Aboard the Russian Federation Navy destroyer Besstrashny
With the captain back on the bridge monitoring the attack, their plan got under way. The tactical action officer (TAO) fed in information from his India-band surface-search radar when it came within range, followed by more precise targeting information from its optronic telescopic night sight and laser rangefinder. The tanker was on a constant heading and speed, so targeting was easy. “Bridge, combat,” the TAO radioed, “we’ve got a clear sight of the target, Captain.”
The captain got up, went to the aft part of the bridge, and checked the repeaters of the targeting screens from the Combat Information Center. The sights were clearly locked on the upper portion of the large white superstructure. “Very well. Range?”
“Twenty-one kilometers, sir.”
“Any change in target heading or speed?”
“No, sir.”
“Any other aircraft or vessels nearby?”
“No vessels within ten kilometers of the tanker, sir. All of the vessels nearby have been accounted for. No threat to us.”
“Very well. Launch the surface and air attack teams.” A small team of six Russian Federation Naval Infantry commandos were launched aboard the Besstrashny’s Ka-27 helicopter and sent to try to secretly board the tanker; at the same time, they loaded a launch with two dozen Naval Infantry commandos to attempt a raid from the sea.
When fifteen kilometers out, the stem section of the tanker was in clear sight on the optronic monitors. “Still no change in target heading or speed,” the TAO reported. “It looks like it’s simply going to ground itself on the northern Turkish coast, about halfway between the Turkish naval base at Eregli and the coastal resort city of Zonguldak.”
“Any oil facilities there?” the skipper asked his intelligence officer. “Any way the Turks can off-load the oil?”
“You mean, steal it?” the intel officer asked incredulously.
“Just answer the damned question.”
“Zonguldak is a coastal residential, resort, and university town,” the intel officer said. “Large desalinization plant, large nuclear-power-generating facility there, but no oil refineries or oil off-loading or transshipment facilities.”
“A nuclear power plant, eh?” the captain mused. “Is it on the coast?”
“It’s about twenty kilometers south of the projected impact area and about two kilometers inland, closer to the naval base.”
The captain was still considering the eco-terrorist angle, but it was starting to distract him, and he didn’t need that right now. “Comm, Bridge, send one last message to fleet headquarters, requesting permission to begin our operation.”
A few moments later: “Bridge, Comm, message from Fleet, operation approved, commence when ready.”
“Very well.” He picked up the ship’s intercom. “All hands, this is the captain. We will commence attack operations immediately.” To the officer of the deck, he ordered, “Sound general quarters.” The alarms and announcements began, and the captain was handed his helmet, headphones, and life jacket. “Release batteries. Commence…”
“Bridge, Combat, high-speed air bandit, bearing zero-five-zero, range three-two kilometers, low, heading southwest at nine-two-zero kilometers per hour!”
“Byt v glubokay zhopi, there’s our mystery attacker,” the captain swore.
“Recommend heading two-three-zero, flank speed, and canceling the attack on the tanker, sir,” the executive officer said.
“My orders are to stop those terrorists from taking that tanker into Turkish waters,” the captain said. “Maintain course and speed, stand by to open fire.”
“He’s not turning,” the satellite surveillance officer reported. “Increasing speed to twenty knots.”
“Looks like he’s not going to break off his attack on the tanker,” Jon Masters said. “We might be too late.”
“Not yet,” David Luger said. “I’ll push AALF up and take it down, and let’s see what he does.”
Masters and Luger, along with a team of technicians, were aboard Sky Masters Inc.’s DC-10 carrier aircraft, orbiting sixty miles north near Ukrainian airspace. The satellite images they were viewing came from a string of six small imaging reconnaissance satellites called NIRTSats (Need It Right This Second satellites), launched earlier by Masters specifically for this operation. The satellites, beaming their signals to a geosynchronous relay satellite that then sent the images to the DC-10 launch aircraft, would provide continuous images of the entire Black Sea region for the next week.
Luger happily entered commands into a keyboard. Fifty miles to the south, a small aircraft began a steep dive and accelerated to almost the speed of sound. The small aircraft was called “AALF,” an acronym that stood for Autonomous Air Launched Fighter. Launched from the DC- 10, AALF was a sophisticated, high-speed, highly maneuverable cruise missile with a brain. AALF was not steered like other unmanned aerial vehicles. It was simply given a task to do, and AALF would use its neural computer logic functions, combined with sensor and preprogrammed threat data, to determine its own way to accomplish the mission. David Luger simply acted as the coach, telling AALF what they wanted it to do. After it had been first launched from the DC-10, AALF had been ordered to be an interceptor, and it had sneaked up on the Sukhoi-24 and Tupolev-95 aircraft and attacked them with internal Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.
Right now, Luger wanted AALF to pretend it was a sea-skimming antiship missile. AALF descended until it was less than two hundred feet above the Black Sea, then accelerated to six hundred miles an hour and headed for the destroyer Besstrashny, making an occasional zigzag pattern as a sophisticated antiship missile would do. The Besstrashny responded as expected, turning hard to starboard to present as small a target to the incoming missile as possible and also to bring its aft 130-millimeter dual-purpose guns and aft SA-N-7 antiaircraft missiles to bear.
Then, just before AALF flew within gun range, it turned away, staying outside maximum gun range. The crew of the Russian destroyer couldn’t ignore the threat, so they kept on maneuvering to keep its stem to the missile in case it started another attack. As it did, the tanker Ustinov sailed farther and farther away, well out of gun range now. The Ka-27 helicopter with its commandos on board had no choice but to turn around — they could not risk facing more shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles without some sort of covering fire to help screen their approach. The launch carrying two dozen naval infantry commandos continued their approach, easily overtaking the much slower tanker.
“See ‘em yet, guys?” Luger radioed. He was watching the launch’s approach on the satellite surveillance video. “About four miles dead astern, heading toward you at forty knots.”
Patrick McLanahan deactivated his helmet’s electronic visor. He and Hal Briggs were wearing the electronic body armor and had led the assault on the tanker. The armor had originally been developed by Sky Masters Inc. as a lightweight protective anti-explosive sheathing inside airliner’s cargo compartments. But the material, nicknamed BERP (Ballistic Electro-Reactive Process), had been adapted for many other uses, including strong, lightweight protection for special operations commandos. Patrick picked up the electromagnetic rail gun rifle and steadied it or the safety rail of the starboard pilot’s wing. He searched, using his helmet-mounted imaging infrared sensor, positioned the rifle, then activated the rifle’s electronic sight. “Contact,” he radioed back to Luger. “Brave boys. They keep on coming, even though their cover is completely gone.”