Karpov was reacting on pure instinct, and his reflex was sure and steady. One part of his mind said this shouldn’t be happening, but then again, he and his ship shouldn’t even be there in 1943. Now something else clearly was there, and it was reading as a denizen of his own long lost future in 2021. He didn’t care how it came to be there, he would just fight it.
Seconds later the S-400s were beginning their terminal radar search. They began to eat away the last interval of space between the their warheads and those planes. This time, instead of one plane trying to spoof the oncoming attack, there were three, all deploying their decoys and turning at high speed. That improved the odds on defense considerably. Each missile had perhaps a 50% chance of getting a kill, but they all would roll good dice that minute, and all three would find pay dirt. The three explosions were clearly seen on Rodenko’ screen, and the odds on the Russians getting four planes like that so easily had been very long. They just got lucky.
“Targets eliminated!” said Samsonov, clearly pleased with himself.
Yes… They had been very lucky, getting to those planes just minutes before they would reach their release point on ordnance. Those three targets would have become twelve targets in a hot minute, but Karpov’s immediate reflex to fire had won him a big advantage. The centermost Shotai in Kita’s attack was gone, but there were still eight planes out there, one group due north, another coming in at a 45 degree angle, and neither of the KA-40s had seen them. They were just now reaching their maximum throw range on the GBU/53s, and they were about to open those weapons bays and let loose the dogs of war.
All hell was about to break loose.
Part XII
The Perfect Moment
“Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
Chapter 34
“Bear!” said Rodenko, seeing another enemy plane. At 10:23 his screen lit up with scarlet, the blood red contacts piling up as his system reported the position of Kita’s other two groups. “Four unidentified aircraft due north, same elevation and speed increasing through 600 knots. It looks like they’ve put ordnance in the air. Wolfhounds! I’m reading multiple contact clusters. And I’m getting another off axis airborne contact—Bears—with more hounds in the air at 45 degrees northeast. My god, I have 64 separate contacts inbound!”
The Western brevity code would had tagged the planes as ‘Bogies,’ and the missiles or bombs as ‘Vampires.’ No one knew much about Russian brevity code, short phrases meant to convey a quick message in the heat of battle. The crew of Kirov had long used the word ‘bear’ to indicate a hostile contact, and the wolfhounds that ran with it were the enemy missiles and bombs.
Karpov could not believe what he was hearing. F-35B fighters had been clearly identified by his systems, and they were coming in fast and furious. While he had concentrated his SAMs on the first group they spotted in the center, two other groups had remained undetected on the wings until they suddenly delivered their ordnance, and his mind was already racing through his own internal database to determine what might be coming his way. Those planes could carry the American Joint Standoff Attack Missile, but not in such numbers, and not released at that range.
Sixty-four Wolfhounds….
“Rodenko! Do you have the planes that made that delivery?”
“Yes sir. They are turning and breaking off to the north.”
“How many did you say? Quick!”
“Two groups of four planes each.”
“Range to leading hound?”
“62 nautical miles, sir. Inbound at a little over 550 knots.”
Bears and Wolfhounds. Planes and unfriendly ordnance inbound on his ship. There was only one way the human side of him could respond.
“Damn!” Karpov swore. Now he knew what his enemy had just thrown at him. “Smart bombs!” he said. “They have to be GBU-53s.”
He had spent hours and hours studying American Naval strike ordnance to learn their characteristics and applications, and match them to the aircraft that could carry them. He knew all the typical loadouts common to the F-35. It was one reason why he was so good in combat. His razor sharp mind for battle was operating on top of a thick database of real knowledge. The F-35 could carry the GBU-53, and one loadout configuration allowed for eight bombs to be carried in the internal weapons bay. Its optimal release point was about 60 nautical miles out, and that’s what Rodenko had just reported to him: eight planes, 64 hounds in the air running subsonic, unthinking death from above, gliding towards him with precision navigation systems and a host of other sensors guiding them in.
Smart bomb munitions were central to the American bag of tricks in naval combat, but who was out there? How did it get here? He could not answer those questions. His mind was all focused on the adrenaline of fight or flight, and for Karpov every synapse in a situation like this screamed at him to fight.
“Helm, ahead flank and hard to port. Come to 145!”
This was going to cost him—big time—where missile inventory was concerned, but it was sink or swim now. The life of the ship and crew was at stake here. His own life, and all his heated aspirations, were on the line, in the crosshairs of those incoming wolfhounds. It wasn’t time, or fate, or the devious will of an opponent like Volkov that was gunning for him now. It was a string of glide bombs, mindless metal, yet seeking his life with their deviously engineered electronic sensors, both radar and infra-red.
“Rodenko,” he said, his voice controlled and steady. “Deploy all offensive ECM systems.”
“Aye sir.”
“Samsonov! Switch to full automatic and fire at the group bearing 045—salvos of six. Fire!”
“String of pearls!” shouted Hideo Honjo at the CIC aboard Takami. They had been watching the battle unfold in the phosphorescence of their own sensor suite, and saw that first missile targeted at the lead plane off Akagi. Their planes had taken the direct approach to the contact, while those off Kaga had moved off axis to come at Kirov from two other angles.
They saw the lead plane get hit, the crew reacting with disappointment. When the next Russian SAM salvo struck home, there was an audible reaction from the bridge crew. Harada looked over his shoulder, feeling the same as his crew did, but knowing he had to hold it all inside.
“See to your work,” he said sternly. “This fellow nearly took us out the last time we saw him, and we have to be damn good to survive out here. Now get it done.” Tensions rose in the silence that followed until Honjo shouted out that epithet—string of pearls. He was describing the ordnance being delivered by the strike planes, all lined up on his screen.
They saw the Russian ship firing again, this time throwing serious metal. They were ignoring Takami completely, their defense now a flurry of SAMs directed at those vampires.
“Good,” Harada said under his breath. “Throw your eggs, you bastard. You’ve got to be letter perfect now, and there’s 64 smart bombs heading your way. Anything you use now is one less missile under that deck when we get close enough to get in this fight.”
They watched, spellbound, as all of 64 JDAMs dotted the screen, descending from that high altitude towards the Russian ship. Then they picked up two more very fast contacts that the system identified as the Zircon SS-N-33s. Kirov must have thrown something their way, and he authorized the use of the best long range defense asset that might have a chance at getting them—his Standard Missile 3. They had been designed to get out after ballistic missiles inbound on a carrier task force, and the Zircon running close to Mach 6 was in that same speed category. It was now going to be a contest between the very best ship killer the Russian technology had designed, against the best defense the Americans had to offer.