“Seven-one-one copies all,” Doleckis replied, reading back the coordinates and pulling out a cardboard chart from his flight suit left-leg pocket. He found the coordinates on the chart, just north of a small village ten kilometers from the border. A standard tactical orbit was figure-eight racetrack with twenty-kilometer legs, 10 degrees of bank, no more than five hundred meters above ground level or as directed by tactical considerations. It was a good pattern for visually searching an area-he was definitely looking for something. He was allowed to vary the centerpoint of the orbit to avoid any chance of attack by enemy ground forces, but here there was little chance of that.
Doleckis configured his MiG-27 for a ground-attack patrol. He brought the power back to 60 percent, manually extended his variable geometry wings to full extension, and lowered one notch of flaps to maintain stability in slow flight — losing control at this relatively low altitude could be disastrous.
“Seven-one-one flight, flaps fifteen, wing sweep sixteen,” Doleckis warned his wingman. He waited a few seconds, then checked to make sure Stebut was configured properly — the standard wingman’s job was to “make your plane look like mine at all times,” but sometimes wingmen got complacent.
Stebut was on the job, settled in nicely with his own flaps and wings extended. The Sukhoi-17 was actually larger, faster, and could carry more weapons than the MiG-27, but the newer avionics and much greater accuracy of the MiG-27 made it the aircraft of choice for most ground-attack chores, especially in situations where low collateral damage or the presence of friendly troops in the area were concerns.
Doleckis had no useful landmarks to use except for the village — it was all thick forests below, the northern part of the world-famous Berezina Preserve — and if he had to find someone or something down there, it was going to be tough. He set the Doppler navigation set to the coordinates so he wouldn’t stray across the Lithuanian border. “Seven-one-one established in orbit,” Doleckis reported.
“Flight seven-one-one, roger,” the controller replied. “Report fuel status.”
He had been airborne for only twenty minutes when he got the call, and he had an external tank nearly full of fuel — at this low power setting, and so close to base to begin with, he could stay aloft forever. “Seven-one-one fuel status two hours.” His endurance was actually a bit longer, but if he said three hours they were probably going to be up there for three hours.
“Control copies, two hours,” the red-haired controller replied. “Stand by… Vladi.”
Well, well, at least she knows my name, Doleckis thought, forgetting about the(fact that he could very well be doomed to orbit that spot for the next two hours. He was going to have to look up that gorgeous redhead when he got back.
The clearing had to be no more than ninety feet wide at its widest point, because when Major Hank Fell, the pilot of the CV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft, nestled his beast into that clearing, there was virtually no room between the rotor tips and the thick, gnarly branches of the pine and spruce trees nearby — and the CV-22 had a clearance of about eighty-five-and-a-half feet. A sudden gust of wind, an errant whipping of a branch by his own rotor wash, and one of those branches could easily hit them.
The crew chief and door gunner on the CV-22 aircrew, Master Sergeant Mike Brown, was outside the aircraft, near the nose, wearing his helmet, with a long interphone cord attached and plugged into the jack near the entry hatch. He was scanning the skies with a pair of binoculars when the jet passed almost directly overhead. There was no chance the pilot would see them through the foliage unless they were very, very lucky, but Brown still crouched lower and half-expected a bomb or something to drop on top of them at any second.
“Got a real good look at them that time, sir,” Brown reported, breathing fast and shallow in the microphone, almost hyperventilating. He ‘cupped his gloved hands over his mouth, breathing in his own exhalations for a few seconds, and waited for his pounding heart to calm down before continuing: “A MiG-27 bomber and a Sukhoi-17 bomber. The leader’s outfitted for long-range close air support, and he’s got Atolls on the wings as well. I couldn’t tell what his wingman’s got, but they could be gun pods. I don’t think they saw us.” He started a timer on his wristwatch. “I’ll time their patrol pattern to see how much time we have to lift off.”
Hank Fell and Martin Watanabe, the CV-22’s copilot, were scared and nervous as well, so they knew exactly what Brown was feeling — they could easily hear the roar of those jets flying overhead, even over their own engine noise. “Copy,” Fell said. “He wasn’t transmitting anything, so I think we’re safe for now. Be sure to check the undercarriage.”
Fell, who had been flying the CV-22 PAVE HAMMER aircraft at treetop level since ten minutes before exiting Polish airspace for Byelorussia, had managed to drop his CV-22 into the clearing when they saw the Soviet-made planes suddenly pop into view about fifteen miles away. Fortunately the fighters were in a gentle turn, so he had a few more needed seconds to respond. He picked the clearing and dove for it. No sooner had his wheels hit the soft dirt than the fighters appeared. The eighteen Marines on board immediately exited the aircraft and took up defensive positions around the clearing. One squad had a Stinger missile, and was tracking the bombers every second.
“Undercarriage is underwater,” Brown reported as he examined the underside of the CV-22. The clearing was partially flooded by the spring rains, the nose gear was completely submerged, and water covered the lower part of the forward radome and bottom of the FLIR sensor ball. “Shut down the radar and FLIR or you’ll lose them.”
“Done,” Watanabe reported.
Luckily the rear of the aircraft was high and relatively dry, so the aircraft was not completely buried in mud. “It might take a high-power setting to free the nose,” Brown surmised, “but your aft trucks are free. It’ll be a hairy lift-off.”
“Great,” Fell said. “How far are we from the LZ?”
Watanabe punched up the computer flight plan on one of the big center multifunction displays. “A good seventy miles,” he replied. “Twenty to thirty minutes’ flight time.”
Fell looked out at his two rotors, spinning at idle power. A V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft burned a lot of fuel turning those big rotors, even at idle power, and that was something they could not afford now. Since lifting off from the U.S.S. Valley Mistress a few hours ago, they had flown almost three hundred miles in a circuitous route, avoiding radar sites in Kalinin and the Byelorussian military bases along the borders. The CV-22, with eighteen Marines and all their gear on board, had a combat radius of only five hundred miles — they carried no extra fuel and did not get an aerial refueling — but they were still a long way from their objective. Every minute they spent idling on the ground sapped a lot of their range, and no one relished the thought of walking through these swamps, being chased by the Byelorussian Army.
“We can’t afford to wait,” Fell decided. “Mike, get everyone back on board. When the Sukhois fly overhead heading eastbound, we’ll be right behind them. Hopefully when he makes his turn back to the west, he won’t see us.”
The Marines had just hustled back on board and were strapped in when Brown tapped on the pilot’s right-side windscreen and pointed to the sky. “Here they come!” he shouted as he dashed for the entry door. Fell pushed the power controls forward—60-, 70-, 80-percent power. Nothing…
“Overhead, ready, ready… now.