Free Iron Wolf by Dale Brown Page A

laser. Ten seconds later, the flight-director bars on Zelin’s HUD flashed bright green. They were in range. He punched the release button on his stick. “Weapons away!”
    The Su-34 bounced upward slightly as two laser-guided bombsfell away from under its wings. Zelin yanked the stick left, rolling the aircraft into an immediate tight, high-G turn to the southeast. If the Poles reacted badly, he wanted a lot more maneuvering room.
    â€œWeapon impact!” he heard Starikov yell.
    Fighting against the g-forces they were pulling, the major turned his head all the way to the right, straining to see through the canopy beyond Starikov’s white flight helmet. There, low on the horizon, a huge cloud of smoke and tumbling debris and dirt marked the point where their bombs had slammed into the ground and exploded.
    â€œOn target! On target!” they both heard the Spetsnaz officer yelling over the radio. “The terrorists are dead! We are advancing!”
    â€œLead, this is Two!” their wingman snapped, drowning out the excited commando captain. “SAM launch! Two S-125s inbound at your six!”
    Zelin slammed the stick even harder left and shoved his throttles into full afterburner. Accelerating past the speed of sound, the Su-34 turned tightly, breaking northeast across the path of the incoming missiles.
    Beside him, Starikov frantically punched buttons to activate their countermeasures systems. The large jammer pod mounted below their fuselage went active, pouring out energy to degrade the accuracy of the Polish radars. Automated chaff dispensers fired, hurling cartridges into the air behind the fast-moving Su-34. They exploded, spewing thousands of small Mylar strips across the sky.
    He looked to his left. Two plumes of dirty white smoke were visible against the light blue sky, curving toward them. Shit. Their jammer and chaff blooms weren’t working. The Polish SAMs were still locked on to their aircraft.
    The major rolled the Su-34 inverted and dove for the ground. “Two, this is Lead,” he said. “Hit that goddamned radar!”
    â€œKh-31 away!” his wingman yelled.
    Zelin rolled out of his dive at less than a thousand meters. He risked another glance to the left.
    A tiny bright dot trailed by smoke streaked northwest and then winked out. Then it flared again, slashing even faster across thesky. The Kh-31P antiradiation missile had a first-stage solid-rocket motor that kicked it up to Mach 1.8 just after launch. At burnout, its rocket motor fell away and a kerosene-fueled ramjet boosted the missile past Mach 4.
    Seconds later, Zelin saw a blinding flash far off in the distance.
    â€œThat SNR-125 is off the air,” Starikov reported.
    And probably dead, the major thought coldly. Even if the Poles had detected his wingman’s ARM launch and switched their radar off, the Kh-31 had an inertial guidance system that would take it all the way home to the target.
    Zelin glanced aft. Without command guidance from their fire control radar, the Polish SAM S were going ballistic, corkscrewing wildly high into the atmosphere.
    He breathed out, starting to relax.
    And then swore bitterly as another shrill radar warning sounded in his headset.
    â€œTwo airborne radars operating in the X-band,” Starikov said. “Computer evaluates them as pulse-Doppler N-O19 Phazotrons. Signal strength is weak, but increasing.”
    Zelin keyed his mike, calling the two Su-35 fighters attached to his force. “Shotgun Flight, this is Sentinel Lead. It looks like you’re going to have to earn your pay after all. We have Polish MiG-29s inbound.”

L YNX F LIGHT, 1 ST T ACTICAL S QUADRON,
    P OLISH A IR F ORCE, OVER E ASTERN P OLAND
    T HAT SAME TIME
    Two Polish MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters, camouflaged in dark and light gray, raced southeast toward the border with Ukraine.
    Inside the cockpit of the lead aircraft, Captain Marek Kaczor was trying very hard not to let his increasing