Plan of Attack

9

The direct-line phone was one of those hot-line connections that would ring continuously until answered, which meant that the call was from headquarters. The sector commander fairly lunged for the phone, snatching it up as fast as he could; he didn’t even bother to say anything as he did, because he knew that the caller would start the conversation right away.

“Report, Major,” the voice of the regional air defense commander said over the secure line from his office at the Far East Military District Air Defense Headquarters at Petropavlovsk Naval Base on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

“Target S-3 is still heading three-zero-zero true, altitude twelve thousand meters, speed five-seven-nine kilometers per hour, no evasive maneuvers, sir,” the sector commander responded. He had reported the contact moments after it appeared, so he knew that headquarters had been alerted — and no doubt the air-defense commander of Pacific Fleet, based at Vladivostok, would be listening in, too. “No reply to our warning broadcasts.”

“Any jamming signals?”

“None, sir.”

There was a long pause. The regional commander knew exactly what air-defense assets he had and their capabilities — undoubtedly he was going over this engagement in his head right now:

Primary among Petropavlovsk’s defenses was the Antey S-300V1 surface-to-air missile system, the world’s best long-range antiaircraft missile system. An entire S-300 brigade was situated at Petropavlovsk, one of Russia’s largest and most important Pacific naval and air bases, with almost two hundred antiaircraft and anti-ballistic-missile rounds deployed between six launcher sites around the sprawling base complex on the southeast corner of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Normally, the S-300 missiles had a nominal range of only one hundred kilometers, but against slow, high-altitude, nonmaneuvering targets such as this one, they had a maximum effective range of almost double that — the unidentified aircraft was already within the S-300’s lethal range.

It was not the only missile site on the Bering Sea. Another S-300 brigade was stationed at Ust’-Kamcatsk, three hundred kilometers to the north; another at Ossora; and yet another at Kavaznya, the site of Russia’s newest long-range anti-ballistic-missile laser system, still several years from completion but proceeding despite the country’s financial woes. Kavaznya was being rebuilt on the site of an old Soviet research facility that was suddenly and mysteriously destroyed in the late 1980s, before the fall of the USSR. The official explanation was that the original site was destroyed when an earthquake ruptured the containment building of the nuclear plant there, causing a catastrophic explosion.

But local Eskimo and Aleut folklore claimed that the laser facility was destroyed by an American air raid using, of all things, a lone 1960s-era B-52 bomber. No one believed that outlandish story, even though the rumors still persisted after almost two decades.

But it didn’t matter right now, because Moscow had ordered that the fighters, rather than the long-range surface-to-air missiles, handle any intruders. A squadron each of MiG-27 and MiG-29 fighters had been deployed to Petropavlovsk since the initiation of hostilities less than two days ago. Four flights of four fighters were assigned a wedge of airspace about four hundred kilometers long. One fighter was airborne continuously; the others would launch as necessary, usually one more fighter upon radar contact by the first fighter and the last two if multiple targets were detected. Two full flights were held in reserve, but in this deployment no one was considered off duty — all air and ground crews were either on crew rest, ready to be called up, or ready to respond. Other air-defense units were based at Magadan and Anadyr and could be called into service if any intruders made it past the outer defenses.

Petropavlovsk also had a squadron of twelve Tu-142 long-range maritime-reconnaissance planes — upgraded Tu-95 Bear bombers designated for antiship, antisubmarine, long-range sea patrol, and electronic-warfare duties. Six bombers were flying at all times on thousand-kilometer-long patrol legs. The bombers had already attacked two vessels, assumed to be intelligence-gathering ships, that refused to turn away from Petropavlovsk.

Yes, the ships had been in international waters — but this was war. They obeyed orders or suffered the consequences. It was the same with this newcomer, the sector commander thought. He was either a hostile or an idiot if he kept on cruising closer to one of Russia’s most important bases. Whichever was the case, he had to die: If he was hostile, he had to be stopped before he attacked; if he was an idiot, he had to be killed before he was allowed to breed.

The Pacific Fleet was one of the most powerful of the Russian navy’s arms, with almost two hundred surface ships, strategic ballistic-missile submarines, and nuclear and nonnuclear attack submarines. Whatever targets the fighters could not get, the SAMs and sea-based antiaircraft units would. But the fighters would not miss.

“Am I clear to engage unidentified aircraft, sir?” the sector commander asked. Even though Russia was excluding aircraft and vessels out to three kilometers, this newcomer had already made it in to two-fifty. The range of the American conventional air-launched cruise missile was over eight hundred kilometers, and the nuclear-armed version was well over four thousand kilometers, so if it was a warplane armed with either weapon, it would have already attacked. The Americans’ next most powerful air-launched weapons — the air force’s AGM-142 TV-guided rocket-powered bomb and their navy’s turbojet-powered Short-range Land Attack Missile-Extended Range — both had a maximum range of about two hundred kilometers, so this unidentified aircraft had to be stopped before it got within range of those two weapons.

“Authorized,” the regional commander said. “Get your fighters airborne, and destroy any target immediately, from long range.”

The surveillance radar at Petropavlovsk had a range of well over five hundred kilometers, and the unidentified aircraft had been spotted cruising in at high altitude at just over four hundred kilometers. The MiGs accelerated to Mach 2. They didn’t need their radars yet — they were receiving datalinked signals from Petropavlovsk showing them exactly where the enemy aircraft were, and once they were within missile range, they could attack without ever revealing themselves. Textbook engagement so far.

But Moscow said they would not be alone: The Americans had stealth aircraft up here, and the word from air force headquarters was that some of them could launch air-to-air missiles. The best tactic, Moscow said, was to rush any aircraft that was detected at high speed with as many fighters as possible, engage at maximum range, get away from the area right after missile launch using full countermeasures, then reengage from a completely different axis of attack.

They had also switched missiles along with changing procedures: Instead of four short-range heat seekers and two semiactive radar missiles, they now carried four long-range R-77 radar-guided missiles, plus two extra fuel tanks. These advanced weapons had their own radars that could lock on to targets as far as thirty kilometers away. This meant that the MiG-29s could simply designate targets, let the missiles fly, then maneuver and escape — they no longer needed to keep the fighter’s radar locked on to the target all the way to impact.

They had only a limited number of the expensive R-77s at Petropavlovsk — more had been sent to air-defense bases in the west and to fighters deployed to active bomber bases at Ulan-Ude, Blagoveshchensk, and Bratsk — but air-defense command had ordered every one of them loaded and sent aloft right away. This was obviously no time to hold back. Every enemy aircraft downed meant that the chances of America’s mounting any sort of counteroffensive against Russia in the far east were slimmer and slimmer.

“Tashnit Two-one, this is Detskaya,” the radar controller said, “initial vector thirty right, your target is one-two-zero K, low, cleared to engage. Acknowledge.”

“Two-one acknowledges cleared to engage,” the lead fighter pilot responded. Flying at well over the speed of sound, the two advanced Russian interceptors from Petropavlovsk closed in on their target rapidly. They already had their orders: no visual identification, no standard ICAO intercept procedure, no warning shots, no radio calls. All Russian air traffic had already been ordered to clear out of more than one hundred thousand cubic kilometers of airspace over the Sea of Okhotsk, the Bering Sea, and the Kamchatka Peninsula — anyone else up here was an enemy, and he was going to down them without any warning whatsoever.

“Da, Detskaya. Ya ponimayu.”

“What is your state, Two-one?”

“Base plus two, control,” the pilot responded. That meant he had forty minutes of fuel remaining, plus one hour of reserve fuel that was inviolate — because the closest emergency-abort base, Magadan, was about an hour’s flight time away.

“Acknowledged. I will launch Two-two. Continue your approach to the target, Two-one.”

“Acknowledged.”

They had just passed within one hundred kilometers of the target. No sign of any other players up here yet, but they had to be up here — the Americans would not send an aircraft into the teeth of the Russian air defenses like this without having another plane ready to sneak past. Maybe it was a decoy? Whatever it was, it was making a large and very inviting target for the MiGs. Just over forty seconds and they could engage from maximum range.

At that moment the radar controller reported, “Sir, target turning south…Continuing his turn, looks like he’s turning around.”

“Too late, aslayop,” the sector commander said under his breath. “I still want him to go down. Have Two-one continue his attack.”

“Acknowledged, sir.” But a few moments later: “Sir, the target is off our scope! Radar contact lost!”

“Lost?” The sector commander could feel the first prickles of panic under his collar. “How could you lose such a big contact less than one hundred and fifty kilometers out? Did he descend? Is he jamming you?”

“Negative, sir,” the controller replied. “Just a weak radar return.”

Shit, shit, shit…The commander fumbled for the mike button on his headphones: “Two-one, control, are you tied on yet?”

“Negative, control,” the MiG pilot responded. “I was expecting to pick him up any second now.”

“We have lost contact,” the commander said. “Advise when you have him either on radar or IRSTS.” The Infrared Search and Track System on the MiG-29 was a very accurate and reliable heat-seeking sensor that could detect and track the hot dots of large engine exhausts at ranges out to two hundred kilometers away — it was so accurate that it was used to guide active air-to-air missiles close enough to their targets so they could lock on with their terminal-guidance radars. This unknown target was flying away from the MiG — its hot engines should show up clearly on IRSTS.

“Status, Captain?” the regional commander radioed once again.

Better to confess right away, he thought: “Sir, the target has disappeared from our scopes,” he replied. “The target turned away from shore and was flying away from the interceptors. The target was beyond the radar’s optimal range, and we did have some weather recently — a slight heading change and a little frozen moisture in the air could easily cause him to drop off our screens.”

“I don’t need excuses, Captain — I need a visual ID on that aircraft, or I need him crashing into the Bering Sea,” his commander told him. “The interceptor should be using his infrared sensor to track him.”

“No contact on IRSTS yet, sir, but if he did make a heading change, the sensor might not pick up his engine exhausts until closer in. The interceptor should be picking up his heat trail soon, and he’ll be in radar contact soon afterward. He can’t simply have disappeared, sir — we’ll get him.”

“How long until Two-one gets into firing position?”

“About five minutes, sir.”

“Call me when the fighter has radar contact,” the regional commander ordered, and he abruptly disconnected the line.

Crap, the sector commander thought, the old man is really pissed now. He switched to the brigadewide radio network, which connected him to all of the different regiments under his command. “Attention all units, this is Brigade. We have lost radar contact with an unidentified aircraft, last seen two hundred and thirty-five kilometers west of Petropavlovsk. All units, stay alert. Immediately report any outages or jamming to Brigade. That is all.”

He knew it was a lame message. His men were already on a hair-trigger alert and had been ever since the attack on the United States — they didn’t need to be told to stay alert. But this was serious…he knew it, he felt it. Something was happening out there.

Not even the old guys ever blew lunch in their helmets, Breaker,” Hal Briggs said. He didn’t need to turn around in his seat to know what had happened — even through the filtration system in the Tin Man electronic battle armor’s helmet, he could smell that unmistakable smell.

“Damn it, I’m sorry, sir,” First Lieutenant Mark “Breaker” Bastian said. Bastian, a former Air Force combat air controller, was a nephew of Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian, the former commander of the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center and originator of the special-ops team code-named “Whiplash” that was the progenitor of the Battle Force ground-operations team. He was a big, muscular guy, with incredible speed and stamina for someone his size. He had excellent eyesight, was an expert marksman, and had made over two dozen combat jumps in his short military career.

He also had an extraordinarily queasy stomach. The poor guy got airsick even before boarding an aircraft. Fortunately, his vasovagal episodes occurred only after or just before he was about to do something dangerous, not during, so his jumpy stomach didn’t usually interfere with his performance.

“It’s okay, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Major Chris Wohl said. He had loosened his restraints and turned to help Bastian remove his battle-armor helmet. “Just make sure you clean out the inside of the helmet carefully — the thing is filled with electronics, and you don’t want crap interfering with any of it. If you can’t clean it well enough, use the spare helmet.”

“Take your time,” Hal said. “We have a long way to go.”

“Someone open a window,” Marines Corps Staff Sergeant Emily Angel said after Bastian began cleaning his gear. Emily had no call sign because everyone called her by her very apropos last name: Angel. With short dark hair, glittering dark eyes, and a body honed by five years in some of the toughest infantry units in the U.S. Marines Corps, Angel had been handpicked by Chris Wohl to join the Battle Force ground team after he’d watched her compete in an urban-warfare search-and-destroy course competition at Quantico. The reason for recruiting new members there was simple: The Battle Force stressed small-unit tactics, speed, and maneuverability over strength and endurance. It was no surprise to Chris Wohl that the winner was a woman.

“Bite me, Angel,” Bastian said, but he gratefully accepted her help as he began cleaning. They all helped because they knew that, but for the grace of God, they could’ve been the ones who’d thrown up in their helmets.

The four members of the Battle Force team were aboard an MQ-35 Condor special-ops infiltration/exfiltration aircraft. They had just been dropped about eighty miles east of the Kamchatka Peninsula over the Bering Sea from an altitude of thirty-six thousand feet from inside an unmanned EB-52 Megafortress bomber. Briggs, who flew on the first Condor flight over Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, was ready for the gut-wrenching descent after dropping from the bomb bay, but no one else on board had ever had that experience before — and no amount of briefing could prepare someone for it.

“Condor, Control, you are at best glide speed,” Major Matthew “Wildman” Whitley, the remote piloting technician controlling the Condor from Battle Mountain, reported. Matt Whitley of the Fifty-second Bomb Squadron was one of the first technicians, or “game boys” as they were called, trained at Battle Mountain to fly the Megafortresses, Condors, and the other experimental aircraft without first being a pilot — his background was in computer-simulation programming. He was proud of his accomplishment, and he was looked up to by all of the other nonrated fliers in the unit as a junior god.

“How’s everybody doing?” asked Brigadier General David Luger, commanding the Air Battle Force from the Battle Management Center at Battle Mountain.

“Except for one smelly helmet, fine,” Briggs reported.

“They let us get an extra sixty miles closer to the coast than we figured,” Wilde said. “We can use every mile we can get.”

“How are we looking, Matt?” Briggs asked.

“Stand by.” He checked the computer’s flight plan, which updated their flight profile constantly, based on glide performance, winds, air temperature, and routing. “Right now we’re looking at a six-one glide ratio — six miles for every thousand feet. That means if we descend you down to ten thousand feet, you can glide for about one hundred and fifty miles, or one hour flight time, before we have to fire up the engine. That will put you roughly over the Central Kamchatka Highway just west of Mil’kovo. Then it’s a thousand-mile cruise into Yakutsk on the turbojet, or about three hours.

“You’ll have less than ten minutes of fuel remaining — if everything goes to plan. Any shift in the winds, ice buildup, or malfunctions can put you on the wrong side of the fuel curve fast. We’ll keep you up as high as we can, but as soon as you leave Magadan’s radar coverage you’ll be in Yakutsk’s, so we’ll have to contend with that. At ten thousand feet, you can glide for another sixty miles once the engine quits, so that’s probably all the reserve you’ll have.”

“Sounds lovely,” Briggs said wryly. “What are the bad guys up to?”

“The threat situation looks about the same as before,” Luger responded. “Numerous fighter patrols all around you. The Russians have set up a picket of patrol and warships every fifty to seventy miles across the Sea of Okhotsk. We’ll reroute you around the ones we detect, but be prepared to do some more gliding down to lower altitudes if necessary. They’re being very careful and not radiating with anything but normal surface-and air-search radars. Long-range surveillance radars at Petropavlovsk, Yakutsk, Komsomol’sk, and Magadan are active, but all of the previously known SA-10 and SA-12 sites along the coast are silent. They’re not exposing any of their air-defense stuff, which will make it harder for us to target them.”

“Was this supposed to cheer us up, Dave?”

They proceeded in silence for the next hour, but the tension built up quickly and precipitously as they cleared the coastline of the central Kamchatka Peninsula and approached the engine-start point. “Okay, crew, listen up,” Briggs said. “The emergency-egress procedures are as briefed: If the engine fails to start, we’ll turn south and continue our glide to the planned emergency landing zone along the Central Kamchatka Highway. We then make our way to Petropavlovsk and wreak as much havoc there as we can from the ground. There are no plans at this time for anyone to rescue us, so we’re on our own. Our mission will be to disrupt air-defense and surveillance operations on the Kamchatka Peninsula in order to offer follow-on forces an easier ingress path. Questions?”

“Has the engine ever not started, sir?” Angel asked.

Briggs turned to glance behind him, then replied by saying, “Are there any other questions?” Not surprisingly, there were none.

“Coming up on engine start,” Whitley reported. “Stand by…. Engine inlet coming open…inlet deicers on…starter engaged…fifteen percent RPMs, igniters on, here comes the fuel…. Stand by…. Ignition, engine RPMs to thirty…thirty-five…” Suddenly the engine’s whirring sound stopped. “Igniters off, fuel off. We got a hot start, guys. The engine inlet might be blocked with ice.”

The crew felt the Condor turn, and shoulders slumped. “Okay, guys, here’s the plan,” Dave Luger said. “We’ve turned you southbound on the planned emergency routing. We’ve got to wait three minutes before we can attempt another start. You’ll lose about two thousand feet altitude and go about twenty miles. We’ll keep the inlet deicers on longer in case we got some ice restricting airflow for the three minutes, then try one more restart. We might have time for another restart if the second one doesn’t work, if the battery doesn’t run out with all the starter activations. We—”

“Caution, airborne search radar, seven o’clock, sixty-five miles,” came a computerized voice — the threat-warning receiver.

“Petropavlovsk — the fighter patrols,” Luger said. “They’ve got fighters everywhere. Hopefully they’re looking out over the ocean and not up the peninsula. We should be—”

“Warning, airborne search radar and height finder, seven o’clock, sixty-four miles.”

“How about we give that engine restart a try now, Dave?” Hal Briggs suggested nervously.

“I think that’s close enough to three minutes,” Dave said warily. “Starter on, igniters—”

“Warning, radar lock-on, MiG-29, eight o’clock, sixty miles.”

“C’mon, baby, start,” Matt Whitley breathed “Time just ran out.”

Control, Yupka-Three-three flight has radar contact on unidentified air target, five-zero kilometers, low,” the lead Mikoyan-23B pilot reported.

“That’s your target, Three-three,” the ground-intercept controller said. “No other targets detected. Begin your intercept.”

“Acknowledged. Wing, take the high CAP, I am turning to intercept.”

“Two,” the pilot of the second MiG-23B responded simply. His job was to stay with his leader and provide support, not chat on the radios.

Based out of Anadyr, the easternmost military air base in Russia, the MiG-23B Bombardirovshchiks were single-seat, swing-wing, dual-purpose fighter-bombers, capable of both medium-range attack and air-interceptor missions. All interceptor-tasked MiG-23s based at Anadyr were armed with twin twenty-three-millimeter cannons in the nose with two hundred rounds of ammunition, two R-23R radar-guided missiles on fuselage hardpoints, two R-60 heat-seeking missiles on wing pylons, and one eight-hundred-liter external fuel tank.

The thirty-eight bomber-tasked planes at Anadyr had different weapon loads: three external fuel tanks on the fuselage hardpoints for extra-long range — plus two RN-40 tactical nuclear gravity bombs on the wing stations, each with a one-hundred-kiloton yield. If the United States tried to attack Russia, their orders were to launch and destroy military targets throughout Alaska and Canada. The fighter-equipped MiGs were there to hold off an attack by either American planes or cruise missiles long enough for the bombers to launch and get safely away from the base.

This unidentified radar contact may have been a prelude to such an attack, which was why nerves were on edge all over the district. The first counterattack by the United States had to be blunted at all costs, and the MiG-23s at Anadyr and the MiG-29s at Petropavlovsk were the first lines of defense against the expected American attack.

The lead MiG pilot kept his PrNK-23N Sokol attack radar on long enough to get a firm idea of the unknown aircraft’s position in his mind, flicked it to STANDBY so his radar wouldn’t give away his position, then rolled right and started a descent into firing position. The target was moving slowly, far more slowly than a jet-powered aircraft. It was also flying at extremely low altitude, barely two hundred meters above the coastal mountain range. It was too dark to be able to see it, so a visual identification was not going to happen.

It was far too late for that anyway — this guy was already well inside Russia’s borders and was not squawking any identification codes. An intruder, no doubt about it. He was going down in flames.

The MiG-23 pilot rolled out and continued his descent. He wished for night-vision goggles so he could see the rugged terrain below, but those were luxuries left for the MiG-29 pilots and the bombers, not the old fighter guys. The pilot had already checked his minimum terrain-clearance altitude, which would keep him safe within a fifty-by-fifty-kilometer box — plus, he added a few dozen meters’ altitude as an extra safety measure “for the wife and kids,” as he and his fellow fighter pilots liked to say. He would be low enough to lock on to and engage this target and still clear the terrain.

As he continued in on his intercept run, the MiG pilot activated his ship’s TM-23 electro-optical sensor, and a blip appeared right away, exactly where he thought it would. The sensor did not display an image of the target, just a simple dot on a screen when a bright or hot object was detected; once locked on, the system fed target bearing and altitude to his fire-control computer, allowing him to give his air-to-air missiles almost all the data they needed to attack.

Using his skill and situational awareness, he kept the dot on the lower edge of the screen and mentally calculated when he would be in firing range. A few seconds later, he flipped on his Sokol attack radar, which was also slaved to the enemy aircraft’s azimuth by the TM-23 sensor. The radar locked on instantly. As soon as he selected an R-23 missile, he received an IN RANGE indication. He flipped open the red cover to the arming switch and then—

At that instant his Sirena-3 radar-warning receiver blared and a red LAUNCH light snapped on — his threat-warning receiver had picked up the uplink signals transmitted to steer surface-to-air missiles, meaning that a missile was in flight and aimed at his plane! His reaction had to be instantaneous: He immediately punched out several bundles of radar-decoying chaff, chopped the throttle, and threw the fighter in a hard right break. In ninety degrees of bank, he pulled on the control stick until he heard the stall-warning horn, leveled out, punched out more chaff, and then hit his afterburner to speed up again. When the radar-warning receiver blared again, he did another break, again to the right, hoping to turn around far enough to lay his radar on his attacker. The stall-warning horn screamed quicker this time, so when he leveled out, he dipped the nose to help speed up.

The second time, he saw it — an explosion, just a few meters away. A missile had missed him by a fraction of a second! Another moment’s hesitation and he could be dead right now.

He had no choice but to bug out; he had received no warnings from his ground controller, and his radar had not locked on to anything — he was completely blind. He pulled the throttle back to full military power to help conserve fuel, then started a turn to the north and a fast climb away from the terrain. His only choice was to disengage, hope the newcomer would follow him up to altitude so the ground radar could see him, then try to reengage.

Kurva! Where in hell did he come from? “Control, Yupka Three-three, I’m under attack!” the pilot radioed frantically. “I was painted by fire-control radar, and I just evaded a missile!”

“Three-three, Control, we do not show a second aircraft, only your target at your seven o’clock position, twenty-eight K.”

“I tell you, Control, I was under attack!” He tried but failed to get his head back into the fight. His brain was hopelessly jumbled — he had a wingman up there to worry about, one known enemy target, and another completely unseen foe that had just attacked him. “Three-three wing, I’ve lost the attack picture, so you engage the target. I’ll take the high CAP.”

“Acknowledged, Lead,” his wingman radioed. “Control, give me a vector.”

“Three-three wing, steer forty right, your target will be at your one o’clock, forty-three K, low, lead will be at your two o’clock, eighteen K. Clear to descend to your minimum vector altitude. Three-three lead, come twenty right, continue climb to your patrol altitude, your wingman will be at your three o’clock, eighteen K, in a descending turn.”

“Wing acknowledges. Turning right.”

“Lead acknowledges.” The lead MiG-23 pilot was quickly regaining his mental picture of the battle space — minus the newcomer, of course. Or did he just imagine that “attack”? Maybe it was some spurious signal from the radar site on the ground or from his wingman, perhaps checking his weapon stores or briefly firing up his radar? Just forget about it, he told himself. Concentrate on getting the one known target and then—

Suddenly he saw a flash of light and a short trail of fire off in the darkness — and he knew he hadn’t been imagining anything. “Oleg!” he shouted on the command radio. “Attacker at your six o’clock position! Break! Do it now!”

“I’m not picking up any—” And at that instant the threat-warning receiver blared. Unlike the MiG-23, this attacker could launch a missile without having a radar lock-on.

“Chaff! Flares! Break!” the lead pilot shouted. But he knew it was pointless. His wingman’s reaction had to be immediate and aggressive, with no hesitation or second-guessing whatsoever. By the time he thought whether or not he should react and then how to do it, it was too late. The lead pilot spotted a bright flash far off to his right, followed by a large explosion, and then a trail of fire that wobbled briefly through the night sky before being swallowed up by the darkness.

Splash one, Crowbar.”

“Thank God — and thank the propellerheads,” the mission commander aboard the U.S. Air Force MC-130H Combat Talon transport plane, Marine Corps First Lieutenant Ted Merritt, said half aloud with a rush of relief. He felt as if he hadn’t taken a breath of air in several minutes, and his throat was dry and scratchy. A veteran special-operations officer of the Twenty-fourth Marine Expeditionary Unit, Special Operations Capable, Merritt was accustomed to handling any kind of contingency on the ground — what he couldn’t handle was being engaged by the enemy while still aboard the transport plane.

Merritt was leading a force of forty-eight Marines on a covert insertion mission deep inside Russia. Their MC-130H had lifted off from Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque, New Mexico, shortly after being given the warning order from U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida. Its seven-member crew flew to Camp Pendleton, California, and embarked Merritt’s Marine Special Purpose Force platoon of fifty-one men, including three thirteen-man infantry squads and three four-man fire teams, that were part of the Fifteenth Marine Expeditionary Unit. The Fifteenth MEU had just completed its twenty-four-week qualification course and had just earned its Special Operations Capable designation before preparing to deploy on a six-month Pacific Ocean cruise.

The Marine Special Purpose Forces, once known as Direct Action Platoons, were composed of highly trained and experienced special-operations soldiers who specialized in light, mobile, and highly destructive missions deep inside enemy territory. Their job was to go in ahead of a Force Reconnaissance battalion or other heavy Marine unit to map out the forward edge of the battle area, hunt down and kill enemy scouts, pinpoint and relay locations of air defenses and fortifications, and create diversions to confuse, exhaust, and harass enemy forces.

The MC-130, using in-flight refueling, had flown nonstop since leaving Camp Pendleton, receiving hourly intelligence briefings and mission updates and plans via satellite while en route on the torturous fifteen-hour flight across the northern Pacific. The plane made several inflight refuelings, with the last one just north of the Aleutian island of Attu, right before entering Russian radar coverage. Once within range of Russia’s long-range airborne early-warning radars at Kavaznya and Petropavlovsk, the MC-130 descended to just a few hundred feet above the ocean using its satellite-navigation system, then used its terrain-following radar once over land to stay at treetop level.

Merritt was hopeful: They hadn’t had one indication of any threats during the entire long overwater cruise through Russian offshore airspace. But just minutes after going feet-dry and hugging some of the roughest terrain on the entire route of flight, where they should be the best protected from radar, they were jumped. Combat Talon II birds had an extensive electronic defensive suite, including jammers and decoys that were effective against ground and airborne threats, but the highly modified C-130 turboprop transports were very large, slow, inviting targets.

Thank God for their guardian angel. He was out there somewhere, blazing a trail for them.

The threat-warning receiver blared once again. The second MiG had already found them.

Control, Three-three, my wingman is hit, repeat, my wingman is hit!” the lead MiG-23 pilot shouted. “Give me a vector! The second target is somewhere at my twelve o’clock! Do you see him?”

“Vy shutitye, Three-three, nyet! Proceed with the attack. We will launch—” And then the radio was drowned out by an earsplitting whistle. The automatic frequency-hopping mode on the radio cleared the jamming for a few seconds, but then it returned again with full force.

He was alone — no wingman, and now no ground controller. It sounded as if the controller was going to vector in some help, but at maximum speed it would take them over fifteen minutes to arrive.

The MiG pilot activated his radar. There, right in front of him, was a radar target. Again he didn’t hesitate. He immediately got a lock-on, centered the aiming pipper on the lock box, and squeezed the trigger just as he got a IN RANGE indication on his heads-up display. He reached down to select his second radar-guided missile.

When he looked up, his radar was a jumble of targets that filled the entire scope. The radar lock box on his heads-up display was flitting from one false target to another, whichever one it thought was the strongest return or the most serious threat. The MiG pilot hit a button on the radar panel to activate the electronic counter-countermeasures mode. That cleared up the radar screen — but only for a few sweeps, and then the enemy jamming signals locked on again to his radar’s new frequency and started false-target jamming it all over again. He had no idea where his missile was heading. For all he knew, it could be heading back toward him.

“Control, Three-three…” he tried, but the radio was still unusable, a hopeless jumble of screeches, pops, and whistles. The MiG pilot immediately started a climb and made a slight right turn — he’d been on that one heading too long, exposing himself to attack. What in hell was it? An enemy fighter over eastern Siberia with both air-to-air weapons and jammers strong enough to take out a Sokol PrNK-23S radar?

He had just a few minutes of fuel left before he needed to head back to base. Without a ground controller, he had only one option left: try to find his original target on his own. Kill something before he had to get out of there — or before he was killed, like his wingman. The MiG pilot’s strength was forming the mental map of the battle space in his head — visualizing where all the players were and correctly guessing what they might be doing, even many minutes since getting their last exact position. That’s what made him such an important and trusted flight lead. He had to put that skill into use right now.

His original target was slow-moving, flying very low but not terrain-masking, and pretty much flying in a straight line. Maybe he would still be doing the same thing now.

The MiG-23 pilot turned slightly left and aimed the nose of his jet slightly nose-low, aiming for the spot he imagined the original target had moved toward. His guess was that the first target was a large American turboprop special-ops aircraft, like an MC-130 Hercules, probably loaded with troops and fuel but having to stretch that fuel a long way — which meant he was going to continue to fly slow and low and not make a bunch of course reversals, climbs or descents, or even very many turns if he could avoid it. Maybe if he was concerned about—

Suddenly a dot appeared on the TM-23 electro-optical sensor screen. There it was! He couldn’t believe his luck. The radio was still being jammed, so he assumed his radar would be jammed, too, so there was no use turning it on and giving away his position. No messing around this time — he slammed the throttle forward, lowered the nose, and started a rapid descent at the slow-moving target.

He had no definite idea how far away he was from the target — he was relying strictly on his own internal “radar screen” as he selected his R-60 heat-seeking missiles and closed in. All he had to do was keep the dot centered and continue moving in — the R-60 would report to him when it had locked on to a hot enough heat source. It had to happen any second now. His situational-awareness “chart” told him he couldn’t be any farther than five or six kilome—

A red light flashed on, and he flipped open the safety cover and squeezed the launch button — before, realizing that it wasn’t the IN RANGE indicator, but the MISSILE LAUNCH warning. The Sirena-2 radar threat detector had picked up the specific frequency of a radar-guided missile in flight. He had to get out of there! He had only a fraction of a second to react.

But at that same moment, he heard the raspy growl of the R-60 locking on to its target, and moments later he saw the IN RA—

The AIM-120 AMRAAM missile plowed into the center of the MiG-23’s fuselage, tearing open its fuel tank and blowing the fighter into pieces in the blink of an eye. The pilot stayed conscious long enough to grasp his ejection handles before the fireball created by his own exploding jet engulfed him, instantly vaporizing him.

Splash Atwo, Crowbar,” Matthew Whitley radioed a few moments later. He was also the “game boy” for the unmanned EB-1C Vampire “flying battleship” bomber, flying in protection mode to cover the MC-13 °Combat Talon II transport as it flew through long-range radar coverage from Anadyr and Kavaznya along the Russian coastal area. “Your tail is clear.”

“Thanks, Bobcat,” Merritt radioed back on the secure radio frequency. “We owe you big-time.”

Merritt’s “guardian angel” was an unmanned EB-1C Vampire long-range bomber. Launched from Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base twelve hours earlier, it was one of the most advanced SEAD weapon systems ever developed. A modified B-1B strategic bomber, its three bomb bays were loaded with a mix of defensive weapons: twelve long-range radar-guided AIM-120 Scorpion air-to-air missiles on a rotary launcher in the forward bomb bay; six AGM-88 HARMs — high-speed antiradiation missiles — on another launcher in the center bomb bay; and eight AGM-65M Longhorn Maverick TV-and imaging-infrared precision-guided missiles in the aft bomb bay. The Vampires also had advanced ultraprecise laser radar systems that could locate and identify enemy targets at long range, even spacecraft in low Earth orbit.

“We can hang with you for another thirty minutes,” Whitley said, “and then we’ll have to reverse course and hit our tanker. But after we refuel, we’ll head back in to cover your approach into Yakutsk and your egress.”

“Copy that, Bobcat,” Merritt said. “We’ll be waiting for you. What’s the word from Condor?”

There was a slight, strained pause. Then: “They may be having some problems. Stand by….”

Warning, airborne radar in target-tracking mode, eight o’clock, fifty-five miles,” the threat-warning computer announced.

The commandos inside the little Condor heard a loud baarkk! sound coming from the rear, followed by a very substantial shudder, another animal-like cough, and then a faint whirring sound. “Engine up to thirty percent…thirty-five percent…forty…forty-five percent…Starters off, temps in the green, looks like we got a good light,” Matt Wilde reported. “Power’s coming up…generators coming online.” At that moment the rumbling and shuddering completely disappeared — it was as if they had suddenly been firmly planted on solid bedrock. “Mission-adaptive system active, guys. Power up to eighty-five percent. Looks like the engine swallowed a chunk of ice, but everything looks okay.”

“ ‘Looks okay,’ huh? You’re not being chased by a damned Russian MiG!” Hal Briggs retorted. “Where is that sucker?”

“Eight o’clock, less than forty miles,” Dave Luger said. “Stand by….”

“ ‘Stand by’? Dave, what’s happening out there?”

I think the fighter has you guys,” Luger radioed from Battle Mountain. “We’re working right now to buy you some time.”

“He’s got one MiG lining up on Condor and another that’ll get within firing range soon,” Whitley reported.

Luger had no choice. “Deploy the towed array on the EB-52, open target fins, and send out a beacon signal,” he ordered. Whitley reluctantly complied. A small, bullet-shaped device unreeled itself from a fairing on the EB-52 Megafortress’s tail. When the device was about two hundred yards behind the bomber, it opened up several fins and began sending out a tracking beacon. The device was an ALE-55 towed electronic-countermeasures array. As well as acting as a jamming antenna and decoy, the array could also act like an air target by making its radar cross-section larger and by sending out identification signals.

“Any chance he’ll run out of gas before he catches up with the Megafortress?” Whitley asked.

“He hasn’t caught it yet, Wildman,” Luger said.

Control, I have a weak radar return at my two o’clock position, sixty-four K,” the MiG-29 pilot reported. “I initially saw the target heading east, but this one appears to be heading west. Can you verify my radar contact? He’s at my two o’clock, sixty K meters, descending at two hundred and forty kilometers per hour. No infrared signature yet — he is either very stealthy or unpowered.”

“Negative, Two-one,” the ground controller reported. “We show negative radar contacts. Be advised, Tashnit Four-seven is engaging targets approximately in your vicinity. Recommend you return to — Stand by, Two-one.” The MiG pilot cursed in frustration. It took several moments for the controller to come back up. “Two-one, we now have a pop-up radar contact, unidentified aircraft, altitude base plus sixteen, range one-one-five K, bearing one-zero-five degrees, heading east at four-eight-zero K. Vector ninety-five left to intercept.”

The MiG pilot hated giving up the chase on a sure contact, but he had no choice except to comply. He plugged in min afterburner as he turned to the new vector heading. At min afterburner, flying just below the speed of sound, it would take him nearly ten minutes to catch up with the unidentified plane. “I’m going to need a relief chaser here in a few minutes, control,” he advised.

“Tashnit Four-nine flight of two will be airborne in a few minutes,” the controller reported. “They’ll join on you after they prosecute the westbound target. You are clear to engage your target, Two-one.”

“Two-one understands, cleared to engage,” the pilot acknowledged.

Since the ground-radar controller had radar contact now, he didn’t need to activate his own radar. Moments later his infrared search-and-track sensor picked up the unidentified aircraft. With the IRSTS locked on, he could close to infrared-missile range and shoot him down without ever being detected. The target was still flying along, fat, dumb, and happy — no evasive maneuvers, just straight, slow, high-altitude flight, exactly like a training target.

“Range twenty K, Two-one.”

“Acknowledged,” the MiG pilot replied. The IRSTS gave him azimuth and elevation, not range, so he didn’t know exactly when the R-73 heat-seeking missile would lock on, but all he had to do was—

There! He heard a loud beepbeepbeep! and saw a REYS indication on his heads-up display. He flipped open the safety cover on his fire button and—

At that moment the target dropped quickly in altitude — slowly at first, then faster and faster. In less than three seconds, it had completely disappeared! That didn’t make sense! He searched in the darkness to see if he could spot it…nothing! “Control, Two-one, I have lost the target! It appears to have dropped straight down. Vector!”

“Two-one, target last seen at your twelve o’clock position, eighteen K. Negative contact at this time.”

“Khuy na!” the MiG-29 pilot swore. How in hell could he be right there one second, as big as a fucking house, and then completely gone the next? He had no choice: He had to activate his pulse-Doppler radar to reacquire.

As soon as he flicked it on, there it was, right at the very right edge of his radarscope and lower, as big as day. But just as he flicked the switch on his control stick to switch from heat-seeking missiles to radar-guided missiles and take a shot, he received heavy jamming so persistent and agile that his counter-countermeasures equipment still couldn’t burn through it. “Detskaya, this is Tashnit Two-one, be advised, as soon as I was able to lock on with my radar, I encountered very heavy jamming, all frequencies and modes.”

But as soon as he let up on the mike button, he heard an unbelievably loud squealing noise. Comm jamming! This bastard had jammed his radio frequencies as well! He was hostile, no doubt about it now. But once the pilot turned toward the fleeing aircraft, his IRSTS sensor picked him up once again. Without the radar and without vectors, his only chance now was to close in to heat-seeking-missile range again. And he had better hurry — the bastard was flying farther and farther away from base, and his own bingo fuel level was fast approaching.

The enemy aircraft had sped up now, but it was still about half of the fighter’s speed. Keeping the power up but being careful not to select a higher afterburner power setting, he zoomed in for the kill.

Here he comes,” Whitley said. He had cut loose the towed decoy array just as the MiG closed within twelve miles, the max range of the AA-11 “Archer” missile, and as soon as he did, he turned the EB-52 bomber hard right, started a rapid descent, and jammed the throttles to full military power. If the MiG had locked on to the towed decoy, once it was cut loose, he would disappear from sight — but not for long. Even a stealthy bird like the Megafortress couldn’t hide its four huge, hot turbofans for long. “Sir?”

“Take him down,” Dave Luger said simply.

“Roger that.” Whitley entered instructions to his remote aircraft-control section, who designated the MiG-29 as an active target. The EB-52 aircraft that launched the Condor aircraft and StealthHawk unmanned attack aircraft couldn’t carry its normal complement of weapons, but it did carry some defensive weapons: two AIM-120 Scorpion air-to-air radar-guided missiles on each wing pylon.

On Whitley’s command, one missile was launched from the left pylon. The missile shot forward ahead of the bomber, then looped overhead in an “over the shoulder” missile-attack profile. The EB-52’s laser-radar arrays datalinked steering information to the missile, aiming the missile to a point in space where the MiG would be on its projected flight path. When the targeting computer determined that the MiG would be in range, the Scorpion missile activated its own radar and locked on to the MiG.

That was the first indication the MiG-29 pilot had that he was under attack — and by then it was too late. The Russian activated his electronic countermeasures and ejected chaff and flares to try to decoy the oncoming missile, but he stubbornly stayed on the same flight path, hoping to catch up to his quarry in the next few seconds. Undeterred by the decoys, the Scorpion missile scored a direct hit on the MiG’s left wing, sending the fighter into an uncontrollable spin into the Bering Sea.

“Splash one MiG-29, guys,” Whitley announced.

“Roger that, Wildman,” Luger said. “Let’s bring that Megafortress around so it can refuel the StealthHawks coming back from the Kamchatka Peninsula, and then we’ll bring it back to Shemya for refueling and rearming.”

“Should we fly it back to help the guys in the Condor?” Whitley asked. “We still have three Scorpions on board, plenty of gas, and three towed arrays left.”

“We’ll need the Megafortress for the follow-on attacks,” Luger said. “Everything is proceeding as the general planned so far. Besides, it looks like the StealthHawks are lining up a target of their own.”

At’yibis at min’a! Get the hell away from me!” the Russian MiG-29 pilot screamed in his oxygen mask. One second he was pursuing an unidentified pop-up target below him, heading south down the middle of the Kamchtka Peninsula just a hundred kilometers north of his home base, and the next he was surrounded by airborne threats. “Control, Four-seven, I’m being engaged! I’ve got a bandit on my tail! I need help!”

“Four-seven, Control, we are not picking up any more targets on radar,” the ground radar controller at Petropavlovsk replied. “Four-nine flight of two will be airborne in three minutes. ETE five minutes.” Silence. “Four-seven, do you copy? Acknowledge.” Still no response. Suddenly the radar-data block representing the lone MiG-29 on patrol started to blink. The altitude readout from the fighter’s encoding transponder showed it in a rapid descent…then it disappeared. “Tashnit Four-seven, do you copy?” Something was wrong. “Tashnit Four-nine, we’ve lost radar contact with Four-seven. Your initial vector is three-three-zero, base plus twelve. Radar is clear, but use extreme caution.”

“Four-nine flight of two, acknowledged. We’ll be airborne in two minutes.” The two MiG-29 fighters taxied rapidly down the taxiway, their pilots quickly running alert-takeoff checklists as they made their way to the active runway. At the end of the runway, they lined up side by side, received a “cleared for takeoff” light-gun signal from the control tower, locked brakes, pushed the throttles to max afterburner, and screamed down the runway together. Both were off the runway in less than fifteen hundred meters. The pilots raised gear and flaps, accelerated to five hundred kilometers per hour, pulled the throttles back to full military power, and started a left-echelon formation turn to the northwest.

Almost at the same instant, both fighters exploded in midair. There was no time for either pilot to eject — the burning aircraft hit the ground almost immediately, still in formation.

Splash two more,” Matt Whitley reported. “StealthHawk One took out the MiG on the Condor’s tail, and StealthHawk Two took care of the two MiGs launching from Petropavlovsk. Both are returning to Bobcat Two-three for refueling, and they’ll all recover to Shemya for rearming. StealthHawks Three and Four are proceeding across the Sea of Okhotsk to the feet-dry point.”

“Roger that, Wildman,” Hal Briggs said. He felt naked now without the vaunted StealthHawks, a commando’s best friend. The RAQ-15 StealthHawk was the improved version of Dreamland’s FlightHawk remotely piloted attack vehicle. Small, stealthy, fast, and powerful, the StealthHawk could fly through the most heavily defended areas in the world at up to ten miles per minute and attack targets with pinpoint precision. The StealthHawks carried a mix of weapons in their ten-foot-long bomb bays; these birds were configured for both air defense and defense suppression, with AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking antiaircraft missiles and AGM-211 mini-Maverick guided missiles configured to home in on and destroy enemy radars. The best part: The StealthHawks could be retrieved by their unmanned EB-1C Vampire motherships, brought up inside the bomb bay, refueled and rearmed, and flown back into battle.

The same unmanned EB-52 Megafortress bomber that launched the Condor had launched two StealthHawks from wing pylons. That was the reason the plane was visible from so far away one moment, then invisible to radar the next: The StealthHawks riding on the wing pylons completely destroyed the Megafortress’s stealth capabilities, which were fully restored once the StealthHawks were released. The EB-52 could refuel the StealthHawks in midair from a hose-and-drogue-type refueling system.

Meanwhile, an EB-1C Vampire bomber from Battle Mountain had launched two more StealthHawks over the Sea of Okhotsk between the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula and Sakhalin Island; those two StealthHawks would escort the Condor in toward the Siberian coast. The Vampire bomber would then retrieve, refuel, rearm, and relaunch the EB-52’s two StealthHawks and send them inland to rotate patrols with the other two StealthHawks. The rotations would continue until the Vampire had to return to Eareckson to refuel and reload.

Briggs’s Condor infiltration aircraft had leveled off at ten thousand feet and proceeded west-northwest across the west side of the Kamchatka Peninsula toward the Sea of Okhotsk. The Condor’s turbojet engine was running at 80 percent power, sending them smoothly on their way at a little over six miles per minute. The Condor descended slightly to five thousand feet above the sea, likely high enough to prevent any Russian naval patrols from hearing or seeing it but low enough to avoid the long-range surveillance radars and antiaircraft missile batteries located along the shore and on patrol vessels on the Sea of Okhotsk.

The crossing was treacherous. The Russian patrol vessels were arrayed so tightly across the Sea of Okhotsk that Battle Mountain had to make the Condor do several heading changes to avoid detection — they were even forced to steer the Condor toward a slightly less capable weapon system in order to avoid another, deadlier missile system that suddenly appeared.

Soon the inevitable happened — they vectored themselves right into the radar footprint of a Russian warship that had appeared as if out of nowhere. “Air-search radar!” Dave Luger shouted over the secure satellite link. “Echo-band air-search radar, close aboard, two o’clock, twenty-eight miles — probably a big-ass destroyer!”

“Get us out of here, Dave!” Hal Briggs shouted.

“Too late,” Whitley said. “You’re already inside his radar coverage. We’re descending you to one hundred feet and turning you south. He’s got another ship on his right — maybe he’ll turn right into the bastard.”

“Warning, missile-guidance radar, SA-N-17, two o’clock, twenty-six miles,” the threat-warning receiver blared. “Warning, fire-control radar, DP-130, ten o’clock, twenty-five miles.”

“The patrol boat at your nine o’clock position is turning northeast,” Dave Luger said. “It’s trying to either engage you or force you to fly north into that destroyer.”

“Warning, air-search radar, nine o’clock, nine miles,” the warning receiver intoned. “Warning, fire-control radar, DP-76, nine o’clock, ten miles.”

“We gotta nail that patrol boat, Dave,” Hal Briggs said. “We don’t have any choice.”

Luger hesitated — but not for long. He knew they had no choice as well. “Matt…”

“Roger that,” Whitley said. He entered commands into his computer console. “Designating Sierra One-nine as a target. Commit one StealthHawk.”

“Commit,” Luger ordered.

The StealthHawk unmanned attack missile received position and velocity information moments later by satellite and activated its own millimeter-wave radar and imaging infrared sensors as it cruised at ten miles per minute toward the Russian Molnya-class patrol boat. Once it was within range, its bomb-bay doors slid open, and it fired both of its mini-Maverick missiles at the vessel. Configured to act as antiradar weapons, the missiles homed in on the Hotel/India-band fire-control radar, which controlled the seventy-six-millimeter dual-purpose gun on the patrol boat. Although the patrol boat carried SA-N-5 antiaircraft missiles, the dual-purpose gun had almost three times the range of the missiles and, coupled to the radar, had almost the same accuracy.

“Good hit…second missile missed,” Luger reported. “India-band radar down. Echo-band radar still locked on in target-tracking mode, but I think he’s locked on to the StealthHawk. We’re changing your course to bring you closer to the patrol boat and keep you away from the destroyer.”

“You’re sure making this exciting, Dave,” Hal Briggs deadpanned.

“The missiles on the patrol boat have a fairly short range and are only infrared-guided,” Luger said. “We’ll keep you out of range of those. We’re just trying to stay away from that destroyer and keep you out of range of that seventy-six-millimeter job in case they have—” Suddenly Hal Briggs could see the horizon illuminate with several spectacular flashes of light. “Optronic guidance,” he finished.

“Lost track of the StealthHawk,” Whitley reported. “Looks like we lost her. The patrol boat is turning — man, that thing is fast! At this range they can keep us in front of them easily.”

“Commit the second StealthHawk,” Luger said.

“Roger…target designated.” The sky lit up with more gun blasts for several seconds, but soon Hal could see two streaks of light from the sky down to the sea. A fraction of a second later, he saw a tremendous burst of light and a brief flicker of flame on the horizon. “Air-search radar is down,” Whitley reported. “Looks like we slowed him up a bit.”

“I’d say you started a little bonfire on his decks,” Briggs said. Even from his range, he could see flickers of light rippling across the sea. “I love those StealthHawk things, guys. Every kid should own one.”

Whitley managed to keep the Condor away from all other patrol boats; the destroyer stopped its pursuit to assist the smaller patrol boat fight its deck fire, so they avoided that threat as well. Fighters were vectored into the area to search for the unidentified attackers, but both the Condor and the StealthHawk were too small to be detected, and all it took was minor course corrections to keep them clear of the pursuing fighters.

Ninety minutes after passing the Kamchatka Peninsula, the tiny Condor jet crossed the coast of Siberia and headed inland. Twenty minutes later they crossed the Dzhugdzhur Mountains along the eastern coast of Siberia and finally left the warnings of the Magadan and Petropavlovsk surveillance radars behind — only to be replaced by warning messages for the Yakutsk surveillance radar. Unlike the rugged, volcanic terrain of the coastline and the Kamchatka Peninsula, the terrain here was rapidly smoothing out to flat, seemingly endless tundra, interspersed with sections of marshy swamps, gravelly kharst, and peat bogs — in short, there was no longer anywhere to hide. It seemed as if they could see forever — but if they could see forever, the enemy could certainly see them.

“Man, oh, man,” Hal Briggs said after studying the terrain map on his multifunction displays, “if this ain’t the end of the fuckin’ world, you can sure as hell see it from here.” But every twelve seconds — the time it took for a radar antenna to make one complete revolution — they were reminded of what lay ahead: the threat-warning receiver announcing, “Caution, early-warning and fighter-intercept radar, twelve o’clock, three hundred miles…Caution, early warning and fighter-intercept radar, two hundred ninety-nine miles….”

“Shaddup already,” Briggs said, flipping a switch to silence the threat-warning voice.

From his decades as an air forces commander, from lowly lieutenant to general, Anatoliy Gryzlov could pick up on the slightest change in noise, tempo, or state of alert of the personnel in his command centers. The changes were incredibly subtle — but enough to awaken him with a start from a deep sleep and catapult him out of his seat. He had been catnapping in his small battle-staff meeting room, but even after less than an hour of sleep, he was wide-awake and on the move. He stormed through the office door and into the main battle-staff area. “What has happened, Stepashin?” he shouted.

“Several air-defense units engaging unidentified hostile aircraft, sir,” Stepashin said. He stepped quickly over to the wall chart. “Fighter wings based at both Petropavlovsk and Anadyr report some losses, and one naval unit in the Sea of Okhotsk was attacked by antiradar weapons.”

Gryzlov had grabbed a long measuring plotter and was running it across some lines drawn on the chart. He pointed gleefully at one of the time markers. “I told you, Nikolai — right dead on schedule,” he said. “McLanahan is so punctual that you can set your watch by him.”

“Sir, all of the fighters reported very small contacts,” Stepashin said. “If McLanahan was coming with bombers…?”

“No bombers — not yet,” Gryzlov said confidently. “These are StealthHawks — unmanned attack aircraft. They can launch missiles, but their primary function is reconnaissance. I told you to pass the word along, Nikolai—use no radars, or they’ll be destroyed by stealth aircraft. The StealthHawks are launched by Megafortresses and Vampires, but McLanahan is not ready to send in his heavy jets — not yet, but soon. They were probably launched by unmanned aircraft.”

He pointed at the lines drawn to several bases in southern Siberia. “He is right on time, Nikolai, so get your men ready,” he said, a sparkle in his eyes showing his excitement at the chase. “The next warning we get will be the main force of bombers trying to penetrate our air defenses. Petropavlovsk may pick up the first wave, but more likely it’ll be the terminal defenses around Anadyr again, Blagoveshchensk, Vladivostok, Sakhalin Island, or Magadan that will get the first indication of an attack.

“You must swarm all over any sensor contact you have and launch every missile possible at it, and keep firing until it goes down or until your crews run out of missiles,” Gryzlov said, stabbing at Stepashin with his cigarette. “We can achieve a stalemate or even a victory if we are successful in shooting down one transport or stealth aircraft — just one! Once the Americans realize they are not invulnerable to attack, they will quickly come back to the bargaining table.”

There was no sweeter sight in the entire world than when you broke out of a thick, angry overcast and saw the landing strip, especially through sheets of almost frozen rain pelting the windscreen. The pilot of the Russian Federation air force’s Ilyushin-78 aerial-refueling tanker breathed a sigh of relief that he was sure could be heard throughout his large, noisy aircraft. “Kalyosa, nizhniy,” he ordered, and the copilot grasped the large landing-gear lever, squeezed the unlock trigger, and lowered the lever. “Flaps to thirty. Ignition switches on.” He reduced power and aimed for the end of the runway as the copilot flipped his plastic-covered checklist pages to the “Aborted Landing” section, ready to read to the pilot in case a go-around was required. But it didn’t look as if it would be needed. The winds were right down the runway, and although the rain was falling pretty hard, restricting visibility, he had this landing nailed. “Unit Three-four-four, field in sight.”

“Unit Four-four, cleared to land, winds three-five-zero at eighteen gusting to twenty-two knots.” The pilot looked through the whipping rain and saw the steady green light from the tower cab, a visual indication that he was cleared to land.

“Acknowledged, cleared to land,” the pilot repeated. The young, easily excitable copilot looked immensely relieved — this had been one hell of a past couple days. It wasn’t just the attack against the United States that made it so amazing — the pilot still wasn’t convinced that that had been a wise move, but he had to give General Gryzlov credit for daring to twist the tiger’s tail like that.

No, not just to twist the tiger’s tail — to rip off the tiger’s legs and beat him with them!

What was really astonishing was the rapid and generational transformation of the Russian military, especially its air forces. No longer would Russia’s military strength rest with its ground and naval forces. The air forces had metamorphosed from a mere transportation-and-support group to a global, rapid-response, precision-striking force. Never before had the air forces been decisive in any battle — this was the first complete victory, and certainly not the last.

Yakutsk Air Base was the prototype of that incredible transformation. In the past, Russia had relied on enormous aircraft and many immense bases located throughout its vast territory to fuel its strike aircraft. Most of the bases east of the Urals had been abandoned, since most military leaders thought that the wastelands of Siberia represented more of an obstacle to be avoided or overflown rather than a target of conquest.

No longer. Aerial-refueling tankers ruled Siberia, and tankers led the way in this war against America and would lead the way for decades to come. With the fleet of late-model tankers Russia was developing, like this Ilyishin-78, the entire globe was truly within reach. There were a few bombers and fighters stationed at Yakutsk, as at every other Russian military base with enough concrete to park one, but here tankers ruled.

With Yakutsk’s tankers opening an air bridge between the bases in the west and North America, Russia finally had a chance to regain its rightful status as a world superpower. General Gryzlov — most Russian military officers still did not refer to him as “President,” believing strongly that it was more of an honor to be called by his military rank than by any political appellation — had to be one of the most visionary airpower leaders in history.

It appeared that the rest of the fleet had already returned from their missions — the ramp was choked with Il-78 and Tupolev-16 tankers, MiG-29 and MiG-23 fighter jets, and even several Tu-95 and Tu-22M bombers. There was a security vehicle parked right on the hold line at the approach end of the runway — rather unusual, but not unexpected with the heightened security. There didn’t seem to be too much activity elsewhere, except for a few roving security patrols, mostly wheeled armored personnel carriers with a large cannon or machine gun mounted on top.

“Check the runway status, copilot,” the pilot ordered.

“Da.” On the command radio, the copilot spoke, “Tower, braking action and runway visual-range report?”

“Runway visual range two thousand meters,” the tower operator reported. Then, hesitantly, he continued, “Caution, runway braking action khudshiy. I repeat, runway braking action khudshiy. Khudshiy!”

The Il-78 copilot stared at his pilot with a look of absolute horror. The pilot was concentrating on nailing this landing with the weather conditions worsening outside, so it took a few seconds for the message and the copilot’s stunned expression to register. “Uyedi na huy!” the pilot shouted. “Go around! Go around! Full power!” The copilot slowly but deliberately shoved the throttles up to full military power. The pilot pitched the nose to level, arresting their descent less than fifty meters aboveground. It seemed to take forever for the airspeed to come up, and for a moment the pilot was sure they’d stall and smack into the ground, well short of the runway.

But they were low on fuel, and gross weight was very low. Soon the airspeed started to increase as the engines spooled up to full power. Once they had reached best-angle climb speed, he carefully raised the nose, every nerve ending in his body alert to the possibility of an accelerated stall. When the vertical speed, airspeed, and altimeter needles all crept upward together, he ordered, “Gear up, flaps to twenty.”

“Who should I call?” the copilot yelled frantically. He was looking out the windscreen in a panic, trying to see anything that might indicate what the emergency was. “Who should I talk to?”

“Wait until I get the plane cleaned up, damn it!” the pilot shouted. “Flaps full up! Check igniters on and inertial separators deployed!” The copilot checked the switch positions, then nervously scanned out the windscreens for any sign of trouble. As soon as the plane was safely climbing and the gear and flaps retracted, the pilot banked steeply away from the airfield, expecting any moment to feel or hear an explosion.

As relieved as he’d been just moments earlier to break out of the clouds and see the runway, he was even more relieved when he finally reentered the clouds a few moments later.

Sorry about that, sir,” Ted Merritt radioed. He was stationed up inside the control tower cab at Yakutsk Air Base, along with a Russian-speaking Marine. Another Marine was tightly binding the Russian noncom’s hands behind him with plastic handcuffs — he was already facedown on the floor, gagged with a rag strapped around his mouth. “Looks like he used a ‘scatter’ code — first time I’ve heard one. I’ve got the tower operator secured now — we can’t trust him on the radios any longer. My corporal will do the radios from now on.”

“Roger that,” Colonel Hal Briggs responded. “That tanker’s not going far.” “Stand by,” he responded. “Break. Briggs to McLanahan. One got away at the last second. You got him, or do you want us to take him?”

Stand by, Dave,” Patrick McLanahan replied from aboard his EB-52 Megafortress, flying just southeast of Yakutsk. He briefly activated the Megafortress’s laser radar, which used laser emitters mounted on all sides of the aircraft to instantly “draw” a detailed picture of every object within three hundred miles of the bomber. He immediately spotted the retreating Il-78 tanker. Although it was not yet out of range of the weapons he carried aboard his bomber, his guys on the ground could do this job much better, and he could save his munitions. “McLanahan to Wohl,” he spoke, using his subcutaneous satellite transceiver to talk directly to his men at Yakutsk. “Sergeant Major, take it down.”

“Roger, sir,” Sergeant Major Chris Wohl responded. He, along with a four-man Marine fire team reinforced by a security team armed with M249 squad automatic weapons, had already set out sensors and mines around the base and were now guarding the main entrance, which was just a few kilometers from a major highway that led to the city of Yakutsk itself, just twenty klicks away. Two more fire teams were spread out around the perimeter of the base, accompanied by Bastian and Angel, while the last team was sent out to help secure the fuel depot and drive vehicles. “Angel, take it.”

“Copy,” Staff Sergeant Emily Angel responded simply. Like Wohl, she was wearing her Tin Man electronic battle armor, standing guard at the north side of the base. She already had her electromagnetic rail gun raised and, using her powered exoskeleton, effortlessly and precisely tracked the Russian aircraft. Moments after she responded, she squeezed the trigger. An eighteen-ounce titanium projectile sped out of the weapon with a muzzle velocity of over eighteen thousand feet per second, leaving a blue-orange trail of vaporized air behind it.

As usual, it appeared as if the projectile missed, and Angel took another shot a few seconds later. But the first shot did not miss. Instead of hitting the outboard engine on the left wing, the projectile pierced the engine’s pylon, severing several fuel, pneumatic, hydraulic, and bleed air lines. The Il-78’s pilot had no choice but to shut the engine down before it tore itself apart.

The second shot also did not miss. It traveled directly up the tailpipe of the inboard engine on the left wing, exactly where Angel had aimed. The projectile had already softened from friction as it traveled through the air, and flying through the nearly two-thousand-degree jet exhaust made it softer still — so when the practically molten titanium hit the engine’s combustion chamber, it completely disintegrated into a fist-size slug of metal that sped through the compressor section of the engine and spattered, shredding the compressor blades and instantly tearing apart the Soloviev D-30KP engine.

The Ilyushin-78 could fly very well on just two engines, especially at its light gross weight, but the pilot had to lower the nose to regain his lost airspeed, and he was hit at just over four hundred meters aboveground — there was no time to try to coax it back to flying speed. The pilot made the decision to pull the right throttles to idle and do a controlled crash landing. The Il-78 flew much better with the right engines pulled back to more closely match the destroyed left engines, so the pilot was able to pancake his tanker into the boggy tundra in an almost perfectly wings-level attitude.

“Splash one big-ass plane,” Angel reported.

“Good shooting, Angel,” Wohl said. “Take your fire team and check for survivors. Bring back the injured and nonresisters — deal with the others. We have enough captives here already.”

“Copy,” Angel said simply — she rarely said much more than that while wearing the Tin Man battle armor. She radioed her Marine fire team to pick her up in a Russian wheeled armored personnel carrier, and they drove quickly out to the crash site.

In thirty minutes she returned with all seven crew members, including one fatality and two injured in the crash. The conscious Russians were shocked to see the U.S. Marines at their air base in the middle of nowhere in Siberia, and even more amazed to see Angel in her Tin Man electronic battle armor.

But not as amazed as they were when they saw a weird-looking B-52 bomber on final approach to their runway. It was a B-52, but with a long pointed nose, angled downward like a supersonic transport’s so the pilot could see the runway better, and with a strange, angled V-shaped tail that looked almost invisible.

The B-52 stopped in less than half the length of the runway and quickly taxied to a designated parking spot, where fuel trucks were waiting. With the engines still running, the belly hatch popped open, and Patrick McLanahan and twelve more men and women stepped out. This EB-52’s crew compartment, which normally carried just two crew members, had been modified with bolt-in seats to accommodate six additional crew members on both the upper and lower decks. After stretching their cramped and aching muscles, the twelve maintenance technicians got to work refueling the Megafortress bomber.

“Dobro pozhalovat Yakutsk, General,” Hal Briggs said to Patrick when they met up at the base-operations complex at the foot of the control tower. Even in his own Tin Man battle armor, he was able to salute the general as he entered the building, then shook hands with him. He had a broad smile on his face after he removed his helmet and ran a hand across his shaved head. “I’ve been learning a little Russian just in case. Welcome to Camp Vengeance, sir.”

“Camp Vengeance? Excellent name.”

“One of the Marines named it — I think it’s damned appropriate.”

“I agree,” Patrick said. “Run down the situation here for me, Hal. We’ll blast off again as soon as we’re refueled, and we’ll set up air-base defense from the air and help escort in the other planes.”

“Roger that, sir,” Hal said. He led Patrick over to a large map of Yakutsk hanging on the wall behind the flight-planning desk. “We’re here in the base-ops buildings, which includes radar, communications, weather, and security forces. This west complex here is the main aircraft-parking area — eighteen hangars and a mass parking apron for about thirty heavies. We’ve moved all the Russian planes out of the hangars to make way for our guys, and we’ve got the captives housed in these two hangars, about two hundred or so.”

“Two hundred? We expected a lot more than that, didn’t we?”

“We made a decision and put all the troops we feel are noncombatant types in a separate hangar, under minimal guard,” Briggs said. “It’s a risk, but putting four or five hundred together is riskier. The hard-core security troops, fliers, senior officers, and noncoms are under close guard. Eventually the others will screw up enough courage to sneak out and try to free the others, and that’s when we might have to waste a few. Until we get more guys in here, that’s the best I can do.”

“How long can you hold out?”

“Twelve Marines to guard two hundred captives — I’d say so far it’s a fair fight, until the jarheads start getting real tired or the noncombatants start getting real stupid. So far it’s quiet. Mark Bastian is supervising. The sight of us in Tin Man getups really freaks ’em out, but it won’t take them long to get over their fear and start planning a breakout. Now that you brought some more aircraft techs, that’ll leave more of the Marines available for perimeter security and guard duty.

“We parked a few planes here and there outside base ops to make it look busy. There were a few bombers getting some work done in the east hangar complex — shut that down, captured a Russian colonel.

“Across the runway is the industrial area — storage, fuel tanks, physical plant, et cetera. Back here is the housing area, squadron ready rooms, and other support buildings. We believe that most of the place was pretty much closed down for the night, but in about an hour or so, the regular folks will start showing up, and then the shit will hit the fan. We’ve got ‘detour’ and ‘road closed’ signs up to try to get folks turned around, but that won’t fool ’em for long. Chris has set up mines and sensors around the perimeter, and the Marines are ready for a fight. They even brought a few unmanned recon planes to help themselves scan the perimeter. Those guys are damned good.”

Patrick nodded. It wasn’t much of a defense — their forces were stretched hair thin. But the Marines were accustomed to dropping into hot landing zones surrounded by bad guys and being asked to do the impossible with almost nothing. These twenty-first-century Marines had a lot more high-tech gadgets to help them, but it still came down to the basic task of sending a few brave fighters into the breach and hoping they utilized their skills, courage, and tenacity to the max. “Pass along my thanks to Lieutenant Merritt and the Tin Men for a job well done,” Patrick said. “Again, I have no intention of staying here a second longer than I have to.”

“Everyone else on time, sir?”

“So far,” Patrick said. “The MC-17 transports should be penetrating Petropavlovsk’s airspace any minute now, with Rebecca and Daren leading a three-ship Vampire escort team. By tonight, with some luck, we’ll be ready to start attack operations.”

Time to go night-night, tovarich,” Daren Mace said. He touched his supercockpit display on the icon for Petropavlovsk’s surveillance radar and spoke, “Attack target.”

“Attack order received, stop attack,” the computer responded, and moments later Mace’s EB-1C Vampire bomber had fired two AGM-88 high-speed antiradar missiles at the ground radar. Soon the Russian long-range radar was off the air.

“The radar is down,” Daren reported. “The fighters will have to start finding targets on their own.” He entered a few more voice commands. “Jammers and countermeasures are active, and the MC-17 is going active as well.” Daren briefly activated his laser radar, which instantly “painted” a picture of the airspace around him. “Two fighters in the vicinity, eleven o’clock, thirty-five miles. They’re mine.”

Rebecca Furness glanced over at Daren’s supercockpit display on the right side of the Vampire’s instrument panel, which clearly depicted the tactical situation: They were flying twenty miles ahead of their charges, two MC-17 special-operations transport planes. Modified by the aircraft and weapons experts at the High Technology Aerospace Weapons Center, the same unit that had designed and fielded the modified B-52s and B-1s, the MC-17s had sophisticated navigation and self-defense systems that allowed them to fly deep into enemy territory. Each was carrying seventy to eighty crew members, technicians, and security forces, plus a hundred fifty thousand pounds of ordnance, equipment, and supplies to support this mission.

Another EB-1C Vampire had launched two StealthHawks to attack Petropavlovsk; it was now standing by a couple hundred miles to the northeast, ready to recover and rearm them for follow-on attacks. Both StealthHawks were armed with a mix of antiradar and mine-dispensing standoff munitions that would destroy all of Petropavlovsk’s air-defense missile sites and, with luck, shut down the airstrip as well. A third Vampire was standing by with Longhorn missiles, heavier mine-laying munitions, and defensive air-to-air missiles, ready to rush in to completely shut down the base and help escort the MC-17s through to the Siberian coastline once the StealthHawks finished their attack runs on Petropavlovsk.

“Attack fighters,” Daren ordered.

“Attack order received, stop attack,” the computer responded. Moments later: “Forward bomb doors opening…Launcher rotating…Scorpion away.”

Suddenly the datalink from Petropavlovsk that was providing steering cues to the air-defense fighters was cut off. That happened frequently, especially if the enemy was jamming the radar. The antijam circuits would take over and change frequencies, and soon the datalink would be active again. The MiG-29’s fire-control system kept the target’s heading and speed in memory, providing an estimated position on the heads-up display, so if necessary the MiG pilot could simply—

“Zima flight, Zima flight!” the radio suddenly blared, startling the pilot. “The base is under attack! The airfield has been bombed, and the surveillance radar has been destroyed! Take over the—” And just then the transmission was cut off by loud squealing and popping on the UHF radio frequency.

The MiG pilot couldn’t help but think of his alternate landing bases: Magadan, their primary alternate, was over a thousand kilometers away, and Kavaznya, their emergency landing base, was not that much closer. They were already close to bingo fuel, and they hadn’t even launched any missiles yet! Almost time to activate his own radar and attack. He hoped his wingman was watching his fuel gauges. What in hell hit them? Was it a cruise missile?

The pilot’s attention was focused on his abort base and not on his threat-warning receiver, so he hesitated just a second or two too long when the MISSILE LAUNCH warning flashed on his instrument panel and on his heads-up display. By the time he thought to react, it was too late — the AIM-120 Scorpion missile hit him squarely in the center of his jet, turning it instantly into a fireball and sending it crashing into the Bering Sea.

Splash one,” Daren Mace announced. “Stand by…second missile away.”

But the wingman wasn’t as distracted. He had just activated his radar and locked up the target at seventy kilometers when his warning receiver blared. He punched off two R-77s — seconds before another Scorpion missile slammed into him from the left rear quarter. He was able to put his hands on his ejection-seat handles but didn’t have time to pull them before the fireball engulfed his plane as well.

Missiles away! Missiles away! Shit, he launched!” Colonel Daren Mace shouted. He could hardly believe that the wingman could fire his own missiles so fast — usually wingmen were just set up to guard the leader, and rarely did they have the situational awareness to prosecute an attack so quickly after losing their leader. The Russians must have changed tactics, Daren decided — all fighters must be ordered to blaze away with every missile they had from maximum range as soon as they got a target locked up. “Two AA-12s. Time to impact…crap, thirty-five seconds.”

The Vampire’s laser-radar arrays were tracking the AA-12s perfectly. They had just a few seconds to try to knock those missiles out of the sky — the MC-17 was sending jamming signals, but the AA-12s were still speeding dead on course, perhaps homing on the jamming. “Daren, get them!” Rebecca shouted.

“Attack AA-12s,” Daren ordered the attack computer. But even as he didso, he knew that it was going to be a very, very close call. The AA-12s had accelerated to Mach 3. The AIM-120s had similar range and speed, but it was going to be a head-to-head intercept — that was the lowest-percentage shot there was. If even one AA-12 missed by less than a few dozen yards, the MC-17 was going down.

Before the attack computer could acknowledge Daren’s order, he spoke, “Countermeasures to standby. Chaff, left and right. Chaff, left and right. Wings level, Rebecca. Electronic cloaking to standby.”

“Daren, what are you doing?” Rebecca shouted. Part of the EB-1C’s stealth enhancements was an electronic system nicknamed the “cloaking device” that absorbed a great deal of electromagnetic energy aimed at the bomber. At longer ranges it could make the bomber virtually invisible. “You can’t shut off the cloaking — it’ll quadruple our radar cross-section! What in hell do you think you’re…?”

But then she looked again at the supercockpit display, and she understood perfectly. Just for good measure, she pulled the throttles on her EB-1C Vampire bomber to idle — to make it easier for the AA-12 missiles to acquire and track them. The tactic worked. Seconds later both Russian AA-12 missiles diverted off course, locked on to the unguarded Vampire bomber, and slammed into it.

Rebecca and Daren were ready — they could see the missiles coming on the supercockpit display, and as soon as they felt the impact, they ejected. They were well clear of the stricken bomber long before it exploded into a huge fiery mass of metal and fuel and plunged straight down into the icy Bering Sea.