Bering Strait

by F X Holden

  What he couldn’t know of course was that Rodriguez and O’Hare had only one way out of their redoubt, and it was over the barrels and out the mouth of the first corridor, straight into the muzzle of Bondarev’s Makarov!

  They hadn’t counted on the thick, choking smoke from the detonation of the 25mm shells, and had to slam the metal tool room door shut and jam cleaning rags against the crack under the door to keep the smoke out. It made the 20 foot by 30-foot tool room that was their last refuge seem even smaller.

  “How many rounds in that belt?” Rodriguez coughed.

  “About a hundred. Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Bunny shrugged. “Now, not so much.” She took a slug of water from a bottle and handed it to her CO.

  “Good to go?” Rodriguez asked, putting down the bottle and lifting her rifle.

  Their next move was Bunny’s idea, of course. She was a fighter pilot. She didn’t have a defensive bone in her body and the idea of waiting in a 20 by 30 sarcophagus for the enemy to come and finish them - that wasn’t her idea of a plan. At all.

  They’d agreed they’d ride out the first wave of attackers and then try to break out. It was possible the Russians had brought a whole company of airborne troops into the base, so they were fully aware it might be a very, very short counteroffensive.

  “Yes ma’am,” Bunny said, giving Rodriguez tight smile and holding out her fist for a bump. Rodriguez saw it was shaking, and she put her rifle against the wall and grabbed Bunny’s fist in both hands. “We’re getting out of here Lieutenant, alright?”

  “Hell yeah ma’am. Hooyah.”

  They moved silently back up to the remains of their barricade. Looking around it, Rodriguez could see virtually nothing, no movement, just dead bodies and blood. The cavern outside was silent. Could they have killed them all? Not a chance she would take.

  “Round two Lieutenant.”

  Bunny held up her remote and put a thumb on the toggle switch. Moving it in one direction had triggered the 25mm ammunition belt. Moving it back again would trigger the second surprise she had rigged up for any uninvited guests. She had placed home-made ‘flash-bang’ pipe bombs disguised as electrical conduit pipes running the length of the wall along the launch ramp forward of the docked Fantom. Simple plastic pipes filled with a mix of aluminum powder and potassium perchlorate, they weren’t intended to bring enemy troops down, merely disorient them for a few vital seconds so that Rodriguez and Bunny had a chance to break out of the corridor and begin engaging their attackers.

  With O’Hare at her back, Rodriguez put her head around the corner a few inches, checking one last time that the corridor was still clear. She gripped her rifle tight, “God help us. Light it Lieutenant,” she whispered. Bunny flipped the switch.

  Outside the service tunnel there was a rippling series of explosions. Rodriguez vaulted over the remains of the graphite barrels and doubled down the corridor, expecting to feel the punch of heavy rounds slamming into her body at any second, but she made it to the shattered blast door and together with O’Hare broke left, dropping onto one knee and looking for a target as O’Hare ran across the deck for the cover of the shooter’s chair blast deflector.

  Rodriguez saw one Russian down, lying on his stomach about fifty feet away and crawling toward a safety barrier. She put four rounds into him and looked immediately for another target. Her eyes were met with a scene of devastation. The Pond looked like it had been hit by a landslide. Water had flooded the cave to just below the flight deck. Their command trailer and all of the crew accommodations had been crushed. A second Russian was crabbing backward on his butt and she fired at him, but missed and he rolled onto his feet and ran for the cover of the shattered command trailer, Bunny’s rifle fire chasing him all the way. Rodriguez noted he was wearing a Russian aviator’s uniform, but then incoming fire from somewhere on her right started hammering the wall behind her and she half stumbled, half dived for the relative protection of their last un-launched Fantom, still crouched on the catapult.

  She saw two Russians another fifty feet away further up the ramp opposite the aircraft elevator door, spraying bullets toward her but not accurately – they were clearly still fighting the disorientation caused by Bunny’s flash-bangs. One of them was crouched behind cover, but the other was dazed and standing in the open. Rodriguez sighted on his chest, squeezing her trigger in short two round bursts. One of her bullets snapped the man’s head back and he fell, unmoving.

  The other trooper wasn’t making the same mistake. He stayed behind the low safety barrier and his return fire slammed into the landing gear of the Fantom which was Rodriguez’ only cover. But O’Hare had him flanked from her position and seeing Rodriguez taking fire, she switched her aim from the fleeing aviator to the trooper up the ramp. It looked like at least one round from O’Hare hit home and he scuttled to his left trying to keep some of the safety barrier between him and O’Hare but that just exposed him to Rodriguez and she put two rounds into the barrier near his head.

  He quickly decided his position was hopeless and threw his rifle away, holding his hands in the air.

  “Surrender!” he yelled in English. “I surrender!”

  Bondarev had put his arms over his head as the bright, deafening explosions rippled along the launch ramp wall. His vision flared, blurred and his ears were ringing at the noise from so many concussive blasts in such a small space. As he pulled himself up onto his haunches all he could see was a blur of movement in front of him and he staggered to his feet. The only option open to him seemed to be to run from the direction of the attack and he staggered away, seeing the crushed control room further up the launch ramp which seemed to offer the only hope of cover. Ricocheting bullets spattered around his heels as he weaved toward the wrecked trailer and then dove behind it.

  Bullets hit the rock wall and metal around him, then suddenly the incoming fire stopped. He could hear at least two American rifles continue to bark, answered by the distinctive sound of at least one 39mm Vintorez as Borisov’s men fought back. He risked a peek around the corner of the trailer.

  He saw one American crouched behind the landing gear of the Fantom, another in the catapult shooter’s pit. The wounded man he had been bandaging lay on the flight deck, unmoving. As was one of the troopers that had been watching the second blast door. From his slightly elevated position, Bondarev could see a large pool of blood around the man’s head. The other Spetsnaz up by the bridge was still returning fire, and the Americans both concentrated their fire on him next.

  Bondarev didn’t have a clean line of sight to the two Americans from his position and even if he’d wanted to get into the fight, his little Makarov would have been near useless against assault rifles. The two Americans who had broken out of their barricaded defensive position were in cover, and Bondarev was both too far away, and too damn smart to start taking pot-shots at them. He crouched back behind the crushed remains of the former command trailer, and watched. As though to confirm his own thinking, one of the Americans spun suddenly and sent a few rounds his way which sent him ducking even lower.

  Caught in a crossfire, trading shots with the two Americans, it didn’t take long for the remaining Spetsnaz trooper up on the bridge to decide his position was hopeless, and Bondarev found it hard to imagine, with all the fire that had been directed at him, that he hadn’t been wounded. Sure enough, after a couple of seconds without returning fire, he put an arm in the air, and Bondarev heard him yell in English, “Surrender!” as he threw his rifle away from him.

  “Drop your weapons!” the Americans yelled back.

  The man stood up, holding his sidearm out by the trigger guard and the bag which Bondarev recognized as holding demolition charges in the air over his head. Slowly, he began walking – limping in fact – back down the bridge toward the Americans at the end of the deck.

  “I surrender!” the trooper yelled again in English.

  “Drop … your … weapons,” the Americans yelled again. Why didn’t the Spetsnaz d
rop his sidearm and the backpack? Did he know Bondarev was still there? Was he expecting him to do something?

  As the man approached the two Americans with his pistol and backpack held high above his head he appeared to stumble and dropped the pack. It was a distraction. Lowering his sidearm quickly he squeezed off two shots at each of the Americans. One dropped. The other returned fire with cold precision. Three flowers of blood appeared on the man’s chest and he fell to his knees, then onto his face.

  After so much violence, it was suddenly very quiet inside the cavern.

  “Bunny!” yelled the voice from behind the Fantom, “Talk to me!”

  A grunt came from behind the blast deflector and the American who had been hit rose to one knee and rested their rifle on the barrier, pointed at Bondarev, “Still here Boss.”

  Women?

  “You!” the first voice called. “By the trailer. Throw your weapons in the water, hands in the air, and approach.”

  Bondarev shrunk back behind the wrecked trailer. “Why should I?” he called back. “You will shoot me like you shot him.”

  “So don’t be as dumb as him,” the woman said. “Drop all your weapons, hands in the air, nice and empty, and move this way. O’Hare, cover!”

  Bondarev watched as the American by the Fantom ran over to the dead Spetsnaz, grabbed his rifle and took grenades from a pouch on his belt, then moved to a new position back inside the doorway of the blasted corridor so that Bondarev would be flanked.

  Yes, it was true. He was not as dumb. But with a copter and another squad of Spetsnaz still on top of the island, able to call in an entire airborne brigade to rescue him, he wasn’t too worried about being taken prisoner either.

  He threw his Makarov out in front of him, watching it skid down the slope and into the water with a splash. For good measure, he pulled his survival knife out of his aviator boot, and threw that into the Pond as well.

  “I am coming out,” he said, putting his hands up and showing empty palms.

  As he moved towards the woman crouched in the wrecked doorway, he saw the other American out of the corner of his eye, moving around behind him.

  “Stop there,” the first woman said. “On your stomach, hands behind your head.”

  He did as he was told. She stepped out from the door, her rifle pointed at his back and she flipped up the visor on her flight helmet. He got his first good look at his captor. She was wearing a dirty US Navy aviation uniform. Stocky and well muscled, black hair, she appeared to be a Latino in her early forties, and a Lieutenant Commander if he was correct. As he lay, he twisted his head to look behind him. The officer coming up behind him was a woman as well, also in a Navy pilot’s uniform. She also had her visor up now, had her rifle held loosely across her chest, and blood was dripping from her right elbow.

  The way they were acting, they didn’t expect to be joined by anyone else.

  He lay his cheek on the ground.

  “I am looking very much forward to hearing your story,” Bondarev said. “And, how you expect to get out of here alive.”

  “All nuclear submarines are now on station,” HOLMES advised. “By my estimate the USS Columbia is holding in position at 49.411841 latitude, 172.854078 longitude, about two hundred miles south of the Aleutian Islands and 600 miles east of the Russian Kuril Islands, but I calculate a degree of error of up to ten percent. signals intel indicates the rest of the nuclear submarine nuclear strike force is also in position.”

  “What is the range of a nuclear-armed hypersonic cruise missile?” Carl asked. “Can they hit the Kurils from there?” It would be a logical form of payback. The Russians create a dispute over an island in the Bering Sea, America makes its point with an attack on an uninhabited island in the disputed Kurils chain, north of Japan.

  “Five hundred and twenty miles. It cannot strike Russian territory from its current position with a hypersonic missile. It does however carry ICBMs which are well within range.”

  “The Ambassador says it’s a ‘shot across the bows’ – a warning,” Carl said. “They can get their point across with a nuclear detonation in the open sea.”

  “On the basis of her information I have upgraded that likelihood from 12% to 13.5% percent since yesterday,” HOLMES replied. “But I still regard a full nuclear pre-emptive strike to be the most likely US response.”

  “I thought you liked her,” Carl remarked.

  “Please rephrase, I do not understand.”

  “I’m betting she’s right.”

  “You have a 13.5% chance of winning.”

  “Forget it.”

  Carl reached his head behind his neck and scratched his greasy scalp. It had been how many days since he last showered? Too damn many, that was for sure.

  “The President is about to make an announcement, shall I bring it onscreen?” HOLMES asked.

  “What? Yes please.” Carl tilted the screen and leaned back in his chair.

  He hadn’t voted for the guy who was staring out at him from behind his desk in the Oval Office. But then, he hadn’t voted for anyone, so he only had himself to blame that in the middle of the biggest military crisis of the century, their Commander in Chief was a 75 year old whose sole military experience was as a platoon leader for the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, guarding Arlington National Cemetery in Northern Virginia. He had demonstrated his temperament in the Turkey-Syrian conflict, cutting loose the Emirates as allies when they refused to allow him to base US aircraft there – a decision which unfortunately moved them into the Russian sphere. Williams had to hope President Fenner had cooler heads around him, but if Ambassador McCarthy was right, it wasn’t certain he did.

  “My fellow citizens,” Fenner began. He had a pinched, narrow face and long nose, atop which sat small round rimless glasses of a type that had been fashionable several years ago. His bushy silver hair was swept across his forehead and looked like it was held in place by solid epoxy. “At this hour, I have taken steps to free our citizens on Saint Lawrence and to defend the world from a grave danger.”

  "As you would be aware, for the last several weeks, under the guise of moving to protect the rights of international shipping in the Bering Strait, Russian forces have occupied the US territory of Saint Lawrence Island, to which we responded forcefully with regrettable loss of life on both sides. Russia has since escalated the conflict further and attacked US Air Force bases at Fairbanks and Anchorage. We have again responded to Russian military aggression in kind, with successful attacks on Russia’s frontline offensive airfields at Anadyr and Lavrentiya.”

  The President paused as a graphic came onscreen showing the location of the Russian bases and grainy images of bomb damage, and Carl realized he was allowing this last news to sink in, because until now, it had not been public.

  “This escalation cannot be allowed to continue. It stops, today.

  “At 0800 hours Eastern Standard Time I advised President Navalny of Russia, that unless he gave a commitment to withdraw his troops from Saint Lawrence by 1200 hours, he would witness a demonstration of force the like of which the world has not seen for nearly 100 years. As there has been no indication that President Navalny wishes to comply with this demand, I have authorized our navy to conduct the first-ever live demonstration of a hypersonic missile-borne nuclear weapon - the first atmospheric nuclear weapons test by the United States since 1962. The test will take place in three hours, over the North Pacific Sea.

  “While it will pose no threat to humankind, it will wreak terrible environmental devastation, and we deeply regret it has come to this. But I am afraid that unless Russia is persuaded to halt its military misadventure over Alaska and the Bering Strait, even greater catastrophe awaits us.” Fenner looked straight down the barrel of the camera. “President Navalny, withdraw your troops. The United States stands ready to use any and all of the weapons in its arsenal to defend its sovereign territory.

  "My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through t
his time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our country and we will prevail.

  "May God bless our country and all who defend her."

  The camera faded to some shocked news anchors, mute for possibly the first time in their lives.

  Carl turned down the sound, leaned back and whistled.

  There was a very strict NSA rule about not using the organization’s bandwidth and resources for private purposes. Carl regarded it as more of a guideline. He wasn’t a big investor, but he had all of his non-401(K) savings invested in stocks. So yesterday, he had gotten HOLMES to analyze the likely impact on the stock market of a US nuclear weapons test in the context of the current conflict.

  When he’d finished reading HOLMES conclusions, he’d gone straight online, sold everything he had, leveraged himself to the eyeballs and had bought gold. Not gold futures, or gold mining stocks, he’d bought real gold. 535,000 dollars’ worth of one ounce South African Krugerrand coins from a bullion dealer in Moscow, which were now stashed in a duffel bag under combination lock in the filing cabinet of his office.

  Because HOLMES conclusion had been that while a US nuclear test in itself wouldn’t necessarily mean Armageddon for the planet, it certainly would be the equivalent of a cosmic meteor strike on the stock market.

  He sat and watched his screen for a few minutes as the Dow reacted to the Presidents’ address. Blood red numbers started filling one window. A second window showed the spot price for gold heading skyward. OK, so that’s what the end of the world looks like. He turned the screen off. By the end of the day, if HOLMES projections were right, he’d be able to pay off his loans, and he’d still be a millionaire, even accounting for the spread when he tried to sell some of his 300 Krugerrand again. It didn’t make him happy, because there was the small matter of whether anyone would be alive to trade with, but he’d deal with that problem when he got there. Or not.