Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 09 (81 page)

 
          
The
enemy fighters didn't waste time—they started in after him again, rolling in
behind him in the blink of an eye. Stoica immediately turned left, staying
level until his airspeed built up enough, then raised his nose and aimed for
the first fighter, waiting until it presented itself He knew he couldn’t stay
like this long, so he fired one missile, acquired a second fighter, fired
another missile nose-to-nose, then veered right and dove before he stalled out
again.

 
          
Stoica
knew he had used all of his pylon-mounted missiles, so it was time to jettison
the empty pylons. Just in time—once they were gone, they’d regain their stealth
profile, and it sure would help his chances of survival if the enemy couldn’t
see him. He leveled off. The three enemy fighters were still up there, but they
had dodged away and were defensive. “Okay, Gennadi,” he said to his backseater
as he leveled off. “Jettison the pylons and let’s take those
zas'er'as
on a trip to the bottom of the
Black Sea
.”
No response. “Gennadi? What in hell are you doing back there?” He adjusted his
mirror to inside the rear cockpit—and saw Yegorov’s head lolling down from side
to side. One of the sharp turns must’ve caught him unawares and knocked him
unconscious against the canopy.

 
          
There
were only a few things the pilot of the Mt-179 could
not
do from the
front seat—unfortunately, jettisoning pylons was one of them. Stoica was stuck
with them until Yegorov woke up. “Gennadi!” he shouted. “Gennadi! Wake up!”
Yegorov did not appear to be fully unconscious, just stunned, but he was
definitely not responding.

 
          
Definitely
time to get the hell away from here. Stoica turned westbound and started a
rapid descent, trying to get to a lower altitude quickly while the F-16
fighters were regrouping. The Tyenee wasn't totally stealthy anymore with the pylons
on, even though they were empty, but the farther he could fly away from the F-
16s, the harder he would be to detect—and if there were any seas below, he
might be able to hide in the radar reflections from the—

 
          
DEEDLE
DEEDLE DEEDLE!
Not so fast, Stoica thought—one of the F-l 6s had locked on
to him already, about forty kilometers behind him. He increased his descent
rate to six thousand meters per minute and reached one hundred meters above the
Black Sea
in less than a minute. Now it was a foot
race The Romanian coastline was four hundred kilometers ahead. It was very flat
until about one hundred and fifty kilometers in, but then the
Transylvanian Alps
rose quickly across the interior, and he
could hide. It would be a long flight, almost twenty minutes at this speed, but
maybe the Turkish F-l6s were already low on fuel and wouldn't be able to give
chase.

 
          
The
threat warning receiver was blaring constantly. The H-16s were still behind him
about thirty kilometers away. Any second now, if they still had any
radar-guided missiles, they would—

 
          
DEEDLEDEEDLEDEEDLE!
came the missile launch warning. Stoica pulled his throttles to idle, popped
chaff, and started a tight right break. He could hear Ycgorov’s head slam
against the left side of the cockpit, and he wondered how much brain damage the
guy had suffered.. ..

 
          
“Where
am I?” Yegorov moaned.

 
          
“Gennadi!
Wake up!” Stoica shouted. “Don’t touch any controls! Do you hear me? Don’t
touch anything!” Stoica knew that a crew member awakening suddenly while sleeping
in a cockpit or after passing out from lack of oxygen or g forces will
sometimes grab something, responding to a dream or a sensation—they'll punch
themselves out, drop weapons, or even shut down engines.

 
          
“I...
I can't breathe ..

 
          
“We’re
defensive, Gennadi, trying to get away from a gaggle of Turkish fighters,”
Stoica said, grunting through the g forces. “I need you to jettison the
pylons—”

 
          
“Fighters!”
Yegorov suddenly shouted. He’d obviously just got a look at the threat
receiver, which depicted three enemy fighters and at least one enemy missile
bearing down on him, “Break! Break! I’m ejecting chaff—!”

 
          
“I’m
rolled out,” Stoica said. “No chaff.” The jammers had taken care of the uplink
signal, and clouds of radar-reflecting chaff strewn behind them had drawn the
Turkish missile away. “Are you all right, Gennadi?”

 
          
“I
think so.”

 
          
“Slowly,
carefully, jettison the pylons,” Stoica said. “They’re empty. Don't jettison
any other weapons, just the pylons.” Stoica rolled straight and level. “I’m
wings-level, Gennadi. Punch ’em off.”

 
          
“What
.. ?”

 
          
“I
said, punch the goddamned pylons .. . !” But Stoica heard yet another
DEEDLE
DEEDLE DEEDLE!
radar lock-on warning. He had no choice. He banked steeply
right and climbed into the enemy fighter. Seconds later, he got another lock-on
tone, and he fired one R-60 missile at him from an internal wing launcher.
Stoica immediately faked left, dropped chaff and flares, and then rolled right
and descended back to less than a hundred meters above the sea. He saw a bright
flash off his left side—he hoped that was another Turkish fighter on his way to
taking a swim. “Gennadi, punch the pylons off,
now.!”

 
          
“Ack
. .. acknowledged.” Yegorov said weakly. Stoica rolled wings-level just as he
felt a rumble through the aircraft as the weapon pylons popped off.

 
          
“Fault
indication,” Yegorov said weakly. Stoica glanced at the
master caution
light,
then at the caution panel. No problem—a fault in an empty launcher—and he
punched the caution light off and ignored it. There were only two F-l6s behind
him now—he’d got another one!—and the last two had their radars on but could
not lock on to him. He was stealthy again!

 
          
Stoica
jammed in full military power and started a gentle climb back toward the east.
Now he had the advantage. He lined up on the nearest F-16, using his radar
threat receiver until the infrared search-and-track system locked on, then
fired another missile from an internal launcher from less than six kilometers
away. That missile tracked dead-on and hit seconds later. Another kill!

 
          
Stoica
considered going back after the remaining bombers. Now that he was stealthy
again, the bombers were his to plink apart as he chose, and killing F-16
Fighters was not much of a challenge right now for him. But as he scanned the
warning and caution panel again, he knew he was done for the day— and maybe for
a long time. Sure enough, the internal missile launchers had a fault—no, not
just a fault this time, a major failure, a
launcher hot
message, meaning
there was an electrical Fire in the wing. “Gennadi, launcher hot, cut off
weapons power now!" Fortunately, Yegorov was alert enough to do it, and
the
launcher hot
warning light went off a few seconds after he isolated
power There were still a few yellow advisory lights on, including the launcher
shutter door jam, the same problem that had been dogging them for months now.
but there were no red warning lights, and for now they were okay.

 
          
It
didn’t mean they were out of danger, only that they probably weren’t going to
fly apart in the next few minutes. Good time to get out of here. The remaining
bombers were indeed tempting, and he still had his internal cannon to use
instead of the internal R-60 missiles, but that would be pushing his luck. He
had already scored kills against two Ukrainian BackFire bombers and two Turkish
F-16 Falcon Fighters. That was a pretty good night’s work. Plus, his head was
still ready to split open, and Yegorov was certainly in no shape to fly the
plane. Stoica turned the plane westbound again toward Codlea, again thanking
the stars he was alive and victorious.

 
          
“Stand
by,
Besstrashny
; ” they heard a few moments later. He read off a series
of geographical coordinates. “That is your exit point from
Alliance
waters,
Besstrashny.
Steer directly
for that point. We will be monitoring your departure with patrol aircraft Any
deviation will result in an immediate attack, and this time we will not abort
the missiles.”

 
          
“Acknowledged,”
Boriskov spat. “Combat, Bridge, what’s happening up there? There is a Russian
Fighter up there?”

           
“We don’t know if it’s Russian or
not,” the tactical action officer responded. “All we know is that one Ukrainian
bomber and two Turkish fighters were suddenly shot down. The unidentified
aircraft may have been shot down, too—the Turkish fighters seemed to have lost
contact.”

 
          
Captain
Boriskov smiled and nodded enthusiastically— whoever it was, he should be given
a medal, even if he got shot himself. “Did the bombers depart? Where are they?”

 
          
“They
just shut down radars, but they are still up there, just outside our
antiaircraft missile range.”

 
          
Too
bad—Boriskov would've liked one more chance to get that tanker. “What's the
situation around the tanker?”

 
          
“Surrounded
by numerous vessels and aircraft now, sir,” the radar operator replied.
Boriskov went out to the port wing and scanned the horizon aft. There was still
a very bright glow where the
Ustinov
was—it was going to burn for a very, very long time.

 
          
He
hated to leave a fight like this, Boriskov thought. Another nation had actually
shot a supersonic antiship missile at a Russian warship, in the
Black Sea
—once considered a Russian lake—and he could
do nothing but turn tail. It was humiliating.

 
          
But
as bad as running was to him, the idea of being a part of defending scum like
Pavel Kazakov was even worse. If the story that terrorist had told was true,
that Russian president Valentin Sen’kov was part of a deal with Kazakov to use
the Russian military to help secure land to build an oil pipeline just to fill
their own pockets, that was truly humiliating.

 
          
Boriskov
didn’t like being pushed around by anyone—not someone calling themselves the
Black Sea Alliance, not by a worthless politician, and especially not by a thug
like Pavel Kazakov.

Codlea
,
Romania
The next morning

 
          
"He
let them go?”
Pavel Kazakov shouted into the secure satellite telephone He
was in his office at his secret base in central
Romania
, in the foothills of the
Carpathian Mountains
. “That damned destroyer captain was just a
few miles away from my tanker, and he let them go?”

 
          
“He
did not ‘let them go’, Pavel,” Colonel-General Valeriy Zhurbenko, Chief of
Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, retorted angrily, speaking
from a secure communications room in the Kremlin “He had six large aircraft with
antiship cruise missiles bearing down on him. He had two choices—turn around as
ordered, or get blasted out of the water. Besides, he thought there was nothing
he could do—the terrorists set off an explosive on the tanker, and he thought
it was on its way to the bottom of the
Black Sea
anyway.”

 
          
Kazakov
turned angrily at his satellite television set, tuned to,CNN- “Oh really? Then
why am l watching the damned Turks off-loading
my
oil onto
their
tankers in
their
harbor?” It was true: there was no fire or explosion on
the tanker, at least not one set by the terrorists. Shortly after the Turkish
Navy and Coast Guard had arrived on the scene, the tremendous fire in the
forward hold had mysteriously disappeared; it had turned out it was in no
danger of sinking after all. The tanker had continued under its own power, and
pulled into the Turkish Navy base at Eregli. As if by magic, another tanker
happened to be at anchor in the vicinity, empty of course, and it was pressed
into service transferring oil to it from the
Ustinov
.

           
The terrorists were now here to be
seen.

 
          
The
stories of the
Ustinov
's
crew were even more fantastic. There were only two terrorists, they
claimed. They were invincible. Bullets bounced off them like spitballs. They
carried no weapons. They shot lightning bolts from their eyes and carried
rifles taller than a man that fired bullets as big as a sausage that could stop
a ship many kilometers away.

 
          
“What
in hell is going on here?" Kazakov fumed. “I’m surrounded by cowards and
incompetents. What is the government doing to get my tanker and my oil back?
This amounts to an act of piracy on the high seas! That tanker was flying a
Russian flag. What are you doing about it?”

 
          
“The
Supreme Tribunal is appealing to the
World Court
on your behalf, as a Russian citizen,"
Zhurbenko replied. "Unfortunately, your ship was struck and damaged by
illegal activity—namely, the unauthorized discharge of a weapon—in Turkish
treaty waters. That brought the matter up before the Turkish military. The
vessel was clearly in danger of sinking, both by the terrorists acts and the
Russian Navy’s actions, so the matter was again transferred to the Turkish
Coast Guard. Minister of Commerce, and Director of Environmental Protection.
There will certainly be a criminal and a military investigation."

 
          
“This
all sounds like bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo. General." Kazakov retorted.
“When do I get my ship back? When do I get my oil back? That product is worth
twenty-five million dollars!"

 
          
“There
is another matter. Pavel." Zhurbenko said.

 
          
“And
that is?"

 
          
“You
happen to be under indictment in
Turkey
for narcotics smuggling, murder, robbery,
securities fraud, tax evasion, and a half-dozen other felony crimes,"
Zhurbenko said. “It is no secret that you own both the ship and the oil, so
both have been seized by the Turkish courts because of your failure to appear
in a Turkish court to answer charges against you."

 
          
“
What?"
Kazakov shouted. “They can’t do that!"

 
          
“They
can and they have," Zhurbenko said. “Your bond in all of your indictments
equaled precisely five hundred million dollars, which is how much the ship and
the oil are worth, so both have been seized by the Turkish courts.”

 
          
“I
want you to get that ship and that oil back,” Kazakov snapped. “I don’t care
what you have to do. Send in the military. send in Spetsnaz, kidnap the Turkish
president—I don’t care! Just get them back! I will not be thumb-tied by a bunch
of Turkish lawyers and bureaucrats!”

 
          
“The
government has its own problems right now,” Zhurbenko said. ”In case you
haven’t noticed, the lid is exploding off our little deal. The taped
conversations between Thom and Sen’kov and between us at Metyor have been
broadcast in a hundred countries and twenty languages around the world. When
I... when
we
leaked the details of the deal between Sen'kov and Thom, we
sealed our fate and Sen’kov’s as well. No one is even paying any attention to
the American president—the spineless popinjay has admitted everything, and the
world loves him for sacrificing so much to rescue his men and women from the
evil clutches of the Russians, or some such nonsense All eyes are on
us.
And I think Sen’kov may have found a way to insulate himself from this whole
mess—after all, he never gave any orders and never authorized any of this.”

         
  
“I have plenty to implicate Sen’kov,” Kazakov
said angrily. “I have bank records, wire transfers, and account numbers in
seven banks around the world. I’ve paid him millions to get him to issue orders
and deploy the army in my favor.”

 
          
”All
his bank accounts are numbered, all anonymous,” Zhurbenko said. ”Not one of
them points to Sen’kov. Besides, the Russian constitution prohibits Sen’kov
from prosecution for anything he does while in office, and if the Duma tries to
impeach him—which they will not do, he is too powerful for that—he can simply
dissolve it. The worst that will happen to him is he’ll be accused of being a
dupe. It is I and the others in his cabinet and security council that will go
to prison.”

 
          
As
if to punctuate Zhurbenko’s words, the images on CNN shifted to demonstrators
outside German and Russian embassies around the world, from
Albania
to
Moscow
, from
Norway
to
South Africa
, protesting the actions of the German and
Russian armies in the Balkans. The entire world now feared a Russo-German Axis
alliance, another attempt to occupy all of
Europe
, and perhaps even a third world war—but
this time, with no help from the
United States
expected, a successful one.

 
          
All
this, CNN said, because of Pavel Kazakov and his bloodthirsty greed. Kazakov
had once been feared for his reputation. Fear had been replaced by grudging
respect for his entrepreneurial audacity and success. Now he was hated. He was
the world’s Public Enemy Number One. He could never walk anywhere in the real
world, even with an army of bodyguards. Even without a reward on his head—and
Pavel had no doubt one was soon going to be announced—he was not safe from
anyone. Who wouldn’t want to be known as the one who’d rid the world of such a
monster?

 
          
Kazakov’s
eyes grew narrow with anger, but slowly his logical mind took over from his
emotions, and he started to devise a plan. “Then I assume,” he asked
sarcastically, “you are speaking to me from a private chartered aircraft taking
you over the
Mediterranean
to some nameless African republic with no
extradition treaty with the
Russian Federation
?”

 
          
“I
am not a rich drug-dealing bastard like you, Kazakov,” Zhurbenko said. “I did
all this for
Russia
. Yes, I took your money, and I hope I can get my wife and sons out of
the country so they can enjoy it before the Interior Ministry takes away
everything I own. But I did all this for mother
Russia
, to regain some of our lost power and
influence around the world. I will not abandon my post or my country.”

 
          
“Then
I suppose you have to live with your decision, General,” Kazakov said casually.

 
          
“Oh,
I can live with myself just fine, Pavel,” Zhurbenko said. “
Russia
again has troops in the Balkans and
throughout Wastem Europe—all legal, all sanctioned by the United Nations—the
NATO alliance has been fractured, we have a powerful new ally in
Germany
, and Caspian oil is making my country rich.
I am proud of what I’ve done for my country, Kazakov, even if I end up going to
prison for it. The loss of your tanker and your million barrels of oil is of no
consequence to me.”

 
          
“Then
I think our business is at an end,” Kazakov said. “You enjoy being a good
little soldier in Lefortovo Prison. Remember, if you drop the bar of soap in
the shower, don’t bend over to pick it up.”

 
          
Kazakov
slammed the phone down so hard, he nearly broke the receiver on his
three-thousand-dollar satellite phone, He had tried to sound casual and
flippant on the phone with Zhurbenko, as if the loss of half a billion dollars
was no big deal for him. but in actuality it was a huge blow. Since he owned
the oil from the well to the refinery, including the terminals all along the
way, and since he had numerous “side deals” with the individual countries to
transport the oil, none of his product or the ships that carried it across the
Black Sea was insured—not that many companies around the world would sell
insurance to a drug smuggler and gangster. In addition, his investors expected
to be paid whether or not the oil made it to the pipeline, and that was seven
and a half million dollars that had to come out of his own pocket. There was no
interest on this money, no grace period, and no declaring bankruptcy—it was
either pay up or be hunted for the rest of his life.

 
          
Further,
the loss of one tanker by some shadowy, obviously powerful terrorist
outfit—probably some CIA or SAS strike team—put the brakes on any more
shipments on tankers bearing his name. That meant leasing other tankers, and
that didn’t come cheap In any case, his oil was as much of a target as his
tankers were, and shipping companies would either simply refuse to transport
any Metyorgaz crude, or charge a hefty premium to do so. to compensate for the
possibility of another terrorist attack.

 
          
There
was only one answer: divert the world's attention away from him and onto
another topic.

 
          
He
left his private office and stormed out to the aircraft hangar. Although they
continued to move the Metyor-179
Tye
nee from place to place on a
regular basis, most of Metyor’s known or suspected bases in
Georgia
.
Kazakhstan
,
Russia
, and
Bulgaria
were under heavy surveillance, so the base
in
Romania
seemed to be the safest. He marched past the security guards and found
Pyotr Fursenko standing in front of the Mt- 179 stealth aircraft, worriedly
discussing the streaks of black and gray on the leading edge—the internal
missile launchers. “Doctor, get the aircraft ready to go tonight,” he ordered.

           
The technician Fursenko was talking
to stepped away, thankful to get away from Pavel Kazakov. “We have some
problems, sir,” Fursenko said.

 
          
“I’m
not interested in problems right now, Fursenko, only action and results.”
Fursenko said nothing, only looked at the hangar floor. “Well? What is wrong
now?”