"Group One copies." They had fifteen minutes now to chase down the Americans, or Group Two — the youngsters aboard the Brezhnev — would launch and go for the intercept. The sheer embarrassment of that was almost unthinkable.
Not checking to see if Red Flight had managed to keep up with him as he sped eastward toward the evading American fighters, the leader of Brezhnev Group One put his Sukhoi-27 Flanker in a max afterburner climb and searched frantically on wide-scan radar for the intruders. He had even less time than he'd first thought: if the F-15s carried Harpoon antiship missiles they could attack from as far away as sixty kilometers, perhaps more at high altitude…
There. "Control, Group One leader has the intruders. Twelve o'clock, thirty-six kilometers and high. Beginning intercept. Group One, check in."
"This is Red Flight. We are at your six o'clock, one mile. Couldn't keep up with that turn, Viktor. Joining on your right wing."
"Copy. Gold Flight, take the high patrol. Red Flight will pursue and close."
The closure rate sucked his breath — the F-15s were cruising, straight and level, at only five hundred kilometers per hour. The Flankers were speeding toward them at nearly three times that velocity. The lead Flanker locked onto four of the ten intruders; his fire-control system would now attack four separate aircraft at once—
Suddenly one of the intruder aircraft heeled sharply over to the left and descended, rapidly.
"Red Five, one intruder peeling left and down at your eleven o'clock. Follow him. He's yours."
"Red Five has him locked on. Pursuing."
The distance had decreased rapidly to less than twenty kilometers when the leader noticed the formation of American F-15s making a shallow left turn. "Intruders are evading left. Red Flight, echelon right for pursuit."
"Two."
"Three."
"Four."
The leader took a quick glance to his right as he continued his shallow left turn behind the American F-15s. The four Su-27s with him were in perfect alignment, turning canopy-to-belly instead of in extended wingtip-to-wingtip to help maintain a solid radar lock-on.
The formation had drifted nearly ninety degrees away from the Brezhnev carrier battle group when the Group One leader heard: "Group One, Group Two is airborne. Joining on you for intercept."
"Copy, Control. We are pursuing intruders. Red Flight, lock and ready in file.
"Two."
"Three."
"Group One lead, this is Red Five. I have a visual on the intruder: it's not a fighter. Repeat: it is not a fighter "
The Flanker tried to absorb this, then shouted out: "Red Five, destroy it. Red Flight, launch…"
Again the leader's windscreen filled with white streaks as the AA-11 missiles sped after their quarry. They launched at less than eighteen kilometers — no aircraft in the world could possibly evade an AA-11 missile at that range…
But when the leader looked at his radar screen again, only three of the nine intruder aircraft were missing. Worse, the intruders were now far to the left — had moved nearly perpendicular to the flight path of the AA-11 missiles in literally the blink of an eye. "Control, three attackers destroyed. Red Flight, follow me in close to the survivors. Red Five, what did you see?"
"They're drones. A HIMLORD remote-piloted vehicle. The one I saw was damaged, spinning out of control…"
"Drones." So. that was it. The Flanker leader didn't know exactly what HIMLORD stood for, but he knew what they were — extremely powerful, highly maneuverable unmanned — reconnaissance drones. Which was why they could outturn an AA-11 missile: the HIMLORDS were designed for such extreme maneuvers… He had seen films of HIMLORDS pulling giant "g" s in all flight regimes. The NATO countries and their allies used HIMLORDS for battlefield reconnaissance, but it was obvious that these were intended here as diversions… Or decoys…?
"Lead, Red Three has a visual on the hostile."
A quick scan… and there it was. Even at four kilometers he could see it easily. It was huge, with a long pointed nose, a set of canards on its forward fuselage, very large main wings with winglets on the tips, and a set of dorsal and ventral stabilizers. Its large turbojet engine released a puff of black smoke every few seconds. Amazingly, the six drones flew in almost perfect formation, staying abreast of each other in spite of each sharp turn and change in airspeed.
"Control, this is Group One lead. We are pursuing drones…"
"Group One, this is Group Two lead. We are at your six o'clock at thirty kilometers. Do you want us on a low patrol? Over."
"Group Two, negative. Return to base immediately. We've been decoyed away. We have twenty fighters chasing a few damn drones. Group One, break off attack. Control, this is Group One. Returning to base immediately."
The radio was filled with static. He was at extreme radio range, and the HIMLORD drones obviously carried small broad-band jammers as well.
The Group One leader ripped off his oxygen mask in frustration. They had spent nearly an hour, dozens of missiles and thousands of liters of precious fuel chasing nearly worthless drones. What was the real target…?
A few minutes later, with the American HIMLORD drones far behind them and still heading for the western shores of the Persian Gulf, Group One's leader finally regained contact with the aircraft carrier Brezhnev. "Control, this is Group One. We are one hundred kilometers out. Request approach clearance."
"Group One, approach clearance only granted. Repeat, approach clearance only is granted. Aircraft launching at this time."
A few moments later he heard the reason. "Green Four, this is Control, Hostile airborne contact bearing zero-four-five range, range one hundred kilometers at your twelve o'clock."
"Copy, Control," the Green Four leader acknowledged. "Picking up J-band height-finders near reference F-one-oh-two Delta and Lima."
F-102 — that was Bandar-Abbas and Bandar-e Lengeh, the two Iranian military bases at the Strait of Hormuz. Green Four was a flight of five Yakovlev-38 vertical takeoff and landing fighters from the Brezhnev, all at least twenty-five years old. No match for any weapons on shore with J-band height-finders armed with high-performance surface-to-air missiles. The Su-27s would have a tough time against them, let alone the aged Yak-38s.
But hostile missile sites at Bandar-Abbas? The Iranian sites had been destroyed long ago, way back at the start of hostilities. The whole area had been contained. Who…?
"They're turning back toward the carrier, Skipper."
General Saint-Michael swiveled his seat around and quickly scanned the master SBR display. He nodded at Chief Jefferson. "Good job, Jake. Do you have enough fuel to recover those HIMLORDS?"
"I don't think so, but then again, I've never flown a drone before. I think we'll be dropping through the horizon before I can recover them anyway. After that they'll be on automatic pilot until they flame out."
"Try to get them as close to that Bahraini data-relay ship as you can. They should be able to recover them."
Jefferson carefully transmitted new flight commands to the six remaining HIMLORDS in flight. "Those things are amazing. I'd swear I could turn a ninety-degree corner with one if I wanted, even with this bastardized remote-control relay setup. I would've loved to see the faces on those Su-27 pilots when I had those HIMLORDS climbing at ten 'g's right after missile launch."
Saint-Michael looked around the command module, shaking his head. The short time in gravity had brought every piece of dirt, every liquid ball, every lost pencil and scrap of paper out of known hiding places and into everything. Yemana and Page had come out of the lifeboat and were running hand-held vacuum cleaners over everything, their POS masks resting beneath their chins, ready at a moment's notice to be put back on.