“Falcon-Eight, this is Seven-Seven-Charlie and Four-Three-Delta on station,” Kaifu radioed. “Looks clean.” Falcon-Eight was Embetsu's call sign.
“Roger, stand by for vectors from Crimson-Three,” their mission control officer instructed.
“Air or surface?” Kaifu asked.
“Surface contact in Soya Strait. Stand by.”
Kaifu switched to his encrypted inter-aircraft channel. “Look sharp, Keisaku, this might be it.”
“Hai.
I hope the bastards try something.”
He and Kaifu, who were second cousins, had gone through the defense academy and flight school together. They were both engaged to be married to each other's cousins. It was a small, close-knit family.
“Seven-Seven-Charlie, this is Crimson-Three. We have an unidentified surface object incoming at approximately thirty knots. Bearing zero-four-eight, eight-zero miles from your position.”
“Single bogie?” Kaifu asked. He hauled his Hornet in a five-G turn to starboard and kicked in his afterburners, accelerating smoothly toward Mach two.
“Roger, Seven-Seven-Charlie. We're presuming it's a Russian destroyer, so watch yourself. We need a positive visual ID.”
“Copy,” Kaifu radioed. At Mach two their time to target was under four minutes.
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“Report all weapons systems armed and ready,”
Sovremennyy's
weapons control officer Lieutenant Nikolai Burov announced.
“Very well,” Anishchenko acknowledged. He glanced at his exec, then picked up the growler phone. “CIC, bridge.”
“CIC, aye,” Combat Information Center officer Lieutenant Grigori Kalmykov responded.
“What are our threat receivers picking up?”
“Other than Wakkanai, nothing, Captain. But there have been radio transmissions between Wakkanai and the Eighth Intercept Squadron at Embetsu, and between a pair of patrol aircraft to the southwest. They are turning toward us now.”
“They've picked us up?”
“Yes, but there's no reason for them to attack until we fire. They've only sent two aircraft, and we'll be ready for them. The moment they light their combat radar systems we'll shoot them out of the sky.”
“Could they be preauthorized?”
“I don't think so, Captain. We detected a brief transmission between Embetsu and Northern Air Defense Command at Misawa. The transmission was encrypted, so we were unable to read it. But it's my guess the squadron commander asked for instructions.”
“Which were?”
“Wait and see what we do, then act accordingly. But there'll almost certainly be a delay on their part.”
“We won't wait for their radars. The moment they pass overhead and present their tail fins to us, we will open fire on them and the radar station at the same moment.”
“They'll be overhead in less than ninety seconds, Captain.”
“Very well,” Anishchenko said.
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“That's definitely a Russian destroyer,” Tatewaki said on the inter-aircraft channel. “No mistake.”
They were eighteen miles out. They'd dropped down
to five hundred feet above the surface and had eased back to subsonic. Kaifu's recognition program pinged when it had the silhouette identified. “I agree.” He keyed his radio. “Falcon-Eight, this is Seven-Seven-Charlie.”
“Falcon-Eight,” their mission control officer answered.
“Sir, we have a positive identification on that surface target. She's a
Sovremennyy-class
destroyer. Looks as if she'll clear the cape. Probably on her way home.”
“Stand by.”
The ghostly thermal image of the destroyer grew larger and more detailed on their Master Monitor Display CRTs as they closed. The Russians knew that they were incoming, but nothing showed on the Hornets' threat receivers. By all outward appearances a Russian military vessel was clearing the Soya Strait and a pair of Japanese ASDF fighter/interceptors had come for a look. Routine.
“Seven-Seven-Charlie, kill the target. Say again, kill the target. You have weapons release authorization.”
“Yo-so-ro,
” Kaifu replied, his heart in the back of his throat. He switched to inter-aircraft. “Launch all four Harpoons at her starboard side on the count of five. Break off, come around, and if need be we'll go for the bridge with Sidewinders.”
“Let's sink the bastard!” Tatewaki agreed.
Kaifu dialed up the AGM-109 anti-ship missiles with his weapons selector switch on his stick, and entered the distance-to-target radar program into the strap-down inertial system. When launched the Harpoon would drop to the deck and skim low over the water. At the programmed distance-off the missile's radar went active and when it found its mark it locked on. At the last moment, the Harpoon pulled up and dove into its target. There was almost no defense against it.
“Five-four-three-two-one-launch,” Kaifu radioed. He hit the fire switch once, and then a second time.
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Anishchenko went to the windows and looked outside. The morning was pitch black, there was nothing to see
other than the forward twin-mount 130 mm gun, and the bows crashing through the seas. In a matter of seconds the two ASDF patrol aircraft would pass overhead and he would order the attack. Four SS-N-22 SSM anti-surface missiles would be launched against Wakkanai, and a pair of SA-N-7 air-defense missiles would be sent against the fighter/interceptors.
From that point he could only assume that help would be nearby. His orders were to shoot, then turn and run for the protection of Kuznetsova thirty miles north on Sakhalin Island. But that was at least an hour away. Long before they reached safety, the Japanese would respond.
The time for self-doubts and recriminations was gone. He was a military commander, and Russia was trying to become a nation that lived by the rule of law, which meant civilians controlled the military. He would follow his orders. Someone had to know what was going on.
“Bridge, CIC.”
Anishchenko walked back to the phone. “This is the captain.”
“Captain, the bogies have turned away! They are no longer in formation!”
“Are they returning to base?” Anishchenko demanded.
“Nyet, nyet!
I think they've fired their missiles. Recommend we commence our attack now.”
“I concur,” Anishchenko said without hesitation. “Launch the twenty-twos. Get a re-lock on the bogies, and fire at will!”
Almost instantly two anti-surface missiles were fired from a launcher on either side of the ship just forward of the bridge. The flash of their rocket motors temporarily filled the bridge.
“Many weapons radars ⦔ CIC shouted, when something crashed in on them from overhead, and a tremendous yellow light filled the air.
The Harpoon came straight through the overhead into the bridge before exploding. Anishchenko and the others never knew what hit them. One moment lights were
flashing, and in the next they ceased to exist as sentient beings.
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Technical Sergeant Halvorson hesitated a moment at the open door of the Marine VH-3 helicopter. The emergency response team from Bethesda worked frantically on the Vice President, while the Secret Service detail watched, their guns at the ready. Everything that could be done to save Eagle Two's life was being done. In the meantime, there were thirty-six other people aboard Air Force Two, many of them still alive. He headed back to the downed aircraft.
“Eagle Two is transferred,” he radioed SARTECH control. “We're going back in, but we're going to need more help.”
“Roger, able leader one. Can you say condition of Sea Gull Two.” It was Sally Cross's code name.
“Deceased,” Halvorson replied tersely. Sometimes he hated this job.
Behind him the chopper's engines came to life, and it lifted off, swinging toward the northeast beneath a lowering overcast.
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James Lindsay had wanted to be President of the United States all of his life. As a schoolboy he wrote essays about it. In the Air Force his fellow officers kidded him about his ambition, telling him he should have joined the Navy so he could have gotten a PT boat command like Jack Kennedy. And in his first years as a state senator and then a U.S. congressman, he'd been ignored. But by the time he became Senate Minority Leader he didn't have to talk about his dream; everyone else told him.
All of his life he'd studied and prepared for the job, had become an expert on every facet of every agency of government, had read the writings of every president including his predecessor, with whom he'd vehemently disagreed, and had himself written a book called
Crisis Management
â
Preparations Before the Storm.
But he'd
not expected this. In order to manage a crisis, Lindsay told himself, he needed an enemy. A Russian, not a Japanese, adversary.
“The number is holding at fourteen, Mr. President,” Jay Hansen said on the speakerphone. “It looks as if eight airports plus Andrews were affected. I've ordered them closed until we get this straightened out.”
“Any word on casualties?” Lindsay asked.
“Not yet. It'll be high, but the worst should be over. We never expected this. There was no way to prepare.”
“No one ever does. You're doing a good job, Jay. I'll let you get back to it.”
“Can you tell me what's going on, Mr. President?”
“Not yet.” Lindsay broke the connection and picked up the conference call to the CIA and NSA. “Has General Murphy arrived yet?”
“He's on the Parkway, Mr. President. Should be here within the next couple of minutes,” Tommy Doyle answered.
“Has CIA come up with anything new?”
“Sir, we're getting information from all over the place, but none of it is conclusive. We can tell you that the Yokosuka riot has spread to Tokyo and several other cities. It started as a Rising Sun demonstration, but we think they've lost control of it.”
“You are aware that fourteen airplanes have gone down, including Air Force Two, and that the Japanese may be involved in some way?” the President's National Security Adviser Harold Secor said.
“The traffic between their embassy here and Tokyo remains heavy,” Amundson replied from Fort Meade. “But we're monitoring another incident in the Soya Strait. That's the water passage between the Japanese north island of Hokkaido and the Russian island of Sakhalin. The Japanese Air Force may have gotten into it with another Russian destroyer. The latest satellite infrareds show the heat signatures of multiple explosions consistent with air-launched missiles.”
“How do you know it was a destroyer?” the President asked.
“We copied traffic between the shipâshe's the
Sovremennyyâand
Pacific Fleet at Vladivostok.”
“What does the CIA know about this?”
“We're reading the same satellite data as NSA,” Doyle said. “But the attack is not unexpected. The Japanese self-defense forces are at DEFCON TWO. Under the rules of engagement they would view any near incursion into their waters as a hostile act. By whomever.”
“We have American people dead on American soil. Where's the connection?” the President demanded. “Who is doing it? Can somebody give me a straight answer?”
“The airplanes were sabotaged. There's no question about that,” Doyle said. “And the Japanese may be involved, but we're in the middle of another developing situation. One that we just don't understand yet, Mr. President. But it may have some bearing on what's going on.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mr. Carrara, our deputy director of operations, has been working with one of our former case officers on the idea that a former East German Stasi assassin may somehow be involved. There has been a series of murders involving Guerin Airplane Company and our air traffic control system that the FBI is investigating. It's possible that another group is responsible for the sabotage and for some reason wants the blame to fall on the Japanese.”
“The Russians?”
“It's possible, Mr. President, but not likely.”
“Let me speak with Carrara.”
“Sir, he's dead. His body was found last night in Baltimore.”
None of this was making any sense to Lindsay. “It could be the Russians after all.”
“Yes, sir. Or the Japanese, or a third group. We just don't have enough information to say for certain.”
“Fine,” the President said.
One of the Marine communications specialists turned from his console at the far end of the room. “Mr.
President, you have an incoming call. It's Prime Minister Enchi.”