Red Metal

CHAPTER 26

In a dark room in Germany full of American military personnel, a young Air Force technical sergeant keyed his microphone to contact his watch officer, who now sat just seventy-five feet away. “Sir, I just got a second alert from Poland. This one from Poznań. The first one was recalled as an error, but this one is being reported as a potential single radar contact that is now lost.”

Captain Watten was in his nearby office, looking at pictures on his unclassified computer of his daughter’s eighth-grade Christmas pageant. With a sigh he looked over to his in-box and began shuffling through the night’s MCS, electronic classified message traffic. After a moment he settled on the right page. “We had another overnight memo from the Pentagon. Here it is. ‘There is concern from COMUSEUCOM that Poland might exaggerate the war-gaming in Belarus to increase the number of future NATO pre-position forces.’ We’re supposed to avoid getting pulled into anything while the Russians are active in Belarus. The Poles really want us as scared of the Russians as they are.

“So… there are no reports of incursions from any other stations?”

“No, sir. Likely somebody hit ‘send’ too quickly on the alert.”

The captain thought a moment. He didn’t think there was anything to this report, but he also knew he had to cover his own ass. “Okay, check down with Integrated Radar Team Sierra to be sure. I’ll call it down to the war room and have them send a message back to Mons,” he said, referring to the NATO HQ in Mons, Belgium.

Watten then said, “Watch station. Message the NMCC.” The National Military Command Center was the Pentagon’s version of an alert center.

A voice in his ear replied, “Yes, sir. On it now.”

Captain Watten went back to the pictures of his daughter’s pageant on his unclassified computer. “Let me know if you hear anything back.”

He clicked a few more times, but the pages wouldn’t load. “Great,” he said. “Does someone know if the unclass network is down? I can’t get on Facebook.”

Just then the tech sergeant called over to Watten in his office again. “Sir, AC Ramstein is calling on the landline. They say they’ve been hacked.”

Watten refreshed his browser continuously on the unclassified network, still trying to get onto Facebook. “What do they want us to do about it? They need to call tech support or NSA or something.”

“Copy, sir. I’ll let them know.”

Two Su-57s flew two hundred meters over Poleski National Park at Mach 1.1.

Colonel Ivan Zolotov glanced to his right, outside his canopy, and looked through the darkness toward the blacked-out plane next to him. He could barely make it out but was pleased to see the naval commander was flying directly level with Zolotov’s aircraft, their wingtips only a meter apart now. Their close, disciplined flying pattern would make them look like one aircraft if they were even picked up on radar at all.

The pilots had flown this route nearly sixty times in the flight simulators, always careful to remain low, fast, and together. This part was vital to their mission’s success. They could not, even for an instant, fly too high and risk getting picked up on the independent Polish radar systems as they traversed the nation.

The other pilots on the mission would be doing just the same as Zolotov and Tatiyev right now, flying farther to the south in southern Poland and across Ukraine and into Czechia.

In minutes Zolotov oriented himself on a highway, and his two-ship flight passed over snow-covered wheat fields near Puławy. They remained low, sometimes no more than fifty meters above the gently undulating landscape.

On cue, both pilots throttled back and made a slight course correction, still somewhat hand holding the DK-12 east‒west road. At their new speed, their carefully computed formula predicted they would reach their objective waypoint in less than thirty-five minutes, just as planned.

Just like this old German watch on my wrist, Zolotov thought, I always run on time.

“Sir! Radar and missile Defense Batteries Q, R, and T are all calling downstairs to the duty hut on landlines. They say our classified phones aren’t working. Battery Q-12 says they confirm an overflight of two Russian fighters.”

“Why didn’t we pick up anything on radar?”

“They didn’t pick it up on radar, either. They watched them fly directly over. Said they were supersonic, heading west.”

“Gówno,” (“Shit”) muttered the captain; then he tried but failed to force calm into his orders. “Right. Okay… call Land Force Headquarters and inform them immediately.”

“Sir, how? The phones aren’t working. And the Internet says we are connected, but we’re not getting through to anyone.”

“Go downstairs. Call on the pay phone if you have to. Just call Warsaw! The fucking Russian air force has penetrated the border!”

Colonel Zolotov and Commander Tatiyev crossed the border into Germany near the hamlet of Ostritz as pine trees glistened in silvery moonlight just five to ten meters below their full weapons pylons. The light from the moon made it easy for Colonel Z to see his wingman now, and he held up one finger to notify the naval commander they had one more minute to go.

Colonel Z looked back to his gauges, then heard a barely audible noise above the hum of the jet.

Colonel Z checked to his right just in time to see Tatiyev’s aircraft rock unsteadily and then begin to fall back. He shifted his eyes down to his rear HUD rearward-facing camera and saw a cloud of snow burst high into the air behind the other Su-57.

Commander Tatiyev had clipped a treetop.

His airplane began to recover its level flight, but it had lost a few hundred meters to Zolotov.

All this way, and a last-minute accident, thought Zolotov. He maintained his own aircraft fast and level, kept the majority of his attention forward, but continued checking his rearview camera as Commander Tatiyev tried to creep back to parallel with his plane.

The colonel looked again at his watch. Less than twelve seconds to go. Come on, sailor, he thought, mentally urging his partner to get back in formation.

An audible beeping tone and a blinking panel light meant a ground-to-air missile had locked onto his aircraft.

Here we go.

The German batteries operated more self-sufficiently than the Polish air defense batteries. Here they could fire independently if the aircraft they queried did not respond or was visually identified as enemy.

Now Zolotov saw and heard the indicator that a missile had been launched at his aircraft, but from far to the north and behind his current position.

No matter: he wouldn’t be sticking around here for long.

With his attack profile, the missile would fall well behind them in a few seconds when they began their next maneuver, so he found it unnecessary to apply countermeasures.

He turned to look back over his shoulder, releasing the stick and craning his neck to do so. Through his canopy he could see Commander Tatiyev struggling to catch up, but he was unable to see the condition of his aircraft. Clearly his wingman wouldn’t have been able to continue flying if his ship had been badly damaged, but Zolotov worried about any slight issues with the airframe, especially in light of the aerobatics this flight of fighters was about to undertake.

“Sir, the Germans just fired antiair missiles at targets near Dresden!”

Captain Watten looked up from his frozen desktop computer in astonishment. “Wha… What?”

“Their radar defense network is all off-line… The duty officer in the liaison office just reported in. He said they have radio and some landline comms. Everything else is down.”

Tech Sergeant James was now looking at the NAEW, a closed-loop computer that linked the building and all the NATO country liasons, called LNOs, within. “Sir, this might be the real deal. The German LNO downstairs reports radar defense batteries have shot at five different pairs of unidentified aircraft intruding into German airspace. I think we have to assume our computers are compromised. I’m getting nothing whatsoever from Poland, the other NAEW stations, or even the airborne early-warning stations.”

“What the hell is going on around here?” Captain Watten stood from his desk, then said, “It’s fuckin’ Christmas, for Christ sakes! Alert all NATO. I’ll personally call SHAPE and the NATO Response Force. Put everyone on alert.”

“Copy. Sir, how do I call—”

“Try the STU line,” he said, referring to the classified phone system.

“Not working, sir,” replied an NCO a few desks away, holding up the STU receiver.

“How about satellite comms?” Captain Watten now asked.

Another tech said, “They are up but severely overloaded, sir. Looks like everyone has shifted to satellite. I’ll try to send a priority message.”

It was time.

Colonel Z gave a hard pull back on the stick, rocketing his aircraft higher. He pushed his throttle forward, maintaining supersonic flight, traveling almost two hundred meters per second. He didn’t even need the afterburner but he kicked it on to ensure a consistent rate of climb.

He checked his rear monitor once more. Commander Tatiyev was there, about eight hundred meters below him, but he was also climbing rapidly.

Solid flying, he thought. Good man.

He looked back out the front of the aircraft; the view through the canopy in front of him showed nothing but starry sky.

The pair of Su-57 fighters continued ascending, nearly vertically, firing up over Germany. In no time they hit 18,000 meters, so high now that, in spite of the g-forces, Colonel Z could feel the forces of the earth’s gravitational pull easing slightly as he reached the stratosphere. The aircraft’s engines burned fuel at a rapid rate in the ascent, and its acceleration slowed as the aircraft had less atmosphere with which to work.

He made a quick mental calculation; he still had almost 6,800 kilograms of fuel left, over half a tank. He had enough for the last minutes of the mission and then the return, as long as he didn’t have to maneuver too much on his egress to avoid enemy forces.

The two aircraft were now almost at their attack position, a specific three-dimensional plot in the sky. This mission required flying to a point 21,000 meters over Germany and launching missiles. From there the smart weapons they carried would do the rest.

The colonel’s eyes shot from his HUD altimeter to his GPS, and then to the time on the display.

He even checked his great-uncle’s watch, feeling an intense pride as the second hand struck the minute.

Now.

Colonel Zolotov pressed the launch button. Waited a split second, switched the weapons control lever, and pressed the launch button again.

The special ASAT, or anti-satellite missiles, were called OKB-12 and STR-14, and they had been developed in complete secrecy, hidden from the West’s knowledge. A first-strike option to be used only when the rodina was threatened and the decision had been made to take out one of the West’s most important capabilities: its global network of satellites.

The two missiles were actually quite different from each other. One was a short-range satellite killer. The other was designed for longer and higher missions, to travel into space and hit high-earth-orbit satellites, like geostationary GPS platforms.

The Western GPS satellites were easy to kill; they transmitted location data down to earth, without concern that their own signals could lead the STR-14s directly to them. But these GPS satellites orbited at a much higher altitude than the communications sats: nearly 20,000 kilometers. It would take the warhead exactly one hour and twelve minutes to arrive at and destroy its target.

Zolotov watched for a brief moment as the missiles streaked away from his aircraft, vaulting toward space, their solid-fuel rocket motors specially tuned to these conditions. At this altitude and atmosphere there was virtually no air resistance, and the faster and smaller OKB-12 was already approaching speeds of 18,000 kilometers per hour.

The weapons’ exceedingly advanced guidance packages would get them close; then they would use the target satellites’ own transmissions to home in the last few kilometers.

The flames of the motors flared only slightly as they broke free of the atmosphere by which Colonel Z and Commander Tatiyev were still bound.

All across Central and Western Europe, Red Talon Squadron Su-57s launched missiles against other Western satellites, all timed to hit at the same instant. All satellite communications in Europe, both civilian and military, would begin to fail within minutes, and then all global positioning information would fail just over an hour later.

Europe would be deaf and mute soon, and in an hour it would also be blind.

Zolotov nodded to himself as he saw Commander Tatiyev’s missiles streak past on their way to their targets, but there was no more time to enjoy the show. He inverted his aircraft and pulled back on the stick, grunting against the forces his body was subjected to, and then the forces ceased, but his stomach rose into his chest when he experienced complete weightlessness. Soon his canopy was facing nearly vertically and then he began his long descent, nose-diving toward Dresden at Mach 1 and gaining speed.

Colonel Zolotov pulled the aircraft to a heading of zero-eight-zero, back toward Poland. Certainly he and his wingman would have a few more antiaircraft missiles to contend with, but the loss of NATO command-and-control computers, the onset of cellular and landline jams, and soon the loss of satellite communications would make any NATO coordination almost impossible.

As Colonel Z rocketed toward earth, Commander Tatiyev pulled into formation off his right wing. He signaled an O with his hand, and Zolotov gave him one right back.

Colonel Glowski moved behind the Polish team, nicknamed Brown Bear. “Are they discovering the bots?”

The team leader conferred with his men a moment more, then stood up. “No, sir. They are moving over to landlines, though. I am working around their data centers, but Poland’s aren’t like the German centers. Some are actually old hardwired systems, so we can’t hack them. I’ve pushed into line-two botnets from the North America team. I’m counting on them not having shared any data intrusion tactics with their civilian call centers.”

“Ponial,” (“Got it”) Glowski replied, and moved back over to Black Bear, the German team.

Here the team leader said, “Sir, Germany is blind; they are trying work-arounds every minute. Seems like an automated fail-safe. Their civilian telecom is really advanced, but it can’t overcome the DDoS on their call centers. I have a ton of bots working from uncovered, badly guarded NATO-partnered systems, like Turkey, overloading their STU and classified phone systems, too. Looks like it’s holding.”

“Good,” said the colonel, and he moved to the NATO team.

The team leader here stood and said, “Sir, NATO is in complete disarray, and they are cut off from the United States.”

Only now did Glowski grin. He pumped his fists in the air. “We’ve done it, boys!”

A wild cheer rang out in the room.