Twenty-Nine

611th Air Operations Center, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska

A Short Time Later

For several seconds, a shocked silence pervaded the crowded operations center. One moment, they’d been observing five aircraft—two American and three Russian—on the radar feed relayed from the E-3 Sentry AWACS plane over Fairbanks. And the next, all five aircraft were gone, wiped off the display as quickly as if some unseen giant’s hand had swatted them out of the sky with one mighty stroke.

Colonel Leonard Huber, Third Wing’s commander, shook his head in disbelief and then turned to his assembled officers. “Can anyone tell me what the hell just happened up there?”

Helplessly, they all shrugged. “Whatever it was, it went down awfully fast,” one of them said at last. “The RC-135 ELINT plane picked up a few fragmentary transmissions from the two Russian Su-35s, but they’re encrypted and unreadable. We didn’t get anything from our own aircraft.”

Huber nodded gloomily. That was not a good sign. At least one of the F-22 pilots, McFadden or Parilla, should have been able to call out a warning, even if their mock dogfight with the Su-35s had suddenly turned hot for some weird reason. He sighed. “Well, one thing’s clear, anyway. A bunch of different aircraft, ours and theirs, just crashed in the middle of a god-awful wilderness.”

“And during a blizzard,” his operations officer pointed out quietly. “One of the worst in years.”

“Yeah, that, too,” Huber agreed tersely. A screen depicting the most recent meteorology reports for the Brooks Range showed the entire area socked in, with strong winds, near-zero visibility thanks to blowing snow, and subzero temperatures. “Mounting a combat search-and-rescue operation up there is going to be a bitch,” he said thoughtfully.

“Yes, sir.”

Huber’s eyes sought out his liaison with the Alaska Air National Guard. The ANG’s 176th Wing ran the ARCC, the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center, which managed all the various military and civil aviation resources needed for search-and-rescue operations. “Major King, what kind of CSAR assets can your people rustle up fast?”

The major looked up from the computer link she’d been intently studying. “Colonel, the ARCC says we can have a pararescue team and a pair of HH-60G Pave Hawks from the 210th Rescue Squadron ready for takeoff in ninety minutes.”

“But your helicopters can’t make it out that far unrefueled, can they?”

“No, sir,” King agreed. “The area where those planes went down is more than a hundred miles beyond our birds’ maximum range. Ordinarily, they’d tank on the way, but the blizzard is moving south fast across the whole state. Midair refueling would be far too hazardous in these conditions. So our helicopters will have to stage through Fairbanks and then Fort Yukon, stopping to refuel on the ground at both places.”

Huber nodded again. Those refueling stops would make slow going, further adding to the time it would take the pararescue team to reach any crash sites. On the other hand, recent forecasts predicted some minor improvement in the weather over the mountains later on today. So, assuming ANG’s Pave Hawk helicopters could somehow fight their way through the storm in the first place, those hoped-for lower winds and better visibility should significantly aid any recovery operations. “All right, Major,” he said to King. “Activate your search-and-rescue units and get them in the air as quickly as possible.”