GOLAN: This is the Future of War (Future War)

by FX Holden

  Sure, Ears thought. Where you would have been the guy who let an Israeli sub sneak by you and unleash Armageddon. Because basically, that’s what I did. “You wouldn’t like being a sailor,” Ears told his brother.

  “No, I guess not. It’s boring, right?”

  “Nah, you’d just find it confusing. In the Marines, they tell you to run at the people shooting at you. On an LCS, we shoot back.”

  As Lieutenant Yevgeny Bondarev packed his personal gear into a duffel bag in his quarters at the Latakia Air Base in Syria, he was willing to admit there were some things he had learned from his time here, and some he still found confusing.

  He had learned that war was much better fought in the air than down on the ground where most of the dying happened. Fact. He had learned that no matter how amusing a personality you had, an enemy missile would kill you as dead as the most boring guy in the squadron. Fact. He had learned that robots were better pilots than humans, even when the aircraft itself was inferior. Fact. These things were not confusing.

  What puzzled him was what his grandfather, Hero of the Russian Federation Viktor Bondarev, called ‘the machinations of State’.

  He looked at what Russia had gained from several years of fomenting war between Syria and its neighbors – Turkey in the north, Israel in the west – and he was left with a simple question.

  Why?

  Syria had gained its northern border provinces back from Turkey, and so was grateful to Russia. All that meant was that the impoverished nation of Syria owed Russia a huge debt for weapons and materiel that it would never be able to pay. Iran had played its hand against Israel, with the support of Russia and Korea, and had been hammered back to the stone age. Yes, it now had a nuclear deterrent, but it also had an economy in ruins. Even if it managed to get an arms agreement with Israel and a form of peace treaty that offered the prospect of easing of economic sanctions, the US had come out of the conflict as the peace broker in that arrangement, not Russia.

  Bondarev had looked at his transfer orders with interest, trying to read the geopolitical tea leaves in them. He was being sent to the Russian Far East, to Khabarovsk, along with most of the other Russian Aerospace Forces units blooded in Syria. Khabarovsk was just twenty miles from the border with China. Was Russia already losing interest in the Middle East? Why would Russia send its elite, battle-hardened units to Khabarovsk, unless it was now concerned about war with China? Had Syria simply been a rehearsal for the real battle to come?

  He shook his head. Such worries were surely beyond the pay grade of a lowly Lieutenant.

  The last thing he threw into his duffel bag was a pair of bright red over-ear headphones. He had borrowed them from a young pilot who loved rap music, and who had told him that if he would just listen to it through a pair of good earphones he would learn to love it to.

  He hadn’t. But he would never forget that young durak either.

  Amal Azaria was watching her son Raza play in a patch of sunlight, and she was thinking of a young fool too. A young, red-headed American fool called Calvin. He’d already written her from Kuwait, and from Hawaii. She would never forget the look on his face, on the stairs inside her house as he followed the body of the dead Marine, Patel, down from her roof. There was an English word for it and in a quiet moment she had looked for and found it in a dictionary.

  ‘Bereft: suffering from the death of a loved one.’

  She also remembered him holding her, inside her workshop, letting her fall apart and then picking her up again. Literally. Lifting her up so that he could tend to her wounded forehead. A big man, but gentle. But so young.

  She’d written back to tell him if he ever came to Israel again, he shouldn’t look for her in Buq’ata. After rejoining her unit, her employer, the Defense Research Directorate, hadn’t been too happy with her workshop nearly falling into the hands of Syrian-sympathetic Druze rebels and had insisted she return to continue her work in Tel Aviv. With both their house and their shop in ruins, Amal and her brother Mansur had decided to return to Tel Aviv until the situation in Buq’ata and the Golan Heights ‘normalized’.

  Buq’ata was full of Russians now, since the Druze declaration of an independent governate in the Golan Heights. Israel had yet to re-establish authority over the region and relations between Israeli settlers and the Druze population in the Golan Heights were more … complicated … than before.

  Having seen firsthand how her robotics could be used to mete out death, Amal had told her employers she was happy to continue her research, but only on reconnaissance and transport drones. For example, she had just started work on a compact, man-portable drone that could lift a wounded soldier on a stretcher and guide itself to the nearest hospital or field station.

  Like a 200lb. Marine, for example, who had been shot in the groin and couldn’t take too much rough handling without bleeding out.

  James Jensen wasn’t the kind who usually minded a little rough handling, but when he’d finally been loaded onto that Big Boy and it had turned west for Israel, he’d stayed awake just long enough to be sure it wasn’t headed for some other Syrian hell hole they hadn’t been told about, and then he’d passed out.

  When he’d come to, he was in the infirmary at Hatzerim Air Base in southern Israel with a grinning Corpsman Bell at his bedside.

  “Hey Gunny, welcome to paradise.”

  Jensen looked around himself, seeing only Marine uniforms, canvas and the red-headed Corpsman. “Don’t tell me, Bell,” he said. “Our ride got shot down, we all died, and this is hell, not paradise.”

  Bell leaned forward. “Alright, be like that. But since you’re dead, you won’t want the burger I ordered you for your lunch so you don’t have to eat infirmary chow. Or this…” He handed Jensen a juice bottle.

  “Orange juice? I am in hell,” Jensen groaned.

  Bell leaned forward. “Not orange juice,” he whispered, giving Jensen an exaggerated wink.

  The wound in Jensen’s groin was a dull throb now, rather than the sharp, shooting pain it had been last time he’d been conscious. “They got the bullet out?”

  Bell pointed to a jar next to the bed, which held an almost pristine bullet. Jensen reached over and picked it up. A 12.7mm slug, he guessed, but longer than he’d expected.

  “Klimovsk smart round, precision guided,” Bell told him. “Russian. Some guy was telling me those bullets are like five hundred bucks a round. Was me, I’d take it as a compliment.”

  “I intend to,” Jensen said, putting the jar down again.

  Bell held out an envelope. “They told me to give you this. Said don’t worry about the date, it doesn’t account for you lying up in hospital.”

  Jensen opened it. “Okinawa. My next posting is on Okinawa.”

  “Sergeants always get it easy,” Bell complained. “I’ll be back in Hawaii tending dumbass Marines who went and shot or blew themselves up, and you’ll be cruising bars in Japan, got your own personal geisha, I bet.”

  Jensen read it again and then put it aside, frowning. “Hey. I was kind of out of it at the end there. But I remember seeing … did Patel buy it?”

  Bell looked away. “Yeah, took one in the back as he was coming down from the rooftop. Through the lung, probably right through the heart too. He had to take just one more shot with that damned blunderbuss, you know…”

  “Damn fool.”

  “Yeah. Dumb jerk.”

  Jensen held his juice up in a mock toast. “See you in Valhalla, Patel.”

  “With the Valkyries.”

  They sat with their thoughts for a while and then Bell perked up. “Hey, lookit Sarge. I got a new tattoo.” He rolled up his sleeve and showed the inside of his bicep, where there was some writing that looked like Hebrew. Bell ran his finger across it. “It’s a Hebrew proverb: ‘A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.’” He flexed his bicep, admiring it. “That Israeli corporal told it to me.”

  Jensen smiled and saw what looked like an Israeli airman
walking through the infirmary with some supplies. “Hey, excuse me. You read Hebrew?”

  The man paused. “Yes.”

  “See this tattoo, what does it say?”

  The man was quick on his feet. He peered at the tattoo thoughtfully as Bell twisted to show him, then stood. “It says, ‘Pull ring, count to three, and throw.’” As he turned to go he gave Jensen a sly wink.

  Bell looked at it again. “Dammit. I paid a hundred bucks for that.”

  “I can’t believe I’m actually paying money for this,” Shelly Kovacs was telling Bunny O’Hare. “It hurts!”

  She had her jeans pulled halfway down her backside as a burly, hairy Greek bent over her with a tattoo gun. “Please not to move,” he said. “Result is better you stay still.”

  Bunny leaned over. She’d dragged Kovacs to a tattooist in Limassol insisting they both get tattoos to mark a successful operation over the Golan. Kovacs’ tattoo was a blue and white crest with wings, featuring a thunderbolt design in the middle. The US Air Force Observer Badge. Underneath it the tattooist had already inscribed, Golan 2030. O’Hare had insisted she choose that one.

  “Looking good,” Bunny told her. “You earned your wings on this operation, that’s for sure, girl.”

  “What did you get?” Kovacs asked.

  Bunny had been next door, and she rolled up the leg of her jeans to show Kovacs the tattoo on her ankle. It was the face of a man wearing a strange outfit with a Zorro-style mask across his eyes.

  “What is that?”

  Bunny lifted it up so Kovacs could see it better. “Are you kidding? It’s the Phantom. The Ghost Who Walks, right? Ph-antom, F-antom, get it? Like our fighter plane.”

  “The who?”

  “You never heard of the comic book hero the Phantom? Kit Walker. Ghost Who Walks. Seriously? I’m going to get it stenciled on all my birds from now on.”

  “Sorry, they don’t teach much obscure Australian comic book history at MIT.”

  “He’s American.” Bunny leaned down beside the Greek tattooist. “Press harder, will you? If she’s still able to be funny it doesn’t hurt enough.” Bunny sat in a chair beside them, a beer in her hand. Unusually quiet for once.

  “I’ve been assigned to a new project,” Kovacs said, breaking the silence.

  “Yeah? Well, since I just about wrote off every prototype you had over the Golan Heights, I figured you’d be semi-unemployed now.”

  “Like you.”

  “No, I’m not semi-unemployed. I ship home, check out of the air force, I’m totally unemployed. And broke. That’s what a ‘no-benefit discharge’ means.”

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “I’m thinking of an anger management course.”

  “No, I mean for work.”

  “Oh, right. I know a guy owns a flight school. I could teach flying, I guess.”

  “Uh huh. How would you like to teach my new students to fly?”

  “Your new project is a flight school?”

  Kovacs lifted herself onto her elbows. “Kinda. Navy is looking for a new amphibious combat drone to fly off missile destroyers. Store it midships, lift it out and retrieve it with an onboard crane. I need someone who can teach the Fantom’s AI how to take off and land on water.”

  “I never flew an amphib before.”

  “Pretty sure you’d pick it up quickly, and the AI will learn from your mistakes, anyway.”

  “Then it’s going to have a lot of learning opportunities.”

  “So, you’ll think about it?”

  “Already did. If you’re in, I’m in.”

  “You want to sleep on it?”

  “Good idea.” Bunny closed her eyes, then opened them. “Done. I’m in.”

  Carmine Lewis wasn’t thinking about Israel, Iran, Syria or nukes at all. She was already engaged in trying to work out where and when the next big geopolitical challenge was going to come.

  The jittery stock markets had settled a little and Oliver Henderson’s handling of the blockade had given him a small bounce in the polls, a slew of new party donors and a lot of favorable comparisons in the media to other Presidents through history who’d held their nerve at times of crisis and won the day.

  He’d been pretty pleased with himself and she’d felt the need to bring him back to earth, just a little.

  For her briefing today, she’d had her people work up a bunch of scenarios based on the latest available intel and now she was seated in the Oval Office with Henderson and his Chief of Staff.

  “So, what do you have for me today, Carmine?”

  “Well, we could start with North Korea,” she said, lifting the top folder off a pile. “Kim’s sister has made a back-channel approach to the government in the South to sound them out on starting reunification talks.”

  “Well, that’s great news.”

  “Not really, Mr. President. North Korea’s generals are completely against it. Not to mention China.”

  “Not so great, then.”

  “No.” She put that file down and picked up the next. “Or there’s our troop drawdown in Japan. Kadena Air Base closing ceremony is tomorrow. The threat assessment is in, and risk of civil unrest is high.”

  “I’m not going back on that. Japan wants to close our bases … I don’t see why we should keep troops there against their will when we can just as well base them in South Korea, and a Congressional majority wants them rebased too.”

  “Except…” She patted the Korean folder.

  “Oh, right. The unification thing. Anyway, the Kadena ceremony is under control, right?”

  “I guess.” She picked up the next folder. “Russian Far East.”

  He sighed. “Again with Russia. Who are they planning to interfere with this time?”

  “That’s the question. DIA reports in the last two weeks they’ve been moving their front-line fighter units out of Syria to their Far East command – Khabarovsk – right on the border with China. The 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division, the guys they had in Syria, have also been rebased in the Far East Command, in Lavrentiya.” Carmine pulled a map out of her folder and showed him. “With the addition of the 2nd Guards, that means Russia now has 120,000 active-duty troops in their Far East Command, many of them veterans from Syria, along with their best air and air defense units.”

  Henderson looked at the map and frowned. “That’s Alaska. They have put 120,000 troops on the Russian border with the USA?”

  “Technically not, since the Bering Strait cuts between Russia and Alaska, but it’s only twice the width of the English Channel at its narrowest point, so I guess it’s semantics.”

  “We need to find out what the hell their intentions are,” Karl Allen said.

  “Their public position is the troop buildup is ‘a natural reflection of the growing economic importance of the Russian Far East region’, and they’re just rebalancing.”

  “Rebalancing. We’re supposed to believe that?”

  “I don’t think they care much what we believe, Karl,” she told him. “But DIA and CIA are on it. Finally, space.”

  “At last, somewhere where we are in control of things,” Henderson said. “We are still on track to send astronauts to the Chinese space lab, right? Peace, love and harmony in orbit and all that good stuff.”

  “Yes. And then there is Project Opekun.”

  “That doesn’t sound Chinese.”

  “It’s Russian. Russia just boosted its second Opekun satellite into orbit aboard a Supertyazh heavy lift vehicle. They haven’t disclosed the purpose of the Opekun satellites but our intelligence suggests they are designed to create a precise map of all objects orbiting the earth, from the smallest piece of debris to the largest satellite. And to map near earth objects, like comets, meteors…”

  “Yes, I remember. Space Command is worried that the only reason to map everything so precisely is so they can shoot it down,” Henderson nodded.

  “Yes, Mr. President, but something doesn’t add up,” Lewis said. “The reason Russia
has to lift these things into space on the back of a Supertyazh rocket is that each one weighs ninety tons.”

  Karl leaned forward. “You said nineteen, right, not nine zero?”

  “No, nine zero. Each one of these things weighs about the same as the original Mir space station. And Russia plans to launch several of them.” She put the last folder back on the pile and straightened it. “We’re digging. Space Command is working with the Brits, trying to get imagery. I’ll update you when we get more, Mr. President. The party never stops.”

  A very unusual reception party was being prepared at the Haifa Submarine Flotilla base.

  The first thing that marked it out as unusual was that everyone in the receiving party dockside was wearing NBC suits. The second was that the submarine was not docking in one of the normal submarine pens, but out at the end of a long pier reserved for vessels with a much deeper draft, which was usually regarded as an inconvenient distance from the main port. A large awning had been erected at the end of the pier that hung a hundred feet out over the water to obscure from satellites or drones anything that might be beneath it.

  The third was that one of the individuals dockside was pulling bodybags from a truck and laying them on the dock.

  The fourth was that the submarine cruising into the harbor had no officers on watch atop the sail, steering it into its berth. It remained fully submerged, invisibly sliding in to dock at the end of the pier fifty feet below the water.

  With no pomp or ceremony, the submarine switched its engines to astern slow and coasted to a halt at the end of the pier, before blowing ballast from its tanks and rising smoothly to the surface under the awning. Where it revealed that in fact, it had no sail at all; just a crushed and mangled stump of metal riding above its smooth, whale-like body.

  As soon as it had settled, a number of the individuals in NBC gear started blasting the decks of the submarine with high pressure water hoses, while others prepared the electro-coagulation equipment that would, it was hoped, remove most of the radiation from the hull. In the process it would cause irreparable damage to the hull’s integrity, so there was a fine balance between bringing radiation levels down and weakening the hull so badly it collapsed and sent the submarine to the bottom of Haifa harbor.