the difficult carrier landing course at Saki in the Crimea and gone on to
become a naval aviator. It would not do for him to allow his excitement to
get the better of his judgment today. Giving in to any sort of emotion was an
invitation to disaster.
“SAM! SAM!” Captain-Lieutenant Stepan Dmitriyev shouted the warning
before Terekhov’s radar picked it up. It was locked on to Dmitriyev’s
aircraft.
“Climb, Stepan! Climb!” Terekhov yelled. The other MiG broke formation
and clawed its way toward open sky, but the missile was faster. As if in slow
motion, Terekhov saw a puff of chaff ballooning behind Dmitriyev’s MiG, but it
was too late. An instant later the aircraft was gone, consumed in a flash of
flame and debris.
“We have taken SAM fire,” he reported, switching to the command channel.
“One-oh-six destroyed.”
“Continue mission,” the controller responded coldly.
As he banked left to line up for the final attack run Terekhov fought to
maintain his calm. Bombers were supposed to have softened up the area
earlier, but evidently the Norwegians had been smart enough to keep some of
their radar and missile assets concealed from that first wave. This wasn’t
going to be as easy as it had sounded in the briefing room aboard the aircraft
carrier Soyuz.
The harsh alarm of another threat warning made him scan his instruments.
Another SAM was locking on. But this time Terekhov was the target.
Almost instinctively he shoved the throttles forward, igniting the
afterburners of the MiG’s twin Isotov RD-33 turbofans. Acceleration pressed
him back into his seat as he wrenched the stick back and climbed, angling
north out toward the line of mountains north of the fjord.
The threat tone went on. He could almost feel the enemy missile closing
on the MiG.
With a sudden, violent movement of the stick Terekhov wrenched the
aircraft onto a new heading and stabbed at the button that would release his
chaff. The cloud of reflective debris would interfere with radar guidance and
hopefully confuse the onrushing missile for the critical seconds he needed.
The Mountainside rushed past his cockpit as he turned, still climbing
fast. Then there was a flash below as the missile, fooled by the chaff,
plowed into a cliff wall and detonated.
Letting out a long sigh, Terekhov dropped back into the fjord and reduced
his speed. The other two planes were ahead of him now, still flying a tight
welded-wing formation.
He spotted the target beyond them by the smoke rising from a fire that
burned close by. So the bombers had caused some damage after all. But the
Norwegian airfield of Hermansverk was still functional, and so were the
coastal defense guns mounted on the cliffs west of the airfield.
“Target in sight,” he reported.
“Commence attack run,” the controller said. “One-oh-five on the Bofors
site. Remaining two aircraft will attack the airfield.”
“Message understood,” he responded. “Recommend a second strike mission
to eliminate further air defenses.”
“Noted. Proceed with attack.”
He passed the orders on to the others, and watched as Lieutenant Douglass
peeled off to commence his attack on the coastal gun. Then he was too busy to
watch the other planes.
The MiG dropped low, sweeping across the arm of the fjord toward the
airfield. Terekhov spotted an F-16 speeding down the runway and taking
flight. He flipped his selector switch to arm an AA-8 infrared homing
missile.
The tone in his ear told him he had a firm lock, and he launched the
missile. It streaked away, catching the Norwegian plane before its pilot had
a chance to react. That was another Royal Norwegian Air Force interceptor out
of the way.
On his left the other MiG released its load of FAB-250 general-purpose
bombs and pulled up. Hastily Terekhov nudged the selector switch and found
his target, an untouched storage tank in the tank farm on the far end of the
airfield. As his MiG stooped low over the RNAF compound he hit the release.
The first bomb dropped away and Terekhov pulled up, cutting in his
afterburners.
The bomb struck with a satisfying eruption of flame and black smoke.
Terekhov banked to port and climbed, scanning the airfield for additional
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