Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (28 page)

           
“All right, good job.
Now get to the lifeboat and have
someone look you over. Baker, Page, report to the lifeboat. Ann, you’ll have to
use the connector between Skybolt and the storage module. Do a double-check
before you open the hatches, all of you. Now move.”

           
Saint-Michael
turned to Walker, who was checking the status and control panel with
Jefferson
.
“Checks, General. We’ve lost the number-one SBR antenna.”

           
“How about the system?”

           
“The other
antenna wasn’t touched,”
Jefferson
said. “It’s working.
I can reprogram it, okay. It may not have quite the resolution or power but I
think we’ll still be on-line.”

           
“Any other faults?”

           
“We may
have lost a thruster,”
Walker
said
and moved quickly from panel to panel, scrolling through the seemingly endless
lists of error messages on the screens. “The number-one negative-Y thruster is
showing zero chamber pressure. The number-two thruster is firing full-time now
to compensate. We’re sucking fuel pretty bad.”

           
“And with a
lost fuel cell, we’ll be in trouble—fast. I’ll need endurance figures as soon
as possible.”

           
“Yes, sir,”
Walker
said, giving the general a
worried look. “Skipper, could it be the laser at Sary Shagan? Is it possible
... ?”

           
“Possible?
It happened, Jim. They hit us with their chemical laser. The pressurized modules
survived because of the silver armor, but we all know the systems mounted on
the keel are vulnerable—”

           
“We’re back
on the horn with the
Nimitz,
General,”
Jefferson
reported.

           
Saint-Michael
returned to his seat and strapped in.
“Nimitz,
this is Armstrong. How copy?”

           
“Weak but
readable, Armstrong,” a radio operator replied. “Stand by for Admiral Clancy.”

           
“Sir,”
Walker
cut in, “I’ve got
Enterprise
on the VHF. They’re asking for instructions.”

           
“Good. Tell
them to stay at least five hundred yards from the station and be ready to
retrieve the lifeboat. Also tell them to keep their open cargo-bay pointed away
from earth in case that damn laser fires at us again.”

           
“Rog.”

           
“Armstrong,
this is Clancy. What the hell happened up there?”

           
“We were
attacked, Admiral. I’ve got half the crew in the lifeboat. Three injuries, two
may be serious. Possible serious damage to our attitude-control system. One
ruptured fuel tank, other collateral damage. Our SRB still shows operational.
We’re going to try to make repairs.”

           
“What
attacked you, Jas?”

           
“We figure
it was our friends at Sary Shagan. I’ll get back to you when we have a full
damage assessment.”

 
         
“Okay, Jas____ Listen, Jas, I’m afraid
I’ve got some very bad news...

           
Saint-Michael
held his breath. He had an idea what was coming.

           
“It’s the
California
...
so far we count six hundred men dead.... Matt Page didn’t make it.”

           
Saint-Michael
didn’t reply for a moment,
then
clicked the microphone
back on. “I’ll let his daughter know, Admiral. Thanks for getting us word.”

           
“He was
hell on wheels, Jas. Did a great job. The men loved him, and that’s no B.S.
Tell her.”

           
“Yes, sir.
I will. Armstrong out.”

           
Saint-Michael
scanned the command module. Of the other crewmembers only
Walker
seemed to have heard. He looked at the general and shook his head.
Saint-Michael told himself to put Captain Page’s death out of his mind for now.
Somehow he’d deal with it, with Ann...
later
. Right
now he had this station to command. He looked to his right and saw
Jefferson
giving his master SBR console an affectionate pat.

           
“Good news,
Chief?”

           
“Yes, sir,
SBR is back on-line. Only a slightly narrower scan area —maybe a hundred miles
less, plus a bit reduced resolution.”

           
“That news
might be academic if we take a few more hits from that laser....”

           
Jefferson
nodded and turned back to his screens, trying to assimilate the mountains of
data that had been received in the short time since the SBR became operational.
Less than two minutes later he called out another report.

           
“Several slow-moving jet aircraft over
Tehran
, General.
Swarms of them.
Extensive fighter
coverage.”

           
“God, the
Russians must be taking
Tehran
,”
Walker
said, looking at the display.
“Three Condor transports
already on the ground at
Mehrabad
Airport
.
Could be as many as six hundred troops.
The Iraqis have almost reached
Abadan
,
too.”

           
Saint-Michael
tried to assess possible implications. He had just finished calling Bayles and
Moyer forward to help with the data transmissions and analysis when the
Nimitz
broke radio silence once again.

           
“Looks like
the shit has hit the fan for real, Jason,” Admiral Clancy was saying. “A
coordinated attack. Fighters from the
Brezhnev
have chased away all the Hawkeye surveillance planes that we’d sent up to
patrol the area. They’re mounting another air attack on
Tehran
,
and Iraqi forces are moving across the border towards
Abadan
.
The Soviets have got the whole northern gulf sewn up tight.”

           
Bad news, no question, Saint-Michael thought.
Tehran
was important, of course, but there was one place that was even more critical
now. He keyed his microphone, “Looks bad over
Tehran
and
Abadan
, Admiral. But those guys
have left themselves a little too open over Bandar-Abbas, do you agree?”

           
“On the nose, Jas.
That’s where we push. I’m going to need
your help on this one. Maybe even use that trump card we talked about. How much
time left on your orbit?”

           
“Sixty
minutes.”

           
“Should be enough.
Just hope whatever the hell hit you
doesn’t take a curtain call.”

           
“Copy,
Admiral. Armstrong out.” Saint-Michael turned and stared wordlessly at the
master SBR monitor for a long moment.

           
Walker
couldn’t take the silence. “Skipper, what’s up?”

           
“Clancy’s
going to start an offensive....”

           
“An offensive?
With what? Where? The Russians are
overrunning
Iran
from all points.”

           
Saint-Michael
looked at
Walker
. “We’re going to
play some sky- poker,” he said. “Just hope our bluff works.”

           
From the
moment Jason Saint-Michael appeared at the hatch to the sausage-shaped crew-rescue
lifeboat, Ann
knew.
She could read it
in his face. She’d been expecting it....

           
“Ann, I...
I’m sorry....”

           
She leaned
back against a compartment. “He’s gone?” She knew, but it needed to be said so
that she could begin to feel it, to really know it....

           
Saint-Michael
moved to her, took hold of her. “Admiral Clancy told me a few minutes ago. He
said to tell you what a fine officer your father was, that the man—”

           
She nodded
at him, tears running down her cheeks, pushing him away and clutching at him
all at the same time.

           
He pulled
her to him, held her as she let
our her
grief. They
stood together that way for who knows how long, sharing the intimacy of each
other in
a
way neither could have
managed minutes before.

           
Finally,
Saint-Michael gently drew away from her, began to move toward the hatch. He
turned around once, paused. “He did a
job,
Ann...
maneuvered the
California
right in front of the missiles. If they’d gotten by, thousands would have been
killed aboard the
Nimitz.

 
         
The whole group would have been forced
to retreat. ... I know it’s no help now, but I want you to know....”

           
She nodded.
“Thanks, I know. He even used to say it was how he wanted to go. But it doesn’t
make it any easier..

           
“Nothing
ever does,” he said, and exited the hatch, leaving her alone with her grief.

 
          
July 1992

 
          
OVER THE
PERSIAN GULF
,
ONE HUNDRED KILOMETERS SOUTH OF THE
BREZHNEV

           
It appeared
simple. Ridiculously simple.

           
The Soviet
Su-27 Flanker pilot from the
Brezhnev
couldn’t help smiling. After all the talk about how autonomous American fighter
pilots were, how innovative, how creatively unpredictable—here they were, ten
American F-15 Eagle fighters, driving directly into the hands of their enemies.

           
The Soviet
aircraft carrier
Brezhnev
had spotted
the Eagle attack formation three hundred kilometers away and had scrambled ten
advanced Sukhoi-27 fighters to intercept, with ten more of the air-to-air
missile-equipped fighters to follow. There were only three places from which an
American counterattack on the
Brezhnev
could have come: Kigzi Airbase in
Turkey
,
Riyadah in
Saudi Arabia
,
and the
Gulf
of
Oman
,
where the
Nimitz
was located. All of those
areas had been bottled up tight by the
Brezhnev's
planes and ships. An attack group would have to circumnavigate the Iraqi and
Soviet forces in the west, the
Brezhnev
and her escorts in the
Persian Gulf
and the destroyers
and battleships in the
Strait of Hormuz
if they had any
hope of attacking the Soviet army and navy positions in
Tehran
and
Tabriz
. It was a move of
desperation.

           
The closing
rate between the two opposing fighter groups was well over two thousand
kilometers an hour, which also favored the Soviet defenders. The F-15s from
Riyadah had already been flying for nearly an hour and were probably overloaded
with weapons and fuel. The Su-27s, virtually identical to the single-seat
version of the American F-15, had just launched from the
Brezhnev
minutes ago and were loaded with AA-11 all-aspect
air-to-air missiles, not fuel. The F-15s would have no time to dogfight. They
would try, as their current flight profile suggested, to blow past the Su-27s,
get as close as possible to the
Brezhnev
and launch their missiles. Desperation. Sheer desperation. .. .

           
“Group One
leader, this is Control. Hostile contact bearing two-six zero, range seven-five
kilometers. Acknowledge when locked-on.”

           
The lead
Flanker pilot thumbed his microphone switch. “I understand, Control. Intruders
are locked on radar, seventy kilometers and descending slowly. Requesting final
authority to attack.”

           
“Request
approved, Group One.” He then switched to English to invoke the universal
fighter pilot’s credo: “Good luck. Good hunting.”

           
The lead
Flanker pilot felt a rush of adrenaline. Invoked in English, the fighter’s
credo always seemed to hone his instincts.

           
“Group One, sixty kilometers.
Final arming check—now.”

           
“Red Flight checks.”

           
“Gold Flight checks.”

           
“Group
One
, lock and ready in file.” The lead pilot pressed his
target-designate switch until the radar-tracking cursor had switched to the
lead American plane. A high-pitched four-beep sequence and a flashing green
light on his arming panel told him his ADC-1054W attack radar was locked on.
Perfect. No maneuvering, no jamming. ...

           
Fifty kilometers.
“Group One ... launch!”

           
It was an
exhilarating sight. In complete unison, twenty AA-11 advanced long-range
radar-guided missiles filled the sky, speeding to their targets. The
missile-attack aspect was ideal. The American F-15s were in a slightly steeper
dive, trying to make it to the relative safety of the
Persian Gulf
’s
choppy waters, where they figured they would be lost in radar clutter. But in
fact they were exposing more of themselves to the missiles’ powerful on-board
terminal homing radars.

 
         
The lead Flanker pilot made one quick
check of his
formation,
then checked his radar for
possible survivors—and saw the impossible.

           
The American
F-15s were still on radar. All twenty AA-11 missiles had
missed.

           
And then he
saw why: the F- 15s, which had been at fifteen hundred meters altitude when the
Flankers launched their missiles, were now at five thousand meters. The
American planes had somehow managed to climb nearly four thousand meters in ten
seconds. Even an AA-11 missile, which could turn at well over seven “g”s,
couldn’t keep up with a climb-rate like that at such close range.

           
The leader
of
Brezhnev
Fighter Group
One
yanked his Su-27 Flanker fighter into a hard climbing
turn to pursue, but he knew without checking his radar that the move was
pointless. He had to steel himself to key his microphone.

           
“Control,
this is Group One leader. All targets are still... still airborne and have
maneuvered above us. Last read-out showed them at five thousand meters and
climbing. Turning to intercept.”

           
“Group One,
this is Control,” came the scratchy message from the air combat controllers
aboard the
Brezhnev.
“We have
intruders at your
five o’clock
,
altitude five thousand meters, range forty kilometers, air speed six-four-three
kilometers per hour.
Turn right heading zero-two-zero,
initial vector for intercept.”

           
“Group One
copies all.”

           
“Group One, state your bingo.”

           
The Group One
leader checked his fuel gauges, feeling his cheeks and ears redden. He could
easily imagine the words being said about him right now on the bridge of the
Brezhnev
—he had been too cocky, too sure
of himself, taking the long- to medium-range shot without bothering to move in
closer. It had to be some sort of electronic jamming or deception that made the
American F-15s appear to be lower than the Su-27s. No aircraft could climb four
thousand meters in ten seconds.

           
To make
matters worse he was now in a tail-chase with the American fighters—and with no
airborne defenders between them and the
Brezhnev.
.. .

           
“Group
One
shows two-zero minutes to bingo.” Even the fuel
situation had gotten worse. The Americans were still on emergency fuel, he was
sure—especially after that crazy maneuver—but now the odds were no longer in
the defenders’ favor.

           
“Group One,
Alert Group Two is preparing for launch. We will recover your group at bingo
minus five. Acknowledge.”

 
         
“Group
One
copies.” They had fifteen minutes now to chase down the Americans, or Group
Two—the youngsters aboard the
Brezhnev
—would
launch and go for the intercept. The sheer embarrassment of
that
was almost unthinkable.

           
Not
checking to see if Red Flight had managed to keep up with him as he sped eastward
toward the evading American fighters, the leader of
Brezhnev
Group One put his Sukhoi-27 Flanker in a max afterburner
climb and searched frantically on wide-scan radar for the intruders. He had
even less time than he’d first thought: if the F-15s carried Harpoon antiship
missiles they could attack from as far away as sixty kilometers, perhaps more
at high altitude....

           
There.
“Control, Group One leader has
the intruders.
Twelve o’clock
, thirty-six kilometers and high.
Beginning
intercept.
Group One, check in.”

           
“This is
Red Flight. We are at your
six o’clock
,
one mile.
Couldn’t keep up with that turn, Viktor.
Joining on your right wing.”

           
“Copy.
Gold Flight, take the high patrol. Red Flight will
pursue and close.”

           
The closure
rate sucked his breath—the F-15s were cruising, straight and level, at only
five hundred kilometers per hour. The Flankers were speeding toward them at
nearly three times that velocity. The lead Flanker locked onto four of the ten
intruders; his fire- control system would now attack four separate aircraft at
once—

           
Suddenly
one of the intruder aircraft heeled sharply over to the left and descended,
rapidly.

           
“Red Five,
one intruder peeling left and down at your
eleven
o’clock
. Follow him. He’s yours.”

           
“Red Five
has him locked on. Pursuing.”

           
The
distance had decreased rapidly to less than twenty kilometers when the leader
noticed the formation of American F-15s making a shallow left turn. “Intruders
are evading left. Red Flight, echelon right for pursuit.”

           
“Two.”

           
“Three.”

           
“Four.”

           
The leader
took a quick glance to his right as he continued his shallow left turn behind
the American F-15s. The four Su-27s with him were in perfect alignment, turning
canopy-to-belly instead of in extended wingtip-to-wingtip to help maintain a
solid radar lock-on.

           
The
formation had drifted nearly ninety degrees away from the
Brezhnev
carrier battle group when the Group One leader heard:

 
         
“Group One, Group
Two
is airborne. Joining on you for intercept.” “Copy, Control. We are pursuing
intruders. Red Flight, lock and ready in file.”

           
“Two.”

           
“Three.”

           
“F_
_ ”

           
“Group One
lead, this is Red Five. I have a visual on the intruder: it’s
not
a fighter. Repeat:
it is not a fighter ”

           
The Flanker
tried to absorb this,
then
shouted out: “Red Five,
destroy it. Red Flight, launch…”

           
Again the
leader’s windscreen filled with white streaks as the AA-11 missiles sped after
their quarry. They launched at less than eighteen kilometers—no aircraft in the
world could possibly evade a AA-11 missile at that range....

           
But when
the leader looked at his radar screen again, only three of the nine intruder
aircraft were missing. Worse, the intruders were now far to the left—had moved
nearly perpendicular to the flight path of the AA-11 missiles in literally the
blink of an eye.

           
“Control,
three attackers destroyed. Red Flight, follow me in close to the survivors. Red
Five, what did you see?”

           
“They’re
drones.
A HIMLORD remote-piloted
vehicle. The one I saw was damaged, spinning out of control....”

           
“Drones.”
So that was it. The Flanker leader didn’t know
exactly what HIMLORD stood for, but he knew what they were—extremely powerful,
highly maneuverable unmanned reconnaissance drones. Which was why they could
outturn an AA-11 missile: the HIM- LORDS were designed for such extreme
maneuvers.... He had seen films of HIMLORDS pulling giant “g”s in all flight
regimes. The NATO countries and their allies used HIMLORDS for battlefield
reconnaissance, but it was obvious that these were intended here as
diversions....

           
... Or
decoys... ?

           
“Lead, Red
Three has a visual on the hostile.”

           
A quick
scan ... and there it was. Even at four kilometers he could see it easily. It
was huge, with a long pointed nose, a set of canards on its forward fuselage,
very large main wings with winglets on the tips, and a set of dorsal and
ventral stabilizers. Its large turbojet engine released a puff of black smoke
every few seconds. Amazingly, the six drones flew in almost perfect formation,
staying abreast of each other in spite of each sharp turn and change in
airspeed.

           
“Control,
this is Group One lead. We are pursuing drones....”

 
         
“Group One, this is Group Two lead. We
are at your
six o’clock
at thirty
kilometers. Do you want us on a low patrol?
Over.”

           
“Group Two,
negative. Return to base immediately. We’ve been decoyed away. We have twenty
fighters chasing a few damn drones. Group One, break off attack. Control, this
is Group One. Returning to base immediately.”