“Thunder One-One flight, warning, you are endangering your aircraft by proceeding in that direction,” the Turkish radar controller said. No shit, Rebecca thought. “What are your intentions?”
“Thunder One-One is due regard,” she replied.
“Understand, One-One,” the controller said. Furness noticed that the air traffic controllers sounded much more official and their English was very good — the civilian controllers must have been replaced by military controllers in critical centers such as Istanbul. A civilian controller might not know that “due regard” meant that a military flight was going off to parts unknown — this controller knew and understood right away. “Cleared to proceed, contact me on this frequency when able.”
For a moment Furness and Fogelman thought he was going to add “Good luck,” but he did not.
“Thunder, go active,” Furness radioed. That was the signal to Norton and Aldridge to take spacing as briefed in mission planning and to go to their briefed radio frequency. “Shut ’em down and button up, Mark,” Furness said on interphone. Fogelman began turning off exterior lights, turning the identification beacons to standby, turning off the Doppler radar, attack radar, and other transmitters, and buckling up their oxygen masks, donning gloves, rolling down sleeves, and lowering the clear visors on their helmets. Fogelman set 243.0, the international UHF emergency frequency, in the primary radio, and the prebriefed AWACS secure voice channel in the secondary radio.
“Thunder, this is Banjo, good evening,” the NATO E-3B AWACS controller said a few moments later. “Fence check, stand by. One-One.”
At that, Fogelman briefly shut off the Mode Four transponder which provided secure identification for the AWACS controller, then turned it back on. “Fence check complete, One-One,” Furness replied. The controller repeated the process for all the Thunder aircraft. They could not hear it, but Turkish and Russian-speaking controllers on the same plane were checking in other aircraft as well.
“One-One flight, push blue,” the controller said. Fogelman switched the radio to the second prebriefed frequency, where one controller would control only their two aircraft. On the new frequency, the controller did not check them in again; he assumed both aircraft had made the jump to the new frequency: “Thunder Flight, you have bandits at two o’clock, high, eighty miles, not paired on you.”
“The destroyer is lit up like a Christmas tree,” Fogelman reported. “S-band search radar, F-band director for the Gadfly missiles, even the X-band for the cannon. They must not be talking to their AWACS or … ah, they’re going radar-silent now. I still see a side lobe from an H-band close-in weapon system radar — they’re ready for cruise missiles.”
“Thunder, range to first target, thirty miles.”
“We’re well inside Grumble missile range, coming up on Goblet range,” Fogelman said. They were still flying north toward the guided-missile cruiser Marshal Ustinov and its escorts, still at ten thousand feet. “Inside Goblet range, still no sign of the F-band. They’re staying cool. Coming up on Gadfly range.”
Then, on the emergency frequency, they heard in English, “Unidentified aircraft fifty miles north of Istanbul heading north, this is the Russian missile destroyer Stoykiy. You are endangering yourself by approaching our vessels. Suggest you turn away immediately and maintain a fifty-kilometer space from our vessels. Suggest an immediate heading of zero-four-five for at least ten minutes. Thank you. Please respond immediately.”
“Gadfly range, now,” Fogelman announced.
“Arm ’em up, Mark,” Furness said. Fogelman had already displayed the weapon status page on the right Multi-Function Display. On his weapons panel, Fogelman turned the weapon status and control switch to ALL and made sure that all four of the AGM-88 HARM legends were highlighted on the right MFD, indicating they were powered up and ready. When he received good READY lights from all four missiles, he depressed the number-three weapon cassette, rotated the weapon select switch to the number-three position, and selected BOMB on the mode switch. On the right-side MFD, only the missile on the number-three pylon indicated ready.
“All weapons check good, number-three missile selected,” Fogelman reported.
Almost at the same time they heard a brief “Pump” on the secure radio. At that, Furness chopped power and began a rapid descent. Thunder One-Two had released two TALD decoys, which would fly straight ahead and begin a slow descent, and they had also begun electronic countermeasures to try to get the Russian radar plane to break lock and lose track of the Vampires. The pod Thunder One-Two carried was designed to jam the Russian AWACS plane, but not the naval search radars — hopefully this would force the ships to turn on their search radars, and hopefully give Furness and Fogelman a chance to kill it. The TALDs were not programmed to fly closer than fifteen miles to any ship and would crash in the ocean someplace far behind the Russian cruiser …
… if they were allowed to continue flying. At that moment, Fogelman cried out, “SA-N-7 up, eleven o’clock!”
“One-One, working Gadfly,” Furness reported on the command radio.
“The Gadfly’s still up … okay, it’s fading, he’s locked on to the decoys,” Fogelman reported, activating the radar altimeter and setting the warning bug for one thousand feet. “You’ve got five thousand to level … two thousand to level … decoy’s been out for thirty seconds … one thousand … five hundred … coming level.” They were now flying at an angle away from the lead Russian destroyer, maintaining a range of about twenty miles — just outside the deadly SA-N-7 Gadfly missile’s range. “My HARM is receiving telemetry, first one will be from the number-three pylon. Go to ‘Attack.’ “
“Thanks, Mark.” Furness set her ISC (Integrated Steering Control) to ATTACK, which would take range information from the TEREC system and give her steering information to the nearest threat.
“Okay, boys, you gonna just watch them go by or—”
Suddenly they saw a bright flash of light off in the distance, and a missile’s motor plume briefly illuminated the profile of a large military vessel — they were twenty miles away, but it seemed close enough to touch. The Russian ship decided not to issue any more warnings — at a range of about seventeen miles, the destroyer Stoykiy opened fire with an SA-N-7 surface-to-air missile. “One-One, Gadfly liftoff,” Furness reported on the AWACS network. Then, on the international emergency frequency, she radioed in the clear, “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, any radio, Thunder One-Zero is under attack. Repeat, we are under attack.” She started a turn to the left to center the steering bars.
“Missile one is locked on,” Fogelman reported.
“Roger.” On the AWACS net, she radioed, “One-One, magnum,” indicating a HARM missile launch to other friendly aircraft, then said on interphone, “Clear to launch. Kill the sucker, Mark.”
Fogelman reached down to his weapons panel, moved the launch switch from OFF to MANUAL, and pressed the pickle button. Immediately the left wing swung up, then stabilized, as the leftmost AGM-88 HARM missile dropped off the number-three pylon. The missile fell for a few seconds as it stabilized itself in the slipstream — which allowed enough time for Furness and Fogelman to close their eyes against the bright glare of the missile’s motor. The HARM’s motor seemed to explode as it started, and an impossibly bright column of fire erupted in the night sky. In seconds the big missile was traveling over Mach-one, in a slight overhead arc directly at where the SA-N-7 missile had lifted off. About eight seconds after launch, as Furness started a gradual turn back to the east, they saw a bright flash of light on the horizon, followed by several smaller flashes and what appeared to be missiles cooking off and spinning into the Black Sea.