“Flight seven-one-one, Lida Naval, fly heading zero-four-five for five seconds for identification, then resume own navigation. Acknowledge.”
“Seven-one-one acknowledge.” Flight Lieutenant Vladi Doleckis used two fingers of his right hand to gently bank his Mikoyan-Gurevich-27 fighter-bomber to the northeast, counted the required time silently to himself, then resumed his original course. His wingman, Flight Lieutenant Frantsisk Stebut, flying in close formation off his left wingtip in a “carp-mouth” Sukhoi-17 reconnaissance fighter, responded. Staying in pretty good fingertip formation, Frantsisk looked as if he were dangling on a string far below Doleckis, although he was only a few meters away.
Air-traffic control in the outlying parts of Belarus was poor these days — obviously Lida Naval Approach was not receiving his encoded beacon, but a primary radar blip only — and such small diversions were commonplace. The young, blond-haired, blue-eyed fighter-bomber pilot didn’t mind. Flying was fun for him, no matter what the rules and restrictions were, and he wasn’t going to let a little radar breakdown spoil his day.
“Seven-one-one, radar identified. Advise before changing altitudes. Flight east of meridian twenty-six prohibited until further notice. Lida Naval out.”
“Seven-one-one. I understand. Out.” That was fine with him — he didn’t want to get involved in the little skirmish brewing up in Lithuania anyway. The “ground hounds” of the Home Brigade from Smorgon were on the move to squash some sort of rebellion or uprising in Lithuania, and although the Smorgon air units had been activated and the Lida and Ross air bases were put on alert — General Voshchanka was in overall charge of all the northern Belarus military forces and was without question the most powerful and influential man in the Belarus military— Doleckis’s unit had not been tasked. Sending in high-performance bombers against the Lithuanians was like killing an ant with a wrecking up eventually, either to deploy to occupied Lithuania or to drive off attacks from the Commonwealth, from Russia, or from the Western nations. As much as he enjoyed the thought of pitting his skills against other MiG-27 pilots or foreign defense systems, he wasn’t looking forward to a war.
“Lida Naval,” Doleckis’s wingman grumbled on the interplane frequency. “What a joke. When are they going to change that name?”
“Whenever the bureaucrats and politicians finally decide to get off their lazy butts,” Doleckis replied with a laugh. The name of that base was one of the many incongruities of life in Belarus these days, one of the bureaucratic quirks that would one day be corrected.
Lida Naval Air Base, about one hundred and twenty kilometers west of Minsk and about two hundred and forty kilometers east of the Baltic, was once a large Soviet naval air base, in support of the Baltic fleet. Lida once had a squadron of twenty Sukhoi-24 fighter-bombers and MiG-23 fighter escorts, designed for tactical and naval reconnaissance, close air support, naval bombardment, and antiship missions in the Baltic. Of course, now independent Belarus had no navy and no naval air force, but Lida still held its “naval” designation. Stupid. One of the useless remnants of a defunct Russian society.
Well, maybe not everything about the Russians was so bad: they built some great warplanes, like this MiG-27 fighter-bomber. It was incredibly sleek and slippery, with a top speed of almost twice the speed of sound at high altitude and over Mach-i at low altitude. It could carry over four thousand kilograms of external stores and it had a range in excess of six hundred kilometers with external fuel tanks. This older D-model MiG-27 was fitted with some pretty fancy hardware as welclass="underline" Doppler automatic-navigation units, an attack radar and laser rangefinder in the nose, a Sirena-3 radar warning system that could warn of nearby enemy radars, an infrared scanner for searching and attacking ground targets, and the upgraded ASP-5R solid-state fire-control system for the weapons and cannon. His D-model MiG-27 still had the titanium “bathtub” armor around the cockpit, which combined with the external bomb load took away his supersonic speed with weapons on board, but it was still a real hot rod. The thing was nearly as old as he was, but Doleckis loved flying it.
First Lieutenant Frantsisk Stebut’s single-engine, swing-wing Sukhoi-7 was a C-model, older than Doleckis’s MiG-27. It was configured for close air-support gunnery, with two 23-millimeter SPPU-22 gun pods on each wing, two 30-millimeter cannons in each wing root, and one large fuel tank on the centerline hardpoint; two of the SPPU-22 gun pods were configured to fire rearward, so ground targets could be attacked even after the SU-17 overfiew its target.
One unfortunate characteristic of Belarus’s Air Force was the strange amalgamation of aircraft in its inventory-they generally flew the castoffs of the old Soviet Air Force or the old Warsaw Pact nations, sparingly flying the aircraft that were serviceable and cannibalizing the others for spare parts.
Doleckis, one of the best bombardiers in the Belarus Air Force, with or without a laser rangefinder, had been scheduled for one of his four-a-month currency flights, but when he arrived at the base the squadron was on alert and his orders had been changed. His MiG-27 was armed to the teeth with a dazzling array of weapons: four cluster bombs on rear bomb racks, each with seventy little antipersonnel bomblets; two 57-millimeter rocket pods on air-intake hardpoints; one external fuel tank on a centerline hardpoint; and two AA-2 heat-seeking air-to-air missiles on the small outboard wing pylons. The big 30-millimeter ground-attack cannon in the belly held three hundred rounds of armor-piercing ammunition. It was the most armament he had flown with since graduating from fighter-bomber school in Tblisi …
… and, just like after flight school, the arming switches for all the weapons were covered and sealed with small steel wires and maintenance lead seals. He had been given strict orders not to activate any switch without specific permission — even breaking a safety wire without permission would lead to disciplinary action. No matter. The switches were out of the way, so accidental activation wasn’t usually a problem — but God, did he want to arm up those weapons and let ‘em fly! Here he was, by himself, loaded with several thousand kilograms’ worth of fine weaponry, but he had been given no orders except to stand by and wait. He knew he was being kept on hand in case he was needed by General Voshchanka, and he liked the idea of getting a frantic call for assistance from the General himself, but he knew that it was unlikely. Stebut’s camera pod had film in it, but neither of them had been briefed on exactly what to do, so they did nothing but fly. Stand by and wait. Bore some holes in the sky …
“Flight seven-one-one,” came the radio message from the approach controller from Lida, “fly heading three-two-zero, descend and maintain seven hundred meters and contact Lida naval command post on local channel nine. Acknowledge.”
“Flight seven-one-one, three-two-zero, seven hundred meters. Going channel nine. Good day.” Finally, maybe some action! This new vector would take him closer to the Lithuanian border, and the altitude would put him only one hundred meters above the highest terrain in the sector. A call to the command post while only a hundred meters above the beautiful forests of the Demas River valley meant something was happening …
Lieutenant Doleckis excitedly switched his radio to the new frequency: “Lida naval control, flight seven-one-one on channel nine. Over.”
“Seven-one-one, control, roger,” the silky female voice of their command post radio-duty technician replied. She was a red-haired beauty from Russia — another good Russian import — that Doleckis had been wanting to get to know for weeks. He could listen to her luscious voice all day long. Breathily, she said, “Seven-one-one, establish tactical orbit at coordinates poppa-kilo, kilo-juliett, five-zero, three-zero, and stand by. Over.”