The Kremlin Strike

Thirty-Four

Colonel Vladimir Titov pondered the intelligence report just flashed from Moscow. A short time ago, one of Russia’s Kondor radar reconnaissance satellites orbiting high over the Pacific Ocean had spotted the U.S. Navy’s Ronald Reagan carrier strike group executing a sudden course change toward the south. Until then, the American ships had been steaming generally north at high speed. Why the abrupt U-turn?

Struck by an unnerving possibility, he swung around to face one of the junior officers crowded with him into the mobile command center vehicle, a heavy-duty 8×8 Ural off-road truck. “Yvgeny! What is the current wind direction southeast of Hokkaido?”

“A moment, sir!” The young lieutenant’s fingers darted across his keyboard. His fresh, unlined face wrinkled in concentration.

Titov nodded in approval. Many of his peers despised younger officers for their fixation on computers and the Internet. In his view, they were foolish. The wiser course was to use this obsession for the benefit of the forces under their command.

The lieutenant looked away from his screen. “Weather reports from Kushiro indicate the wind is from the south, sir.”

Titov’s unnerving “possibility” crystallized into a certainty. That big American aircraft carrier had suddenly turned into the direction of the wind — which meant it had launched aircraft. He looked at another of his subordinates. “Alert all missile battalions, Major. The Americans may be coming our way—”

“Sir! Early warning radar on Iturup, in the Kuril Islands, reports a large formation of high-speed aircraft bearing two-five-zero, relative,” his communications officer reported. “Direction of flight is three-zero-zero, absolute. Range four hundred kilometers. Speed eleven hundred kilometers per hour. Altitude unknown.”

“Plot that contact!” Titov demanded.

Titov leaned over the man’s shoulder and saw a set of blinking red icons flash onto the map almost dead center in the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Thank God for our new radar station in the southern Kurils, he thought. Any part of Hokkaido was far outside the effective range of his regiment’s own air surveillance radars. Based on their speed and observed direction of flight, this was almost certainly a formation of F/A-18E Super Hornet strike aircraft… and they were currently headed straight toward the city of Khabarovsk…

Or more likely, his own surface-to-air missile battalions, he realized coldly, if Colonel General Leonov’s suspicion that the Americans were plotting an attack against the Vostochny Cosmodrome was correct. To have any hope of flying a bomber group far enough into Russia’s far east region to hit the launch complex, they would have to cripple its outlying surface-to-air missile defenses. He blessed the recent decision to reequip his regiment with the newer, longer-range, and more capable S-400 Triumf system, in place of its old, shorter-range S-300PS units.

“Sound air-raid alert,” Titov ordered, forcing himself to sound calm and completely in control. If those F/A-18s were carrying standoff land attack missiles, such as the AGM-158B joint air-to-surface standoff missile, they would be in range to launch within twenty-five minutes. And any missiles they fired would strike home less than twenty minutes later. True, his new S-400 SAMs could theoretically reach out and destroy enemy aircraft, or even their air-launched weapons, much farther out. But that was only true for targets they could “see” on radar. Long before those American strike aircraft came within his reach, they were sure to drop back down to very low altitude… which would drastically decrease the distance at which the regiment’s search and fire-control radar systems could pick them up.

No, he decided, this battle would almost certainly be fought at much closer ranges than the theoretical maximums for either side’s weapons. As it was, he was extremely fortunate that the enemy aircraft carrier had launched its attack planes so soon. By the time those Super Hornets were close enough to fire their standoff missiles, they should be very near the outside edge of their own effective combat range. They would be short on fuel, significantly reducing their ability to maneuver defensively against his S-400s, which ought to greatly increase his odds of scoring kills.

Now that his subordinates were in action, Titov realized he had one further duty. He grabbed a secure phone and punched in the code for the National Defense Control Center in Moscow. “This is Colonel Titov with the 1529th Guards Air Defense Missile Regiment. I need to speak to Colonel General Leonov or his senior deputy immediately!”

Seen from ten thousand feet, Hokkaido was ablaze with light. A huge warm yellow glow marked the major city of Sapporo. Smaller radiances signaled the locations of other cities and towns scattered across the island. Thinner lines of light traced out a dense network of highways, roads, and rail lines.

Commander Dane “Viking” Thorsen listened to the steady warble in his headset and checked his Super Hornet’s threat display one more time. It identified the enemy radar as a Nebo-M VHF-band air search system. Its signal strength and azimuth marked it as the Russian set deployed on Iturup, one of the Kuril Islands stretching northeast off Hokkaido’s coast. He smiled beneath his oxygen mask and keyed his mike. “D-Back One-Five to all D-Back, Talon, and Outlaw aircraft. We’ve baited the hook. Execute strike plan Delta.”

Crisp acknowledgments returned.

Thorsen dropped the nose of his F/A-18E. The navy strike fighter slid lower, losing altitude as it accelerated to more than six hundred and seventy knots. The other twenty-five aircraft in Reagan’s attack force followed him down.

The warning tone in his headset cut off abruptly as they descended into the radar shadow cast by Hokkaido’s mountains and volcanoes. The Russian radar station on Iturup had lost contact.

Four minutes later, flying at altitudes of less than five hundred feet, the swarm of navy planes streaked across the coast and out over the Sea of Japan. “Feet wet,” Thorsen reported laconically.

They flew on for a while longer, closing fast on a predetermined point one hundred and sixty nautical miles from Russian territory. The masthead lights of fishing boats bobbed across the surface of the sea in front of them and then vanished astern.

Thorsen kept his eyes moving between his fighter’s nav display and its threat-warning system. Winning tonight’s little game with the Russians would demand both absolute precision… and deception. He listened intently for the chirping sound that would indicate he was being painted by enemy radar. There was only silence. “Confirm naked,” he radioed.

Affirmative replies flowed through his headset. No one else in the strike force showed any hostile radar warning receiver indications either. For the moment, they were effectively invisible. Seconds later, his F/A-18E reached the preset point. “Action Delta,” Thorsen ordered.

He pulled back on the stick slightly, climbed a couple of hundred feet, and then toggled the weapons release. One after another, two small ADM-160B miniature air-launched decoys, or MALDs, fell away from under his Super Hornet’s wings.

Immediately Thorsen broke hard left, clearing the way for the pilots in his wake to launch their own decoys. His wingman turned with him. Thirteen of the fighters in the two Super Hornet squadrons were carrying MALDs. The other eleven were armed for air-to-air combat — ready to engage only if the strike force was jumped by Russian aircraft, or if the enemy launched a retaliatory attack against the Reagan and its escorts.

In pairs, the rest of the F/A-18Es reached the launch point, fired their MALDs, and rolled back toward Hokkaido. They were accompanied by the pair of EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft assigned to this mission.

Behind the departing navy strike force, a flock of twenty-six tiny decoys arrowed onward toward the Russian coastline. Ultralight turbojet engines propelled them at close to six hundred knots. Programs were running in their onboard computers, counting down the minutes to activation. Once that happened, the decoys would begin mimicking the radar signatures and flight profiles of the Super Hornets and Growlers. Two of them were more advanced ADM-160C MALD-Js, equipped to act both as decoys and as radar jammers.

Colonel General Leonov sat down at his workstation and snapped, “Brief me, Semyon!”

His deputy, Lieutenant General Semyon Tikhomirov, obeyed, offering a quick rundown of the most recent developments. “Our air defense missile regiments at Knyaze, Komsomolsk, Vladivostok, and Nakhodka are on full alert. So are all army and Pacific Fleet units in Kamchatka and on the Kurils.”

“What about our fighter and bomber regiments?” Leonov asked.

“The alert Su-35S fighters from both the 23rd Fighter Aviation Regiment at Dzemgi near Komsomolsk and the 22nd Regiment at Tsentralnaya Uglovaya near Vladivostok have already scrambled. They are currently orbiting over both air bases, awaiting further orders. Both regiments are fueling and arming their remaining aircraft with all possible speed. The Su-24s and Su-34s of the 277th Bomber Aviation Regiment and the Su-25s of the 18th Guards Attack Aviation Regiment have also been alerted, but it will take considerably more time to ready their planes for operations.”

“And the Americans? Where are they now?”

Tikhomirov brought up a map. A solid red line indicated the flight path followed by the carrier-based aircraft while they were being tracked on radar. It faded out over Hokkaido, replaced by a dotted red line extending out across the Sea of Japan… aimed straight at Khabarovsk and onward toward the Vostochny Cosmodrome much farther inland. A small blip just off the Russian coast pulsed slowly, moving steadily northwest with every separate pulse. “This is the air staff’s projection of that enemy formation’s most likely current position, based on its last known course and speed.”

Leonov nodded. This estimate could be wrong, particularly if the enemy strike force had radically altered its heading after dropping off radar. But that was doubtful. If the Americans were serious about hitting Vostochny, they first had to knock out the S-400 SAMs sited just east of Khabarovsk. Given the distances involved and the need to fly in heavily loaded with air-to-ground ordnance, those U.S. Navy F/A-18s couldn’t dick around. They wouldn’t have the fuel to carry out elaborate maneuvers designed to spread Russia’s defenses. No, he thought coldly, it was straight up the middle or nothing for those American pilots — trusting in their Super Hornets’ defensive systems and jamming support from electronic warfare planes to break through and destroy his S-400 launchers and radars.

That wasn’t a particularly good bet.

Then Leonov frowned. But it wasn’t impossible either, especially if the Americans used some of the high-tech drones and radar-spoofing technology pioneered by the mercenary Iron Wolf Squadron in recent conflicts with Russia. If so, it would be wise to move a backup force into position. He looked at Tikhomirov. “Tell Colonel Federov at Dzemgi that I want every available fighter from his regiment in the air as soon as possible. Send them west of Khabarovsk, ready to intercept any enemy strike aircraft that slip through.”

Impatiently, Colonel Ivan Federov tugged on his flight helmet and hurried toward his waiting Su-35S fighter. From all across the airfield, the earsplitting howl of Saturn AL-41F1S turbofan engines spooling up shattered the night. A handful of his regiment’s aircraft were already taxiing out of their revetments and hardened shelters. He scowled. Between planes that were down for routine maintenance and the inevitable delays involved in rousting sleeping pilots and ground crews out of their quarters, the 23rd would be fortunate to get half its strength into the air before this American raid had come and gone.

It was not the sort of result that would endear him to his superiors, especially Colonel General Leonov. The commander of Russia’s aerospace forces was not a man who accepted excuses, even when they were reasonable.

Swearing under his breath, Federov started up the ladder to the Su-35’s cockpit. With a bit of luck, he might get a chance to tangle with the enemy’s F/A-18s. Coming back to Dzemgi with a couple of kills should absolve a host of other perceived sins.

“Colonel!” a voice yelled up at him, pitched to carry over the shrill din of jet engines coming to life.

He turned around on the ladder, furious at the interruption. “What?”

It was Uvarov, his executive officer. He looked out of breath. “Lieutenant Khryukin just phoned in from that little town up north. He says—”

Federov’s temper exploded. “Fuck that little shit!” he snarled. “For God’s sake, Uvarov, we’re in a combat situation here! I don’t have time to deal with that moron right now. You handle whatever mess Khryukin has made.” Then, dismissing the interruption from his mind, he swung himself into the Su-35’s cockpit and started strapping in.

“Multiple faint S-band, X-band, and VHF radar emissions detected from ten o’clock to eight o’clock. Some are ground-based. Others are airborne. Ranges indeterminate. Detection probabilities are all nil,” the XCV-62’s computer announced calmly.

Nadia Rozek studied her threat-warning display closely and then turned to Peter Vasey with a triumphant smile. “Something seems to have rattled the Russians, Constable. They appear to be activating every available radar set between Vladivostok and Komsomolsk.”

“Do tell,” the Englishman said dryly. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on his HUD and his hands poised carefully on the stick and throttles. Even with the help of the Ranger’s digital terrain-following system, a night flight at low altitude over the sea was a dangerous business. A split-second loss of focus at the wrong moment could send them plowing nose first into the ocean.

His steering cues slid left and he gently banked the XCV-62 to the west. Off the port and starboard sides of their aircraft, the two MQ-55 Coyote drones followed suit. The EQ-55 Howler trailing them made the same wide, curving turn a few seconds later. Somewhere out ahead, still invisible even in the faint light cast by the still-rising quarter moon, loomed the mass of Sakhalin Island — stretching five hundred nautical miles from north to south, but only seventy-five miles from east to west. Beyond Sakhalin lay the Russian mainland. “Position check?” he asked.

Nadia tapped on a screen, opening a navigation display. “We are approximately fifty minutes out from the LZ.”

Vasey nodded tightly. “Right. Next stop Oldjikan Circus. All change to the Nevada line.” Then, aware that she was staring at him, he grinned wryly. “Never mind me, Major. Just a throwback to a misspent youth riding the Tube in London while skiving off school.”

Before she could comment, her left-hand multifunction display pinged, signaling the arrival of an encrypted satellite transmission. Her fingers rattled across the virtual keyboard. “SBIRS satellites report multiple launches from the vicinity of Khabarovsk,” she read off. “Launches evaluated as S-400 surface-to-air missiles.”

“Well, that opens the ball,” Vasey said quietly.