Arctic Storm Rising by Dale Brown (android based ebook reader .TXT) 📕

been given just before takeoff had shown yet another severewinter storm headed across the state, with fierce winds and bands of thick clouds. “Well, let’s just hope these guys playit smart and come in above the weather,” he said, advancing his throttles. Instantly, he was pressed back deeper into hisseat as the F-22’s powerful twin Pratt & Whitney turbofans spooled up.

Accelerating smoothly to nine hundred knots, both Raptors streaked toward the distant Brooks Range.

Over Northern Alaska

A Short Time Later

As the Tu-142 climbed steadily through a swirling sea of gray cloud, Zinchuk was sure that his lumbering aircraft had nowbeen detected. Sukachov’s reports of steadily increasing signal strengths from both the American E-3 AWACS plane and theirground radar station could yield no other possible conclusion. He spoke over the intercom. “Very well. The Americos know we’re here, so there’s no point in staying quiet. Activate all sensors!”

Acknowledgments from the electronics officers stationed in the forward and aft cabins rattled through his headset. Satisfied,he radioed his two fighter escorts. “Bodyguard, Prospector. Recommend you break away now. Use the mountains for cover andtake station ahead of us.”

 

Aboard the rightmost Su-35, Major Vadim Kuryokhin heard Zinchuk’s suggestion with relief. Maintaining a safe distance fromthe colonel’s reconnaissance aircraft was incredibly difficult in this solid cloud layer, even with his fighter’s IRST, itsinfrared search and track system, picking up the other aircraft’s enormous heat signature. He’d been dreading the possibilityof a fatal midair collision ever since they’d started climbing into this low-hanging mass of snow- and ice-swollen storm clouds.

He raised Troitsky in the other Su-35. “Okay, Ilya. Switch your radar on at low power and set synthetic aperture mode. We’regoing down to play hide-and-seek ahead of Prospector. Stand by.”

“Two, standing by,” his wingman replied.

Kuryokhin pushed a button on the side of his left-hand multifunction display. Half the display lit up, showing a highly detailed,three-dimensional image of the surrounding mountains and twisting river valleys. Using its synthetic aperture mode, the Su-35’sIRBIS-E passive electronically scanned array radar mapped the ground ahead—making very low-altitude flight possible even inpoor visibility. Swiftly, he sketched out a suggested flight path and sent it via data link to Troitsky.

He took a deep breath. This was going to be . . . a little hairy. “Very well, Two! Break away . . . now!” He pulled his sticksharply right, rolling the fighter into a diving turn away from the huge Tu-142. Down and down he plunged through the cloudswith his eyes practically glued to the images on his glowing MFD. A jagged mass of rock, the spire of a thousand-meter-highpeak, loomed ahead, growing with alarming speed, and he quickly rolled back to the left to dodge around it.

Then Kuryokhin banked hard right again and pulled back on the stick a little, leveling off as he broke out of the clouds onlya few hundred meters above the ground. There, in a widening gap between steep, ice-sheathed slopes and even higher rocky cliffs,he picked out the trace of a frozen river through the snow—like a gray-silver snake winding through white sand. His Su-35turned to follow it, and he pushed his throttles forward to accelerate out ahead of Zinchuk’s now-invisible Tu-142 as it climbedhigher above the clouds. In his rearview mirror, he saw Troitsky’s plane swing in behind him. Curving back and forth alongthe meandering valley, the two twin-tailed Russian jets flew onward.

 

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 stilloutside 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 twelvehundred 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 confirmationyet 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 ofthe RC-135 Rivet Joint crew’s collective imagination. He opened a terrain map on one of his displays. His mouth turned downeven more as he scanned the rugged topography of the Brooks Range. Air search radars couldn’t see through solid rock. Whichmeant that jumble of mountains and valleys and gorges offered a number of possible hidden avenues of approach for pilots willingto 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 electronicallyscanned array, it randomly changed frequencies with every radar pulse, making it a lot harder for any enemy to pick out itsemissions from