Arctic Storm Rising

Twenty-Seven

Colonel Iosif Zinchuk peered ahead through the Tu-142’s cockpit windows, straining to see clearly through a dim, gray half-light. Ahead of his big patrol plane, the clouds were thickening, as were the torrents of snow and sleet now driven almost straight across the icebound sea by shrieking, gale-force winds. The closer they came to the coast, the worse this storm got. He gripped his steering yoke tight, making constant, small adjustments to keep the Tu-142 from veering suddenly off course or slamming a wing or propeller blade into the jagged surface not far below them. Every muscle in his arms, shoulders, and face felt on fire with the strain involved in this prolonged, low-altitude flight.

“Colonel, that American AWACS plane is moving,” Sukachov reported again over the intercom. “Both the strength and bearing of its radar emissions have changed.”

“Moving where?” Zinchuk snapped.

“Due east from its previous position,” the Tu-142’s defense systems operator said.

Zinchuk frowned. “Heading back to its base?”

“No, sir,” Sukachov told him. “The E-3’s course would take it more southeast if that were the case. This looks like a change in deployment instead.”

“Is that usual?”

Sukachov hesitated and then admitted, “I’m afraid not, Colonel. In fact, it’s a definite departure from the standard operational patterns we’ve observed in the past.”

“Which could indicate that the Americans are onto us,” Zinchuk guessed.

“That is a possibility,” the other man said. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “If their AWACS plane continues eastward on its present heading, it will be in a position to detect us once we cross the coast and have to climb over the mountains.”

Zinchuk fought down the urge to rattle off a string of violent, profane curses. Doing so might make him feel better, but hearing their commander lose control of his temper would only unnerve the rest of the Tu-142’s eleven-man crew. As it was, several days of long, difficult patrols across the polar ice cap had already put them all on edge.

He winced. Had this hazardous, borderline insane flight just above the ice been for nothing? “How could the Americans know what we’re doing?” he demanded angrily. “Were we spotted by that fixed radar site at Barter Island?” On their present course, they were drawing ever closer to the American FPS-117 long-range array just off the Alaska mainland.

“No, sir,” Sukachov promised. “At this altitude, we’re still well below its horizon.”

Impatiently, Zinchuk forced himself to set aside the question of how the Americans apparently knew what they were doing. That was something for intelligence officers in Moscow to sort out later — once he and his crew returned and were debriefed. Maybe their plane had been spotted by an American spy satellite in orbit, as hard as that seemed to believe. Or maybe the CIA had its own spies inside the Ministry of Defense. What mattered now was that he do whatever was necessary to press onward with this risky reconnaissance mission… and to preserve whatever was left of their most important tactical surprise.

He glanced out the left side of the Tu-142’s cockpit. There, about a kilometer off his wing, he could just barely make out the needle-nosed profile of one of the two Su-35s assigned to escort him deep into the American interior. Between the fighter’s winter camouflage and blinding flurries of snow howling across the windswept ice, it was incredibly difficult to spot. Unfortunately, he knew, visual detection and radar detection were two very different things. Su-35s were incredibly agile combat aircraft, but they were not stealth fighters.

Nevertheless, Zinchuk thought, there were still a few tricks he could play to confuse the enemy’s radar picture. He keyed his mike. “Bodyguard Lead, this is Prospector. Close in on my aircraft. Tuck yourselves in as tight as you can, right behind each wing.”

“Prospector, Bodyguard,” he heard Major Kuryokhin reply. “Copy that. Moving into your shadow now.”

Zinchuk concentrated on holding the big reconnaissance plane straight and level while the two much-smaller jet fighters carefully maneuvered into position — closing on the Tu-142 until they were flying only a couple of dozen meters away on each side. With luck and skill, their smaller radar signatures would blend with that of the much-larger aircraft, presenting the Americans with what should appear on their screens as only a single bogey.

Several minutes later, Zinchuk heard Lieutenant Gorsheniov, the Tu-142’s navigator, call out over the intercom, “Feet dry!” They had just crossed the Alaska coast and were now back over land.

With a touch of weary cynicism, the colonel considered how little practical difference there was between the sea’s ice-covered expanses and the snow-and-ice-layered frozen tundra stretching ahead of them. Colliding with either surface — solid land or solid water — meant sudden death. Slowly, he pulled back on the yoke, bringing the Tu-142’s nose up a few degrees to begin a steady climb to higher altitude. The northernmost slopes of the rugged mountains making up the Brooks Range were only sixty kilometers away.

Two dark gray F-22 Raptors from the Ninetieth Fighter Squadron flew north-northeast from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Both carried twin six-hundred-gallon external fuel tanks mounted on underwing pylons and a full internal weapons payload of six AIM-120 AMRAAM radar-guided missiles and two AIM-9X Sidewinder heat-seekers. They were headed toward a midair rendezvous with Exult One-Five, the RC-135V Rivet Joint electronic intelligence aircraft currently orbiting west of Fairbanks.

Aboard the lead Raptor, Captain Connor “Doc” McFadden suddenly heard the voice of an air controller from Elmendorf-Richardson come up over his radio. “Casino Lead, this is Air Ops Center,” the controller said. “We’re changing your mission. Both our E-3 Sentry and Barter Island have picked up the same new air contact — probably another Tu-142 patrol plane. It just crossed the coast east of Barter Island, heading south-southeast at around three hundred and eighty knots. Bearing zero-one-five, range three hundred and forty miles, altitude six thousand and climbing. We need you to intercept, positively identify, and warn off that Russian aircraft.”

McFadden clicked his mike. “Copy that, Ops,” he said tersely. “Anything else we should know about?”

“Affirmative, Casino,” the controller told him. “Signals intelligence from Exult One-Five strongly suggests the Russian recon plane could be accompanied by combat aircraft, probably Su-35s. And the E-3 says that bogey may be a little too big to be just one aircraft. So stay sharp.”

McFadden whistled softly off-mike. So the Russians had figured out a way to provide fighter escorts for their patrol planes coming over the Arctic? Well, that was a new twist, and not a good one. “Lead to Casino Two,” he radioed. “Let’s punch it, Cat. The closer we intercept these guys to the coast, the more maneuvering room we’ll have.”

“Copy that, Doc,” his wingman, Lieutenant Allison “Cat” Parilla, acknowledged. “But that blizzard coming across the mountains is really nasty.”

McFadden nodded to himself. The quick meteorology brief they’d been given just before takeoff had shown yet another severe winter storm headed across the state, with fierce winds and bands of thick clouds. “Well, let’s just hope these guys play it smart and come in above the weather,” he said, advancing his throttles. Instantly, he was pressed back deeper into his seat as the F-22’s powerful twin Pratt & Whitney turbofans spooled up.

Accelerating smoothly to nine hundred knots, both Raptors streaked toward the distant Brooks Range.

As the Tu-142 climbed steadily through a swirling sea of gray cloud, Zinchuk was sure that his lumbering aircraft had now been detected. Sukachov’s reports of steadily increasing signal strengths from both the American E-3 AWACS plane and their ground radar station could yield no other possible conclusion. He spoke over the intercom. “Very well. The Americos know we’re here, so there’s no point in staying quiet. Activate all sensors!”

Acknowledgments from the electronics officers stationed in the forward and aft cabins rattled through his headset. Satisfied, he radioed his two fighter escorts. “Bodyguard, Prospector. Recommend you break away now. Use the mountains for cover and take station ahead of us.”

Aboard the rightmost Su-35, Major Vadim Kuryokhin heard Zinchuk’s suggestion with relief. Maintaining a safe distance from the colonel’s reconnaissance aircraft was incredibly difficult in this solid cloud layer, even with his fighter’s IRST, its infrared search and track system, picking up the other aircraft’s enormous heat signature. He’d been dreading the possibility of a fatal midair collision ever since they’d started climbing into this low-hanging mass of snow- and ice-swollen storm clouds.

He raised Troitsky in the other Su-35. “Okay, Ilya. Switch your radar on at low power and set synthetic aperture mode. We’re going down to play hide-and-seek ahead of Prospector. Stand by.”

“Two, standing by,” his wingman replied.

Kuryokhin pushed a button on the side of his left-hand multifunction display. Half the display lit up, showing a highly detailed, three-dimensional image of the surrounding mountains and twisting river valleys. Using its synthetic aperture mode, the Su-35’s IRBIS-E passive electronically scanned array radar mapped the ground ahead — making very low-altitude flight possible even in poor visibility. Swiftly, he sketched out a suggested flight path and sent it via data link to Troitsky.

He took a deep breath. This was going to be… a little hairy. “Very well, Two! Break away… now!” He pulled his stick sharply right, rolling the fighter into a diving turn away from the huge Tu-142. Down and down he plunged through the clouds with his eyes practically glued to the images on his glowing MFD. A jagged mass of rock, the spire of a thousand-meter-high peak, loomed ahead, growing with alarming speed, and he quickly rolled back to the left to dodge around it.

Then Kuryokhin banked hard right again and pulled back on the stick a little, leveling off as he broke out of the clouds only a few hundred meters above the ground. There, in a widening gap between steep, ice-sheathed slopes and even higher rocky cliffs, he picked out the trace of a frozen river through the snow — like a gray-silver snake winding through white sand. His Su-35 turned to follow it, and he pushed his throttles forward to accelerate out ahead of Zinchuk’s now-invisible Tu-142 as it climbed higher above the clouds. In his rearview mirror, he saw Troitsky’s plane swing in behind him. Curving back and forth along the meandering valley, the two twin-tailed Russian jets flew onward.

Still more than two hundred nautical miles south of the oncoming Tu-142, the American F-22 pilots, Doc McFadden and Cat Parilla, both heard the same high-pitched, chirping tone in their headsets. Their radar warning receivers had just detected the Russian reconnaissance plane’s powerful active sensors lighting up.

“Guess that guy’s not trying to hide anymore,” McFadden commented laconically.

“Nope,” his wingman agreed. Parilla checked her RWR display. “He still can’t see us, though, even with these honking big gas tanks hanging off our wings.”

McFadden nodded, scanning his own display. External fuel tanks made their Raptors a lot less stealthy, but they were still outside the range at which that Russian radar should be able to spot them. On the other hand, they were closing that gap fast. With the propeller-driven Tu-142 and their F-22s now headed straight for each other at a combined speed of more than twelve hundred knots, they were shaving off nearly twenty-two nautical miles every minute.

“Anvil Four-Five, this is Casino Lead,” he radioed the E-3 Sentry, now orbiting well behind them over Fairbanks. “Any confirmation yet on those possible Russian fighters?”

“Casino, this is Anvil,” the radar controller aboard the AWACS plane replied. “Negative on that. We thought we saw a couple of smaller contacts break away from the Tu-142 a few seconds ago. But we’ve got nothing else on our screens right now.”

McFadden frowned. He didn’t like not knowing where those Su-35s were — or even if they were real, and not just a figment of the RC-135 Rivet Joint crew’s collective imagination. He opened a terrain map on one of his displays. His mouth turned down even more as he scanned the rugged topography of the Brooks Range. Air search radars couldn’t see through solid rock. Which meant that jumble of mountains and valleys and gorges offered a number of possible hidden avenues of approach for pilots willing to take chances.

He made a decision. Their Raptors weren’t supposed to sneak up on that big, lumbering Russian patrol plane. Far from it. The whole point of this intercept mission was to swoop in hard and fast and make it very clear to that SOB that he wasn’t going to parade around unchallenged through U.S. airspace. Besides, if there were Russian fighters out there somewhere up ahead, the more eyes looking for them, the better. Situational awareness mattered more right now than stealth. “Okay, Cat,” he said. “Let’s not be coy. It’s time to let these guys know we’re coming their way. Light ’em up!”

And then, suiting his actions to his own words, McFadden activated the F-22’s powerful AN/APG-77 radar. As an active electronically scanned array, it randomly changed frequencies with every radar pulse, making it a lot harder for any enemy to pick out its emissions from ordinary background noise in the electromagnetic spectrum. But harder wasn’t the same thing as impossible.

Alexei Petrov followed Bondarovich into the aircraft shelter at a run. Inside, the hanging lanterns used to provide illumination swayed crazily in swirling currents of freezing air. Distorted shadows danced across the fabric walls and hard-packed snow floor. Wind-whipped ice crystals spattered against the parked PAK-DA bomber’s wing and fuselage.

Petrov stared up at the shelter’s roof and swore. More of the camouflage cloth panels had ripped loose. Still attached at one end, they flailed wildly in the blizzard. Straps that had tied the panels to overhead aluminum trusses whipped back and forth from the loose side of each panel. He grabbed Bondarovich’s shoulder and pointed upward, screaming into the other man’s ear to be heard over the shrieking wind. “Get your men! All of them! Bunin, too! If we don’t tie those damned panels back in place, this fucking storm will tear the whole shelter to pieces!” He shoved the ex-Spetsnaz soldier back toward the outside. “Move, damn it!”

The other man nodded anxiously. He turned and plunged back into the maelstrom outside.

Petrov scrambled up a ladder and out onto the PAK-DA bomber’s wing. His boots might damage a few sections of the plane’s advanced, radar-absorbent skin, but that was nothing compared to what would happen if the shelter came apart around it. Even an hour or two of exposure to subzero temperatures, hundred-kilometer winds, and blowing snow and ice could render the aircraft completely unflyable. Frantically, he grabbed for one end of a strap as it snapped through the air, and missed.

Again and again, he tried to get a hold on one of the flailing straps and failed. His face darkened in fury. To come so close to changing the world forever and then to be defeated by a wind-whipped piece of cloth? How his father must be laughing at him, he thought grimly. Laughing at him out of the icy depths of hell.