Bering Strait

by F X Holden

  If Bondarev was unhappy, Rodriguez was even more so. Bringing their birds home had not been a smooth process this time. One of the Fantoms had lost forward vision as it approached the Rock, meaning Bunny had to bring it in blind. A software kludge had been needed to get it to ignore its collision warning system as it autopiloted itself towards the Slot, and they had wasted precious time and fuel while O’Hare and a programmer hammered out the workaround, debugged and uploaded it. But it had made them realize they needed the software update applied to all of their drones, because any one of them could end in the same situation and they had to have a way to tell it that it wasn’t about to wipe itself out on a cliff face. As the Fantom had glided into the opening, Bunny had grabbed manual control as soon as she had a visual, but it was rough. The drone had slapped onto the water hard, bending its ski support gear. Rodriguez figured two days, maybe more, for her small maintenance crew to replace the supports and forward video system and get it airworthy again.

  There was not a lot of jubilation under the Rock that night, even though they had delivered on their mission objectives. It had cost them two Fantoms down, one damaged and out of play. Halifax picked up on it as he walked into the ready room that doubled as a duty galley down by the deck. He looked around him, seeing a distinct lack of laughter and teasing, and a whole lot of tired people slumped on their elbows spooning food into their mouths and not really even talking with each other. He walked over to Rodriguez, who was going through an inventory checklist with one of her ordnancemen.

  “Officer on the deck!” she announced as he approached, and she snapped to attention.

  “As you were Boss,” he said. “Can we have a word?” She dismissed her aircrewman and looked at him expectantly.

  “Why the glum faces?” he asked.

  “Two dead, one wounded, sir,” she replied simply.

  Halifax blinked. “They’re machines, Rodriguez.”

  “And we know that. But if we have this attrition rate on every combat mission, this base will pretty quickly be out of business. It’s supposed to be a covert center of operations, so we can’t be flying new drones in here every few days or we’ll get found pretty quickly. Could bring in the airframes by submarine, put them together here again, but that would be too slow for combat conditions. And we’d need double the personnel. The ambition is for this facility eventually to be fully autonomous if we can one day solve the problem of how to automate the aircraft recovery – right now we can’t even guarantee to keep it operational when manned.”

  She was right, Halifax knew that, but he had expected to see a little more optimism among his people. They’d lost two drones, yes, but they’d also gotten vital intelligence and showed what they were capable of under combat conditions. He’d told them they needed to launch faster than they had, but O’Hare and Rodriguez’s people had managed to get four drones into the air averaging five minutes between launches, off a single catapult. They needed to shorten the time from a launch order to the first launch, but he couldn’t fault their performance once they got the first cartridge on the Cat.

  O’Hare. He just realized she wasn’t here and he hadn’t seen her since the mission debrief. “Where is our pilot?” Halifax asked Rodriguez.

  “She’s DARPA's pilot sir and she’s probably resting,” Rodriguez replied. “Theirs or not, she’s the only jock on the Rock. She knows you could be calling on her again anytime and she has to be mission capable.”

  “I’ve asked CNAF Coronado to get those reserve pilots here stat,” Halifax said. “Some pencil head told me we had to wait for the base to be certified before I could request more personnel. I told him we just certified the base under enemy fire and he’d better put me through to someone who realized the Russians had just invaded US territory.” He bit his lip. “The problem is how to get them in without Ivan noticing.”

  “Can’t you just chopper them in, topside? You must have personnel going in and out of the radar station all the time. We’re facing off against the Russians a hundred miles south, no one is going to be surprised at some extra traffic on Little Diomede.”

  “That’s exactly the problem. Damn Russian no-fly zone has CNAF rattled; they don’t want to risk a shoot down even if we are fifty miles north of the perimeter. We lose anyone, even in an accident, it could start a shooting war. No ships or subs available, I tried.” Halifax looked around the room and back to Rodriguez, “For now, your crew here and that hot-headed contract pilot are it.” He put a hand on her shoulder, “So I need you to get your people off their mopey asses and ready for war Boss. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rodriguez said. “You’re right.” She turned to the people scattered around the canteen, and raised her voice. “Listen up! Simulated Fantom hex launch in 10 minutes. One-zero. Get moving!”

  “I’m freezing,” came the whining voice for about the fifth time.

  “Shut up Dave, I’m cold too,” Perri said through clamped teeth.

  “I’m telling you, we should go down there, join the others,” the younger boy continued. “At least they have heat, food.”

  “They’re prisoners Dave, do you want to be a Russian prisoner?” Perri asked. He shifted on his stomach, trying to get comfortable and peered through the scope on his rifle again. The Russian patrol circled the village about every fifteen minutes in its jeep, about a hundred and fifty yards away down the hill. He’d thought about how easy it would be to shoot out one of its tires as it passed in front of them, maybe make it flip - but that trick only worked in movies. He was a good shot, but not Hollywood good.

  It was the third day since he’d escaped from the invading Russians. He and Dave had spent the first night and day up in the abandoned gas station, watching what was going on down on the airstrip and in the town. It had been pretty uneventful after they’d seen the Russian anti-aircraft batteries firing off their missiles and then that spy plane had rocketed down the runway from two different directions and got splashed by Russian fighters, missiles slamming into it just as it cleared the town. So the US air force, or whoever it was, knew what was going on. The Russians had started piling sandbags and icy dirt around their emplacements on the runway, the last choppers had lifted off, and there had been a lot of shouting down in Gambell, but no shooting.

  The next day they saw Russian troops going from house to house in Gambell looking for residents. Anyone they found, they bustled out of their houses or businesses and into jeeps and drove them all to the school at the eastern edge of town.

  “Just a matter of time before they check up here,” Dave had said. “We are so screwed.”

  “We could hike out to Savoonga,” Perri had said. “I did it with my brothers once, this time of year. It’s OK if the weather holds. Takes a few days along the coast track. Or we could steal a boat.”

  “What makes you think Savoonga will be any different?” Dave asked. “You tried calling but it’s like the tower is down. Savoonga is probably full of these guys too.”

  “Yeah, in the town. But the Air Force has that base up there,” Perri pointed out. “Maybe they’re holding out. If we could make it there…”

  That was as far as the conversation got. Right then, they’d seen a jeep heading out of town coming straight for them.

  “In the tank!” Perri had said, pushing Dave out of the gas station office. He looked around him. Coffee mugs! They’d brought a couple of mugs of coffee up with them from Dave’s hideout. He grabbed them by their handles and bustled out behind Dave who flung the hatch open and waited until Perri was on his way down before climbing in himself and locking the hatch from the inside with a lock he’d put there to keep his brothers out in case they came looking for him.

  At the bottom of the ladder they waited and listened. It was only six feet from the tank to the ground above, and the hatch didn’t have an airtight seal anymore. They heard the crunch of tires on gravel and then at least two voices. The voices didn’t sound worried or urgent. In fact, they sounded like they were having an argument.
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  “That’s Russian,” Dave whispered and Perri put a hand over his mouth to stop him saying anything else. But he was right. It was easier to pick up Russian radio in Gambell than stations from Alaska, so everyone listened to the Russian pop stations, even if few people spoke more than a few words.

  Then they heard boots and the hatch rattled. There was some discussion, and a huge bang as something was hammered down on the hatch cover, maybe a rifle butt. Rust flakes filled the air. Perri was glad it was late summer, because the snow on the ground was mostly melted or their footprints would have been clearly visible. After a bit more rattling, it seemed the troops overhead lost interest in the hatch and moved off.

  In another five minutes, they heard the jeep starting up and pulling away.

  Dave put a hand on the ladder to head up again, but Perri grabbed him and pointed to the mattress. “Let’s wait,” he said quietly. “There’s no point going up too soon.”

  While they’d waited, they’d agreed they had to get into town and see what was happening. They’d wait until nightfall, sneak in through the old fish processing plant that bordered the school. So they had. And if Perri had been pissed at getting his ATV shot up and chased into the sea, he was doubly pissed at what he saw from the windows of the fish plant. Inside the school, they could see the Russians had gathered the whole town, young and old, and crammed them into the school gym. There were no windows in the gym they could look in, but every two hours they saw groups of people being led out of the gym and through the school, to the toilets, and then back again. Russian troops patrolled around the outside of the school and were stationed on the doors. In one of the groups was his mother and one of Dave’s brothers.

  That was all he’d needed to see. He’d grabbed Dave by the collar and led him back to the gas station on the outside of town. Down in the tank, he’d started loading his rifle and checking Dave’s ammunition.

  “What are you doing?” Dave had asked him. “There’s hundreds of them. You can’t take on a whole army. We might as well just give ourselves up.”

  “You can give yourself up,” Perri said. “They have our families. They tried to kill me. I’m going to start killing them.”

  But the more they talked, the more Perri realized he would need help. He’d seen a fantastic movie once, about an army sniper team. You had this idea that snipers were these lone wolves who just headed out onto the battlefield with their gun and a bit of dried meat and hid in a bush until some African warlord came past, and then capped him before melting into the bush. But it wasn’t like that - snipers worked in pairs, with one person acting as a spotter with binoculars and the sniper keeping his vision protected and his rifle ready. You couldn’t see shit when you were looking down a scope, so you needed a partner to be your wide-angle vision and spot targets for you. The best place for them to set up was on the slopes of Sivuqaq Mountain, looking down on the town from behind. He’d explained this to Dave.

  “Yeah, we could do that,” Dave had said. “Or, we could just cozy on down here until the US Navy comes steaming into Gambell harbor with one of its big missile destroyers and a few hundred Navy Seals and starts killing them for us.”

  “You think America gives a shit about a couple thousand dumb Yup’ik in the Bering Strait?” He pointed east. “They’ll be lining up their tanks and fighters, for sure, but over there in Nome, to protect Alaska. I’ve got news for you - the cavalry isn’t coming, Dave.”

  “OK, but what’s the plan here?” the boy asked. “You kill one of them, ten come after us. Maybe they don’t catch us, we kill another one. A hundred come after us. Maybe they get mad, start executing the people in the school. None of this gets our families out of that school.”

  Perri knew that, but he was too angry to care. “It’s called ‘asymmetrical warfare’ man. A smaller force can keep a bigger force unbalanced, distract them, tie up their troops so they can’t do whatever they came here to do.”

  “You read that in one of your Army recruiting books?” Dave asked. “We aren’t a ‘smaller force’, Perri. We’re just two kids hiding in a hole in the ground.”

  “You aren’t a kid anymore Dave,” Perri said, gesturing around him. “Look at this place. You already moved out of home, you just didn’t tell anyone yet.”

  The young boy had seemed to straighten his back when Perri said that. After a bit more talk, he’d decided to help, but they’d agreed just killing Russian troops was pointless and just as likely to force the Russians to start killing their hostages in retaliation. So they’d spent their second night creeping through the town, raiding people’s larders and dragging bags of canned or dried food back to the gas station and stashing it in the tank. There had been a couple of near misses and the most dangerous was about three a.m. when they’d broken into the rear of the general store. They’d wanted more ammunition, camping gear, water bladders for storing drinking and cooking water, stuff like that. They’d hoped to find guns there too, but while they had left plenty of ammo behind, the Russians had cleaned out the gun lockers. Anyway Dave and Perri were in there filling big shopping bags with whatever looked useful when there were flashlights and voices outside. Dave ducked down behind the store counter, but Perri was stuck right near the window, reaching for a rainproof jacket on a dummy. Anyone looking in would have seen him. He’d frozen behind the dummy as two soldiers walked past, swinging flashlights from side to side. But they weren’t really searching for anything. They walked past the window without a glance and in a few seconds were gone. It freaked Dave and Perri so much though they decided they’d pushed their luck far enough for the night and humped their loot back to the tank.

  Perri had no idea what had happened to his father and brothers. They’d been out at sea when the Russians arrived. He had to assume they’d come back to the harbor to find themselves hostages like everyone else, but he hadn’t seen them being walked to the toilets while he and Dave were watching, so he couldn’t be sure.

  Now it was the night of the third day, and Dave and Perri had crept out of the gas station and climbed up the slope that led up to Sivuqaq Mountain. Only 600 feet high, it was more like a bluff than a mountain, but it towered over Gambell like a stone guardian. It had been a pain in the ass getting to a position where they could look down over the town, within range of Perri’s rifle, but not down amongst the nests of the Crested Auklets which infested the slopes of the bluff this time of year. Their alarmed chattering would have given the two boys away in moments, so they’d stayed above the nests and then moved downslope when they saw a clear space without too many of the little red-beaked birds sitting on their eggs.

  They’d found a perfect spot between and behind some rocks, looking straight over the school, down the road that went through town and out to the airstrip. Their plan was just to try to identify some static targets on this trip, and maybe pick a few good hides they could shoot from.

  “Stop moaning and tell me what you see,” Perri said, looking through his scope. They had a thick grey tarpaulin pulled over them, the same color as the gritty dirt and sand around them.

  “OK, well, I see a bunch of guys pulling nets over some boxes, and there are two jeeps there.”

  “Where?” Perri moved his scope around, but couldn’t see anything in the small circle of glass, and could see even less with his bare eyes.

  “To the left, this side of the school.”

  “I told you man, you have to use the clock,” Perri said patiently. “Straight ahead is 12. Left is 11, 10, 9, right is 1, 2, 3, OK? And tell me high, or low.”

  “Ok ok. Say 10 o’clock. And it’s all low from here,” Dave said.

  Perri swiveled his sight and picked up movement. His .300 Winchester had a long barrel which he had resting on a rock to keep it steady. He had grabbed a new scope in the general store, one he’d had his eyes on ever since it came in, but would never have been able to afford. It was by a company called Precision Scopes, and overlaid on the glass viewer was a small ‘heads up’ display showing Perr
i the range to the target once he had it framed, the direction and strength of the wind, the degree of bullet drop and a bunch of other stuff Perri wasn’t sure about, like ‘incline’ and ‘cant’. Having read about it in a hunting magazine, what Perri was sure about was how it worked. You put a red pip on your target and with your thumb, pressed a button you mounted down back of the trigger of your rifle. Then the sight calculated a firing solution and a crosshair appeared, showing where your bullet would go if you fired it. You put the crosshair over your target and … boom.

  That was the theory anyway. Perri couldn’t risk test firing to zero the sight, which he’d normally want to do. He’d just entered the make of the rifle and its ammo into the scope’s settings, and had to hope it would do. He knew his rifle though, and he knew it shot pretty true.

  Now he saw what Dave had been talking about. At the edge of town, under an old carport, Russian troops were piling up cases. They were wooden, and looked to be about the size of a 36 pack beer case. The writing on the outside was Cyrillic, and Perri couldn’t read it so he had no idea what might be in them. Besides those though there were some crates already stacked up three deep and he had no trouble guessing what was in them. The top one on the leftmost stack was open, and he saw what looked like missiles. While a couple of the soldiers were piling up the ammunition, another group of about four were building walls of sandbags up around the carport. At the rate they were going, Perri figured it would take maybe another day, and they would have created a nice little ammo bunker well away from any other building.

  “You seeing what I see?” Dave said, looking through his binos.

  “Missiles,” Perri replied. “Maybe the ones we saw them firing on that first day? So the other stuff is probably ammo for guns, maybe grenades, wire-guided bazookas, that kind of thing.”

  “No, I mean, they’re piling all those sandbags around it. You’re never going to get a shot, once they’re done.”