Patrick McLanahan Collection #1 (90 page)

The checklist was long. It directed them to extinguish all external lights; turn off transponders and any other radios that automatically transmitted a signal, such as the formation distance-measuring equipment and air-refueling rendezvous beacons; make sure radio switches
were configured so no one would accidentally transmit on an outside frequency; turn down all interior instrument and cabin lights; and reduce cabin pressurization so any piercing of the fuselage would not produce an explosive decompression. Even the smallest, tiniest lights still left on in the cockpit seemed like searchlights in the ink-black sky, and he found himself checking each light switch two and three times, then finally pulling the circuit breakers to make sure he could not accidentally turn them on. He had done this checklist so many times in training missions and simulators, but it took on a whole new level of importance now.

He had no sooner finished the checklist a few minutes later when he heard a buzzing sound in his headset, and sweat spontaneously popped onto his forehead and the back of his neck, chilling him instantly. “Threat warning, India-Juliett band!” the EWO shouted. “F-16 Falcon interceptor!”

“Low-level-descent checklist!” Leborov shouted, and simultaneously pushed the nose over and pulled the throttles of his four Kuznetsov turboprop engines back to keep the airspeed below red line. “Copilot, notify the formation, evasive action, proceed to opposed ingress routes immediately.” In order to ensure that the maximum number of planes made it past the defenses, the four six-ship formations would break apart and go in single-ship, following slightly different routes—some planes were separated by only one or two degrees of track, less than a hundred meters' altitude, or less than a minute's time. Borodev's voice was as excited and high-pitched as a woman's as he got on the radio to notify the rest of their package that enemy fighters were inbound.

That would be the last transmission to his comrades until they all met back at base…or in hell.

An F-16! They hadn't expected an F-16 up here for another hour at least. He adjusted the propeller pitch of the rearmost propellers to increase drag so he could increase his descent rate. “Has he seen us yet?” It was a stupid question—they had to assume that the American fighter had them. They also had to assume that there was more than one fighter out there—the American Air Force almost always traveled in two-plane formations. Fortunately, the F-16's radar did not have a true look-down/shoot-down capability, so they had a chance if they could make it to low level. The radar clutter of the Arctic Ocean and then the ruggedness of northern Canada would hide them very effectively.

“I don't think so, sir,” the EWO responded. “His radar is still in long-range scan, and his track has not changed. He's heading northeast, across but away from us. He might lose track in a couple of minutes.”

But then again, Leborov thought, if he did what he was supposed to do and establish a patrol orbit, along the most probable inbound path for bombers from Russia to take—like the one they were on right now—he was bound to find them. They were quickly running out of time. “Any word from our support package, copilot?” Leborov asked.

“Negative,” Borodev responded woodenly. “No idea where they are.”

“Are we on time?”

“About two minutes early,” the navigator responded. “Good tailwinds.”

“Good tailwinds, my ass—two minutes is all the time that F-16 needs to sound the alert.” Shit, thought Leborov. Soon the entire American and Canadian air forces would be howling after them. Mission and radio security was one thing, but shouldn't they know where the rest of their strike package was? “Okay, we can't stay up here any longer,” he said. He put the airspeed needle right on the red line by dumping the nose even lower. “Our best chance is to try to duck under his radar cone before he comes around on his patrol orbit—we may be able to slip past him.”

Leborov unconsciously let the airspeed creep up past the red line in an attempt to get down faster, but soon he could feel Borodev pulling back on the control column. “Let's not rip the wings off this old hog, Joey,” he said. “We've still got a long way to go.” He pulled the nose up to get the airspeed back down below the red line. Damn, Leborov thought, how many of his wingmen had started their descent? How many were still up high? He hoped everyone used proper crew discipline and was ready when that fighter appeared—or they'd be dead meat.

That same time

K
nifepoint, Knifepoint, Hunter Four, blue four.”

“Hunter, this is Knifepoint, strangle mode three and Charlie, go active, stand by for mickey check…. Hunter, acknowledge. Verify you're single-ship this morning.”

“Knifepoint, Hunter checks, I'm single-ship. My wingman will join up later.”

“Copy that, Hunter. Negative contacts, cleared into track Gina-two, deploy, advise joker.”

“Hunter copies, wilco.”

To tell the truth, thought U.S. Air Force First Lieutenant Kelly Forman, she preferred being up here by herself, without having to keep an eye out for a wingman or flight lead. The Alaska sky was an absolute delight to fly in—clear, crisp, and cold, with only the stars above and a very, very few lights below. She sometimes felt as if she were the only person in the sky right now….

Which was obviously not true, or else she would not have been sent up here on such short notice.

The twenty-six-year-old mother of two boys was a newly operational F-16C Fighting Falcon pilot in the Eighteenth Fighter Squadron “Blue Foxes” out of Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. Although the Blue Foxes were a ground-attack fighter unit, using the LANTIRN night-attack and low-level navigation system, they were often tasked with the air-defense mission as well, operating with the Nineteenth Fighter Squadron's F-15 Eagle fighters and the 962nd Airborne Air Control Squadron's E-3C AWACS radar planes out of Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage. But tonight she was all by herself. Even after an hour, she was
still
by herself—her wingman was still broken, still on the ground. Another F-16 had just taken off a few minutes earlier, with one of the 168th Air Refueling Wing's KC-135 tankers based at Eielson, and wouldn't rejoin for another thirty minutes.

Forman was two hundred miles northwest of Point Barrow, Alaska, over the seemingly endless expanse of the Arctic Ocean. She had just entered her assigned patrol orbit, which was a narrow triangular course aligned northwest-southeast, at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. She was the “low CAP,” or combat air patrol, the altitude that allowed her APG-68 radar to see all the way down to the ocean's surface, at her radar's optimal range of eighty miles, and all the way up to thirty thousand feet, on its normal long-range-scan mode; once her wingman joined her, he would take the high CAP, twenty-four thousand feet, so he could see as high as fifty thousand feet.

As briefed, Forman reduced speed to save fuel and started her turn northwestbound in the triangle. “Hunter Four's established in Gina-two,” she reported to Knifepoint. Knifepoint was the call sign of the
Alaska NORAD Regional Surveillance Center, based at Elmendorf Air Force Base, which combined radar information from the North Warning System, Federal Aviation Administration, Transport Canada, and other military and civil radars into one regional control center. Knifepoint was different from an air-traffic-control center—unlike air-traffic controllers, who strived to keep aircraft safely
separated,
the Knifepoint controllers' job was to maneuver fighters as
close
as possible to other aircraft.

“Roger, Hunter,” the controller responded. “No contacts.” Up here, at the top of the United States, Knifepoint relied on the North Warning System radars to see any intruders—the FAA radars in Fairbanks and Anchorage did not have the range to see this far north. The North Warning System, or NWS, in Alaska consisted of four long-range partly attended radars, nicknamed “Seek Igloo,” plus eight short-range unattended radars, called “Seek Frost,” which closed the gaps in the longer-range systems.

Air patrols were a combination of monitoring the instruments, keeping track of the aircraft in its patrol track, twisting the heading bugs at the corners to head down the next leg, watching the radar and radar-warning receivers for signs of aircraft—and staying awake. Forman enjoyed air-defense exercises because she
knew
there was going to be an intruder, and it was her job to find it. In the real world, she had to
assume
there was an intruder out here in all this darkness. Many times air-defense fighters would be launched after being detected by the FAA or North Warning System, and she would be vectored into position while radar-silent and intercept the intruder from behind to attempt an identification. Those were damned exciting.

Not so this time. She didn't know the exact reason she'd been launched and sent to this patrol, but so far there was no sign of intruders. Often fighters were sent into air patrols because the Russians had spy planes nearby, or because NORAD, the Air Force, or the Canadians wanted to test or observe something. It was impossible to know, so she assumed there was a bad guy out here that needed to be discovered.

But she'd been launched right at the end of her duty day, after studying for a pre-check-ride written exam while doing her normal training duties. An eight-hour duty day followed by several hours' flying in the wee hours of the morning…swell. This could turn into a very, very long morning.

She had just turned eastbound after completing her initial fifty-mile
northwest patrol leg when she heard, “Knifepoint, this is Hunter Eight, blue four.” It was Forman's wingman, finally checking on with the NORAD controller.

“Hunter Four, Knifepoint, your company is on freq.”

“Roger that, Knifepoint. Hunter Four checking off to talk with company aircraft. I'll monitor your frequency and report back up.”

“Roger, Hunter, cleared as requested.”

Forman switched over to her secondary radio: “Eight, this is Four on tactical. 'Bout time someone showed. Girls don't like being stood up, you know.”

“Sorry about the delay—nothing's working right on the ramp this morning. Must be a full moon. We're about two hundred miles out. How's everything going?”

“Nice and quiet. Established in the low CAP. The bird is doing okay.” She punched instructions into her navigation computer, checking her fuel reserves. “Joker plus one on board.” The “joker” fuel level was the point at which she had to leave the patrol area and head for home; she had one hour left on patrol before she had to head back in order to arrive with normal fuel reserves, which in Alaska were substantial. Because weather and airfield conditions changed rapidly here, and because suitable alternate airfields were very, very few and far between in this big state, every fighter flying in Alaska took as much fuel as possible with it on patrol; Kelly's F-16 had two 370-gallon drop tanks on board, along with four AIM-120 AMRAAM radar-guided missiles, two AIM-9L “Sidewinder” heat-seeking missiles, and ammunition for the twenty-millimeter cannon. Aerial-refueling tankers were precious commodities.

“Roger that. I brought the gas can with me. Any sign of Roadkill?” “Roadkill” was the Blue Foxes' name for their brethren in the Nineteenth Fighter Squadron—their squadron emblem, a stylized gamecock, looked to many folks like a squished critter on the road. The F-15Cs of the Nineteenth, coming with their E-3C AWACS radar plane, were the air-defense specialists; the F-15s had much longer legs, two-engine reliability, and a better look-down, shoot-down radar to find any bad guys that might be up here. They would undoubtedly take over the air-patrol mission once they arrived, although the F-16s liked to play with them as much as possible, too.

“Negative.” There was a lot of static on the channel all of a sudden, which was fairly common at the higher latitudes, usually because of
sunspot activity. The northern lights were beautiful up here, but the solar flares that caused the sky to light up with waves and waves of shimmering light played havoc with the radios.

“Rog. I'll give you a call if I hear from them. See you in a few.” Despite the growing static, Kelly instantly felt much better. Although she enjoyed flying by herself, it sure was comforting to hear a friendly voice on the airwaves, to know that friendly forces were on the way—especially the tanker.

Forman was a couple minutes from her turn to the southeast when the radar target box winked on, at the extreme center-left edge of her heads-up display. Got a nibble, she told herself as she made a hard left turn to center up on the newcomer. It was high enough so it probably wasn't an ice floe or some other—

When she rolled out of her turn, she couldn't believe what she saw: radar targets
everywhere.
She thought she had a radar malfunction, so she turned her radar to
STBY
, then back to
RADIATE
—and the targets were still there. Maybe two dozen targets, all at different altitudes.

“Ho-lee
shit,
” she muttered to herself. Frantically, she switched back to the command channel on the primary radio. Through a haze of static, she radioed, “Knifepoint, Knifepoint, this is Hunter Four, ‘gorilla,' I say again, ‘gorilla,' northwest two-four bull's-eye.” “Gorilla” was the brevity code for a large formation of unidentified planes in indeterminate numbers. Forman gave the target's position relative to an imaginary point that changed on every patrol. She couldn't give the targets' altitude, speed, or any more precise information because there were so
many
of them out there.

“Say again, Hunter.” There was a loud squeal in the radios that the frequency-hopping communications system couldn't eliminate. “Be advised, Hunter, our status is ‘bent,' repeat, ‘bent.' Keep us advised.”