Final Storm (41 page)

But even before his connection went through, the control room’s radio crackled. Piped through the PA system, it was an excited report from an officer at an isolated air defense battery. A missile had been launched at a possible radar contact—unsuccessfully as the missile had been interfered with by airborne jamming. Mursk quickly checked the control room’s main screen and saw the report had come from an area that corresponded to the place on Vasilov’s radar screen where the phantom contact had been spotted minutes earlier.

Mursk felt his mouth go dry. He knew the radar contacts and the SAM launching could mean only one thing—an enemy aircraft was heading for Krasnoyarsk.

Quickly, Mursk redialed the commander of the large air base located several hundred miles east of the massive radar station. Within thirty seconds he was talking to the man.

“This is Krasnoyarsk reporting,” Mursk began formally. “We have radar contact at—”

“Yes, yes! Of course,” the air wing commander told him brusquely. “We already know of the radar contacts…. They have been on our screens for several minutes now.”

“But the interceptors must be …” Mursk continued before he was abruptly cut off again by the commander.

“We have already launched the interceptors, Krasnoyarsk!” the shrill voice rang through the earpiece’s receiver. “They are now being vectored to meet the American bombers over the ocean!”

Mursk was shocked. “The ocean? But my contact was …”

“Krasnoyarsk,” the commander replied. “Our radar contacts show twenty American bombers less than five hundred miles from the Kamchatka peninsula. They are flying in groups of two along the high-altitude tracks of the old SAC alert routes we used to see before the war.

“All available fighters have been ordered to intercept.”

And with that, the air base commander hung up.

“A
RE YOU SURE YOU
had a positive contact, Mursk?”

Air Marshal Porogarkov was pacing the gray floor of the Krasnoyarsk radar station. Next to him, Captain Mursk was reviewing a replay of the two radar contact indications picked up by his sergeant’s radar console.

“We had two events, sir,” Mursk told the air marshal, pointing to the radar replay review screen. “One there. The other … right there …”

Mursk replayed the tape for the air marshal. “Both were only onscreen for a second, sir,” Mursk said. “At extremely low altitudes. But I felt we couldn’t take the chance …”

Porogarkov watched the replay a final time and slowly nodded his head.

“Good work, Mursk,” he said. “You were correct in calling for the fighters. But apparently there
is
a larger threat coming in from the east as picked up by Irkutsk.”

They both stared at the radar screen for a long moment, then Porogarkov said: “I must call Moscow right now and tell them of this.”

With that, the senior officer gave Mursk two hard, complimentary slaps on the back, then he rushed to his office and the special phone line to Moscow.

“How things
have
changed,” Mursk thought.

The air defense minister was back just a minute later.

“Moscow has ordered the commander in Irkutsk to deal with the threat over the Bering Sea,” he said, his voice a mixture of concern and agitation. “However, there is a reserve squadron of fighters still on the ground. Only a few airplanes—a MiG-31, two MiG-25s, and the rest are old MiG-21s from our reserves—with trainee pilots. They’ll be released to us once the situation in the east is evaluated.”

“But what if it’s too late, sir?” Mursk asked.

Porogarkov turned and stared at the younger officer. He had no answer—so he simply shrugged.

Suddenly, for both of them, it felt just like the
bad, old
days …

High above the Bering Sea in the cockpit of his MiG-29, Soviet Colonel Artyem Ivanovich Mikoyan was locking a pair of targets into his modern fighter’s tracking computer.

He knew the others in his flight were doing the same. They were more than two hundred miles off the Pacific coast of the Soviet Union, two squadrons of Soviet fighters in all, tracking a series of solid radar contacts at high altitude.

The blips on their screens represented the invading American bombers, undoubtedly the decrepit B-52 dinosaurs, hoping to bomb the valuable combat control center at Krasnoyarsk. No matter, Mikoyan thought to himself, they will soon be deep beneath the sea.

His interceptor was one of the few Soviet Fulcrums to survive World War Three, or “The Second Great Patriotic War,” as some in Red Star had begun to refer to it. The twin-tailed fighter packed a full load of heat-seeking and radar-guided missiles under its wings, and he had orders to attack and destroy the invading Americans “at all costs.”

As he closed to within range, he launched one of his radar-guided AA-7 missiles toward the two targets that appeared on his pulse Doppler radar’s display. A second later, his wingman had launched a similar missile. Intent on personally observing the kill, he increased his speed another notch to follow the streaking missiles.

He kept watching the tiny display, expecting to see the huge bombers begin their pathetic attempts to evade the deadly missiles, but instead he saw only the monotonous track of the hulking American planes, steadily boring into Soviet air space, oblivious to the airborne darts that sped toward them.

Could it be, Mikoyan thought, that he had caught the Americans napping?

His thought was confirmed as he observed both his own missile, as well as his wingman’s, draw closer to the plodding radar blip that appeared on his display.

Another second, and there would be a direct hit.

The nearest target blip suddenly brightened significantly, as if a burst of energy had infused it. The surge attracted both his and his wingman’s missile to it, and the target disappeared in a spreading blossom on his display. A cry of jubilation echoed through his headset as his wingman cheered the kill.

But Mikoyan sensed something was wrong.

What had caused that sudden energy boost in the first bomber? And why was the remaining American still tracking the same course as though nothing had happened? Ignored by the missiles, it had just continued along without diverting, and without changing course or speed.

Quickly cutting off his partner’s celebration, he ordered the other pilot to break off and intercept the American plane along with him. When he punched down his throttles, the huge engines responded instantly, catapulting the sleek Fulcrum ahead at better than Mach 2.

Mikoyan was determined to get within visual range of these insane Yankees. He could always make the second kill with infrared-seeking AA-6 missile if need be.

But he had to find out what madness drove this suicidal American.

Mikoyan’s suspicions deepened as he closed the range. At forty miles and coming up rapidly on the slow-moving B-52, he still detected no jamming signals, no evasion, and no threat warnings. Only the steadily increasing hum and buzz of crackling static in his radio headphones. As a precaution, he keyed in the target data and began preparing his heat-seeking air-to-air missiles for launch against the curious target.

As he closed the range further, Mikoyan was dismayed to find that he couldn’t make out the silhouette of the huge bomber, even though by now the full moon shone brightly off the ice-flecked surface of the Bering Sea below. His radar scope certainly detected it, as the tiny display mushroomed with a huge target blip.

His missile guidance system bleeped out a shrill alert, indicating that his missile target guidance system had acquired a positive target. Still, wanting to get closer, Mikoyan waited until the last possible second to launch the deadly heat-seeker. Although his display indicated a target of immense proportions, he could not see anything in the frigid skies over the gray ocean.

Mikoyan reluctantly punched the missile “fire” button, confident that his air-to-air could find the target even if he couldn’t. The tapered missile shot off his left wing toward the target that he still couldn’t see, and it quickly found a strong infrared signal that beckoned it along faster.

Unfortunately for the Soviet pilot and his wingman, the missile found its mark all too well. As it detected the presence of the IR seeking signals from the AA-6 missile, the tiny American drone suddenly erupted in white-hot flames. Phosphorous flares spewed out their blinding light and fiery jets flamed out from the ports on the drone’s wings.

The missile immediately locked on to the drone’s heat, and it quickly impacted the little decoy, disappearing inside the flaming ball in the sky.

For a split second, Mikoyan finally saw the target of his missile attack, as the glowing meteor erupted across the black sky. What he would never know was that the tiny drone had actually exploded, its huge warhead of TNT sending metal shards out for hundreds of yards in all directions.

There was no escaping the shower of brilliant sparks that arced in all around his plane. Both Mikoyan and his wingman were flying directly through the deadly hailstorm of shrapnel, wings and canopies absorbing the flaming debris that pelted them furiously. And the gruesome sound of jagged metal chunks being sucked into the MiG’s powerful jet engines filled the cramped cockpit of the Soviet fighter.

At least one of the fiery shards was expelled by the whirling turbine blades into Mikoyan’s primary fuel line that fed his airplane’s left engine its volatile mixture. A single spark ignited a steady stream of burning fuel, which in turn was inhaled by the rattling jet engine, and literally blow-torched out the exhaust nozzle of the stricken Fulcrum.

There was no time for Mikoyan to cut the fuel supply, no time to radio his wingman for help, no time even to pull the ejection handles in the front of his seat.

He had only time enough to realize that he was already a dead man …

Ten thousand liters of explosive jet fuel was instantly touched off, transforming his fighter into a white-hot fireball that turned the blackness of the Pacific night into a ghastly backdrop for the Fulcrum’s mini-nova eruption. The brilliant fire glowed for several terrible seconds, hanging in the cold sky, before plunging to the ocean like a spent meteorite. Mikoyan’s cremation was complete before the wreckage struck the ocean.

A total of twenty Soviet fighters were lost attacking the drones that night over the Bering Sea.

I
T WAS ONLY AFTER
the third radar event was picked up west of Krasnoyarsk that Air Marshal Porogarkov called the nearby air base commander and threatened to shoot him if he didn’t release the reserve fighter squadron.

Despite the man’s pleas for reconsideration, based on now solid evidence that some kind of an American attack force was approaching from the Bering Sea, Porogarkov refused to change his order. The base commander would face a firing squad if the reserve jets weren’t scrambled immediately.

Ten minutes later, a flight of six Soviet fighters lifted off a dimly lit runway and sped toward a point in the sky a hundred miles west of Krasnoyarsk.

“Picking up multiple bogies at high altitude.” Toomey’s voice was steady as he called out the alert to Hunter in the B-1’s cockpit. “They’ve got search radars on wide scan … they haven’t found us. Yet.”

“Damn!” Jones exclaimed from his TV screen. “Maybe they didn’t take the bait over the Bering after all!”

“We’ve come this far without them finding us,” Wa said hopefully. “Maybe it’s just a routine patrol …”

“Don’t bet on it,” Hunter responded grimly, his unique inner senses detecting the enemy airplanes just seconds before JT’s radar. “These guys never just fly around for fun. If there are any interceptors up here, they’re definitely looking for us.”

Two tense minutes passed. The B-1 was now only eighty-five miles away from the target.

“Any positive ID on the bogies, JT?” Hunter asked.

“Looks like three Foxbats—no, wait—one’s got a different signature It’s a Foxhound!” Toomey replied tightly, remembering his air duels with the tough Soviet MiG-25s and -31s during the war. Both were super-fast Mach 3 fighters that carried lots of firepower—usually big AA-6 air-to-air missiles. And both had a fairly sophisticated look-down/shoot-down radar to search out and destroy their prey.

“What about the others?” Hunter asked, instinctively nudging the big, battered B-1 a few feet lower, in a effort to closer hug the hard ground below.

“Can’t tell for sure, Hawk,” Toomey said after checking his scope. “Single-engine jobs, well behind the first group, about Mach 1.5 speed…. Maybe MiG-21s.”

Hunter was scanning the MAPS plot on his small CRT screen, reviewing the remaining course to the target to see if there were any alternate routes in case they had to engage in evasive maneuvers.

No sooner had the B-1’s sleek nose section risen slightly to clear some terrain feature below, when the cockpit radio crackled again.

“Narrow-beam scan! Tracking radar signals!” Toomey’s alert confirmed Hunter’s apprehension. “One of the bastards found us! Should I commence jamming on guidance frequency?”

“No, wait!” Jones called out at this point. “If we light up the jammer, the others will pinpoint our location. Save it until we get a positive missile detect signal. But start jamming the hell out of the VHF signals—we don’t want them reporting our position to each other or back to their base.”

“Roger …” Toomey went to work on the countermeasure scope, sending out powerful jamming signals on the VHF transmission bands he’d monitored the Soviet pilots using. With their radios spewing forth an ear-splitting blast of crackling static, the Soviet pilots knew the American was out there somewhere, but they couldn’t locate him.

The B-1 screamed along below a thirty-mile ridgeline, hidden from the clawing fingers of electronic energy emanating out of the Soviet planes desperate to find them. Hunter checked the MAPS display and saw he was now just fifty-five miles from the target.

Suddenly the protective ridgeline curved to the left, directly in front of the racing bomber’s path. Even before Wa’s shouted instruction reached his ears, Hunter had disengaged the autopilot to haul the big bomber’s stick back to raise them up over the ridge.