R. Karl Largent
Red Skies
Chapter One
Far below Air Major Arege Borisov was the vast expanse of the featureless Gobi Desert. He was passing over into the airspace of the Mongolian People's Republic. Suddenly there was a disturbing awareness that there was no turning back; it was the final break, Nei Mengu, Inner Mongolia, and soon, Shaanxi. Now he could only hope that Colonel General Viktor Isotov's and Chairman Han Ki Po's plan worked.
The last of the escort planes, a MiG-31 Foxhound, had broken off radio contact at 1111 over Erzin, presumably returning to its base at Krasnoyarsk — but only after losing radio contact and reporting that the scheduled refueling rendezvous with the Su-39 over the Yenisey River had not taken place.
For the past thirty minutes, Arege Borisov had been on his own in the flight command seat of the top-secret aircraft. Komivov was slumped in the pilot's seat beside him, the thin trickle of blood from the small .22-caliber bullet hole just in front of his right ear seeping out from under his helmet and slowly coagulating into a crusted ribbon. The young test pilot had suspected nothing. The bullet had passed through both his helmet and head and lodged in the foam pad on the head restraint.
Borisov took a deep breath. With nothing below him now but a few isolated Mongolian villages in the foothills of the Uliastays, he repeated his systems check and used the UHR to check for radio beams. He was following the carefully detailed flight plan to the letter; since Tultue, he had maintained an altitude of 51,000 feet, and a covert posture under condition IV-Gray.
The twin Tumanski R-35 engines with their combined 34,000 pounds of afterburning thrust were propelling him through the thin air at speeds close to Mach 1. If he maintained that speed and the Yackof computer calculations were correct, it would be another four hours before he rotated to GB-2 and switched to the auxiliary fuel tanks that had been installed in the armament cavities. From time to time he wondered about the Menenski engineers who had stripped out the Su-39's armament and replaced them with the two 8,000-pound-capacity titanium fuel tanks. It was those fuel tanks that would enable him to bypass the scheduled inflight fueling over the Yenisey.
Did they know? Nyet. Of course not, he decided. Isotov would not have left such a matter to speculation. No doubt they were told that it was merely an endurance flight — something that would not have been uncommon at this stage of the Su-39's development.
The audit screen on the VA-instrument computer stared back at him, passively parading systems checks with only an occasional minor deviation in the digital display. None of them troubled him. The craft was performing like a battle-proven veteran, not at all like the unproven design it was. Like its closest American counterpart, the F-117, the Su-39 was camel-back in design and thick through the fuselage. It incorporated geometrically flat panels rather than the smooth aerodynamic configurations of previous Sukhoi and Mikoyan designs… and it was both faceted and coated with radar-absorbing material to eliminate radiating radar energy back to the transmitting and receiving source.
In earlier flights, Borisov, who had conducted many of the short- and long-range tests of the Su-39's predecessor, had been uncomfortable.
The cockpit, despite being large enough to accommodate both a flight commander and a pilot, afforded him little headroom and under extreme buffeting his flight helmet actually vibrated against the glass walls of the canopy.
"The aircraft is unstable," he had informed Schubatis, the aircraft's designer, in a debriefing session after one of the Su-39's earliest flights. "We cannot always count on optimum conditions."
Schubatis had looked at him, made note of the comment, and within a short period of time the quad-redundant fly-by-wire control system had been installed and the canopy enlarged to minimize the problem.
Now, after six hours in the aircraft, the longest flight to date, his legs were beginning to feel cramped and little things like the micro-thin wire mesh on the casing of the HUD were beginning to annoy him. He shifted in his seat, elevated the seat pan, and tried to get comfortable. Ahead of him lay the imposing eastern slopes of the Himalayas and the broad, sweeping valleys between the Mekong and Yangtze.
He glanced at Komivov, reached over, and pulled down the dead man's visor to conceal the look on his face.
Colonel Mao Quan stood at the window of Isotov's office with his hands folded behind his back, staring down at the hydroelectric dam on the Bratsk Reservoir. Isotov was still on the telephone.
It had been eight hours since the initial reports of Borisov's departure and word had been expected long before now. When the Colonel General hung up, Quan turned and looked at him. His face mirrored his impatience.
"You have received word?" Quan questioned.
"Patience, Comrade, patience," Isotov replied. "You must remember that the first four hours of the flight were routine. As far as my blundering colleagues in the Air Ministry are concerned, this is merely another test flight — one of considerable duration certainly, but just one more test, one more shakedown before we proceed to the next level. Not until Major Borisov fails to contact our checkpoints at 25-B and 45-B will there be cause for concern." Isotov paused. "Remember, Comrade, it is a vast land, in some ways even more vast than yours."
Quan lit another in his endless chain of cigarettes and walked to the map on the far side of Isotov's office. Mentally calculating flying time and distance, he stabbed at a point in the staggering immensity of the Tibetan Plateau. "By now, he should be here."
"You are assuming, of course, that all goes according to plan," Isotov said, "a dangerous assumption in view of the fact that the Su-39 is still in its development phase." He followed his assessment with a mocking laugh.
Quan frowned. "I have read your communiqués to Chairman Han Ki Po. You are the one who pronounced the craft ready for testing of its weapon systems."
"And so it is," Isotov said as he stood up. "But it is the responsibility of the government of the People's Republic to conduct the tests. That is why we have already shipped the hardware to Danjia. As soon as Major Borisov is convinced your pilots are capable of flying the Su-39 and are ready to conduct the tests, we will authorize the installation of the weapons systems and release the calibration data."
"And you are certain President Aprihinen knows nothing of these arrangements?" Quan pressed.
Isotov leaned against his oversize desk, preparing to offer Quan a drink, when there was a knock on his door.
"Da"
"I have a facsimile for the Colonel General," the voice said.
Quan, who spoke both Russian and English as well as several Chinese dialects, including his native Szechuan, began to smile. "Perhaps," he whispered, "word has come."
Isotov instructed the man to enter, took the fax, unfolded it, and read it. Then he looked at Quan. "See for yourself," he said. He handed Quan the paper.
Piskaryovs 1500/1109m/tar is konfirmt
B-25/B-45 no report
Contact/negative/verified
Intercept and escort: NA Kirhvia
Intercept and escort: NA Uzbekzia
Slavutichtrqn: 1507
Isotov smiled, revealing the gold in his teeth. "Now we must wait until our Major Borisov fails to rendezvous with the second refueling station over Elnivoka. When that fails to materialize, we will dutifully express our concern… and, of course, we will alert our air-sea rescue authorities."
"Of course," Quan agreed. It was Quan's turn to smile.
The Crospar section of Washington consisted mostly of abandoned warehouses, a few run-down tenement buildings, and an occasional neighborhood bar that no longer had a neighborhood to support it.