Bering Strait

by F X Holden

  Back inside the tank, Perri had hooked the battery up to the radio, guided by photos he’d taken of how the wiring had been organized when it was still connected inside the jeep.

  It was dead, and stayed dead, no matter what he did.

  “Russian piece of crap,” Dave decided after about an hour of watching Perri mess with it. “Can’t even take a hit from a bomb and keep working.” He reached down to Perri’s feet and held up something that looked like a small pair of tweezers with one blue arm and one red. “Better keep all this stuff together, we might be able to use it for parts if we find another one.”

  “Give me that,” Perri said, taking it and turning it around. “Did this fall off it?”

  Dave looked at him strangely. “No, you took it off, together with a bunch of wires, and you put it down on the ground. You’re the techie, I figured you’d decided you didn’t need it.”

  Perri held the small metal clip in one hand, and began turning the radio over with the other, looking for somewhere to fasten it. On the backside of the radio he found two copper studs that looked just the right distance apart, and slid the clip onto them to see that the blue arm was held by one stud, and the red arm by the other. He clipped the power wires to the battery again.

  A small hum filled the tank as the radio sprang to life.

  Someone else springing to life, was Senior Lieutenant Bunny O’Hare.

  “Please say again ma’am,” Bunny said slowly. “I was almost sure you said you wanted me to stay behind in a cave full of explosives after everyone else has left.”

  “I’ll stay as well, of course,” Rodriguez said. “We’ll wire the base for remote detonation before we pull people out, but I’ve asked CNAF for permission to fly our aircraft out rather than leave them in situ. There are two billion dollars’ worth of hardware in those hangar bays, so I’m expecting to get a yes rather than risk Russia walking in and taking it. When the last Fantom is on its way home, they’ll pick us up and seal the base.”

  “Two people can’t launch 24 drones,” Bunny pointed out. “You’ll have to keep a bunch of people back.”

  “Actually that’s not right. One person has to fly them out. But it only takes one person to load and launch them. This system was designed for truck mounted launch using a crew of one driver/mechanic, and one launch officer. It’s fully automated, from fueling to pre-flight checks, loading the cartridges and firing the Cat.” She grinned. “And I’m the best damn shooter in the navy.”

  “So if you only need one person to run the launch system, why do you have two crews of ten people each?” Bunny insisted. “What am I missing?”

  “Speed,” Rodriguez said. “With more people we can do things in parallel, rather than in sequence, shorten the time between launches. Plus, I’m only talking about launch; recovery is completely different. Truck mounted launchers are ‘one and done.’ They can launch, but they can’t recover and relaunch – a truck launched drone has to land at an airfield after its mission. Down here it takes several people to recover the drone, do the post-flight system and damage check, reload ordnance, slot it into a new launch cartridge and port it back to the launch bay.”

  “Are you serious ma’am?” Bunny asked, close to exasperation. She lifted her nose in the air, and sniffed. “You smell that? This place reeks of death now. It would be different if we were going back up there, getting some payback, but we’re not, we’re bugging out and rigging the roof to blow. You’re talking 24 drones. How fast do you figure we can pre-flight, load and launch, all on our own?”

  “Twenty three – we don’t have time to fix the bird with the bent leg. I don’t know… say one airframe every two hours?”

  “So we fire one out the chute, I set it on its way to either Eielson or Elmendorf-Richardson and program the AI to bring it home,” Rodriguez saw she was at least thinking it through now. “We’ve got to eat and sleep or we’ll screw up. So 23 kites, 12 hours on, six hours off, that will take us …”

  “Three days, if we push through,” Rodriguez said, having already done the math. “They may not be able to turn around a sub or surface pickup that quickly though. So we might be down here a week or so.”

  Bunny looked out the trailer at the grey concrete and rock walls, “All just to save your Great American Taxpayer a few dollars’ worth of hardware.”

  “It’s not the money. I just figured that’s what might appeal to ANR strategists. I’m actually thinking if this fight heats up again, we are going to need every one of those machines or the next generation of kids in Alaska might be learning Russian instead of English.” Rodriguez let a little desperation creep into her voice, “I know this isn’t your fight. You aren’t American, you aren’t even Navy. So, you want to get on that sub when it docks, I won’t stop you.”

  Bunny leaned forward, elbows on her knees, face just a foot away from Rodriguez’ face. “Ma’am, my great grandfather was Royal Australian Navy. He stood on the deck of the HMAS Napier in Tokyo Harbor when the Allies took the Japanese surrender. He told my father, and my father told me, that if it wasn’t for the US Navy, I’d have grown up speaking Japanese. So I guess I owe you one.” She reached out, and grasped Rodriguez’ fist in hers, pulled it toward her and held it there. “Besides, when people drop thermobaric bombs on my head, I tend to take it personally.”

  THE PHONY WAR

  There were times when it was right to ask for permission, and times when it was better to ask for forgiveness. Devlin figured this was one of the latter. She knew that Carl Williams’ intelligence report was on its way to NSA. She’d made sure it was also copied to the CIA and FBI heads of station in Moscow, and her own channels in State. She wanted it widely read, and well understood. HOLMES analysis had convinced her this wasn’t a fight about the Ozempic Tsar or a small island in the mouth of the Bering Strait, it was just the first move in a plan to take western Alaska.

  That was a whole other war than the one they were preparing to fight. Devlin wasn’t privy to the plans the Pentagon were putting together, but she was pretty sure they just involved putting a few hundred Rangers or Airborne troops in the air, landing them on Saint Lawrence and taking the island back. It wouldn’t be easy, they’d have to win air superiority to get the troops in, which also meant dealing with Russian naval assets in the Strait. But that was the purpose of the Enterprise task force, now on its way north from San Diego. At the same time she was due to meet with Kelnikov, a media announcement would be going out announcing the task force’s intention to reinforce ‘freedom of navigation’ in the Strait, but the signal to Russia should be clear. ‘We are going to take back our island.’ Knowing what she knew, Devlin realized Russia was not likely to be spooked by the approach of the Enterprise. They probably already had a plan for how they would deal with it.

  If HOLMES and Williams were right, then Russia was already at war, it just hadn’t declared it yet.

  Foreign Minister Kelnikov had organized to meet Devlin at an office inside the Foreign Ministry building on Moscow's Smolenskaya-Sennaya Square. As with everything in Devlin’s world, such meetings always had an element of predictable theatre. The Minister had kept her waiting an unreasonably long time, even given the state of relations. The seating was arranged so that she was uncomfortably perched on an ornate 18th-century chair that seemed to have been stuffed with porcupine quills. It was mid-morning by the time the Minister arrived, a bright sunlit day, so she was of course arranged with the sun in her eyes and his face in shadow. He had insisted she come alone, while he was flanked with a phalanx of Foreign Ministry officials. It was so predictably pathetic.

  But he wouldn’t have taken the meeting if he didn’t have something to tell her. She doubted he was there to listen, but she hoped to change that.

  Adjusting himself behind a long low desk, Kelnikov smiled expansively, “Madame Ambassador I am terribly sorry to have kept you waiting, I was in a tiresome meeting with the Prime Minister of Burundi.” Translation; this business with Saint Lawrence is not top of my
agenda. Devlin smiled back at him, “Julius? Yes, I met with him yesterday.” Translation; screw you.

  “To the business at hand,” Kelnikov said, one of his aides handing him some papers. “It is good our ceasefire seems to be holding. Great powers have great responsibilities. A slip now by either side could have global repercussions neither of us wants.”

  “Indeed,” Devlin replied carefully. “And on that point, I have been asked by our Secretary of State to convey to you once again our very simple demand, that you liberate the citizens of Saint Lawrence and withdraw your remaining forces.”

  “Yes,” he affected to sound bored. “And is there another deadline accompanying this ultimatum?” He looked at the top page of the papers he had been handed. “I see you have just announced you are going to try to send an aircraft carrier task force through the Strait. A ‘freedom of navigation’ exercise you call it. We might see it differently.”

  “Oh, no, you misunderstand,” Devlin said, and paused. She was supposed to communicate that the Enterprise task force would not be dissuaded from trans-navigating the international waters of the Strait, Russian objections or not. After the devastation of the US cruise missile strike it was to be seen as an unsophisticated attempt to force Russia’s hand and give them the opportunity to withdraw their meager force without any further combat. Looking at Kelnikov, even in the half shadow caused by the light behind him, she could see something of the same smugness in his eyes as she saw all those weeks ago - he radiated it, and her blood was boiling.

  She had decided. She was going to go seriously off-script.

  “That’s just media spin,” she said. “The Enterprise task force is actually moving into position to be able to take back Saint Lawrence and protect us from any likelihood you might be stupid enough to attempt to invade Alaska.”

  Now she had his attention. Oh, she would have paid a million dollars for video of his face as she said it. That insufferable smugness vanishing in an instant to be replaced by a horrified uncertainty.

  “I am sorry?” he said. “You accuse us of…”

  She reached for her own briefcase, and took out the printout she had made of HOLMES analysis of Russian troop activations and air force dispositions. She handed it across the table, and one of Kelnikov’s aides took it, studying it with a frown before handing it to the Minister.

  “You have a serious leak at the highest levels of your defense ministry,” she lied, maliciously. “Clearly not everyone in your government agrees with the insanity of its leadership.”

  “What is this?” Kelnikov demanded, turning the page over and back again.

  “Your timetable for war. A timetable in which Saint Lawrence was the first move, and Nome will be the next.”

  He threw the paper down on his desk, “This is fiction.”

  “As you will,” Devlin said, standing. “Minister, the Enterprise is not sailing to the Bering Strait for a ‘freedom of navigation exercise’. And we are doing more than preparing to take back Saint Lawrence Island, which we soon will. We stand ready to defend the sovereign State of Alaska against invasion, with every man, woman and weapon at our disposal.” She delivered a small, mocking bow. She had rehearsed her next lines in the car, and took a breath to make sure she delivered them properly.

  “You seem to have forgotten that the last ‘great power’ that attacked a US territory was Japan. That decision ended for them in ruin and nuclear fire.”

  She turned to leave, the sound of voices arguing with each other in Russian behind her as Kelnikov’s aides broke their silence. He said nothing himself.

  On a whim, she turned to face the Russian delegation again but fixed her eyes on the Foreign Minister, speaking only to him, “Minister, there is a way out of this. Russia will find it humiliating and the compensation terms will not be favorable. But it could save millions of lives. Just put your troops back on the helicopters they rode in on, and bring them home.”

  His glare burned through her back as she closed the door behind her. She hadn’t actually lied. Not really. She was pretty damn sure that as soon as Carl Williams report started circulating inside the State Department and Pentagon, that everything she had just said was about to be true.

  As she reached the end of the corridor outside her aide Harrison fell into step beside her.

  He wasn’t able to contain himself this time. “How did it go ma’am?”

  “Not well Harrison,” Devlin said. “Not well at all. I’m terribly afraid I nearly lost my temper.”

  Life in the age of ‘always on’ had its advantages. Perri had found that if he ran a copper wire from the antenna input on the radio, up the ladder to the sheet of tin covering the hatch, his Russian radio connected automatically to some sort of satellite communications network. So far so good. He could read just enough Russian from years of watching Russian TV to see the display was asking him to input a code word to link into a Russian military network. That wasn’t an option. But the radio also had a guest device connection capability, and it was more than happy to hook up to his telephone and connect him to the unencrypted world wide web. ‘Warning,’ said the text scrolling across the display, ‘Communications on this channel are not secure.’

  The person he had called was a kid they met in Vancouver, who actually lived in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Alaska. He was a member of the Ta’an Kwach’an first nations tribe, called Johnny Kushniruk. Perri and Dave had agreed Johnny was the best person to call because his old man was a Mountie in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Whitehorse, and they needed someone with a few stripes to help get their story out and tell them what the hell they should do.

  When they’d convinced Johnny they weren’t messing around, and then convinced him to get his father on the line, the conversation got very serious very fast. Johnny’s father’s name was Dan Kushniruk, but he told the boys to call him Sarge.

  “Are you guys safe?” was his first question.

  “Yeah, no one is looking for us,” Perri told him. “Not since the missiles. They’re pretty much occupied with just staying alive now I think.”

  He got the boys to walk him through what they’d done the last few days, their attack on the ammo dump. His main concern was for the townspeople still being held hostage.

  “I’ve got photos of everything,” Perri told him. “Most of them are from long distance, up on the bluff, but we did a run to the airstrip yesterday to get this radio, so we have some photos from there too. I could upload them?”

  “I can give you a website to send them to,” Sarge told them. “Send me everything you’ve got. Look, you have to assume that using that Russian radio isn’t safe. Someone in Gambell could be listening in next time, or someone in Russia. When you’re online, it will be pretty easy for them to track your signal down, triangulate you. If the place you are in is safe, you need to keep it safe.”

  “OK.”

  “So once you make that upload, I want you to cut this connection and never call me from your base again.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t call me from your hiding place. Never make a call from the same place twice. Keep the calls under three minutes, less than a minute would be even better.”

  “Got it. Should we have a schedule or something?”

  “Good thinking son, but not a fixed schedule. What’s your birthday?”

  “My birthday? January 7, 2012.”

  “And your friend?”

  Dave leaned forward toward the phone, “November 19, 2014.”

  “Right, so for the next few days you will connect only once a day at 1 pm, 7 pm, 8 pm and 12 pm, got that? That’s the numbers in your birthday. Then you follow your friend’s birthday: 11 pm, 7 pm, 8 pm and 2 pm. You get me?”

  “Yeah, I get it, 20 is like 20:00 military time, so that’s 8pm,” Perri said.

  “Right. It’s a pretty random pattern but easy to remember and hard for anyone to predict. We get through the next few days like that, then we’ll come up with a new schedule.”


  Sarge took them through what he wanted them to report on in their next report later that day: how many civilians were being held hostage, where they were being held, whether any appeared sick or injured, and then the Russian troop numbers, how many were still in Gambell, how many body bags they had seen, how many injured, what uniforms they were wearing, what equipment they appeared to still possess.

  “Can you get word out to the press? We want to let people know we’re still here, we’re fighting back,” Perri told him.

  “I get that,” Sarge said. “And it’s amazing, the two of you holding out this long, doing what you’ve done. But that would be suicide. Right now the best thing you have going for you is no one knows you are there.”

  Private Zubkhov had joined the Spetsnaz three years ago on a dare. His buddy in the 18th Artillery Division had applied and Zubkhov had told him he was crazy. A scrawny stick like him would never get through, they only took men who were totally hardcore, like Zubkhov.

  “OK, so, you apply too, we’ll see who gets through,” his friend had said. “I bet you get booted out in your first week. Mental resilience, that matters more than brawn.” He was wrong of course. You needed both. Zubkhov qualified, but his buddy didn’t.

  He had brawn, and he had brains. So why was he being left behind to babysit a bunch of grandparents, seven wounded Russian troopers too sick to walk and too tough to just die, and one lobotomized Captain? It wasn’t fair. He was Spetsnaz! From any height, into any hell! The motto had stirred his blood when he first heard it. But if it hadn’t been for the dare, he probably wouldn’t have made it through. The physical tests were nothing for a boy who’d grown up on the steppes, nursed from a frozen teat. But the gung-ho idiocy of his squad members made his teeth grind - there wasn’t one of them who had recognized it was Dostoyevsky the Captain was spouting. He doubted any of them had ever read anything longer than a weapons manual.