by Dale Brown
“But as far as we know now, this unprecedented level of military activity seems limited solely to Russia’s Air Force, surface-to-air missile regiments, and surveillance radars?” Taylor asked pointedly.
Admiral Chao nodded firmly. “That’s correct, Mr. Secretary.”
Taylor looked along the table toward Jonas Murphy, favoring him with a shrewd, amused smile. “Which brings us around to you, Jonas.”
“Me?” Murphy said, trying his best to sound surprised.
“Yes, you,” the older man said wryly. “Earlier today, your office transmitted a top secret alert to all of our U.S. Air Force formations deployed in Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq, right? An alert that raised the possibility of a Russian aircraft making an unauthorized transit through their areas of operation?”
Crap, Murphy thought, feeling suddenly cornered. “That’s true.”
“So why did you send out this highly unusual alert?” Taylor asked bluntly, not bothering to beat around the bush.
Left with no other choice, Murphy fell back on partial truth. “The CIA received intelligence from what appears to be a high-level Russian source. Intelligence which suggested the possible defection of a pilot flying one of their most advanced military aircraft sometime in the next twenty-four hours.”
“What type of aircraft?” Taylor pushed.
“Tupolev’s PAK-DA experimental stealth bomber prototype,” Murphy admitted.
That drew the reaction he’d expected. General Neary and the other Joint Chiefs of Staff seated at the table with him looked stunned at first and then somewhat predatory. The prospect of getting a close, hard look at the technology that Moscow had openly boasted would rival and even exceed that of America’s own stealth bombers was irresistible.
“How reliable is the CIA’s intelligence on this?” Taylor asked directly.
Murphy shrugged. “That’s unknown, I’m afraid. We don’t have any history with their source . . . yet.”
“A defection attempt of that magnitude could certainly explain the frantic Russian air and radar activity we’re seeing now,” General Neary mused out loud, looking up at the wall screens. Then he turned back to Murphy. “But do you have any honest-to-God confirmation that such a defection is actually underway?”
The DNI glanced at the secure smartphone he’d laid faceup on the conference table in front of him. There were no new messages from Miranda Reynolds, the head of the CIA’s clandestine operations service. He shook his head. “Unfortunately, I don’t.”
“Which means what you’ve been sold could be typical Russian disinformation,” Neary pointed out. “Part of a deliberate plan to sow confusion and slow our response to the increase in military readiness we’re seeing right now.”
Murphy nodded uncomfortably. “That’s certainly possible.”
“Which leaves us with the question of how we’re going to respond to what we do know right now,” Taylor broke in. “Which is that the Russians are rapidly bringing their combat air units and ground-based air defenses to wartime levels of readiness.” He looked along the table. “Suggestions?”
After a glance at his colleagues, Neary leaned forward. As the chief of staff for the Air Force, this was largely his bailiwick. “My recommendation to the president is that he immediately raise our own alert status to DEFCON Three, both here at home and abroad.” The other senior officers around the table nodded, signaling their agreement. DEFCON Three would put the entire U.S. military on full alert, with the Air Force ready to move at fifteen minutes’ notice. “And I also strongly recommend that he contact our allies and urge them to take similar precautionary measures.”
Murphy interjected. “I concur, but with the caveat that we still urge caution by our air units operating near Russia’s southern frontier. If a Russian pilot really is trying to defect, I’d rather that we weren’t the ones who shot him down.”
“Doing so carries risks of its own,” Neary warned. “Even a single aircraft conducting a surprise strike can inflict a hell of a lot of damage using modern weapons.”
Taylor considered that carefully. “That’s true, General,” he said after a few moments. “But Director Murphy has a good point, which I’ll pass on to the president.” The defense secretary spread his hands. “Anyway, if the Russians are preparing a serious attack against us, they aren’t going to use just one plane—no matter how well it’s armed—” He broke off abruptly as new digital maps opened on the far wall. These depicted regions of northern and western China. More symbols appeared, thickly clustered near the People’s Republic of China’s border with Russia.
“We’ve received new satellite and SIGINT data, sir,” Admiral Chao confirmed. “All major fighter and SAM units assigned to the PRC’s Western and Northern Theater Commands have just gone on high alert.”
“Seems like Beijing’s getting spooked by the Russians, too,” Taylor said somberly. He reached for one of the secure links at his place. “It’s time I called the president.”
176th Air Defense Squadron, Alaska Air National Guard, Regional Air Operations Center, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska
That Same Time
Staff Sergeant Peggy Baker sat up a little straighter in her swivel chair. She’d just caught a flash of movement on one of the multiple screens at her workstation. A small colored dot briefly appeared on the feed from the FPS-117 phased array radar at Barter Island. It faded out for a few seconds and then reappeared for another very short interval before disappearing completely.
For a moment, she was tempted to write off the blip as just a radar or weather anomaly. After all, seriously bad weather was closing in over the radar site and all of northern Alaska, complete with high winds and driving snow and ice storms. Then again, L-band radars weren’t affected by storms to the same degree as high-frequency equipment. So whatever that unidentified object was, it could be something real. And from the size of the reflection, it was also very small, no larger than a good-sized bird—but no bird in nature moved at that kind of speed, almost 450 knots. She picked up the phone to her supervisor. “Ma’am,” she told Lieutenant Colonel Carmen Reyes, “I may have picked up a bogey here. It could be nothing, but I think you should take a look at the track.”
“On my way,” Reyes said crisply. She hung up and trotted down the short flight of steps from the observation deck to the main floor of the operations center. It took her less than thirty seconds to reach Baker’s station. “Okay, Peggy, show me what you’ve got,” she ordered.
Rapidly, the sergeant entered a series of commands on her keyboard to pull up a recording of the data from Barter Island’s radar. Reyes leaned over her shoulder, watching as the faint blip appeared, moved slightly across the screen, vanished, and popped up again for a few short seconds. Based on the short observed track, if that was a genuine bogey, it had been heading almost due south across the coast about twenty nautical miles east of Kaktovik. She pursed her lips in thought. “Contact Anchorage Center. See if they know anything about a private jet or commercial airliner that’s gone astray up that way.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Baker picked up her direct line to the FAA’s Air Route Traffic Control Center and relayed the colonel’s question to one of the controllers on duty. On its face, the suggestion wasn’t unreasonable. About an hour ago, the Russians had abruptly closed all the transpolar routes through their airspace. As a result, ARTCCs across the Northern Hemisphere were scrambling to divert dozens of civilian passenger jets and cargo planes to alternate routes. It was just possible that they’d lost track of one in all the confusion.
After a brief conversation, Baker hung up. She swiveled to Reyes. “Negative on that, ma’am. Anchorage says all the flights they were monitoring are accounted for. No civilian aircraft have been cleared through that sector.”
Reyes tapped her foot on the tiled floor while she ran through her options. Although there weren’t any aircraft currently on patrol, Third Wing did have two F-22 Raptor fighters on alert status. But even if this was a genuine bogey
and not just some kind of equipment- or weather-related glitch, its last confirmed position was more than five hundred nautical miles from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. That was very near the outside edge of a Raptor’s subsonic combat range. Plus, by the time any F-22s arrived on scene, whatever the Barter Island radar had detected would be long gone. There was also one more significant factor to consider. “What’s our latest read on the weather?” she asked.
“Horrible,” Baker told her. “The Barter Island station reports strong winds from the north at forty knots, gusting to sixty, with a solid cloud layer down to less than five hundred feet. Conditions are worsening fast, with blowing snow and sleet. Visibility on the ground is only around fifty or sixty feet right now. And the storm front that’s whacking them is headed straight our way.”
Reyes shivered, suddenly very glad her command post was deep underground and centrally heated. She came to a decision and shook her head. “Right, I’ll buck this one up to Wing for their final call, but my recommendation will be that we let this bogey go. Given the weather conditions and the extreme range, there’s almost no chance of making a successful or safe intercept.”
Eighteen
Deep in the Brooks Mountain Range, Northern Alaska
That Same Time
Buffeted by the storm howling down from the Arctic Ocean, the PAK-DA stealth bomber streaked onward through a swirling torrent of wind-driven snow and ice. Colonel Alexei Petrov fought to keep his heavy aircraft under control, reacting almost instinctively to powerful gusts and unexpected pockets of severe turbulence that tugged and tore at the edges of its wing. Through his canopy, he caught only fleeting glimpses of the rugged, mountainous maze he was navigating. Sheer limestone cliffs and steep, boulder-strewn slopes towered above him on all sides, rising higher and higher until they vanished in a thick, gray layer of low-hanging cloud.
The steering cue on his HUD slid sharply to the right. Immediately, he yanked his stick in that direction. The bomber banked sharply, narrowly avoiding a cliff face that appeared suddenly out of the darkness and then just as abruptly disappeared astern, cloaked by falling snow.
Petrov felt his left eye twitch. Beneath his oxygen mask, his facial muscles were locked in a manic grin. He’d plotted this low-altitude flight path weeks ago, using a combination of satellite photos and detailed topographic maps. But what had looked practical in the quiet, well-lit confines of his quarters was proving infinitely more difficult at night, in the middle of a raging storm. The course he’d chosen followed a series of narrow river valleys that writhed and twisted and wound their way deeper into this vast labyrinth of barren, snow-covered mountains and ridges. If he misjudged a single turn or lost control for even a fraction of a second, his stealth bomber would slam head-on into a mountainside or clip the edge of a precipice—disappearing forever in an enormous fireball that would briefly light up a few desolate peaks and gorges . . . and leave nothing but fragments of scorched wreckage as a monument. A quick death to be sure, he thought bleakly, but a singularly meaningless one.
Faintly, over the wailing sound of the wind and the roar of the PAK-DA’s jet engines, he heard a groan from the seat next to him. It was echoed from farther back in the cockpit. Bunin and Mavrichev were starting to stir, slowly and painfully clawing their way back toward consciousness. After several hours, the fentanyl derivative he’d used to drug them was finally wearing off.
Petrov rolled the bomber back to the left, following the trace of an ice-covered river below as it curved back toward the southeast. Distances counted down on his HUD. He was very close to the Brooks Range divide, a geological boundary separating the rivers and streams that ran north out of the mountains toward the Arctic Ocean from those that meandered south, deeper into Alaska and Canada’s Yukon Territory.
Now! His navigation cue spiked upward and he yanked back on the stick—pulling into a near-vertical climb. His left hand shoved the throttles forward, going to full military power. The PAK-DA skimmed just above the slope of an east–west razor-backed ridge that cut straight across his flight path. He cleared the top with only meters to spare and plunged into a wall of cloud. Ice pellets rattled off the cockpit canopy like machine-gun fire. Seconds later, his brightly lit steering indicator dipped toward the bottom of the HUD. He pushed forward, diving back out of the cloud and down into another gorge.
A new window opened on the multifunction display he’d set to manage the bomber’s navigation system. target range: 90.5 kilometers.
Petrov throttled back to significantly reduce his airspeed. He banked right and then left and back right again, following the narrow gorge as it snaked south through higher peaks and ridges. Little patches of stunted trees lined the banks of a frozen watercourse at its bottom. The howling winds and turbulence clawing at his aircraft diminished a little. He’d flown out ahead of the oncoming storm.
Gradually, the chasm widened. The mountains and rounded hills fell away on either side, revealing a broader valley ahead. Stretches of snow-covered tundra and clumps of woods appeared eerily green in the PAK-DA’s infrared sensors.
Petrov glanced down at his MFD. target range: 15 kilometers. He blinked, still scarcely able to believe that this nightmare run through the mountains was nearly over. He was just two minutes out. It was time to find out if Voronin’s mercenaries were awake and attentive to their duties. His lips thinned. He disliked being forced to trust the competence of men he’d never met.
He reached forward and tapped a preset icon on the display. Obeying his command, the bomber’s tactical communications system transmitted a short, encrypted radio signal at very low power. Without waiting for a response, he toggled on his landing lights. Powerful spotlights speared through the darkness. Control surfaces along the trailing edge of the PAK-DA’s wing whined open, providing additional lift as his airspeed decreased. More hydraulics whirred as the landing gear came down and locked in position.
In the distance, glowing dots blinked into existence. Days before, Voronin’s team had set up pairs of shielded infrared markers to outline the improvised runway they had built out of compacted snow. A parachute flare, blinding bright through falling snow, arced high into the air from the forward edge of the runway—giving him a visual indication of the wind direction and strength.
Gently, with tiny movements of the stick and his other controls, Petrov brought the big stealth bomber in to land. Ahead through his canopy, the twin rows of infrared markers grew steadily larger, taking on shape and definition as he skimmed low over the valley floor on final approach.
The first pair of markers slid past under his wing. He was just above the compacted snow field. It was time to set the bird down. Petrov throttled all the way back in one smooth motion. Robbed of the last lift keeping it in the air, the bomber dropped onto the runway. Curtains of snow sprayed outward as it thundered down the valley, shedding speed as he reversed thrust and carefully applied his brakes. Gradually, as the aircraft slowed, the trees and rock-littered hillsides blurring past his canopy sharpened into focus.
Petrov grinned more genuinely under his oxygen mask. He’d been confident this would work. His countrymen had successfully operated heavy four-engine IL-76 transport aircraft on similarly improvised snow and ice fields in the past. Their loaded weight was comparable to that of the PAK-DA prototype . . . and to the American B-2, for that matter. But the Americans were far too conventional to imagine anyone would risk pulling the same stunt with an armed stealth bomber—let alone using a makeshift runway secretly carved out inside their own national territory.
As he taxied toward the end of the field, a large white structure slowly emerged from the darkness and blowing snow. Shrouded in netting to break up its visual signature, it was a temporary aircraft shelter created with ultralight thermal and radar-reflective camouflage fabric. Two men were stationed near the entrance to guide him inside.
Slowly, directed by their glowing orange batons, Petrov carefully maneuvered the PAK-DA into position, set the brakes, and switched
off both engines. The huge turbofans keened down to a stop, descending steadily in pitch until they fell silent. After so many hours spent in the air surrounded by their roar, this sudden quiet seemed unnatural.
He sat back with a relieved sigh, stripped off his headset, and unbuckled his straps. When he stood up, he noticed that both Bunin and Mavrichev were wide awake now. They glared at him. “Welcome to America,” he said cheerfully.
“You fucking traitor,” Mavrichev spat out in response.
Petrov shook his head. “I sincerely hope not, General.” He shrugged his shoulders. “This is a purely private-enterprise operation. And if Moscow is wise, it will meet our price. Then you and Oleg there can fly the prototype home. You may not return as heroes, but at least you’ll be the men returning a precious aircraft to its rightful owners.”
Without waiting for a reply, he brushed past them and unlatched the hatch. When it swung open in a blast of bitterly cold air, he slid down the ladder and dropped lightly onto the aircraft shelter’s hard-packed snow floor.
Shielded lanterns illuminated its cavernous interior. In their glow, Petrov saw a group of three hard-faced men waiting for him. They were bundled up against the subzero weather in parkas and fur-lined hoods. One stepped forward with a thin smile. “Congratulations on your success, Colonel. My name is Bondarovich. I’m in charge here.”
Petrov nodded briefly. As a matter of operational security, he hadn’t been briefed on any of their names. But he recognized their type—ex-soldiers who’d found a way to use the lethal skills they’d been taught by the state for their own personal profit. It amused him to realize they undoubtedly believed he was just the same.
