“An old can, then! We’ve found enough trash here from tourists and mountain climbers, haven’t we?”
“Then why does it come and go and come back?”
The lieutenant got visibly angry at last. “Sergeant, I know you have a year’s combat experience in Afghanistan. I know I am a new officer. But I am a Goddamned officer and you are a Goddamned sergeant!”
The wonders of our classless society, the sergeant thought, continuing to look at his officer. Few officers could bear his look.
“Very well, Sergeant. You tell them.” The lieutenant pointed at the radio.
“Markhovskiy, before you come back, check out the hilltop to your right.”
“But it’s two hundred meters high!” the squad leader shot back.
“Correct. It shouldn’t take long at all,” the platoon sergeant said comfortingly.
USS INDEPENDENCE
Toland switched viewgraphs, in the projector. “Okay, these satellite shots are less than three hours old. Ivan has three mobile radars, here, here, and here. He moves them about daily-meaning that one’s probably been moved already-and usually has two operating around the clock. At Keflavik we have five SA-11 launch vehicles, four birds per vehicle. This SAM is very bad news. You’ve all been briefed on its known capabilities, and you’d better figure on a few hundred hand-held SAMs, too. The photo shows six mobile antiaircraft guns. We don’t see any fixed ones. They’re there, gentlemen, they’re just camouflaged. At least five, perhaps as many as ten MiG-29 fighter interceptors. This used to be a regiment until the guys from Nimitz cut them down to size. Remember that the ones who’re left are the ones who survived two squadrons of Tomcats. That is the opposition at Keflavik.”
Toland stepped aside while the wing operations officer went over the mission profile. It sounded impressive to Toland. He hoped it would be so for the Russians.
The curtain went up fifty minutes later. The first aircraft launched for the strike were the E-2C Hawkeyes. Accompanied by fighters, they flew to within eighty miles of the Icelandic coast and radiated their own radar coverage all over the formation. More Hawkeyes reached farther out to cover the formation from possible air-and submarine-launched missile attack.
KEFLAVIK, ICELAND
Ground-based Soviet radar detected the Hawkeyes even before their powerful systems went active. They could see two of the slow propeller-driven aircraft hovering beyond SAM range, each accompanied by two other aircraft whose extended figure-eight-course tracks denoted them as Tomcat interceptors guarding the Hawkeyes. The alarm was sounded. Fighter pilots boarded their aircraft while missile and gun crews raced to their stations.
The fighter-force commander was a major with three kills to his credit-but who had learned the virtue of caution the hard way. He’d been shot down once already. The Americans had sprung one trap on his regiment and he had no wish to participate in a second. If this was an attack and not a feint to draw out what fighters remained on Iceland-how would he know? He reached his decision. On the major’s command, the fighters lifted off, climbed to twenty thousand feet, and orbited over the peninsula, conserving their fuel and remaining over land, where they could be supported by friendly SAMs. They had exercised carefully the previous few days with these tactics, and were as confident as they could be that the missile crews could distinguish between friendly and unfriendly aircraft. When they got to altitude, their radar threat receivers told them of more American Hawkeyes to the east and west. The information was relayed home with a request for a strike by the Backfires. What they got back was a request to identify the American fleet’s location and composition. The air-base commander didn’t bother forwarding that. The Soviet fighter commander swore under his breath. The American radar aircraft were prime targets, and tantalizingly within reach. With a full regiment, he’d streak after them and risk losses from their fighter escorts, but he was sure that that was precisely what the Americans were hoping he’d do.
The Intruders went in first, skimming above the wavetops from the south at five hundred knots, Standard-ARM missiles hanging from their wings. More Tomcat fighters were behind them at high altitude. When the fighters, passed the radar aircraft, they illuminated the circling MiGs with their radars and began to fire off Phoenix missiles.
The MiGs couldn’t ignore them. The Soviet fighters separated into two-plane elements and scattered, coached from their ground-based radar controllers.
The Intruders popped up at a range of thirty miles, just outside range of the SAMs, and loosed four Standard-ARM missiles each, which homed in on the Russian search radars. The Russian radar operators faced a cruel choice. They could leave their search radars on and almost certainly have them destroyed or turn them off and lessen the chance-and completely lose track of the overhead air battle. They chose a middle ground. The Soviet SAM commander ordered his men to flip their systems on and off at random intervals, hoping to confuse the incoming missiles while keeping tenuous coverage of the incoming strike. The missile flight time was just over a minute, and most of the radar crews took the time to switch their systems off and leave them off-each misunderstanding the order in the most advantageous manner.
The Phoenixes arrived first. The MiG pilots suddenly lost their ground-control guidance, but kept maneuvering. One aircraft had four missiles targeted, and evaded two missiles only to blunder into another one. The major in command swore at his inability to hit back as he tried to think of something that would work.
Next came the Standard-ARMs. The Russians had three air-search radars and three more for missile-acquisition. All had been turned on when the first alarm sounded, then all had gone black after the missiles had been detected in the air. The Standards were only partially confused. Their guidance systems had been designed to record the position of a radar in case it did go off the air, and they homed in on those positions now. The missiles killed two transmitters entirely and damaged two others.
The American mission commander was annoyed. The Russian fighters were not cooperating. They hadn’t come out even when the Intruders had popped up-he’d had more fighters waiting low for that eventuality. But the Soviet radars were down. He gave the next order. Three squadrons of F/A-18 Hornets streaked in low from the north.
The Russian air-defense commander ordered his radars back on, saw that no more missiles were in the air, and soon picked up the low-flying Hornets. The MiG commander saw the American attack aircraft next, and with them, his chance. The MiG-29 was a virtual twin to the new American aircraft.
The Hornets sought out the Russian SAM launchers and began to launch their guided weapons at them. Missiles crisscrossed the sky. Two Hornets fell to missiles, two more to guns, as the American fighter-bombers scoured the ground with bombs and gunfire. Then the MiGs arrived.
The American pilots were warned, but were too close to their bombing targets to react at once. Once free of their heavy ordnance, they were fighters again, and climbed into the sky-they feared MiGs more than missiles. The resulting air battle was a masterpiece of confusion. The two aircraft would have been hard to distinguish sitting side by side on the ground. At six hundred knots, in the middle of battle, the task was almost impossible, and the Americans, with their greater numbers, had to hold fire until they were sure of their targets. The Russians knew what they were attacking, but they too shrank from shooting with abandon at a target that looked too much like a comrade’s aircraft. The result was a swarming mix of fighters closing to a range too short for missiles, as pilots sought positive target identification, an anachronistic gun duel punctuated by surface-to-air missiles from the two surviving Russian launchers. Controllers on the American aircraft and the Russian ground station never had a chance to direct matters. It was entirely in the hands of the pilots. The fighters went to afterburner and swept into punishing high-g turns while heads swiveled and eyes squinted at familiar shapes while trying to decide if the paint scheme was friendly or not. That part of the task was fairly even. The American planes were haze-gray and harder to spot, allowing easier target identification at long range than at short. Two Hornets died first, followed by a MiG. Then another MiG fell to cannon fire, and a Hornet to a snap-shot missile. An errant SAM exploded a MiG and a Hornet together.
The Soviet major saw that and screamed for the SAMs to hold fire; then he fired his cannon at a Hornet blazing across his nose, missed, and turned to follow him. He watched the American close for a high-deflection shot on a MiG-29 and damage its engine. The major didn’t know how many of his aircraft were left. It was beyond that. He was engaged in a struggle for personal survival-which he expected to lose. Caution faded to nothing as he closed on afterburner and ignored his low-fuel state light. His target turned north and led him over the water. The major fired his last missile and then watched it track right into the Hornet’s right engine as his own engines flamed out. The Hornet’s tail fragmented and the major screamed with delight as he and the American pilot ejected a few hundred meters apart. Four kills, the major thought. At least I have done my duty. He was in the water thirty seconds later.