He looked for a place to set down the cup, but most of the flat, stable
surfaces in an AWACS aircraft are for work. He kept the cup clenched in
his brown fingers and turned his attention back to the radar displays.
Ozzie wasn’t a big man, but he was built like a fireplug. There were
traces of gray in his curly black hair, but he still moved in a way that
suggested that if there was a brick wall between him and where he wanted
to be it was too damn bad for the wall. Like the crew, he wore a dark blue
Air Force flight suit. But there was no insignia of rank on Ozzie Sharp’s
flight suit because he had no rank.
“Anything?” he asked the operator at the end of the line.
“Not a thing,” the operator said, never taking his eyes off the screen.
The operator didn’t add “sir” and Sharp understood the significance of
that perfectly.
Well, fuck ’em. Ozzie Sharp had been sent here from Washington because he
was one of the best trouble shooters in the agency. This was trouble and
he meant to get to the bottom of it.
So far he was just a passenger. The general had set this operation up
before he arrived and all Ozzie had to do was ride along. The general
might be content to command from the ground, but Ozzie Sharp wanted to be
where the action was.
The AWACS was further west than usual. Whatever was out there was tricky.
Moving the plane out over the Bering Sea made it easier to burn through
the jamming and pick up the weak radar returns.
Orbiting nearby were two F-15 Eagles with conformal fuel tanks for extra
range and Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles to deal with whatever they
encountered. Perhaps more importantly, the fighters also carried a variety
of sensors including special video cameras to record what they found.
Back at the base were more Eagles, two KC-10 tankers on alert, and another
AWACS, ready to take up station when this group reached the end of their
endurance. They had been doing this for four days now, but no one was
getting bored.
The operator, a skinny kid with a shock of dark hair, turned to his
passenger and tapped his screen. “Ivan’s out in force today.”
“What’s that?”
The radar operator grinned. “Our opposite number. An Illuyshin 76 AWACS.”
“Observing a test?”
The operator shrugged. “Maybe. But if I had to guess I’d say they’re
looking for something in that fog bank-just like us.”
“With just the AWACS?”
“Nossir, that’s not their style. But they like to hold their interceptors
on the ground until they’ve got a target and then come in like
gangbusters. Their birds are probably faster than ours but they don’t have
the range.”
Sharp nodded. It was a well-known fact that the Soviets were years behind
the West in jet engine technology. What the Americans achieved by
sophisticated engineering and advanced materials, the Russians got by
brute force at the cost of higher fuel consumption.
But high-tech or low-tech, the effect was the same, Sharp reminded
himself. When those interceptors came they could be damn dangerous.
“Make sure our people know about this,” he told the operator.
“Already done,” the operator replied, pleased he had anticipated the
civilian.
The operator turned back to his screen, scowled at it, then reached over
and fiddled with the controls.
“Hello, hello,” the operator said to himself. “Looky here.” Then he
thumbed his mike.
“Okay, we’ve got contact. Bearing 231 and range approximately 220 nautical
miles. Height 500.”
The pilot’s voice squawked in his earphones. “Five thousand?”
“Negative. Five hundred.”
“Understood,” the pilot came back. “Five hundred feet.”
“Eagle Flight,” the flight controller’s voice came on the circuit, “you
are cleared. Now go!”
“Eedyoteh!” Go!
Senior Lieutenant Sergei Sergovitch Abrin of the PVO-the Soviet air
defense forces-eased the throttle on the Mig 29 Flanker forward. The plane
rolled down the rain-slick runway gathering speed as it came. In his rear
view mirror he could see his wingman behind and to his right. He was
vaguely conscious that the second pair of his flight was taking off on the