Arctic Storm Rising Dale Brown (literature books to read TXT) 📖

polar latitudes, so close to the beginning of true winter, the sun never actually appeared above the horizon.

Colonel Iosif Zinchuk looked out the left side of the Tu-142’s cockpit as he banked gently into yet another turn. Far below,he saw the two Su-35s break out of the clouds and streak toward them, climbing almost vertically. He keyed his mike. “Bodyguard,this is Prospector,” he said. “I have you in sight.”

“Copy that, Prospector,” the lead fighter pilot, Major Vadim Kuryokhin, acknowledged. “Permission to tank from Mother Hen. We’re not exactly flying on fumes, but we could be a lot more comfortable.”

Zinchuk knew the other man wasn’t exaggerating. Reaching this distant midair rendezvous without being spotted by American radar had required both Su-35s to fly well beyond their normal combat radius. Without additional fuel from the IL-78, they would be doomed to ditch somewhere in the icy wastes below, or, worse yet, make a humiliating emergency landing at the nearest American airport. “Permission granted,” he radioed immediately. He throttled back all four of the Tu-142’s big engines, slowing down to make room for them behind the humpbacked tanker aircraft.

For a time, the four Russian aircraft flew together in formation. Zinchuk watched closely as the two Su-35s carefully edgedin behind the much-larger IL-78, each aiming for one of the drogue baskets streaming behind its left and right wing. Throughhis headset, he could hear a calm, running radio commentary between the three aircraft as they helped guide each other intoposition. Despite air currents that set the baskets bouncing and swaying in the tanker’s wake, both fighter pilots succeededin making contact after only a couple of failed attempts. And once they were solidly connected, the task of refueling itselftook comparatively little time. The IL-78’s pumps could transfer more than thirty liters of fuel per second, enough to fullyreplenish both fighters in less than eight minutes.

One after the other, the Su-35s broke contact and peeled away from the tanker. “Prospector, Bodyguard,” Zinchuk heard Kuryokhin say. “We’re ready to proceed when you are.”

“Copy that, Bodyguard,” he replied. “I’m starting our run now. Give me plenty of room until we break out of the clouds.” Slowly,he turned the Tu-142’s steering yoke back to the right and pushed forward. In response, the huge aircraft banked toward thesouth-southeast and descended. Moments later, they crossed into the cloud layer and the world outside the cockpit vanished—swallowedup in a sea of unrelieved gray. The buffeting increased, accompanied by a staccato fusillade of ice droplets spattering acrossthe wings, canopy, and fuselage.

Zinchuk watched his altimeter very, very closely as it spun down, hoping like hell that the meteorology reports he’d been given were halfway accurate. If these clouds went all the way down to the ocean, he’d have to abort this mission—which would definitely not endear him to anyone in Moscow.

Then, at a little over five hundred meters, they came back out of the storm clouds into a faded, murky half-light. Throughdriving flurries of snow, the Tu-142’s command pilot caught glimpses of a desolate, windswept vista stretching away in alldirections. Ridges of rafted sea ice unrolled below the reconnaissance aircraft’s enormous wings, growing larger as they loststill more altitude. Tight-lipped, he took his aircraft down even more before leveling off only two hundred meters above thebarren ice cap.

This was a form of madness, Zinchuk knew. For all its many virtues—sheer endurance, payload, and powerful, long-range sensorsamong them—his mammoth turboprop was not at all designed to make low-level penetrating flights through enemy air defenses.Without any form of terrain-following radar or computer navigation, the slightest lapse in his concentration or control couldlead to utter disaster.

But coming in practically right on the deck was the only way the Tu-142 could possibly hope to escape detection by the chainof American radars lining Alaska’s northern coast. Behind him, the two Su-35s reappeared, emerging out of the cloud layeragain. Smoothly, the twin-tailed fighters slid forward into their assigned slots, one to his right, the other to his left.

“I’m picking up weak signals from an airborne radar!” Captain Sukachov, the Tu-142’s defense systems operator, abruptly reportedover the intercom. With all of their active sensor systems still on standby to avoid prematurely revealing their presence,Sukachov’s radar warning receivers were their primary means of figuring out what the Americans ahead of them might be doing.“It’s a pulse Doppler system. Our computer evaluates it as an AN/APY-2 type.”

“What’s your assessment?” Zinchuk demanded.

“It’s an American E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft,” Sukachov told him. “From the bearing and signal strength, I’d estimate that it’s orbiting somewhere over western Alaska, probably near Nome.”

Based on prior experience, Zinchuk judged that was likely to be true. Any U.S. Air Force early-warning plane operating inthat area was perfectly positioned to pick up Russian reconnaissance probes coming east from the Chukchi Peninsula, Asia’seasternmost point—one only a little over a hundred kilometers from American territory. “Can that E-3 spot us?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Sukachov said with complete assurance. “We’re well outside its radar’s effective range and much too low. As faras that enemy AWACS plane is concerned, we might as well be on the far side of the moon.”

Exult One-Five, RC-135V Rivet Joint ELINT (Electronic Intelligence) Aircraft, over Central Alaska

That Same Time

Eighty nautical miles west of Fairbanks, a large four-engine Boeing-designed aircraft orbited at high altitude. Antennas studdedits exterior, allowing it to sift the airwaves for even the faintest electronic signal. Inside the RC-135V’s electronic-equipment-crammedaft cabin, Captain Amanda Jaffe knelt down next to Technical Sergeant Philip Kijac, one of the fourteen cryptologic languageanalysts aboard Exult One-Five. As the information integration officer aboard this flight, it was her job to fit togetherall the disparate fragments of intelligence its specialists gathered and somehow use them to develop a coherent picture. Alltoo often that was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces were gray and half of them were missing.

“What have you got for me, Kij?” she asked.

In answer, he brought up a recording of the weak radio transmissions several of their antennas had picked up a few minutesearlier. Jaffe