“Ma’am, the first shots have already been fired,” Freeman said. “This is a response to Russian aggression. We wouldn’t allow this fleet within three hundred miles of the American coast, yet they’re less than sixty miles from the Turkish coast.”
“General, I think the First Lady is right,” the President said. “Is there any way we can work it to make our involvement purely defensive in nature? Let’s let the Turks and the Ukrainians call the shots on this one.”
Freeman shook his head in obvious frustration. Christ, how I loathe both of them. He took a deep breath and replied, “Sir, I understand your concern, but that’s not the way we should operate. Our primary concern is the safety of our crews, and sending them against a hostile force with orders to fire only when fired upon is wrong and outdated thinking. If we launch those Vampire bombers, they should go in fighting.”
“This is not between America and Russia, General,” the First Lady informed him as if he were just too thick to understand real policies. “This is between Russia and the Ukraine. Turkey was an innocent bystander — President Velichko said the attack on the Turkish ships was wrong, and I believe him. If we attack Russian ships without provocation, we’ll be drawn into this war, and it’ll be your fault.” She crossed her arms and affixed him with a stare, just daring him to challenge her.
Freeman felt like raising his hands in utter surrender — his words were being deflected away from the President like bullets off cold steel. “Sir, I have a plan for your review,” he said finally. “It meets your criteria for defensive action and support for our allies.” He hesitated, knowing he shouldn’t make any concessions to the First Lady when it came to his troops in the field, but said, “We may be able to adjust the rules of engagement to allow only nonthreatening surveillance actions by our crews, but I—”
“I think that’s a wise idea, General,” the First Lady said pointedly.
THIRTY-FIVE
Rebecca Furness and Mark Fogelman were flying at ten thousand feet over the rugged coastal mountains surrounding the Marmara Sea near the city of Yalova. It was after two A.M. in Turkey, and the night was overcast and very cold — Rebecca could see a light dusting of frost on the leading edge of the wings and hoped the icing wouldn’t get too bad. They had barely reached the Marmara Sea, the body of water between the Dardanelles and the Bosporus Strait in western Turkey, when the TEREC (Tactical Electronic Reconnaissance) sensor system and radar threat indicator came to life. “Naval search radar, one o’clock,” Mark Fogelman reported. “Analyzing … I’ve got an S-band naval search radar, probably a Head Net or Top Steer radar. That must be the cruiser we’re picking … nope, wait, now I got two S-band radars, one farther north. The closer one must be the destroyer and the farther one must be the cruiser.”
“Copy that, Mark,” Rebecca Furness acknowledged. “Let me see the satellite photos again.”
Fogelman gave Furness a small binder with satellite photos of Russian warships stationed off the coast of Turkey, delivered electronically just a few hours earlier. There were actually two groups of warships directly off Turkey’s northern coast in the Black Sea: a guided-missile cruiser task force, led by the cruiser Marshal Ustinov, with two guided-missile destroyers and two light frigates escorting it. Farther east, halfway between the Crimean Peninsula and Turkey, was an aviation cruiser task force, spearheaded by the carrier Novorossiysk, which carried missile and antisubmarine-warfare helicopters and several Yak-38 Forger vertical takeoff and landing fighters. The Novorossiysk battle group was escorted by two guided-missile destroyers and four frigates with powerful air search radars. Antisubmarine sonars patrolled the waters between the two groups, making sure nothing sneaked in between the two powerful Russian battle groups.
“Thunder One-One flight, use caution for Russian patrol vessels at your twelve o’clock, one hundred miles,” the air traffic controller at Istanbul Air Control Center told them. “They have requested that aircraft be vectored at least sixty miles around them.”
“Roger, copy, Istanbul,” Furness acknowledged. On interphone she remarked, “The magic number: sixty miles. Ten miles outside range of our radar reconnaissance pod.”
“And just outside maximum range of the cruiser’s SA-N-6 missile system,” Fogelman added, copying the details of that call down on his kneeboard. “I’m going to transmit and see if I can pick ’em up. Radar’s going to transmit.” He switched on the attack radar, set the range to one hundred and twenty miles, and turned the tilt down. “Bingo. Radar contact, three vessels, about one hundred miles north of our position and about eighty miles offshore, due north of Istanbul.” He hit the manual video button on the attack radar, which recorded the radar’s video image on tape for later analysis. “Can’t break out individual ships yet — there’s supposed to be five ships in that group, but I only see three so far. Not picking up any jamming yet. Going to ‘standby.’ “ He flicked the mode switch to STANDBY, which kept the system warmed up but did not allow any transmissions that the ships could use to home in an antiradar missile.
“Okay, the cruiser is supposed to have an SA-N-6B Grumble missile system, and we’ll be within range of that in about two minutes,” Fogelman said, reading from the order-of-battle card given to them by NATO intelligence officers back at Kayseri. “The next system is an SA-N-3B Goblet system. The destroyer has an SA-N-7 Gadfly missile system good out about twenty miles, and that’ll be our primary threat.”
“That and fighters,” Furness reminded him. “We’ll be under constant radar contact from that cruiser, so fighters will be under full radar control — and as long as they’re over water, they’ll have the balls to come down and get us. We gotta stay sharp.”
“Bingo,” Fogelman called out. “TEREC picked up a strong data-link signal, looks like a Pincer Chord microwave steering signal. Nothing on the RHAWS scope yet, but they don’t need a fighter radar if they got naval. Now I’m picking up a search radar at one to two o’clock. That must be the AWACS plane.” The Novorossiysk battle group was stationed directly under the loitering area of an A-50 “Mainstay” airborne early warning and control radar plane which had been detected flying over the central Black Sea. From its position, it could see the entire Black Sea and detect the approach of any aircraft from sea level to forty thousand feet.
“Well, we can assume we’re busted,” Furness said grimly. “Let’s hope we can convince them we’re just taking pictures.” On the scrambled HAVE QUICK FM interplane frequency, she radioed, “Okay, guys, we’re feet-wet and moving in. Stay as tight as you can.”
Two clicks of the microphone was the only acknowledgment from Thunder One-Two, Furness’ wingman, manned by Paula Norton and her temporary navigator, Curt Aldridge. Of course, the two RF-111Gs were prepared in case the Russians didn’t buy that argument. Furness’ RF-111G carried four AGM-88C HARM antiradar missiles and two AIM-9P-3 Sidewinder missiles under the wings, along with the TEREC electronic reconnaissance pallet in the bomb bay.
Norton’s aircraft was configured completely differently. She carried an AN/ALQ-131 electronic countermeasures jamming pod mounted between the ventral fins in the rear of the jet and a total of twelve ADM-141 TALD (Tactical Air-Launched Decoy) gliders mounted on pylons under each wing. The TALDs were small four-hundred-pound unpowered gliders resembling small cruise missiles, with small wings that pop out after release. The TALDs carried chaff dispensers, radar reflectors, tiny radar transmitters, and heat emitters that would make the eight-foot-long missiles look like slow-moving attack aircraft to a weapons officer or fire control officer. Two more two-ship RF-111G Vampire hunter-killer formations — half the Vampires deployed to Turkey — had been launched that night to probe the boundaries of the Russian Fleet stationed not far from Turkey’s shores and to take an indirect part in the first counterattack by the Ukrainian Air Force against their Russian invaders.