Iron Wolf (30 page)

O
VER THE
N
ORTH
A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

T
HAT NIGHT

Twenty thousand feet over the ocean, four XF-111s flew eastward in close formation. Two more SuperVarks were about a mile ahead and a few thousand feet higher, performing the intricate maneuvers required to take on fuel from a Sky Masters KC-10 Extender aerial tanker.

“Wolf Three-One, this is Masters One-Four, pressure disconnect,” the boom operator aboard the tanker radioed. “You're topped off and good to go.”

“Thanks, One-Four. Clearing away now,” the pilot of the XF-111 that had just finished refueling replied, sliding down and away from the KC-10.

“Wolf Three-Two, you're up next,” the tanker said. “Cleared to precontact position.”

“Roger that, One-Four. Three-Two moving to precontact.”

From the cockpit of the lead XF-111, Wolf One-One, one mile back, Mark Darrow could see all the director lights on the KC-10's belly flash twice, followed by a pair of blinking green lights. He could see the last of the six aircraft in his formation slowly moving up into position, getting set to guide in on the KC-10's boom nozzle. Once Karen Tanabe's Wolf Three-Two topped up with fuel, they could break away from the Sky Masters tanker and fly on to Poland.

“You know, Jack,” he said to his copilot and weapons systems operator. “This daft little scheme of Mr. Martindale's might actually work.”

Over on the right side of the crowded cockpit, Jack Hollenbeck grinned back under his oxygen mask. “My mama always thought I'd end up on the wrong side of the law. But I figure she was thinking more about little old-fashioned crimes like bank robbery or car theft. Airplane smuggling seems like a mighty big step up. More high-class, somehow.”

Darrow laughed. The Texan's description of what they were doing was apt. Caught without enough time to move the remaining XF-111s legally—or at least discreetly—to Poland, Scion and its partners at Sky Masters had been forced to improvise. First, technicians had hurriedly installed temporary auxiliary fuel tanks in each refurbished aircraft's bomb bay, significantly increasing the amount of fuel they could carry. Next, Sky Masters reactivated their air refueling systems—technically illegal according to U.S. export laws. Once that was done, contract pilots had flown the planes to different civilian airports along the eastern seaboard, ready for the Iron Wolf crews coming in from Poland take over.

Roughly four hours ago, every one of those six Iron Wolf Squadron XF-111s had taken off—flying east using commercial air and civilian transponder codes that identified them as chartered cargo flights bound for different destinations in Africa and Europe and filing all the necessary Customs and Border Protection electronic forms for crossing the U.S. border. Nearly three thousand separate flights crossed the Atlantic in both directions every day—six more planes added to that traffic flow should rate less than a blip on anybody's radar, or so Martindale had hoped. Once they left radar air traffic coverage, the XF-111s had switched off their transponders, increased speed, and converged at this planned midocean air refueling rendezvous.

So far, so good, Darrow thought. And one thing was already clear. The other Iron Wolf crews were bloody good at their jobs. Every plane had made it to this difficult rendezvous on time and without trouble.

“Warning, warning, unidentified X-band target search radar detected,”
the SPEARS threat-warning system announced.
“Four o'clock. Range undetermined.”

“Ruh-roh,” Hollenbeck muttered, glancing down at his threat-warning display. “Identify.”

“Negative identification,”
the computer.
“Agile active frequency signal. Stand by.”

“Hell.” Hollenbeck stared down at his display. “The frequencies
that goddamned radar is using are jumping around like a jackrabbit being chased by a coyote. My best guess is that it's an AN/APG-79.”

“Blast,” Darrow said. That was almost as good as the AN/APG-81 active electronically scanned array radar carried by their SuperVarks. Besides the refurbished XB-1 Excalibur bombers produced by Sky Masters, the only other aircraft fitted with the AN/APG-79s were the U.S. Navy's F/A-18F Super Hornets . . . which meant they were in big trouble. Quickly, he switched their primary radio to GUARD, the international emergency frequency.

A tense voice crackled through their headsets. “Unknown aircraft heading one-zero-five degrees at angels twenty and angels twenty-three, this is Navy flight Lion Four. Identify yourselves immediately!”

Darrow glanced down at the information fed to one of his multifunction displays by Hollenbeck. Lion Four was a U.S. Navy F/A-18 all right, part of Strike Fighter Squadron 213, the “Blacklions.” VFA-213 was currently shown as flying off the
Nimitz
-class carrier
George H. W. Bush
. The Super Hornet's crew must have been on a routine training flight when it picked them up, probably using ATFLIR, its Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared system. If the Navy fighter had been on station as part of the carrier group's CAP, its combat air patrol, the XF-111 group's warning receivers would have picked up emissions from a wide range of naval radars at long range. And that would have given them plenty of time to hightail it out of this area before being spotted.

So this was just bad luck.

Really bad luck.

If a report of “unidentified F-111s” making a mid-Atlantic refueling maneuver flashed up the Navy chain of command to the Pentagon or, worse yet, President Barbeau's White House, all hell would undoubtedly break loose. At best, the six Iron Wolf Squadron planes and their crews would be ordered back to the States for further investigation—an investigation that was bound to go on for a very long time and lead to a lot of awkward, unanswerable questions. As unpleasant as that would be for him, Jack Hollenbeck, Karen Tanabe,
and the others, Darrow realized, it would be a lot worse for the rest of the squadron back at Powidz. Without these reinforcements, they would be forced to go in against the Russians desperately short of aircraft and trained crews.

Well, then, Darrow thought, his six XF-111s were going to have to bluff their way past this Super Hornet pilot and his backseater, at least long enough to break contact and zoom out of detection range. “You'd better do the talking, Jack,” the ex-RAF pilot said, frowning. “My accent might prove a bit . . . disconcerting . . . to our friend out there.”

Hollenbeck nodded. “Time to find out if our ‘get out of jail free' card really works, I guess.” He keyed his mike. “Lion Four, this is Blackbird One. My code phrase is EIGHTBALL HIGH. Repeat, EIGHTBALL HIGH. Suggest you run that through your computer, pronto.”

C
OMBAT
D
IRECTION
C
ENTER,
C
VN
-77

USS
G
EORGE
H
.
W
.
B
USH,

IN THE
N
ORTH
A
TLANTIC

T
HAT SAME TIME

“Say again, Lion Four,” Commander Russ Gerhardt, air operations officer for the
Bush,
said into his mike. In the dim, blue-tinted light of the CDC, he leaned forward, studying the radar and infrared images sent via data link from the F/A-18F Super Hornet. They showed a formation of seven separate aircraft, one large plane evaluated as a KC-10 refueling tanker and six smaller, sweptwing F-111-type aircraft. Every single F-111 had long since been retired to the Boneyard, so that was weird. None of them were squawking on any transponders, and that was even weirder.

“These bozos gave us a code phrase to check,” the backseater aboard Lion Four radioed. “EIGHTBALL HIGH, whatever that is.”

Gerhardt frowned. Code phrases? Crap. Who the hell were these guys? He turned to the specialist manning the nearest computer station. “Run that through the system, Cappellini.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” she said, her fingers already dancing over the keyboard. And then stopped as a warning flashed on her screen. “Commander?” the young Navy technician said, in a worried tone. “I can't access that information. I'm not cleared for it.”

Bush
's air operations officer moved over to get a better look. Her display showed lines of text in bright red: TOP SECRET//OS-SPECIAL ACCESS REQUIRED-EIGHTBALL HIGH. DO NOT REPORT. DO NOT RECORD.

His frown grew deeper. The OS tag on this EIGHTBALL HIGH crap meant this was a Defense Department–approved military operation of some kind. But the Special Access bit meant it was so highly classified that all information about it was restricted to
those few with a “need to know.” And apparently nobody on CVN-77 or in her assigned air wing met that criterion.

Well, Gerhardt thought, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this was somehow connected to all the shit going down between Russia and Poland. The Pentagon brass and the White House must be running a “black ops” mission to help the Poles. Which explained the DO NOTs attached to the code phrase. After President Barbeau had made such a big deal out of staying neutral, anything the United States did to aid Warsaw would have to be totally deniable.

“Wipe that entry, Specialist Cappellini,” he ordered. “It never happened. Understand?”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Gerhardt keyed his mike again. “Lion Four, this is Avenger. Break away from those unknowns and deactivate your radar. Head back home. That's an order.”

“Avenger, this is Lion Four. Falcon one-zero-one?!”

Gerhardt grinned, hearing the Navy pilot code for “You've got to be shitting me.” “No fecal matter is involved, Lion Four. Back off those guys and shut it down.”

O
VER THE
A
TLANTIC

T
HAT SAME TIME

“I'll be damned,” Hollenbeck said slowly, staring at his MFDs. “It actually worked. That Hornet's radar just went off-line. He's turning away.”

Mark Darrow breathed out in relief. Scion's computer wizards had claimed they'd done a bit of tweaking inside the U.S. Defense Department's databases to cover this little jaunt. It looked as though they'd done their hacking job properly. He switched back to the frequency they'd been using earlier. “Masters One-Four, many thanks for your assistance.”

“Wolf One-One, you're more than welcome. Fly safe,” the tanker radioed. “We're heading for home.”

Darrow watched the big KC-10 bank away, turning back to the west. Its director lights winked out. Within minutes, even the navigation lights on the aerial tanker's wing tips and tail vanished in the darkness. He keyed his mike again. “All Wolf flights, this is Wolf One-One. Now that we're finally all alone out here, let's pick up the pace, shall we? We'll go to full cruise and take it down to ten thousand feet. Follow my lead, understood?” A succession of clicks and acknowledgments came through his headset as the five other Iron Wolf crews signaled they understood his orders.

“Right, then, Wolf flights. Here we go,” Darrow said, sweeping the XF-111's wings back to fifty-six degrees while simultaneously pushing the throttles forward. The big fighter-bomber accelerated smoothly toward its full cruise speed of nearly six hundred knots. He pitched the SuperVark's nose down, watching the altitude indicator on his HUD slide down toward ten thousand feet. One after another, the five other planes followed him down—staying on the course that would bring them to the Strait of Gibraltar, the entrance to the Mediterranean, in a little over two hours.

C
OMBAT
I
NFORMATION
C
ENTER,

R
USSIAN
A
IRCRAFT
C
ARRIER

A
DMIRAL
K
UZNETSOV,

IN THE
W
ESTERN
M
EDITERRANEAN

T
HAT SAME TIME

Rear Admiral Anatoly Varennikov studied the short transcript of the GUARD channel radio transmission picked up by his aircraft carrier's signals intelligence detachment. He arched an eyebrow, silently translating the English-language phrases into their Russian equivalents. He made it a point to always see the raw data first, but he never pretended to be a first-rate linguist. At last he looked up, meeting the interested gaze of his chief intelligence officer, Captain Yakunin. “EIGHTBALL HIGH? I've never seen that before. What does it mean, Leonid?”

“Based on what they said, it's an operational code of some kind, sir,” Yakunin said. He shrugged. “But it's not one we have listed in our files.”

“And there was nothing more?” Varennikov asked. “Just a request from the American Navy F/A-18 for identification from these unidentified aircraft? And then this strange code in response?”

“There were no more messages between the mysterious aircraft and the Hornet,” Yakunin said. “But when the pilot passed this code back to his carrier, the
Bush,
his commanders told him to abort the intercept. In fact, they told him to turn off his radar immediately and return to the ship. Interesting, eh?”

“Extremely interesting,” Varennikov agreed. “It suggests the movement of American military or intelligence aircraft, but a movement so secret that not even its own naval commanders were briefed about it in advance.”

He turned to the map plot showing the present position of
Admiral Kuznetsov
and its escorting destroyers and frigates. They were
about one hundred and sixty kilometers east-northeast of Gibraltar, steaming almost due east under Moscow's most recent orders to return to the Black Sea. If the Ukrainians chose to impede the Russian troops scheduled to advance toward Poland, President Gryzlov wanted the carrier group in position to help punish them. Then he studied the estimated position, course, and speed of the unidentified group of aircraft out over the Atlantic. They might be heading his way.

Varennikov chewed his lower lip, deep in thought. Was it worth delaying his task force's transit to the Black Sea to investigate further? Yes, he decided. If the Americans really were up to something sneaky, it was important to try to find out exactly what that was. He moved to the command phone connecting him to the bridge. “Captain Bogdanov, signal the task force to reverse course. And ready two Su-33 fighters for launch. I want them to go hunting.”