“Read them.” The admiral, though squat, thick-shouldered, and already bald at forty-seven, was still vain enough to wear his reading glasses only in the privacy of his own cabin. He put the binoculars to his eyes and pretended to examine the vast panorama of Soviet sea-power stretching out to the horizon.
“Satellite reconnaissance indicates virtually no activity anywhere within Houston’s eighteen-hundred-square-kilometer city limits, sir. Factories and oil refineries throughout the metropolitan area have ceased operations-not a thread of smoke or a burning flare-gas jet is visible anywhere. Highways are deserted, and local traffic is at a standstill. Schools and offices are closed, hospitals emptied. It’s a dead city.”
“Not quite yet,” Fleet Admiral Maximov replied grimly. “But in two hours it will be, without the option of resurrection. We’re going to have what Texans call a ‘turkey shoot.'”
“I doubt there will be many turkeys left to shoot, sir. In the three weeks since our task force left Murmansk, most of Houston’s civilian population has run for its life.”
That was true-and odd, now that Maximov thought about it. Abandoning their sprawling metropolis was inconsistent with the Texans’ traditional arrogance, bravado, and recklessness, so evident during the Battle of the Black Channel in 1998. Had they lost their nerve, or had they merely become wise, acknowledging that Soviet power was overwhelming, refusing to immolate themselves on the funeral pyre he would soon ignite?
“But I suppose the Texas Defense Forces will feel compelled to die to the last man-Alamo spirit and all that,” Maximov commented. “Pity we have to destroy brave men fighting for a hopeless cause.”
Chief of Staff Yakovlev laid his clipboard on the pilot house radarscope, took off his hat with the scrambled eggs on the brim, and mopped his forehead. Even at that predawn hour, a hot and clammy mist hovered above the oil-smooth waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and the bridge of the flagship Beria was not air-conditioned. “Perhaps not, sir. The TDF seems to have followed the Houstonians’ excellent example: it has apparently taken to the hills, too.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Captain Yakovlev held out the clipboard. “See for yourself, sir. These are the latest satellite and long-range aerial reconnaissance reports. We’ve not had a single sighting of any hostile force around Houston during the past twelve hours. Infrared surveillance photographs indicate that Houston’s Air Defense Squadron flew to bases in north Texas during the night. As for ground forces, Intelligence believes they were part of the general exodus from Houston over the past ten days.”
Maximov didn’t read the reports. No matter what they said, he knew the Texans would fight back. Even if they did, though, there was little to fear. Although they were conceded to be first-rate in terms of discipline, efficiency, and advanced weaponry, the Texas Defense Forces were inconsequential compared with the Soviet task force now approaching the southern coast. To be sure, Ripley Forte’s Sunshine Industries was rumored to have perfected some ingenious weapons. But rumors and boastful lies had always been among Texas’ principal exports. The only reliable intelligence the GRU and KGB had provided was that each of their infantrymen, who numbered a mere two reinforced regiments comprising 12,600 men, was a highly mobile assault force in himself. Individually mounted on air-cushion vehicles, the infantrymen could cover 425 miles a day over rugged terrain, deploy, and hold their own against units several times their size.
Their Waka tanks were similarly fast and deadly. The low-profile, two-man jet-propelled surface-effect craft, weighing a mere seven tons, skittered across the Texas landscape like hummingbirds, depending on agility, stealth, and speed to evade enemy gunners. Unfortunately for the TDF, it had only eighty Wakas and, as satellite photos showed, they had joined the general flight northward.
As for the Texas Air Force, it was a joke: two squadrons totaling twenty-four single-place Doozer aircraft. They were small and slow-top speed was a pathetic Mach .87-although nimble, thanks to vectoring jets.
Against the Texas Defense Forces, which would have been hard-pressed to conquer Kansas City, was ranged the might of Task Force Aleksandr Vasilyevich Suvorov, the most powerful fleet to put to sea since World War II. Fleet Admiral Maximov’s 140,000-ton flagship, the carrier Beria, could easily have annihilated the Texas Defense Forces all by itself. Its seventy-eight MI-37 Baez helicopter gunships, thirty-six heavily-armored two-man MiG-53 Spock fighters, and forty-four Sukhoi-38 Fonda bombers would be part of an armada of nearly four hundred aircraft blasting Houston into rubble.
The Beria’s formidable striking power was backed up, moreover, by seventy-two other ships, many of them loaded with naval infantry capable of fighting a protracted campaign ashore. This time, the Russians were taking no chances.
“Ten minutes to launch,” said Captain Yakovlev.
“Very well,” Fleet Admiral Maximov said. It was going to be the shortest war in history, he reflected, glancing at his watch. H-Hour was at 0545, less than two minutes away. The aerial assault would level Houston in a single wave-the devastation of the heavy bombers completed by the tens of thousands of incendiary bomb-lets dropped by nearly a hundred Clark heavy-lift helicopters. By 0700 Houston would become the center of a gigantic firestorm dwarfing that of Dresden in 1945. By nightfall nothing would be left of the proud city but twisted skeletons of buildings, heaps of smoldering cinders, and bodies charred beyond recognition. Whatever forces Texas mustered to oppose the Russian tank advance would be mowed down like a field of summer wheat.
“Coming up to H-Hour, sir,” said Captain Yakovlev.
“Very well.” Fleet Admiral Maximov looked down on the flight deck, where all faces were turned toward him on the bridge, awaiting his command. “Launch strike force!” he ordered.
From nine aircraft carriers with the huge Red Star painted on their flight decks, MiG-53 Spock fighters were shot aloft from twin catapults to provide high cover for the Sukhoi-38 Fonda VTOL bombers, which rose vertically from the same flight decks at five-second intervals. As the last of the bombers cleared the deck, the leaders, far out of sight overhead, eased their thrusters into a horizontal plane and shot forward, pulling the rest of their groups along in their wake like a string of water skiers.
At 0555 radar operators aboard the Beria reported that 380 Sukhoi-38 Fondas in successive waves were headed northward toward Houston at two thousand meters. Another 120 MiG-53 Spocks were flying cover at eleven thousand meters.
Just as the last formations of aircraft were crossing the Texas coastline, the first of Fleet Admiral Maximov’s amphibious forces were landing upon it, disgorging hundreds of PR-94 main battle tanks, which rumbled down bow ramps and across undefended beaches. By 0927 forty-four columns of twenty-five tanks each were rumbling unopposed toward Houston, sixty miles away.
Aboard the troop ships, a spetsnaz regiment and four brigades of naval infantry were loading their armored personnel carriers aboard landing craft, preparing to follow the tank advance, suppress any remaining resistance, and occupy the principal cities and communications centers in the Republic of Texas.
By Sunday night, 14 September, two days hence, the conquest would be complete.
“Red Leader to Wolf Pack-southern boundary of target area coming up in thirty seconds. Arm all ordnance.” Red Leader Colonel Fyodor Petrovich Primakov looked up from his instruments to the brightening sky overhead. Formations of Spocks were spread across the heavens, invisible except for their condensation trails ten miles above him. The parallel contrails were as regular as if drawn with a straightedge, which meant that no Texas bogies had been sighted-if they had been, the contrails would have curved as the Spocks changed course. Intelligence was right, for once-no resistance.
Primakov glanced down at the earth, alternate rectangular patches of green and brown, dotted here and there with clusters of houses and farm buildings. Of human activity there was no sign. Up ahead three or four miles away the city began. His own target was beyond, an ugly, decrepit industrial complex of a company called Air Products, Inc. He wondered about the health of a nation where even the air had to be manufactured.
“Target in sight, Colonel,” his weapons systems operator said over the intercom. “Please come to course 007.”
“Acknowledged,” said Colonel Primakov.
It was the last thing he would ever say, for an instant later an invisible knife sliced four feet off the starboard wing, fuel from the ruptured wing tank was ignited by the jet’s flaming exhaust, and the Fonda vanished in a huge fireball that cartwheeled across the sky like an exploding star.
In the one or two seconds they had to live, pilots behind Red Leader were frozen with horror before their planes were cut in two and they joined their commander in fiery death. Back in the pack, other pilots jinked wildly to escape, some switching to afterburners and diving toward the ground, others breaking off into acrobatic turns and rolls as if to escape the phantom fighters right behind them. The menace had to be behind them: MiG-53s were providing top cover, and no enemy streaked toward them from any other quarter. As for ground-based antiaircraft artillery or missiles, their radarscopes showed no sign of them.