And yet, when they had come out on top of their loops facing to the rear, pilots found the sky there empty, too. And Fondas-become-fireballs kept lighting up the sky; neither speed nor altitude nor evasive action seemed to offer any protection. Only distance from Houston. Echelons far to the rear observed that only when their comrades neared Houston’s city limits were they blasted out of the sky. Not all of them, to be sure. A few had firewalled their throttles, even while their wing-mates were going up in flames, and pressed in upon the city to drop their bombs. The pilots who managed to complete their mission were the exception-but at a terrible cost: while attempting to return to base, every one was blasted out of the sky.
The leaders of following wings, after quick radio consultation with the chief air operations officer aboard the Beria, broke off before they reached the danger zone and led their wings back to their carriers, where the air staff would consider what to do in this grave emergency. And emergency it was, for of the 380 Sukhoi-38 Fondas that had taken off, 66 had been shot down, all within the space of five minutes. Enough operational aircraft remained to destroy the city, to be sure, but even a fleet admiral’s career could come to an abrupt end over such losses.
Maximov personally interviewed the first pilot who landed his plane aboard the Beria. “What the hell happened?” he demanded.
“I wish I knew,” said the shaken pilot. “The lead planes were flying normally, when all of a sudden a wing seemed to shear off, the plane torched and went down. One plane two miles ahead of me was bisected right down the middle. The two separated sides were a couple hundred meters apart when they disappeared in a ball of fire. It was as if the plane had been cut with a-with a-well, razor.”
“You mean laser.”
“No, sir-razor. There was no visible beam, and nonvisible light would have triggered the detectors.”
“Razors don’t fly, Lieutenant. So what the hell was it?”
The pilot looked at him, his mind as blank as his eyes.
“Will they be coming back?” asked the scared young radar technician as he tracked the cloud of blips on his screen, heading back across the Texas coastline and out to sea.
Major Gerard Murphy of the Texas Defense Forces, commanding Baker battery of four rail guns, nodded. “Probably. The Russkies don’t give up easy. We surprised them, and Russians sometimes come apart at the seams when the unpredictable happens. But they have all day to figure it out, and when they do-yes, they’ll be back.”
“From the south?”
Murphy, a transplanted Dubliner whose lips were made for laughter, laughed-mirthlessly. “Look, son, these guys aren’t television Russians. They’re real.
They’re professionals. Next time out they could come from any direction-any direction but south.”
And when they did, Houston was doomed. The TDF had only seventeen of the rail guns, and the TDF Chief of Staff Major General Mark D. Raymond had decided against dispersing them. Reasoning that the Russians, seeing Houston apparently undefended, would send their planes on the most direct course to reach the city, he had deployed all seventeen kinetic energy weapons on the city’s southern approaches. By sending away most of the Texas Defense Forces, he had disarmed the natural Russian instinct for tactical finesse, and they had barreled straight on in, just as he hoped they would. But next time around, they’d spill out of the skies from the east or west, perhaps even the north. And they would find those approaches undefended.
Major Murphy swore, in Gaelic, a language whose oaths had been honed to needle sharpness by dint of much usage against Ireland’s English oppressors over the centuries. If only, he thought…
If only Sunshine Industries, which had perfected the Jim Bowie rail gun, had been able to deliver a hundred of them-or even seventy or eighty-Houston might have been completely ringed with iron, and thus spared. Unfortunately, the weapon had been rushed into production only three months earlier.
The rail gun’s range was only thirty-one miles, but the weapon fired projectiles at the rate of one every four seconds, and with passive radar had a kill ratio of 91 percent. But it required an enormous expenditure of electrical energy. So General Raymond had ordered Houston’s factories closed and the population evacuated from the city. While the exodus was still in progress, new high-tension lines Were being laid under cover of darkness to the Jim Bowie batteries south of the city. There, in conical shafts sunk into the ground, the kinetic energy weapons were mounted. The Jim Bowies were electronic slingshots fired automatically, aimed and triggered by radiation of an enemy plane’s own active radar as it passed overhead.
* * *
It was toward the southern approaches that the Russian armored spearhead also thrust. Eleven hundred tanks rolled north from the coastal city of Freeport in a great pincers movement aimed at surrounding the city then pounding to dust what was left after the bombers had done their work. The tanks advanced in a wide front over range and farmland, then separated into two extended formations at Angleton. The two divisions of tanks on the right flank, comprising the Operational Maneuver Group Karaganda, pounded through Danbury, five kilometers to the northeast of Angleton, then headed for the Houston suburb of Pasadena. Leading elements of the two tank divisions of OMG Ulanbator, simultaneously passing through West Columbia, would swing in a wide circle around Houston from the west and link up with OMG Karaganda. The four divisions would then converge on the town center, destroying anything and anybody the air assault had missed.
Two kilometers north of Danbury, the open plain that lay before OMG Karaganda was suddenly obscured by a curtain of smoke rising from the ground. OMG Karaganda commander Colonel Valentin Starozhilov, in the lead tank, radioed orders to close up the formation and prepare for action, and plunged ahead through the smoke at full speed. Three hundred meters farther on the smoke cleared, to reveal the totally unexpected presence of what must have been the entire TDF tank corps, three score hovertanks.
The earth heaved beneath the tank on Colonel Starozhilov’s left, keeping strict formation at forty-eight kilometers per hour. It flipped over on its back, gouged a thirty-meter ditch with its turret, and blew apart as its ammunition ignited. Starozhilov’s ears rang with the crash of gunfire as his tank commander began to return the surprise barrage. Within seconds the Wakas turned and fled, with the Russians in hot pursuit. The Soviet tanks kept up a steady fire with their cannon, but while the earth erupted all around the enemy tanks, half a minute later they all disappeared, unscathed, into another cloud of smoke.
The Russians followed, only to emerge on the other side of the smoke curtain, but of the Texan tanks themselves-no sign.
The Soviet losses had been light-only five tanks destroyed in the ambuscade. But where had the enemy gone?
Twice again the TDF Wakas were sighted through a veil of smoke. Twice again the enemy inflicted a few casualties before turning tail and disappearing under the cover of smoke. The chase had taken no more than fifteen minutes, all told, but in pursuing the Texan tanks OMG Karaganda had veered off its course and was now heading due west.
“What the hell is going on, Colonel?” exclaimed his exasperated tank commander. “We’re hot on the heels of the bastards, and they disappear in a puff of smoke, only to pop up out of the blue.”
“I don’t know,” said Starozhilov. “But whatever it is, I don’t like it.” The fact that they had reached the crest of a long, sloping hill, beyond which he could discern outlying buildings in Houston’s suburbs, did nothing to reassure him. Nor did scouts’ reports that their present position was bordered by an antitank ditch running parallel to their line of advance on the west, while to the east his flankers reported the presence of an extensive minefield that the Texans had not troubled to camouflage. He ordered the group to close up, cut its advance to fifteen kph, and keep a sharp lookout on all sides.
The Russian tanks rolled slowly forward at close intervals, almost tread to tread, occupying a front fifteen tanks across and some thirty-five ranks deep. Ahead was nothing but kilometer after kilometer of emptiness, broken only by occasional farmhouses and outbuildings. Colonel Starozhilov called a halt, opened the turret, and carefully examined the countryside around them. Deserted, but its very quiet was somehow ominous.
“Tank 277,” he radioed to the behemoth on his right flank. “Scout the area dead ahead. Deploy your mine detectors and report anything suspicious. Look for concealed entrances to underground tank parks.” The tank rumbled forward for nearly four hundred meters at walking speed, then suddenly stopped.
“Tank ditch ahead, sir. Camouflaged with painted canvas.”