Price of Duty

THIRTY-SIX

Brad McLanahan had watched Charlie Turlock’s CID beacon disappear from his tactical display in stunned disbelief. God only knew, he was no stranger to the violent deaths of people close to him. In the past couple of years alone, he’d lost plenty of friends and teammates. But it was still a shock to see someone like Charlie — so full of life and energy and joy — wiped out in the blink of an eye. He’d felt her death like the sharp, piercing blow of an ice pick driven straight into his heart. What made it even worse was realizing that it could easily have been Nadia piloting that robot, and feeling grateful that she was safe.

And now Whack Macomber’s CID was down too, destroyed by the same brutally effective Russian ambush. The lump in his throat grew larger, threatening to choke him. Not for the first time lately, he wished he weren’t too old to cry.

He stared out the cockpit windows. Outside, across the clearing, Ian Schofield and his commandos humped their gear and weapons back toward the XCV-62. Once they were aboard in a couple of minutes, he could take off — beginning the long, risky flight out of Russia with the news of their failure.

“Brad,” Nadia said suddenly, sitting bolt upright. She’d been scanning through radio frequencies, using the Ranger’s sophisticated computers, in an effort to figure out more of what the Russians were up to. “Listen!”

She switched the channel she’d been monitoring to his headset. Someone gabbling frantically in Russian sounded in his ears. He frowned. It sounded like a very excited junior officer making a report, but otherwise it was gibberish to him. He shrugged helplessly. “Sorry, I can’t make it out.”

“Major Macomber is alive!” Nadia said. Her eyes were almost completely closed while she translated on the fly. “This lieutenant is telling his colonel that they’ve taken a prisoner from the second mercenary robot they destroyed.”

For a split second, Brad experienced a surge of hope. But then it faded, replaced by a horrible feeling of dread and helplessness. Alive as a prisoner of the Russians, Whack was probably worse off than if he’d been killed outright. Gryzlov had tagged the Iron Wolf Squadron as terrorists, even though they fought in uniform and for a recognized nation-state. The cold-blooded Russian leader would have no qualms about ordering Whack tortured for information about CID and other advanced Scion weapons technology and tactics. And after they’d squeezed him dry, they’d put a bullet in the back of his skull and dump his body in an unmarked grave.

Flying at three thousand meters above the forests of northern Russia, two Russian Air Force Su-50 stealth fighters in dark and light blue camouflage raced northeast. Seen from a distance in daylight, their deceptive “Shark” paint scheme made them appear much smaller than they actually were. At night, they were almost invisible to the naked eye.

Colonel Ruslan Baryshev spoke into his mic. “Perun Security Command, this is Prividenye Lead. I am five minutes out from your position. Request situation update.”

“Specter Lead, this is Security Command,” an agitated voice acknowledged. “We have defeated the enemy ground assault, destroying two of their combat machines. But our casualties are extremely heavy — as is the damage to our special complex.”

Baryshev grimaced. The quick briefing he’d received from Colonel General Maksimov before his fighters took off had indicated the extraordinarily high value President Gryzlov placed on this top-secret facility. Heads were likely to roll in the aftermath of this Iron Wolf attack — he only hoped his would not be one of them. He keyed his mic again. “What about the enemy transport aircraft? Have your radars or scouts pinpointed its location?”

“Negative, Specter,” the other man reported. “Our radars were destroyed in the initial assault, along with our fixed air defenses. And unfortunately, we have no ground- or helicopter-based reconnaissance units currently available to search the surrounding area.”

Better and better, Baryshev thought acidly. The situation on the ground sounded like a total clusterfuck — which meant it was up to him to find the surviving American mercenaries before they escaped.

So far, his Su-50’s radar showed no unidentified contacts in the skies ahead. That wasn’t surprising. To have penetrated this far inside Russia without being detected, any enemy aircraft would have to be fairly stealthy and able to fly safely at extremely low altitude. If so, he couldn’t expect to pick up anything until they were much closer.

The other possibility, of course, was that the Iron Wolf aircraft was still parked somewhere on the ground, somewhere relatively close to the Perun’s Aerie complex. He radioed his wingman. “We’re going hunting, Oleg. Let’s maximize our coverage. Deploy in line abreast. Five-kilometer spacing. I’m switching my radar to air-to-ground mode. You keep an eye on the sky, understand?”

“Two,” the other pilot, Captain Oleg Imrekov, replied. Even over the radio, he sounded dubious. “It’s going to be a bitch spotting anything in all that clutter up ahead.”

Baryshev understood his wingman’s skepticism. They were approaching the Urals at high speed. The brand-new N036 AESA radars equipping their Su-50s were marvels of Russian technology, but no fighter-size airborne radar in the world could hope to see through mountains. “Don’t worry, Captain,” he said. “Wherever these mercenaries are hiding, they’ll have to come up into the open air sooner or later. And if they don’t, we’ll fly search patterns until we nail them on the ground.”

“Caution, two unidentified airborne X-band search radars detected,” the Ranger’s SPEAR threat-warning system announced abruptly, shockingly loud in the gloom-filled silence of the cockpit.

Jolted out of his funk, Brad muttered, “Hell.” The Russians finally had aircraft up looking for them. Which meant they had to get out, and get out fast. Stealth characteristics or not, they were bound to be detected eventually — and on the ground, the XCV-62 was a sitting duck. He leaned forward, rapidly punching through takeoff checklist menus on his two MFDs. “I’m going for a fast engine start.”

“Identify those radars,” Nadia ordered.

“Negative identification,” the computer told her. “Probable agile frequency signal. Stand by.”

Her fingers flew across the virtual keyboard on one of her displays as she searched for possible matches. If those enemy radars were hopping frequencies too fast for the SPEAR system to identify, they were probably active electronically scanned array types. And those rapid frequency changes made it almost impossible to get a bearing and range to the emitter, let alone positively identify it from its signals alone.

On the other hand, she thought, there were only so many known X-band airborne radars in the Russian inventory. And there were even fewer AESA-types. Her finger stabbed at one of the screens on her MFDs — the N036 radars manufactured by Russia’s Tikhomirov Scientific Institute of Instrument Design, or NIIP. That had to be it. Her eyes widened slightly as she realized those radars were only fitted to one type of combat aircraft. Alarmed, she turned back to Brad. “We are being hunted by Russian Su-50 stealth fighters.”

“Swell,” he said under his breath. “Nice of them to bring out the first team.” He opened a channel to the Ranger’s troop compartment. “Captain Schofield?”

“We’re aboard,” the Canadian-born commando officer said, sounding a bit breathless. Running through deep snow was hard work, no matter how physically fit you were.

“Good,” Brad said. He tapped a control on his display. “Then I’m sealing the ramp.” A high-pitched hydraulic whine penetrated the cockpit. “Strap in tight. We have company coming and this is going to get hairy real fast.”

He entered more commands. Outside the windows, their four turbofan engines started spooling up. “All compressors are in the green. Engine temps look good,” he said, studying the readouts.

Beside him, Nadia was running through her own checklists. “Preparing defensive systems. SPEAR is ready. Flares are set for K-74M2 heat-seekers. Chaff is configured for K-77M radar-guided missiles. Spinning up inertial navigation systems on both MALDs. GPS receivers are initialized.”

Hearing her, Brad nodded to himself. That was smart. She’d identified the air-to-air weapons most likely to be carried in those approaching Su-50s’ internal weapons bays. Their defensives would be preset for maximum efficiency against the most likely threats. Unfortunately, their options were very limited.

According to their intelligence, Su-50s configured for stealth flight usually carried two heat-seekers each. Russia’s K-74M2 missiles were an advanced version of its R-73 infrared homing weapons, code-named the AA-11 Archer by NATO. In size, range, speed, and agility, K-74M2s were the equivalent of the American AIM-9X Sidewinders. That was bad enough.

The four K-77M radar-guided missiles carried by the Russian fighters were even more dangerous — better than anything in current U.S., NATO, or AFN service. Compared to American AIM-120 AMRAAMs, K-77Ms had one huge advantage: older missiles of this type carried a small, mechanically steered radar antenna in their noses to provide final guidance against a target during the seconds before impact. But sharp evasive maneuvering by an aircraft in those last few seconds could slip out of that narrow seeker beam faster than it could adjust, causing a miss. Unfortunately, the K-77M carried a phased-array terminal guidance radar in its nose. Since this radar was digitally steered, its beam could be adjusted thousands of times per second. Put simply, there was no way any final evasive maneuver could shake its lock. Stealth, jamming, and chaff were the only real defensive options… and even then the missile’s phased-array guidance radar greatly reduced their effectiveness.

Struck by a sudden thought, Brad pulled up a digital map on one of his displays. Flying straight west with those Russian fighters up and looking for them would be suicide. They couldn’t outrun those Su-50s or dodge every weapon they fired — not over northern Russia’s vast, virtually flat expanses of forest. But heading east into the radar maze created by the jagged peaks and ridgelines of the Ural Mountains might help them evade detection. If missiles started flying, the cover offered by mountains might also give them a slim chance at survival. That wasn’t much of a straw to grasp at, but it was better than nothing.

“Unidentified X-band signal strength increasing,” the Ranger’s computer reported.

Brad finished his takeoff checklist. “We’re good to go,” he said quietly. He throttled up to full military power. The XCV-62 started rolling forward, picking up speed. Carefully, he steered straight down the ruts his landing had ripped through the snowpack. Huge masses of compacted snow rippled off the ground behind the Ranger and blew apart into individual flakes, sent whirling through the air by the exhaust from its engines.

He held tight on course and felt the batwinged aircraft shuddering and bouncing as it raced faster and faster across the clearing. The woods on the far side grew larger with astonishing quickness. The airspeed indicator on his HUD climbed higher. C’mon, baby, he thought, give me just a little more speed. Now individual trees were starkly visible through the windscreen, looming closer and closer. “Vr… rotating!” he said, pulling back on the stick.

The Ranger’s nose rose and it soared off the ground in a billowing cloud of vaporized snow. Still accelerating, the batwinged aircraft cleared the tops of the surrounding trees by a few yards and climbed higher. Its landing gear whirred smoothly up and locked inside with a few muffled thumps.

At a thousand feet, Brad banked sharply, rolling back toward the east at 450 knots. With the ice-and-snow-covered peaks rising ahead, starkly outlined against the night sky, he leveled off.

Captain Oleg Imrekov frowned. At this speed, nearly eleven hundred kilometers an hour, he and Colonel Baryshev were only two minutes out from the Perun’s Aerie base. But their radars still weren’t picking anything up — not in the air and not on the ground. How stealthy were these damned mercenaries? Were they already gone, well on their way out of Russia?

Suddenly a sharp tone sounded in his headset, alerting him to a possible detection. A green diamond appeared on his HUD. His infrared search-and-track system was picking up a heat signature almost due north. But the signature was very small, more like that of a missile than a full-size aircraft. It was moving east across his field of view at more than eight hundred kilometers an hour. Well, hell, he thought, that was far too slow for a missile. For a split second, his radar saw something in the same spot but then lost the contact.

“Lead, this is Two!” Imrekov snapped. “Stealth target bearing eleven o’clock moving to twelve at low altitude. Target is heading east toward the mountains at high speed. Range more than thirty kilometers. IRST contact only.”

He pushed a switch on his stick. Two missile symbols appeared in the corner of his HUD. The two K-74M2 heat-seeking missiles in his Su-50’s wing-root bays were armed and set for a single salvo launch.

“Acknowledged, Two,” Colonel Baryshev said excitedly. “Switching back to air-to-air mode. Do you have a shot?”

Imrekov’s eyes narrowed as he rapidly considered the question. Scoring a kill on a crossing target at this range, especially one with such a small heat signature, would be tough. Then again, if you didn’t shoot, you couldn’t score. “Affirmative!” he radioed back.

“Then you are cleared to fire, Two! See if you can rattle this mercenary’s cage.”

Without hesitating, Imrekov squeezed the trigger on his stick. One after another, two K-74 missiles dropped out of his fighter’s internal bays and lit off. Trailing fire and smoke, they slashed across the night sky — arrowing toward the distant Iron Wolf target at two and half times the speed of sound.

“Warning, warning, IR missile launch detection at three o’clock,” the Ranger’s computer announced. “Two missiles inbound.”

“Countermeasures ready,” Nadia said. She had her head bent low, peering intently at her displays. “Time to impact estimated at thirty seconds.” She transferred her data to Brad’s HUD, providing a visual running countdown.

Brad nodded tightly. Some Russian son of a bitch was eager for a quick kill, because that was a hell of a long range shot for heat-seekers. Their solid-rocket motors would have burned out by the time they reached him, meaning they would be flying solely on inertia. Plus, the geometry sucked. But he wasn’t close enough to the mountains to use them as cover… and those K-74s were dangerous weapons.

One of the best ways to defend against a long-range attack like this involved climbing right away to force enemy missiles to bleed off more energy in their approach, making it easier to evade them at close range. Doing that now, though, would only increase the odds the Russians could lock up the XCV-62 on radar — which would expose them to a long-range attack by the far more lethal K-77 radar-guided missiles those Su-50s were carrying.

Well, he wasn’t going to play that game, Brad decided. Instead, he kept straight on toward the mountains. “Stand by on countermeasures.”

“Countermeasures ready,” Nadia confirmed.

“Lead missile burnout,” the computer reported. “Time to impact is fifteen seconds.” A moment later. “Trailing missile burnout.”

Now those K-74s were coasting toward him on inertia alone, Brad thought. Then the side of his mouth quirked upward in a wry grin. Well, at least, if you could call missiles tearing through the sky at more than sixteen hundred knots “coasting.”

The missile-impact estimate on his HUD kept counting down. When it flickered to 4 seconds, he snapped, “Countermeasures!” Nadia’s finger stabbed at her display. Brad yanked the XCV-62 upward into a hard, tight, climbing turn — briefly handling the Iron Wolf aircraft more like it was a fighter jet than a transport. G-forces slammed him back against his seat. The color started to leach out of his vision, turning the world gray. The Ranger soared skyward, trading airspeed for altitude as it climbed.

Dozens of flares streamed out behind them, each a miniature sunburst against the black sky.

Decoyed away, the first Russian missile veered off toward one of the tumbling points of fire and detonated. Slowing visibly, the second K-74 swung through the flare cloud and chased after the Iron Wolf transport as it climbed and turned. Every turn it made in a vain effort to home in on the evading aircraft ate more energy, until at last, out of airspeed and at the extent of its range, the Russian missile fell away — plummeting toward the darkened earth several thousand feet below.

Instantly, Brad rolled out of the climb and dove back toward the ground, again heading east toward the Urals. He throttled back to reduce their heat signature, allowing gravity to accelerate them as they plunged back down.

“Warning, warning, X-band radar locked on,” the computer said.

Shit, Brad thought. He kept his eyes on the altitude reading sliding down the edge of his HUD. Five thousand feet. Four thousand feet.

“Engaging X-band radar,” Nadia said from beside him. She tapped a display, directing their SPEAR system to try to jam or spoof the Russian airborne radar that had them zeroed in. “I show two Su-50s on our thermal sensors,” she continued coolly. “They are fourteen miles behind us and closing at high speed.”

“Understood,” Brad said tightly. Suddenly his “brilliant” plan to backtrack deeper into the Urals didn’t look quite as smart. There was no way he could outrun those enemy fighters. And how the hell was he going to outmaneuver them in this crate? The XCV-62 handled beautifully for a transport aircraft, but she wasn’t built for dogfighting. That 4-g turn he’d just pulled was right at the edge of her performance envelope. In contrast, the Su-50s now in hot pursuit were some of the most maneuverable combat aircraft in the world.

The Ranger streaked east, still losing altitude fast. Three thousand feet. Twenty-five hundred feet. They roared low over a steep-sided ridge and dropped behind it. A wide valley opened up before them, running northeast deeper into the Urals. Brad rolled left to follow it.

“X-band radar lock broken,” the computer reported.

With that ridge crest between them and the Russians, they had a few moments’ grace. It wouldn’t last long, he realized. Those enemy fighters had two options, both equally dangerous: If their pilots were aggressive, they could go for a balls-out chase through this maze of ice and snow, relying on superior speed and maneuverability to close in for a better IR missile shot… or even drive into knife-fight range for a gun kill, using their 30mm cannons. If they were cagey, the Russian pilots could go high, using their powerful radars and IRST systems to cover every possible escape route out of the mountains. That way they could either vector in other fighters to finish the job — or make the kill themselves with long-range, radar-guided missiles as soon as fuel constraints forced Brad to break back west… out of cover.

“One Su-50 just popped over that ridge and is now dead astern,” Nadia said. She had one of her displays cued to their rear-facing thermal sensors. “Range is now eight miles. The trailing Russian aircraft is one mile behind the leader.”

That meant they’d decided to chase him down themselves, Brad figured. That was no great surprise. That first long-range shot they’d taken at him signaled that these guys were aggressive as hell. A sharp tone from their SPEAR threat-warning system sounded in his headset. At this range, those X-band radars probably had him painted again. And the IRST systems carried by those enemy fighters certainly did.

He rolled back right, turning tightly down another gorge running east between two serrated spurs. The threat-warning tone cut off. More high ground rose steeply about three miles ahead, where this valley bent sharply back to the southeast.

“We can’t run. We can’t fight. And we can’t hide forever,” he muttered. “Which leaves—”

“Deception,” Nadia finished for him.

“Exactly,” Brad said. He slammed the Ranger into another tight, 3-g turn, following the trace of the gorge as it veered right. There, about five miles ahead, a rugged mountain summit soared sharply, sharp-edged in white snow and gray rock against the black, star-spangled night sky.

“I am laying in an evasion course for MALD One,” Nadia said, straining forward against the g-forces to input commands on her display. “General heading?”

“East and then north,” Brad told her. He flew on straight toward that huge peak. The mountain grew larger and larger with frightening speed — spreading across the XCV-62’s windscreen until it filled it completely.

“Course programmed,” Nadia told him. Another warning tone sounded from SPEAR. “The lead Su-50 is now six miles astern and turning after us,” she said. “He could fire at any moment.”

Brad shook his head. “That guy already fired his only two heat-seekers at us. It’s the trailer we have to worry about.” His eyes narrowed, completely focused on the steep slope looming ahead. He could make out huge boulders now, half buried in ice and snow. This was going to be close… very, very close.

At almost the last possible moment, he pulled back sharply on the Ranger’s stick — yanking the aircraft into a near-vertical climb. His left hand shoved the throttles forward, running the engines up to full military power. They soared skyward at high speed, roaring above the slope with just a few feet to spare. Another glistening rooster tail of swirling snow fanned out in their wake.

Still flying at more than four hundred knots, they cleared the top of the peak. Instantly, Brad rolled right almost inverted, causing the Ranger’s nose to tuck sharply down the other side into a wide valley. Negative g’s tugged him forward against his shoulder straps.

The warbling tone from their SPEAR system went silent. He’d put the massive bulk of that mountain and its millions of tons of rock between them and those pursuing Su-50s. They had maybe thirty seconds before the Russians could pick them up again.

Brad rolled back wings level and cried, “Launch the MALD!”

Nadia stabbed her display. “Launching!”

Bay doors whined open, and a small ADM-160B decoy dropped away from the Ranger. Its small wings unfolded as it launched. Then, powered by an ultralight turbojet engine, the MALD veered away, jinking wildly as it flew northeast above the mountain slopes. It went active, mimicking the radar signature and flight profile of their XCV-62.

Immediately Brad rolled away and dove, following the trace of the valley opening before them as it curved back west around the mountain. He throttled back to minimum power to cut their heat signature as much as possible. The roar from their engines faded away, replaced by the eerie, keening sound of wind as they glided down and down — slanting toward the ground at high speed. The needle-sharp tops of pine trees reached out toward them.

Far behind and above them, two blinding flashes lit the sky.

“Missile launch!” Nadia shouted. The leading Su-50 had fired K-77 radar-guided missiles at the fleeing MALD. Both missiles slashed through the darkness, curving northeast as they guided on their target.

Seconds later, another explosion seared the darkness. Bits and pieces of flaming debris tumbled toward the earth — scattering widely across the boulder-strewn slopes of another mountain spur miles away.

“The Su-50s are turning away from us!” Nadia said exultantly. “They’re flying north, toward the MALD crash site!”

Grinning like a lunatic, Brad jammed the Ranger’s throttles forward to regain some control. He leveled out only a hundred feet above the treetops. The Iron Wolf aircraft zoomed westward down the valley — widening the distance between itself and the Russian stealth fighters now speeding away toward the wreckage of the decoy they had mistaken for their prey.