CHAPTER 61
Cotton knew all he had to do was avoid those fighters long enough for help to arrive.
One would be tough to shake. Two? Nearly impossible.
But he had an idea. With the Baltic approaching, the wind had noticeably picked up, buffeting the plane, especially its damaged wing.
The ?resund Strait churned with long rows of whitecaps.
He knew from experience that white tops came from at least fifteen-knot winds.
The Russian had only grazed them with the initial cannon fire, surely trying to damage the plane enough to knock them down as opposed to openly shooting them down.
But everything was still playing out in the sky for all to see.
So let’s give them something to watch.
Except when it wasn’t.
Like here.
“He will be back here soon,” Ivan said.
He hoped the EMB could handle what he was about to do. The starboard control surfaces were severely damaged, but the port side and tail rudder seemed okay. Most important, the engines were working, though there was now a noticeable difference in their timbre.
He engaged the lever and lowered the landing gear. He heard the hydraulic noise of the gear doors grinding open and the spinning of the wheels’ reverse rotation. He then angled the flaps down, slowing their speed dramatically.
Flying dirty. Which ate up altitude. Fast.
He had to get low. Real low. For two reasons.
First, those capping waves would create clutter for the fighter’s firing radar.
Second, and even more important, the Russians would have to go dirty too.
But fighters were not low-altitude machines.
They worked best in the stratosphere, not near the ground where computers and engines could be tapped to the max.
They would also be sucking fuel at an alarming rate to stay aloft at their breakneck speeds.
And for two hostile aircraft far from their base, that was a disadvantage he had to exploit.
He waited another two seconds, then pulled back on the throttle and pushed on the yoke. The plane dropped faster.
Tracer rounds rocketed past as their altitude decreased.
Two thousand feet.
Fifteen hundred.
One thousand.
The fighter shot past above them, its turbofans leaving a trail of black smoke.
“My stomach is in my throat,” Ivan said.
“I had to do something he wouldn’t expect.”
He focused through the windshield. Another Sukhoi loomed in the distance toward the north. Stephanie had said there were two. One was circling, watching, waiting, the other engaging. He realized either fighter could easily shoot them down with air-to-air missiles.
Another navy lesson flashed through his mind.
Learn from other people’s mistakes.
“We’re going to the water,” he said.
Stephanie’s mind raced.
Everything was happening fast. No time to be afraid. Cotton’s life was in real jeopardy.
“Colonel,” she said to the phone. “You still there?”
“I am. We are three minutes out.”
He’d anticipated her question and provided the correct answer.
“Can’t they do something to let those fighters know they’re not alone?”
“I have no authority to fire air-to-air missiles at Russian aircraft.”
“Colonel, you don’t know me. But I am the head of the Magellan Billet, a covert intelligence agency of the U.S. Justice Department. What’s on that plane is vital to our national security. I need you to protect it.”
She was throwing a little weight around hoping it might generate some action. Not usually her style. But there was nothing about this that was usual.
“I can’t fire on that plane, ma’am.”
“Can you fire and miss?”
Cotton figured he had about three to four minutes left before the cavalry arrived. So he decided to use the two things he had.
Low altitude and the ?resund Bridge.
Built a quarter century ago to connect Denmark to Sweden, the abovewater portion of the span ran five miles from Sweden to Peberholm Island before dipping below the surface into a tunnel.
The span supported a roadway and rail line, along with data and communications cables.
It was held aloft every 450 feet by concrete piers rising from the water.
At the center of the main span, two pairs of freestanding, cable-supported towers suspended a fifteen-hundred-foot-wide opening over the water, allowing ships to pass beneath.
Most important was the height from the bottom of the span to the top of the water.
Maybe a couple of hundred feet? Going to be tight for a fast-moving aircraft.
But that was the whole idea.
He reduced their speed further. The outside air seemed capricious and inconsistent, which only aggravated the lack of full control.
He dropped the left wing and slipped into a slow bank, the controls straining from the damage, the airplane sluggish in the turn.
After another slow turn, he angled the nose and leveled off at eight hundred feet above the water.
“You see the jet?” he asked.
Ivan’s head spun in every direction possible out the windows. “Nyet. But that mean nothing. He could still have us in sights.”
A fact he realized. He struggled to keep the wings level, as the starboard side control surfaces were ignoring his commands. Luckily, it seemed the codex was safe, strapped down behind them, not moving.
A rush of wind shoved them to the right.
He held the nose high and angled straight for the bridge, dropping to a hundred feet above the water.
A small container ship was coming toward them from the other side, lined up to pass beneath.
He knew that usually the ships avoided the open span and passed unobstructed in the Drogden Strait that ran above the tunnel.
Nothing to hit there. But he’d spotted the ship as they’d approached and decided to use it too.
“I see fighter,” Ivan said. “There.”
He followed Ivan’s pointed finger and caught the glint in the sunlight ahead and above them. Coming fast. The Russian had chosen a frontal assault. A game of chicken? Okay. He could do that.
But where was the other fighter?
The bridge offered the perfect distraction from any incoming rounds. All that metal would play havoc with firing radars. As would the container ship, which was literally a floating pile of steel boxes. The unknown? How far were the Russians willing to go to kill Ivan?
Missiles from afar?
He held the yoke steady and could already tell depth perception was going to be a problem.
He would have to judge the distance correctly, both up and down and right to left, and make sure airspeed was perfect.
He was worried about stalling. Luckily, no crosswind blew, or at least none he could feel.
But like he’d been told.
Gravity never loses.
Cassiopeia watched the monitor.
Cotton had dropped to just barely above the surface. The two Russian fighters were overhead, one in front, the other looping around to approach from the rear. He seemed to be flying straight for what the monitor identified as the ?resund Bridge.
The screen suddenly split.
One side showed the radar, the other a view from one of the F-16’s cameras down to the water.
“I’ve sent a live feed through Swedish military command,” the colonel said from the phone.
“We have it,” Stephanie said.
They could see the bridge and a small container ship approaching from the north headed south. The EMB was flying low just above the surface, south to north, headed under the bridge, straight for the ship, to its right.
“What’s he doing?” she muttered.
“Surviving,” Stephanie said.
The radar image showed something moving away from the Russian fighter in front of the EMB.
“They fired a missile,” the colonel said through the phone.
Another image emerged from one of the American interceptors that had just come onto the screen.
“We fired too,” the colonel said. “At the higher fighter to the rear.”
“Why not to the one who fired first?” Cassiopeia asked.
“That one is for Cotton to avoid,” Stephanie said. “They’re trying to give pause to the other to not join in the attack.”
Cotton hoped there was enough room.
They were a hundred yards from the bridge, the ship to his right, and he was flying barely above the uppermost containers stacked tall, which was taking about half the space beneath the bridge out of play. The Russian fighter was nowhere to be seen.
Off to the south, a flash appeared.
An instant later a vapor trail snaked a path across the morning sky.
He knew what was happening.
Incoming air-to-air missile, its fire-and-forget active radar zeroing in on them. He kept the EMB on course and decided to use the ship to maximum advantage. The bad part? He had no electronics, nothing at all to track the approaching danger.
They were now no more than fifty feet above the water.
It looked like the ship, the missile, and the EMB would all arrive under the bridge—
At the same time.