Fortunes of War

6

Other first people in Siberia to discover something amiss were the radar operators at the Vladivostok airport, a facility the military shared with the occasional civil transports that had flown the length of Siberia or over the Pole. There weren’t many of those anymore. Fuel was expensive, money to maintain aircraft in short supply, and the navigation aids in the middle of the continent were not regularly maintained. Anything or anyone that really had to get to Vladivostok came by rail or sea. Still, the radars that searched the oceans to the east and south were in working order and operators were on duty, even at two o’clock in the morning, near the end of another short summer night. In Russia change occurred because the government agency responsible ceased paying the bills and, to survive, the people who had lived on that trickle of money wandered on to something else. Money to make the radars work still dribbled in occasionally from Moscow. The task of safeguarding Mother Russia was too sacred for any politician to touch.

The only operator actually watching the screens was also perusing a card game that the other members of the watch section were playing. conOccasionally, he remembered to glance at the screens. It was on one of these periscope sweeps that he saw the blip, to the south. Three minutes later, when the blip was still there, and closer, he called the supervisor to look. The supervisor put down his cards reluctantly. There were no aircraft scheduled to arrive from that direction — there were no aircraft at all scheduled to arrive in Vladivostok until the next afternoon — and repeated queries on the radio went unanswered. As the blip got closer, it separated into many smaller blips, apparently a flight of aircraft. The radar supervisor called the air defense watch officer on the other side of the base and reported the inbound flight, which would penetrate Russian airspace in about twelve minutes if it maintained the same COURSE and speed. Two Sukhoi Su-27 fighters were in the usual alert status, which meant each was fully fueled and armed with four AA-10 Alamo missiles and a belt of shells for its 30-mm cannon. The ground crews were asleep in a nearby hut. The pilots, wearing flight suits, were playing chess in another nearby shack. Usually at this time of night, the alert pilots would be asleep, but these two had attended a wedding dinner earlier in the evening and weren’t sleepy. When the duty officer telephoned, ordering a scramble, they dropped everything and ran for their planes as they shouted to awaken the ground crews. One of the pilots opened the door to the ground crew’s shack and turned on the light. At the aircraft, the pilots donned their flight gear as the ground crewmen came stumbling across the mat. The Sukhois rolled onto the runway eight minutes later, lit their afterburners, and accelerated. The mighty roar washed over the sleepy base like thunder. After a modest run, the wheels lifted from the concrete and the pilots sucked up gear and flaps. With the afterburners still engaged, the two fighters moved closer together. The pilots then pulled into a steep climb and punched up through the overcast as the leader checked in with the ground control intercept (Gci) controller, who was the same man who had seen the incoming blips, for what was originally one blip had now separated into five, sometimes six, individual targets. The supervisor and most of the watch section were now gathered behind him, watching the scope over his shoulder. The blips were doing about 250 knots. Probably turboprop aircraft. But whose? Why were so many aircraft coming from the southeast?

Why hadn’t Moscow transmitted a copy of their flight plans?

The tops of the lower layer of stratus clouds were at fifteen thousand feet tonight. Another cloud layer far above blocked out most of the glow of the high-latitude sky. As they climbed above the lower layer of stratus clouds, the Sukhoi pilots eased their throttles back out of burner and spread out into a loose combat formation. They then killed their wingtip lights, so only the dim formation lights on the sides of the planes enlivened the darkness. When the fighters were level at twenty thousand feet, the GCI controller turned them to a course to intercept the large formation heading toward Vladivostok.

The leader’s attention was inside his cockpit. Although the Su-27 had a HUD, the pilot wasn’t using it. Even if he had been, he would probably have died anyway. He concentrated on flying his aircraft on instruments, and on adjusting the gain and brightness of his radar screen. The task took several seconds. As he examined the scope, he glanced at his electronic countermeasures panel, which was silent. Yes, the switches were on. A shout on the radio. He automatically raised his gaze, scanned outside. At eleven o’clock, slightly high, a bright light…, brilliant! missile!

The thought registered on his brain and automatically he slammed the stick sideways to roll left, away from his wingman, and pulled. The responsive fighter flicked over obediently into 220 degrees of bank. The missile arrived a second and a half after the pilot first spotted the exhaust plume: The fighter’s nose had come down no more than conten degrees. The missile missed the Sukhoi by about six inches. The proximity fuse detonated the warhead immediately under the cockpit area. The shrapnel punched hundreds of holes in the belly of the plane. In less than a second, fuel from punctured fuel lines sprayed into the engine compartment, starting a fire. A half second later, the aircraft exploded, killing the pilot instantly. The wingman had instinctively rolled right — away from his leader — when he spotted the inbound missile. He also shouted into his radio mike, which was contained within his oxygen mask. It was this warning that the leader heard. The wingman only rolled about seventy degrees, however, so he could keep the oncoming missile in sight. Still he laid on six Go’s. He saw the missile streak in out of the corner of his eye and saw the flash as it detonated under the leader’s plane. The flash temporarily blinded him. Blinking mightily, he slammed the stick back left and pulled while he looked to see if his leader had successfully avoided the missile. He keyed his radio mike, opened his mouth to call. The wingman never saw the second missile, which impacted his plane in the area of the left wing root and detonated. The explosion severed the wing spar, so the wing collapsed. The hot metal of the warhead ignited fuel spewing under pressure from the ruptured wing tank. Then all the fuel still in the wing exploded. The sequence was over in a few thousandths of a second. The pilot died without even knowing there had been a second missile. The blossoming fireballs from the two Sukhois were visible for twenty miles in this dark universe. The pilots of the four Japanese Zeros — White Flight — cruising at max conserve took their thumbs off the fire buttons on their sticks, where they had been hovering in case further missiles were necessary. The leader had been the only plane to fire. Now White Leader began a gentle left turn to carry the flight back in the direction of Vladivostok. He hoped to orbit in this area to the east of the city in a racetrack pattern, ready to shoot down any other aircraft coming out of Vlad or the bases on Sakhalin Island to harass Japanese aircraft delivering paratroops. Flying as number three, Jiro Kimura checked the location of the other aircraft in the formation on his computer presentation. The planes used pencil-thin laser beams to keep track of one another. No external lights were illuminated; consequently, the airplanes were invisible in the darkness. Confident that all four planes were where they were supposed to be, Jiro’s thoughts moved on. He banked to keep the leader in position. Why did he not feel elated? The first two victories of the war had just been won. The Athena devices on the Zeros made them invisible to Russian radar, so the GCI controllers had no clue whatsoever that the Zeros were even airborne. They had launched the Sukhois to investigate the incoming transports. The Sukhoi pilots had been ambushed without warning…, without mercy, without a chance in hell. They were executed. That was the truth of it. Jiro felt no pity or remorse, only a tiredness, a lethargy, and a sense of profound sadness. Flash, flash, two explosions seventeen miles away in the night sky… and two men were dead. Presumably. Jiro thought the odds of surviving explosions like that must be very slim. Bang, bang. Just like that — two men dead. That was the way he would die, too. The revelation came to him now in his cockpit as he sat there tired, hungry, thirsty, and very much alone. He would die in this cockpit someday just as those two Russians had, without warning, without luck, without a moment to reflect, without an opportunity to make his peace with the universe. And he had chosen this destiny! Just last evening, his commanding officer had sent for him, showed him a message from the Japanese Intelligence Agency demanding a loyalty investigation. “You telephoned an American Air Force officer?”

“I attended the American Air Force Academy, sir, as you are aware. I know many Americans. I have kept up my contacts with several of them through the years.”

“Of course,” his CO said. “These bureaucratic spy fools have not looked at your record. But you see how it is, Kimura. You see how easy it is to compromise yourself. Be more careful in the future.” With that admonition, the CO tossed the message in a pile of paperwork that a clerk was placing in boxes for storage. “I called this American to—” His commanding officer didn’t want to hear it. He cut him off. “Kimura, we are going to have a war. You and I will both be in combat within twenty-four hours. I have better things to do just now than write letters to bureaucrats. An investigation, they want. If we are both alive a month from now, I shall write them a letter saying that you are a loyal soldier of Japan. If you are dead, I shall tell them how gloriously you died. Like cherry blossoms falling — isn’t that the way the old poems go? If I am dead …”

The CO had shooed him out. Now the Russian GCI controller came on the air, calling to his dead pilots. He didn’t know they were dead, of course, but they had disappeared from his radar scope, so he was calling, albeit futilely. Jiro could not understand the words, but he could hear the concern and frustration in the controller’s voice. Jiro kept a wary eye on his electronic warfare (Ew) warning indications they were comfortably silent — monitored the tactical display, and concentrated on staying in proper position in his formation as the controller called and called to men who would never answer.

The ten aircraft approaching Vladivostok were C-130 Hercules, J- models, the most advanced version of the late-twentieth-century military transportation workhorse. Each aircraft was crammed with troops. The first flight of four aircraft began descending seventy miles from the city. They dropped into a trail formation by alternately dropping gear and flaps. The pilot of the lead plane delayed his dirty-up the longest— he dropped his gear just as he intercepted the instrument landing system (Ils) glide path. He couldn’t yet see the runway since the visibility was only three or four miles in this gentle rain.

The ILS was working fine, which was amazing considering how little money the Russians had devoted to their airways system over the last few years. Even if the ILS had been disabled, he would have flown exactly the same approach using the GPS equipment and computers in his cockpit. Still, the flight leader was delighted the ILS was operating. Had it been off, he would have had to worry about how much warning the Russians had had and whether or not the runway was blocked. Since the ILS was functioning, he felt confident the runway would be clear. Just to be on the safe side, however, he compared the ILS indications he was receiving with the computer presentation derived from GPS and the onboard inertial. All the instruments agreed.

The copilot chortled merrily, as did the leader of the paratroops, who stood behind the pilot looking over his shoulder.

The second flight of four C-130’s kept their speed up as they dropped toward the city. Level at three thousand feet, in the overcast, the crews opened the rear cargo doors. The paratroopers lined up and connected their static lines.

The planes continued descending toward the city in trail, three miles apart, the paratroopers waiting. Many of the soldiers stood with eyes closed, lips moving as they prayed to their gods and their ancestors. A night parachute jump was hazardous enough, but the Russians had antiaircraft missile batteries and artillery spotted around the city; if they opened fire the C-130’s were going to fall like ruptured ducks. And the city was on a peninsula, with water on three sides. Paratroopers hated water. When the chart was unveiled, revealing the location, several gasps were heard as the men saw all that water.

The guns and missile batteries remained silent. The Hercs swept in at 200 knots, slowing to 150 as they dropped lower and lower toward city lights glowing in the cloudy, rainy darkness.

Two of the planes dropped their paratroopers over the old closed Vlad airport, which was being rebuilt.

The other two planes dropped their men north of the wharves along Golden Horn Bay. The first planeload of these troops landed mainly on the streets and small grassy areas, but a gust of wind seemed to catch the last several dozen men of the second stick. The men hanging in their parachutes drifted toward the black water of the bay lying immediately to their right.

Silently, without a cry or shout, the soldiers dropped into the oily waters of the bay and went under. Each man was wearing almost a hundred pounds of gear and weapons, so they had no chance. They were the first Japanese to die invading Siberia.

In the airport tower, the supervisor was unable to establish communications with the approaching aircraft. He spoke into the microphone only in Russian. Trying to communicate with the incoming planes in English, the universal language of international aviation, never once occurred to him.

The thought did occur to him, however, that he had better personally notify the military of the presence of the unknown planes.

He dialed the telephone number of the commanding officer of the army unit that provided airport security. Since it was the middle of the night there was no one in the office to answer the telephone. The army ran a strictly business-hours operation. Consequently, the four ZPU-23 antiaircraft artillery units parked around the airport perimeter that could have shot the incoming Japanese C-130’s to bits with just a few bursts of aimed fire were never manned. This was, perhaps, just as well, because near each gun was a Japanese commando in civilian clothes, armed with a sniper rifle equipped with a starlight scope.

The tower supervisor also turned off the airport lights — the runway, taxiway, and approach lights. Vlad airport instantly took on the appearance of the black water that bordered it on three sides.

The lead C-130 broke out of the overcast a mile and a half out on the ILS glide slope. As a precaution, the aircraft was displaying no exterior lights. The pilot looked in vain for the approach and runway lights, then correctly assumed that they had been turned off. He spoke this conclusion aloud to the battalion commander standing behind his seat. The words were just out of his mouth when the ILS needles locked up and the off flag appeared on the face of the instrument. The tower supervisor had ordered the instrument landing system turned off, too.

The copilot was now flying the plane. The ILS failure bothered him not at all. He continued to follow GPS lineup and descent commands on the heads-up display.

At a hundred feet above the runway, the pilot saw lights reflecting off the wet concrete and called it. The copilot saw it, too. The pilot had his hand on the switch to turn on the landing lights, but he decided not to take the risk. There was just enough glare from the city reflecting off the clouds for the copilot to flare the Here and set it on runway centerline. The pilot pulled the props into reverse thrust and, when the plane had slowed, turned off on the first available taxiway. The battalion commander slapped the pilot on the shoulder, then turned and went aft to where his men were waiting.

Six minutes after the first Here was on the ground at Vlad airport, Japanese troops were in the airport control tower and Japanese controllers were running the radar and talking to inbound traffic. The transition occurred with only the most minor of glitches: The tower guard, a young Russian policeman armed only with a pistol, pulled it from its holster as six soldiers in strange uniforms trotted out of the darkness toward him with their assault rifles at high port. The gesture was futile. No one had told the policeman anything; he had not the least glimmer of an idea that Siberia — the airport — was being invaded. Still, his nervous reaction was, perhaps, understandable. A pistol was a pistol, so the corporal trotting up with his squad shot the policeman with a burst of three rounds. The soldiers, all wearing body armor, jerked open the door of the building and went thundering through. The policeman’s body lay where it had fallen for the rest of the night. A passing Japanese officer finally noticed the pistol — a seventy-year-old Webley relic from the heady days of World War II Lend-Lease. He picked it up and stuck it in his belt. No one touched the body.

The paratroopers landing at the former closed airport assembled and counted heads. Several of the men had landed in construction ditches and one had fractured a leg by striking a bulldozer that had apparently been employed tearing up concrete. Surprisingly, the Russians were ripping up the crumbling old runways and putting in new. They were also in the process of installing sewers, water, and power lines. Miraculously, all the paratroopers had somehow missed a construction crane towering a hundred feet in the air. Landing in a major construction site complicated the paratroopers” arrival somewhat, but so far, no one had paid them the least attention. In accordance with the invasion plan, a company of soldiers assigned to guard the perimeter moved to the fences and took up their positions. The remainder of the soldiers laid out flares and tiny radio transmitters to outline a landing zone in the event the airport runway lights failed for any reason. Some of the larger pieces of construction equipment, including the construction crane, were marked with red warning lights. Then the men waited for the additional paratroopers scheduled to arrive. Within fifteen minutes, more soldiers floated from the misty clouds on white parachutes as the hum of turboprop engines echoed from the surrounding buildings and hills. When the second wave of troops was on the ground and out of the way, containers carrying machine guns, ammo, and communications gear began to drop from the clouds. The Japanese were dropping most of the men first, then the containers of supplies, just to be on the safe side. Still, they had hoped for only light opposition. So far, there had been none. Occasionally, a container would drift too far west and fall into Amur Bay amid the fishing and industrial boats moored there, but not too many drifted that far, so no one paid much attention. People were visible on the boats, watching the military operation. No one made any attempt to interfere or even get closer to kibitz better.

Meanwhile, in the heart of the old city of Vladivostok, four unarmed Japanese commandos in civilian clothes watched as a small coaster eased through the gentle swells of the black water inside the Golden Horn, moving toward the public pier. There were no policemen or Russian soldiers anywhere about, the commandos had made sure of that. For:,” the past two days, they had had this area under surveillance. During the hours when they weren’t on watch, they played the role of Japanese businessmen at a local hotel and ran up prodigious bills — which they. had no intention of paying — for food, vodka, and women.

Two of the commandos walked out to the bollards and caught lines thrown from the coaster’s deck. Soon she was against the pier, with two gangways over. Troops in combat dress trotted ashore. They kept right on going across the pier and sidewalk and parking area, stopping at the first major street and forming a perimeter guard.

When the coaster’s contingent of fifty men was ashore, the lines were, taken in and it backed out into the strait. Another coaster eased out of the darkness up to the pier. The next day, several major cargo ships would appear in the road stead, ships carrying tanks, artillery, and all the other supplies and equipment necessary to keep a division fighting for weeks. Across the bay at the Churkin wharves, a similar scene was being played out. Two of the Japanese cargo ships could get in against this wharf, but the cargo cranes were broken. The Russians had been unloading cargo by hand. The following day, these soldiers would have to have the military situation in Vladivostok well enough in hand that a portable crane could be off-loaded and erected. The soldiers certainly had encountered no opposition thus far. That would soon change. Telephones were ringing all over Russia; the news from the airport was being discussed in Moscow. Locally, the authorities were hearing of the paratroops” arrival. At the ferry slip on the west side of the bay, the captain of Ivan Turgenev, a ferry loading passengers for Russian Island, across the strait from Vladivostok, saw strange troops in battle dress on the Churkin wharves and called his dispatcher on the radio. The dispatcher was incredulous. With the diesel engine of his ferry still idling, the captain went ashore. The boozy barflies waiting to be taken home after an evening on the town paid no attention. Some of them were already vomiting over the railing. At a public telephone in the little terminal, the ferry captain asked the operator for police headquarters. The officer on duty there did believe the captain’s story, got the facts as quickly as possible, and even thanked him for calling. After he hung up, the captain stood watching the troops for a moment from a window in the terminal; then he heard another ferry tooting. Ivan Turgenev was late on her departure. He ran back to the boat and headed for the bridge. Invasion or no, the ferries had to keep running.

A half hour after the destruction of the two Su-27’s from the Vladivostok airport, the combat air patrol of Zeros known as White Flight was nearing the end of its on-station time. A new flight of four — Yellow Flight — scheduled to enter the area in five minutes was at least fifteen minutes behind schedule. White Leader had listened a few minutes ago to Yellow Leader talking to the tanker on Station Alpha, two hundred miles southeast. Yellow Leader was in a foul mood — the tanker was having equipment problems — but verbal rockets over the radio seemed to have little effect. So that flight was late, and it was not escorting the transports Carrying more troops and supplies to Vlad. There, on the very edge of his tactical SCREEN, something coming west from Sakhalin Island White Leader adjusted the scale of the screen. Four planes, still climbing. His computer identified them as Mig-29’s. Definitely hostile. He decided to continue to orbit, to let the Migs come to him. If he flew toward them, he was leaving the back door open for planes coming south from Khabarovsk in the Amur valley. “White Three, you will fire two missiles at the eastern most targets, upon my command.” This transmission went out over the encrypted radio circuit. “Roger, White Leader.” That was Jiro Kimura, White Three. Max range for the missiles under the Zeros’ wings was sixty nautical miles. White Leader decided to shoot at fifty, in case one of the missiles had less than a full load of fuel. He studied the tactical display as he orbited. The Migs were high, over thirty thousand feet, up where airliners cruise. Airliners … Where were the transports? They should be just offshore…, coming north from Hokkaido. Shouldn’t they?

White Leader checked the watch on his wrist. He adjusted his tactical screen, pushed buttons. The transports should be identified on this presentation, if they were on time. Nothing. Drat!

“White Three, White Lead. Do you have any friendly transports on your tac screen?” This transmission was encoded in a discrete, impossible-to-intercept beam of laser light that was aimed only at the other planes in the formation. “Affirmative. They are—” Even as Jiro spoke, the Migs changed course, ninety degrees to their left. Southwest. And the transports appeared on White Leader’s tac screen, the very edge of it. The Migs were on course to intercept. “White Three, watch the back door. White Two, come with me.” White Leader stroked his afterburners. The Zeros had been cruising at a very economical.8 Mach. Now the fuel flow increased dramatically, as did the airspeed. The two Zeros slid through the sonic barrier with nary a buffet. Mach 1.2 … 1.6 … Mach 2 … 2.3 … 2.4. The airspeed stabilized at Mach 2.5.

Below, people asleep in coastal villages and towns awoke to twin thunderclaps, so close together that some people heard only one loud sonic boom. The booms reached the ground miles behind the speeding Zeros, streaking to intercept the Migs before they got within range of the transports. Above the clouds, the brilliant glow of the white-hot flames from twin afterburners shot across the sky like missiles. As the planes got away from the land, the stratus clouds thinned to wisps. Here and there, the sky was clear. The intense heat signature of the two planes appeared as targets on several infrared scanners on coastal antiaircraft missile batteries, batteries recently alerted by telephone calls from frantic men in distant headquarters. One of the missile crews got an target lockup and tried to confirm via telephone that the target they were seeing was hostile. While this conversation was taking place, the targets passed out of range and lockup was lost. The second crew was less professional. The danger of firing a surface-to-air missile at Russian fighters did not occur to them until later. When they got an IR lockup, they pushed the fire button. Their SAM-3 missile leapt from its launcher as a sheet of dazzling flame poured from the solid fuel rocket motor. The missile accelerated away into the darkness, chasing that hot target. Unfortunately, the battery crew had committed their missile to a futile stern chase. The missile exhausted its fuel before it closed half the distance to those fleeing Mach 2.5 targets. When the engine fell silent and the missile nosed over, a self-destruction circuit sensed the absence of acceleration and exploded the missile harmlessly. White Leader got a glimpse of the explosion in his rearview mirror, but he was extremely busy and didn’t give it any thought until later, much later, during mission debrief. He was closing on the Mig-29’s at almost a right angle, actually eighty-eight degrees. This would be a full deflection missile shot at nearly maximum range, the worst kind: the missile might not be able to make the corner. Should he wait and turn in behind before shooting?

That would increase the chances that a missile would track, but it would let the Migs get closer to the transports. The Migs were at seventy-five miles now, closing at a sixty-degree stern angle. There were two flights of Migs, two to a flight, and the flights were about three miles apart. For a second, White Leader wondered if the Migs knew he was there, knew they, too, were being hunted. He shook the thought off. No time for that now. Sixty-miles range. He fired one missile, then made a short left turn. This would let the Migs extend out, put him astern. He still had a ton of closure — they could be doing no more than Mach 1.5. He would get astern and shoot again. “White Two, shoot on my command.”

“Roger.”

Now, a sixty-degree angle of bank turn to the right. Yes. He was only forty-five degrees off, still closing. The first missile must have missed, because the Migs were turning hard, hard right, into the direction that the missile had come from. “Out of burner, now.”

White Lead and his wingman came off the juice. They slowed as they turned to place the turning Migs at their twelve o’clock. Very nice. Range forty miles. Well within the missiles’ performance envelope. White Leader triggered his last missile at the leading Mig, the one farthest to his right. “I’ve shot at the leader, Two. Blaze away at the rest of them.” Two said nothing. He answered with missiles. One after the other, two seconds apart, three missiles came off his rails. Seconds ticked by. The Russian second-element wingman, Tail-end Charlie, lost sight of his lead during all the maneuvering and turned hard left, back toward the transports. He picked the nearest and locked him up with his radar. Just then, White Leader’s missile impacted the lead Mig-29 in front of the tail and detonated. The tail was severed from the aircraft, which entered an uncontrollable tumble. The pilot tried to eject, but the tumbling was so violent that he passed out before he could do so. Within seconds, the plane broke up. From the corner of his eye, Tail-end Charlie saw the fiery streak of the first missile coming in and the flash as it impacted, and he correctly guessed what it was. He had his firing solution on one of the Japanese transports at max range, seventy miles, so he pushed the fire button on his stick and held it down. The firing circuit had a one-second delay built in before it ignited the missile’s rocket engine, a delay designed to prevent inadvertent missile launching. This second was the longest of the young pilot’s life. As he waited, he saw in the canopy rail mirror the flash as a Japanese conmissile exploded just above the cockpit of his element leader. This was the first missile fired by White Two.

Now Charlie’s long-range Alamo missile came off the rail and seared the darkness with its cone of white fire. Instinctively, the Mig pilot rolled upside down and pulled the nose ninety degrees down, straight down, toward the black ocean below. The second missile from White Two arrived right on time, fatally impacting the other surviving Mig. The missile aimed at Tail-end Charlie nosed over to track him and increased its speed. Charlie lit his burners, accelerated toward the waiting ocean. The missile nosed down farther, gravity making it go even faster … and it overshot. It exploded harmlessly when its internal computer concluded it had missed. At the flash of the explosion, Charlie began to pull. He was passing twenty thousand feet, eighty degrees nose-down at Mach 1.6. He came out of burner, pulled until he thought the wings would come off, then pulled some more. The nose was coming up, but not fast enough. He fought to stay conscious. Pull, pull, pull, scream into the mask, pull to stay alive. Nine thousand … seven … nose thirty degrees down … Nose twenty degrees down…, ten degrees, passing three thousand feet … At one thousand feet, only three hundred meters above the sea, Tail-end Charlie bottomed out. He was below Mach 1 at this point, but he was alive. As the nose came above the horizon and he relaxed the G, the Russian pilot glanced at the radar scope on the panel before him. Nothing. It was blank. He laid into a turn in the direction from which the missiles had come. The enemy had to be up there, if only he could point his plane in the proper direction. Unlike the Zero, the Mig-29 lacked computers and passive sensors; the pilot had only radar to enable him to see his enemy. A streak of fire in the sky caught his eye — another missile!

He was low and slow, trapped against the sea. He did the only thing he could — pulled the nose of the Mig straight up and lit the afterburner. The missile went through the left wing, snapping it cleanly in two. With his plane rolling out of control, the pilot of Tail-end Charlie ejected. His parachute opened normally and he rode it down into the black ocean.

After floating in his life jacket for two hours, he died of hypothermia and exhaustion. During that time his only consolation was the fact that he had fired a missile at a transport before the unseen enemy got him. He never knew that his missile failed to guide.

White Three — Jiro Kimura — watched the spots of flame that were the afterburner exhausts of White One and Two accelerate away into the darkness. They receded more slowly than missile engines, but they did resemble missiles, or wandering stars, points of light growing smaller and smaller as the night swallowed them. Jiro glanced at his wingman, then turned back toward Vladivostok. He kept his turn shallow, less than a ten-degree angle of bank, so he would not present the belly of the plane to an enemy radar to use as a reflecting surface. He watched the tactical situation develop on his multifunction tac display. He saw the transports, saw the Migs go for them, and saw White One and Two dash to cut them off. The missiles that were fired were not displayed, but the disappearance of the Migs from the screen one by one spoke volumes. We are winning. That thought has sustained fighting men for thousands of years. It helped Jiro now, gave him a sense of confidence that no amount of exhortation could. He was eying his fuel gauges nervously and toying with the idea of breaking radio silence when the tactical display presented a target coming down from the northeast, from the direction of Khabarovsk. A Sukhoi. Now two. Where is Yellow Flight?

Jiro leveled his wings heading toward Vlad. The Sukhois were about a mile apart, heading southwest. If everyone maintained heading, the Sukhois would pass White Three and Four several miles to the left. “Three, this is Four. My gadget has overheated. I’m turning it off.”

This unexpected transmission on the plane-to-plane digital laser system shook Jiro. He had just been basking in the glow of Athena’s excellence, and now his wingman’s unit had failed. It was high time to be out of here. Where is Yellow Flight?

Without Athena to cancel incoming waves of electromagnetic energy enemy radar, Four was now plainly visible on the screen of every radar looking. Apparently, several of them were looking with interest. Jiro’s electronic countermeasures panel lit up — someone was tracking them in high PRF, the firing mode of an antiaircraft missile radar. Actually they were tracking the wingman, but Jiro was close enough to the targeted aircraft to receive the indications on his equipment. “Break away, Four. RTB.” This meant return to base. “I’ll be right along.”

“My fuel is bingo,” Four said, trying to cushion the embarrassment of his Athena failure. Jiro’s fuel was also getting desperate. But if he didn’t cover Four’s withdrawal, Four was in for a very bad time. “RTB,” Jiro repeated. “Now!”

The other Zero turned away hard. Jiro watched the tactical display and ensured the wingman steadied up as he headed toward Hokkaido. The Sukhois from Vlad turned fifteen degrees to the left and launched a missile. Two. Four was too far away for the discrete laser com. Jiro keyed the radio, which was scrambled, of course. Still, he was radiating. “Two missiles in the air, White Four. Sixty-three miles behind you.” Four should have the missiles on his tactical display, if he had the proper display punched in. Jiro was taking no chances. The Sukhois were too far away for Jiro to shoot. The Russian missiles had more range than the Japanese. Perhaps the Sukhois could be diverted with another target. Jiro turned off his Athena device. The visibility was too poor to see the Russian missiles’ exhaust. They were out there, though, thundering along at almost Mach 4, covering two miles every three seconds. The missiles had been fired at nearly maximum range, so White Four was trying to outrun them. He was accelerating too, dumping fuel into his exhaust in exchange for speed. That was not a wise maneuver for a man without fuel to spare, but he was trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea. Four was accelerating through Mach 2. Well, he was safe. The missiles would never catch him in a stern chase before they exhausted their fuel. “Three, this is Four. I’m changing freqs, calling for a tanker. I need fuel to get home.”

“Roger.”

Jiro devoted his attention to the Sukhois, which had turned in his direction. He checked his fuel gauges. He didn’t have any to spare on speed dashes, either. Missile launch. One … two from the Sukhois. Where in hell is Yellow Flight?

“Yellow Leader, White Three. State your position and expected time to arrive on station, please.”

Jiro and the Sukhois were closing head-on at a combined speed of Mach 2.5. The missiles were coming at Mach 4. Closure speed with the missiles, 1.2 miles per second. He was going to be in range for his missiles in five seconds. They were armed and ready to fire. He had only to punch the fire button on the stick. Four … three…, two … one … the in-range symbol appeared on the scope. If he waited for a few seconds, he would have a better chance of scoring hits. But the fuel … Jiro pressed the fire button and held it. One potato…, and a missile left in a gout of flame. He released the button, waited for the ready symbol on the HUD, then fired again. With his left hand, he reached for the Athena switch. He turned it from the standby to the on position. The yellow light stayed illuminated. Damnation I He cycled the switch to off, then back to standby. Now to the on position. There was a ten-second warm-up delay built into the circuitry, so that many seconds had to pass before the gear began to radiate, canceling incoming radar waves. Meanwhile, he dumped the nose and turned hard to the southeast. Nose well down, gravity helping him accelerate. The incoming missile warning was flashing, showing twenty-one seconds to impact. He was tempted to engage the afterburners; he eyed the fuel gauge again. No, he didn’t have enough. If he did the burner trick, he might ” end up trying to swim to Japan. Going down hard. He pushed the stick forward another smidgen, his dive. Fifteen seconds to impact. He looked outside, tried to see the oncoming missiles. There!

And he went into the top of the stratus cloud deck.

That was stupid. If he had kept the missiles in sight, he would have had a better chance to outmaneuver them, if Athena refused to work. Stupid. A stupid mistake. You are fast running out of options, Jiro, options to save your silly butt. At twelve seconds to impact, the green light appeared on the Athena panel. The missiles were still coming. He watched them close on the tactical display. were they tracking him?

One way to find out. He slapped the stick sideways and turned hard into the missiles. Six Go’s. Inadvertently, a groan escaped him. The missiles didn’t follow. They passed harmlessly behind and to his left. Jiro got his nose up, started climbing, and lowered a wing to turn back to the southeast. He needed to get up to at least forty thousand feet for the trip to the tanker at Station Alpha. He was climbing when he saw his missiles and the Sukhois merge on his tactical display. Target merger, and the Sukhois were gone. He lived; the Russians died. Just like that. Jiro wiped the sweat from his eyes.