Hearing her, Brad nodded to himself. That was smart. She’d identified the air-to-air weapons most likely to be carried in those approaching Su-50s’ internal weapons bays. Their defensives would be preset for maximum efficiency against the most likely threats. Unfortunately, their options were very limited.
According to their intelligence, Su-50s configured for stealth flight usually carried two heat-seekers each. Russia’s K-74M2 missiles were an advanced version of its R-73 infrared homing weapons, code-named the AA-11 Archer by NATO. In size, range, speed, and agility, K-74M2s were the equivalent of the American AIM-9X Sidewinders. That was bad enough.
The four K-77M radar-guided missiles carried by the Russian fighters were even more dangerous — better than anything in current U.S., NATO, or AFN service. Compared to American AIM-120 AMRAAMs, K-77Ms had one huge advantage: older missiles of this type carried a small, mechanically steered radar antenna in their noses to provide final guidance against a target during the seconds before impact. But sharp evasive maneuvering by an aircraft in those last few seconds could slip out of that narrow seeker beam faster than it could adjust, causing a miss. Unfortunately, the K-77M carried a phased-array terminal guidance radar in its nose. Since this radar was digitally steered, its beam could be adjusted thousands of times per second. Put simply, there was no way any final evasive maneuver could shake its lock. Stealth, jamming, and chaff were the only real defensive options… and even then the missile’s phased-array guidance radar greatly reduced their effectiveness.
Struck by a sudden thought, Brad pulled up a digital map on one of his displays. Flying straight west with those Russian fighters up and looking for them would be suicide. They couldn’t outrun those Su-50s or dodge every weapon they fired — not over northern Russia’s vast, virtually flat expanses of forest. But heading east into the radar maze created by the jagged peaks and ridgelines of the Ural Mountains might help them evade detection. If missiles started flying, the cover offered by mountains might also give them a slim chance at survival. That wasn’t much of a straw to grasp at, but it was better than nothing.
“Unidentified X-band signal strength increasing,” the Ranger’s computer reported.
Brad finished his takeoff checklist. “We’re good to go,” he said quietly. He throttled up to full military power. The XCV-62 started rolling forward, picking up speed. Carefully, he steered straight down the ruts his landing had ripped through the snowpack. Huge masses of compacted snow rippled off the ground behind the Ranger and blew apart into individual flakes, sent whirling through the air by the exhaust from its engines.
He held tight on course and felt the batwinged aircraft shuddering and bouncing as it raced faster and faster across the clearing. The woods on the far side grew larger with astonishing quickness. The airspeed indicator on his HUD climbed higher. C’mon, baby, he thought, give me just a little more speed. Now individual trees were starkly visible through the windscreen, looming closer and closer. “Vr… rotating!” he said, pulling back on the stick.
The Ranger’s nose rose and it soared off the ground in a billowing cloud of vaporized snow. Still accelerating, the batwinged aircraft cleared the tops of the surrounding trees by a few yards and climbed higher. Its landing gear whirred smoothly up and locked inside with a few muffled thumps.
At a thousand feet, Brad banked sharply, rolling back toward the east at 450 knots. With the ice-and-snow-covered peaks rising ahead, starkly outlined against the night sky, he leveled off.
Captain Oleg Imrekov frowned. At this speed, nearly eleven hundred kilometers an hour, he and Colonel Baryshev were only two minutes out from the Perun’s Aerie base. But their radars still weren’t picking anything up — not in the air and not on the ground. How stealthy were these damned mercenaries? Were they already gone, well on their way out of Russia?
Suddenly a sharp tone sounded in his headset, alerting him to a possible detection. A green diamond appeared on his HUD. His infrared search-and-track system was picking up a heat signature almost due north. But the signature was very small, more like that of a missile than a full-size aircraft. It was moving east across his field of view at more than eight hundred kilometers an hour. Well, hell, he thought, that was far too slow for a missile. For a split second, his radar saw something in the same spot but then lost the contact.
“Lead, this is Two!” Imrekov snapped. “Stealth target bearing eleven o’clock moving to twelve at low altitude. Target is heading east toward the mountains at high speed. Range more than thirty kilometers. IRST contact only.”
He pushed a switch on his stick. Two missile symbols appeared in the corner of his HUD. The two K-74M2 heat-seeking missiles in his Su-50’s wing-root bays were armed and set for a single salvo launch.
“Acknowledged, Two,” Colonel Baryshev said excitedly. “Switching back to air-to-air mode. Do you have a shot?”
Imrekov’s eyes narrowed as he rapidly considered the question. Scoring a kill on a crossing target at this range, especially one with such a small heat signature, would be tough. Then again, if you didn’t shoot, you couldn’t score. “Affirmative!” he radioed back.
“Then you are cleared to fire, Two! See if you can rattle this mercenary’s cage.”
Without hesitating, Imrekov squeezed the trigger on his stick. One after another, two K-74 missiles dropped out of his fighter’s internal bays and lit off. Trailing fire and smoke, they slashed across the night sky — arrowing toward the distant Iron Wolf target at two and half times the speed of sound.
“Warning, warning, IR missile launch detection at three o’clock,” the Ranger’s computer announced. “Two missiles inbound.”
“Countermeasures ready,” Nadia said. She had her head bent low, peering intently at her displays. “Time to impact estimated at thirty seconds.” She transferred her data to Brad’s HUD, providing a visual running countdown.
Brad nodded tightly. Some Russian son of a bitch was eager for a quick kill, because that was a hell of a long range shot for heat-seekers. Their solid-rocket motors would have burned out by the time they reached him, meaning they would be flying solely on inertia. Plus, the geometry sucked. But he wasn’t close enough to the mountains to use them as cover… and those K-74s were dangerous weapons.
One of the best ways to defend against a long-range attack like this involved climbing right away to force enemy missiles to bleed off more energy in their approach, making it easier to evade them at close range. Doing that now, though, would only increase the odds the Russians could lock up the XCV-62 on radar — which would expose them to a long-range attack by the far more lethal K-77 radar-guided missiles those Su-50s were carrying.
Well, he wasn’t going to play that game, Brad decided. Instead, he kept straight on toward the mountains. “Stand by on countermeasures.”
“Countermeasures ready,” Nadia confirmed.
“Lead missile burnout,” the computer reported. “Time to impact is fifteen seconds.” A moment later. “Trailing missile burnout.”
Now those K-74s were coasting toward him on inertia alone, Brad thought. Then the side of his mouth quirked upward in a wry grin. Well, at least, if you could call missiles tearing through the sky at more than sixteen hundred knots “coasting.”