by Dale Brown
“Ah, hell,” he muttered, with almost resigned incredulity. “And here I thought today would be boring.” Scowling, he jammed on his brakes, bringing the big Lincoln to a full stop next to the hitchhiker. Silent now, he waited while the other man popped open the passenger door, climbed in, and flipped back the hood of his sweatshirt.
“Well, this is just great,” Boomer said with a wry smile. “So Bradley James McLanahan has come to call. With all the hell breaking loose in the world, I should have figured you’d be dropping by to visit your old pal Hunter Noble and his Sky Masters hangar full of super-duper, high-tech wonder planes.”
“Nice to see you, too,” Brad replied with a lopsided grin. “Hope I didn’t startle you too much.” He shrugged. “I’d have picked a less cloak-and-dagger way to get in touch, but I’m not supposed to be in the States at all, let alone here in Battle Mountain.”
Boomer snorted. “No kidding. If there’s anyone else in the world who’s more non grata as a persona, with both the feds and the Russians, than you and your Iron Wolf compadres, I’d be very surprised.” He raised an eyebrow. “Which makes me curious as to just how far you’re planning to ride with me this morning.”
“All the way to your office,” Brad said simply. “I need to brief you on some developments and I’d rather not do it outside a secure environment.”
“Yeah, see, there’s the problem,” Boomer told him with a frown. “Our corporate security guys have gotten a lot twitchier since someone kicked the crap out of Barksdale. They aren’t exactly going to let you come waltzing through the gate, even on my say-so.”
In response, the younger man unzipped his sweatshirt. A Sky Masters ID card was clipped to his shirt pocket. Made out in the name of someone named Michael Kelly, it showed a recent photo of Brad wearing a coat and tie and it looked completely genuine. Not only that, but the ID indicated that he was a “special projects engineer” for Sky Masters’ aerospace unit—the same outfit headed up by one Dr. Hunter Noble, Ph.D.
Boomer stared at it for a long second. Then he shook his head in disgust. “Don’t tell me . . . that shiny new ID of yours is already planted in our personnel system, too, right?”
“Yep.”
Boomer let out a breath. “How the hell did Martindale—?” Then he stopped himself and just held up a hand, with a deep, frustrated sigh. “Never mind, I really do not want to know.”
He grimaced. Every time the former U.S. president and current head of Scion pulled one of these spooky stunts, Sky Masters security people scrambled around like maniacs trying to plug whatever gaps he’d found in their systems. Martindale was one of the company’s best customers, despite Stacy Anne Barbeau’s efforts to close off their sales to him, so this was more like a game than anything more serious. But it was still a game Boomer was getting tired of losing.
“Mind telling me what you’re up to?” he asked finally.
“Right now?” Brad offered him a seriously shit-eating grin. “I’m going to grab a little shut-eye on the way into work. I put in a couple of incredibly long days just getting here, you know.” With that, he reclined the Lincoln’s comfortable leather passenger seat and closed his eyes.
Idly contemplating whether his neighbors would really mind so much finding a corpse sprawled across one of their nice, neat streets when they woke up, Boomer took his foot off the brake and drove on toward Sky Masters.
Brad looked around Boomer’s cluttered office while the other man sat down and fired up his office computer. Stacks of aircraft manuals, binders crammed full of engine specifications and test results, and printouts of other scientific and engineering data occupied almost every flat surface. Detailed models of every aircraft and spacecraft Hunter Noble had ever flown lined the shelves behind him.
He nodded at one of them, a l:64th-scale version of the sleek, single-stage-to-orbit S-19 Midnight spaceplane. It was a cutaway model, showing the S-19’s revolutionary triple-hybrid engines, which could transform from air-breathing supersonic turbofan engines to hypersonic ramjets to pure rocket engines. “Getting any flight time these days?”
Boomer looked up from his computer and followed Brad’s gesture. “On the S-19s?” With a sour look, he shook his head. “Zero. Zip. Nada. All of our spaceplanes are mothballed for now. Stacy Anne Barbeau is allergic to orbital operations, especially by anything with the Sky Masters logo on the side.”
“What’s her excuse? Too expensive?” Brad asked.
“Nope, it’s not that,” Boomer replied. “She’s all about spending taxpayer money . . . but only as long as the money stays well inside the earth’s atmosphere.”
“And ends up in the pockets of contractors who back her politically?” Brad guessed.
Boomer snorted. “I hate to hear someone so young sounding so cynical.”
“Especially when I’m right?”
“Well, yeah,” Boomer admitted. He rocked back in his chair. “But I bet you didn’t come all this way to Nevada just to talk politics.” His eyes narrowed. “And I really hope you weren’t planning to acquire another one of the X-planes we’ve got stashed out in Hangar Five. Because I can tell you that’s a total nonstarter, in the current circumstances.”
Brad shook his head, hiding a grin. Though he would never probably confess it openly, it was pretty clear that Boomer hated the idea of letting any of the highly advanced prototypes stored here at Battle Mountain slip through his fingers. Most of them were the products of the late Jon Masters’ irreplaceable genius. Every one of them was literally one of a kind. They incorporated revolutionary technologies and design concepts that might someday be applied to new aviation projects. Watching any of those experimental aircraft fly off into danger with the Iron Wolf Squadron or some other Scion covert outfit must be like seeing one of your kids ride a tricycle out into traffic.
“Your X-planes are safe from my nefarious clutches . . . this time,” Brad promised, holding up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
“Okay, so why am I not feeling hugely relieved to hear that?” Boomer asked quietly. He leaned forward again. “Look, if you’re not here to snag a new plane, why the hell are you here?”
Brad lowered his hand. The other man was right. It was past time to get serious. “I’ve got a team of three CIDs parked up in the hills just north of here,” he said flatly. “Because we think the Russians are likely to hit Sky Masters next.” Quickly, he outlined his reasoning.
When he was done, Boomer sighed. “Yeah, that all makes sense. I wish it didn’t.” He forced a tired smile. “But other people around here see the situation the same way you do. I know the possibility of a Russian attack against us has been on my mind ever since I saw the pictures out of Barksdale. And it sure explains a lot of the weird shit we’ve been doing over the past couple of days.”
“Like what?”
“Richter’s had all of us—all of his top people—working like dogs to secretly transfer all of our CID-related materials, components, and software to hidden storage facilities off-site,” Boomer explained. “By the time we’re finished, which should be in the next couple of days, you could walk in here and never realize that Sky Masters had anything to do with those machines.”
Brad felt himself relax slightly. Learning that Jason Richter, Sky Masters’ chief executive officer, was on the ball was a relief. Even though the Russians already had their own combat robots, it was a safe bet that their war machines were not quite as advanced as the Cybernetic Infantry Devices built and continually upgraded by Richter and his cybernetic engineers. But given Russia’s enormous resources, it was also probable that Gryzlov’s robot force now had numerical superiority over the Iron Wolf Squadron. Which meant that allowing the Russians to attain technological parity using information they captured at Battle Mountain would be catastrophic.
Unfortunately, though, CID technology was only the tip of the iceberg.
“What about everything else?” he asked. “All of your X-planes, UAVs, advanced weapons, and sensors. Are you dispersing t
hem, too?”
Boomer shook his head gloomily. “No can do,” he said. “The feds have their guys keeping close tabs on the airport. And more FBI types are arriving all the time. It’s getting so crowded that the trench-coat-and-fedora boys are practically tripping over each other outside our main gate. Right now, I can’t fly anything bigger than a quadcopter toy without setting off alarms from here to Washington, D.C.”
Brad thought about that. “Are you sure all of these new arrivals are FBI agents?” he asked. If Gryzlov was planning a raid on Sky Masters soon, he was bound to have a recon team deployed to scout the company’s Battle Mountain facilities.
“Hell no,” Boomer said, shaking his head. “We’ve got spies hanging off us like fleas on a mangy old dog. Exactly who works for whom is anyone’s guess.” He looked hard at Brad. “Which kind of raises the question of how you’re proposing to set up a defensive perimeter to protect us without getting tagged yourselves.”
“That’s a definite problem,” Brad acknowledged. “The camouflage systems on our CIDs are fantastic, but we can’t run them for more than a few hours without draining our battery power. So with federal agents . . . and maybe Gryzlov’s people . . . crawling all over Battle Mountain, the best I can do is post my CIDs high up in the Sheep Creek Range. That way our sensors and computers will have a shot at spotting any incoming missile or ground attack.”
“And then what?”
“Then we’ll come running,” Brad said.
Boomer sighed. “No offense, kid, but I’m sensing a heck of a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes’ and ‘hope so’s’ in this plan of yours.” He looked out his window. “How close do you figure you can post your robots without being detected?”
“About six miles away,” Brad said reluctantly.
“Which means it’ll take your CIDs at least ten minutes to get here if the balloon goes up,” Boomer pointed out grimly. “The problem being that it took less than ten minutes for the Russians to wipe Barksdale off the map.”
Brad nodded again, even more reluctantly this time. “Which is why it might be a smart idea to move your people away from Battle Mountain until this is over.”
“Because burned-out buildings can be replaced more easily than good scientists and engineers?” Boomer suggested. He shrugged his shoulders. “Helen Kaddiri, Richter, and I have already hashed that possibility out. And it’s not going to fly.”
“Why not?”
“Can you imagine what our brilliant president, Stacy Anne Barbeau, would think if she heard we were closing up shop here? Given her long-standing deep regard and admiration for Martindale, your dad, and Sky Masters, I mean?” Boomer asked dryly.
Brad winced. “She’d think you were guilty as hell and hoping to get out of Dodge ahead of the posse.”
“Exactly,” Boomer replied. “Which is why we’re just going to sit here going about our normal business like the good little boys and girls that we are.” His face was a lot darker than his tone.
Slowly, Brad nodded in agreement. The prospect of using friends as bait for Gryzlov’s mercenaries was looking more unpalatable than ever. No matter how quickly his Iron Wolf team reacted, a lot of good people were likely to die.
Twenty-Three
STRATEGIC COMMAND BUNKER, WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, DAYTON, OHIO
LATER THAT DAY
President Stacy Anne Barbeau took her seat at the conference table with a sense of relief. For the first time in nearly forty-eight hours, she was back on solid ground. This briefing room was situated on the lowest of five levels in the new Strategic Command bunker buried deep below the surface of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It shared the same overbright LED lighting and drab institutional carpet and paint scheme found aboard the E-4B . . . but at least it wasn’t in constant motion and at the mercy of high-altitude winds and turbulence. Or in danger from some mercenary-piloted stealth aircraft or air-to-air missile.
Far from it, in fact.
This secure bunker had been built at tremendous expense to replace its predecessor, destroyed along with the rest of Offutt Air Force Base in a Russian nuclear-armed cruise-missile attack more than a decade ago. It was housed inside a thick cube of steel, which was, in turn, encased in solid concrete, the bunker’s command, intelligence analysis, and communications facilities designed to ride out a full-scale nuclear war. In short, she was safer here from a missile or bombing attack than anywhere else in the United States.
Barbeau caught the eye of Colonel Daniel Kim, the Air Force officer in charge of security for the facility. “Have those Ohio National Guard armored units arrived yet?” she demanded.
Kim nodded confidently. “Yes, Madam President. The heavy tank transporters carrying Charlie and Delta companies from the Hundred and Forty-Fifth Armored Regiment rolled through Gate 15A an hour ago.” He checked the digital clock displayed beneath one of the large LED wall screens that lined the briefing room. “Their twenty-eight M1A1 main battle tanks should be fully deployed within the next fifty minutes.”
Barbeau nodded, satisfied by this news. Not even those Iron Wolf CIDs could fight their way through two full companies of armor mounting 120mm guns. Sharply, she rapped her knuckles on the table. “Enough chitchat, people. I need answers, and I need them now.”
The assembly of high-ranking civilian and military officials she’d summoned to this gathering abruptly fell silent. Apart from Luke Cohen and Ed Rauch and Admiral Firestone, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, most of them were ranking deputies and senior staffers in the various federal agencies and departments essential to national security—the CIA, NSA, FBI, the Defense Department, Homeland Security, State, and the Department of Justice. These were the men and women who could make things happen.
Luke Cohen hunched forward in his seat. He’d changed into fresh clothes flown out from D.C. on the same plane that ferried Rauch and the others to Wright-Patterson. Only the dark circles under his eyes showed the ordeal he’d been through. He cleared his throat nervously. “Uh, Madam President? We’re getting some pretty pointed queries from Congress. Both the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader are asking when you plan to return to the White House.”
Barbeau’s lips thinned. “Not anytime soon. The White House is too vulnerable, too exposed to attack. We’d have to evacuate half the city to set up a defensive perimeter solid enough to stop an attack like the one that smashed Barksdale. And it doesn’t make sense to tie down the huge numbers of troops and combat aircraft a defense of that magnitude would require.”
She saw Admiral Firestone and some of the other Defense Department types nodding sagely in agreement. How nice, she thought tartly. It was always an added plus when concern for her own personal safety meshed so closely with military common sense.
Cohen looked even unhappier. “We could take some serious political damage if you stay off the public stage much longer,” he warned. “People get kind of nervous when they start thinking that the nation’s commander in chief is running scared.”
“Maybe so,” Barbeau snapped, feeling her temper flare. “But I’d sure as hell rather be a lame duck than a dead duck!” Angrily, she glared at her chief of staff. “And it’s your job, Luke, honey, to convince the American people that I’m acting in the interests of national security . . . and not to save my own skin. So you do your goddamned job, or I’ll find someone else who can. Do you understand me?”
Miserably, he nodded.
She swung her icy gaze toward Rauch. To his credit, her national security adviser didn’t flinch. Working for her administration must be toughening the little man up. She’d put him in charge of coordinating the federal investigation into what they were still calling a terrorist attack on Barksdale Air Force Base. “What have you got for me, Ed?”
“Info on one of the cruise missiles used to hit us,” he said quietly. “We think either the engine or the guidance package failed, which is why it crashed into a bayou about two miles east of the runway.”
“Let’s see it.”
Rauch tapped the screen of his laptop, opening a file and sending the images it contained to one of the briefing room’s video screens. Photos blossomed on the LED display, showing the mud-smeared, crumpled gray fuselage and fins of what was unmistakably a missile. Shots showing the wreckage being loaded into a sling beneath one of the Air Force’s Pave Hawk helicopters gave a sense of scale.
“Have our people been able to identify this weapon?” Barbeau asked.
“Yes, Madam President,” Rauch said carefully. “The wreckage has been examined by specialists from both the Air Force and the intelligence community. There’s no question that what you’re looking at is a Kh-35UE short-range, subsonic cruise missile.” He brought up another image, this one a file photo showing an intact version of the same missile. “It’s a Russian design, comparable to our own Navy’s Harpoons. And like the Harpoon, these missiles can be fired by a wide range of platforms—by fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, ships, and ground-based launchers. In fact, some analysts have nicknamed the Kh-35 the ‘Harpoonski’ because they’re so similar.”
Barbeau narrowed her eyes in annoyance. “Dr. Rauch, are you telling me this was a Russian attack after all?”
He shook his head. “Not with any certainty.” Seeing her confusion, he explained. “The Russians have been selling export versions of the Kh-35 around the world for decades. Plus, several countries—some of them with governments that are extremely unstable and corrupt—build their own copies under license.”
“Which means there’s no way to tell how many of these missiles have made their way onto the black market,” she realized.
“Correct,” Rauch agreed. “And since we can’t find the usual serial numbers on any of the components in this missile, that’s probably what we’re looking at. Certainly, there’s no doubt that whoever sold these weapons doesn’t want them traced back to the source.”
