heading fast in your direction. Shut off all your exterior lights. Get out of there
The first officer’s face looked as white as a ghost’s. “What do we do?” he cried.
“We turn,” the captain said, flipping on the switch for the seat belt warning sign. “Shut off all the damn lights — cabin lights, too. Notify President Martindale and Deputy Secretary Hershel that we might be under attack.” As if that’s going to do any good, he thought grimly.
He banked hard right and started a descent. Seconds later the intercom beeped — he knew that his steep turn and sudden descent were going to unseat and maybe even hurt a lot of the VIPs, and they would be screaming to the flight attendants to find out what had happened — and, no doubt, to demand his head on a platter.
That was okay. He would be happy to take the heat as long as they survived this encounter. “Get on oxygen,” he ordered the first officer. “Read me the emergency-descent and defensive-maneuvering procedures checklist.”
“SAM Flight One-eight-zero,” the first voice in broken English radioed on the bogus UHF frequency, “we show you in a left turn and in a steep descent. Is there a problem? Turn left direct Krasnovodsk as ordered.”
“Don’t answer him,” the captain ordered. The first officer was fumbling to put on his quick-don oxygen mask, a procedure that usually took less than two seconds. He’d never seen any grown man so scared before — and hoped
“Flight One-eight-zero, turn left immediately and level off. You are not cleared to descend yet.” The captain only pushed harder, increasing the descent rate. “Flight One-eight-zero, acknowledge. Do you read me?”
“Turn off the transponder,” the captain ordered. The first officer complied with shaking fingers. Only a “primary target,” their radar skin-paint, would appear on the controller’s radarscopes now.
All of the flight attendants’ station intercoms were beeping; small articles were floating around in the negative Gs as they quickly descended. “What do we do?” the first officer bleated. “What’s going on?”
“Ignore them. We’re diverting to Baku. Call it up on the FMS and give me a heading.”
Just then they heard, “Attention all aircraft, attention all aircraft, an air defense emergency has been declared. All aircraft are ordered to level off, decrease airspeed, and lower their landing gear immediately, or you will be considered a hostile enemy intruder. Repeat, level off, decrease airspeed, and lower your landing gear immediately. This is your final warning.”
The voice was coming over the assigned UHF frequency — in English. It was the same voice who’d been calling himself the Ashkhabad air-traffic controller.
“Full countermeasures!” the captain ordered. The C-32A had a suite of decoys and first-generation electronic trackbreakers to help defend the aircraft, but he knew they were strap-down, last-ditch gadgets only. The C-32 was unarmed and still virtually defenseless.
“SAM One-eight-zero, high-speed traffic at your seven o’clock, low, forty kilometers and closing fast.”
The captain turned left twenty degrees, trying to keep the newcomer from getting a clear look at their engine exhausts — if he locked on to their hot exhausts, they wouldn’t stand a chance. The sons of bitches… who the hell attacks unarmed aircraft?
“SAM One-eight-zero, target maneuvering, six o’clock, thirty kilometers and closing, almost at your altitude… SAM One-eight-zero, be advised, my radar is being jammed. Switching frequencies… Negative, negative, all frequencies showing heavy false target jamming. I am now painting multiple targets on my scope. I cannot provide further vectors. I cannot tell which is the real target. I am sorry, sir.”
The captain squeezed the mike button: “Ashkhabad Control?”
“Go ahead, SAM One-eight-zero.”
The captain looked at the first officer, gulped, then said, “Tell my wife I love her.”
“Roger, Sam One-eight-zero,” he heard through the growing static and squealing of the enemy’s jammers. “I’ll do it. God be with you.”
The Russian Federation’s MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter that had launched from Krasnovodsk Airfield several minutes earlier did so using light signals sent from a ramp supervisor’s vehicle instead of receiving radio signals from the control tower. It made no radio broadcasts and did not use its air-traffic-control transponder or encrypted identification beacons. It did not even use any external lights. Because the fighter carried no external fuel tanks — unusual for any Russian interceptor — and only two R-73 heat-seeking air-to-air missiles, it climbed quickly into the cold night air, reaching fourteen thousand meters’ altitude in less than three minutes.
The American aircraft was maneuvering, but it was a lumbering pig compared to the high-speed maneuverability of the MiG-29, and the pilot was able to get a solid infrared target lock-on inside thirty kilometers’ range — he never activated his attack radar at all. The R-73s were Russia’s most advanced heat-seeking missiles: highly maneuverable, able to be aimed by a helmet-mounted sight and launched from extremely high offset angles. They had over four times the range and twice the warhead size of any other heat-seeking missiles in the Russian arsenal.
The Russian pilot’s orders were specific: Kill this aircraft without appearing to attack it. He knew that Baku Radar Control would be tracking him and listening for any hint of weapon or radar lock-on, so he had to do this approach carefully. The R-73 was the perfect weapon for the job.
As ordered, the MiG-29 pilot flew behind the American aircraft, never pointing the fighter’s nose directly at it, never locking his attack radar on him or even turning it on. Using his helmet-mounted sight, the MiG pilot locked the R-73 missile’s supercooled seeker head on target when the American was over twenty-five kilometers distant and far off to the left — the MiG-29 was actually flying
Because he had never used his attack radar and therefore didn’t know the exact range to the target, the attack computer couldn’t give him a “time to die” countdown. The MiG pilot started to count to himself, estimating perhaps twenty seconds maximum missile flight time for the first missile. He pulled back the throttle and engaged the autopilot, then loosened his shoulder harness so he could look behind him. Even at well over thirty kilometers, he reckoned, he should be able to see the kill.
Sure enough, he saw a very bright flash of light off in the distance, followed by another seconds later. It was much quicker than twenty seconds, but he wasn’t exactly sure of his counting.
Good hit.
The pilot turned to the north slightly so he could watch for any sign of an explosion. He expected to see another burst of fire, followed by a trail of fire as the target went down. Any second now…
Seven
“Attack target one.”
“Laser attack missile,” Major Frankie Tarantino responded.
