Jack Ryan 4 - The Hunt for Red October (31 page)

They were doing what the Tomcat does best. An all-weather interceptor, the F-14 has transoceanic range, Mach 2 speed, and a radar computer fire control system that can lock onto and attack six separate targets with long-range
Phoenix
air-to-air missiles. Each fighter was now carrying two of those along with a pair each of AIM-9M Sidewinder heat-seekers. Their prey was a flight of YAK-36 Forgers, the bastard V/STOL fighters that operated from the carrier
Kiev
. After harassing the Sentry the previous day, Ivan had decided to close with the Kennedy force, no doubt guided in with data from a reconnaissance satellite. The Soviet aircraft had come up short, their range being fifty miles less than they needed to sight the Kennedy.
Washington
decided that Ivan was getting a little too obnoxious on this side of the ocean. Admiral Painter had been given permission to return the favor, in a friendly sort of way.

Jackson
figured that he and Sanchez could handle this, even outnumbered. No Soviet aircraft, least of all the Forger, was equal to the Tomcat—certainly not while I'm flying it,
Jackson
thought.

“Spade 1, your target is at your
twelve o'clock
and level, distance now twenty miles,” reported the voice of Hummer 1, the Hawkeye a hundred miles aft.
Jackson
did not acknowledge.

“Got anything, Chris?” he asked his radar intercept officer, Lieutenant Commander Christiansen.

“An occasional flash, but nothing I can use.” They were tracking the Forgers with passive systems only, in this case an infrared sensor.

Jackson
considered illuminating their targets with his powerful fire control radar. The Forgers' ESM pods would sense this at once, reporting to their pilots that their death warrant had been written but not yet signed. “How about
Kiev
?
”

“Nothing. The
Kiev
group is under total EMCON.”

“Cute,”
Jackson
commented. He guessed that the SAC raid on the Kirov-Nikolayev group had taught them to be more careful. It was not generally known that warships often made no use whatever of their radar systems, a protective measure called EMCON, for emission control. The reason was that a radar beam could be detected at several times the distance at which it generated a return signal to its transmitter and could thus tell an enemy more than it told its operators. “You suppose these guys can find their way home without help?”

“If they don't, you know who's gonna get blamed.” Chris-tiansen chuckled.

“That's a roge,”
Jackson
agreed.

“Okay, I got infrared acquisition. Clouds must be thinning out some.” Christiansen was concentrating on his instruments, oblivious of the view out of the canopy.

“Spade 1, this is Hummer 1, your target is
twelve o'clock
, at your level, range now ten miles.” The report came over the secure radio circuit.

Not bad, picking up the Forgers' heat signature through this slop,
Jackson
thought, especially since they had small, inefficient engines.

“Radar coming on, Skipper,” Christiansen advised. “
Kiev
has an S-band air search just come on. They have us for sure.”

“Right.”
Jackson
thumbed his mike switch. “Spade 2, illuminate targets—now.”

“Roger, lead,” Sanchez acknowledged. No point hiding now.

Both fighters activated their powerful AN/AWG-9 radars. It was now two minutes to intercept.

The radar signals, received by the ESM threat-receivers on the Forgers' tail fins, set off a musical tone in the pilot headsets which had to be turned off manually, and lit up a red warning light on each control panel.

The Kingfisher Flight

“Kingfisher flight, this is
Kiev
,” called the carrier's air operations officer. “We show two American fighters closing you at high speed from the rear.”

“Acknowledged.” The Russian flight leader checked his mirror. He'd hoped to avoid this, though he hadn't expected to. His orders were to take no action unless fired upon. They had just broken into the clear. Too bad, he'd have felt safer in the clouds.

The pilot of Kingfisher 3, Lieutenant Shavrov, reached down to arm his four Atolls. Not this time, Yankee, he thought.

The Tomcats

“One minute, Spade 1, you ought to have visual any time,” Hummer 1 called in.

“Roger.. .Tallyho!” Jackson and Sanchez broke into the clear. The Forgers were a few miles ahead, and the Tomcats' 250-knot speed advantage was eating that distance up rapidly. The Russian pilots are keeping a nice, tight formation,
Jackson
thought, but anybody can drive a bus.

“Spade 2, let's go to burners on my mark. Three, two, one—mark!”

Both pilots advanced their engine controls and engaged their afterburners, which dumped raw fuel into the tail pipes of their new F-110 engines. The fighters lept forward with a sudden double thrust and went quickly through Mach 1.

The Kingfisher Flight

“Kingfisher, warning, warning, the Amerikantsi have increased speed,”
Kiev
cautioned.

Kingfisher 4 turned in his seat. He saw the Tomcats a mile aft, twin dart-like shapes racing before trails of black smoke. Sunlight glinted off one canopy, and it almost looked like the flashes of a—

“They're attacking!”

“What?” The flight leader checked his mirror again. “Negative, negative—hold formation!”

The Tomcats screeched fifty feet overhead, the sonic booms they trailed sounding just like explosions. Shavrov acted entirely on his combat-trained instincts. He jerked back on his stick and triggered his four missiles at the departing American fighters.

“Three, what did you do?” the Russian flight leader demanded.

“They were attacking us, didn't you hear?” Shavrov protested.

The Tomcats

“Oh shit! Spade Flight, you have four Atolls after you,” the voice of the Hawkeye's controller said.

“Two, break right,”
Jackson
ordered. “Chris, activate countermeasures.”
Jackson
threw his fighter into a violent evasive turn to the left. Sanchez broke the other way.

In the seat behind
Jackson
's, the radar intercept officer flipped switches to activate the aircraft's defense systems. As the Tomcat twisted in midair, a series of flares and balloons was ejected from the tail section, each an infrared or radar lure for the pursuing missiles. All four were targeted on
Jackson
's fighter.

“Spade 2 is clear, Spade 2 is clear. Spade 1, you still have four birds in pursuit,” the voice from the Hawkeye said.

“Roger.”
Jackson
was surprised at how calmly he took it. The Tomcat was doing over eight hundred miles per hour and accelerating. He wondered how much range the Atoll had. His rearward-looking-radar warning light flicked on.

“Two, get after them!”
Jackson
ordered.

“Roger, lead.” Sanchez swept into a climbing turn, fell off into a hammerhead, and dove at the retreating Soviet fighters.

When
Jackson
turned, two of the missiles lost lock and kept going straight into open air. A third, decoyed into hitting a flare, exploded harmlessly. The fourth kept its infrared seeker head on Spade 1's glowing tail pipes and bored right in. The missile struck the Spade 1 at the base of its starboard rudder fin.

The impact tossed the fighter completely out of control. Most of the explosive force was spent as the missile blasted through the boron surface into open air. The fin was blown completely off, along with the right-side stabilizer. The left fin was badly holed by fragments, which smashed through the back of the fighter's canopy, hitting Christiansen's helmet. The right engine's fire warning lights came on at once.

Jackson
heard the oomph over his intercom. He killed every engine switch on the right side and activated the in-frame fire extinguisher. Next he chopped power to his port engine, still on afterburner. By this time the Tomcat was in an inverted spin. The variable-geometry wings angled out to low-speed configuration. This gave
Jackson
aileron control, and he worked quickly to get back to normal attitude. His altitude was four thousand feet. There wasn't much time.

“Okay, baby,” he coaxed. A quick burst of power gave him back aerodynamic control, and the former test pilot snapped his fighter over—too hard. It went through two complete rolls before he could catch it in level flight. “Gotcha! You with me, Chris?”

Nothing. There was no way he could look around, and there were still four hostile fighters behind him.

“Spade 2, this is lead.”

“Roger, lead.” Sanchez had the four Fighters bore-sighted. They had just fired at his commander.

Hummer 1

On Hummer 1, the controller was thinking fast. The Forgers were holding formation, and there was a lot of Russian chatter on the radio circuit.

“Spade 2, this is Hummer 1, break off, I say again, break off, do not, repeat do not fire. Acknowledge. Spade 2, Spade 1 is at your
nine o'clock
, two thousand feet below you.” The officer swore and looked at one of the enlisted men he worked with.

“That was too fast, sir, just too fuckin' fast. We got tapes of the Russkies. I can't understand it, but it sounds like
Kiev
is right pissed.”

“They're not the only ones,” the controller said, wondering if he had done the right thing calling Spade 2 off. It sure as hell didn't feel that way.

The Tomcats

Sanchez' head jerked in surprise. “Roger, breaking off.” His thumb came off the switch. “Goddammit!” He pulled his stick back, throwing the Tomcat into a savage loop. “Where are you, lead?”

Sanchez brought his fighter under
Jackson
's and did a slow circle to survey the visible damage.

“Fire's out, Skipper. Right side rudder and stabilizer are gone. Left side fin—shit, I can see through it, but it looks like it oughta hold together. Wait a minute. Chris is slumped over, Skipper. Can you talk to him?”

“Negative, I've tried. Let's go back home.”

Nothing would have pleased Sanchez more than to blast the Forgers right out of the sky, and with his four missiles he could have done this easily. But like most pilots, he was highly disciplined.

“Roger, lead.”

“Spade 1, this is Hummer 1, advise your condition, over.”

“Hummer 1, we'll make it unless something else falls off. Tell them to have docs standing by. Chris is hurt. I don't know how bad.”

It took an hour to get to the Kennedy.
Jackson
's fighter flew badly, would not hold course in any specific attitude. He had to adjust trim constantly. Sanchez reported some movement in the aft cockpit. Maybe it was just the intercom shot out,
Jackson
thought hopefully.

Sanchez was ordered to land first so that the deck would be cleared for Commander Jackson. On the final approach the Tomcat started to handle badly. The pilot struggled with his fighter, planting it hard on the deck and catching the number one wire. The right-side landing gear collapsed at once, and the thirty-million-dollar fighter slid sideways into the barrier that had been erected. A hundred men with fire-fighting gear raced toward it from all directions.

The canopy went up on emergency hydraulic power. After unbuckling himself
Jackson
fought his way around and tried to grab for his backseater. They had been friends for many years.

Chris was alive. It looked like a quart of blood had poured down the front of his flight suit, and when the first corpsman took the helmet off, he saw that it was still pumping out. The second corpsman pushed
Jackson
out of the way and attached a cervical collar to the wounded airman. Christiansen was lifted gently and lowered onto a stretcher whose bearers ran towards the island.
Jackson
hesitated a moment before following it.

Norfolk
Naval
Medical
Center

Captain Randall Tail of the Navy Medical Corps walked down the corridor to meet with the Russians. He looked younger than his forty-five years because his full head of black hair showed not the first sign of gray. Tail was a Mormon, educated at
Brigham
Young
University
and
Stanford
Medical
School
, who had joined the navy because he had wanted to see more of the world than one could from an office at the foot of the
Wasatch
Mountains
. He had accomplished that much, and until today had also avoided anything resembling diplomatic duty. As the new chief of the Department of Medicine at
Bethesda
Naval
Medical
Center
he knew that couldn't last. He had flown down to
Norfolk
only a few hours earlier to handle the case. The Russians had driven down, and taken their time doing it.

“Good morning, gentlemen. I'm Dr. Tail.” They shook hands all around, and the lieutenant who had brought them up walked back to the elevator.

“Dr. Ivanov,” the shortest one said. “I am physician to the embassy.”

“Captain Smirnov.” Tail knew him to be assistant naval attach‚, a career intelligence officer. The doctor had been briefed on the helicopter trip down by a Pentagon intelligence officer who was now drinking coffee in the hospital commissary.

“Vasily Petchkin, Doctor. I am second secretary to the embassy.” This one was a senior KGB officer, a “legal” spy with a diplomatic cover. “May we see our man?”

“Certainly. Will you follow me please?” Tail led them back down the corridor. He'd been on the go for twenty hours. This was part of the territory as chief of service at
Bethesda
. He got all the hard calls. One of the first things a doctor learns is how not to sleep.

The whole floor was set up for intensive care,
Norfolk
Naval
Medical
Center
having been built with war casualties in mind. Intensive Care Unit Number Three was a room twenty-five feet square. The only windows were on the corridor wall, and the curtains had been drawn back. There were four beds, only one occupied. The young man in it was almost totally concealed. The only thing not hidden by the oxygen mask covering his face was an unruly clump of wheat-colored hair. The rest of his body was fully draped. An IV stand was next to the bed, its two bottles of fluid merging in a single line that led under the covers. A nurse dressed like Tail in surgical greens was standing at the foot of the bed, her green eyes locked on the electrocardiograph readout over the patient's head, dropping momentarily to make a notation on his chart. On the far side of the bed was a machine whose function was not immediately obvious. The patient was unconscious.