The Moscow Offensive

by Dale Brown

  Four hundred kilometers east of where the Polish F-16s were stationed, the MQ-55 drone broke out of the slow, lazy circle it had been tracing over the Black Sea and headed due west. Its turbofan engines whined louder, powering up as the Coyote climbed steadily into the cloud-speckled night sky.

  COMMAND POST, S-400 TRIUMF SURFACE-TO-AIR MISSILE BATTALION, FEODOSIA, CRIMEA

  THAT SAME TIME

  “I have intermittent contact with an unidentified aircraft approximately two hundred kilometers south of our position,” one of the battalion’s radar operators reported suddenly. His voice cracked with mingled excitement and frustration. “But I can’t lock it up for very long. The target keeps fading in and out on my screen.”

  Colonel Ivan Zaitev spun toward the boyish-looking lieutenant. His eyes narrowed. “Intermittent contact? Are we being jammed?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What is the estimated course and speed of this contact?” Zaitev asked.

  “Direction of flight is roughly two-six-five degrees. Speed is more than six hundred kilometers an hour.”

  “Altitude?”

  “Perhaps one thousand meters,” the lieutenant said hesitantly.

  “That certainly sounds like a stealth aircraft of some kind,” Zaitev’s executive officer commented from his station.

  The colonel nodded. His lips thinned. “So it does.” His fingers drummed on a console in time with his speeding thoughts. “And if it is, now we know right where those spies the whole Southern Military District is hunting have got to.”

  “Should we fire now?” his XO asked. He sounded uncertain. “At that speed, they’ll be out of our effective engagement range in less than ten minutes. I know we haven’t got a tight lock on this bastard, but maybe if we put enough missiles in the air—”

  “Fire? Without confirming we have a valid target? Christ, no!” Zaitev snapped. The sky over the Black Sea was full of commercial airliners crisscrossing to and from Europe, Turkey, and the rest of the Middle East. Lobbing effectively unguided missiles into that tangle would be insane. The diplomatic repercussions if his battalion accidentally blew a passenger jet out of the air would be horrific. Just imagining the Kremlin’s likely reaction to such a disastrous mistake was enough to make his skin crawl.

  “Then what can we do?”

  “We make the flyboys earn their pay for once,” Zaitev said, coming to a decision. He stabbed at the button that opened his direct secure link to the headquarters of the Southern Military District. “This is Colonel Zaitev. I need to speak to Colonel General Nikitin immediately!”

  While he waited for Nikitin to come on the line, his executive officer frowned. “But what can those Su-27 pilots do that we can’t? Our radar is better than theirs . . . and if we can’t lock up this contact, how will they?”

  “The old-fashioned way, Yevgeni,” Zaitev said with a lopsided smile. “With their own eyes. After all, we’re getting enough data off this unidentified contact to vector them into the right sector. And then, if this really is one of those damned Iron Wolf stealth planes, our fighters should be able to shoot it down without too much trouble.”

  SCION SIX, ON THE GROUND IN SOUTHERN RUSSIA

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  Peering down at his display, Brad saw the icons representing the Russian Su-27s suddenly break out of the racetrack patrol pattern they’d been flying and head southeast at high speed. He whistled. “I’ll be damned. My cockeyed idea actually worked.”

  “So Mohammed really is going to the mountain?” Sam asked from the darkened cabin behind him.

  “Just as fast as their afterburners can take them, Ms. Kerr,” Nadia said matter-of-factly. She throttled up. Overhead, the PZL SW-4’s rotors spun ever faster. She pulled up on the collective, changing the pitch of the rotors, and pressed down on her left pedal—counteracting the torque produced by the three big blades.

  The helicopter lifted off.

  “So now we get you back to Poland,” Nadia continued. “And then we see if what you discovered at Bataysk was really worth all this trouble.”

  Eleven

  REGAN AIR FREIGHT SPECIAL CARGO HUB, GRAND COUNTY AIRPORT, NEAR MOAB, UTAH

  THE NEXT DAY

  Squinting against the sudden brightness, Yuri Annenkov stepped out of the portable trailer he and his crews were using as a flight operations control center. Heat waves shimmered across the concrete apron. Several ground support vehicles with the Regan Air logo surrounded their Boeing 737-200F aircraft. One was a tanker truck, busy refueling the twin-engine cargo jet after its most recent round-trip flight to Mexico. The rest were “K” loaders assigned to unload the freight containers Annenkov and his copilot had just ferried in.

  For a moment, the former Russian Air Force colonel stood watching his small ground crew at their work. By military standards, this clandestine RKU operation was shorthanded, with each man at the Moab base being expected to handle several different tasks as needed. While that made turning their aircraft around between flights a slower process, it was also less likely to arouse unwelcome suspicion. Even the Americans, he supposed, might notice the sudden arrival of a large number of foreign aircraft mechanics, cargo handlers, and refueling specialists. As it was, he knew the locals were puzzled that so few of Regan Air’s new employees ever ventured outside the fenced-in airport perimeter.

  So far, his security detail, the only really fluent English speakers working for him, had handled this potential problem by explaining that Moab was a high-stakes, start-up operation for the company. “Until we start cranking out profits, the bigwigs back at corporate expect our guys here to put in ridiculously long hours. We’re on call practically twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” he’d heard one of his guards tell a caterer delivering prepackaged meals. “By the time we’re off shift, basically all we want to do is watch a little TV and then crash.”

  “Sounds like working on one of those offshore oil rigs,” the caterer had replied with a knowing grin. “Good way to save up a lot of money. Of course, then a lot of guys blow their savings on a spree when they finally get off the rig.”

  Smiling back, the guard, a veteran GRU agent, had agreed this was pretty much the same kind of arrangement.

  For now, at least, Annenkov was satisfied that their cover story would hold up. The bigger question was whether or not this base would be ready to conduct active operations when Moscow finally gave the word. He turned on his heel and strode toward the big prefabricated steel building they were using as a warehouse and “special materials” assembly plant.

  The air-conditioned warehouse was brightly lit. Crates and cargo pallets stacked halfway to the high ceiling filled the front half. A couple of workers in grease-stained coveralls were comparing the contents of one crate with a manifest. They stiffened to attention when they saw him. With a tight-lipped frown, Annenkov waved them back to work. Some of his people still had trouble remembering they were no longer “officially” members of Russia’s armed forces.

  He threaded his way through the stacks, heading toward the rear of the big steel building. Sound-canceling partitions screened off the area. The armed sentry posted at the only entrance stepped aside at his terse nod, allowing him to pass.

  Workbenches littered with tools and other pieces of equipment lined the back wall. More crates, most of them opened, were scattered across the concrete floor. Several technicians were busy at various tasks.

  “Come to inspect our progress, Colonel?” their leader, a short man with thinning hair, asked.

  Before joining RKU, Major Andrej Filippov had been an air-force ordnance specialist. His narrow face was always serious. He rarely made jokes. Unlike those lured by Major General Kurakin’s promises of higher pay and spectacular bonuses, Filippov had personal reasons for joining this covert operation. Three years ago, his older brother, a fighter pilot flying Su-35s, had been shot down and killed by the Poles and their mercenary American allies. This was his chance to exact a measure of revenge.

 
“If you can spare the time, Andrej,” Annenkov said dryly, “I’d just like to make sure that all the flights I’ve made to Mexico, Canada, and other godforsaken spots across the U.S. have served some real purpose.”

  “Of that you can be certain,” Filippov replied. He led the way to the nearest bench. Several desktop computers and printers in various states of disassembly covered the work surface. They were all manufactured by different companies. “For example, these came in today.”

  Annenkov raised an eyebrow. “Are you planning on opening an office supply store, Major?”

  Filippov forced himself to smile. “Not exactly, sir.” He pulled off the case on one of the computers, revealing a mare’s nest of electronic components and wiring. “You see?”

  “Just for a minute, Andrej, pretend that I am nothing more than a simpleminded old aircraft pilot,” Annenkov said with deliberate patience. “And not a rocket scientist.”

  “Oh,” the other man said blankly, obviously recalibrating his thoughts. Then, with a quick shrug, he reached inside the open computer case and carefully detached a gray metal box. “You see this?”

  Annenkov frowned. “So? What is it? Some sort of hard drive or power supply unit?”

  “That is precisely what a customs agent would assume, if he x-rayed the computer or opened the case,” Filippov said with quiet satisfaction. “In reality, it is the inertial control system for one of our Kh-35UE cruise missiles.”

  “Ah, I begin to understand.”

  First designed as anti-ship weapons comparable to America’s Harpoon missiles, Russia’s Kh-35 subsonic, short-range cruise missiles could be launched by ships, helicopters, coastal defense batteries, and aircraft. In attack mode, they were sea-skimmers, able to fly at extremely low altitude to evade enemy detection and countermeasures.

  Filippov opened another computer. With pride, he plucked out several more components to show the colonel. Pieces that masqueraded as everything from DVD drives to video cards and memory card readers turned out to be things like radar altimeters, servo units, and missile fuel system controllers.

  Annenkov offered praise where praise was due. “Ochen’ umno, Andrej. Very clever.” He looked at the other benches. “But what about the rest of the components we need? You can’t smuggle everything inside computers and other electronic gear.”

  “Quite true,” the other man agreed. With the colonel in tow, he moved over to a large container in one corner of the warehouse. The words wind energy systems, inc. were stenciled across its exterior. Smaller boxes and crates that had been packed inside were being opened and inspected by one of Filippov’s technicians.

  Annenkov peered into one. There, surrounded by foam packing material, he saw a sky-gray aluminum-alloy cone nearly a meter long and around forty centimeters in diameter. “A Kh-35 missile nose cone?”

  “To us, yes,” Filippov agreed. He shrugged. “But according to the official paperwork filed with U.S. Customs, this is the nose cone for a wind turbine rotor hub.”

  Annenkov raised an eyebrow. “Who would believe that? It’s too small, isn’t it? I’ve seen wind turbines. They’re enormous. Some of them have blades that must be forty meters long.”

  “Those are industrial-sized machines,” Filippov explained. “Turbines come in all sizes.” For a brief instant, it looked as though he might actually smile again, but the moment passed. “The paperwork for our shipments describes them as ‘experimental, high-efficiency small wind turbines intended for modular installation in disadvantaged and isolated rural communities.’”

  “And customs officials actually buy that line of bullshit?” Annenkov asked in disbelief.

  “They do.” One corner of the other man’s mouth twitched slightly. “In fact, thanks to the American government’s renewable-energy incentives, we receive a significant discount on the import duty and taxes for this equipment.”

  Annenkov grinned. What could be better than seeing the Americans actually help make President Gryzlov’s planned operations that much cheaper? Still enjoying the irony, he paid close attention while Filippov showed him other disguised missile components. Kh-35 active radar homing seekers were concealed inside cylinders mocked up to look like the generators used to convert the mechanical energy of turbine blades into electric power. Missile flight control surfaces were camouflaged as tail vanes that kept turbines themselves facing into the wind in all conditions. Fuselage pieces were hidden in plain sight as sections of pipe or nacelle.

  “Smuggling in the missile warheads and their turbofan engines is the trickiest part of the business,” Filippov admitted. “The Americans take more care to check for weapons and explosives crossing their borders. And engines are difficult to disguise as anything but themselves.”

  “But it can be done?”

  “Oh, yes, Colonel,” Filippov said with total confidence. “We have several shipments of oil and gas exploration equipment slated for your next flight.” Seeing Annenkov’s look of incomprehension, he explained. “Small explosive charges are commonly used in oil exploration and production—in seismic surveys to find potential fields and in the newly completed wells themselves.”

  “So the explosives required for our Kh-35 warheads can be safely included with these apparently legitimate energy industry shipments,” Annenkov realized. Filippov nodded. “And our missile engines? What about them?”

  “The turbofans are camouflaged as parts of large diesel motors used to provide power for oil-drilling rigs,” the ordnance specialist answered simply. “They should be effectively undetectable by any routine visual or X-ray inspection.”

  Annenkov shook his head in admiration. Filippov and the men in Moscow’s RKU logistics branch were geniuses. Once the rotary launchers being sent by sea and then truck arrived here and were installed aboard his 737-200F, he would possess a powerful strike force. He knew both Gryzlov and Kurakin put more emphasis on their prized, ultra-advanced war robots, but the colonel was something of an old-fashioned warrior. In his experience, if you put enough air-launched weapons on target, you could destroy virtually anything.

  Twelve

  IRON WOLF SQUADRON HEADQUARTERS, POWIDZ, POLAND

  THE NEXT DAY

  Kevin Martindale finished reading the intelligence report prepared by his top Scion analysts. With a frown, he flipped the manila folder closed, revealing the red security designations stamped on its cover, Nazbardziej Tajne, Nie Kopiować in Polish and Most Secret, Do Not Copy in English. Then he looked up, suddenly aware of the awkward silence.

  Four others sat around the conference table: Brad and Patrick McLanahan, Whack Macomber, and Nadia Rozek. They were the key members of the joint Polish–Iron Wolf command team. And all of them were watching him with equally serious expressions.

  He opened his mouth to begin. “I suppose—”

  “If you really say, ‘I suppose you are all wondering why I have called you here,’ I will personally shoot you in the kneecap,” Nadia interrupted bluntly.

  “And then I’ll break the other one with my bare hands, sir,” Macomber promised. He nodded toward the folder. “We know you’re dying to fill us in on what your guys uncovered at Bataysk, so let’s just cut to the chase, okay?”

  Outwardly, both Brad and his father winced. But neither could completely hide his amusement.

  Martindale forced himself to smile. There were moments when he wished these people didn’t take so much pleasure in baiting him. Then again, he guessed they’d earned the right by repeatedly risking their lives at his request. And, he supposed, he did have the occasional tendency to pontificate. Maybe you couldn’t spend years in politics and the White House—even in the unconventional way he’d played his part as president—without catching the disease.

  “Very well, Colonel,” he said calmly. “You’re quite right. This”—he tapped the Scion intelligence report—“confirms our earlier speculation. Certainly as far as the Twenty-Second Spetsnaz Brigade is concerned.”

  “You telling me their combat readiness real
ly is collapsing?” Brad asked. The younger man could not hide his skepticism. No one who’d gone up against Russia’s elite special forces troops in battle could ever take them lightly.

  Martindale nodded. “My best intelligence analysts have gone over every file Kerr and Cartwright retrieved from the Bataysk database and there’s no other possible conclusion. The Twenty-Second has been hollowed out.”

  “Hollowed out how?”

  “Over the past several months, some of its most experienced platoon and company leaders, scouts, snipers, demolition, and language specialists have requested permission to resign from active duty in the armed forces.”

  “You say some,” Nadia said carefully. She looked at Martindale. “How many . . . exactly?”

  “Fifty-two,” he said. “All of them with top-notch fitness reports.”

  Whack Macomber whistled. “You’re right. Having that many of your best people dump out on you like that would leave a hell of a mark on any military unit. But in a commando outfit?” He shook his head. “That brigade’s fucked.”

  Martindale nodded.

  On the surface, the resignation of fifty-two officers and senior enlisted men didn’t seem like much—not out of a force with a total strength of thirteen hundred soldiers. But this was a case where quality counted for a lot more than raw numbers. In any military organization, a relative handful of natural leaders created the unit cohesion that was essential to combat effectiveness. That was especially true in the special forces, where so much depended on skill, initiative, and courage at the individual and small-unit level. In wartime, as casualties mounted, new leaders might emerge amid the stress of battle. In a peacetime army, with all its inherent bureaucratic sluggishness, it was much harder to rebuild a leadership cadre once it was lost.

  “And the Russian high command is just sitting back and letting those guys leave?” Brad asked in astonishment.