hundreds of yards wide.
And when it exploded now, in the midst of the fourth formation of MiG-23 attackers, all four fighter-bombers simply, instantly ceased to exist.
“My God,” Patrick breathed. He had seen the effects of the plasma-yield warhead many times — he was the first use one in test launches over the Pacific — but it still never failed to astound him. It was a totally fearsome weapon. The plasma-yield detonation had taken out not just the fourth formation of MiGs but several of the single- ship bombers as well. “I see two formations and eight stragglers,” he said.
“Keep coming south, sir,” Rebecca Furness said, and at that moment Patrick saw another Lancelot missile heading north toward the Russian planes. Her second Lancelot missile malfunctioned and failed to detonate, but a Lancelot fired from one of her wingmen destroyed another complete formation. By then the sixth formation of MiG- 23s and all of the surviving single-ship aircraft were heading west, toward Petropavlovsk Naval Air Base on the Kamchatka Peninsula, their intended recovery base.
“Good shooting, Rebecca,” Patrick radioed. “Looks like they’re on the run.”
“Thanks, boss,” Rebecca said. “We’ll stay on patrol while you guys land and reload.”
“I’ll send the Dragon down to have the laser looked at,” Patrick said, “but we’re not going to land. I’m going to air-refuel the rest of the package and press on.”
“But you were ordered to land, boss.”
“And I fully intended to comply — until Gryzlov tried a sneak attack on Eareckson,” Patrick said. “Our mission is back on. I’m going to take the fight to Gryzlov and make him negotiate — with the barrel of a gun pointed right in his face.”
President Anatoliy Gryzlov, seated in the center of a raised row of seats behind Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Stepashin and his senior aides, could immediately see that something had happened. The staff officers with the headsets listening to reports had suddenly stiffened, then looked furtively at Stepashin, then quickly turned away before they were noticed; the technicians working on the grease boards froze, looked at their symbols with angst, then stepped away from the boards as if unsure what to do. “What has happened, General?” he asked.
“I…er, reports are still coming in, sir,” Stepashin stammered.
“Damn it, Stepashin,
“One of our flight leaders of the Shemya attack force reports that he has lost contact with…with all of the other flight leaders,” Stepashin said. “Flight Six is leading his group plus five stragglers back to their poststrike base at Petropavlovsk.”
“One flight plus five…
“Our flight leader said they were intercepted by air-defense aircraft firing air-to-air missiles, some with nuclear warheads,” Stepashin said.
Gryzlov was about to continue his tirade but stopped short. “Nuclear weapons? I don’t think so,” he said. He shook his head, thought for a moment, then nodded knowingly. “No, I think what the squadron encountered was McLanahan’s attack force of Megafortresses and Vampires and his other high-tech aircraft. It was just plain bad luck, Nikolai. Either McLanahan’s forces were deploying to Eareckson or President Thorn really did order those planes to return to Eareckson, and McLanahan was obeying his order — rather uncharacteristic of him. They may have even used one of their plasma-yield weapons when they found they were in danger of being overrun — one detonation could have easily destroyed a close formation of MiGs.”
The Russian president shook his head, and Stepashin was surprised to see a smile creep across his face. He lit up a cigarette, the same crocodile smile still on his face, although his voice was now seething with anger. “You know what else, Stepashin? We will never get a phone call from Thomas Thorn. He will never accuse us of breaking the agreement or even acknowledge that anything untoward happened. If he didn’t realize it before — and I’m positive he was sincere when he said he would recall McLanahan’s forces in the interest of peace — he knows it now: The fight is on.”
“What do you want to do, sir?” Stepashin asked.
“McLanahan will come now — no doubt about it,” Gryzlov said. “It could happen at any time. Start a watch from the last report from our MiG bombers, set aside enough time for McLanahan to refuel those forces at Eareckson and rearm the ones that expended weapons, and then compute flight time to Vladivostok, Petropavlovsk, Kavaznya, or Anadyr — that is how long you have to get your air-defense forces in place. Whatever he has in mind, he’ll come, and he will come hard and fast.”
9
The direct-line phone was one of those hot-line connections that would ring continuously until answered, which meant that the call was from headquarters. The sector commander fairly lunged for the phone, snatching it up as fast as he could; he didn’t even bother to say anything as he did, because he knew that the caller would start the conversation right away.
“Report, Major,” the voice of the regional air defense commander said over the secure line from his office at the Far East Military District Air Defense Headquarters at Petropavlovsk Naval Base on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
“Target S-3 is still heading three-zero-zero true, altitude twelve thousand meters, speed five-seven-nine kilometers per hour, no evasive maneuvers, sir,” the sector commander responded. He had reported the contact moments after it appeared, so he knew that headquarters had been alerted — and no doubt the air-defense commander of Pacific Fleet, based at Vladivostok, would be listening in, too. “No reply to our warning broadcasts.”
“Any jamming signals?”
“None, sir.”
There was a long pause. The regional commander knew exactly what air-defense assets he had and their capabilities — undoubtedly he was going over this engagement in his head right now:
Primary among Petropavlovsk’s defenses was the Antey S-300V1 surface-to-air missile system, the world’s best long-range antiaircraft missile system. An entire S-300 brigade was situated at Petropavlovsk, one of Russia’s largest and most important Pacific naval and air bases, with almost two hundred antiaircraft and anti-ballistic- missile rounds deployed between six launcher sites around the sprawling base complex on the southeast corner of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Normally, the S-300 missiles had a nominal range of only one hundred kilometers, but against slow, high-altitude, nonmaneuvering targets such as this one, they had a maximum effective range of almost double that — the unidentified aircraft was already within the S-300’s lethal range.
It was not the only missile site on the Bering Sea. Another S-300 brigade was stationed at Ust’-Kamcatsk, three hundred kilometers to the north; another at Ossora; and yet another at Kavaznya, the site of Russia’s newest long-range anti-ballistic-missile laser system, still several years from completion but proceeding despite the country’s financial woes. Kavaznya was being rebuilt on the site of an old Soviet research facility that was suddenly and mysteriously destroyed in the late 1980s, before the fall of the USSR. The official explanation was that the original site was destroyed when an earthquake ruptured the containment building of the nuclear plant there, causing a catastrophic explosion.
