Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks [89]
At the same moment, the Ekranoplan was taking on fuel from a tanker at a prearranged stop off Fort Shevchenko on the westernmost tip of Kazakhstan. The target was thus a static one for the pilots of the three RAF Vulcan B-2s coming in at five thousand feet at just below the speed of sound – a velocity
they had maintained since departing from their secret location in the Gulf, scrambled by an emergency order from Northolt, based on information from a Noshahr call box via Tehran and Regent’s Park. One of the planes was loaded with a Blue Steel missile, a rocket-powered stand-off bomb armed with the 1.1 megaton yield Red Snow warhead. The other two carried 21 one-thousand-pound conventional bombs.
The nuclear-armed aircraft was instructed to attack only if the first two planes were unsuccessful and stood off at a distance of some twenty miles. As the British pilots closed in for the kill, the airwaves crackled with anticipation. They began the operation with both leading Vulcans on a classic ‘lay-down’
attack, releasing ten bombs each in a long, wavering trail.
The sea around the Ekranoplan rose up in towering sheets of salt water that swamped the tanker as well as the hybrid craft herself, which shook to the limit of her stress equations. But she remained intact as the bombers climbed up into the sun, banked and regrouped.
Neither pilot was trained for a second pass, as the slow delivery speed of the aircraft made it vulnerable to Triple ‘A’ and surface-to-air missiles. ‘ The kitchen
sink first time’ was the pilots’ rule of thumb, but these were no ordinary circumstances.
After brief radio contact, both planes came round for a second attempt, but this time the Ekranoplan was ready for them and fired one of its missiles directly into the flightpath. Seeing its approaching white vapour trail, the pilot of the first plane fired chaff and went into a sharp emergency climb. The second plane was slower to react, and the missile, rising like a lethal white firework, tore a section from the starboard wing. Unable to control the plane, the pilot was forced to climb as high as he could before ejecting, his co-pilot following suit, their parachutes opening five thousand feet above Fort Shevchenko. The stricken plane spiralled back into the sea with three crewmen still on board.
The first Vulcan, meanwhile, levelled off, and, after a steep banking manoeuvre, ran in at nine hundred feet for a seemingly suicidal third pass. This time, however, its angle and low altitude were too much for the stranded amphibian’s defences, and the plane dumped its remaining bombs with geometric precision. As they hit the side of the fuel tanker there was a calculated delay before detonation to allow the aircraft to escape the blast.
The astonished Vulcan pilot looked down from
his climb to see the Ekranoplan lifted clear of the water and disintegrating into a million particles as the giant explosion shook the Caspian Sea to its bedrock.
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18. Zlatoust-36
‘One minute,’ said Massoud.
Below them, the Ural mountains towered grey and jagged. They could make out the sprawling city of Chelyabinsk in the eastern foothills to their right. Away to the left a large expanse of water stretched to the western horizon. The bright sun and clear, sparkling air made navigation childishly simple. Under Massoud’s instruction, Scarlett continued to move the control arm forward so the needle in the altimeter whirled anticlockwise and the big plane tilted steeply down towards the nuclear city of Zlatoust, cradled in its secret folds of rock. The door of the flight deck burst open, and a Luger pistol pointed at Massoud’s head. It was all that Bond needed. As Massoud turned his gun away
from Scarlett, Bond threw himself across the cabin and grabbed his arm.
The roaring sound of a shot reverberated