Control,” the Russian fighter commander said distinctly. “Bodyguard out.” He glanced out of his cockpit at the other Su-35, flying about a kilometer off his right wing. “Lead to Bodyguard Two,” he radioed, making sure he was using a lower-powered tactical channel. “You heard the man, right?” he said wryly. “So keep your itchy finger off that trigger, Ilya. Or else Daddy Rogozin might give us both a spanking.”

“Two,” his wingman, Captain Ilya Troitsky, acknowledged. “What the hell does the general think we’re going to do? Take on the whole damned American Air Force with a total of four missiles between the two of us?”

“Apparently your aggressive reputation precedes you,” Kuryokhin said with a grin.

Even over the static-laden tactical circuit, he could hear Troitsky’s loud, exasperated sigh. “For God’s sake, Lead, it was one lousy bar fight. Just one. And no one even got killed.”

Kuryokhin shrugged. “I think it was the fact that you were willing to take on four biker gang members by yourself that got some attention.”

“I thought there were only two of them,” his wingman said sulkily. “Okay, Lead, I’ll be on my best behavior. But are we still supposed to keep those F-22s off our guys? Or just wave politely at them as they zoom on by?”

“We keep the Americos away,” Kuryokhin confirmed. “We just can’t shoot them in the process.”

Over the circuit, Troitsky sighed again. “Look, Major, you know these rules of engagement are stupid, right? Whoever came up with them must think you can screw a woman through your clothes and still get her pregnant.”

“Stupid they may be, but they’re still the orders we’ve been given,” Kuryokhin said firmly. “Orders that we will both obey to the letter. Copy that?”

“Two copies,” his wingman replied.

The two Su-35s accelerated and raced on to the northeast across the frozen sea — staying at very low altitude to avoid any possibility of detection by American radar. Flying so low burned fuel fast, cutting their maximum range by more than half. Which was why the rendezvous they were headed toward was so critical to the success of this mission. Ahead of the two Russian fighters, a band of dark clouds stretched across the sky. They were at the western edge of what seemed to be a never-ending sequence of snow and ice storms surging down out of the polar region to pummel Alaska and northern Canada.

One thousand kilometers northeast of Wrangel Island and five hundred kilometers due north of the Alaska coast, two other Russian aircraft flew a fuel-conserving racetrack pattern. One was a very large, swept-wing aircraft with four eight-bladed propellers, a Russian Tu-142 maritime reconnaissance plane. The other, almost as big, was an IL-78M-90A refueling tanker. They were several thousand meters above the solid cloud layer, orbiting high enough to make out a pale orange glow off to the southeast. In these polar latitudes, so close to the beginning of true winter, the sun never actually appeared above the horizon.

Colonel Iosif Zinchuk looked out the left side of the Tu-142’s cockpit as he banked gently into yet another turn. Far below, he saw the two Su-35s break out of the clouds and streak toward them, climbing almost vertically. He keyed his mike. “Bodyguard, this is Prospector,” he said. “I have you in sight.”

“Copy that, Prospector,” the lead fighter pilot, Major Vadim Kuryokhin, acknowledged. “Permission to tank from Mother Hen. We’re not exactly flying on fumes, but we could be a lot more comfortable.”

Zinchuk knew the other man wasn’t exaggerating. Reaching this distant midair rendezvous without being spotted by American radar had required both Su-35s to fly well beyond their normal combat radius. Without additional fuel from the IL-78, they would be doomed to ditch somewhere in the icy wastes below, or, worse yet, make a humiliating emergency landing at the nearest American airport. “Permission granted,” he radioed immediately. He throttled back all four of the Tu-142’s big engines, slowing down to make room for them behind the humpbacked tanker aircraft.

For a time, the four Russian aircraft flew together in formation. Zinchuk watched closely as the two Su-35s carefully edged in behind the much-larger IL-78, each aiming for one of the drogue baskets streaming behind its left and right wing. Through his headset, he could hear a calm, running radio commentary between the three aircraft as they helped guide each other into position. Despite air currents that set the baskets bouncing and swaying in the tanker’s wake, both fighter pilots succeeded in making contact after only a couple of failed attempts. And once they were solidly connected, the task of refueling itself took comparatively little time. The IL-78’s pumps could transfer more than thirty liters of fuel per second, enough to fully replenish both fighters in less than eight minutes.

One after the other, the Su-35s broke contact and peeled away from the tanker. “Prospector, Bodyguard,” Zinchuk heard Kuryokhin say. “We’re ready to proceed when you are.”

“Copy that, Bodyguard,” he replied. “I’m starting our run now. Give me plenty of room until we break out of the clouds.” Slowly, he turned the Tu-142’s steering yoke back to the right and pushed forward. In response, the huge aircraft banked toward the south-southeast and descended. Moments later, they crossed into the cloud layer and the world outside the cockpit vanished — swallowed up in a sea of unrelieved gray. The buffeting increased, accompanied by a staccato fusillade of ice droplets spattering across the wings, canopy, and fuselage.

Zinchuk watched his altimeter very, very closely as it spun down, hoping like hell that the meteorology reports he’d been given were halfway accurate. If these clouds went all the way down to the ocean, he’d have to abort this mission — which would definitely not endear him to anyone in Moscow.

Then, at a little over five hundred meters, they came back out of the storm clouds into a faded, murky half-light. Through driving flurries of snow, the Tu-142’s command pilot caught glimpses of a desolate, windswept vista stretching away in all directions. Ridges of rafted sea ice unrolled below the reconnaissance aircraft’s enormous wings, growing larger as they lost still more altitude. Tight-lipped, he took his aircraft down even more before leveling off only two hundred meters above the barren ice cap.

This was a form of madness, Zinchuk knew. For all its many virtues — sheer endurance, payload, and powerful, long-range sensors among them — his mammoth turboprop was not at all designed to make low-level penetrating flights through enemy air defenses. Without any form of terrain-following radar or computer navigation, the slightest lapse in his concentration or control could lead to utter disaster.

But coming in practically right on the deck was the only way the Tu-142 could possibly hope to escape detection by the chain of American radars lining Alaska’s northern coast. Behind him, the two Su-35s reappeared, emerging out of the cloud layer again. Smoothly, the twin-tailed fighters slid forward into their assigned slots, one to his right, the other to his left.

“I’m picking up weak signals from an airborne radar!” Captain Sukachov, the Tu-142’s defense systems operator, abruptly reported over the intercom. With all of their active sensor systems still on standby to avoid prematurely revealing their presence, Sukachov’s radar warning receivers were their primary means of figuring out what the Americans ahead of them might be doing. “It’s a pulse Doppler system. Our computer evaluates it as an AN/APY-2 type.”

“What’s your assessment?” Zinchuk demanded.

“It’s an American E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft,” Sukachov told him. “From the bearing and signal strength, I’d estimate that it’s orbiting somewhere over western Alaska, probably near Nome.”

Based on prior experience, Zinchuk judged that was likely to be true. Any U.S. Air Force early-warning plane operating in that area was perfectly positioned to pick up Russian reconnaissance probes coming east from the Chukchi Peninsula, Asia’s easternmost point — one only a little over a hundred kilometers from American territory. “Can that E-3 spot us?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Sukachov said with complete assurance. “We’re well outside its radar’s effective range and much too low. As far as that enemy AWACS plane is concerned, we might as well be on the far side of the moon.”

Eighty nautical miles west of Fairbanks, a large four-engine Boeing-designed aircraft orbited at high altitude. Antennas studded its exterior, allowing it to sift the airwaves for even the faintest electronic signal. Inside the RC-135V’s electronic-equipment-crammed aft cabin, Captain Amanda Jaffe knelt down next to Technical Sergeant Philip Kijac, one of the fourteen cryptologic language analysts aboard Exult One-Five. As the information integration officer aboard this flight, it was her job to fit together all the disparate fragments of intelligence its specialists gathered and somehow use them to develop a coherent picture. All too often that was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces were gray and half of them were missing.

“What have you got for me, Kij?” she asked.

In answer, he brought up a recording of the weak radio transmissions several of their antennas had picked up a few minutes earlier. Jaffe plugged her headset into his console and listened along to the series of hissing crackles, squeaks, and pops. “Encrypted voice transmissions?” she guessed.

Kijac nodded. “Yes, ma’am, that’s my read.”

“Coming from where?”

He opened a map on his computer screen. “Those signals originated somewhere along a bearing of roughly zero-zero-five degrees from our current position. Triangulating backward and judging by the signal strength when we picked them up, I’d estimate those transmissions were coming from around… here.” With a stylus, he tapped a point near the top of his digital map. It was far north of their RC-135V, well out over the ocean.

Jaffe frowned. “That’s what? Nearly three hundred nautical miles off our coast?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kijac agreed. “Which also puts them outside the range of any of our North Warning System sites.”

Reflexively, she tapped a finger against her lips, thinking things through. “Could that have been one of those big Russian recon aircraft reporting back to its home base?”

The specialist shook his head. “I don’t think so. A signal like that would have been a lot more powerful and much easier for us to pick up. No, ma’am, this sounds more to me like multiple aircraft talking to each other, using a real low-powered tactical frequency.”

Jaffe nodded, seeing his point. “Can you match those transmissions with anything else in our databases?” she asked.

Radio transmissions and other electronic signals recorded by RC-135V Rivet Joint ELINT flights all went into giant computer data archives for later analysis and comparison against other intelligence. Transmissions that could be definitively paired with types of aircraft performing distinct activities — things like landings and takeoffs, bombing runs, simulated dogfights and missile launches, and air reconnaissance reports, for example — were especially valuable, since they could be matched against new signals to speed up the process of figuring out what they meant. The system was similar to that used by the U.S. Navy to identify other submarines from passive sonar recordings of their unique acoustic signatures.

“I think so,” Kijac said. “I’ve got the computer running a comparison screen now.” As he spoke, a series of lights lit up along the side of his display. Rapidly, his fingers tapped the touch screen, opening a series of graphs that showed the signal characteristics of the transmissions they’d just detected matched against earlier recordings. He expanded one. “There we go. That’s a match, all right, with a ninety-plus percent certainty.”

Jaffe eyed the computer’s assessment with interest. “So it thinks the signals we picked up were from Russian multirole combat aircraft, either Su-27s or Su-35s, carrying out some kind of air-to-air refueling exercise?” The specialist nodded.

She frowned. Why were the Russians sending frontline fighters so far out from their usual bases? She checked the meteorology plot and her frown grew even deeper. Those faint radio signals had come from right in the middle of a developing storm front. Air-to-air refueling was never a trivial maneuver, even in good weather. And in bad weather, even at high altitude, the aircraft involved would have been contending with high winds and significant turbulence. She shook her head. Whatever was going on out there, this was no routine training mission. Not even the Russians were crazy enough to try a risky refueling op so far from any friendly base, not when a failure would likely doom both the fighter itself and its pilot. Not without a really pressing reason.

Making a decision, Jaffe picked up one of the RC-135’s secure communications handsets. “Air Operations Center, this is the IIO aboard Exult One-Five. We’ve just picked up indications of at least three and possibly more Russian aircraft operating three hundred and fifty — plus nautical miles due north of Umiat. Be advised that we believe these aircraft include at least one air refueling tanker and two multirole combat fighters, probably Su-27s or Su-35s.”

The Third Wing’s commander, U.S. Air Force Colonel Leonard Huber, listened closely to the report relayed from the RC-135V ELINT plane. He didn’t like the idea of Russian fighters operating so far north, out on his flank. His defenses were mostly oriented to detect and intercept combat aircraft sortieing from Moscow’s air bases on the Chukchi and Kamchatka peninsulas. But fully refueled Su-27s or Su-35s coming south out of the Beaufort Sea would be in a great position to slide past his command’s defenses without being detected.

He studied the board. Third Wing didn’t have many aircraft up right now, just an E-3 Sentry AWACS plane with the call sign Anvil Four-Five over the Seward Peninsula and the RC-135 west of Fairbanks. The colonel swung to his operations officer. “Contact Anvil and tell them to shift eastward toward Fairbanks. I want airborne radar coverage of that corridor across the Brooks Range in case our Russian comrades are trying something sneaky.”

“Yes, sir.”

Huber turned back to the board. His jaw tightened. “And I want all four of the F-22s we’ve got on ready alert in the air,” he said firmly. “Send one pair to escort the E-3 and assign the other two Raptors to bird-dog Exult One-Five.”

“You think the Russians might be planning to bushwhack them?” his ops officer asked.

Huber shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But if they are, I’m not interested in making things easy for them.” His eyes narrowed. “Because I do know that if we lose those AEW and ELINT aircraft, we’d be suddenly blind and deaf — which strikes me as a real good way to end up getting our asses kicked if Moscow’s got bigger and nastier plans today.”