by F X Holden
“Sarge?”
“Yes son.”
“It hurts to talk. Going to stop now.”
“Sure, look….”
“Won’t … die on you.”
“You better not,” the man said. “I’m going to call you every 20 minutes and you better answer, alright?”
“White Bear out.” Perri let the handset drop and returned his arm to his waist. It felt better just trying to hold everything in tight.
He thought you were supposed to pass out when you were in this much pain. Every book he ever read, right about here was when the writer would say about the guy who got shot or clubbed or burned, ‘mercifully, at that moment, he blacked out’. But every time he moved, every time a muscle even twitched in his leg or his stomach, a bolt of searing fire shot through him, jolting him right back into his screwed up reality. How did people manage to pass out with this sort of shit going on?
So he was wide awake when he heard a voice below him say, “Hello in there, American number two.”
Rodriguez heard the line drop out and she cut the call. She kept her rifle on the Russian Major-General.
“Did you understand any of that?” Bondarev asked, looking at his captors.
“I had some language training,” the Australian said. “I got some of it. Like the part about a coup.”
“You heard your Ambassador. There has been a putsch in Moscow. We are on the brink of nuclear war,” Bondarev told them. “I might be able to stop it, but you have to cooperate.”
Rodriguez didn’t take her rifle off him. “Keep talking.”
“In the backpack of one of the men you killed is a radio. I need it to contact my pilots.”
“How about you contact those Spetsnaz up there, and tell them to stay right where they are?” Bunny asked. “How about that for cooperation?”
“I will, after I talk with my pilots,” Bondarev said. “Don’t you understand? We need to work together!”
“Contact your pilots, and tell them what?”
“I need to stop the attack on Anchorage,” Bondarev told her. “Those bombers will be overhead in ten minutes.”
Rodriguez stared at him incredulously, “You are going to tell your pilots to shoot down their own bombers?”
“They wouldn’t do that,” Bondarev said. “It would be treason. But I can order them to return to base. That’s an order they might follow.”
“What good would that do?”
The Russian jerked his head toward the remaining Fantom, queued up beside the flight deck. “It would leave the bombers wide open.” He gestured to the hands behind his back. “But they are going to launch their missiles as soon as the American atomic test is confirmed, which means they will only wait on station for the next fifteen minutes, so I need that radio!”
Carl had been listening to the BBC Russia Service on the radio in his office, and turned it off. “HOLMES, give me an update on the Alaska situation,” he asked.
Carl had to admit, he was almost as much in love with Devlin McCarthy as HOLMES appeared to be. She had walked back into her Embassy with the world outside going to shit, realized he wasn’t insane and was offering her a way to save the world, had jumped on the line with the Russian Commander of air operations for the 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command, and had then clapped him on the shoulder and told him, “You’ll have to take it from here. When that nuke goes off, angry and frightened Russians are going to be looking for a target for their anger and this Embassy is going to be goddamn ground zero.” Then she’d waded back out into the maelstrom of shouting and panicked voices outside Carl’s office.
“US strategic nuclear forces are at DEFCON 1,” HOLMES reported calmly. “However I now estimate the likelihood of a US first strike at less than nine percent. US CYBERCOM has just initiated a high-level denial of service attack on Russian defense, financial, security and police service servers inside mainland Russia, Georgia and the Ukraine. Russian and Chinese hackers have initiated the same against American cyber systems. Lebanese Hezbollah militia backed by Syrian regular army troops have crossed the Lebanese border into Israel. The nuclear submarine USS Columbia has just reported it is in position as ordered and ready to execute the planned HSSW missile launch. It is awaiting final go codes for a launch in 18 minutes. The Russian strategic bomber flight and its escort has just crossed the Russian coast at Anadyr and is holding on a racetrack pattern in the Bering Strait over Nome, Alaska. Based on satellite, cyber, signals intel, and limited human source reporting I show a high probability the Russian force is also awaiting go codes for its attack, and that the attack will be timed to take place immediately after the US nuclear detonation is confirmed.”
“Do you have intel on the payload the Russian bombers are carrying?” Carl asked.
“No Carl. I have at 64% probability the payload is nuclear, 36% it is conventional.”
“Do we have any chance of an intercept?”
“Zero. No available US asset is within strike range.”
“Give me your prognosis on a US Strategic Command response to a Russian nuclear attack on any populated area in Alaska.”
“Insufficient data,” HOLMES responded.
Carl frowned, “What do you mean? I’m asking you to run the percentages on some pretty uncomplicated scenarios. Do you need me to spell them out?”
“No Carl, the scenarios are not complex. They range from a full-blown retaliatory nuclear strike, to a limited escalatory response, to no response at all due to total US political incapacitation.”
“Then why do you have insufficient data?”
“The US response in this particular threat scenario is entirely dependent on human personality factors. I do not have sufficient insight into the personalities of President Fenner and his military advisers or their past response to such situations to calculate the relevant probabilities.”
“Make a wild-assed guess,” Carl ordered. One of the things he had experimented with in relation to HOLMES was something he called ‘WAG code’. It worked on the knowledge that HOLMES was constantly generating and updating scenarios, assigning probabilities to them and updating the analysis as more intelligence was received. When he reached a pre-determined certainty threshold, he would share the probabilities. But until then, he would report an ‘insufficient data’ condition. The ‘WAG state’ forced him to put forward the current scenario with the highest assigned probability, even if that probability didn’t meet the threshold.
“Yes Carl. My guess is that if Russia conducts a nuclear attack on a population center in Alaska, USSTRATCOM will respond with a full-scale nuclear attack on Russian military and civilian centers.”
“Right,” Carl said. “Thank you. Please continue monitoring the Alaska situation, and also throw a text feed on the desktop regarding any potential threats to the US Embassy in Moscow.”
“Yes Carl.” There was an unusual pause from HOLMES. “Carl, I have just picked up a report from NORAD of the launch of a US drone from the NCTAMS-A4 base.”
“What?? Repeat, expand!”
“NORAD is tracking an F-47 Fantom drone launched from NCTAMS-A4, on an intercept course for the Russian bombers. It will be within air to air missile range in eight minutes.”
“Can you hear me in there American?” Private Zubkhov called up to the water tank. “You still have radio in there. I want that radio.”
There was no response. He had heard the American say he had been shot. So it was his blood Zubkhov had seen on the man who had left the water tank. It explained a lot. Firstly, it made perfect sense there were two American soldiers. It explained how they had been able to outmaneuver him - he had simply been outnumbered, that was all.
Now they had separated. They had a radio, so they could have called for help. The only explanation for not doing so was that the man's comrade had deserted him. Left him to die. That was something he could use.
“American, I know you are in there!” Zubkhov said. He lifted his Makarov and fired a shot into the air. “I am still armed, but I w
ill not shoot you. I just want that radio. Bring it out to me, and I will get you help.”
“Come … get it,” a weak voice inside the water tank said. “Already shot you twice. Happy to make it three.”
Zubkhov looked up at the water tank again. It sat on a wooden and steel platform. The voice had sounded like it was coming from the bottom of the tank, so the man was probably lying down. If he was badly wounded, that made sense. But Zubkhov’s 9mm ammunition wouldn’t have much chance of punching through the wood and steel platform and the reinforced steel bottom of the water tank as well.
He slumped down against one of the legs of the water tank.
“Dumb ass American,” he said loudly. “Your comrade has left you for dead. I can get you help. I am only one who can save you.” There was no answer. Zubkhov stared out at the ruins around him, “They have left you all alone comrade. No one cares for you. I know what that feels like.”
Bondarev had made the radio call to his third in command, the incredulous Captain Komarov. “Comrade Major-General, with respect, what do you mean, ground all aircraft?!”
“I mean, issue the order to return to base,” Bondarev said. “All air patrol, air support and escort missions are canceled. All aircraft are to RTB at Lavrentiya or Savoonga.”
“Sir, I am relieved you have survived the destruction of your aircraft, but were you … injured? Your orders would mean handing the airspace over the Operations Area to the enemy,” Komarov said. “I would have to confirm…”
“You will confirm nothing, Captain,” Bondarev said, his voice steel hard. “You will follow my orders to the letter, or you will be court-martialled.” Bondarev softened his tone a fraction. “We have received new operational directives and there is no time for you to take your question up the line. If you want confirmation, you can contact GRU operations intelligence on Savoonga.” I hope. Be there for me Tomas.
“Lieutenant Colonel Arsharvin?”
“Yes, he will confirm the order.”
“Yes sir. I will have Lieutenant Colonel Arsharvin confirm your order and recall all patrols.”
“Captain?”
“Yes Comrade Major-General?”
“There is a flight from the 4th or 5th Air Regiment escorting two Tu-162 bombers from the 21st Guards on a classified mission. We will not be recalling the bombers…” I don’t have the authority over units of the 21st Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment, he thought to himself. Or we would. “But you will recall their escort. Is that clear? The commander of the 21st Guards will deal with the recall of his own aircraft.”
“Yes sir!”
The man cut the line. Bondarev had no way of being sure if Komarov would comply. But he knew the man, and he knew he had never counteracted an order in his entire career, no matter how facile, so Bondarev had to hope he would not start now.
The two Americans had kept their weapons trained on Bondarev the whole time he had been speaking, and the younger one lifted hers slightly now, “Spetsnaz,” she said.
“You need to launch that Fantom,” Bondarev told them, failing to keep the urgency out of his voice.
“Spetsnaz,” the pilot said. “We won’t be launching anything if someone sends some sort of sick chemical gas grenade down that chute.”
He couldn’t disagree with her logic. He quickly put through a radio call to the Sergeant in charge of the remaining Spetsnaz troops topside. The man was unsettled by the lack of contact with Borisov since they had breached the US base.
“Communications have been blocked by the depth of the rock,” Bondarev lied to him. “The situation here is under control. The enemy force has been neutralized. We will soon be finished here, maintain your positions until you hear from me again.”
That satisfied the two Americans. They bound him hand and foot again and pulled him over to a side wall, within speaking distance and where they could easily keep an eye on him. He saw the pilot disappear into the blasted corridor in which they had been hiding, while her commanding officer moved to a console and hit a sequence of keys which triggered the drone loading system to extend the gantry holding the drone out over the launch catapult and lower it into place.
The two allied aviators soon began a ballet of activity that left the air force officer in Bondarev completely awestruck.
It wasn’t foresight, it was pure bloody-minded optimism. One of the last things Bunny had stowed in the ‘keep’ was a mil-spec laptop, a portable set of flight controls and a wireless uplink that could log into the central servers still running deep within the base. The servers were the last thing Bunny was supposed to blow if they were bailing on the base, but even with the Spetsnaz knocking on the door, she hadn’t done it. Call her crazy, she just had this hunch if she got through alive, she might just need an uplink. And if she didn’t, what the hell difference did it make?
As Rodriguez ran the boot sequence on the Fantom and checked that it wasn’t reporting system errors after the beating it had taken, Bunny closed the catapult bridge, then one-handed, pulled some crates and boxes behind the blast shield and created a makeshift cockpit for herself. With only the virtual screen real estate of her virtual-reality headset to work with, and with her joystick and throttle clamped to a stack of boxes, her ass parked on a collapsible chair and her feet on a pair of hot-linked rudder pedals held to the ground with two heavy iron bars lying across their plastic feet, she felt like a 14 year old again, flying flight sims on a gamer rig in the basement of her parents’ house. Those sims had been her refuge from all the BS happening upstairs between her parents, and she had to bite hard on the memories to hold them back as she got herself set up and online. It only took her about five minutes though. It was a routine she could run in her sleep.
“Ready to boot!” Rodriguez called over to her. “You mission capable there Lieutenant?”
Bunny gave her a bloodied salute with her mangled paw. “Let’s lock and load ma’am!” she called, putting her virtual-reality helmet down and running over to the Fantom. Between them they bullied the drone onto the catapult rail and got it locked into the shuttle.
Bunny headed back behind the blast shield and pulled on her helmet.
“Booted!” Rodriguez called. She dropped into the shooter’s chair. The boot system told her the Fantom’s flight and weapons systems were online and ready for launch. The boot system check had reported no faults. But there had been no time to check the Fantom’s physical integrity. There had been a lot of metal and stone flying around the Fantom in the last few hours. It wasn’t unlikely some of it had struck the Fantom in its cradle. She just had to hope its hardened alloy shell hadn’t been punctured anywhere fatal.
Or it could be a very short flight.
“Bridge locked and Cat clear?”
“Locked and clear aye!”
“Man out?”
“Man out aye!”
“Light her tail.”
“Afterburner aye!”
The Fantom’s engines screamed to full power. Her shooter’s console lit up green.
“Launching!” she called.
Despite herself, she flinched as the fighter rocketed down the catapult, across the bridge and out of the chute, expecting to see it explode into a spectacular fireball of hydrogen fuel and liquid metal at any moment. It was almost with disbelief that she watched its silhouette disappear out of the mouth of the chute, and bank away south for the 120 mile, ten-minute journey to the bomber intercept point.
“Systems green boss, good launch,” Bunny said from inside her rig. Her left hand flew over the keyboard but she winced as she stabbed down with her right index finger and thumb, the only digits on her right hand she could use for anything. “Hey, ‘Skippy’ is still on the air!” she said in surprise. “How you doing out there little buddy?” It was an unexpected and welcome advantage. Linked to NORAD, its data-net covering an area two hundred miles around Little Diomede, the grounded Fantom was working like a seaborne-WACS. It would help bring down the lag time between Bunny’s control inputs
and the drone response dramatically.
Looking over at their Russian hostage, Rodriguez saw him watching them intently. OK, so NCTAMS-A4 had no more secrets to keep. She walked up behind Bunny. She couldn’t see on the laptop exactly what Bunny was seeing inside her virtual-reality rig, because it was showing Bunny both a virtual cockpit instrument panel and heads-up display, the view out of the drone cockpit simulation cameras, and data being downlinked from NORAD satellite coverage. But Bunny had set the laptop to show the tactical map of the Operations Area, and Rodriguez could clearly see the icon for their Fantom heading south from Little Diomede. She also saw with some satisfaction the red icons of other enemy formations moving south and west from the Bering Strait and Alaska toward Savoonga and Lavrentiya. It seemed Bondarev’s orders were being implemented after all. At least until someone further up the chain asked what in the name of Stalin’s Sainted Son was going on.
Major Vasily Ivanovich Alekseyev of the 21st Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment was one of the first frontline pilots qualified on the new generation Tupolev Tu-162 strategic bomber. Essentially a large flying wing made of stealth composite materials, it was able to carry up to 88,000 lbs. of fuel and ordnance, but its normal loadout was two rotary launchers each holding 6 hypersonic cruise missiles capable of carrying either conventional or nuclear warheads. The Tupolev itself was already a treaty breaker, because its development had specifically been banned under at least two bilateral US-Russia arms treaties. The Tsirkon 3M22 hypersonic missiles it carried were also banned by several treaties. So it mattered little whether they were armed with conventional or nuclear warheads.
Major Alekseyev knew exactly what warheads had been loaded on his Tsirkon missiles, but his crew and the crew of the other aircraft flying in formation with him did not. He did not consider it necessary that they knew. If they had known, several of them might not have been able to perform their duties. Alekseyev had no such issues.
