The Shadows of Power Read online

  The Chief, an Arabic linguist, looked at the radar return and compared it to the heading and distance information undoubtedly being transmitted to the fighters he was following on the screen. He watched the computer triangulate the GCI (Ground-Controlled Intercept) transmission he was listening to and confirmed it was coming from the Air Force base outside of Algiers that had launched the fighters thirty minutes ago.

  Kenny nodded again and spoke through his lip mike, “They’re sending their fighters range and bearing data but are adding ninety degrees to the bearing and subtracting a hundred and fifty from the range. Pretty basic. Everybody got the fighter channel?”

  The three men to his right nodded. “Okay. Sprague, see if you can find any other traffic we haven’t seen yet. Thompson, get on the HF and see if they’re getting any help from anybody else. Amad, check the ground crew transmissions again. See if anyone else is turning on the ground.”

  They all nodded their agreement.

  “Come on down,” Kenny said to himself and smiled as he watched the two MiG-25 targets approaching them at an ever-increasing speed.

  A similar picture was right in front of Stovic. The E-2C was transmitting its radar picture via data link to the airborne fighters. All Stovic and Bruno needed to see where the MiGs were was electrical power. Stovic’s screen showed the symbols for two data link bogeys—inverted chevrons. He shook his head, moving his oxygen mask back and forth slightly. The MiGs were coming out to intimidate the unarmed EP-3 and probably thump it—fly underneath it, then pull up directly in front of it to startle and intimidate the Americans. Instead they were about to get a rude surprise of their own.

  The American radios were deathly quiet now. Everything that needed to be known was being transmitted by UHF data link. And it was always transmitting. No one who was listening to the UHF transmission would be able to make any sense of it—it was all data and was all encrypted—and the volume of transmission didn’t change if things got more interesting. There was simply no way to know what the Americans were looking at or whether they were even tracking the MiGs.

  Suddenly Stovic’s AN/ALR-67(V)3 radar warning receiver jumped to life. It was the unmistakable sound of a fighter radar. He tore his eyes away from his visual cues on the side of the EP-3 to glance at the display. MiG-25. Bigger than hell. He’d never seen this radar indication before. Few Americans had ever flown against the vaunted MiG-25. The Russians rarely sent them out, and the Algerians never did. It was the fastest jet fighter ever built. It was the gorilla of Russian fighters—big, fast, and mean.

  Stovic watched the MiG radar. It was unusual for them to illuminate a target from forty miles away. They liked to sneak up on targets, illuminate late in the intercept, then be right on top of them. In this case, no doubt because they were confident the American surveillance plane was flying alone, they wanted the Americans to know they were coming, to be concerned and worried, and possibly do something they would never do if they kept their cool.

  He ran through his combat checklist. His AIM-120 AMRAAMs were ready, as were the AIM-9 Sidewinders. His gun was fully loaded. He checked all his switches and held off only on the master arm switch, which would make his trigger hot as soon as he selected a weapon. Fifteen miles.

  * * *

  “Mr. President,” Sarah St. John said softly.

  The President put down the New York Times. His favorite thing to do every morning when he was at Camp David was to read the paper. He knew that his National Security Advisor wouldn’t interrupt him lightly. “What is it?”

  “They’re all airborne. You said you wanted to know.”

  The President drank from his orange juice.

  “The Algerians are coming out?”

  “Yes, sir. MiG-25s.”

  “How many?”

  “Just two.”

  “That’s a pretty big fighter, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. Biggest one they’ve got. Very fast. Capable of Mach 3.”

  President Kendrick sat back. “Think they know what we’re up to?”

  “We don’t think so,” she replied.

  “You still having doubts?” the President asked.

  “This decision has been made, sir. I just think if something happens, it will look like we set them up.”

  He rolled up the Times, tossed it to the middle of the table, and stood. “Get everybody. Let’s go over this one more time. Could we still call off our fighters?”

  She nodded. “They’re escorting the EP-3, but nothing has happened yet. We’ve only got a few minutes, though.”

  “Get everybody into the conference room.”

  She hurried out of the room. It wouldn’t take long, since they were all eating breakfast in the guest dining room in the next building. It was only his Chief of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, and Sarah St. John, the National Security Advisor. They gathered in the newly refurbished high-tech briefing room just next to the room where the President had been eating. The table he had been sitting at had been quickly taken away, and the room had been restored to a family room with a large brick fireplace.

  They gave St. John curious looks as they entered the large room. What could have happened in the last thirty minutes since they had received the security brief?

  President Kendrick stood against the wall in a loose-fitting polo shirt and khakis. “Go ahead, Sarah.”

  “We’ve talked about this. We agreed to send the Truman battle group into Algeria’s new two-hundred-mile limit—”

  “We had to, Sarah,” Stuntz said. Howard Stuntz was the Secretary of Defense and was forever nipping at her heels, trying to impress her with his superiority. She had learned to deflect most of his comments. “We don’t let countries just shut down international waters. And here, it’s right by the Strait of Gibraltar.”

  “Of course,” she replied. “But the EP-3, with fighter escort, could be seen as provocation. I just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page.”

  Stuntz rolled his eyes. “I hope it does provoke them. I mean really, a two-hundred-mile economic zone? No ships or airplanes allowed? It’s ridiculous. What did they think we were going to do? Just say okay, close off the western Mediterranean? Libya did the same thing with their ‘Line of Death.’ Same deal. Same result. We sent in carrier battle groups until they made some stupid moves, lost some boats and airplanes and relented. The ‘Line of Death,’ “ he said in a mocking tone, “suddenly went away.”

  She looked at the map of northern Africa that someone had called up on the huge projection screen in front of them. It had the positions of the forces in place, including the carrier battle group, the EP-3, and the F/A-18E Super Hornets with it. Approaching from the west were the two symbols representing the Algerian fighters. “I just don’t want another China incident.”

  Stuntz grunted. “We’ve got to protect the EP-3—”

  Kendrick interrupted. “Look, all that has happened is the Algerians have launched a couple of fighters. That’s what we expected. There’s nothing new. If they go out there and see the escort, they should turn around and tell all their friends maybe the American intelligence planes aren’t such easy targets. Right?”

  St. John replied, “Yes, sir. That’s why we’re doing this. I just wanted to keep the bigger picture in mind. The new regime in Algeria has been on the sidelines in the War on Terrorism, but they’re sympathetic to the wrong people. They haven’t done what we feared. I’m just concerned this could push them over the edge.”

  The Chief of Staff, Dennis Arlberg, a lifelong friend of the President, watched the President as the others spoke. Then he jumped in. “Look, the EP-3 is a national asset. The NSA and everybody else care a lot about what happens to it. This new regime in Algeria is borderline irrational. They come from people who used to kill civilian villagers in their own country for ‘intimidation.’ They don’t come from the same kind of thinking we do. They are the ones who came up with the two-hundred-mile limit. Not us. And they had to know we always challenge restrictions on
international waters. Always have, always will. No matter who is President.

  “The only thing different about this is the escort. But if you think we should troll up and down the coast of Algeria in their new two-hundred-mile limit without protecting an unarmed, slow airplane, you’re out of your mind. If they make something of it, it’s at their peril, and we have a carrier battle group right there in case they do.”

  Kendrick asked, “Is the MiG-25 a problem for the Super Hornet?”

  Stuntz shook his head. “Anything can happen, of course, but it shouldn’t be any problem.”

  “Anything else?” Kendrick asked. No one responded. “Keep me posted.”

  * * *

  Twelve miles behind Stovic and Bruno, Chakib Nezzar and Hamid, the lead pilot, accelerated to Mach 2. They stayed together, transmitting from their radars to ensure the EP-3 knew who was coming after them. They kept their noses below the horizon to get down to the Americans’ altitude quickly. Chakib kept his left hand on his throttle and ran through his combat checklist. He knew there wasn’t any chance of combat, but he had live missiles on board and needed to do everything by the book.

  Eight miles. Chakib could now see their target. He squinted at the airplane, afraid his eyes were tricking him. He had seen photos of the EP-3 before. It looked like the antisubmarine P-3, only fatter, with odd antennas and bulges, clearly modified for the collection of intelligence. But he’d never realized just how fat it really was—bulbous, stubby, ungainly, unlike the photos he had seen. There was something odd, or wrong. The fuselage was moving from side to side as if it were made of unattached parts. Chakib leaned forward and squinted, wondering what exactly he was seeing.

  As they closed on the EP-3 at fourteen hundred miles per hour, Chakib’s heart went to his throat—he realized he was looking at four jet engine exhausts that didn’t belong to the EP-3. Four afterburning exhausts. It had to be an illusion of some sort. Then he saw the other four wings and the other four tails, the ones attached to the four afterburning engines, the ones that defined the images his brain had refused to recognize—two American F/A-18s tucked under the wings of the EP-3, waiting for them. There was no way they could slow down. They were committed to flying below the EP-3 at twice the speed of sound, underneath two of her front-line fighters armed to the teeth, and would pull out directly in front of them.

  Chakib cursed and quickly threw his master arm on. If the Americans were going to take the MiGs, it wouldn’t be without a fight.

  His lead quickly transmitted in a high-pitched voice in Arabic, “American F-18s under the wings!”

  Chakib grimaced. He looked up and saw the EP-3 pass directly overhead a thousand feet above them. They screamed past the Americans. The supersonic booms from the MiGs shook the EP-3 and the two Hornets violently. He saw the Hornets light their afterburners, begin to pull away from the EP-3, and accelerate to catch up with the MiGs. Chakib watched as his flight lead pulled up hard into a climb, as they had planned, but now they were climbing in front of two armed F/A-18s that could shoot them down any moment. Chakib held his breath against the hard G forces pushing him into his seat at six times the force of gravity. Their noses pointed up as they climbed away from the Americans. Good, he thought. Let’s just go high and head back to Algiers. We have shown them they can’t just fly down our coast without cost. But as they straightened out with their noses pointing directly away from the earth and his lead chattering on the radio to the ground controllers in Algiers, he saw his lead come out of afterburner. He frowned and pressed his lips together. No, he thought. Keep your speed up and head back.

  As their speed dropped below Mach 1.5 and headed toward subsonic, Hamid pulled his MiG back toward the Americans. Don’t do that, Chakib said to himself. But he knew better than to transmit on the radio such a disagreement with his leader. And he had heard the ground controller encourage Hamid to “continue investigating” the American spy plane.

  He reduced his throttle and pulled the stick back to bring the nose of the Foxbat around toward the Americans, now a mile behind them in perfect missile firing position.

  The two MiGs dropped below supersonic and began turning even more sharply.

  “Lock them up!” Hamid commanded.

  Chakib shook his head as he turned his fire control radar back toward the American fighters and raced toward them.

  Bruno was shocked to see the MiGs turning back. The MiG-25 had no hope of prevailing in a turning fight with an F/A-18. In a straight race, there was no contest; the MiG was much faster. But the contest was equally unbalanced—in the other direction—in a turning fight.

  “Combat checklist. Master arm on,” Bruno transmitted.

  “Roger.” Stovic flipped up the switch just over his left knee. They watched as the MiG-25s came back down from altitude, heading directly toward them, or possibly back toward the EP-3 that was behind them.

  Bruno transmitted to the controller on the ship for the first time on their encrypted channel. “Pueblo, they’re turning back into us.”

  “We’ve got them.”

  “Any instructions?”

  “Intercept and escort.”

  “Roger,” Bruno said, acknowledging the only order that was really possible. They had no indication the Algerians had anything in mind other than a little sporting flight, a quick flipping of the bird, then back to the officer’s club to boast to their Algerian friends how they had shown up the Americans.

  Stovic was on Bruno’s left in combat spread—a mile off and slightly higher—watching the two MiGs turn back. He put the MiG on the left in the reticle in the middle of the HUD—the Heads-Up Display—on his windscreen and pressed the button on the throttle to focus his radar energy around that point. The radar immediately saw the reflected energy from the MiG-25 and locked it up. The symbology on the HUD changed to show he had a target locked up and an AMRAAM (Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile) selected, the AIM-120, a smart missile that had its own internal radar.

  Stovic and Bruno were thinking alike. Without saying a word they kept their throttles at full military power—full speed without afterburner. They would stay subsonic and maneuverable, their place of best advantage against a MiG-25.

  Chakib Nezzar was breathing harder than he wanted to. Hamid was still in the same hard turn down toward the earth, and Chakib was trying to follow. He transmitted, “They have me locked up!”

  Hamid looked at his own receiver just in time to see and hear the energy from Bruno’s F/A-18 radar battering the skin of his airplane. Hamid leveled off from his slashing downward turn and prepared to climb over the Americans, who were in front of them and below them, clear against the dark blue sea underneath.

  Chakib leveled gratefully next to Hamid and waited for him to begin his inevitable climb. Hamid reset the autopilot switches, then returned his hand to the stick to begin the climb. His gloved hand reached too far and pushed the large handlelike trigger on the backside of the stick. The large AA-10 missile on his left wing dropped and fired, leaving a large trail of white smoke as it headed down toward the ocean, unguided. Hamid cursed and quickly turned off his radar to prevent any chance of the missile guiding, or hitting anyone.

  Chakib’s mouth flew open as he yelled into his oxygen mask, “No!”

  Bruno began yelling at the same time. “We’re being fired on!” He watched the missile go straight out from the Foxbat. “Animal,” he said. “Check the—”

  Stovic’s heart pounded as he heard Bruno on the radio. He kept his eye on his target as the huge radar-guided missile from the other Foxbat tore from the jet. Everything proceeded in slow motion, as if he were watching a movie. He focused on the MiG-25 on the left, the wingman. As he watched the MiG that had fired turn hard away, the one that hadn’t fired continued toward him. He found himself icily calm and acutely aware that he didn’t feel any danger; there was a chance the missile that had come off the MiG had gone instantly stupid or had been a mistake. But he also knew the rules of engagement, and based on what
had happened, he could fire with a free conscience. He might never have such an opportunity again.

  Shooting down a MiG was a dream. Every Navy fighter pilot carried around a not-so-secret dream of shooting down an enemy fighter. But what had raced into Stovic’s mind was more than just the glory that might come to his Navy career from being known as a MiG killer. It was how he might use that new reputation to accomplish his lifelong dream of becoming a Blue Angel, a member of the Navy’s elite flight demonstration squadron. He found his dreams crowding out his judgment as he moved his finger up on the inboard throttle to the trigger, determined to shoot.

  He looked at the base of the HUD, confirmed he had a good AIM-120 AMRAAM selected, and pulled the trigger before Bruno could finish his sentence.

  The missile flew off in a rage and guided toward the Foxbat on the left, directly in front of him, accelerating to Mach 4. “Fox one!” Stovic transmitted, indicating to those on the carrier that he had fired a radar missile at the target. The frequency came alive with radio transmissions. Other fighters were racing to their aid, and the controllers were shocked and looking for the Admiral to get directly involved. The Hornet computer showed Stovic how long until impact on his HUD.

  Bruno released his microphone button on the throttle. Never mind, he said to himself. Inadvertent or not, it was a shot, and Stovic was justified in returning fire. He selected an AMRAAM on his weapons selection panel and waited to see what came next. If the other MiG fired, he would fire instantly. Under any rules of engagement he was entitled to defend himself. But something made him hold his fire. He just couldn’t believe the MiGs had come out to shoot somebody or that the presence of the Hornets so rattled them that they fired out of fear or panic. It just didn’t make any sense. He reduced his throttle to keep his distance from the MiGs and watched the two missiles in front of him. The Algerian missile had gone straight down to the ocean, and Stovic’s missile was heading straight for the wingman.