James Barrington - Overkill

‘Hang on a tick, and I’ll get the trolley. Then we can pull him out.’ Erroll pressed a button and with a faint hum the two curtains parted to reveal a floor-to-ceiling mortuary refrigerator and a wheeled trolley. The top of the trolley was fitted with two parallel lines of rollers to carry a mortuary tray. He opened the fridge door, rapidly cranked the trolley up to the height of the single occupied tray, pushed it into place and slid the tray smoothly on to it.

‘Had a holiday job in a mortuary while I was up at Oxford,’ he said cheerfully, as he lowered the trolley to a convenient height and began to undo the safety pins holding the sheet closed over the corpse. ‘Fascinating work,’ he added, ‘if somewhat gruesome.’

He paused before removing the sheet and looked at Richter. ‘Only fair to warn you that he’s not a pretty sight. He was only wearing a lap seat belt and took the impact with his head, so his face is pretty well pulped. That’s the trouble with these cheap bloody Russian cars; they’ve got no padding on the dashboard at all. It’s just bare metal. And then the wreck caught fire, which accounts for the burning of the arms and torso.’

Richter nodded, pulled a notebook out of his pocket, wrote ‘Graham Newman’ at the top of a clean page, added ‘Injuries’ underneath, and underlined all three words.

With something of a flourish, Erroll peeled away the sheet.

Aspen Three Four

Captain Paul James detected the Mikoyan–Gurevich MiG–25 Foxbat at 1053. ‘Fire-control radar – Fox Fire. Full ECM engaged.’

Sophisticated ECM – Electronic Counter-Measures – have to be employed against the Foxbat. Simple jamming doesn’t work because the aircraft’s Fox Fire radar relies upon sheer power – a 600-kilowatt output – and jam-proof vacuum tube technology rather than solid-state electronics.

Frank Roberts pushed the throttles fully open. Speed and height were the only things he could vary. The mission planners had made it very clear that, except as a last resort, the aircraft’s course had to remain exactly as ordered. ‘Where is it?’

‘No contact. OK, contact now. Twenty-five thousand feet below and twenty-seven miles behind. Range is opening. No launch detection, no danger. Ease the speed.’

At 1101, with the Blackbird again holding Mach three and eighty thousand feet, precisely on the planned surveillance route, Paul James detected a more immediate threat. ‘I’m detecting MiG–29 Fulcrum fire-control radar. Two contacts, both green two zero, range forty and indicating fifty thousand feet, climbing slowly and on an intercept heading.’

‘Weapon load?’

‘They’re probably each carrying AA–9 and AA–10 missiles, plus a thirty-millimetre cannon. The missiles are fire-and-forget.’

‘Maximum engage range?’

‘Twenty miles for the AA–9s, ten for the others. Maintain height – the Fulcrums can’t reach us here – but increase speed now to three decimal three.’

The Blackbird surged forward again as Frank Roberts pushed the throttles wide open. Fifteen seconds later the SR–71A systems detected missile launch.

British Embassy, Sofiyskaya naberezhnaya 14, Moscow

Where it wasn’t black, the corpse was white and waxy, the result of post-mortem hypostasis – the blood draining to the lowest parts of the body after death – and he hadn’t exaggerated the face. There were no discernible features, just a torn and ripped red mess, teeth and bone showing white. Richter extended a hand and touched the skull, feeling the uneven lumps and ridges where the cranium had shattered.

Erroll looked at him quizzically. ‘You’ve seen bodies before, haven’t you?’ he asked. ‘I was quite expecting you to keel over. Lots of people do, you know, especially the ones you least expect. I suppose you’ve been in mortuaries before for the identification of clients?’

‘Something like that,’ Richter agreed, writing ‘crushed skull’ in his notebook. ‘Could you remove the rest of the sheet, please – I’d like to see if there are any other injuries.’ Apart from the massive trauma to the head, the body was virtually undamaged by impact. Richter examined the limbs and the trunk, looking for any signs of fracture or dislocation, but with the exception of a broken collarbone and two or perhaps three fractured ribs, he found nothing else to write down in his notebook. The fire had made a mess of the hands, blackening and twisting them into clutching claws, but had caused surprisingly little damage, other than superficial charring, to the rest of the body. He lingered for a few minutes over the corpse, and jotted some more brief notes into his book, but for all practical purposes he had finished the examination long before. The injuries were almost precisely what Richter had expected to find. More importantly, he hadn’t found the one thing he was looking for.

Aspen Three Four

‘Birds away – four launches detected, almost simultaneous. Probably the AA–9s. Interceptors at sixty-five thousand feet and range twenty.’

‘Roger.’

‘Jamming and ECM engaged. Missile range fifteen – intercept course confirmed on three. One falling away – probably lost radar lock.’ Twenty seconds passed. ‘Second missile falling away. Remaining two still have radar lock. Engaging the target generator.’

Radar works by transmitting a pulse towards an aircraft and then receiving the return signal that has bounced off it. The direction from which the return signal arrives gives the bearing of the target, and the time between transmission of the pulse and receipt of the return signal provides the aircraft’s range. Range and bearing locate a target precisely, for engagement by a missile or interception by fighter aircraft.

The Sanders Associates’ AN/ALQ–100 false target generator is designed to confuse air defence radars by providing a return signal to the radar at exactly the right frequency, but at a much higher strength. This effectively obliterates the real return signal and generates a false target some distance away from the aircraft using it.

Paul James used the Blackbird’s Enhanced Radar Warning Receiver to detect the precise radar frequency being used by each of the two approaching AA–9 missiles, fed that data into the AN/ALQ–100, and engaged the system. Then he waited.

‘SITREP?’ The slight note of tension in Roberts’ voice was the only indication of the strain he was under.

‘OK. Radar lock lost by both missiles. They’ve each locked on to the false targets, and they should detonate in under a minute, about ten miles astern. Interceptors now out of effective range. Reduce to Mach three in thirty seconds.’

Voyska IA-PVO Unit, Arkhangel’sk, Confederation of Independent States

‘The interception was unsuccessful, Colonel,’ Privalov said, leaning back in his chair. ‘Interceptor One reported that two missiles lost radar lock, and the other two detonated, but well behind the target,’ he elaborated. ‘Possibly the Americans used decoys.’

‘Where are the other interceptors?’ Kabalin asked Vetrov, turning away from Privalov.

‘We have six pairs airborne, holding at altitude and awaiting intercept vectors. I have positioned them to try to box the American in.’ Vetrov pointed to the screen, indicating the positions of the fighters which had been scrambled. ‘Here, sir, at Murmansk, Kirov, Gor’kiy, two pairs north of Moscow, and a pair of MiG–31s north of Minsk.’

Kabalin mused for a few moments. ‘If I were flying that aircraft,’ he said, ‘I would want to clear this area as quickly as possible.’ He projected the Blackbird’s track down to the south-west and estimated distances to the edge of the CIS. ‘My guess is that they’ll try to turn to the west or north-west and break out into Finland. And most of our interceptors are holding to the south of the American’s track.’ He stroked his chin thoughtfully. ‘Well,’ he said, and reached for a telephone. ‘We’ll have to do something about that.’