"Maloney, Mack - Wingman 02 - The Circle War UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maloney Mack)

"This is not your typical Soviet stunt," Hunter was saying. "These guys were pros. It took a lot of planning and execution to jump fifty Goddamned jets across the arctic."

"And to do it in bad weather," Frost said. "And without a peep on the radio."

"Some kind of special unit," Dozer said. "Probably trained just for this mission."

"Damn!" Hunter said, pounding the table. "I would never have guessed the Russians had five of these Yaks left, never mind fifty!"

"We have to find them and take them out," Cap-

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tain Crunch of the Wreckers said. "Any ideas where they went, Major?"

Hunter was quiet for a moment. "I hate to even say this but . . ." he began slowly. "My guess is they jumped themselves right over into the Badlands."

"Christ!" Twomey blurted out, expressing the feeling of every officer there. They were all unquestion-ingly brave men. But still not one of them wanted anything to do with the Badlands.

"Why do you figure the Badlands, Hawk?" Wa asked.

"Well, based on the maximum operating range of the Yak-38, if they flew light and conserved fuel, they could have made it in one extra jump," Hunter said, pulling out a notebook of calculations. "And these photos show they weren't carrying any ordnance under the wings. They were, however, carrying extra large wing tanks.

"This tells us something else. If they weren't carrying bombs, it could mean they were meeting up with someone who was."

"Goddamn," Dozer said. "Fifty Russian jump jets flying around the continent can cause a lot of misunderstandings to say the least."

"What are they here for, Major?" one of the Cobras asked. "Convoy raiding?"

"Well, it seems like a hell of a lot of trouble to go through just to shoot at airliners," Hunter said.

"Could be part of another disruption campaign," Dozer said. "They sent a bunch of jets over to The Family, too."

"That's true," Hunter said. "But we've got to figure

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that they sent more jets than pilots that time. Pilots must be in very short supply over there, still. And so are top-shelf airplanes like these Yaks. Top-shelf to the Russians, anyway."

"You think something bigger is brewing?" Frost asked.

Again, Hunter was silent for a few seconds. He had given it a lot of thought in the past few hours, though he had to admit, some of the answers literally popped into his head from nowhere. He now had theories on most of the recent mysteries, both on the west coast and on the east Чall except one.

"Okay, let's look at these one at a time," he began. "First, we have a patrol boat who reports something strange and sends out an SOS. By the time we get there, they're gone. Now, whatever it was, it had to be a ship that attacked them. Yet the Wreckers didn't see anything else floating around out there."

"True," one of the F-4 pilots confirmed.

"Okay," Hunter continued. "Maybe it was a submarine. Maybe it was a bunch of submarines. By the way the patrol boat captain was talking, he might have sailed right into a school of them."

"Or a wolf pack," Dozer interjected.