The Shadow Protocol

by Andy McDermott

  Holly Jo was still monitoring the radio traffic. “They’re warning the Russian air force about us,” she said, alarmed.

  Now that they were airborne, Kyle had relaxed. “Pfft. What’re they gonna do?” he asked dismissively. “They can’t even afford to keep up a proper interceptor screen. Besides, we’ll have an F-22 escort as soon as we’re out of Russian airspace. Nothing’ll be able to touch us.”

  “Maybe,” said Holly Jo, less convinced. “But we’ve got to get out of Russian airspace first …”

  A rising shrill announced to those on the shore that Adam had started the Beriev’s engines. Baxter waved to his men. “Let’s go, let’s go! Bring the prisoner!”

  Spence hauled Qasid upright and pushed him along the cutting. The two other soldiers quickly caught up.

  Tony kept a close watch on the buildings. Al-Rais had fired from behind the largest one, its wooden wall now ravaged by G36 bullets—but he was certain the Saudi had escaped unharmed.

  Al-Rais was no longer the only threat, however. Sevnik’s soldiers were somewhere in the woods—and getting closer. “Okay, John,” said Tony, “get Bianca to the plane. I’ll cover you.”

  “You should take her,” Baxter said.

  “There isn’t time to argue. Go!”

  Baxter frowned but helped Bianca up. “Can you carry both those cases?” he asked.

  “They’re heavy, but—yeah, I can,” she said, realizing that he was effectively offering to take one himself, which would leave him holding his rifle one-handed.

  “Good.” He turned to cover the cutting’s southern side. “Okay, head for the plane as quick as you can. Go!”

  She swung the cases onto the jetty, then clambered up. Baxter hopped onto the structure with considerably more grace. Arms straining, she scurried along the pier. The Alabaman moved at a backward trot behind her.

  “Movement in the woods!” yelled one of the men on the shore. “Southwest!”

  Tony looked past the derelict buildings, seeing shadowy figures ducking among the snow-laden evergreens about a hundred yards distant. Three, maybe four men—which meant the rest of Sevnik’s squad would be moving in from a different direction. “Suppressing fire!” he ordered. “Get to the plane!”

  Spence drove Qasid toward the pier as the other two men opened up, firing three-round bursts into the trees. The shots weren’t intended to kill, simply to force the approaching Russians to drop and find protection—preventing them from shooting back. Bark splintered, white powder exploding from the drooping branches. The soldiers scrambled for cover.

  Tony checked on Bianca and Baxter. They were halfway along the jetty, Baxter still watching the shore. “Tony!” the ex-marine shouted, gesturing with his rifle.

  More figures in the trees, these emerging from behind the buildings to make a pincer movement along the lagoon’s edge. Baxter fired a burst in their direction. The Russians hurriedly pulled back.

  “Come on, move!” yelled Tony as Spence and Qasid passed him. The remaining two men backed toward the pier as they unleashed bursts of fire into the woods.

  “Reloading!” said Levin, ejecting a spent magazine. He crouched behind a pile of mine debris and fumbled for a replacement. Fallon reached the jetty.

  “Levin, hurry up!” Tony yelled as he climbed onto the wooden structure to start his own retreat. Another look back. Bianca boarded the plane, Baxter pausing to untie the mooring rope. “We are leaving!”

  Levin finally loaded the new mag. He popped up to fire across the cutting, then raced for the jetty.

  One of the Russians in the woods shot back, his Kalashnikov on full auto. Some of the rounds were tracers, lines of green fire streaking like laser beams across the tracks.

  Homing in—

  A shot ripped through Levin’s left shoulder with a spray of blood.

  “Man down!” Tony cried, seeing him fall. “Cover me!”

  He opened up with his SIG at the shooter, who ducked into cover. The men on the jetty also fired, Baxter and Spence aiming at the soldiers behind the buildings while Fallon put down more suppressing fire on Tony’s target. Tony ran to the fallen man. “Can you move?”

  Levin had dropped his gun, his free hand clamped over the bloody wound. “I—I think so.”

  Tony hauled him to his feet. “Get going—I’ll give you cover. Run!” He picked up the G36 and backed up, firing into the trees.

  Baxter pulled the last loop of the mooring line free. “Get that asshole aboard!” he shouted to Spence, who forcefully shoved Qasid through the hatch before turning to continue shooting. “Tony, come on!”

  Tony fired one last burst—then his rifle clicked empty. He dropped it and ran, quickly catching up with Levin and pulling him with him.

  Baxter retreated into the plane, the others following suit. Despite their suppressing fire, retaliatory gunshots rattled from the shore. Bullets clunked against the Beriev’s hull. Bianca shrieked, flattening herself on the deck and shielding her head. “Get moving, go!” shouted Tony, waving furiously for the plane to set off.

  In the cockpit, Adam saw him and pushed the throttles. The engines rose in power. The float on the seaplane’s starboard wing would have hit the pier if he had simply gone forward, forcing him to engage reverse thrust and back the thirty-ton jet away from it.

  Still hauling Levin with him, Tony reached the open hatch just as it slipped from the end of the jetty. Hands dragged them inside.

  “They’re aboard!” Baxter yelled to Adam, before leaning back out of the door to resume firing. “Get us out of here!”

  Adam pushed the port engine’s throttle farther forward. The extra power on that side drove the aircraft into a slewing turn, its tail swinging toward the shore. Ice crackled under the hull. He looked through the side window. Was the float clear?

  A hailstorm rattle of bullets told him that it would have to be. He closed the thrust reversers and pushed both throttles forward. The Beriev’s nose tipped upward like a surging speedboat before the water’s drag on the aft fuselage slammed it back down in an explosion of spray. Shouts came from the cabin as people were thrown off their feet.

  Fear gripped him, the copilot’s inexperience fueling the emotion. I’ve only done this twice before—and Stepan is dead! He worked the controls, extending the wing flaps for maximum lift. With the RTG aboard, the Beriev was heavily laden, its hull low in the water and both wing floats carving deeply into the lagoon’s surface. The nose thumped through the choppy waves as the plane moved out into open water. What do I do? Elevators—use the elevators, set the right pitch angle …

  Adam made the adjustments, the seaplane’s nose slowly tipping back up. Another wave impact, but this time the Be-200 skipped over it rather than plowing through. He increased power and looked ahead.

  Hills filled his vision. The plane’s turn had left it pointing diagonally across the long lagoon. He needed to head due south to have enough room to take off. I’ve never turned at this speed! We might capsize!

  Despite the persona’s warning, he pushed his foot down on the rudder pedal. The Beriev changed course, centrifugal force rolling it heavily onto its left side. Slower, slow down!

  But he couldn’t. Off to his right he saw movement above the woods. The Hind had taken off again.

  Sevnik was trying to stop their escape.

  Adam pushed the rudder pedal down harder. The Beriev tipped farther, the pilot’s corpse flopping grotesquely over the armrest. The hillside swung away. Gray sky almost touched gray water in the distance ahead, separated only by a thin bar of land across the lagoon’s mouth.

  He eased pressure on the rudder, lining up the plane with the open sky. The Hind pulled ahead, sweeping out across the water. He realized what Sevnik was doing. The Russian didn’t want to risk losing the RTG—maybe he even had some sliver of conscience that drew the line at poisoning the Motherland with five kilograms of strontium 90—and rather than destroy the seaplane, he was trying to stop it from taking off.

  The easiest way
to do that would also be the simplest: block its path.

  Adam opened the throttles, changing the elevator pitch to bring the nose back up. The Beriev bounced over the waves as it gained speed. It needed at least a kilometer of open water and to reach 120 knots to take off. The Hind could easily match its pace and move to obstruct it. A collision would be catastrophic for both aircraft, and Sevnik was surely banking that the American team was not on a suicide mission.

  Tony entered the cockpit and braced himself against the dead pilot’s seat. “Can we make it?”

  “Yes—if we can get past the Hind!” The gunship was now directly ahead, slowing to a hover and turning to face the oncoming seaplane.

  “Is he playing chicken?” Tony said in disbelief.

  “If we hit him, we’ll lose the tail and probably the engines too. All he has to do is force me to cut power and splash down again, and I won’t have enough room left to get back up to takeoff speed.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Adam indicated the body. “He’s the one who’d know what to do. I’m just trying to stop this thing from nosediving into the lake!”

  He checked the airspeed indicator. Fifty knots and rising. The Beriev crested a wave with a loud whump, spray speckling the windshield. More pitch on the elevators! He adjusted the trim. The young Russian was at least a qualified pilot in conventional aircraft, even if his seaplane experience was far too slim for comfort. It was only then that Adam realized he didn’t even know the man’s name. Gennady, the persona told him, almost indignant. Always the middle brother, always overlooked …

  Orange flashes from the Hind’s cannon. Waterspouts kicked up in the Beriev’s path. Sevnik was giving him a shot across the bows, trying to scare him into aborting the takeoff.

  Eighty knots. The Be-200 skipped over each wave, producing a momentary roller-coaster sensation in his stomach before the keel sliced back into the water. Ninety knots. “Everybody hold on!” he shouted over his shoulder.

  More flames—this time from one of the gunship’s rocket pods. Two great white geysers erupted just ahead of the seaplane, the Beriev plowing through the spray. Adam’s view through the windshield was obliterated, water gushing into the cockpit through the bullet hole. It took him—rather, Gennady—a moment to remember where the wiper controls were. He found the switch, the blades squealing across the rectangular panes.

  The Hind was dead ahead, an ugly bug-eyed creature hanging above the lake.

  He applied more rudder as the Beriev bounced up again, the seaplane curving to port. The gunship tilted to follow. The way was still blocked. One hundred knots.

  Another burst of cannon fire—

  This time, the Be-200 hit the line of waterspouts. There was a piercing bang somewhere below the cockpit’s right side. Adam felt the jolt of impact through the joystick. His eyes snapped to the display screens. The computers weren’t reporting any damage—but that did not mean the wound was harmless.

  One-ten. He jammed the throttles to the detent and pulled back on the stick. The Beriev was still short of takeoff speed, but if it didn’t get airborne now it would never clear the gunship.

  Another wave—and the seaplane’s nose pitched upward. A hundred and fifteen knots. The hull cleared the surface completely …

  It wasn’t enough.

  He felt the roller-coaster sensation again as the plane reached the top of its arc. The Hind hovered gloatingly ahead, weapons pods curled down like mantis claws. If he didn’t cut power immediately, he would crash into it—

  The flash of lunatic inspiration was not Gennady’s, but Adam’s own. He didn’t pull back the throttles. Instead he shoved the joystick forward, throwing the plane into a power dive. The Beriev pitched down sharply, water rushing up to meet it …

  The seaplane hit the lake hard, another eruption of spray blinding its pilot—as he yanked the joystick back and slammed the elevators to their maximum pitch.

  The Be-200 skipped off the surface like a thrown stone and climbed again—

  Passing right under the gunship.

  The tip of the seaplane’s tail scraped the Hind’s belly with a metallic shriek, but the damage it inflicted was nothing compared with the impact of the Beriev’s jet exhaust. With both engines at full power, it was blasting out over thirty thousand pounds of thrust—swatting the helicopter out of the sky.

  The gunship was hurled into a corkscrewing spin, rolling as it fell. Its rotors slashed into the water—and the engines’ torque flung the fuselage around in the opposite direction, slamming it down like a hammer. The Hind disintegrated, wreckage tumbling in all directions before being swallowed by the icy void.

  But the Beriev was not out of danger. The forced touchdown had slowed it, the airspeed indicator dropping. The bar of land across the lagoon’s mouth was coming up fast—and the seaplane was falling toward it.

  Adam grappled with the controls, desperately trying to find extra lift. If he pulled the stick back to climb without increasing speed, it would result in a stall, smashing the Be-200 on the frozen ground. But the indicator needle was climbing too slowly. The plane reached one hundred knots again, but it was not enough to stay airborne.

  Despite every instinct of Gennady’s screaming for him to stop, he pushed the stick forward again. The altimeter spun down faster—but the plane picked up speed. One-ten, 115, but the Beriev was only fifty feet above sea level.

  Rocks and snow filled his vision …

  One hundred and twenty knots.

  Adam felt the plane’s wings flex, as if it were coming alive. He pulled the stick back. The icy land dropped away—

  A fearsome grinding noise echoed through the fuselage as the Beriev’s keel grazed the bar, kicking up a spray of snow and gravel—then the seaplane angled upward, gaining height.

  “Slava bogu!” cried Adam, whooping. “We made it!”

  “Jesus!” gasped Tony, still clinging to the other seat. He looked back shakily into the main cabin. “Is everyone okay?”

  Baxter and his men gave more or less positive responses, the team leader closing the hatch before checking Levin’s wound. Bianca flipped strands of spray-soaked hair off her face. “Oh yes, fine,” she said with withering sarcasm.

  “So what’s the in-flight movie? Alive?”

  Adam ignored her, turning the plane southeast. He found a pair of headphones on a hook and donned them, then switched on the radio and listened to the rapid chatter from Provideniya’s control tower. “This isn’t good,” he said.

  “What is it?” Tony asked.

  “Our plane got away from Provideniya—but the controllers have requested Russian military support to bring them back.”

  The blond man was unimpressed. “The nearest airbase is, what, two hundred miles from here? There’s no way they’ll catch up before we reach US airspace.”

  “They don’t have to,” Adam said urgently. “They already had two fighters in the air on a long-range exercise—they’re moving to intercept!”

  The Global 6000 had leveled out at ten thousand feet, on course for St. Lawrence Island. Kyle hoped for a sight of American soil in the distance, but clouds obstructed his view. “Goddamn, that was close,” he said, leaning back in his seat. “I’d better get danger pay for this.”

  Holly Jo glowered at him. “Jesus Christ, Kyle!”

  He looked affronted. “What?”

  “Is that all you can think about, yourself? Some of our people just died! We lost at least three members of the tac team—and we don’t know what happened to everyone else after you blew up the UAV.”

  “Hey, I was trying to save them by doing that.”

  “That’s not the point! You’re sitting there whining about how dangerous things were for you, when—”

  The entire plane lurched violently, loose items flying across the cabin. Only Kyle and Holly Jo’s seat belts kept them from following suit. A thunderous roar shook the aircraft, followed a moment later by another vicious jolt and a second rumbling scream that rap
idly Dopplered away into the distance.

  Holly Jo grabbed her armrests in panic. “What the hell was that?”

  Kyle looked back through the window. “Holy shit!”

  Two sleek jet fighters powered away from the American plane, having just crossed its path at near-supersonic speeds so that it would slam into their turbulent wakes—the aerial equivalent of throwing a stinger strip in front of a speeding car. They circled behind the business jet, giving Kyle a better view as they passed. He identified them instantly: Sukhoi Su-35E “Super Flankers,” painted in angular gray dazzle camouflage. The pride of the Russian air force, and among the deadliest aircraft on the planet. Each Flanker had four missiles mounted beneath its wings.

  He doubted that the weapons were harmless training dummies.

  Holly Jo used her headset to talk to the cockpit. “What’s happening?”

  Tension was clear in the pilot’s voice. “They’re ordering us to turn about and head back to Provideniya.”

  “They can’t do that!” Kyle protested. “We’re in international airspace.”

  “We just violated Russian airspace with an unauthorized takeoff. They’re kinda pissed about it!”

  “But what about our F-22s?”

  “Gee, I don’t see them,” the pilot replied scathingly. “Do you?”

  Holly Jo listened in on another transmission, from one of the Sukhois. “Oh my God,” she said, going pale. “They just said that if we don’t turn around, they’ll open fire.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” said the pilot. “I’m taking us back.”

  Kyle pressed his face against the porthole. One of the pursuing Flankers swung into sight as the Global 6000 banked, the military aircraft effortlessly matching the Bombardier’s movements. “Crap. Crap, oh crap!” he cried, close to panic. “What happens if they arrest us? I mean, we’re technically spies.”

  “There’s no ‘technically’ about it,” said Holly Jo. “We are spies! We’ve got to destroy the hard drives, wipe anything containing classified data—”

  She was interrupted by an astonished shout from Kyle. “Holy shit! Look at this, look!”