by Dale Brown
Gryzlov threw the unlit cigarette to the floor. “What is it, General?”
“A large transport plane is circling Yakutsk Air Base,” Stepashin said. “It made a low approach and appeared to try to land but pulled up at the last moment.”
“Is it a combat-engineering team, checking radiation levels?”
“They use helicopters, not large transport planes, sir,” Stepashin said. “Whoever it is, he is not authorized to go anywhere near that base.”
Gryzlov’s shoulders drooped, and he felt his face drain of life. Once again, right when he felt like celebrating, something else had begun to happen….
Yakutsk Air Base
That same time
Not enough room—you’ll have to move that debris,” said the load-master of the MC-17 special-operations transport plane. He pointed out the open rear cargo doors. “That fuel truck and whatever that pile of stuff is there has got to go.”
“Got it,” said Air Force Technical Sergeant James “JD” Daniels, his voice electronically amplified by the communications suite built into his Tin Man battle armor. He and his partner, U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Johnny “Hulk” Morris, stood at the edge of the cargo ramp, one hand on a handhold, the other gripping their electromagnetic rail guns. Both men were stunned to see the carnage below them—buildings flattened, trucks and aircraft tossed around like toys in a young child’s room, and large craters of eerie gray gravel, like cremated remains. There was absolutely nothing left standing aboveground for miles. Daniels nodded to Morris. “Radiation levels are moderate, Hulk—not as bad as we thought.”
“You’re shitting me, right, Sarge?” Morris asked. The MC-17 started a steep right bank over the base, lining up on the downwind side for another pass. “This place got hit by four or five nukes, and you’re saying it’s not as bad as we thought?”
“I’m picking up less than twenty rads per hour,” Brigadier General David Luger radioed from Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base. “That’s good for about six hours—and safe endurance will be much longer in the Tin Man armor. Should be more than enough time.”
“The young sergeant is a little skittish because he hasn’t had any kids yet, and he’s afraid his family jewels might get zapped, sir.”
“You’re just jealous because no woman would have you, Sarge.”
“Save it for when you’re back home, boys,” Luger said. “Get ready.”
It took a few minutes, but soon the MC-17 was making another low approach over the devastated runway. The big transport swooped in, descending to just over forty feet above the runway. As soon as the plane leveled off, at the approach end of the runway, Daniels stepped off the edge of the cargo ramp, holding the rail gun in his hands at port arms.
Morris had practiced these jumps back at Battle Mountain a few times, but he was relatively new to the unit and didn’t quite fully trust all this high-tech gear. He had made many parachute jumps of all kinds in his Marine Corps career—free-fall, static-line, HALO—and he’d even jumped from moving helicopters without a parachute before in thirty-thirty jumps—thirty feet above water, traveling thirty knots. But he had never jumped from a moving transport plane going three hundred knots—onto solid ground.
But now was not the time to question the wisdom of doing it. He briefly wondered which job was stupider—jumping off a cargo plane like this or riding in that crazy Condor insertion aircraft, like the commander and the sergeant major did: a plastic turd with wings, dropped from inside a B-52 flying at thirty-six thousand feet, then riding in it for over three hours right over the bad guys’ heads! Now, that was crazy. He gripped his rail gun tighter, took a last deep breath, and stepped off the cargo ramp just seconds after Daniels.
As they fell to Earth, gyros and accelerometers in their electronic battle-armor suits told them which way they needed to lean into the fall and at the same time measured their speed and the distance to the ground and adjusted the thrusters on their boots to compensate for being pushed by the jet blast from the MC-17. As they neared the ground, their boot thrusters fired at full power, slowing their fall—but even so, Daniels hit the ground hard and clattered to the concrete in a heap.
“You okay, Sarge?” Morris radioed.
“Affirmative,” Daniels responded. He was unhurt, but the rail gun’s data and power cable had broken. He cursed to himself and set the rifle near a distance-remaining sign on the edge of the runway so he could find it again. “Broke my damned rail gun, though. Let’s move, Hulk.”
The two Tin Man commandos in microhydraulically powered exoskeletons, working together, had the runway completely cleared of debris in minutes, including a partially crushed fuel truck. By the time they finished and stepped clear of the runway, the MC-17 had come around once again, smoothly touched down, and quickly powered to a stop using thrust reversers.
Daniels, Morris, and the others on board the MC-17 worked fast. After the transport plane lowered its cargo ramp, they unloaded what it carried: two forty-six-foot-long self-contained nuclear-biological-chemical—(NBC)—weapon-decontamination trailers, pulled by diesel tugs; two rubber water bladders on flatbed trailers, each holding three thousand gallons of fresh water and pulled alongside the decontamination trailers; and twenty NBC technicians.
Led by Daniels and Morris, the group headed toward the central west side of the runway. Beside where the west cluster of aircraft hangars used to be located were two low structures, less than four feet aboveground and, amazingly, still intact—they were each little more than a roof composed of eighteen inches of solid reinforced concrete, with a single steel door facing the aircraft parking ramp. One decontamination trailer backed up to each steel door, and the Tin Man commandos attached protective plastic tunnels to each shelter entrance and to the trailer entry door.
“Knock knock, Sergeant Major,” Daniels radioed.
“Door’s coming open,” Marine Corps Sergeant Major Chris Wohl responded. A few moments later, the steel doors swung open, and six individuals ran out of the underground shelters and directly into each door marked ENTER on both decontamination trailers. After the first group entered the trailers, Chris Wohl and Colonel Hal Briggs both emerged from the shelters, wearing Tin Man battle armor.
The two knocked fists with Daniels and Morris in greeting. “Good to see you guys,” Hal Briggs said. “What’s the situation?”
“No opposition, aircraft is code one, all personnel good to go, sir,” Daniels responded.
“What are the radiation levels?”
“We’re reading about forty rads per hour here. That’s good for about four hours’ exposure time. It’s a bit higher out on the parking ramp, but the isolation chamber inside the MC-17 and in the cockpit is about ten to fifteen rads. The max we detected inside our suits has been five rads per hour.”
“We gotta hand it to the Russkies—they know how to build bomb shelters,” Hal said. “We picked up just five rads during the attack and less than two rads per hour since then. Pretty damned good.”
“How many made it inside, sir?”
It was obvious, even concealed by his battle armor, that Briggs was sorrowful. “We have fifty-one in our shelter and forty-two in the other,” Hal said. “We were shoulder to shoulder in there. We managed to grab about thirty Russians and take them in with us.”
“My God,” Daniels breathed. He knew that the Air Battle Force had flown about a hundred fifty personnel into Yakutsk with them on the MC-17s, plus several more on the Megafortresses. That meant that about ninety American technicians had died in the attack, plus the aircrew members who were caught on the ground when the nukes hit.
The decontamination trailers had four separate stations, each of which could accommodate six people at once. Each person removed excess contaminated equipment in the first room, which was ventilated with filtered air to remove any radioactive fallout. Next each person scrubbed and showered in warm water and detergent in the second compartment, with clothes still on. In the third compartment, clothing was stripped off
under water-and-detergent showers and discarded; and in the fourth compartment, each person again showered and scrubbed in warm water and detergent, then dried with warm-air blowers that exhausted to the outside. The person then dressed in clean clothes, underwent a quick medical scan to be sure as many radioactive particles as possible were removed, then were transported back to the MC-17. A positive-pressure plastic tunnel led from the decontamination trailer to a shielded waiting area set up in the forward part of the cargo compartment, with a positive-pressure filtered-air ventilation system activated to keep radioactive particles out.
“Twenty minutes to do six people per trailer, about thirty-six people per hour—we should be done in less than three hours,” Hal Briggs radioed. “I’m not sure how we’ll decontaminate the Tin Man battle armor—we might end up leaving it behind and blowing it in place.”
“Decontaminate the armor if you can,” Dave Luger said, “but don’t waste time with it. If you can’t safely decontaminate it or keep it separate from the personnel, go ahead and blow the gear, and then get the hell out. We’ll be leaving the decontamination trailers behind, unfortunately.”
“Any activity around the base?” Briggs asked.
“Lots of it, but even the aircraft are staying at least ten miles away,” Luger said. “They know you’re there, but it looks like they’re leaving you alone—at least for now.”
Ryazan’ Alternate Military Command Center, Russia
Minutes later
That’s correct, sir,” General Nikolai Stepashin said. “Our reconnaissance aircraft observers believe that the aircraft is an American C-17 ‘Globemaster’ transport plane. It was carrying what they believe to be decontamination vehicles. They are attaching the vehicles to the base’s bomb shelters, waiting there a period of time, then driving over to the transport. It is apparent that the Americans are decontaminating their personnel and are preparing to airlift the survivors out of Yakutsk.”
“This is unbelievable!” President Anatoliy Gryzlov shouted. “I cannot believe the sheer audacity of these Americans! They have flown another military aircraft right past our air defenses and landed at a Russian air base again, completely disregarding the sovereignty of our airspace!”
Stepashin had to bite a lip to keep from grimacing—after what they had done to the United States of America, they had no cause to criticize anyone else’s breach of air sovereignty!
“Do they think they own that airfield now? Do they expect us to just look the other way while they load up their transport and fly away again? We should hit that transport immediately with another air strike—blow the Americans to hell, where they belong!”
“Sir, I strongly suggest we let that transport load up and leave Yakutsk unharmed,” Stepashin said measuredly, not risking angering the already frantic-looking president but trying to be firm at the same time. “They undoubtedly have Russians in those shelters with them—they could be helping our soldiers. It is a humanitarian airlift, not an offensive strike. We should not interfere with it, especially since we did nothing similar ourselves to help survivors at Yakutsk.”
“Are you saying I am a coward, Stepashin?” Gryzlov shouted. “You will be silent, Stepashin, or you will be dismissed! I will not tolerate insubordination in my own command center!”
“With all due respect, sir, I was making a recommendation,” Stepashin said, his rising anger barely restrained. “We should not attack an unarmed humanitarian rescue mission.”
“I do not care if they flew in a children’s choir carrying daisies and magic pixie dust, General—I want that plane destroyed!” Gryzlov shouted. Stepashin noted the large, dark bags under his eyes, the drooping shoulders, the shaking hands, and the pale complexion—the man probably hadn’t had any sleep for the past two days and was subsisting mostly on cigarettes and coffee. “See to it immediately! I want—”
At that moment the conference room’s telephone rang again. Gryzlov jumped, then stared at it as if it were a gigantic hairy spider. He’s losing it, Stepashin thought as he picked up the phone. “Stepashin…Yes, I copy. Alert all air-defense sectors. Keep all other air-defense radar systems in standby, and use optronic sensors to locate it. Repeat, do not use radar—they will only be destroyed as well.”
“What the hell happened, General?” Gryzlov gasped.
“Air-defense alert issued by Novgorod air-defense region,” Stepashin said. “Small, subsonic aircraft detected east-northeast of the capital. Intermittent and very weak return, too small to be a stealth aircraft. Possibly an unmanned aircraft or reconnaissance drone.”
“My God…he’s here,” Gryzlov murmured, eyes bulging in fear. “McLanahan’s here! He’s decided not to attack our Siberian bases but is going to attack Moscow itself!”
“McLanahan is not the only threat out there, sir,” Stepashin said. “Our air defenses are much more capable around Moscow than anywhere else in the world. Perhaps this is just—”
“Order an attack, Stepashin,” Gryzlov said. “I want a full retaliatory strike launched on the United States.”
“Sir?” Stepashin retorted. “You want to order a nuclear attack on the United States? You cannot do this!”
“They are attacking my capital—I will retaliate with everything I’ve got and make them pay for their actions!” Gryzlov shouted. He stepped quickly over to the Strategic Forces officer carrying the special briefcase and snatched it out of his hands—he had to drag the officer to the conference table, because the briefcase was still handcuffed to him. Gryzlov unlocked the briefcase, withdrew a circular slide-rule-like decoder device from under his shirt, dialed in the current Greenwich Mean Time, wrote down a series of numbers, then selected a card from arowofred cards in the briefcase. He punched the series of numbers into a keypad in the bottom of the briefcase, then inserted the card in a slot and pressed a green button. He then turned to Stepashin and said, “Enter the authentication instructions, General.”
“Are you absolutely sure, Mr. President?” the chief of the general staff asked. He took the card but held it up to the president, using it to focus Gryzlov’s attention. The president couldn’t seem to keep his eyes steady on any target for more than a second or two, and it appeared as if he was having trouble keeping his eyelids open. “This will certainly start a world war, Mr. President. Millions of lives could be lost in the next hour if you proceed.”
“Our lives will be lost and millions of our people’s lives will be held hostage if we do not do this,” Gryzlov said. “Give the authentication code, General.”
Stepashin sighed. He looked around the room, hoping to find someone who might be sympathetic or help him try to talk Gryzlov out of this, but there was no one. He withdrew his own decoder from inside his tunic, glanced at the clock, dialed in the time, inserted the red card in the slot, and entered the resultant code and his own personal passcode into the briefcase device. Moments later a strip of paper printed out of the briefcase. Stepashin tore it out, read it over to be sure it had printed correctly, then nodded.
“Do it, General,” Gryzlov said through clenched teeth. “Let us get this war over with. I want McLanahan to pay, not with his own life but with the lives of his fellow Americans.”
Stepashin walked over to the telephone on the conference table, picked up the receiver, dialed some numbers, and waited. After a short wait, he spoke. “This is Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation General Nikolai Stepashin. I am with President Gryzlov in the Alternate Military Command Center at Oksky Reserve, Lybedskaya Street, Ryazan’. I am prepared to authenticate.” He waited another few moments, dialed in the date and time again on his decoder, and said, “I authenticate iyul’ pyatnadtsat’. Authenticate noyabr’ shyest’.” He waited again, checked his decoder, then said, “That authentication is correct. I have a priority emergency-action message from the commander in chief. Advise when ready to copy.” He waited once more, then read the characters from the printout twice. “Go ahead with your readback.” Again he was sile
nt for several long moments as he checked off each character. “The readback was correct,” he said finally. “You may hand over the phone to your deputy, who will reread the message back to me…. Yes, I hear you clearly, Captain. Go ahead with the readback.”
The second authentication readback seemed to be taking longer than the first one. Gryzlov had been through many exercises simulating this procedure—he had in fact devised most of these very same procedures himself, when he was chief of the general staff—but for some reason this seemed to be taking longer than usual.
Gryzlov lit up a cigarette and was halfway through it when all of a sudden he saw two officers running toward the conference room, with two armed security men behind them. Stepashin turned toward them, the phone still to his ear, then held up a hand, silently ordering the men not to enter. The officers hesitated, conversed between themselves for a moment, then decided to enter anyway.
“What is the meaning of this!” Gryzlov shouted. “Get out of here! Go back to your posts!”
“Sir!” the senior officer said, snapping to attention momentarily. “I am Captain Federov, the communications-section commander of this facility.”
“Get out of here, Captain,” Stepashin said. “We are busy here. That is an order!”
“Sir…” He saw the phone in Stepashin’s hand, his eyes bulging in surprise, then turned to Gryzlov and said excitedly, “Mr. President, we have detected an unauthorized overseas call being placed from this room!”
“A…what?” Gryzlov shouted.
“Someone…” The captain turned to Stepashin, swallowed, and said, “Sir, the chief of the general staff is making an unauthorized telephone call—to the United States of America.”
Gryzlov turned to Stepashin, his mouth dropping open in surprise. “The United States? I thought he was talking to the communications center! He is relaying an emergency-action message—”
