The Kremlin Strike

Thirty-Five

“Contact lost,” a radar operator reported in frustration over the command circuit. “Heavy jamming and possible terrain masking.”

“First salvos going ballistic,” another officer said. “Our missiles’ active homing seeker heads were never able to lock on independently.”

Colonel Vladimir Titov fought down the urge to swear out loud. It would do no good and it might further unnerve his subordinates. He’d known the odds were against scoring hits with such long-range shots, especially since the enemy attack force was coming at them across a wide band of rugged coastal hills and ridges. Staying low allowed the American strike aircraft to use this terrain to hide their approach. “Estimated range to the enemy formation at last solid contact?”

“Two hundred kilometers,” the radar operator said.

“Have you detected any new, smaller contacts?” Titov demanded.

“No, sir.”

He frowned. The twenty-plus F/A-18s headed his way were already near enough to fire any standoff air-to-ground missiles they were carrying. So why hadn’t they done so? Were they so confident they could evade his SAMs that they had decided to keep coming… hoping to overwhelm his defenses with a massed missile salvo at close range?

“Contact regained!” he heard the radar operator say suddenly. “Formation of high-speed aircraft bearing one-three-five. Direction of flight now three-one-five degrees.”

Those American strike fighters are barreling right down our throats, Titov thought grimly. What had happened to their fuel constraints? Were they treating this as a one-way mission, like the Japanese kamikaze pilots of the Second World War?

“Range one hundred and seventy kilometers. Speed eleven hundred kilometers per hour. Altitude one hundred and fifty meters!”

“Handoff to 92N2E missile-guidance radars complete!” one of Titov’s fire-control officers reported eagerly. “Twenty-six hostiles confirmed. Signatures correlated to F/A-18s. Solid lock on multiple targets. Ready to attack!”

“Release all batteries,” Titov ordered. “Commence firing.” Unable to resist seeing what was going on with his own eyes, he hurried over to the door of the mobile command center and peered out into the night.

Missile after missile thundered aloft from launchers deployed in the surrounding fields — slashing upward through the darkness on pillars of fire as they accelerated toward Mach 6. Within seconds, they arced high over and vanished downrange.

“New jamming!” the radar operator said suddenly. “Our radars are hopping frequencies to compensate. But we’ve lost the lock to some targets.”

Titov yanked his head back inside, angry with himself for playing tourist in the middle of a battle. “Do you have an evaluation of the source of this jamming?”

“My computer evaluates it as originating from two, or possibly three, American EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft.”

The colonel nodded. That was in line with what they’d observed so far. The Reagan must have committed half her strike fighters to this attack, so it was no real surprise to see so many airborne jammers assigned in support.

“We’ve scored hits!” a fire-control officer crowed suddenly. “I count three kills from the salvo.”

Titov refrained from pointing out that it left almost 90 percent of the attackers alive and closing fast. From the worried looks he could see on some of the faces around him in the command center, others were perfectly capable of drawing the same conclusions. Unless they got lucky and took out the American electronic warfare planes in the next couple of salvos, this engagement was going to get ugly fast.

“Damn,” his radar operator muttered. “Contact lost again, sir. The enemy formation has dropped into a river valley. Our radars cannot see them.”

Titov stared at the plot. If the Americans hugged that valley floor as far as they could, they would be less than one hundred and twenty kilometers away when his sensors regained contact… practically spitting distance for modern ground-attack weapons. His shoulders tightened involuntarily, almost as though he could already feel the searing heat of explosions and the hail of shrapnel. With an effort to stay calm, he turned to his communications officer. “What is the status of those Su-35 Super Flankers from Dzemgi?”

“Colonel Federov has twelve fighters en route to the air control point selected by Moscow,” the younger man said. “They should arrive west of our position in the next ten minutes.”

“Make sure they are tied into our target-tracking data uplink,” Titov ordered. Crazy as it seemed, maybe this American strike force planned to blow right past his SAM regiment — driving onward to launch extended-range AGM-158B joint air-to-surface standoff missiles directly at Vostochny’s launchpads, rocket assembly buildings, and cryogenic fuels storage tanks. If so, Federov’s fighters would come into play. And the ability to use tracking and targeting data supplied by ground radars, rather than their own easily detected onboard radars, could give them a crucial edge… the ability to ambush those oncoming F/A-18s with air-to-air missiles fired from out of a clear night sky.

Leonov sat enthralled at his station, listening to the increasingly tense chatter between Titov’s command post and his unit’s outlying radar vehicles and missile launchers. Tracking and engagement data relayed from the S-400 SAM regiment were displayed in graphical form on screens around the room. They showed the American formation — now whittled down to just twelve aircraft — as it pressed steadily onward. The eleven F/A-18E Super Hornets and a single surviving Growler jammer plane were only eighty kilometers from Knyaze-Volkonskoye… well out over the broad, flat Amur River valley. There was no higher ground they could hide behind to break radar contact.

He shook his head in amazement. Those U.S. Navy pilots were brave men and women. But they were also being incredibly stupid. This was no longer a battle they could win.

“Next salvo, fire!” he heard Titov order.

Two dozen missile icons streaked across the display. Moving at Mach 6, they closed the distance to the American planes in less than forty seconds. Aircraft winked off the screen as warheads found their targets and detonated. Leonov considered that an oddly antiseptic rendering for what was a supremely violent act. Out there, thousands of kilometers away in the real world, pilots were dying horribly — ripped apart by a lethal hail of fragments or burning to death in crippled aircraft spiraling down out of the sky.

“We hit the enemy EW aircraft!” one of Titov’s fire-control officers announced gleefully.

With the destruction of their jammer aircraft, the radar images of the surviving seven American strike fighters sharpened considerably. Now they had no protection whatsoever against the next S-400 salvo.

It was all over in less than a minute.

Leonov pursed his lips as he listened to the whoops and cheers as Titov’s relieved officers and missile battery crews celebrated their one-sided victory. Something is wrong here, he thought critically. This attack had been defeated too easily. Much too easily. They were all missing something.

He connected directly to Titov. “Were any of your sensor posts or missile launchers fired on by any of those American aircraft, Vladimir?”

The other man sounded equally puzzled. “No, sir. Not by so much as a single standoff attack missile or bomb.”

An ugly realization dawned in Leonov’s mind. “Those were decoy drones, Colonel. There were no real U.S. Navy aircraft among them. This was a trick.”

“But to what purpose?” Titov asked.

“How many of your surface-to-air missiles did you expend against this diversion?” Leonov asked in return.

There was a moment of stunned silence. “More than half,” Titov admitted.

Leonov saw his deputy, Lieutenant General Tikhomirov, signaling frantically at him. He lowered the phone. “What is it, Semyon?”

Tikhomirov pointed toward one of their screens, which suddenly showed a new set of threat icons over Hokkaido. “The early warning radar on Iturup has just detected another large formation of enemy aircraft headed toward Knyaze-Volkonskoye.”

Leonov’s mouth tightened to a thin line. “Hell.” He spoke into the phone again. “Get your men back in control and have your regiment stand to again, Titov. The Americans were drawing your fire earlier. Now they’re sending in their real attack force.”

For the second time that night, Commander Dane “Viking” Thorsen listened to the continuous warble that showed the Russian radar on Iturup had spotted his strike force as it climbed higher, above the shelter of Hokkaido’s mountains. Now you see us, he thought cheerfully, but pretty soon you won’t.

He spoke into his radio. “This is D-Back One-Five. Nice wriggling, guys. We’ve definitely got their attention. Execute plan Echo as fragged.”

Again, Thorsen took his F/A-18E Super Hornet back down, losing altitude fast to drop back into the radar shadow. The other strike fighters and electronic warfare aircraft under his command followed him.

But this time, as soon as the warning tone from that distant surveillance radar faded away, he banked southeast — turning toward a narrow pass that ran through the range of jagged volcanic peaks bisecting Hokkaido. His aircraft were headed back toward the Reagan. Only from now on, they would stay low all the way to avoid detection.

Thorsen grinned happily. Eventually, around thirty minutes from now, those Russian assholes were going to start figuring out that they’d been suckered… for the second time in the same night. While he wasn’t sure exactly why he and the other Reagan pilots were putting on this show — that was information restricted to the CAG, the carrier air wing commander and his ultimate boss, the rear admiral in overall command of the carrier strike group — any chance to twist the bear’s tail was always welcome.

“We are ninety seconds out from the LZ,” Nadia Rozek said. She knew that her voice sounded tight and strained, and she regretted this lapse in cool, calm professionalism. But there was no help for it. They were approaching the make-or-break moment in this attempt to rescue Brad McLanahan. If the wide stretch of clear ground they’d picked out from satellite photos and maps as a landing zone turned out to be unusable — either because it was too rough or too boggy — there was no second option.

Peter Vasey peered through his HUD. The XCV-62’s forward-looking night-vision camera systems turned the darkness around them into a green-tinged version of daylight. Right now their planned landing area was a patch of brighter green against the darker green of the surrounding woods and low-lying marshes. “I have the LZ in sight,” he confirmed.

Nadia tapped one of her MFDs, scanning the area through one of the Ranger’s passive sensors. Her heart leaped when she saw the single human-sized thermal image crouched in good cover near the edge of the woods. “I see Brad!” she exclaimed. “He is alone. There are no other unidentified contacts around the LZ.”

Quickly, she toggled a single pulse from their air-to-ground radar. A tone sounded in her headset as the Ranger’s radar swept the valley ahead of them. The information it collected appeared as an image on her display. “No hidden obstructions,” she reported. “And the ground looks firm.”

“Right, then,” Vasey said decisively. “We are go for landing.” He entered a new command into his computer and throttled back. “We’d best let our passengers know.”

Nadia tapped a key. “We are coming in to the LZ, Major Schofield. Stand by.”

“Standing by,” the Canadian’s voice replied from the aft troop compartment. “My lads and I are ready to move out the moment you drop the ramp.”

Beside her, Vasey scrolled a cursor across his HUD, selecting his planned touchdown point. Another quick series of movements lowered their landing gear and disengaged the Ranger’s terrain-following system. He chopped the throttles back even farther. Control surfaces opened, providing more lift.

As its airspeed decreased, the XCV-62 descended toward the broad clearing ahead. The three Iron Wolf drones that had flown with them from Attu Island climbed slightly and banked away. Following the orders programmed in earlier by Nadia through their communications links, the two Coyotes and the Howler would circle low overhead while they were on the ground.

Alerted by the roar of several turbofan engines, Brad McLanahan looked up through overhanging branches in time to spot a distinctive batwinged aircraft slide across the sky, briefly silhouetted against the pale moon. For a moment, overcome with sheer relief, he blinked back sudden tears. You are not going to start bawling like a baby, McLanahan, he told himself fiercely. Not in front of Nadia. Or anyone else for that matter.

With his jaw clenched against an expected surge of discomfort from his injured right shoulder and leg, he forced himself back to his feet. And then the pain hit, more like a solid wall of white-hot flame than a passing wave. For a long moment, his whole world narrowed down to a single sensation.

“Jesus,” Brad hissed through gritted teeth. He breathed out deeply in an effort to expel the sudden agony that otherwise threatened to overwhelm him. Slowly, the excruciating pain from his shoulder and leg eased up, becoming merely the usual sharp, throbbing aches that never really left him, even when he dozed.

At last, he lifted his head and saw the XCV-62 Ranger touch down on the clear ground beyond the woods. The aircraft bounced once and then slowed fast as its pilot reversed thrust. Trailing a cloud of torn grass and dust, it slowed to a stop no more than a couple of hundred yards from his position.

Without waiting any longer, Brad hobbled down the gentle slope and out into the open.

The Ranger’s rear ramp whined down. Before it even settled into the tall grass, four men rushed out of the troop compartment and leaped to the ground. One went prone, sighting through the nightscope attached to a magazine-fed Remington sniper rifle. The other three Scion commandos sprinted toward him. They wore night-vision goggles, body armor, and carried HK416 carbines.

In the dim moonlight, Brad recognized the leader as soon as he came within a few yards. “Geez, Ian, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

Ian Schofield pushed his night-vision goggles up his forehead and gave him a fast once-over. He shook his head with a quick, fleeting grin. “Whereas I’d have to call you more a sore sight to my eyes, Brad. No disrespect, but you look like hell.”

“Yeah, well,” Brad said, making an effort to match the other man’s wry smile, “I kinda took a bad spill getting out of my spacecraft. The first few hundred miles went fine. But the last hundred thousand feet down were a little rough.”

Schofield nodded sympathetically. He turned his head to his subordinates. “In the circumstances, gentlemen, I think we should offer Captain McLanahan a lift.”

“You got it, Major,” one of the two agreed. He slung his carbine over one shoulder, knelt down, and unfolded a collapsible field stretcher. He looked up at Brad. “Ready when you are, sir.”

“I know being carried aboard isn’t exactly dignified, Brad,” Schofield murmured. “But we’re in a bit of a hurry. The Russians aren’t known for extending a friendly welcome to trespassers.”

“Screw dignity,” Brad said gratefully, easing himself down onto the stretcher. He closed his eyes, fighting against another wave of pain from his shoulder when they strapped him in. “The quicker we’re out of here, the happier I’ll be.”

Within moments, the litter team was on its way back to the Ranger, moving at a rapid trot. The aircraft’s engines were already spooling back up, preparing to take off the moment they were aboard with the ramp sealed.