“Understood,” the major muttered, impatiently blinking away a small droplet of sweat that stung his right eye. A small box appeared on his HUD, above and just a few degrees to the left of the Su-34’s current flight path. The box was a navigation cue supplied by their onboard computer?a visual guide to their primary ground attack target. He pulled back on the stick, climbing steeply to two thousand meters or so and turning slightly until the target box was centered on his display.
The brighter glow of city lights appeared ahead, spreading across the horizon as they closed in. A web of roads and rail lines converged on the growing sea of lights, cutting straight across the darkened landscape. The darker ribbon of a wide river, the Dnipro, came into view to the east. Days and weeks of intensive map study paid off as he recognized the outer eastern suburbs of Kiev, Ukraine’s capital.
“Fifteen kilometers,” the Su-34’s navigator reported. He touched another set of buttons. “Ordnance guidance systems active. Coordinates downloaded.”
Suddenly a warning tone sounded in the major’s headset.
“Search radar spike!” the navigator snapped, scanning his defense displays frantically. “Detection alert! Right rear quadrant!”
“Jam it,” the major growled. They had been picked up by Ukrainian radar, probably those sited at the large air defense complex outside Konotop. He snorted softly in disgust. According to the mission brief, covertly inserted Spetsnaz teams were supposed to have destroyed those radars fifteen minutes ago.
So much for the Army’s arrogant, fawned-over commandos, he thought coldly.
Then he shrugged. Even in these days of high-tech combat, of satellites and precision-guided weaponry, the old adage that no plan ever fully survived contact with the enemy was still true. War was always the province of random chance, uncertainty, and human and machine error.
Beside him the navigator was busy with the controls on his console, trying to jam the powerful Ukrainian search radar with the Su-34’s built-in electronic countermeasures systems. It would be a miracle if he managed it, but every extra second he bought them was valuable. The range-to-target indicator on the HUD now showed twelve kilometers. The target cue box flashed red.
They were almost in range of their primary target, the wartime headquarters for the Ukrainian Defense Council.
A new, shriller tone sounded in the major’s earphones.
“Weapons radar lock-on!” his crewmate warned. “SAM launch detected!
Two missiles inbound. Pattern indicates they are S-300s. Commencing active and passive defense measures now!”
“Shit,” the major said under his breath. The S-300 was one of the most modern long-range surface-to-air missiles in the Ukrainian arsenal, the equivalent of the American Patriot missile.
The Su-34 shuddered briefly as onboard chaff dispensers fired. Cartridges popped out and detonated behind the speeding fighter-bomber. Within a second, clouds of thousands of tiny Mylar strips blossomed in the air. Each ultra-thin strip of chaff was precisely cut to match the wavelength used by the enemy radar locked on to them. With luck, the rapidly widening chaff blooms would decoy the incoming SAMs awav from them.
“Come on. Come on!” the major heard himself muttering under his breath, still grimly holding his aircraft on course despite the temptation to begin immediate evasive maneuvers. The target box turned green. They were in range.
“Weapons away!” he snarled, punching the release button on his stick. Immediately, the Su-34 jolted upward, several thousands of kilos lighter as four precision-guided bombs tumbled away from under its wings. Without waiting any longer, the colonel yanked the stick hard left, rolled the aircraft upside down, and dove for the ground in a tight, hard, multiple-G turn.
He rolled out of the dive barely a hundred meters off the deck?so close to the ground that trees, barns, houses, and electric power pylons appeared out of the darkness and disappeared almost before they even registered as solid objects in his vision. The warning tone in his headphones fell silent.
“Radar lock broken!” his navigator confirmed, breathing easier. “We’re below their horizon.”
The major yanked his head around, craning his neck to look through the clear canopy behind them. A succession of dazzling white flashes cascaded across the horizon, momentarily turning the black night into brilliant day.
“Bomb impact,” the navigator said quietly. “The computer predicts that all weapons hit the designated target.”
Suddenly everything outside the Su-34’s cockpit went black.
A new voice sounded in their headsets. “Attack simulation complete. Stand-by.”
With a shrill hydraulic whine, the canopy swung up, revealing a cavernous hangar filled with several other large boxlike Su-34 flight simulators. The other machines were still in motion, twisting and tilting rapidly while computer-driven displays provided crews with realistic views of the sky and ground outside their wildly maneuvering aircraft.
The major frowned, thinking back over the events of the past hour. “Reset the mission, Controller,” he said, speaking into his throat mike. “This time I want to try a slightly different flight path to see if we can avoid detection from Konotop when we pop up to drop our bombs.”
His navigator glanced across the cockpit at him with a wean grin. “That was our fifth time through this attack run today, Sergei Nikolayevich. We’ve been in the simulators twelve hours a day for three days now, running through every possible permutation and wrinkle. Couldn’t we take a break for a bit, at least just to stretch our legs?”
The major shook his head. “Not yet, Vladimir,” he told the other man firmly. He shrugged. “You’ve seen the warning orders from Moscow. We’ve only got two more days to train here before the whole regiment deploys to Bryansk. And I don’t buy any of the nonsense about this being just a so-called emergency readiness exercise.”
The Su-34 squadron commander looked seriously at his subordinate. “Remember, if we do wind up carrying out this air strike on Kiev, there won’t be any room for serious mistakes or miscalculations. There won’t be any second chances if we screw up during the real mission. We’d better be damned ready, or we’re going to end up dead.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Russian President Viktor Dudarev maintained his private office in the central section of the triangular, yellow-and-white Senate building. In sharp contrast to the incredibly ornate ceremonial audience chambers that were scattered throughout the other Kremlin palaces, this small, rectangular room was furnished simply and practicallv, with only a few touches of classical elegance.
The elaborate coat of arms of the Russian Federation hung on the wall behind Dudarev’s malachite-topped desk. Two flags flanked the desk ?on the left, Russia’s white, blue, and red national banner, and on the right, the more intricate and colorful Presidential Standard. These banners were the only traces of bright color in the entire office, which was otherwise marked by dark oak paneling, a high molded ceiling painted in muted yellows and eggshell whites, and the faded green, red, and ochre geometric designs of a centuries-old Astrakhan rug. Along the interior walls stood bookcases filled with rare volumes and up-to-date reference works. Between the room’s two windows stood a long oak table surrounded by straight-backed chairs.
Konstantin Malkovic occupied one of those chairs. He glanced across the table at Dudarev and then quickly at the stocky, gray-haired man seated next to the Russian president. The Serbian-born billionaire hid a frown. The unexpected presence of Alexei Ivanov, the dour head of the FSB’s Thirteenth Directorate, at this critical meeting disturbed him.
He sensed the same uneasy mood in the man sitting on his own right, Erich Brandt. Before they arrived at the Kremlin, the former Stasi officer had notified him that Ivanov was likely to make trouble for them over HYDRA’s unfortunate security lapses. Studying the Russian spy chiefs sternly impassive face, Malkovic decided Brandt was probably correct. Something about Ivanov’s hooded look reminded him of a big cat?a tiger or a leopard ?lazily eyeing those whom it considered potential prey.
