“So, it’s not a go, but a chance. We could be going in tomorrow at first dark. That’s my suggestion. We’ll see what the Japanese leaders think of the idea. Oh, if we go in, we’ll take our new toys, plus lots of flash-bangers and our regular weapons and a full load of ammo. Any questions?”
“How many bad guys we looking at, Skipper?” Horse Ronson asked.
“Two hundred on the island, about fifty at the central HQ and around it on sentry and guard duty. Just a guess. Not bad odds.”
There was a buzz of talk, but no more questions. He told Jaybird to get the men out of there and back to their quarters. They were off duty the rest of the day. At twenty thousand feet in the thin air over Kunashir Island, Sergei Viktor cruised in his assigned position, making a five-mile circle over the target below in his SU-33 Flanker, then doing a lazy eight, and coming back to circle his position the other way. He had been bored out of his mind all of this flight. His two wingmen were making similar moves at fifteen thousand and ten thousand feet. They had been on this station for over an hour.
Sergei bristled now just thinking about it. By rights, he shouldn’t even be here. He had been born fifteen years too late.
Before the dismantling of the Soviet Union, his family had been high up in the power structure of the Party. He would have gone to the Naval Institute in any case. But then he would have come out a lieutenant, and four years later would have been a captain, with his admiral’s insignia another three years away.
It was the way the Party worked, rewarding those loyal to it. His family had earned those rewards. Now all of that special attention and those privileges were gone. He had attended the Institute, and come out only an ensign like everyone else. After six years, he was still a lowly lieutenant, even with his top ability as a fighter pilot. His name meant nothing. His family’s heroics had been forgotten. He was just another pilot at the command of a trio of officers not fit to lick his boots.
Yes, half of his blood was Cossack. It flamed in his veins as he thought about how the fates had treated him. It was a damned conspiracy, and everyone in the whole fucking world was to blame.
Sergei remembered the good times in Moscow before the fall of the Union. There had been parties, grand waltzes, the ballet, and all the girls he could want even when he was fifteen. Glorious. His father had been promoted high in the Party, not yet in the Politburo, but on a fast track leading that way.
He had been accepted into the Naval Institute, and had been assured that he would do well, and graduate with honors. It was expected, it would happen. Rank and loyalty had its privileges.
Sergei remembered how it had all crashed down around them in two days. His father was arrested by the new government for crimes against the state. Their beautiful home and the dacha outside the city, both were confiscated. He and his mother and sister had to rush to her sister’s house and hide.
Six months later, his father had been released, but he’d had nothing to come back to. No home, no land, no vocation, no money. He had killed himself after trying to get a job for six terrible months.
Sergei had changed his name, applied to the Naval Institute, and gained entrance on his abilities alone.
But now it had come to this. In a way he was following in his father’s footsteps, being loyal to the regime in power. But how long could he put up with it?
Sergei felt his blood pressure rise, the way it did when he had to make two passes to land On a storm-tossed carrier deck. He didn’t care.
There came a time when he could stand it no longer.
His tactical plane-to-plane speaker came on. “Sergei, don’t you see them? This is Anatol, you having radio problems? There’s a flight of three American Tomcats at fifteen thousand feet making a slow crawl around our formation. Looks like they’re on a joyride. Hey, Sergei, are you still with us?”
“Yes, yes, I’m here. Where? Where are they?” Sergei listened as his voice went louder, higher than he wanted it to go.
“To the north, climbing out to nearly twenty thousand,” Anatol said. “You should be able to see them on their next pass.”
Sergei craned his neck, and searched the sky to the north. He quit his circle, and flew north for a minute, then turned back. They wouldn’t be expecting him from this quadrant. He had the highest Tomcat on his radar, but not where he wanted the plane to be. Sergei edged around more so he could come out of the sun at the Americans. Yes, just like in practice, and mock combat runs. He didn’t care how long it took. He could wait for the exactly right moment so there would be no chance of failure. Yes, he had come to a decision. He was not doing himself any good here. This Navy life was not for him. Not anymore.
There had to be a change made, and it was about to happen. He nosed the SU-33 Flanker downward, and pushed on his radar fire controls.
All he wanted to do was lock on. He had to lock on right now.
A mile and a half away, Lieutenant Jerry Vanhorst knew that they had three Soviet Flankers in the area. His RIO had kept him informed.
He had seen one of them, but the other two were far below him as he climbed to his assigned station at 25,000 feet.
He had just reported on station, and carried full tanks of fuel.
Vanhorst looked around in the pale blue of the thin sky.
“Hey, Mugger, you lose another one?” Vanhorst asked his RIO in the backseat. “Where the hell is that frisky Russian jet jockey we saw a minute or two ago?”
“Out there somewhere. He was circling at twenty thousand.
Probably on the backside where we can’t spot him.”
“Vanhoast, old buddy,” Lieutenant (j. g.) Phillips said from the Tomcat well below him. “You guys having trouble counting to three up there? I can come and help you find him if you need me.”
“Not by your eyebrows, Phillips san,” Vanhorst said. “Stick to your sampan ways. We’ve got this covered.”
“Oh, shit!” Vanhorst’s RIO bellowed. “Somebody’s locked on to us.
Get us the hell out of here, Jerry.”
Lieutenant Jerry Vanhorst didn’t have the slightest idea which direction to move. He hit the button releasing a load of metal chaff to try to detour any missile that could be coming, and at the same time kicked in the afterburner and made a screaming diving turn to the left that drained the blood from his brain. He had a feeling, a sick and cold premonition, that it wasn’t going to be enough. How was he to know they’d be in a fucking shooting war up here?
Behind him, the Russian air-to-air heat-seeking missile from the bayonet-fighting distance for a Mach Two fighter of two miles tracked the targeted F-14, slamming through the thin air at Mach 1.4. Its heat-seeking sensitive nose ignored the chaff designed to distract other-type missiles, and zeroed in on the Vanhorst Tomcat’s flaming afterburners.
The conditions couldn’t have been better for the Russian missile.
It streaked through the air following the jet’s sudden left turn and dive, and in eight seconds rammed into the American Tomcat’s tailpipe heat source and detonated.
18
The Tomcat F-14 exploded in a horrendous roar as over six thousand pounds of fuel, four AIM-54-C Phoenix missiles, two AIM-9M Sidewinders, and two AMRAAM radar-guided missiles detonated in a blinding flash. A cloud of smoke and fire jetted upward, and pieces of the aircraft, and of the two human bodies, started their 25,000-foot drop into the Pacific Ocean.
Lieutenant Phillips had caught the frantic shout from the RIO in the highest F-14, that Vanhorst’s plane had been locked on by targeting radar. The flash in the daytime sky was so brilliant that Phillips saw it from ten thousand feet below.