An icon flashed on Nadia’s left-hand multifunction display. She tapped it. A message opened up on the screen: REAGAN AIR GROUP AT POINT DELTA. “Our American friends are ready to make their move,” she reported.
Vasey smiled in satisfaction. “Well, God bless the U.S. Navy,” he said. He glanced at her. “Now to see if Gryzlov and his lads react the way you’ve hoped.”
“They will,” she said confidently. “Who pays attention to the little flea when confronted by a snarling mastiff?”
Thirty-Four
Colonel Vladimir Titov pondered the intelligence report just flashed from Moscow. A short time ago, one of Russia’s Kondor radar reconnaissance satellites orbiting high over the Pacific Ocean had spotted the U.S. Navy’s Ronald Reagan carrier strike group executing a sudden course change toward the south. Until then, the American ships had been steaming generally north at high speed. Why the abrupt U-turn?
Struck by an unnerving possibility, he swung around to face one of the junior officers crowded with him into the mobile command center vehicle, a heavy-duty 8×8 Ural off-road truck. “Yvgeny! What is the current wind direction southeast of Hokkaido?”
“A moment, sir!” The young lieutenant’s fingers darted across his keyboard. His fresh, unlined face wrinkled in concentration.
Titov nodded in approval. Many of his peers despised younger officers for their fixation on computers and the Internet. In his view, they were foolish. The wiser course was to use this obsession for the benefit of the forces under their command.
The lieutenant looked away from his screen. “Weather reports from Kushiro indicate the wind is from the south, sir.”
Titov’s unnerving “possibility” crystallized into a certainty. That big American aircraft carrier had suddenly turned into the direction of the wind — which meant it had launched aircraft. He looked at another of his subordinates. “Alert all missile battalions, Major. The Americans may be coming our way—”
“Sir! Early warning radar on Iturup, in the Kuril Islands, reports a large formation of high-speed aircraft bearing two-five-zero, relative,” his communications officer reported. “Direction of flight is three-zero-zero, absolute. Range four hundred kilometers. Speed eleven hundred kilometers per hour. Altitude unknown.”
“Plot that contact!” Titov demanded.
Titov leaned over the man’s shoulder and saw a set of blinking red icons flash onto the map almost dead center in the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Thank God for our new radar station in the southern Kurils, he thought. Any part of Hokkaido was far outside the effective range of his regiment’s own air surveillance radars. Based on their speed and observed direction of flight, this was almost certainly a formation of F/A-18E Super Hornet strike aircraft… and they were currently headed straight toward the city of Khabarovsk…
Or more likely, his own surface-to-air missile battalions, he realized coldly, if Colonel General Leonov’s suspicion that the Americans were plotting an attack against the Vostochny Cosmodrome was correct. To have any hope of flying a bomber group far enough into Russia’s far east region to hit the launch complex, they would have to cripple its outlying surface-to-air missile defenses. He blessed the recent decision to reequip his regiment with the newer, longer-range, and more capable S-400 Triumf system, in place of its old, shorter-range S-300PS units.
“Sound air-raid alert,” Titov ordered, forcing himself to sound calm and completely in control. If those F/A-18s were carrying standoff land attack missiles, such as the AGM-158B joint air-to-surface standoff missile, they would be in range to launch within twenty-five minutes. And any missiles they fired would strike home less than twenty minutes later. True, his new S-400 SAMs could theoretically reach out and destroy enemy aircraft, or even their air-launched weapons, much farther out. But that was only true for targets they could “see” on radar. Long before those American strike aircraft came within his reach, they were sure to drop back down to very low altitude… which would drastically decrease the distance at which the regiment’s search and fire-control radar systems could pick them up.
No, he decided, this battle would almost certainly be fought at much closer ranges than the theoretical maximums for either side’s weapons. As it was, he was extremely fortunate that the enemy aircraft carrier had launched its attack planes so soon. By the time those Super Hornets were close enough to fire their standoff missiles, they should be very near the outside edge of their own effective combat range. They would be short on fuel, significantly reducing their ability to maneuver defensively against his S-400s, which ought to greatly increase his odds of scoring kills.
Now that his subordinates were in action, Titov realized he had one further duty. He grabbed a secure phone and punched in the code for the National Defense Control Center in Moscow. “This is Colonel Titov with the 1529th Guards Air Defense Missile Regiment. I need to speak to Colonel General Leonov or his senior deputy immediately!”
Seen from ten thousand feet, Hokkaido was ablaze with light. A huge warm yellow glow marked the major city of Sapporo. Smaller radiances signaled the locations of other cities and towns scattered across the island. Thinner lines of light traced out a dense network of highways, roads, and rail lines.
Commander Dane “Viking” Thorsen listened to the steady warble in his headset and checked his Super Hornet’s threat display one more time. It identified the enemy radar as a Nebo-M VHF-band air search system. Its signal strength and azimuth marked it as the Russian set deployed on Iturup, one of the Kuril Islands stretching northeast off Hokkaido’s coast. He smiled beneath his oxygen mask and keyed his mike. “D-Back One-Five to all D-Back, Talon, and Outlaw aircraft. We’ve baited the hook. Execute strike plan Delta.”
Crisp acknowledgments returned.
Thorsen dropped the nose of his F/A-18E. The navy strike fighter slid lower, losing altitude as it accelerated to more than six hundred and seventy knots. The other twenty-five aircraft in Reagan’s attack force followed him down.
The warning tone in his headset cut off abruptly as they descended into the radar shadow cast by Hokkaido’s mountains and volcanoes. The Russian radar station on Iturup had lost contact.
Four minutes later, flying at altitudes of less than five hundred feet, the swarm of navy planes streaked across the coast and out over the Sea of Japan. “Feet wet,” Thorsen reported laconically.
They flew on for a while longer, closing fast on a predetermined point one hundred and sixty nautical miles from Russian territory. The masthead lights of fishing boats bobbed across the surface of the sea in front of them and then vanished astern.