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

plugged her headset into his console and listened along to the series of hissing crackles, squeaks, and pops.“Encrypted voice transmissions?” she guessed.

Kijac nodded. “Yes, ma’am, that’s my read.”

“Coming from where?”

He opened a map on his computer screen. “Those signals originated somewhere along a bearing of roughly zero-zero-five degrees from our current position. Triangulating backward and judging by the signal strength when we picked them up, I’d estimate those transmissions were coming from around . . . here.” With a stylus, he tapped a point near the top of his digital map. It was far north of their RC-135V, well out over theocean.

Jaffe frowned. “That’s what? Nearly three hundred nautical miles off our coast?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kijac agreed. “Which also puts them outside the range of any of our North Warning System sites.”

Reflexively, she tapped a finger against her lips, thinking things through. “Could that have been one of those big Russianrecon aircraft reporting back to its home base?”

The specialist shook his head. “I don’t think so. A signal like that would have been a lot more powerful and much easier forus to pick up. No, ma’am, this sounds more to me like multiple aircraft talking to each other, using a real low-powered tacticalfrequency.”

Jaffe nodded, seeing his point. “Can you match those transmissions with anything else in our databases?” she asked.

Radio transmissions and other electronic signals recorded by RC-135V Rivet Joint ELINT flights all went into giant computerdata archives for later analysis and comparison against other intelligence. Transmissions that could be definitively pairedwith types of aircraft performing distinct activities—things like landings and takeoffs, bombing runs, simulated dogfightsand missile launches, and air reconnaissance reports, for example—were especially valuable, since they could be matched againstnew signals to speed up the process of figuring out what they meant. The system was similar to that used by the U.S. Navyto identify other submarines from passive sonar recordings of their unique acoustic signatures.

“I think so,” Kijac said. “I’ve got the computer running a comparison screen now.” As he spoke, a series of lights lit up along the side of his display. Rapidly, his fingers tapped the touch screen, opening a series of graphs that showed the signal characteristics of the transmissions they’d just detected matched against earlier recordings. He expanded one. “There we go. That’s a match, all right, with a ninety-plus percent certainty.”

Jaffe eyed the computer’s assessment with interest. “So it thinks the signals we picked up were from Russian multirole combataircraft, either Su-27s or Su-35s, carrying out some kind of air-to-air refueling exercise?” The specialist nodded.

She frowned. Why were the Russians sending frontline fighters so far out from their usual bases? She checked the meteorologyplot and her frown grew even deeper. Those faint radio signals had come from right in the middle of a developing storm front.Air-to-air refueling was never a trivial maneuver, even in good weather. And in bad weather, even at high altitude, the aircraftinvolved would have been contending with high winds and significant turbulence. She shook her head. Whatever was going onout there, this was no routine training mission. Not even the Russians were crazy enough to try a risky refueling op so farfrom any friendly base, not when a failure would likely doom both the fighter itself and its pilot. Not without a really pressingreason.

Making a decision, Jaffe picked up one of the RC-135’s secure communications handsets. “Air Operations Center, this is theIIO aboard Exult One-Five. We’ve just picked up indications of at least three and possibly more Russian aircraft operatingthree hundred and fifty–plus nautical miles due north of Umiat. Be advised that we believe these aircraft include at leastone air refueling tanker and two multirole combat fighters, probably Su-27s or Su-35s.”

611th Air Operations Center, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska

That Same Time

The Third Wing’s commander, U.S. Air Force Colonel Leonard Huber, listened closely to the report relayed from the RC-135VELINT plane. He didn’t like the idea of Russian fighters operating so far north, out on his flank. His defenses were mostlyoriented to detect and intercept combat aircraft sortieing from Moscow’s air bases on the Chukchi and Kamchatka peninsulas.But fully refueled Su-27s or Su-35s coming south out of the Beaufort Sea would be in a great position to slide past his command’sdefenses without being detected.

He studied the board. Third Wing didn’t have many aircraft up right now, just an E-3 Sentry AWACS plane with the call signAnvil Four-Five over the Seward Peninsula and the RC-135 west of Fairbanks. The colonel swung to his operations officer. “ContactAnvil and tell them to shift eastward toward Fairbanks. I want airborne radar coverage of that corridor across the BrooksRange in case our Russian comrades are trying something sneaky.”

“Yes, sir.”

Huber turned back to the board. His jaw tightened. “And I want all four of the F-22s we’ve got on ready alert in the air,”he said firmly. “Send one pair to escort the E-3 and assign the other two Raptors to bird-dog Exult One-Five.”

“You think the Russians might be planning to bushwhack them?” his ops officer asked.

Huber shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But if they are, I’m not interested in making things easy for them.” His eyes narrowed.“Because I do know that if we lose those AEW and ELINT aircraft, we’d be suddenly blind and deaf—which strikes me as a realgood way to end up getting our asses kicked if Moscow’s got bigger and nastier plans today.”

Twenty-Seven

Russian Reconnaissance Group, over the Beaufort Sea

A Short Time Later

Colonel Iosif Zinchuk peered ahead through the Tu-142’s cockpit windows, straining to see clearly through a dim, gray half-light.Ahead of his big patrol plane, the clouds were thickening, as were the torrents of snow and sleet now driven almost straightacross the icebound sea by shrieking, gale-force winds. The closer they came to the coast, the worse this storm got. He grippedhis steering yoke tight, making constant, small adjustments to keep the Tu-142 from veering suddenly off course or slamminga wing or propeller blade into the jagged surface not far below them. Every muscle in his arms, shoulders,