“Sixteen green lights,” Uspensky said, sounding satisfied. “The cross-check with our own navigation fix is complete. All missiles are receiving accurate GLONASS navigation data.”
“Very good,” Annenkov said, equally pleased. He trusted Filippov’s missile assembly work, but he was also well aware that every new piece of technology added yet another potential failure source to any weapon. Computer cards could malfunction for any number of reasons. Power and data cables might be jarred loose by sloppy handling or even turbulence. And without functioning satellite navigation capability, there was no way any of their missiles could possibly come near tonight’s chosen targets — let alone actually score hits.
“Downloading preprogrammed attack profiles to the missiles,” his copilot continued, selecting new virtual controls on his display. More lights went green. “Attack profiles are locked in.”
Annenkov double-checked him on his own display and then ordered, “Bring all missiles to full readiness.”
Uspensky entered more commands into his computer. He checked off reports as they flowed across his display. “All Kh-35 radar altimeters are online. Their turbofans are ready. All self-destruct systems are live.”
“Confirm that every Gran-KE radar seeker is disabled,” the colonel said.
His copilot brought up another schematic. “All radar homers are disabled,” he reported.
That was perhaps the most ironic part of this planned attack, Annenkov realized. Since their Kh-35s were originally intended for use against enemy ships on the high seas, their advanced onboard radar seekers were optimized for use against moving targets. Which meant relying on them tonight would have been a catastrophic mistake.
Satisfied that their cruise missiles were ready for launch, Annenkov and Uspensky donned their oxygen masks, depressurized the 737’s cargo deck, and transferred flight control to their attack computer.
Turbulence increased as the jet’s forward door slid open. Launcher after launcher rolled into position at the door, ejected its four attached missiles and swung away to make room for the next in line. In less than a minute, all sixteen Kh-35s were safely away — plummeting silently through the night sky toward San Diego.
Ten to fifteen meters above the ground, each cruise missile’s motor ignited. One after another, the sixteen missiles streaked northwest above scattered clumps of cholla and yucca cactus, desert saltbush, and other scrub brush. Their speed increased steadily, peaking at close to a thousand kilometers an hour.
Thirteen minutes after launch, the Kh-35s screamed low over the low hills southwest of Tijuana. Panicked by the shrill howl of their jet engines, thousands of migratory shorebirds fluttered upward in dense, swirling clouds. One Russian cruise missile raced straight through a maddened flock of gulls, slammed head-on into several of the screeching seabirds, and wobbled out the other side in a cloud of scorched feathers and pulverized bits of flesh. Its turbofan motor fell silent. Shedding shattered pieces of fan blades, it veered away just above the surface of the water and then exploded in midair. The rest of the Kh-35s flew on, still heading northwest.
Thirty seconds later, the first missile executed a sharp course change, turning almost due east. One by one, the remaining fourteen followed suit. They were paralleling the rugged slopes of the San Miguel Mountains, which straddled the U.S.-Mexico border. Nearing a narrow canyon between two sheer masses of high ground, the Kh-35s jinked again — swinging back a little to the west-northwest.
Now deep in the jumble of mountains and high-rises of San Diego, the missiles steered an increasingly complicated course. For kilometer after kilometer, they swerved to the east or west around peaks and hilltops, climbing just high enough to clear buildings and hills. Between the radar shadows cast by surrounding elevations and their extremely low altitude, they were still effectively undetectable by the U.S. Navy E-2C Hawkeye orbiting off the coast.
The GLONASS satellite navigation card inside one of the Kh-35s abruptly failed. Although the missile’s inertial guidance system tried to take over, integration drift — the accumulation of small errors by its accelerometers and gyroscopes over the past several minutes of flight — led its tiny onboard computer astray. Thinking itself still several hundred meters behind on the flight plan, the missile flew right through a programmed way point and crashed into the southern flank of the San Miguel Mountains. Twisted shards of burning wreckage sprayed across a wide area, igniting small fires that quickly guttered out among the mountain’s rugged boulder fields and widely scattered tufts of cactus and brush.
The surviving fourteen cruise missiles came on — streaking west toward San Diego at high speed.
“Hey, that’s weird,” U.S. navy lieutenant (junior grade) Carly de Mello said suddenly. The short, perky brunette, only a couple of years out of Annapolis, was the Hawkeye’s radar officer, the most junior of the three equipment operators seated in the crowded compartment behind the turboprop’s cockpit.
Her boss, Lieutenant Tim Layton, frowned. “Show me,” he snapped. As the combat-information-center officer, he occupied the middle crew position — seated squarely between the E2-C’s radar officer and its aircraft control officer.
“I may be picking up bogeys out in the mountains east of San Diego, south of Los Alpine and I-8,” de Mello said. With deft fingers, she used keyboard commands and her trackball to “hook,” or select, the new contacts on her big center display. “But they keep disappearing on me.”
Following along on his own display, Layton saw a succession of dots blink briefly into existence during a radar sweep and then vanish again. His eyes narrowed in concentration as he invoked his radar-masking tool. Immediately sections of the map layered below their radar imagery showed areas where terrain would block their APS-145 radar. More contacts appeared during the next sweep… and disappeared as soon as they crossed into those terrain-masked places. A text box showed their estimated course, speed, and altitude.
Without hesitating, he mashed his transmit button and said excitedly, “Broadsword, Broadsword, Sun King Three-One, quail, quail, quail! Multiple high-speed targets inbound bearing zero-eight-two, one-three miles, speed five hundred, on the deck!”
“What the hell, Layton?” the pilot shouted on the intercom. “This is a training mission! You just radioed an actual hostile missile report to the damned command post!”
“That’s because I’ve got actual missiles in the air, heading right for the Navy piers!”
“Oh shit,” de Mello muttered. “This is so not good.”
Silently, Layton agreed with her. While everything the Hawkeye’s radar saw was being simultaneously fed through the Cooperative Engagement Capability data link to all Navy ships and installations in the region, the speed of those incoming missiles gave the defenders less than two minutes to react. That wouldn’t have been an insurmountable problem if the fleet were at sea — able to employ every component of its layered defenses from Standard medium- and long-range antiair missiles to its Phalanx Close-In Weapon System 20mm automatic cannons and Nulka missile decoys. Unfortunately, though, a substantial number of the Pacific Fleet’s warships, including several Ticonderoga-class cruisers and Arleigh Burke—class destroyers, were tied up along the piers… held at anchor by President Barbeau’s direct orders.