Price of Duty

by Dale Brown

  Heading east, they zoomed down one of the narrow valleys. Rocky heights rose sharply on both sides. An ice-covered stream twisted and turned down the floor of the valley.

  “VHF signal strength decreasing,” the computer reported. “Detection probability now low.”

  “You did it!” Nadia said, exhaling.

  Feeling a little safer now that they had higher ground between them and that Vostok radar, Brad switched the XCV-62’s terrain-following system back on. It pulled them back up to two hundred feet. He unclenched his teeth. “Maybe. Maybe not,” he told her. “Depends on how jumpy that radar crew is. And why they suddenly powered up.” He shrugged his shoulders against his harness. “I’m pretty sure they got some piece of us, at least for a few seconds. Now, if we’re lucky and that Russian crew was only running a routine test, they may think the blip they saw was just a systems glitch.”

  “And if we are not lucky?” Nadia asked softly.

  “That’s what has me worried,” Brad acknowledged. He clicked the intercom, opening a channel to the troop compartment. In a few terse phrases, he briefed Macomber, Charlie Turlock, and the others on the situation.

  “So,” Macomber drawled, “it may be ‘good-bye, surprise’ and ‘hello, hornet’s nest?’”

  “Could be.”

  “Care to give me any odds on which one it is?” Macomber asked.

  Brad shrugged again. “Maybe fifty-fifty.” He banked right, following the trace of the valley as it curved southeast. “Do you want to abort?”

  “Hell, no,” the other man growled. “If those Russian sons of bitches really are awake and waiting for us, skedaddling now won’t improve the situation much. If we’re gonna have to run a missile gauntlet on the way home, let’s blow the shit out of Gryzlov’s cybergeeks first.”

  “Charlie?” Brad asked.

  “Suits me,” Charlie Turlock said simply. “You know, not that I would ever say I told you so, Whack . . . but I feel compelled to point out that I did strongly suggest we stop for a drink at that Finnish airport bar first.”

  Despite his anxiety, Brad felt himself grinning. “Captain Schofield?”

  “My lads and I are ready,” the Canadian told him. “We’re unstrapping now and getting our gear ready.”

  “That’s kind of dangerous,” Brad told him. “This could be a pretty rough landing.”

  “We’ll take that chance,” Schofield replied. “No offense, Captain McLanahan, but if we are heading into a hot LZ, my troops and I would rather like to get clear of this aircraft and into cover as quickly as possible.”

  “Understood,” Brad said. The glowing numbers on his HUD altered slightly as the Ranger’s computer recalculated their flight plan, based on their current airspeed and heading. “We’re eight minutes out. Stand by.”

  NEAR KIPIYEVO

  THAT SAME TIME

  “Replay that sequence, Proshkin, but slow it down this time,” Captain Fyodor Golovkin ordered. His sergeant obeyed. Together the two men watched the small blip suddenly appear on their radar display, waver, and then just as suddenly vanish. From start to finish, the blip was visible only for fifteen seconds. The captain pulled at his jaw. “What do you think?”

  The sergeant shrugged. “We were still powering up, Captain. It could easily have been a false reading.” His fingers drummed lightly on the side of his console. “But since we haven’t been able to run our normal alignment, calibration, and other tests, who knows how out of whack this equipment is. Ordinarily, I’d say that we picked up something real. As it is, in these temperatures and with all that ice coating the ring element radiator—”

  Golovkin nodded. He shared the other man’s frustration and uncertainty. As part of the effort to hide the existence of Perun’s Aerie, Colonel Balakin had ordered them to keep their radar completely off the air once it was deployed. Golovkin had argued that his equipment needed periodic checks to confirm its full operational readiness—especially in these harsh winter conditions. Unfortunately, the colonel had ignored his protests. Like many senior officers without a technical background, Balakin expected that fully activating complex systems like their Vostok E radar was as simple and foolproof as flipping a power switch.

  He sighed. If only it were that easy. “How does the equipment look now?” he asked, still trying to decide what he should do about this possible contact.

  “The antenna array seems okay,” the sergeant admitted. His tone, however, strongly suggested that he wouldn’t be surprised if bits and pieces started falling off in the next few minutes.

  “Assuming that contact was genuine, what can you tell me about it?” Golovkin pressed.

  The sergeant brought up the recorded sequence again and ran through it one more time. “We picked it up at about sixty kilometers,” he said carefully. “I would estimate the contact’s course as zero-eight-five degrees and its speed at more than eight hundred kilometers per hour.”

  “Right, so let’s put that track on a map and then extend it along the observed direction of flight,” the captain said.

  Dutifully, the sergeant obeyed. During the fifteen seconds the blip appeared on their radar display, it had covered a little more than three kilometers before disappearing. Golovkin’s eyes followed the projected track as it “stretched” almost due east—slanting toward the Urals on a course that took it within a few kilometers of Mount Manaraga and Perun’s Aerie.

  “Damn,” he muttered. Still looking at the map, he picked up the direct line to Balakin’s command post. It was answered on the first ring. “This is Captain Golovkin at the Kipiyevo radar outpost. I need to speak to the colonel. Right now!”

  THIRTY-THREE

  IRON WOLF STRIKE-FORCE LANDING ZONE, NORTHWEST OF MOUNT MANARAGA

  THAT SAME TIME

  “We are two minutes out from the LZ,” Nadia Rozek reported. On the surface, she sounded cool, totally unruffled. But Brad could pick up the tension hidden beneath her outwardly calm, thoroughly professional manner.

  “I confirm that,” he said. “I have the LZ in sight.” Through his HUD, the clearing they’d picked out from satellite photos as a landing zone was a brighter green against the darker green of the surrounding forest. They were arrowing toward it at three hundred knots, flying low down a narrow gap cut through the tall, razor-backed ridge that formed an outer barrier to the Nether-Polar Urals mountain chain.

  The irregular, roughly oval-shaped clearing was a little under two thousand feet long and only about five hundred feet across at its widest point. Close study of the photos taken before snow covered the area had shown no signs of tree stumps or boulders that could tear off the Ranger’s landing gear or rip open its fuselage. But Brad knew satellite photos were one thing. Reality might be quite another.

  “Ninety seconds out,” Nadia said. She tapped one of her MFDs, zooming in on the view through one of their forward-looking passive sensors. “No unidentified thermal contacts around the LZ.”

  Brad nodded tightly. So far, so good, he thought. While it was still possible that antithermal camouflage might mask Russian troops deployed around the clearing, it wasn’t likely—not unless they’d been stationed there before this mission was even planned. And if that was the case, they were screwed any way you looked at it. “Give me a quick air-to-ground radar sweep of the immediate area, please,” he told Nadia.

  Using radar of any kind, even for a single pulse, this close to the Russian cyberwar complex was risky, but he needed to confirm they had a clear field ahead of them. The radar sweep should reveal any obstructions hidden beneath the snow . . . and any enemy troops, weapons, or vehicles hidden under camouflage.

  “Sweeping now,” Nadia acknowledged. She tapped a menu on her right-hand display once.

  One quick tone sounded in Brad’s headset as the XCV-62’s radar pulsed once in air-to-ground mode. In milliseconds, the aircraft’s computer analyzed the information received from the sweep and showed the resulting image as an overlay across his HUD. “Looks clear,” he said. “We are g
o for landing.”

  “Go for landing,” Nadia agreed. She tapped a key on one of her MFDs, alerting Macomber and the others in the troop compartment that they were on final approach.

  Using a control on his stick, Brad scrolled a blinking cursor across the HUD and selected his preferred touchdown point. The navigation system updated his steering cues.

  “Forty-five seconds,” Nadia announced.

  “I am configuring for landing,” Brad said quietly. He entered a command on one of his MFDs and throttled back. The muted roar from the Ranger’s four turbofan engines decreased fast.

  Their airspeed dropped. Hydraulics whined out along the trailing edge of the XCV-62’s wing. Control surfaces were opening to give them more lift as they slowed. There were more bumps and thumps below the cockpit as the Ranger’s landing gear came down.

  When he got the green light confirming that their nose gear and bogies were locked in position, Brad disengaged the terrain-following system and throttled back even farther. “Hang tight!” he warned over the intercom.

  The Iron Wolf aircraft slid down out of the sky and touched down. Thick curtains of snow fountained to either side, hurled high into the air as the Ranger raced down the clearing. It bucked and bounced across the uneven ground hidden beneath the snowpack. Carefully, Brad reversed thrust—trying to shed speed as rapidly as possible without risking a skid on this slick surface.

  They slid to a shuddering stop with only a couple of hundred feet to spare. “Everyone all right back there?” Brad asked over the intercom.

  “Jostled around and bruised a bit, but otherwise fine,” Ian Schofield said cheerfully. “Standing by to deploy once you drop the bloody ramp.”

  Smiling with relief, Brad fed just a little power to the engines and steered the Ranger through a tight 180-degree turn so that they were facing back the way they’d come, ready for an immediate takeoff. Then he throttled all the way down and hit the ramp release.

  Schofield and his four commandos were out in seconds, fanning across the snow-covered expanse to take up covering positions around the stationary XCV-62. One of them lugged three Israeli-made Spike-SR man-portable antitank missiles. The others were equipped with a mix of sniper rifles and automatic weapons.

  The two Iron Wolf CIDs exited right behind them—slowly unfolding out of the cramped troop compartment. They glided down the ramp and out into the snow with long, menacing strides. Packs stuffed full of extra ammunition, explosives, and other gear were slung across their backs. The lead robot swiveled its six-sided head toward the cockpit. “Wolf One to Wolf Six-Two,” Macomber said. “Thanks for the ride. We’re moving out now.”

  “Copy that, One,” Brad replied. His chest felt tight. “But be careful, Whack. If the defenses look too tough, don’t try to bull on through.”

  “Don’t sweat it, Six-Two,” the other man said gruffly. “Charlie and I know what we’re doing. We’ll go in, shoot the crap out of a bunch of Russians, and boogie on back here before the survivors figure out what the hell just happened to them. Wolf One out.”

  With that, the two Iron Wolf robots turned and loped southeast at high speed.

  THE KREMLIN

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  Gryzlov listened intently while Colonel Balakin made his report. “Our radar station at Kipiyevo picked up one brief contact about thirty minutes ago,” the colonel said. “But they say it vanished almost immediately. Within just a few seconds.”

  “Was their system knocked out or spoofed by the enemy’s netrusion technology?” Gryzlov demanded.

  “I don’t think so, Mr. President,” Balakin said. “The Vostok E crew reports no apparent interruption of their radar’s normal operation.” He hesitated. “However, Captain Golovkin has often warned of potential equipment problems caused by prolonged exposure to the winter elements. This fleeting contact may only be a false reading caused by a minor hardware malfunction or some software bug. Since we’ve seen no further signs of any enemy activity, that seems increasingly likely. In which case, I may have alerted my garrison unnecessarily.”

  Gryzlov’s hand tightened around the phone. “Don’t be an idiot, Balakin,” he snapped. “You and your troops will stay on full alert until I decide otherwise. Is that perfectly clear?”

  “Da, Mr. President,” the other man agreed hurriedly.

  “Keep your eyes and ears open wide, Balakin, if you want to live through the night,” Gryzlov told him brutally. He disconnected and then punched the button for Ivan Ulanov. “Get me Colonel General Maksimov!”

  Maksimov, his former instructor at the Yuri Gagarin Military Air Academy, sounded drowsy, almost half asleep, when he answered the phone. Impatiently, Gryzlov checked the time. His lip curled in disgust. It wasn’t even that close to midnight yet. Maybe the old man really was past his prime and ready for the boneyard, along with the rest of the old Soviet-era relics.

  “It looks as though Poland’s Iron Wolf mercenaries have slipped right through your vaunted air-defense network, Valentin,” Gryzlov said, not bothering to hide his scorn. “I want two of the alert Su-50 stealth fighters stationed at Syktyvkar heading for the Pechora area at once! Tell the pilots to go in hard and fast, with their radars active. They are to shoot down any unidentified aircraft they detect. Failure will not be tolerated. Is that understood?”

  “I understand, Mr. President,” the older man said. His voice was stiff. “But I must point out that sortieing our Su-50s with their radars powered up negates every advantage otherwise conferred by their stealth configuration and materials.”

  “I don’t give a crap about stealth right now, Colonel General,” Gryzlov said icily. “You’ve boasted that the Su-50 is the best combat aircraft in the world—faster, longer-ranged, and more maneuverable than the American F-35. You also told me its phased-array radar and other sensors could detect and track any enemy aircraft, no matter how stealthy. Were those lies?”

  “No, sir,” Maksimov growled, plainly stung.

  “Then prove it,” Gryzlov told him. “Get those precious fighters of yours off the ground and tell the pilots to go kill whatever they find.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  PERUN’S AERIE

  THAT SAME TIME

  Major Wayne “Whack” Macomber’s Cybernetic Infantry Device crouched low among snow-covered trees and boulders. Mount Manaraga’s slopes climbed above him, rising to a jagged peak more than a mile high. A pulsing green dot on his tactical display marked the position of the Iron Wolf robot piloted by Charlie Turlock. She was about four hundred meters north of him, also concealed well in among the trees.

  The pine forest they were using to cover their approach came to an end about five hundred meters dead ahead, right at the edge of a mile-wide bowl formed by two steep spurs extending out from Manaraga’s main summit. There were no trees on those white slopes, just occasional patches of bare black rock and loose scree.

  Looking uphill, Macomber could see a massive tunnel set into the flank of the northernmost spur. According to their intelligence, that was the principal way into the Russian cyberwar complex. Scion and Polish analysts suspected there were probably a number of smaller, secondary entrances and exits, but he and Charlie didn’t have the time to scout for them. An overhanging ledge shielded this particular entrance from satellite or aerial observation. The tunnel was about two thousand meters from his current hiding place. Even scrambling upslope through deep snow, he could cover that distance in his CID in well under four minutes. He grinned sourly to himself. Or at least he could if it weren’t for all the enemy weapons so carefully sited to lay down a deadly hail of fire on anyone moving up that bowl.

  Data from his sensors poured into his mind. The robot’s computers provided instant analysis of everything he “saw” and “heard”—whether in the form of thermal imagery, narrow-beam radar pulses, intercepted radio and cell-phone transmissions, and even sounds picked up by its incredibly sensitive microphones. A sea of targeting indicators flashed onto his display, each marking the positi
on of a concealed Russian bunker or remote sensor.

  The woods ahead of them were laced with IR-capable cameras, motion detectors, and trip-wire-triggered flares. He shook his head. A mouse might make it through there without triggering an alarm, but nothing bigger would. At least not while those sensors were operational. And beyond the woods, those seemingly empty slopes were studded with camouflaged bunkers and buried minefields. They were also covered by emplaced ground-surveillance radars to pick up the slightest movement.

  Macomber whistled softly, studying the results. He radioed Charlie Turlock. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  “As in ‘antitank guns, missile launchers, machine guns, and minefields under the snow, oh my!’?” Charlie said. “Yep, I sure am. Geez, you’d almost think these guys don’t want any uninvited visitors.”

  “You would, wouldn’t you?” Macomber said. He paused, listening to the simultaneous translation of a conversation between the Russian soldiers manning one of the nearby fighting positions. They were wondering if this sudden alert was just another drill or something more serious. “And it just gets better. Because it sure as shit looks as though these bastards are wide-awake and waiting for us.”

  There was a moment of silence while Charlie digested the information from her own sensors and obviously came to the same, sobering conclusion. “Well, that makes it more of a fair fight, right?” she said at last. The biometric data piggybacked onto her transmission showed that her heart rate had climbed slightly, but there was no real trace of fear in her voice.

  Macomber forced a laugh. “Hell, I hate fair fights.” He sighed. “But I guess this is where we earn the big bucks they’re paying us.”