Plan of Attack

But local Eskimo and Aleut folklore claimed that the laser facility was destroyed by an American air raid using, of all things, a lone 1960s-era B-52 bomber. No one believed that outlandish story, even though the rumors still persisted after almost two decades.

But it didn’t matter right now, because Moscow had ordered that the fighters, rather than the long-range surface-to-air missiles, handle any intruders. A squadron each of MiG-27 and MiG-29 fighters had been deployed to Petropavlovsk since the initiation of hostilities less than two days ago. Four flights of four fighters were assigned a wedge of airspace about four hundred kilometers long. One fighter was airborne continuously; the others would launch as necessary, usually one more fighter upon radar contact by the first fighter and the last two if multiple targets were detected. Two full flights were held in reserve, but in this deployment no one was considered off duty — all air and ground crews were either on crew rest, ready to be called up, or ready to respond. Other air-defense units were based at Magadan and Anadyr and could be called into service if any intruders made it past the outer defenses.

Petropavlovsk also had a squadron of twelve Tu-142 long-range maritime-reconnaissance planes — upgraded Tu-95 Bear bombers designated for antiship, antisubmarine, long-range sea patrol, and electronic-warfare duties. Six bombers were flying at all times on thousand-kilometer-long patrol legs. The bombers had already attacked two vessels, assumed to be intelligence-gathering ships, that refused to turn away from Petropavlovsk.

Yes, the ships had been in international waters — but this was war. They obeyed orders or suffered the consequences. It was the same with this newcomer, the sector commander thought. He was either a hostile or an idiot if he kept on cruising closer to one of Russia’s most important bases. Whichever was the case, he had to die: If he was hostile, he had to be stopped before he attacked; if he was an idiot, he had to be killed before he was allowed to breed.

The Pacific Fleet was one of the most powerful of the Russian navy’s arms, with almost two hundred surface ships, strategic ballistic-missile submarines, and nuclear and nonnuclear attack submarines. Whatever targets the fighters could not get, the SAMs and sea-based antiaircraft units would. But the fighters would not miss.

“Am I clear to engage unidentified aircraft, sir?” the sector commander asked. Even though Russia was excluding aircraft and vessels out to three kilometers, this newcomer had already made it in to two-fifty. The range of the American conventional air-launched cruise missile was over eight hundred kilometers, and the nuclear-armed version was well over four thousand kilometers, so if it was a warplane armed with either weapon, it would have already attacked. The Americans’ next most powerful air-launched weapons — the air force’s AGM-142 TV-guided rocket-powered bomb and their navy’s turbojet-powered Short-range Land Attack Missile-Extended Range — both had a maximum range of about two hundred kilometers, so this unidentified aircraft had to be stopped before it got within range of those two weapons.

“Authorized,” the regional commander said. “Get your fighters airborne, and destroy any target immediately, from long range.”

The surveillance radar at Petropavlovsk had a range of well over five hundred kilometers, and the unidentified aircraft had been spotted cruising in at high altitude at just over four hundred kilometers. The MiGs accelerated to Mach 2. They didn’t need their radars yet — they were receiving datalinked signals from Petropavlovsk showing them exactly where the enemy aircraft were, and once they were within missile range, they could attack without ever revealing themselves. Textbook engagement so far.

But Moscow said they would not be alone: The Americans had stealth aircraft up here, and the word from air force headquarters was that some of them could launch air-to-air missiles. The best tactic, Moscow said, was to rush any aircraft that was detected at high speed with as many fighters as possible, engage at maximum range, get away from the area right after missile launch using full countermeasures, then reengage from a completely different axis of attack.

They had also switched missiles along with changing procedures: Instead of four short-range heat seekers and two semiactive radar missiles, they now carried four long-range R-77 radar-guided missiles, plus two extra fuel tanks. These advanced weapons had their own radars that could lock on to targets as far as thirty kilometers away. This meant that the MiG-29s could simply designate targets, let the missiles fly, then maneuver and escape — they no longer needed to keep the fighter’s radar locked on to the target all the way to impact.

They had only a limited number of the expensive R-77s at Petropavlovsk — more had been sent to air- defense bases in the west and to fighters deployed to active bomber bases at Ulan-Ude, Blagoveshchensk, and Bratsk — but air-defense command had ordered every one of them loaded and sent aloft right away. This was obviously no time to hold back. Every enemy aircraft downed meant that the chances of America’s mounting any sort of counteroffensive against Russia in the far east were slimmer and slimmer.

“Tashnit Two-one, this is Detskaya,” the radar controller said, “initial vector thirty right, your target is one- two-zero K, low, cleared to engage. Acknowledge.”

“Two-one acknowledges cleared to engage,” the lead fighter pilot responded. Flying at well over the speed of sound, the two advanced Russian interceptors from Petropavlovsk closed in on their target rapidly. They already had their orders: no visual identification, no standard ICAO intercept procedure, no warning shots, no radio calls. All Russian air traffic had already been ordered to clear out of more than one hundred thousand cubic kilometers of airspace over the Sea of Okhotsk, the Bering Sea, and the Kamchatka Peninsula — anyone else up here was an enemy, and he was going to down them without any warning whatsoever.

“Da, Detskaya. Ya ponimayu.”

“What is your state, Two-one?”

“Base plus two, control,” the pilot responded. That meant he had forty minutes of fuel remaining, plus one hour of reserve fuel that was inviolate — because the closest emergency-abort base, Magadan, was about an hour’s flight time away.

“Acknowledged. I will launch Two-two. Continue your approach to the target, Two-one.”

“Acknowledged.”

They had just passed within one hundred kilometers of the target. No sign of any other players up here yet, but they had to be up here — the Americans would not send an aircraft into the teeth of the Russian air defenses like this without having another plane ready to sneak past. Maybe it was a decoy? Whatever it was, it was making a large and very inviting target for the MiGs. Just over forty seconds and they could engage from maximum range.

At that moment the radar controller reported, “Sir, target turning south…Continuing his turn, looks like he’s turning around.”

“Too late, aslayop,” the sector commander said under his breath. “I still want him to go down. Have Two-one continue his attack.”

“Acknowledged, sir.” But a few moments later: “Sir, the target is off our scope! Radar contact lost!”

“Lost?” The sector commander could feel the first prickles of panic under his collar. “How could you lose such a big contact less than one hundred and fifty kilometers out? Did he descend? Is he jamming you?”

“Negative, sir,” the controller replied. “Just a weak radar return.”

Shit, shit, shit…The commander fumbled for the mike button on his headphones: “Two-one, control, are you tied on yet?”

“Negative, control,” the MiG pilot responded. “I was expecting to pick him up any second now.”

“We have lost contact,” the commander said. “Advise when you have him either on radar or IRSTS.” The Infrared Search and Track System on the MiG-29 was a very accurate and reliable heat-seeking sensor that could detect and track the hot dots of large engine exhausts at ranges out to two hundred kilometers away — it was so accurate that it was used to guide active air-to-air missiles close enough to their targets so they could lock on with their terminal-guidance radars. This unknown target was flying away from the MiG — its hot engines should show up clearly on IRSTS.

“Status, Captain?” the regional commander radioed once again.

Better to confess right away, he thought: “Sir, the target has disappeared from our scopes,” he replied. “The target turned away from shore and was flying away from the interceptors. The target was beyond the radar’s optimal range, and we did have some weather recently — a slight heading change and a little frozen moisture in the air could easily cause him to drop off our screens.”

“I don’t need excuses, Captain — I need a visual ID on that aircraft, or I need him crashing into the Bering Sea,” his commander told him. “The interceptor should be using his infrared sensor to track him.”