Gurychenko, his wingman, took up a position to his right, and Volontov blinked his lights. Advancing his throttles, then releasing the brakes, Volontov allowed the MiG to roll. Gurychenko stayed right alongside.
He pushed the throttles outboard and shoved them into afterburner.
The MiG leaped like a ballet dancer. Halfway down the stage, she rose into the air, and he retraced the landing gear and flaps.
When he achieved 600 knots and 2,000 meters, Volontov shut down the afterburners. He continued to climb, waiting for the others to group around him.
There was very little talk on the radio. Everyone had his own thoughts to tend to, and the flight strategy had been ingrained after several briefings.
When the wing was complete, Volontov advanced his speed to Mach 1.5. They climbed quickly through low and scattered cloud cover and emerged into a starlit night. The clouds were like rolling plains below. Billowy steppes.
Three hundred kilometers out of Murmansk, Volontov spoke on the first tactical frequency. “This is Condor One. Code Neva. I say again, Code Neva.”
Condor Flight continued to climb, seeking the 15,000 meters they would maintain, while Vulture Flight leveled off at 6,000 meters and accelerated to Mach 1.7. When they were twenty kilometers ahead of the main group, they would return to Mach 1.5.
Tern Flight stayed at 6,000 meters. At the first sign of radar contact, they would dive to a hundred meters off the water and attempt to avoid the radar. After a few minutes passed, Volontov checked the positions by switching his radar to active.
Every one was in place.
He was proud of them.
His heading was shown as 000 degrees on the HUD, the reading taken from the gyroscopic compass. Magnetic compasses were less than reliable in the far north. The downward pull of magnetic north tended to depress the needles and make them jump from side to side.
Each of the flights met two tankers and topped off their fuel.
When the computer informed him that he had achieved 80 degrees north latitude, he checked his watch. 1112 hours, German time. They were two minutes ahead of schedule.
There would be ice shelf down there, but the clouds, which had been closing in, blocked a view of it.
On the second tactical frequency, Volontov said, “Delta Blue, Condor One.”
“Go Condor, you’ve got Blue.”
“Code Silver Lake.”
“Copy Silver Lake. Code Ural.”
“I receive Code Ural. Good luck, Delta Blue.”
“Same to you, fella.”
On the first tactical frequency, Volontov told his wing, “Code Volga.”
The entire flight turned to the west, Condor and Tern Flights waiting one and a half minutes, in order to stay directly behind Vulture flight.
Half an hour later, Rostoken reported the first radar probes.
Felix Eisenach was enjoying a late-night brandy with Hans Diederman in the engineer’s quarters on the fourth level when the duty officer called.
Diederman hung up the telephone and grabbed his jacket from the back of the sofa.
“There has been a radar contact, Herr General. Unidentified aircraft.”
Eisenach retrieved his own uniform jacket and slipped into it as he followed Diederman out of the small apartment and down the corridor to the operations room.
The dome did not have a military-type plotting screen, but one of the consoles was displaying the radar picture relayed by one of the Tornadoes over the ice platforms.
The console operator was a little excited. “I count… eh… count twenty aircraft, Lieutenant. Now, wait. Eight of them have disappeared into the clutter of ground return. They are flying very low.”
The duty officer looked up to Eisenach.
The general was extremely disappointed. He had been certain that attacks by aircraft were a thing of the past. Either the secret service’s leaking of the information about the fail-safe explosive devices had been ignored, or had not reached the proper ears. He should have used the newspapers, as the Americans had with the task force information.
“How many interceptors do we have up?” he asked.
The leutnant spoke to the operator. “Let us see our own radar.”
The screen flickered then displayed the area covered by the radar antenna on the dome. The Soviet — they had to be Soviet from that direction — aircraft were out of range.
With his finger, the operator checked off blips. “Twenty-four, Herr General.”
Twenty-four? That was all of the aircraft assigned to Weismann. Had the oberst known something that Eisenach had not known? The man had trouble communicating.
Nevertheless, Eisenach was happy to see all of the aircraft.
“Some of them are joining to meet the Soviets,” the leuntnant said. “See here? Ten of them.”
“That is good,” Eisenach said, relieved that Weismann had apparently instilled some discipline in his pilots.
The telephone rang, and the duty officer picked it up, listened, then handed the phone to Eisenach. “It is Admiral Schmidt.”
Eisenach took the handset. “Yes, Gerhard?”
“Did you know that twenty Soviet airplanes are coming at us, Felix?”
“Yes. I am watching on the screen.”
“And did you also know that the Soviet and British-American task forces have been turned northward and are making flank speed?”
“It could be expected,” Eisenach said. “As I mentioned to you.”
Inside, his stomach felt like jelly.
“I must have missed that mention,” Schmidt said. “I am going to sound General Quarters, and I am freeing my guns and missiles.”
“Of course,” Felix Eisenach said. “That is what you must do.”
Seventeen
The AEW&C plane was an Ilyushin II-76 using the call sign Sable. The air controller had a baritone, unflappable voice. He sounded so rock-solid that Volontov agreed with NATO. They called the airborne early warning and control aircraft version of the II-76 Mainstay.
“Condor, Vulture, this is Sable.”
“Proceed, Sable,” Pyotr Volontov said.
“You have ten targets on intercept course, velocity Mach 1.2. We interpret them as four Eurofighters at seven thousand meters and six Tornadoes at twelve thousand meters. They have you spotted, so you may as well go to active radar.”
Volontov activated the radar set. The sweep lit up so many blips that it took him several seconds to sort them out.
He depressed the transmit button, “Sable, Condor. The Eurofighters appear to be a probe.”
“Agreed, Condor.”
“Vulture Flight, scatter,” Volontov ordered. “Condor, Vulture, Tern, arm all.”
Volontov raised the protective cover and armed his guns and missiles. He selected two AA-11 missiles from the inboard left and right pylons.
On the radar screen, he saw Rostoken’s flight of six break up as preplanned. Three fighters spread out and began to climb toward the four Eurofighters. The other three hung back for a second, then went to afterburners and started to climb toward the Tornadoes.
The distance to initial contact was fifty kilometers. One of the Eurofighter pilots was nervous. He released two missiles, probably Sky Flashes, far too early. The small blips dashed across the screen and died an early and ineffective death.
Tern and Condor Flights maintained their steady advance at Mach 1.5.
At forty kilometers, just inside the Sky Flash effective range, the Eurofighters fired eight missiles at the lead MiGs. Volontov thought that the Germans were too obviously trying to draw an attack by all of his craft.
The three lead MiGs returned fire with six missiles, then took evasive action, their blips disappearing in a cloud of chaff and flares.