Fortunes of War (19 page)

The transport was just a dot, a flyspeck in the great vastness, still well above him and conning beautifully. About ten miles, he figured, but he couldn't afford to turn on the radar to verify that. He was closing from fifteen degrees right of dead astern.

He centered the dot in the gunsight, squeezed off a missile. It shot forward off the rail trailing smoke. He lowered the nose, aimed a little left, and fired a second missile. A hard right turn, fifteen degrees of heading change, and a third missile was in the air. Total elapsed time,
about six seconds. If there were Japanese fighters there, the missiles would find them.

The third missile had just disappeared into the haze when the ECM squealed in his ears.

The AA light was flashing, and a red light on the instrument panel just below his gunsight: “
Missile!
”

Yan Chernov slammed the stick sideways and pulled. The plane flicked over on its side and he laid the G on. A target decoy was automatically kicked out by the countermeasures gear.

Five…six…seven G.

A missile flashed over his right wing and detonated. A miss. The Missile warning light went out, but the ECM continued to chirp and flash direction lights. The Japanese were on the air now.

Ten years ago nothing on the planet could turn with a Su-27. It could still out-turn missiles, so Yan Chernov was still alive.

He came out of burner, retarded the throttles as quickly as he dared—he certainly didn't want to flame out just now—and let the G bleed off his airspeed. He got the nose up to the horizon.

A Japanese fighter overshot above him.

There might be two of them…

His skin felt like ice as he slammed the stick right and rolled hard to reverse his turn. The ECM was singing.

The Japanese pilot was turning left, beginning to roll back upright.

Chernov pulled with all his might to raise the nose.

As the enemy fighter streaked across from right to left, Chernov had his thumb on the 30-mm cannon, which vomited out a river of fire. The finger of God.

The flaming river of shells passed through the wing of the Japanese fighter.

Chernov rolled upside down, pulled as he lit his burners. There had to be someone else out there: the ECM was chirping madly.

The earth filled the windscreen. Going straight down, accelerating
…Only 23,000 feet, fool
. He rolled the plane and scanned quickly. Nothing. Now the ECM was silent.

He began to pull. Pull pull pull at seven G's, fight to stay conscious.… The sweat stung his eyes, and his vision began to gray.

He was screaming now, watching the yellow earth rushing up at him, trying to stay conscious.

He was going to make it.

Yes!

Relax the stick, drop to a hundred feet or two, just above the earth, and let the old girl accelerate.

The ECM stayed silent.

He twisted his head, looked behind. Right. Left.

Nothing.

Two planes falling way off the right. On fire—one of them large enough to appear as a black dot against the yellow cirrus layer.

 

When Yan Chernov taxied into the hard stand at Zeya, his flight suit and gear were soaked. The sweat was still running off him in rivulets, even though he had the canopy open. On the instrument panel, the needle on the G meter that recorded the maximum G pulled that flight rested on 9.

Nine G's with only a stomach-and-legs G suit. The wings might have come off under that much overstress. He would have to have the mechanics carefully inspect the plane.

Chernov waited until the linemen had the chocks in place, then secured the engines.

“Water,” he said. The senior NCO passed up a bottle.

“How did it go, Major?” one of the junior pilots asked after he finished drinking. There were four of them standing there, gazing at the empty missile racks and the gun port with the tape shot away.

“I got two, I think. Maybe three. One of them almost took my scalp.”

“Very good.”

“Luck. Pure luck. They just happened to come along, and I just happened to see them before they saw me.” He shook his head, filled with wonder that he was still alive.

“They are good?”

“Good enough.” He tossed his helmet down, then climbed down from the cockpit. When he was on the ground, he drank more of the water. “Do you have another plane ready?”

“Yes, Major,” said the senior NCO.

“Two?”

“Just one, sir. We hope to get three more flyable tonight by cannibalizing parts from the down birds. And the fueling takes forever.”

“Any word from Moscow?”

“No, sir. They haven't called.”

“We will fly the planes west in the morning, as many as we have fuel for. As many as we can get started.”

Damn Moscow. With almost no fuel, no spare parts, little food, one-third of the mechanics the squadron was supposed to have, and an inoperative GCI site, he couldn't do much more, even if Kalugin wrote the order in blood. He was being realistic. He had flown a stupid solo mission, almost gotten killed, affected the course of the war not at all, and now it was time to face facts: Russia was defenseless.

“I'll bet Zambia has a better air force than we have,” one of the junior officers muttered.

Chernov took off his flight gear and sat down by a main tire with the water bottle and waved them away.

“Let me rest awhile.”

His mind was still going a thousand miles an hour, replaying the missile shots and the Japanese fighter slashing across in front of his gun. The emotional highs and lows—amazing! He would never have believed that he could feel so much elation, then, five seconds later, so much terror. He was wrung out, like a sponge squeezed to millimeter thickness in a hydraulic press.

Five minutes later one of the NCOs came for him from the dispersal shack.

“Sir, Moscow is on the line. Someone very senior.”

“How senior?”

“He says he's a general, sir. I never heard of him.”

Chernov walked across the ramp and entered the dispersal building, a single room with a naked bulb in the ceiling—not burning, of course; the only light came from the dirty windows. A large potbellied wood-stove stood in the center of the room. The four or five enlisted men in the room fell silent when Chernov walked in and reached for the phone.

“Major Chernov, sir.”

“Major, this is General Kokovtsov, aide to Marshal Stolypin.”

“In Moscow?”

“Headquarters.”

“I've been trying to telephone regional headquarters and Moscow since the Japanese invaded. You are the first senior officer I've spoken to.”

The desk soldier had other things on his mind. “I asked to speak to the commanding officer. Are you in command of the base?”

“Apparently so, General.”

“A fighter base should have a brigadier general in command.”

“Our general retired four years ago and was never replaced. Two
of our squadrons were transferred three years ago and took their airplanes with them. The other squadron was decommissioned: The people left, but the airplanes stayed, parked in revetments. My squadron, the Five hundred fifty-sixth, is the last.”

“And you are a major?”

“That is correct, sir. Major Chernov. We used to have a colonel. This spring, he and some of the other officers took several vehicles and left. We haven't seen them since. They said they were going to Irkutsk, near Lake Baikal. To find work. The colonel had relatives in Moscow, I believe. He talked of the city often, so he may have gone there.”

“He had orders?”

“No.”

“He deserted!”

“Call it what you like.”

“Desertion.”

“The colonel drove out of here in broad daylight. The others too. They were owed over eighteen months' pay. They hadn't seen a ruble in six months.”

Silence from Moscow. Finally, the general said, “Why are you still there?”

“My wife left me five years ago, General. I'm alone. This place is as good as any other.”

“You are loyal.”

“To what? What I am is stupid. The government owes me almost two years' pay. I haven't been paid anything since the colonel was, nine months ago. Neither have these enlisted men. We're selling small arms and ammunition on the black market to get money for food. When we don't have any money, we ask for credit. When we can't get credit, we steal. But enough of this social chitchat—what did you call me to talk about?”

“I'm sorry.”

“Believe me, so am I.”

“Marshal Stolypin wants you to harass the Japanese. Just that. Launch a few sections a day, try to shoot down a transport or two, force them to maximum effort to protect their resources.”

“I thought Stolypin retired years ago. Samsonov is—”

“Samsonov is dead. Stolypin has come out of retirement to lead us against the Japanese.”

“Maybe he can work a miracle.”

“Don't be insubordinate, Major.”

“I'm trying, sir.”

“So what have you done, if anything, to fight the war?”

“I went up awhile ago. One plane. They shot at me; I shot at them.”

“One sortie?” he asked, disbelief apparent in his voice.

“Three today. We flew six yesterday, four the day before.”

“Only thirteen?”

The jerk! Chernov had dealt with asshole superiors all his adult life. He kept his voice absolutely calm, without even a trace of emotion. “We can launch one more sortie this evening. We have fuel for perhaps eight more; then we're done.”

“We'll have fuel delivered.”

“The electricity has been off here for a month. No one has paid the power company, so they shut it off. We have to pump the fuel from the tanks to the planes by hand, which takes a lot of time and effort.”

“President Kalugin has signed a decree. The electricity will be turned back on.”

“Terrific. War by decree.” Yan Chernov couldn't help himself. He was losing his composure. Maybe it was adrenaline aftershock.

“We want you to launch some sections to harass the enemy,” the general said from the safety of Moscow. “Don't be too aggressive, you understand. Inflict just enough pain to annoy them. That is the order of Marshal Stolypin.”

Chernov lost it completely. “You fool! We worked for four days to get six sorties out yesterday. Two sorties a day on a sustained basis is all we could possibly launch, even if World War Three is declared. My executive officer was killed this morning. We have no food, no fuel, no electricity, no spare parts, no GCI site, no intelligence support, no staff.
…We have nothing!
Have I made it clear? Do you comprehend?”

“I am a general, Major. Watch your tongue.”

“Get your head out of your ass, General. We can't defend this base. We should be flying these planes west to save them. It's just a matter of time before the Japanese attack. It's a miracle they haven't already. I can only assume you and Stolypin
want
the Japanese to attack us, because you are taking no steps to prevent it. When we're dead, you idiots in Moscow won't have to ever feed us or pay us or—”

The headquarters general hung up before the major completed the last sentence. When Chernov realized the line was dead, he quit talking and slammed down the telephone.

Everyone in the room was staring at him.

“Everything that can fly goes west at dawn,” Chernov shouted, spittle flying from his lips. “Work everyone all night.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chernov turned to face the junior officers who had trickled in while he was on the telephone.

“Get the trucks we have left. Fuel them. Have the men load the tools and all the food we have. They may take their clothes. Nothing else. No furniture or televisions or any of that other crap.”

He was roaring at the top of his lungs, unable to help himself. “We will drive west, all the way to Moscow. If we get there before the Japanese, we will drag the generals from their comfortable offices and hang them by the balls.”

Yan Chernov stomped out to pee in the grass.

 

Delivery of the Russian ultimatum to the Japanese was a chore that fell to Ambassador Stanley P. Hanratty. The Russian diplomats had all left Tokyo the day after the invasion, turning out the lights and locking the door of the embassy as they left. The U.S. government offered to assist the Russians diplomatically in the Japanese capital until relations were restored, an offer that Kalugin seized upon. Delivery of the ultimatum was Ambassador Hanratty's first chore for the Russians. Of course, he and the U.S. government were privy to the contents of the note.

Hanratty returned the following morning to the Japanese foreign ministry to receive the Japanese reply. “We find it difficult to believe, in this day and age,” the Japanese foreign minister said as he handed over the written reply, “that any government on the planet would threaten another with nuclear war. Still, in anticipation of just such an event, Japan has developed its own nuclear arsenal. Should Russia attempt to launch a first strike upon Japan, the Japanese government will, with profound regret, order a massive retaliatory strike upon Russia.”

It was late in the day in Moscow when Kalugin received the Japanese answer from Danilov. He read the reply carefully, then handed the paper back without a word.

By working throughout the long evening and short night, the officers and enlisted men of Major Chernov's squadron at the Zeya Air Base got six planes into flyable condition. The planes were ready a half hour before the true dawn. Chernov had the best one armed with cannon shells and four AA-10 missiles.

Chernov had ordered five of his pilots, the five most senior, to fly to Chita, five hundred nautical miles west, well beyond range of the Zeros. Now he slapped them on the back, watched them strap in, start engines, and taxi. They took off one by one, white-hot exhausts accelerating faster and faster and faster. The roar of their engines filled the night with a deep, rolling thunder.

The fighters kept their exterior lights off and did not bother to rendezvous. They retracted their wheels as they came out of burner and turned west. Still, it was several minutes before the roar of the last plane had faded.

Yan Chernov stood beside the sixth plane and listened until even the background moan was gone and all he could hear were the insects chirping and singing, as they had done on this steppe every summer since the world was young.

The senior warrant officer came over. They shook hands. “Roll the trucks now,” Chernov said. “Get the men to Chita, if possible. If not, go as far west as you can. The Japanese may attack at dawn, hoping to catch us sleeping.” He glanced at his watch. The night at these latitudes was only two hours long.

“Do you really think so, Major?”

“There is a chance they'll strike as soon as there is light enough.”

“Why today?”

“I hurt them yesterday. They should have hit us days ago. Now they will.”

“I suppose.”

Chernov shrugged. “This morning or soon.”

“I've already sent the other trucks on. I'll wait and go with your linesmen.”

Chernov held out his hand. The warrant office took it.

The major smoked the last of his cigarettes as he eyed the northeastern sky, waiting for the first glow of dawn. He had been rationing himself, to make the cigarettes last. When these were gone…well, without money…

The night was not really dark. At this latitude summer night could accurately be described as a deep twilight. He could see stars, so the sky was clear and visibility good. Chernov had grown up in a village dozens of miles from the nearest town, far from urban light pollution, so stars were old friends.

He had finished his last cigarette and was strolling around the airplane, touching it, caressing it, trying to stay calm and focused, when the stars in the east began to fade.

He climbed to the cockpit and the senior linesman helped him strap in. “Take care of yourself, sir.”

“Peace and friendship, Sergeant,” the pilot said, repeating the traditional phrase.

He sat alone in the cockpit, watching the sky turn pale. He had no fuel to waste, yet if he delayed his takeoff too long, the Japanese would catch him on the ground. If they came.

He could wait no longer. He gave the signal to the linesman.

Seven minutes later, sitting on the end of the runway, he ran through his takeoff checklist. Everything looked good. The radio didn't work, so he didn't turn it on. The ECM gear did work. He watched the telltale lights intently, listened with the volume turned up to maximum. And he saw and heard nothing.

Maybe the Japanese weren't coming. Maybe he would be shot for cowardice in the face of the enemy. Be shot by that officious desk general who had called yesterday wanting the brigadier. A sick joke, that.

The stars were going fast.

Yan Chernov released the brakes and smoothly shoved the throttles forward to the stops. Pressures good, fuel flow fine, rpm and tailpipe temperatures coming up nicely….

Now he lit the burners. The white light of the afterburners split the darkness like newborn stars.

The acceleration pushed him back into the seat. Despite the fact the
Sukhoi-27 was a big plane, weighing about 44,000 pounds this morning, it accelerated quickly. Soon the trim lifted the nosewheel off the pavement. He steadied her there, flew her off.

Gear up, then out of burner as soon as possible. When everything was up and in, he turned to the southwest. The most probable direction for an approach by enemy attackers was southeast. If he could make another side attack before they spotted him, he might be able to…

He leveled at ten thousand feet and let the speed build to .8 Mach. At this low altitude, fuel flow was high. Nervous, he glanced again at his watch. He had been airborne for six minutes.

After ten minutes of flight, he began a long, slow 180-degree turn. His head was on a swivel, searching the early-morning sky in every direction, especially to the south and east. He was tempted to tap his radar for one sweep, just to see, but he decided it was too dangerous.

The sky to the northeast was a pale blue. Visibility excellent, easily fifty miles. It's just that small airplanes more than a few miles away are exceedingly difficult to see in the great vastness of the sky, he thought. And this early, with the earth below still dark, the task was almost impossible—unless the planes were in that northeast quadrant, silhouetted against the growing light.

He tried to resist the temptation to stare toward the northeast. They would probably approach the base from the southwest, from the darkness!

He searched futilely in all directions.

Nothing.

Maybe the Japanese aren't coming
.

What a fucked-up war!
It's every man for himself, comrades. We have fucked up our country so badly that we have nothing to sustain our soldiers with. It's poor, polluted, filled with starving people and radioactive waste
.

Chernov did a 360-degree circle, then another one.

He was sweating.

Well, this idea was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He should have gone with the others to Chita, talked to the people at headquarters from a telephone there, set up a liaison with a tanker squadron. Su-27s should be operated from a secure, well-defended base, one properly supplied with fuel and ordnance and spare parts, one beyond the range of the Japanese. Then, with the help of airborne tankers, the fighters could be launched on combat missions against the enemy here at Zeya or even at Khabarovsk.

Why dawn? Why did he think they would come at dawn?

He admitted to himself that he didn't know the answer to that question. He just sensed it. A dawn attack seemed to fit.

He glanced at his fuel guage. Then his watch.

Keep the eyes moving, look at that sky, look for the tiniest speck that isn't supposed to be there
.

His ECM chirped. Just a chirp and a flash of light. He eyed the panel, waiting for the light to flash again, waiting for a strobe to indicate direction. Nothing. He looked outside. He couldn't maintain a watch on the damned panel.

Maybe a Japanese pilot had given in to the temptation that Chernov had resisted—maybe he had tickled his radar, let it sweep once, just to verify that…to verify…

Three tiny specks, way out there, against the blue of the dawn. The sun was just ready to pop over the earth's rim, and above the growing light in the sky he could see moving black specks. Three. No, four. Five. Six. Moving to the west. They would pass well north of Chernov's position.

So.

Six. Damn! Why did there have to be so many?

He turned to the southwest. If he came out of the darkest part of the sky while they were working over the base, he would be difficult to acquire visually.

They would turn their radars on as soon as they suspected he was around. Still, if he got first shot…

Yan Chernov eased the throttles forward, right against the stops. He wasn't ready for afterburner yet. Full power without the burners gave him .95 Mach.

Now the ECM panel lit up. The Zeros were looking for planes over Zeya.

He eased the nose into a descent, let the plane accelerate, retrimming constantly. Mach 1, now 1.1, now 1.2. Still at full military power.

He made the turn to go back toward the base, checked the handheld GPS.

Master armament switch on.

Four missiles selected, lights red. They were armed and ready. Each squeeze of the trigger on the stick would fire one.

He leveled at five hundred feet, just above the earth. Down to Mach 1.1, decelerating because the engines could not hold him supersonic without the thrust of the afterburners. If only he had a modern plane, like an F-22. Or even a Zero.

Fifteen miles. Fourteen. Thirteen—a nautical mile every six seconds.

He glanced again at the ECM panel. All ahead, nothing behind.
Nothing behind that is radiating
. He took a ragged breath, tried to calm himself. His heart felt like a trip-hammer in his chest.

Ten miles. Nine. Eight…

At seven miles he pulled the nose up five degrees and squeezed off an AA-10 missile. Then a second, third, and fourth, as fast as he could pull the trigger. These fire-and-forget missiles had active radar homing. With luck, two or three of them would find targets.

He opened the afterburners full. The acceleration pushed him back into his seat. His fingers flicked the switches to select “Gun” on the armament panel.

The Japanese must have picked up the radar emissions of the inbound missiles.

Now he flipped the switch that caused his radar to transmit.

The scope blossomed.

He was still looking outside, through the gunsight, when he saw the first flash—a missile hit. Now another. And a third.

The fourth missile must have missed.

Yan Chernov glanced at the radar scope, quickly turned one of the knobs to adjust the gain.

A plane on the left, heading slightly away.

He looked through the gunsight. There! At eleven o'clock.

A
transport
! Parachutes in the air! Paratroops. The Japanese were taking the field. All that registered in Chernov's mind without conscious thought. He was concentrating on the transport.

He was going to get a deflection shot. He was doing Mach 1.4; the other plane, probably two hundred knots max.

He jabbed at the rudder, adjusted the stick with both hands to get the nose where he wanted it. He squeezed the trigger, and the gun erupted, hosing fire.

It was over in two seconds. The stream of white-hot lead was in front of the enemy transport, then, with the gentlest touch on the right rudder, stitched it from nose to tail. The four engine turboprop blew up and Chernov shot just behind the expanding fireball, still accelerating. Mach 1.7 now, all the Sukhoi would give him in this thick air. His eyes registered the sight of more parachutes, but he was busy flying. The enemy radars were emitting in his rear quadrant now. He let the nose sag in order to get down against the earth.

As the seconds ticked by, he felt his shoulder blades tighten. Sure enough, the Missile light under the gunsight began to flash.

Level thirty meters above the ground, Chernov punched out chaff, rolled the plane ninety degrees to the left, and pulled the stick into his gut until the meter read 7 G's. Sweat stung his eyes. The horizon was right there, a line through his gunsight. He fought the temptation to look over his left shoulder, concentrated instead on keeping the horizon below the dot in the gunsight that represented his flight path. If that dot dropped below the horizon, he would be into the ground in seconds, and very, very dead.

A missile went over his right shoulder, exploded harmlessly after it was by.

The next one went off just under the plane, a sickening thud that slammed the plane hard.

He rolled right, through level, into a right turn. Less G now, because the Missile light was off. So was the ECM panel. It shouldn't be. The Japanese were still back there, perhaps trying to catch him. If he could keep his speed up, they never would. He needed to extend out.

For the first time, he glanced at his system gauges, the gauges that told him of his steed's health.

Uh-oh. Hydraulic pressure was dropping; he had three yellow warning lights and a red. The red was a generator.

Oh, God! The ECM panel was silent because it lost power when one of the generators dropped off the line.

Just then another missile exploded above him: a flash, a pop, followed by a rattle of shrapnel against the fuselage.

He leveled the wings. Despite the low altitude, he risked a look aft.

Nothing visible behind. Still Mach 1.6 on the airspeed indicator.

Fuel trailing away behind the right wing. He could just see the fuel boiling off the wing in the rearview mirror. A glance at the gauge for fuel in the right wing. Almost empty.

Another gentle left turn. He consulted the GPS. Fifteen miles from the base, going northeast.

Yan Chernov kept the left wing down about ten degrees, let the nose slowly come toward the north, then the northwest. It seemed as if the wing was almost in the grass of the steppe. The sensation of speed was overpowering, sublime; he was orbiting the planet at a distance of five meters. He watched intently ahead, focused with all his being, tugging the plane over rises and rolling hills. If the wing kissed
the earth now, he would never know it: He would be dead before the sensation registered.

He leveled the wings, heading west.

Are the Zeros chasing? They must not have the fuel to chase.

Oil pressure to the right engine was dropping quickly.

Chernov came out of burner. When he did, the right rpm began dropping. He pulled the throttle to idle cutoff, secured the fuel flow.

He still had one engine, one generator.

At fifty miles from the base, he took off his oxygen mask and swabbed the sweat from his eyes and face.

He checked the fuel again. Must be another leak somewhere. He had enough for thirty more minutes of flight, if he didn't have any fuel leaks. With leaks, less. But he was alive.

 

Pavel Saratov walked the periscope around slowly. The attack scope protruded just inches above the surface of the sea, which fortunately was calm today. Still, a wave occasionally washed over the glass. When it did he paused until he could see again, then continued his sweep. Visibility was about ten miles, he estimated.