by F X Holden
It was after dawn now, and the outside light was getting brighter. Inside the cave, they had switched on the low-intensity green light emitting diode or LED lighting that was used for landing. Anything else caused the cameras on the drone to flare, and the pilot risked losing orientation as they adjusted for white balance. The low luminosity of the green LEDs meant that if all went well, Bunny saw a brief half-circle of complete black, and then the green wall lighting of the Pond and the dock sprang into view ahead of her. If all went well.
“That’s it mate,” Bunny was purring to herself now, as though she was coaxing a racehorse into a starting gate. “Don’t be scared.”
Then Rodriguez saw the silhouette of the Fantom framed in the circle of light two hundred feet away and before she could react it was thumping down onto the water, hydraulic cushioned skids jumping as they soaked up the energy of the landing. Too fast! Bunny popped her air brakes, tapped a key to give the drone just a touch of reverse thrust, and it dipped its nose alarmingly, but not enough that it risked what Bunny called ‘a face plant’.
From the back of the drone, a drogue parachute exploded, acting like the sea anchor on a yacht in heavy seas and pulling it up so sharply it slowed it to a stop with fifty feet of Pond to spare. Bunny cut the engines, pulled off her helmet and leaned back in her chair, hands on her head, looking at the Fantom through the trailer windows like she couldn’t actually believe she had really landed it.
As she watched her green shirted crew get the recovery crane and sling rolling to lift the drone off the water and into a recycling bay, Rodriguez could see that every human-piloted landing on this base was going to be two parts art, one part terror.
“Someone needs to buy me a damn beer,” Bunny said, turning around. “If I do say so myself, ma’am.”
Rodriguez smiled, “How about breakfast, Lieutenant? Once we’ve got that Fantom squared away.”
“You have a deal, Lieutenant Commander,” Bunny said, standing and stretching her compact frame. “Got to stay sober anyway. So I can pull the logs and write up the mission report, doing justice to how totally awesome I was.”
In her quarters that night, Rodriguez lay on her bunk staring at the raw rock ceiling. Above her was a hundred thousand tons of rock and bird droppings. She should be basking in the afterglow of their first successful combat exercise, but instead she lay on her back in the dark, going over the hundred small things that could have gone better. She hated this side of herself but knew she had no hope of changing it. It was how she had earned her handle – “Hammer” – early in her career, from chewing out subordinates for the smallest mistakes. She had no doubt her people called her less complimentary names, but it was her attention to detail and obsession with being the best that had got her this commission. “They are giving you two years to do what should rightly take four,” her CO on USS Trump had told her. “Someone wants that facility ready for World War Three in a hurry,” he said, “And the only thing that gives me peace of mind about that, is they’re putting you in charge.”
World War Three? Their catapult software was still acting up, their complement of regular Navy aviators hadn’t been assigned, a stiff wind could block the Slot with ice and they weren’t even ready to put two birds in the air in rapid succession, let alone six. Forget World War Three; right now, they couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag.
She drifted off to a fitful sleep, dreaming of storm clouds rolling toward her.
A RUN IN THE SNOW
While Alicia ‘The Hammer’ Rodriguez was dreaming of storm clouds, Yevgeny Bondarev was freezing his ass off in the melting snow of a Khabarovsk Autumn. He’d asked for a few minutes of General Lukin’s time and had been told he could meet with him at 0630 when the General was taking his morning run.
Fifty-nine years old and he was still taking a morning run in the subarctic temperatures of Khabarovsk? Bondarev sincerely hoped he would be dead before he had to even think about keeping up that kind of discipline himself.
He waited outside the General’s quarters in his running gear, hopping from one leg to the other to keep warm. He knew it was dumb at these temperatures to blow warm air into his mittens, because it would condense, turn to water and freeze his fingers. Same for the balaclava around his face - blowing warm air into the mouth and neck would be as self-defeating as pissing in his pants to keep warm. There was nothing for it but to keep moving, but he also knew Lukin was the type who thought five minutes early was already late, so he wasn’t too worried he’d be kept waiting.
Sure enough, at 0625 he saw the General come thumping down the stairs, fling open the doors from his quarters and take a deep breath. “Bondarev,” was all he said before nodding and pointing up the single road out of the base and then padding off down the road. Once he might have been a sprinter or a hurdler, but Lukin was slower now, thank God. He pounded down the road like a heavyweight boxer and Bondarev jogged by his side, wondering who should speak first. It was a little awkward, because quality time with the most senior officer in the 3rd Command of Air Force and Air Defense was not something he got that often, and spending that time running through the snow in the dark with him was something he’d never had to do before.
Luckily Lukin broke the silence, “That shifty bastard Arsharvin has brought you into the circle then?”
“Sir?” Bondarev asked, not wanting to throw his friend under the bus.
Lukin was the annoying type who could apparently talk and run without panting. The only sign he was exerting himself was that he spoke in clipped sentences and timed his words with his exhalations.
“You don’t have to cover for him,” Lukin said. “I know you two served together in Syria. You asked my staff for an urgent meeting with me and I can’t believe it’s because you misunderstood your orders from yesterday. It’s a pretty simple CAP cover role, no matter the context. You take your machines to Saint Lawrence, scare away anyone who gets in the way, and make sure by the end of two days our troops are boiling tea and cooking pork and potatoes on the ground below you without any bombs or missiles upsetting their appetites.”
“Yes sir,” Bondarev agreed. “The Saint Lawrence objective is clear. But I have a suspicion that this is just our first move in a larger maneuver.”
“Suspicion, Major-General?”
“Unfounded suspicion, Sir,” Bondarev said carefully. “But if I’m right, I’d like permission to bring my 6983rd Okhotniks up to full readiness. It’s not the weapons platforms sir, they are already on trucks, moving to Anadyr. I’m short of pilots and systems operators.”
They had left the base now, and were headed up a hill to a tree-lined horizon, dark on dark. As though to test him, Lukin perversely picked up the pace when they began the climb. Bondarev easily matched his pace, but was glad to see the older man at least begin to breathe more heavily.
“I can’t confirm your ‘suspicions’ Major-General,” he said. “But I am concerned to hear the 6983rd is not at full readiness already. It is intended to be a front-line unit. No one has told me anything about pilot or systems officer shortages.”
Bondarev knew that was not true. He had been warning of the personnel shortages monthly in his reports to the General Staff for nearly 18 months and knew these were read personally by Lukin. He had been told that Russian Aerospace Command was prioritizing combat operations in the Middle East and Africa and that the Eastern Military District was too far down the list for anyone to listen to him. He had accepted that, but hadn’t stopped flagging the shortages in his monthly reports, or in fact, at any opportunity. He had personally had a conversation with Lukin about it six months earlier.
“The Comrade General is not expected to be across such details,” Bondarev panted. “But it is the case that I am currently 20 crew short of being able to field my full regiment of 48 Okhotniks.”
He half expected criticism from Lukin for Bondarev not keeping him informed, or at least something about the incompetence of his staff. Instead, he was silent. They jogged
side by side, Lukin apparently in thought, Bondarev in stasis, until they crested the hill and began the curving downhill part of the run that would take them through a small village and then back toward the base.
“Twenty crew you say,” Lukin said finally.
“Yes sir. For full operational capability I would require 24 to allow for … rotations.”
Bondarev had hoped that Lukin would ease off his pace as they jogged through the darkened, quiet town. Only one or two houses were lit, with early risers who no doubt had duties somewhere on the military base. A dog barked off in the distance, highlighting to Bondarev how still the early morning was. There was no traffic, neither foot nor wheeled. In his soul, Bondarev hoped to hear at least a cock crow, but he knew that was a thought dredged up from a semi-rural childhood and not likely here in the middle of the icy wind blasted desolation of Khabarovsk.
“You are not to commit the 6983rd’s Hunters to the operation over Saint Lawrence,” Lukin said finally, as the lights of the base appeared over a rise. “I expect a limited reaction from the Americans. They are weak and indecisive but if the 4th and 5th Air Regiments suffer losses, you will bear them, Major-General.”
“Yes sir.”
If Bondarev had hoped for Lukin to share any of the grand plan with him, he was disappointed. They ran in silence for the rest of the distance back to the base, threading their way through the main gates, around a dead circle of hedge rustling in the early morning Arctic wind and then back to the front door of the General’s quarters.
Bondarev expected a curt dismissal, but was a little surprised as Lukin stopped on his steps, stretched out a leg and bent over it, warming down. “I am a fighting pilot like you Bondarev,” he said. He was looking at his foot, grabbing the toe as he pulled on his hamstrings.
“Yes sir,” Bondarev said.
“Did you know I am still current on the Yak-130?” he asked pulling in his right leg and stretching out his left, still not looking at Bondarev directly.
Bondarev smiled, of course he knew. The whole of the 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command knew that Lukin had his own Yak-130 trainer - a red two-seater light ground-attack fighter and trainer that had hardpoints for weapons and drop tanks and was painted like an Italian Ferrari. He flew himself and his adjutant from base to base for inspections, to observe exercises and join staff meetings.
“Yes sir,” he replied simply.
“You do your job,” Lukin said. “Keep those skies clear. And I’ll look forward to flying my Yak into that American airfield at Savoonga. You join me, and we will toast a job well done. Deal?” The General held out his hand, looking directly into Bondarev’s eyes for the first time.
Bondarev took his hand, “A deal General.”
The General held his hand a moment longer than necessary. The gesture had a feeling of finality about it that unsettled Bondarev. It was as though they were saying a final goodbye. But Lukin dropped his hand and smiled, “You will also ensure your Okhotnik drivers are trained and working together like the cogs in a Swiss clock,” Lukin said. “I will see about that personnel shortage, Major-General. The fighting in Syria is more or less over now, from what I hear.” He patted Bondarev on the shoulder and pulled open the door to his quarters and Bondarev watched as he bounded upstairs for a shower. Something about Lukin’s tone was less hearty than his words though.
He’s sending us off to die, Bondarev was thinking. He knows it, but he won’t say it.
“You don’t know your history,” Arsharvin was telling him. It didn’t quite come out that way though. It was more like, “Youdunnoyahistry.”
Bondarev was nowhere near as far gone as his friend. He was aware, and he spat upon, the clichéd Western images of Russians as big drinkers. He came from a family of teetotalers, in which he was the first in many generations who had ever taken a drink and recent anniversaries aside, it was rare he took more than two. His grandfather had been head of the entire Russian Air Force and he had never seen him touch a drop, even on the day he had turned up at a family dinner, pale-faced and quiet, clearly shocked over something that had happened. Yevgeny’s mother had plagued him to know what had happened, but he had told her not to worry, it was just a military matter, not something he could share with her. Bondarev remembered his 13-year-old self-watching the grey-haired, box jawed older man sitting at the table, staring into his cold tea for nearly an hour without moving. A week later they heard an entire Russian air base inside Syria had been overrun by Turkish forces, with dozens dead and the rest of the personnel taken prisoner.
The old man had seen the worried look on his grandson’s face and had pulled him over to the table as he sat there. “There will be war now, Yevgeny,” his grandfather had said. “Not like you have seen before. I will be called away, and you will …” he had patted his shoulder, “You will do your duty too.”
His grandfather had been right. Following the Syrian civil war Turkey had refused to yield Syrian Kurdish territories it had overrun, ironically with Russian military support, and after several years of cross-border skirmishes, Syria and Russia had declared war on Turkey. Attacking that country from the south in Syria, from the Black Sea, and from airfields in the Caucasus, Russia’s action served several goals. To show the West that it was once again a military power to be reckoned with, and to show its allies or those in its shadow that they would need to choose sides for the second part of the 21st Century, as divided loyalties were no longer an option. And, Bondarev realized now, to test the resolve of the United States when it came to meeting its many treaty obligations.
Russia had achieved all of those objectives and more. Turkey alone was never going to be a match for the Russian Navy, Air Force or special forces troops. And Turkey was very quickly left alone to deal with Russia. After years of antagonizing its European neighbors and throwing their overtures of friendship back in their faces, it had metaphorically burned all bridges across the Bosporus leading to Europe. Neither could it rely on US support, having been unilaterally expelled from NATO by the US after continued aggression against US Kurdish allies. Turkey quickly found that its own push toward independence from Europe and the West, and embrace of Islam, made it very vulnerable. Cut off from Europe, faced with an angry Russia bearing down on it, it cried for help and found itself in an echo chamber.
But Turkey was no military lightweight and Russian overconfidence had seen early victories in Syria and Turkey met with some unfortunate reverses: a war that planners had foreseen might take one year to 18 months before Turkey was forced to capitulate, was still raging two years later. While the fabled Blue Mosque in Istanbul was shown on Russian television still standing, as proof of both the discipline of Russian forces and the precision of its missiles and bombs, it stood almost as the only surviving building amongst the rubble of Istanbul.
By the second year of the conflict, the young Yevgeny Bondarev had earned his fighter wings. Bondarev’s first combat mission had been in the skies over Istanbul, as he followed his flight in for a strike on anti-aircraft positions along the river dividing the city between Asia and Europe. They had blasted in at sea level, popped up over the first ruined bridge at Besiktas, and loosed their anti-radiation missiles at the targets that had been identified by high flying Airborne Control aircraft and drones. Yevgeny had not seen the missiles strike. His flight had headed for the nap of the earth again as soon as their missiles were away and were headed back to Sevastopol by the time they detonated. Russia had no need, nor appetite, for losing valuable pilots over enemy territory.
It was also the first time Bondarev had seen Okhotnik drones in action. As he had followed his flight leader away from the release point, he had seen a flight of nine Okhotniks, like small triangular darts, sweep in from his nine o’clock high to deal with the inadequate Turkish air force response to their attack. Turkish air defense satellites and radar had identified Bondarev’s flight as it had popped up, and two outdated but well-armed F-18 Superhornets had been directed to pursue Bondarev’s fligh
t. He was picking up their search radars as they tried to get a lock on the fleeing Russian flight and watched as the Okhotniks flashed past his wing, loosed two AMRAAMs each at the Turkish jets and then immediately transitioned into an impossible full thrust vertical climb that would have turned a human pilot’s brain to mush. Within seconds the entire flight of Okhotniks was gone, surfing the stratosphere and no doubt looking for new targets even as their missiles swiped the Turkish Superhornets from the sky.
Bondarev saw the kills confirmed on one of the screens in his Su-57, and heard a grunt from his flight leader. “This isn’t war,” the man said. “It’s a video game and other side is still in the Nintendo age.”
“That silicon can sure as hell fly and shoot though sir,” Bondarev said.
“You looking for a transfer Bondarev? Your idea of war is sitting on your ass in a trailer in Georgia looking at a video screen, where the worst thing that can happen is spilling your coffee if you get a woody?”
Bondarev had instinctively run his eyes from controls to instruments, across his wing, the sky-high and low around him and then back to his controls. A hill was rushing toward them and as one, the flight rose and then fell to avoid it. He checked the position of his wingman and felt the machine respond as he pulled back gently on his stick, felt the pressure of his seat against his back as he slid back into formation, the hill receding quickly behind him.
“Not likely sir,” he’d said.
But with a fabled name like Bondarev he wasn’t going to be allowed to live out his days as a simple pilot. And despite their technological superiority, Russian losses were mounting as the second year dragged into a third, and then a fourth. A quick campaign had turned into a problematic, drawn-out intervention and occupation facing an asymmetric enemy, with Turkish forces maintaining control of vital oil reserves and a newly guilt-ridden Europe coming in late with material support; if not with troops, then at least with weapons systems. With two air and 15 ground kills against his name Bondarev had been given a Nesterov Air Medal, promotion to Captain and command of his own Su-57 flight of six fighters.
