Contents ( 55)
- In Memoriam
- Epigraph
- Cast of Characters
- Americans
- Russians
- Canadian
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Weapons and Acronyms
- Weapons
- Acronyms
- About the Author
- Also by Dale Brown
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
Still more than two hundred nautical miles south of the oncoming Tu-142, the American F-22 pilots, Doc McFadden and Cat Parilla, both heard the same high-pitched, chirping tone in their headsets. Their radar warning receivers had just detected the Russian reconnaissance plane’s powerful active sensors lighting up.
“Guess that guy’s not trying to hide anymore,” McFadden commented laconically.
“Nope,” his wingman agreed. Parilla checked her RWR display. “He still can’t see us, though, even with these honking big gas tanks hanging off our wings.”
McFadden nodded, scanning his own display. External fuel tanks made their Raptors a lot less stealthy, but they were still outside the range at which that Russian radar should be able to spot them. On the other hand, they were closing that gap fast. With the propeller-driven Tu-142 and their F-22s now headed straight for each other at a combined speed of more than twelve hundred knots, they were shaving off nearly twenty-two nautical miles every minute.
“Anvil Four-Five, this is Casino Lead,” he radioed the E-3 Sentry, now orbiting well behind them over Fairbanks. “Any confirmation yet on those possible Russian fighters?”
“Casino, this is Anvil,” the radar controller aboard the AWACS plane replied. “Negative on that. We thought we saw a couple of smaller contacts break away from the Tu-142 a few seconds ago. But we’ve got nothing else on our screens right now.”
McFadden frowned. He didn’t like not knowing where those Su-35s were—or even if they were real, and not just a figment of the RC-135 Rivet Joint crew’s collective imagination. He opened a terrain map on one of his displays. His mouth turned down even more as he scanned the rugged topography of the Brooks Range. Air search radars couldn’t see through solid rock. Which meant that jumble of mountains and valleys and gorges offered a number of possible hidden avenues of approach for pilots willing to take chances.
He made a decision. Their Raptors weren’t supposed to sneak up on that big, lumbering Russian patrol plane. Far from it. The whole point of this intercept mission was to swoop in hard and fast and make it very clear to that SOB that he wasn’t going to parade around unchallenged through U.S. airspace. Besides, if there were Russian fighters out there somewhere up ahead, the more eyes looking for them, the better. Situational awareness mattered more right now than stealth. “Okay, Cat,” he said. “Let’s not be coy. It’s time to let these guys know we’re coming their way. Light ’em up!”
And then, suiting his actions to his own words, McFadden activated the F-22’s powerful AN/APG-77 radar. As an active electronically scanned array, it randomly changed frequencies with every radar pulse, making it a lot harder for any enemy to pick out its emissions from ordinary background noise in the electromagnetic spectrum. But harder wasn’t the same thing as impossible.
Deep in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
That Same Time
Alexei Petrov followed Bondarovich into the aircraft shelter at a run. Inside, the hanging lanterns used to provide illumination swayed crazily in swirling currents of freezing air. Distorted shadows danced across the fabric walls and hard-packed snow floor. Wind-whipped ice crystals spattered against the parked PAK-DA bomber’s wing and fuselage.