Plan of Attack

accuracy.

“Good hit…second missile missed,” Luger reported. “India-band radar down. Echo-band radar still locked on in target-tracking mode, but I think he’s locked on to the StealthHawk. We’re changing your course to bring you closer to the patrol boat and keep you away from the destroyer.”

“You’re sure making this exciting, Dave,” Hal Briggs deadpanned.

“The missiles on the patrol boat have a fairly short range and are only infrared-guided,” Luger said. “We’ll keep you out of range of those. We’re just trying to stay away from that destroyer and keep you out of range of that seventy-six-millimeter job in case they have—” Suddenly Hal Briggs could see the horizon illuminate with several spectacular flashes of light. “Optronic guidance,” he finished.

“Lost track of the StealthHawk,” Whitley reported. “Looks like we lost her. The patrol boat is turning — man, that thing is fast! At this range they can keep us in front of them easily.”

“Commit the second StealthHawk,” Luger said.

“Roger…target designated.” The sky lit up with more gun blasts for several seconds, but soon Hal could see two streaks of light from the sky down to the sea. A fraction of a second later, he saw a tremendous burst of light and a brief flicker of flame on the horizon. “Air-search radar is down,” Whitley reported. “Looks like we slowed him up a bit.”

“I’d say you started a little bonfire on his decks,” Briggs said. Even from his range, he could see flickers of light rippling across the sea. “I love those StealthHawk things, guys. Every kid should own one.”

Whitley managed to keep the Condor away from all other patrol boats; the destroyer stopped its pursuit to assist the smaller patrol boat fight its deck fire, so they avoided that threat as well. Fighters were vectored into the area to search for the unidentified attackers, but both the Condor and the StealthHawk were too small to be detected, and all it took was minor course corrections to keep them clear of the pursuing fighters.

Ninety minutes after passing the Kamchatka Peninsula, the tiny Condor jet crossed the coast of Siberia and headed inland. Twenty minutes later they crossed the Dzhugdzhur Mountains along the eastern coast of Siberia and finally left the warnings of the Magadan and Petropavlovsk surveillance radars behind — only to be replaced by warning messages for the Yakutsk surveillance radar. Unlike the rugged, volcanic terrain of the coastline and the Kamchatka Peninsula, the terrain here was rapidly smoothing out to flat, seemingly endless tundra, interspersed with sections of marshy swamps, gravelly kharst, and peat bogs — in short, there was no longer anywhere to hide. It seemed as if they could see forever — but if they could see forever, the enemy could certainly see them.

“Man, oh, man,” Hal Briggs said after studying the terrain map on his multifunction displays, “if this ain’t the end of the fuckin’ world, you can sure as hell see it from here.” But every twelve seconds — the time it took for a radar antenna to make one complete revolution — they were reminded of what lay ahead: the threat-warning receiver announcing, “Caution, early-warning and fighter-intercept radar, twelve o’clock, three hundred miles…Caution, early warning and fighter-intercept radar, two hundred ninety-nine miles….”

“Shaddup already,” Briggs said, flipping a switch to silence the threat-warning voice.

Ryazan’ Alternate Military Command Center,

Russian Federation

A short time later

From his decades as an air forces commander, from lowly lieutenant to general, Anatoliy Gryzlov could pick up on the slightest change in noise, tempo, or state of alert of the personnel in his command centers. The changes were incredibly subtle — but enough to awaken him with a start from a deep sleep and catapult him out of his seat. He had been catnapping in his small battle-staff meeting room, but even after less than an hour of sleep, he was wide-awake and on the move. He stormed through the office door and into the main battle-staff area. “What has happened, Stepashin?” he shouted.

“Several air-defense units engaging unidentified hostile aircraft, sir,” Stepashin said. He stepped quickly over to the wall chart. “Fighter wings based at both Petropavlovsk and Anadyr report some losses, and one naval unit in the Sea of Okhotsk was attacked by antiradar weapons.”

Gryzlov had grabbed a long measuring plotter and was running it across some lines drawn on the chart. He pointed gleefully at one of the time markers. “I told you, Nikolai — right dead on schedule,” he said. “McLanahan is so punctual that you can set your watch by him.”

“Sir, all of the fighters reported very small contacts,” Stepashin said. “If McLanahan was coming with bombers…?”

“No bombers — not yet,” Gryzlov said confidently. “These are StealthHawks — unmanned attack aircraft. They can launch missiles, but their primary function is reconnaissance. I told you to pass the word along, Nikolai— use no radars, or they’ll be destroyed by stealth aircraft. The StealthHawks are launched by Megafortresses and Vampires, but McLanahan is not ready to send in his heavy jets — not yet, but soon. They were probably launched by unmanned aircraft.”

He pointed at the lines drawn to several bases in southern Siberia. “He is right on time, Nikolai, so get your men ready,” he said, a sparkle in his eyes showing his excitement at the chase. “The next warning we get will be the main force of bombers trying to penetrate our air defenses. Petropavlovsk may pick up the first wave, but more likely it’ll be the terminal defenses around Anadyr again, Blagoveshchensk, Vladivostok, Sakhalin Island, or Magadan that will get the first indication of an attack.

“You must swarm all over any sensor contact you have and launch every missile possible at it, and keep firing until it goes down or until your crews run out of missiles,” Gryzlov said, stabbing at Stepashin with his cigarette. “We can achieve a stalemate or even a victory if we are successful in shooting down one transport or stealth aircraft — just one! Once the Americans realize they are not invulnerable to attack, they will quickly come back to the bargaining table.”

Yakutsk, Siberia, Russian Federation

Several hours later

There was no sweeter sight in the entire world than when you broke out of a thick, angry overcast and saw the landing strip, especially through sheets of almost frozen rain pelting the windscreen. The pilot of the Russian Federation air force’s Ilyushin-78 aerial-refueling tanker breathed a sigh of relief that he was sure could be heard throughout his large, noisy aircraft. “Kalyosa, nizhniy,” he ordered, and the copilot grasped the large landing-gear lever, squeezed the unlock trigger, and lowered the lever. “Flaps to thirty. Ignition switches on.” He reduced power and aimed for the end of the runway as the copilot flipped his plastic-covered checklist pages to the “Aborted Landing” section, ready to read to the pilot in case a go-around was required. But it didn’t look as if it would be needed. The winds were right down the runway, and although the rain was falling pretty hard, restricting visibility, he had this landing nailed. “Unit Three-four-four, field in sight.”

“Unit Four-four, cleared to land, winds three-five-zero at eighteen gusting to twenty-two knots.” The pilot looked through the whipping rain and saw the steady green light from the tower cab, a visual indication that he was cleared to land.

“Acknowledged, cleared to land,” the pilot repeated. The young, easily excitable copilot looked immensely relieved — this had been one hell of a past couple days. It wasn’t just the attack against the United States that made it so amazing — the pilot still wasn’t convinced that that had been a wise move, but he had to give General Gryzlov credit for daring to twist the tiger’s tail like that.

No, not just to twist the tiger’s tail — to rip off the tiger’s legs and beat him with them!

What was really astonishing was the rapid and generational transformation of the Russian military, especially its air forces. No longer would Russia’s military strength rest with its ground and naval forces. The air forces had metamorphosed from a mere transportation-and-support group to a global, rapid-response, precision-striking force. Never before had the air forces been decisive in any battle — this was the first complete victory, and certainly not the last.

Yakutsk Air Base was the prototype of that incredible transformation. In the past, Russia had relied on enormous aircraft and many immense bases located throughout its vast territory to fuel its strike aircraft. Most of the bases east of the Urals had been abandoned, since most military leaders thought that the wastelands of Siberia represented more of an obstacle to be avoided or overflown rather than a target of conquest.

No longer. Aerial-refueling tankers ruled Siberia, and tankers led the way in this war against America and would lead the way for decades to come. With the fleet of late-model tankers Russia was developing, like this Ilyishin-78, the entire globe was truly within reach. There were a few bombers and fighters stationed at Yakutsk, as