Countdown

CHAPTER 11

"Fox two!" Coyote yelled, and a Sidewinder whooshed off the rail beneath his starboard wing. Unlike Phoenix or AMRAAM, the AIM-9 Sidewinder was IR-guided, homing on the heat given off by the target, especially the heat thrown off by a jet engine.

Too late, he realized he probably should have retargeted on one of the Sukhois. Its warload dropped, the Badger-G was already clumsily turning to port, moving onto a heading that would take it back toward the Kola Peninsula.

The Flagon-Fs, however, were thundering up from the sea, their targeting radars already locking onto Coyote's Tomcat.

Thinking fast, Coyote veered left, dropping his targeting pipper across the closer of the two Flagons. His last missile's IR warhead locked on and he squeezed the trigger. "Fox two!"

Head-on shots with IR-homers were a lot riskier than sending one up the tailpipe; such a shot would have been impossible with earlier models of the Sidewinder, but the AIM-9M was an all-aspect heat-seeker, able to lock on to and track the heat radiated from any part of a target aircraft, front or rear.

With his last missile away, he broke to the left; at the same moment, his first Sidewinder arrowed up the starboard engine exhaust of the Badger and detonated. Ten pounds of high explosive did not make that big of a bang.

There was a puff of white smoke and a scattering of debris, but the Badger continued to fly, still turning gently away from the center of the American fleet.

Coyote, meanwhile, dove for the deck, forcing the two Flagons to break their climb in order to maintain their radar lock.

Standard operating procedure for the Su-21 was to fit it out with two AA-3 "Anab" missiles, loading a heat-seeking version on the port side, a SARH-guided version to starboard. By ripple-firing the two, the pilot better than doubled his chances of a kill. The Sukhoi also carried several smaller AA-8 "Aphids," highly maneuverable dog-fighting missiles for close-in work.

At a range of about a mile now, Coyote decided, the Flagons would probably try to take him with Aphids. By going onto the deck and coming up underneath or behind them, he would keep them from getting a solid lock.

"Warning tone!" Cat yelled. "He's going for a fox one!"

Damn! They'd opted for a radar lock rather than infrared… or else they were going to try to nail them with both.

"Hang on to your lunch!" he warned Cat, and he kicked in the afterburners.

Their second Sidewinder slammed into one of the Flagons; from Coyote's viewpoint, it looked as though the nine-foot missile had smashed straight through the Sukhoi's cockpit and detonated in a shattering cascade of glittering fragments. At almost the same moment, first one, then another missile blasted clear of the second Sukhoi, tracking on the hurtling Tomcat.

The Badger had been circling to the left during those past few seconds, smoke streaming from its damaged starboard engine. Coyote had been cutting to the left as well and was now dropping toward the Badger on a collision course.

There'd been no conscious planning on Coyote's part, only the instinctive and near-instantaneous reactions of a Top Gun-trained aviator in combat. As the two Anab air-to-air missiles circled around toward the fleeing F-14, Coyote slammed the Tomcat past the Badger so close he felt the airframe shuddering as it carved through the bomber's slipstream. For a split second, he could look up and to the right, seeing every detail of the Tu-16 ― the greenhouse-type canopies over cockpit and nose, the deadly probe of a 23mm cannon extending from the starboard side of its fuselage forward, the back-swept wings each tagged by a bright, red star. Almost, he imagined, he could see the startled faces of its pilot and crew.

Then he was beneath the Tupolev and past it, still shrieking toward the sea. The Badger was firing at him with its twin 23mm tail guns ― he could see them twinkling ― but without effect.

A moment later, the bomber exploded in a ball of flame.

"My God!" Cat said, and there was something like awe in her voice. "You… you suckered that SARH into the Badger!"

Coyote twisted in his seat, looking back over his right shoulder. The Badger was falling toward the sea, its fuselage a mass of flame that was picked up and reflected by the water as a brilliant orange glow. Fire and glow rushed to meet one another.

"If the Flagon had a radar lock on us," he said, "we broke it by slipping into the Badger's shadow. The SARH lock transferred to the Badger and the Flagon driver didn't have a chance to break it… or else he didn't realize he'd started tracking the Badger."

"You make it sound like you didn't know what was going to happen," Cat said. "But I know better! That was sheer genius!"

"Coyote, this is Mustang!" a voice called over his headset. "Did you see that Flagon score an own goal?"

"Rog," Coyote replied.

"Looks like that last Flagon's called it quits. He's running."

"What about those cruise missiles?" Cat asked.

"Nothing we can do about them now. That'll be Shiloh's headache."

"Coyote, this is Mustang. Listen, Skipper, I'm down to fumes. Let's head for the farm. I think we're gonna need to find a Texaco before we start hunting for the Jeff."

"I'm with you, pal. Let's do it!" The two Tomcats vectored back toward the fleet.

The battle group's cruisers, destroyers, and frigates had but a single purpose in life: to protect the CBG's carrier. To accomplish this, the surrounding area was divided into three distinct defensive zones.

The outermost zone, between one hundred and three hundred miles from the carrier, was patrolled by the air wing's interceptors ― F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornets ― which with their look-down, shoot-down radar capability could take on any target from a Backfire bomber to a sea-skimming cruise missile. The middle zone, from ten to one hundred miles out, was covered by the frigates and destroyers, firing Standard missiles designed to lock on to incoming cruise missiles and take them down. The inner zone, out to ten miles from the carrier, was protected by surface ships firing both Standard missiles and short-ranged AIM-7 Sea Sparrows.

Of course, with so many aircraft and missiles in the sky all at once, confusion ― even deadly mistakes ― was always possible. Key to handling so many ships scattered across so much empty water was the Aegis cruiser and its remarkable SPY-1 radar.

Admiral Tarrant sat in the Aegis cruiser's Combat Information Center, surrounded by the subdued green glow of a dozen large radar screens and electronic displays. From his post at one of four huge multi-colored consoles, the unfolding course of the battle could be followed on those screens, which separated sea from land and pinpointed both the IFF-tagged blips of friendly ships and aircraft and the far larger number of approaching hostiles. The SPY-1 radar had a reach of 250 miles, nearly to the limit of the carrier group's defensive patrol range, but it could also take data fed through an electronic data link from E-2Cs or other far-ranging eyes of the fleet, extending its personal space even farther, tracking everything on and over the sea. The system was called Aegis after the magical shield of Zeus in Greek mythology.

At the reductions necessary to compress so much data onto a single screen, however, detail was lost… with potentially deadly results.

Usually, the Battle Group Commander's screens were set to show ranges of either thirty-two or sixty-four miles from the cruiser. For the moment, Tarrant had set his primary display for 128 miles, a necessary compromise between accuracy and what Tarrant liked to call "the big picture." The Battle of North Cape was sprawling across thousands of square miles now. Several enemy bombers had penetrated to within eighty miles before releasing their deadly cargoes. Most, fortunately, had launched much farther out. The farther away from the carrier group a missile could be killed, the better.

As Tarrant and his battle staff watched the incoming missiles, they spoke in low, measured tones to communications and weapons officers over their radio headsets, identifying missiles and assigning them to specific ships. With so many shooters and targets, there was a real danger that in the confusion of battle, ships might gang up on some targets with more firepower than was necessary to destroy them… but allow other targets to pass through the CBG's perimeter unchallenged. Battle management, it was called, but Tarrant was terribly afraid that no one human could keep track of all of the variables, all of the moving graphic symbols on those screens, and do more than nudge the unmanageable conflict along in one stumbling direction or another.

"Tally Six, Hotspur King," Tarrant said. "Designating Alpha Sierra Five-three at one-one-eight. He's yours."

"Hotspur King, Tally Six, roger that. Alpha Sierra Five-three at one-one-eight. Range six-three miles. Confirm lock-on. Firing number one."

A new blip appeared, separating from the radar return marking the Leslie and closing silently with a fast-traveling blip just crossing the one-hundred-mile mark. Moments later, the two blips merged, grew fuzzy, then faded from view. A Standard missile had just killed a Kingfish.

There were no cheers, however, no celebration, though he thought he heard a ragged cheer transmitted from the CIC aboard the Leslie, hastily cut short.

Tarrant and the battle staff were already detailing another missile to another ship, and there was no time for anything but curtly worded orders and equally curt message repeats and acknowledgments.

Tomcats and Hornets, interceptors still deploying from both carriers toward the front line of battle, ate away at the cruise-missile threat by locking on to them one by one with their look-down, shoot-down radars, then tagging them with AMRAAMs or Sparrows. Cruise missiles that closed to within one hundred miles of Carrier Group 14's center began to take fire from the frigates posted in Jefferson's outer defensive zone. Normally spread across thirty thousand square miles or more, the CBG's escorting surface ships had redeployed along the "threat axis" before combat, concentrating the group's defensive fire between the carrier and the approaching ship-killers. One after another, shipboard radars locked on, missile mounts pivoted, elevated, then loosed their deadly warloads in billowing contrails lancing into the sky.

Explosions detonated across the sea, some direct hits, others near-misses that sprayed thin skins and delicate electronics with white-hot shards of shrapnel.

In minutes, the number of incoming cruise missiles was reduced to seventy-six… then sixty-four… then thirty-eight. Circling Hawkeye E-2Cs tracked the survivors, plotted their courses, and vectored in additional Tomcats and Hornets to add to the mid-zone defense.

The surviving missiles kept coming.

Jefferson's CIC was similar to the combat center aboard the Shiloh, but far less elaborate. The carrier's several radar systems ― SPS-49 air search, SPS-64 surface search, SPS-65 threat detection, and the fire-control systems for her missiles and Phalanx CIWS ― had a much shorter range than the SPY-1, adequate for tracking ships and aircraft throughout Jefferson's area under most circumstances, but insufficient to deal with the complex threat of a massed Russian air assault. That, after all, was why the Navy had Aegis cruisers.

Tombstone was in CIC, watching the computer displays, listening to the chatter of his aviators as they continued to press the oncoming mass of Soviet bombers and their fighter escorts. A dozen separate dogfights had broken out so far. Tomcats such as those flying BARCAP, after they expended their loads of AIM-54s, still had Sidewinder and AMRAAM missiles and were closing eagerly on the Russian formations. The F-14s that had gone aloft with a warload of six Phoenix missiles had only their guns to fall back on in a dogfight and were vectored out of the fray by the all-seeing Hawkeyes, but the F/A-18 Hornets moved in close to cover their withdrawal.

As far as he could see from here, the battle was quickly degenerating into blind, random chaos.

And Tombstone could do nothing to help. Jefferson's CIC was "off the air," her radio and primary communications networks shut down to avoid detection and tracking by radar-seeking missiles. The data displayed on the combat center's screens were being transmitted via data link from the Shiloh and from the orbiting Hawkeyes.

All he could do was stand in the eerie semidarkness, watching this clash between anonymous points of light that had all the ferocity and blood-lust of a video game. It was difficult to attach faces and names to the voices he heard relayed over the room's speakers.

"Rodeo Eight, Rodeo One. Come left three-five and goose it!"

"Ah, roger, roger. We've got Alpha Sierra Two-one in our sights. Goin' for fox one."

"Easy… almost on him. Lock! Fox one!"

"Echo Tango, Rodeo Eight. Splash Alpha Sierra Two-one…"

"Shit-fire, what was that?"

"MiGs! MiGs! We got four… no, five MiGs, coming down fast!"

"This is Echo Tango Seven-six-one. Repeat last and identify."

"Echo Tango, this is King Three! We just got buzzed by a wing of MiG-29s. That's MiG Two-niner. Goin' to burner! "Yah, we're turnin'and burnin'!"

"Rock and roll!"

Tombstone turned to the CIC officer at his side, a young, black commander named Frazier. "Who're 'King' and 'Rodeo'?" he asked.

The officer glanced up at a plastic board where a petty officer was marking up additions to the order of battle.

"King'd be VF-142, CAG," he said. "Rodeo is VF-143. The Ghostriders and the Pukin' Dogs, off the Ike."

Carrier battle force. Combining Jefferson's fighter squadrons with the squadrons off the Eisenhower gave the American task force a fighting chance.

Tombstone moved to one of the big repeater screens, showing the location of each CBG element, ships and aircraft, identified by circling Hawkeyes and compiled and transmitted from the Shiloh.

Several of CBG-7's outer defensive zone pickets were already showing on the board, 150 miles north of Jefferson's position, the frigates Blakely, John C. Pauly, and Simpson, and the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer David D. Porter.

All four ships had already added their Standard missile firepower to the battle and were knocking down incoming Russian cruise missiles as fast as they appeared on the screen.

As he kept listening to the bursts of radio communication between the men and women in the fighters, however, Tombstone knew that the real brunt of the fighting was being borne not by the CICs of the surface ships involved, but by the aviators. As minute dragged after minute, the Tomcats and Hornets from both CBGs continued to claw at the neo-Soviet aircraft formations pressing in across Jefferson's eastern combat perimeter. One wave had largely been wiped out of the sky by the long-range AIM-54Cs; there'd been a brief pause, but now a second wave had appeared, and the Hawkeye radar pickets indicated that still more aircraft were beginning to appear in the skies above the Kola Peninsula air bases.

Sooner or later, the repeated Russian assaults, crashing like storm-driven waves across the CBF's slender defenses, would break through.

When that happened, the water would come crashing through the breach, and there would be nothing left with which to stop it.

"Low Down!" Bouncer cried in his ear. "Watch it! We got two dropping in from our five o'clock!"

Lieutenant James Stanley Lowe, call sign "Low Down," was a new arrival aboard the Jefferson. A member of the carrier's other Tomcat squadron, the VF-97 War Eagles, he'd come aboard during Jefferson's refit at Norfolk some two months before, having flown before that with a reserve squadron at Oceana.

He'd brought his RIO with him, Lieutenant j.g. Beth Harper. After she'd thrown an abusive drunk out the door of a squadron watering hole in Norfolk, everyone had called her Bouncer.

They worked well together, and he'd enjoyed the notoriety of being one of the first in his reserve group to team with a female NFO.

Glancing back over his shoulder, he spotted the slim, nose-on silhouettes of the MiGs following the Tomcat into a long right turn. Damn… a pair of MiG-29 Fulcrums, flying welded-wing. They were still perhaps a mile off. He pulled the stick farther to the right, tightening his turn.

"Keep… watching… 'em…" he called back, battling the increasing G-forces of the turn.

This was bad. Fulcrums were hot… as fast and as able as the F-15 Eagle they'd been designed to combat, and in some ways better. Worse, Lowe and Harper had launched with a warload of six Phoenix missiles. They'd expended them all at long-range targets and been on their way back to the Jeff to rearm when these jokers had slipped through the perimeter and jumped them.

Trading altitude for speed, Low Down straightened out of the turn to starboard; the two MiGs, still flying in tight side-by-side formation, punched across his flight path a good mile to the rear. With twin stabilizers and large underslung intakes, they looked a lot like U.S. Air Force Eagles.

"They're turning," Bouncer told him. "They're coming right and following us down!"

He'd lost sight of them behind the aircraft. "Are they still turning?"

"Yeah! Still coming! Turning our way!"

Lowe went into a reverse turn to the left that made the Tomcat shudder in protest. He'd practiced this stunt a lot, had even pulled it once on a couple of F-15s during Navy-Air Force "Red Flag" maneuvers. Standing on his port-side wing, he watched sea and sky wheel past his canopy until the two tiny, distant shapes swung past his left shoulder and dropped behind his HUD.

One of the MiGs had turned smartly and was coming down Lowe's path virtually in his footsteps, too close and too far to the right for Lowe to engage. The other had had trouble with the hard left turn and drifted away from his wingman. As he pulled out of his turn, he was a mile beyond his companion and almost directly in the center of Lowe's HUD.

This would be the time for a heat-seeker shot, but he didn't have any.

"Going to guns!" he called, and he flipped the selector. His HUD showed the drifting circle of his aiming reticle, as well as the rectangle marking the target. Just beneath the vertical airspeed indicator on the left side of his HUD was a discrete reading: ARM 675, showing his gun ready, with a full load of 675 rounds of 20mm ammo. Pulling up slightly, he dragged the reticle across the rectangle, squeezing the trigger when the one encompassed the other.

The F-14 mounted the M61A1 Vulcan, a six-barreled, high-speed cannon recessed into the left side of the fuselage, just below the cockpit. That gun screamed now, hurling 20mm shells toward the MiG as it angled toward him almost nose-on.

The other MiG flashed past him on the left. He ignored it and kept holding down the trigger. Firing six thousand rounds per minute, the Vulcan would eat 675 rounds in less than seven seconds. He held the trigger down for two full seconds, watching the flicker of yellow tracers as they whipped off his Tomcat's nose, then slowed in accordance with the laws of perspective, floating, nearly stopping as they converged on the MiG. He imagined he saw debris breaking off the target but couldn't be sure.

Yes! The MiG was trailing smoke. There was a puff of smoke, and something separated from the aircraft, now less than half a mile away. The Russian pilot had just ejected.

Bringing his stick back to the right and kicking his rudder over, Low Down rolled to starboard, cutting away from the oncoming aircraft. Burning now, it held its long, straight descent toward the sea.

"Splash one Fulcrum!" he called over the tactical channel.

"Low Down!" Bouncer warned. "The other MiG's reversed. He's coming in on our five again!"

Twisting in his seat, he picked up the enemy aircraft over his right shoulder. Damn, this guy was good! His wingman must have been a rookie to let himself get pulled out of formation like that, but this man was matching Lowe turn for turn, and then some, getting full value out of the Fulcrum's superior turning and maneuverability.

While he was looking at the MiG, he saw a yellow spark ignite beneath its wing. Missile! With no radar warning, it would be an IR homer, probably one of the Russians' AA-8 Aphids.

"Missile launch!" Bouncer called. "Incoming!"

"Flares!" he snapped. He rolled hard to the right, turning into the attacker, hoping to break inside the missile's turn radius. He could already tell, though, that he was too late.

Next choice. He throttled back, way back, pulling the Tomcat's engines nearly to idle. More hot-burning magnesium flares scattered into the sky behind his aircraft. With the engine throttled back, the IR homer might choose the flares instead of his exhaust.

A second missile was in the air now, and the first was hurtling toward his six with appalling speed. He let the F-14's nose fall way off. The ocean spun across the front of his canopy, filling his view forward in a spinning blur of ultramarine…

The first missile slammed into his starboard engine and exploded, sending white-hot fragments ripping through avionics, combustion chambers, turbine blades, and fuel tanks. In that same instant, Low Down knew that the aircraft was doomed. He could feel the plane tearing itself to pieces around him.

"Punch out, Bouncer!" he yelled. "Eject! Eject!"

He grabbed his own red-and-white-striped ejection ring and pulled, hard.

The canopy exploded away from the falling aircraft, and a second later, an angry giant slammed his boot into the base of Lowe's spine, flinging him clear of the Tomcat in a shrieking cacophony of wind and rocket motor.

For a few seconds, Low Down was suspended in blissful silence. He saw his Tomcat ― what was left of it, anyway ― disintegrating into flaming, tumbling fragments as it dropped toward the sea.

And then his chute opened, jerking him upright with a jolt that nearly knocked the breath from his lungs. Reflexively grabbing the chute's risers, he dangled there, surveying his surroundings.

Low Down was alone in a wide, open sky. He couldn't see the MiG that had killed him, though the snarled white contrails of other aircraft and missiles in the distance gave the skyscape a strange, surreal look. Twisting in his harness, he tried to spot Bouncer. Had she gotten clear?

He couldn't see her chute anywhere. Minutes later, he plunged into the frigid waters of the Barents Sea.