“Black Leader, this is Bastion One-one-seven” sounded in his headset.
“Do you read me? Over.”
“Bastion One-one-seven, Black Leader reads. Go ahead.”
“We are being painted by American radar, almost certainly from their naval AWACS.”
“What about ECM?”
“We have been jamming steadily for fifteen minutes, sir. The Americans have been increasing the power of their scans and at this point are probably burning through our interference. They will not be able to judge our numbers, but they know we are here, and probably where we are going.”
“That does not matter. They will not be concerned with us unless they believe us to be threatening their battle group.”
“Just keep your ears sharp, Yevgenni,” the voice of Captain Oleg Nikiforov added over the tactical channel. “Once they figure out what we’re up to, they will be after us like a cat pouncing on mice.”
“The cats will find they’ve cornered a pack of wolves, Captain,” Ivanov replied, and he heard the others chuckle in response.
As a military pilot, he had a healthy respect for American naval aviators ― the men, anyway; he’d flown with them in the Indian Ocean and against them off Norway and could accept, with some few unspoken reservations, the fact that they were the best in the world. This time around, however, it was going to be different.
There would be no massed attacks against layered American carrier battle group defenses, for one thing. That type of antiquated strategy had been dictated by the old Soviet military command, back when they’d been faced with the problem of how to wage war in the air, on the land, and both on and under the sea against a technologically superior enemy, overcoming them with forces whose only advantage lay in their numbers. No, the first direct attack against the Americans would come only after their battle group had been seriously weakened.
And weakening their forces was precisely the objective of today’s low-level raid.
Ivanov thrilled to the sheer, joyous power of his machine. He was never more alive than when he was in the cockpit of the sleek attack aircraft, peering ahead across the broad, wedge-shaped nose known affectionately to the aircraft’s pilots as utkanos, the duck nose. The Mig27, known as “Flogger-D” in NATO’s code, was a venerable aircraft by now; it had entered service with Frontal Aviation in 1974, and for most of that time had been the mainstay of Soviet air-to-ground attack. Most pilots held a genuine affection for the machine; up until its appearance, odd Mig designation numbers had been reserved for fighters, while even numbers identified attack planes. Like the American F-111, however, an attack plane with the completely inappropriate F-for-fighter designation, the Mig27 carried a somewhat confusing identifier. Pilots who liked the way the plane handled, however, insisted that it was as fast and nimble as most fighters and therefore carried exactly the right ID. Indeed, besides his main armament of air-to-surface missiles, the Mig carried both two AA8 infrared-homing missiles for air-to-air dogfighting, as well as a powerful six-barrel rotary cannon for close-in work. At need, the Mig could play the fighter’s role, though Ivanov knew he would be at a disadvantage if he found himself tangling with American Tomcats or Hornets.
That was what the Mig29s in Bastion were for.
He checked the flight’s position on his terrain-mapping radar. Less than ninety kilometers to go. It was too late for the Americans to stop them now, even if they guessed what their true objective was.
There was still one remaining chance that the attack would be aborted, and it was time now to find out, one way or the other. Reaching down, he dialed his radio frequency selector to the channel assigned for Operations.
“Tower, Tower, this is Black One. How do you read me? Over.”
“Black One, Tower. We read you.”
“Dostoyevsky,” he said, the writer’s name serving as a code informing Operations that the attack group was on course, on time, and ready to proceed with the mission. The reply would be either “Tolstoy,” which would mean abort and return to base, or…
“Chekhov,” the voice said. “I say again, Chekhov.”
“Confirm Chekhov,” he replied. The mission was on! “Proceeding as ordered.”
Switching back to his tactical channel, he contacted the other five aircraft of Black Flight. “The word is Chekhov, men,” he said, and the relief he felt as he said it was almost palpable.
“Excellent!” Piotr called. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time!”
“Radio silence from now on,” he warned. “Vsevaw harashiva y pabeda!”
Good luck, and victory.
The flight of deadly Mig27s arrowed toward the still-invisible coast of Turkey.
“Dog House, Dog House, this is Watch Dog Six-one. Do you copy, over?”
Lieutenant Arnold Brown checked again the sweep of green-white fuzz and blips on his main display screen. There was no doubt about it. Something big ― several somethings, in fact ― were moving out there, over one hundred miles to the southwest.
“Watch Dog, this is Dog House,” the voice of the Operations watch officer replied. “Go ahead.”
“I have a contact, designated Mike One-five, bearing two-zero-five, range one-zero-eight. There is heavy, repeat, heavy ECM, but I believe the contact to be multiple air targets down on the deck.”
“Copy that, Watch Dog. We’ve got your screen up here in front of us now.
How long you been tracking them?”
“Five, maybe six minutes, Dog House. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t picking up waves.”
“Met says the sea’s flat and calm today, Watch Dog, so whatever you have, it’s a hard target. Besides, I doubt that the Ukes are jamming to keep us from seeing waves off the Turkish coast.”
“Ah, roger that.”
Brown puzzled a moment at Ops’ assumption that the targets were Ukrainian. On their current heading, they could have come from either Odessa or Sevastopol; the reciprocal of their course drew a line lying almost directly between those two cities on the map. They could as easily be Russian aircraft as Ukrainian.
The real question, though, was what were they up to? With all of that jamming, it was clear they didn’t want the Americans ― or anybody else, for that matter ― to see what they were up to. They weren’t threatening the CBG. They weren’t anywhere near the battle group. If Brown had been ordered to take a guess, he’d have sworn they were lining up for an attack on the Bosporus. “Watch Dog, Watch Dog, this is Dog House.”
“Dog House, Watch Dog. Go ahead.”
“Hey, Twenty XO is down here, and he wants to know if you think those bogeys are setting up for an attack on Istanbul.”
Brown grinned. Twenty XO meant Commander Grant, the executive officer of CVW20.
“Tell the Coyote that that’s a big-time roger,” he said. “Either Istanbul or the straits themselves would be my guess.”
“Could it be a practice run, Watch Dog?”
“Dog House, there’s no way to tell that until they goddamn launch!”
“Ah, copy that. Wait one, Watch Dog.”
“Whatcha got, Lieutenant?” Lieutenant Commander Jake Garner, Watch Dog Six-one’s commander, asked over the ICS.
“Bogeys on the road to Istanbul, Commander,” he replied. “I’m on the horn to Jeff and they have me on hold.”
“What, the Russkis are attacking Turkey?” Garner asked. “That doesn’t make much sense.”
“Could be a training exercise,” the enlisted radarman at Brown’s side put in. “You know, our subs are always practicing attack runs on friendly ships, just for practice, like.”