Armageddon Mode

CHAPTER 22

Lieutenant Colonel Ramadutta could see the enemy’s defensive line forming on his radar display screen. It was unlikely that the Americans had yet seen him.

The Fulcrum was a marvel of modern technology, with electronics that even surpassed much of what was available to American pilots. Unlike any Western fighter, the Mig-29 gave its pilot a variety of long-range tracking options, including an excellent pulse-doppler radar, an extremely sensitive IR imager, a helmet-mounted computer display — though this was absent from the Migs sold to India — and a laser ranger. By flying close to the surface, Ramadutta was hoping to mask himself from American radar. At the same time, his own radar was off to avoid giving away his position directly. Instead, he was using the Mig’s infrared search/track mode, or IRST. Meanwhile, enemy aircraft using their own radar were quite visible to him, plotted on his display screen by the Fulcrum’s electronics.

Over his headset, he could hear the Indian strike aircraft calling to one another, reassuring and bolstering each other as they formed up their attack waves. Ramadutta had deliberately left the Jamnagar area in company with a flight of large, slow BAC Canberra bombers. Those relics of the fifties, Ramadutta thought, would not stand a chance against the American fleet. But their takeoff had given him the cover he needed to leave the airfield unnoticed by the watchful radar eyes of the American Hawkeyes.

He glanced left and right, making certain that the other three aircraft of his flight were tucked in close. Together, they could hit the American air defenses without warning and give the Indian strike planes their chance to get through.

He signaled his comrades with a waggle of his wings, then pushed the throttle forward. The Fulcrum thundered, shuddering as it approached the speed of sound.

Then he was through and still accelerating, pushing faster and faster as he hurtled south, skimming the crests of the waves.

Lieutenant Commander Tahliani was worried about his Sea harrier’s fuel reserves. Harriers gulped enormous quantities of jet fuel, especially when they performed such unorthodox maneuvers as hovering or viffing.

After shooting down the American Tomcat, he’d expected the other U.S. fighters to follow him and had circled back toward the east in an attempt to draw them out.

The F-14s had not taken the bait, circling instead toward the north.

Tahliani could see the battle unfolding on his radar screen and understood the Americans’ caution, They were heavily outnumbered in the air, and the ground-based aircraft from Kathiawar were beginning their move.

This, he decided, might present an opportunity to Viraat’s Sea Harriers.

It seemed that they’d been momentarily forgotten, lost in the surface clutter of the sea, or simply overlooked in the enormous scope of the rapidly escalating battle. There were several targets within easy reach, targets that would let the Harriers prove their special place in the Indian fleet’s aviation arm.

He was leery of launching another Sea Eagle missile at the American carrier. Tahliani was fairly sure his one shot, released solely to decoy the American Tomcat, had hit the ship, but there’d been no indication that he could see of damage, no reduction of power, no pillar of smoke on the horizon. Possibly the antiship missile had been shot down by the carrier’s point defenses at the last second.

Or possibly the U.S.S. Jefferson was simply too large to be badly hurt by ASMS.

But there was another target within the Sea Harriers’ reach, one much smaller than the nuclear carrier, but one that was vitally important to the American naval squadron. Kill it, and the battle might be won for India there and then.

“Blue King Leader to all Blue Kings,” he called. “Close on my position.”

From across the sea the scattered Indian Harriers came, joining Tahliani’s aircraft and circling with him, their numbers growing.

Kontr-Admiral Dmitriev stood on his bridge, looking down through narrow windows at the aircraft arrayed on Kreml’s flight deck. Migs and Suichois crowded one another, competing for every square meter of deck space, strike planes and fighters, men and munitions. The ship’s Captain, Captain First Rank Soni, stood beside him.

“My Operations Department informs me that we will be ready to launch the strike force within the hour, Admiral,” Soni said. He was a small man, with sandy hair and pale, Nordic eyes. “Mig-29s and Su-25s. Their combat load will include cluster bombs and incendiaries, rockets, and both free-fall and laser-guided bombs.”

“Excellent. You have done well, Captain.”

“Admiral, we continue to get rather urgent requests from Captain Sharov aboard the American Aegis cruiser. Their Admiral Vaughn is pressing for us to add to their air defense posture.”

Dmitriev shook his head. “We must get our strike force airborne first.

What kind of CAP do you have up now?”

“Four Yak-39s.”

Dmitriev made a face. He thought little of the V/STOL naval aircraft.

“We need real fighters in the air. How soon can we launch the Forty-third Squadron?”

Soni looked surprised. “They are ready for immediate launch, Admiral.

But they are reserved to fly protection for the strike-“

“Forget that. We need a strong CAP now. A flexible CAP, in case our American friends cannot handle the load. How long will it take?”

“Twelve Mig-29s? Less than thirty minutes, Admiral.”

“Who is commander?”

“Captain Third Rank Kurasov.”

He remembered Ivan Andreivich Kurasov, a young intense man with eyes of blue ice. He nodded. “Very well. Have Captain Kurasov launch at once.

He will be our contribution to this battle until we can get our strike planes in the air.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Kurasov is a good man. His primary responsibility should be the safety of the Russian squadron, of course, but he may use his discretion in aiding the Americans. And after the launch of our strike force, perhaps we can contribute something more.”

“Very well, Admiral. I should mention, sir, that the Tactical Operations Department feels that it is unlikely that the Indians will attack our vessels. The American carrier is their primary target. We are both farther away and less, shall we say, politically expedient.”

Dmitriev grinned. The Indians had balanced on their fence rail of neutrality for years. Today, perhaps, they would fall off once and for all. From New Delhi’s point of view, it would be much wiser to anger the Americans rather than the Russians, who, after all, were much closer to their part of the world. “We will teach them a thing or two about political expediency, Comrade Captain! Give the orders.”

As Soni turned away, Dmitriev’s gaze returned to the Russian warplanes on the flight deck. His orders from Moscow had been as clear as they had been distressing. Pressed on every side by unrest and ethnic violence, by a chaotic economy, and — most significantly — by rising disaffection with the Russian military, the Kremlin desperately needed a stunning coup that would demonstrate to the world, as well as their own generals, that the Commonwealth of Independent States could be a world power.

Russian admirals such as Dmitriev had long admired the Americans’ supercarriers to the point of envy. It had taken the drive, conviction, and the political connections of the immortal Admiral Gorshkov, however, to finally make the Russian carrier program a reality.

The thing was far harder to do than anyone had expected. The Americans, the British, even the French all had naval aviation traditions that extended back to the earliest days of military aircraft. They’d had a core of highly trained, highly experienced pilots to draw on throughout the thirties and forties, as carriers grew larger and more complex, their aircraft faster, heavier, and deadlier.

In the early fifties, when the rise of jets had forced the adoption of such British innovations as catapults and angled flight decks on aircraft carriers, Russia had continued to show scant interest in developing a carrier arm of its own. Back during the Great Patriotic War, of course, the navy had been visualized as an arm primarily geared for coastal defense and the support of amphibious operations. Stalin’s sole interest in naval warfare had extended to submarines, with the result that the technology for undersea warfare had for years been pursued to the virtual exclusion of all else.

Later, as American superiority in naval air had become more and more apparent, the Soviet Union had begun experimenting with the taktiches kye avianostny kreysera, the tactical aircraft-carrying cruisers like the Kiev. These were odd combinations of capital ship and carrier, with an angled flight deck attached to a cruiser’s hull alongside and aft of the superstructure. The design was good only for the various Yak V/STOL aircraft, imitations of the British and American Harrier jump jets that even the Kremlin admitted were not as good as their Western counterparts.

It wasn’t until the eighties that the first true Soviet aircraft carriers had been conceived, designed, and constructed. Even then, there had been critics who’d insisted that the project would never work.

An artificial carrier deck had been constructed on the Black Sea coast, and naval pilots had trained for carrier landings.

Too many had lost their lives attempting something for which there was no tradition and no experience anywhere within the Soviet military. And dozens more had died when the first landings were actually tried at sea, when the flight deck was moving in three different directions at once.

But it had been worth it in the end. Kreml and his brothers represented an entirely new era for the Soviet Navy. Billions of rubles, hundreds of lives had been sacrificed to achieve this sleek and ultra-modern weapon.

And now, the world would see what that weapon could do. It was necessary, a vital gamble. Russia’s military leaders feared that the Commonwealth would become a third-rate, Third World nation unable to affect the course of world events beyond her own, strife-torn borders.

The word had come through from Moscow a week before. Use this gigantic symbol of naval might to end the crisis between India and Pakistan. The Commonwealth could not tolerate The use of nuclear weapons on the very stoop of her back door.

And the orders had stressed that, if possible, Kreml was to beat the United States to the punch, to deliver the telling blow without the help of the American carrier group.

Dmitriev had not been certain how he was going to manage that part of the orders, though they did give him leeway in situations that allowed no alternatives. Vaughn’s short-sighted insistence on keeping control of the operation had played into Dmitriev’s hands. The Russian admiral now knew the Americans’ plan, the targets for their strike, the time the strike would be launched. By launching three hours ahead of time, the Russians would, as the Americans themselves might say, steal the show.

Washington would be forced either to admit that they themselves had sabotaged any chance of the two squadrons working together … or adopt a face-saving stance which suggested that the Russian carrier had carried out the mission, supported by an American task force.

Yes, his superiors in Moscow would like that. The President could shore up his battered public image by presenting himself as a strong man fully capable of taking charge in an international crisis for the good of his people and the world.

And for Dmitriev, this command would be a magnificent first step toward bigger and better things. The Commonwealth was still changing so quickly. There were opportunities, fantastic opportunities, for a man with the courage to grab them.

Thunder rent the air, and Dmitriev pressed against the flag bridge window, looking forward. Two navalized Mig-29s shrieked against the catapult shuttles that bound them to Kreml’s forward deck, eager to leap into the clean blue sky. Their thunder spoke of the raw power of the Russian naval air arm, of its reach beyond the borders of the Motherland.

The admiral smiled. In one morning, Russian carrier aviation was at last going to catch up with the Americans, ending the superiority they’d enjoyed for forty years!

America and the Commonwealth were no longer face-to-face at the brink of war. The world had changed so much from the old days of confrontation and incident. But the old rivalry, Dmitriev knew, was still there. New world or not, new politics or not, he found he was looking forward to this particular confrontation.

Tombstone was flying close to the water, ten miles behind the main American Tomcat formation.

“The bad guys are all over the place, Tombstone,” Hitman reported. The Tomcat was vibrating heavily in the dense and bumpy air close to the water. Thick plumes of condensation sprayed off the wings, describing graceful spirals in Tombstone’s jet stream. “Eagle Leader is lining up a shot. He’s called it! That’s fox one!”

“How’s it look in our neck of the woods, Hitman?”

“All clear. There’s nothin’ … holy shit! Bogies! Four bogies at zero-five-niner and coming fast! Range fifteen miles!”

Tombstone shifted the control stick right to meet the threat. He’d expected something like this, an attempt to slip some planes past the main body at extreme low altitude. With the confusion higher up, it was possible they could slip through unseen, lost in the radar clutter of waves and thickly packed airplanes. From behind the American formation, they could strike at the fleet … or circle to take the defenders from the rear.

“Bogies are turning. Tombstone! Range now … twelve miles. Looks like they’re going to swing onto the Eagles’ tail.” Tombstone reviewed his options. With Sparrow he could take all four bogies now … but he’d have to maintain course, illuminating them with his Tomcat’s AWG-9 all the way. No. Better to save the Sparrows and take these guys up close. He pushed the throttles forward to Zone Five.

“Eagle, Eagle, this is Tombstone,” he called. “Watch your six. You have four bogies, repeat, four bogies on your six.”

On the radar, the American planes were turning, aware of the new threat behind them. Tombstone’s F-14 thundered across the water, fifty feet between the waves and the missiles slung from the aircraft’s belly. At Mach 2, the passage of the F-14 raised a wall of spray behind him, a sonic boom made visible in geysering water.

“We got ‘em, Stoney!” Hitman cried, excitement charging his voice.

“We’re sliding right on to their six!”

“We’ll go for Sidewinder,” he said. No sense in warning them that he was coming. The enemy pilots’ attention appeared to be focused on the Eagles in their sights.

“Range … nine miles.”

“Targeting.”

Computer graphic symbols danced on his HUD. Four small shapes marked the enemy aircraft. Using his controller, Tombstone dragged the targeting pipper across one and locked in. The square changed to a circle, with the word “LOCK” beside it. A warble sounded in his headphones as the first Sidewinder saw its target.

“Tone,” Tombstone said. “Fox two!”

He squeezed the trigger and the Sidewinder slid off the launch rail with a whoosh. The instant the heat-seeker was away he was moving the pipper to a new target.

Batman heard Tombstone’s warning over the tactical channel. The Vipers were east of the Eagles and not threatened by the bogies coming in from the south, but it was a reminder that the American defensive formation was as porous as a sieve. The American response was going to have to be flexible and in-depth, or the individual aircraft was going to be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers.

“Find us a target and let’s dump this last bird,” he told Malibu. The F-14 handled better “clean,” without the added weight and drag of the half-ton missile on its belly.

“Got one. Range two-zero miles, bearing three-five-one. AWG-9 locked in. Tracking.”

“Punch it.”

“Fox three!”

Their last radar-homer streaked into the northern sky. Batman brought the Tomcat hard left, turning into the approaching main body of enemy aircraft.

“Ninety-nine aircraft,” the voice of the Hawkeye controller sounded in his headset. “We are tracking three primary groups of bogies, designated Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.”

More long-ranged missiles lanced out from the American squadrons as the BARCAP planes shot off the last of their AIM-54-Cs and the newcomers began unloading their Sparrows.

The AIM-7 Sparrow was a design that, in various incarnations, went back to the early fifties. Naval aviators tended to distrust it, for the missile had more than once shown a nasty tendency to lock onto the water instead of the target. Just as bad, from the pilot’s point of view, Sparrow had SARH guidance, which meant that once it was fired, the aircraft could not Maneuver without breaking the radar beam that illuminated the target for the missile’s sensors.

The latest F-and M-versions had ranges of up to sixty miles. Aviators preferred to dump them early in a fight, while they still had the luxury of flying straight and level toward the enemy.

“Fox one,” someone called over the tactical frequency.

He was echoed a second later by someone else. “Fox one, fox one.

Missile away.” Then other voices joined in. It was the high-tech equivalent of volley fire, a throwback to the days when armies stood their soldiers shoulder to shoulder and fired en masse.

Batman’s radar display rapidly became a tangle of blips as the sky filled with half-ton chunks of metal, hurtling north at Mach 4.

Ramadutta’s radar display was a blotchy, static-covered mess, partly from the sheer number of targets, partly from the American jamming that was turning out to be more effective than the New Delhi planners had anticipated. His tail threat receiver detected one target, however, with terrible clarity.

An air-to-air missile was coming in from behind.

“Enemy missile at one-eight-five!” he shouted, warning the other Migs in his flight. “IR homing! Evasive!”

The formation of Mig-29s blossomed apart, breaking in four directions as the enemy Sidewinder raced in across the kilometers. Several seconds into a high-G turn, Ramadutta saw that the missile was not locked on him, but on Lieutenant Pahvi’s Mig, number 404.

“Pahvi!” he snapped. “Use flares!”

Too late. Lieutenant Pahvi’s Mig was angling straight into the sky, a dazzling trail of flares dropping away behind his ship as it rose, but the American missile was rising fast, ignoring the flares and centering on the center of the aircraft.

There was a flash. Ramadutta saw the orange ball of flame, smoke, and debris punch through the airplane squarely between the wings, rupturing the wing tanks.

Pahvi’s Mig was a mass of flame an instant later, still climbing into the sky atop a towering pillar of writhing black smoke.

On the radar, the American pilot was still coming, alone. Gritting his teeth against the G-force, Ramadutta completed his turn, bringing the nose of his Fulcrum around until it was aligned with the American, now five miles distant.