“Do you suppose they’re calling it quits and returning to base?”
She glanced at him with a raised eyebrow. “Would you?”
The Englishman shook his head. “‘Flee? And leave my friends unavenged? Nay, rather I come, bristling with fury and hot for blood,’” he quoted sonorously.
“Shakespeare?” Nadia asked.
“God no.” He grinned. “One Vasey, Peter Charles, from an unfinished play written during my school days.”
“I see why you became a pilot instead,” Nadia said dryly.
“It did seem a more promising career,” Vasey allowed. He banked the XCV-62 gently to the right, turning back to the southeast. The valley they’d been flying through opened up ahead, widening into a flat plain riddled with streams, swamps, and rivers that ran almost all the way to the Russian coast. “Up to now, that is.” He shrugged. “So what’s our next move, Major?”
In answer, she opened data links to the two MQ-55 Coyote drones, which were still circling over the hills well south and west of their current position. Swiftly, she programmed new navigation waypoints and instructions into their computers. Green lights glowed again on her display as each unmanned aircraft signaled that it had received her orders and would obey. “If the Russians want revenge, we must give them what they desire,” she told Vasey.
On her display, the two icons representing the MQ-55s broke out of their orbits, climbed to five hundred feet, and flew off in separate directions — one headed north, the other southwest.
“Alas, poor Coyotes, we knew them well,” Vasey agreed.
“Sentry Lead, this is Five! I have a thermal contact! Stealth target bears ten o’clock moving to nine at low altitude. Range is twenty kilometers.”
“Acknowledged, Five, you are cleared to engage!”
“Weapons hot, Lead. Turning to make my attack now. Good tone! Missiles away!”
“Lead, this is Nine! Separate contact! Second stealth aircraft bears one o’clock and is flying north at low altitude! Range is thirty kilometers! I am in pursuit and arming heat-seekers.”
Leonov listened closely to the radio chatter from Federov’s Super Flankers as they spotted, attacked, and destroyed the two American aircraft. Like most air-to-air missile engagements, the fighting ended with astonishing speed.
“Warlord One, this is Sentry Lead,” Federov reported exultantly. “Good kills on both targets. No parachutes observed. There are no enemy survivors.”
Leonov frowned. He’d expected the American stealth aircraft to put up more of a fight, especially considering the slaughter they’d inflicted on the colonel’s fighter force in their first encounter. Instead, both engagements had been easy — more like target practice than real combat.
Perhaps too easy?
He leaned forward. “Sentry Lead, this is Warlord. Did either American aircraft attempt to evade your missiles? Or use flares to confuse them?”
“Negative on that, Warlord,” Federov admitted.
Leonov’s suspicions solidified into absolute certainty. “Those were more damned decoys, Colonel,” he snapped. “You and your pilots just shot down a pair of unmanned drones.”
There was a long moment of static-filled silence.
At last, Federov radioed. “Request further instructions, Warlord.”
“Stand by, Sentry Lead,” Leonov growled. Before tonight’s clusterfuck, he would have rated the other man as one of his best regimental commanders. Now he was beginning to think the colonel would be much better suited to a considerably less challenging post… perhaps something like one of the remote weather stations far north of the Arctic Circle.
Aware of Tikhomirov’s worried gaze, he studied the large map displayed on his screen. Tracks showed the last observed courses of all three downed American drones. His eyes narrowed. “Do you see the pattern, Semyon?”
Without waiting for an answer, Leonov continued. “Our line of Su-35s came northeast at high speed with their radars active. Nothing could have slipped past them, correct?”
Tikhomirov nodded.
“So… Federov picked up that first enemy stealth aircraft heading southeast — crossing his path like a hare running from the hounds. Naturally, he turned after it…”
“Into an ambush, probably conducted by those other two drones,” Tikhomirov realized.
“Correct,” Leonov agreed. He tapped the two remaining tracks. “Both of which then veered off, one to the southwest and the other to the north… only to be caught and killed by our fighters.” He looked back at his deputy. “So what direction did the American stealth transport fly during all of this confusion?”
Tikhomirov sighed. “Northeast, to stay as far away from Federov’s Super Flankers as possible.”
“Exactly. And by now, it’s headed back toward the open sea.”
Leonov sat back, contemplating his next moves. It was unlikely the Americans would try to break straight east. Doing so would mean crossing the Kamchatka Peninsula, flying right into the teeth of more S-400 SAM battalions and the MiG-31 interceptors based at Yelizovo. No, he decided, the safest and most logical escape route ran through the Kuril Islands, where Russia’s air surveillance and air defense were weakest. And if so, Federov’s fighters still had a chance to catch up with, detect, and destroy the enemy rescue aircraft before it reached safety. He reopened the circuit to the Su-35s. “Sentry Lead, this is Warlord. Listen closely. Here are your new orders…”
Thirty-Eight
A lone Su-35S Super Flanker raced low across the moonlit sea, weaving back and forth in an S-shaped pattern to cover as much of the sky as possible with its passive infrared search-and-track system. The fighter’s IRST might have a very limited field of view compared to its nose-mounted phased-array radar, but at least it could be used without fear of detection by an enemy.
Resolutely, Colonel Ivan Federov pressed on, gloomily aware that his continued command of the 23rd Fighter Aviation Regiment hung by a single, slender thread. Stripped to their essentials, his orders from Leonov were simple: find and kill that American stealth transport before it escaped… or face a court-martial for incompetence. To have any hope at all of doing that, he’d been forced to spread his remaining Su-35s across a wide front — dispersing them as single aircraft rather than deploying them in fighting pairs. Though that was a clear breach of both doctrine and sound tactics, it was also the only way his weakened force could cover every likely escape route.
He’d chosen their most probable exit course for himself. These Americans had made him look like a fool at every turn. Only by personally shooting them down could he erase that stain.
Federov’s head swiveled from side to side in the cockpit, checking every quadrant of the sky around his fighter for the slightest sign of movement. Besides the IRST, he could rely only on his own eyesight. And even a quick glimpse of stars occluded by the passage of another aircraft would be enough to set him on the right track.
He got lucky.
A tone sounded in his headset. The Su-35’s infrared sensors had picked out the heat emanating from an aircraft flying very, very low over the water. A new green diamond blinked into the middle of Federov’s HUD. Its range was still uncertain. Carefully, he tugged his stick to the right and then back to the left, initiating another quick, S-curved weave to triangulate on the contact. This maneuver gave his passive sensors enough information to determine that the American stealth aircraft was approximately forty kilometers ahead, still beyond the effective reach of his K-74M heat-seekers.