"I don't think it'll take Beringa that long to discover we don't have a flight plan," Elliott asked. "Things are going to get hairy pretty soon. Wendy, you're sure he can't see us?"
"As sure as I can be."
"Can you jam their radar in case he spots us?"
— Yes, I'm positive of that."
Elliott adjusted his parachute harness. "This means we're close to the penetration descent, crew. Wendy, prepare to take the Center radar down. We'll be making a power-off descent in a few seconds. When everyone's ready to go, we'll start a gradual turn toward the gap in the radar coverage. When Beringa notices us off-course we'll engage the terrainavoidance computers, make a rapid descent to five thousand feet and a quick turn toward the gap. Once we go coast-in we'll stay at five thousand unless the navigators tell us differently.
We'll rely on the shorter-range mapping radar to stay down just low enough to clear the terrain until the computer enters the altitude-plotted region, then put it on the deck when we get within range of Kavaznya's radars-or if we get chased down beforehand.
Questions?Okay, how much time to the gap?"
"About fifteen minutes, General," Luger said.
"Anyone looking at us, Wendy?"
Wendy was studying her scope, cross-checking some of the signals present with a frequency comparison chart in her checklist. "I can see Beringa looking for us, but I'm sure they can't get a primary target on us-their signal is very weak. No airborne radars up. There's…
"What?"
"Another search radar comes up only every few minutes or so," she said, puzzled. "It's not a Soviet radar, at least not one I've seen before.
It's extremely weak and intermittent-like it's being turned on and off at random."
"Can it see us?" Elliott asked her. "Could it spot us if we were at low altitude?"
"I don't think so. It doesn't come up long enough for me to analyze, but the signal is so intermittent that I don't think they could spot us even if they could see us. It could be nothing more than a trawler or cargo ship with a weather radar."
"Well," Elliott said, unclenching his hands from the yoke, trying to relax, "it seems we've got more than enough to think about.
Gently he eased the wheel to the right and pointed the sleek nose of the Old Dog toward the Soviet Union.
"Here we go The Chief of Intelligence aboard the U.S.S. Lawrence ran down the metal hallway to the radio room, where a small knot of officers, enlisted personnel and civilian technicians clustered around one bank of radio scanners.
"What the hell is going on?" Markham asked as he pulled off his orange fur-lined jacket.
"An American aircraft, Commander Markham," Lieutenant J.G. Beech, the senior controller, reported hastily, cocking one earpiece of his headset to the side-but not enough to keep him from listening to the channels he was monitoring. A seaman 44 came up to him with a short message. The senior controller read it quickly, swearing softly to himself.
:f "Well, what the hell is it, Beech?"
"An American aircraft, Commander," Beech asked. "Came over U.H.F GUARD emergency channel a few minutes ago."
He shook his head. "The aircraft is in Soviet airspace, being controlled by a Soviet controller-" "An American aircraft?" Markham grabbed the note out of Beech's hand.
"Lantern four-five Fox," Markham read. "Lantern. That sounds familiar."
"It should," Beech asked. "We monitored four Lanterns from Elmendorf dragging a bunch of F-4s to Japan yesterday. Those were KC-10s with an international flight plan-coordinated days in advance. Lantern two-one through two-four."
"Did you get this guy's flight plan?"
"There's no Lantern four-five Fox," Beech asked. "Never was. It didn't come out of Elmendorf.
A i "Where, then?"
"We're double-checking," Beech asked. "But this guy has no flight plan.
We're trying to get confirmation from Elmendorf but so far we have nothing.
"Did you get anything?" Markham asked. "Type aircraft?
Anything?"
"Nothing. I'll get the tape for the staff meeting, but there was nothing. A Soviet controller in Beringa Island in the Kornmandorskiyes asked him all that when he looked up his flight plan, but he didn't tell him anything… Here's how it went, sir… a PVO Strany jet out of Petropavlovsk picks up a Lantern four-five Fox on airborne radar and calls for him in the blind on GUARD.When he started to call we got on the radar and looked for him, too. We had the PVO jet all the way but we couldn't find the other guy until the PVO jet called out his range and bearing. We plotted him forty miles east of the airway-and then we got a track on him. This four-five Fox plane looked like he was heading toward Russia " "Toward Russia?" Markham swiveled in the navy-gray seat.
"From where?Didn't we see him before?"
"He just sort of appeared out of nowhere. We weren't really scanning for aircraft but we should have spotted him before the Strany surveillance plane did. I don't know how we-" PVO "Where is he now?"
"We lost contact with four-five Fox right after he crossed back onto the airway," Beech asked. "Apparently he was crossing south of the Kommandorskiyes, and that's just about the limit of our coverage.
"But get this-when we picked him up on radar he wasn't squawking anything. When he contacted Befinga they assigned him a mode three squawk, but his mode C altitude readout was out. Then Beringa kicks him out of their airspace and gives him a vector out around Petropavlovsk airspace."
"Jesus," Markham said, wiping his forehead. "Someone's screwing up but bad here. "He thought for a moment. "No mode one?Mode two?
Four?"
Those were U.S. military-only identification codes.
"Nothing-not even after Beringa talked to him."
"An aircraft with a military call sign," Markham said, "but with nothing but mode three-and that assigned by a Soviet controller.
"He was speaking Russian to him, too, sir," a technician said from a nearby radio console.
"Russian?" Markham asked. "What the hell was he saying?"
"Conversational. Please, thank you, that sort of thing.
Asked the PVO Strany recon jet pilot where he was from."
"Did the Lantern pilot sound Russian?"
"No, sounded like maybe he used to speak it in the past, but he was definitely American. Even said he was from Butte, Montana.
"We have no further contact with this guy?"
"Radio contact only," Beech said, "but he hasn't talked to Beringa for some time so we couldn't get an updated DF steer on him. "He motioned over to a large glass plotting board near the Communications center, which he and Markham walked over to.
"Here's our Position," Beech told the intelligence chief, pointing to a tiny ship sticker, "a hundred and fifty miles west northeast of the Kommandorskiyes. Here's the airway-we're sitting almost directly under it. We first plotted the unknown aircraft here, northwest of us and forty miles east of the airway, heading southeast. He intersected the airway here and flew along it for a few minutes until Beringa chased him further away from Petropavlovsk airspace, which he'd run into in about twenty to thirty minutes. Our last DF steer put him south of the Kommandorskiyes, a little bit west of the airway. But Beringa control had confirmed him on a mag heading of onefour-zero, which would put him well outside Petropavlovsk airspace. Even if he went direct to Sapporo or Tokyo he'd never get close enough to worry anyone."
" Is there any chance this could be a Soviet aircraft?"
Markham asked. "How do we know it's American?"
Beech looked puzzled. "Well except for his call sign, we don't, sir."
"But you've said there's no Lantern four-five Fox from anywhere.
"We haven't received confirmation from Elmendorf," Beech asked. "They won't talk about their aircraft on unsecured radios. All we know is that no flight plan has been filed on a Lantern four-five Fox. It could've been dropped, or filed late It's unusual but it can happen.