he shouted above the combined thunder of the C-141’s engines. “General Riley!”
Riley’s voice was crackling with static; even the most sophisticated electronics were prey to the vicissitudes of solar flare-driven northern atmospherics. “Riley here, General.”
“Colin. I want immediate FAE strikes. Coordinates one six niner zero three…”As Freeman was speaking, the mauvish brown screen display in the NORAD regional combat command at Elmendorf was flashing the status of all aircraft aloft in Alaska Command; the smaller green grids to the right listed, in descending order, weapon status, fighter, reconnaissance, and airlift mission schedules. In front of Riley the duty officer was bringing up the buffer zone signified by the map grids covering the Bering Strait from latitude sixty-six north to sixty-five south. On the five magnification Riley saw the position Freeman had given them for the FAE strike was on a midline running across Ratmanov Island near the eastern cliffs.
“That’s too close to our own men,” he told Freeman.
“Whole island’s too close to our own men, General. I want FAE strikes now. You’ve got — nine minutes.”
“I don’t know whether any—”
“I’m taking full responsibility.”
Riley had to gather spittle to talk, the terrible risk having made his mouth dry. “I know you are, Douglas. What I mean is that it’ll take five minutes or so to load up FAEs. We’ve got nothing up there carrying—”
“Then don’t waste time. Start loading, damn it! I want those airstrikes, Colin. Now!”
Freeman was off the air and relaying orders to Maj. Harold E. Morgan, leader of the Delta Force stick. “Goddamn it! Even from subsonic from Galena it’s less than a minute to Rat Island. What the hell’s the matter with him? All right, now listen, Harry. We’re going to keep circling in this big bird till we see the FAEs. Soon as the flames the down — which won’t be long in this blizzard — you boys go. Don’t bother looking for SAS, they’ll link up with you soon as they can. Go for that exit the Tomcats’ve reported.” He pointed to the circled position on the map. “It wasn’t on the photo recon. Must be one they had up their sleeve.”
“Yes, sir,” said Morgan, knowing what the general had meant by not “looking for SAS.” It wouldn’t only be a waste of time; there might not be many left if the fuel air explosive — the deadlier cousin of napalm — spewed out anywhere near them. In any case, Morgan wasn’t about to judge Freeman for using the tremendously high overpressure created by an FAE to detonate mines so close to his own men. The court of public opinion would put him in the dock soon enough.
“Sir,” said the Starlifter’s pilot, calling out to Freeman. “Elmendorf’s reporting Bogeys rising from East Cape.” It was the Siberian side. “Look like Fulcrums.” The Mikoyan-Gurevich 29-Fs were the piece de resistance of the Siberian air arm. As Major Frank Shirer, now held prisoner by the SPETS, had found out over the Aleutians, the eighteen-thousand-pound thrust of the twin Tumansky R-33Ds-powered Mach 2.8 fighter could put the Fulcrum into a near-vertical climb position, attain a hammerhead stall/tail slide, evade enemy radar, and come out of nowhere with six deadly pylon-mounted Alamo air-to-air missiles and a drum-fed thirty-millimeter machine gun sheathed beneath the left wing.
“Then by God,” said Freeman, “Novosibirsk must be worried to risk their air force. Is Galena intercepting?” Freeman asked the pilot.
“Affirmative. F-18s. And Tomcats—’fingers four’ from
“Good,” commented Freeman.
The Starlifter’s engineer didn’t agree. “Gonna be like the Fourth of July up here.”
No one answered. He was right. And there was the danger of collision with everyone flying on instruments in the bad weather and on radio silence as much as possible; the chances of slamming into someone else were high. Even so, it was nothing compared to the risk the SAS on the ground faced if the pilots, dropping the FAEs, weren’t on the ball.
“You reached anybody down there yet?” shouted Freeman.
“No, sir,” replied the copilot. “Siberians are jamming everything. You’d need land lines to evade that lot.”
Freeman said nothing; he didn’t have to. If the SAS weren’t informed of the impending FAE drops the risk to them was even higher. If the FAEs missed them and he secured the island with Delta Force he’d be a hero, but he knew that while victory would have many parents, defeat would be an orphan — his. The president and the Chiefs of Staff were right — it was his responsibility. It came with a general’s pay.
The SPETS were no longer interested in Shirer. Any information he could give them now was null and void with the SAS trapped and about to be wiped out in the dawn’s early light. Nevertheless, the SPETS resented the American’s stubbornness in refusing to tell them anything but name, rank, and serial number. It transcended all common sense. Everyone broke sooner or later, and if you didn’t, then you outraged your captors’ assumption of omnipotence. The SPETS had orders from Dracheev not to kill the American ace Shirer, and they saw the sense in this, for when the Allied commandos failed to take Ratmanov, Shirer, whose nickname in the Western press was “One-Eyed Jack,” might be useful in a prisoner exchange. Americans were soft — always willing to trade five of yours for one of theirs.
“Last chance,” the SPETS corporal told Shirer, who was tied to a metal chair near the base of one of the ventilator shafts. “Why do they call you a one-eyed Jack?” The corporal’s English was impeccable.
The other SPETS looked at the corporal, switching to Russian. “Why are you asking him that? You know he used to be one of their Air Force One pilots. They wear the black patch on one eye so if there’s a nuclear airburst and everybody else on the plane is blinded, the pilot still has one good eye to fly the instruments. We know that — what the hell are you wasting time for?”
“I didn’t know,” the corporal answered him in Russian. “Bastards think they’re tougher than we are. Need a lesson.”
“So give it to him. But let’s hurry, eh? It’ll soon be twilight. I don’t want to miss out on the fun.”
“You won’t. Here, hold him steady!”
The corporal unslung his AK-47, rested it against the far side of the ventilator, and pinned Shirer’s arms even tighter against the chair.
“That’s it,” said the other SPETS, and took Shirer by the hair, pushing his head back hard on the top of the chair so that Shirer was forced to look up at the heavy, steel-reinforced roof of the ventilator tunnel.
“Look at me!” he commanded Shirer. Shirer, his face contorted by his previous beating and bruised from the scrape against the canopy when he’d ejected, glanced defiantly at the SPETS. He wasn’t going to tell them squat about Air Force One. In one quick movement the SPETS slipped the ballpoint pen from his pocket and drove it into Shirer’s eye.
Shirer was screaming, but the SPETS’ voice was louder, reverberating around the ventilator shaft. “That’s why you’re called one-eyed Jacks.” Grinning, the SPETS looked across at the corporal, who was slinging on the Kalashnikov. “His flying days are over, Comrade.”
“C’mon!” said the corporal impatiently. “You’ll miss the party.”
The “party” had already started in the blizzard over Ratmanov Island as F-18s, their Litton inertial navigation system and Martin Marietta AN/ASQ-173 laser spot tracker and forward-looking infrared giving the Hornets the edge above the blizzard level where the Fulcrums had to pursue them if they wanted to engage. Below, in the blizzard itself, F-15C Eagles on afterburner went into the furball as other MiGs tried to take out the big Starlifter, which was now opening its ramp once more. Freeman, the first man in the Delta Force stick, cinched the straps holding the Winchester 1200 modified riot gun to his pack, its perforated heat shield already frosting under the plastic. Freeman quickly wrapped another layer of waterproof camouflage sheet about it to prevent the four flechette cartridges and the slugging shell in the chamber from getting too cold. If the FAEs did the job properly, he wouldn’t need the flechettes until he got inside the tunnels, but a slugging shell, which could go through an engine block at three hundred yards, might come in handy on the already bomb-rattled rat hole covers.
“General,” Harry Morgan advised him, the major’s voice whipped away by the slipstream, “you’re not supposed to be leading, General.”
“You have any objections, Harry?” Freeman shouted, one hand on the webbing net by the door as they hit unstable air, the other hand busy tightening the oxygen mask before the helmet came down.
