The Moscow Offensive

by Dale Brown

  “Oh, subtle, kid,” Macomber radioed. “Real subtle. I bet people could hear those explosions twenty miles from here.”

  “Wait . . . you mean I was supposed to do this quiet-like?” Brad said, taking refuge in gallows humor. He paused. “Oops. My bad. Sorry about that, Wolf Three.” Striding away from the burning buildings, he slid the grenade launcher back into one of his weapons packs.

  He moved back across the airport grounds. A pulsing dot centered on the flight operations trailer showed that someone inside was still in touch with Moscow via satellite. “Wolf Two, any luck hacking into that transmission?”

  “Wait one,” Nadia replied tersely, sounding intensely absorbed in her task. CIDs had enormous computing power and electronic warfare capabilities. The higher-grade encryption used for secure e-mails was beyond the reach of anything less powerful than the supercomputers used by America’s NSA and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters at Cheltenham. But the time imperatives of live, two-way voice and picture communication denied the application of those more rigorous methods. So, in theory, she should be able to break past the digital encryption protecting this Russian satellite phone transmission. Now it was time to find if real-world practice matched academic theory.

  Brad closed in on the Boeing 737-200F cargo jet still parked out on the apron. Its forward door was just sliding shut. Puffs of exhaust from the aircraft’s two engines indicated that the pilot was trying for an emergency start. Which made him brave, Brad guessed, but very low on common sense.

  He checked the ammunition remaining for his autocannon. He still had plenty of rounds left. Fire discipline was the key to fighting effectively inside one of the Iron Wolf combat robots. Caught up in the false sensation of superhuman power and invulnerability that came with piloting one of the machines, it was all too easy to get carried away and fire wildly—expending rounds unnecessarily. Hundreds of hours of simulator practice and real-world experience, coupled with rigorous mental control, were required to resist this temptation.

  Load 1:1 mix of armor-piercing and incendiary ammunition, he ordered.

  Machinery whirred and clicked, detaching the autocannon’s current belt of HE ammo and replacing it with a new one configured to his specifications. Weapon ready, the CID reported.

  With one smooth, economical motion Brad raised the 25mm autocannon and sighted toward the cargo jet. C’mon, he mentally urged its crew, bail out of that crate. There was no way the converted 737 could possibly escape. He waited long enough for anyone watching to know he was deliberately holding his fire. “Cut your engines and come out!” he ordered. The CID’s translation software turned his spoken words into Russian.

  More seconds ticked by without any visible response.

  “This ain’t a damned tea party, Brad,” Macomber growled over the radio. “And stupidity carries its own price tag. So nail that plane!”

  “Copy that, Wolf Three,” he said, with a sigh. He pulled the autocannon through an arc, squeezing the trigger again and again and again.

  WHANG. WHANG. WHANG. WHANG.

  More than a dozen 25mm rounds hit the enemy aircraft—shredding it from nose to tail. Its cockpit windows exploded, blown inward. Shards of torn fuselage spun into the air. Rivulets of flame from burning fuel and hydraulic fluid rippled across the 737’s punctured skin. Oily black smoke billowed away from the wrecked cargo jet, thickening as the fires his incendiary rounds had set took hold.

  Feeling sick at heart, Brad turned away. He didn’t mind killing men who could fight back. But this felt more like murder, even though he’d given the crew inside that plane at least a brief chance to surrender.

  “I have broken into their satellite connection,” Nadia said suddenly. “They are in contact with RKU headquarters in Moscow. And they have reported they are under attack by an Iron Wolf combat robot.”

  “Did they send any images from their security cameras?” Brad asked. He reloaded his autocannon.

  “Beautiful pictures,” she confirmed, sounding gleeful. “You look quite terrifying!”

  Macomber broke in. “Let’s finish this, Wolf One. If we don’t book out of here in the next few minutes, we’re gonna have a very up-close and personal encounter with the sheriff’s department.”

  Without hesitating any longer, he opened fire on the flight operations trailer. Armor-piercing rounds ripped through its thin walls and exploded out the other side—destroying everything and everyone in their path. Fires fed by smashed furniture and short-circuiting electronics glowed orange in the wreckage. On his CID’s display, the pulsing dot showing a live transmission to Russia vanished as the signal cut off.

  Brad whirled away from the airport and loped east out into the desert, heading to join the other two Iron Wolf combat robots. Behind him, flames crackled noisily—spreading fast through the ruins of Gennadiy Gryzlov’s covert air base.

  Thirty-Four

  RAZDAN-1 ELECTRO-OPTICAL SURVEILLANCE SATELLITE, IN SUN-SYNCHRONOUS LOW EARTH ORBIT

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  Russia’s most advanced spy satellite orbited several hundred kilometers above the cloud-flecked globe—circling the world once every hundred minutes at nearly twenty-seven thousand kilometers per hour. As it crossed the terminator into darkness over the central Pacific, new commands reached its onboard computer. In response, its telescope rotated slightly, focusing on a different sliver of the earth spinning past far below.

  Fourteen minutes later, the Razdan-1 satellite came into visual range of the new target its masters wanted investigated. Over the next few seconds, high-resolution digital cameras took several extremely detailed infrared pictures of a very small area of the United States. A high-speed radio antenna instantly relayed the images to Moscow through Russia’s Meridian satellite military communications network.

  THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  Russian president Gennadiy Gryzlov’s face contorted in anger as he studied the satellite pictures on his monitor. Even without the benefit of detailed analysis by the military’s photo interpretation experts, it was clear that RKU’s Utah base had been completely destroyed—along with its converted 737-200F cruise-missile carrier. He looked up at Vladimir Kurakin. “Were there any survivors for the Americans to interrogate?” he demanded.

  “None,” the other man said. His face was pale and set. “As a security precaution when we established the Moab facility, the FSB’s Q Directorate hacked into the communications networks of all the local law enforcement and emergency services agencies. Our intercepts of police and ambulance service calls make it clear the Americans found no one left alive at the scene. Only mangled and burned corpses.”

  Gryzlov nodded, feeling his anger subside. “So at least the Poles and their mercenaries did us one small favor.” One side of his mouth twitched upward in a wry, half smile. “That was kind of them.”

  Kurakin stared back at him in disbelief. “I just lost nearly fifty of my best airmen, special forces operatives, and ordnance technicians, Mr. President,” he said stiffly. “I find it very difficult to see anything positive in this catastrophe.”

  “Casualties are an inescapable consequence of war,” Gryzlov retorted. He shrugged his shoulders. “A few men killed and a single aircraft destroyed? Weighed against the damage your operations have already inflicted on the Americans, that’s nothing . . . a mere fleabite.”

  Kurakin’s jaw tightened. But he stayed silent.

  “From the beginning, we both knew basing an aircraft inside the United States was a high-risk venture,” the Russian president continued coolly. “Losing it is an unfortunate occurrence, but nothing more than that.”

  Kurakin’s nostrils flared. “Unfortunate?” he growled. “That is not the word I would choose . . . sir.”

  Gryzlov eyed him closely. The man he’d selected to command his mercenaries had served him loyally thus far. Was that time coming to an end? He hoped not. Replacing the former Spetsnaz general now—so close to the culmination of this
secret war—would be difficult. No, he decided, it would be better to ride this faltering horse awhile longer, to death if need be, rather than waste valuable time looking for a new mount.

  With a swift flick of his finger, he dismissed the satellite photos from his monitor. “Never mind, Vladimir. We don’t have time to waste on minor setbacks. Now that we’ve lost the ability to launch more cruise-missile strikes, we need to recalibrate your operations.”

  “Recalibrate my operations?” Kurakin said, clearly taken by surprise. “You intend to continue this war? Even now?”

  “Of course.” Gryzlov raised an eyebrow. “What else do you propose?”

  “That we withdraw Baryshev’s KVM unit and their security team!” the other man replied forcefully. “And as soon as possible. The Iron Wolf attack that destroyed Colonel Annenkov and his entire unit proves that the Poles and Scion have penetrated our operational security. Baryshev’s robots are vulnerable.”

  “Your fears are irrational,” Gryzlov said coldly. “You saw the pictures from the security cameras at Moab. Your base was destroyed by a single Iron Wolf machine. Correct?”

  Kurakin grimaced. “Yes.”

  “You see what that implies, of course?”

  “That just one of the enemy robots was available,” Kurakin guessed.

  Gryzlov nodded approvingly. “Exactly. The Poles must be too afraid to risk more of their foreign soldiers and machines in operations inside the United States.” He shrugged again. “I don’t see one lone Iron Wolf robot as a serious threat to our remaining forces . . . or to our plans. It would only be easy prey for our own KVMs.”

  “But the Poles could pass on what they’ve learned to President Barbeau,” Kurakin warned.

  “And what is that?” Gryzlov said. “Nothing beyond supposition and guesswork. Nothing in the wreckage of your Utah base ties directly back to us.”

  “The Americans are sure to dig deeper into the new owners of Regan Air Freight and FXR Trucking,” Kurakin argued.

  Gryzlov laughed, remembering the contingency arrangements he’d made with Willem Daeniker, the utterly mercenary and thoroughly amoral Swiss banker who’d been his go-between with Francis Xavier Regan and then with the managers of both companies. Gryzlov had sent a text message activating those emergency measures as soon as he’d received the first word of the Iron Wolf raid on RKU’s airbase. “Oh, I earnestly hope the Americans do conduct a thorough investigation, Vladimir,” he said cheerfully. “What they would learn would be most . . . instructive.

  “Let me make this plain to you,” Gryzlov continued bluntly. “So long as it is likely that Barbeau and her advisers are still in the dark about our involvement, Operation Checkmate will proceed.”

  Reluctantly, Kurakin nodded. “Very well, Mr. President. But I must tell you that our options going forward are increasingly narrow—especially now that we’ve lost our cruise-missile aircraft.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because the Americans are learning from their earlier mistakes,” the RKU chief explained. “Their warships and submarines are putting to sea, where Colonel Baryshev’s robots cannot touch them. And their air and ground forces are mostly dispersed to heavily defended bases. Our KVMs could probably overrun one of those military installations . . . but not without being detected, tracked, and, ultimately, run to ground and destroyed.”

  Gryzlov frowned. “Then we go after more of their armaments factories and weapons labs. Like that F-35 assembly plant and the cybernetics lab we just hit. The Americans don’t have enough troops or planes to defend every possible target against our robots.”

  “They don’t,” Kurakin agreed heavily. “But they do have enough drones.”

  “What?”

  “The Americans are bringing more and more of their long- and medium-duration drones home from overseas,” the RKU chief explained. “Counting their operational MQ-1 Predators, MQ-1C Gray Eagles, MQ-9 Reapers, RQ-7 Shadows, and RQ-4 Global Hawks, that’s a fleet of a thousand unmanned aircraft. Most of them were once committed to hunting for terrorists, but it’s clear that homeland defense now takes a much higher priority.”

  “Drones!” Gryzlov jeered. “Why should our KVMs fear them? Most of them don’t even carry weapons.”

  “The Americans don’t need weapons,” Kurakin said. “They need information.” He shrugged his shoulders. “A single real-time image showing Colonel Baryshev’s machines loading or unloading from Aristov’s trucks would blow our whole operation sky-high.”

  “Then we will turn our forces in another direction,” Gryzlov said coolly. “We will strike something the Americans do not expect. Something political.”

  What Kurakin and the others had never understood was that his overall concept for Shakh i Mat, for Operation Checkmate, had always entailed a three-pronged assault on the United States—striking first at its military power and defense industries . . . and then, later, nearer to its presidential election, taking aim directly at its political stability. But now that America’s armed forces and factories were too well protected, it was obvious that the time had come to go straight for the throat.

  Still smiling, Gryzlov gave Kurakin his new target.

  The other man turned even paler. “But, Mr. President, that would be—”

  “An act of war?” Gryzlov said mildly. His eyes were ice-cold. “What did you think we were doing here, Vladimir? Playing a game? What is one more dead American, among so many others?”

  Kurakin’s face froze for a long moment. At last, he dipped his head, acknowledging the instructions he’d been given. “Your orders will be obeyed,” he said carefully. “But I strongly recommend that Aristov and his team be allowed to conduct a thorough reconnaissance before Baryshev’s war machines attack. Given the consequences of any failure, we cannot risk encountering anything unexpected.”

  Blithely, Gryzlov agreed. “If you strike the king, you must kill the king.” His expression grew even more callous. “And of course, the same rule applies even when you strike at the king-in-waiting.”

  Thirty-Five

  STRATEGIC COMMAND BUNKER, WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING

  Suppressing a massive yawn, national security adviser Edward Rauch rubbed hard at his tired eyes. He’d already been up for more than twenty-four hours—ever since the incredible reports that someone had just blown up a private airport in Utah first hit his desk. One of the many downsides of Barbeau’s refusal to delegate her power was the workload she placed on the shoulders of the handful of subordinates she did trust.

  Rauch took a sip of the coffee some enlisted man had brought him . . . when? Hours ago, by the stale, cold taste. Grimacing, he shoved the mostly empty paper cup into his wastebasket. Didn’t the Air Force give its combat pilots and bomber crews stimulants? He vaguely remembered reading an article about something called modafinil. It was supposed to be nonaddictive and incredibly effective. Maybe he should see if the bunker medical staff could find some of the pills for him.

  “Jesus, you look like hell, Ed,” Stacy Anne Barbeau said with some relish, barging into his tiny office without knocking. Luke Cohen tagged along behind her. From the dark shadows under his eyes to the way his shoulders sagged, the White House chief of staff didn’t appear to be in much better shape than Rauch was.

  Of the three of them, only the president seemed reasonably awake and rested—though she was unnaturally bright-eyed, with a brittle, false smile plastered across her once-attractive face. Ever since she’d learned that Patrick McLanahan was still alive, Barbeau had been teetering on the edge of panic.

  She took the chair across from Rauch. “Well?” she demanded. “Brief me. What the hell happened at this Podunk airport out in the middle of nowhere?” Her lips twisted into an even uglier, phonier smile. “I’m guessing this wasn’t some weird Mormon missionary send-off gone wrong.”

  “No, ma’am,” Rauch said shortly. “Based on reports from Air Force specialists, there’s no doubt that it was the oper
ating base for those cruise-missile attacks against both Barksdale and San Diego. They’ve already identified dozens of Kh-35 missiles in the wreckage.” He shrugged. “There never was a stealth bomber attacking us. We were hit by what looked like an ordinary commercial jet flying right out in the open.”

  Barbeau scowled, clearly unhappy with his dismissive tone. She’d invested considerable time and presidential clout in badgering the Air Force and Navy to deploy their limited numbers of air surveillance aircraft to spot a Scion-piloted stealth plane. “So who was flying that plane, Doctor?” she snapped. “And manning this secret base?”

  “We don’t know,” he admitted. “Not yet.”

  “Well, why the hell not?” she growled. “I’ve seen the pictures. There are dead bodies scattered all over that damned place. Don’t any of your freaking specialists know how to run a few fingerprints through the FBI database?”

  To his surprise, Rauch discovered that he was able to ignore her jab. “Many of the corpses were very badly burned,” he said evenly. “But the site investigation team has been able to run fingerprint checks against a number of federal databases, including the Pentagon and the FBI.”

  “And?”

  “Well, there’s the dog that didn’t bark in the night, Madam President.”

  Barbeau glowered at him. “Spare me the fucking Sherlock Holmes references, Ed,” she said tiredly.

  “So far, we haven’t been able to identify any of the bodies,” he explained. “Which is not what I would have expected . . . if this really was a Scion or Iron Wolf Squadron operation.”