by Dale Brown
Movement outside the tent caught his eye. A snowmobile was headed toward them from the far end of the runway.
“Another of my men,” Bondarovich explained. “He fired that flare for you, and made sure none of our IR markers were blocked by drifting snow.” He glanced up at the PAK-DA bomber looming over them. “I understand you have a prisoner you need us to handle?”
“Two of them, actually,” Petrov said. He filled the other man in on Mavrichev’s sudden decision to invite himself along on what was supposed to be a triumphant test of the prototype’s capabilities.
Bondarovich whistled in amazement. “The commander of Long-Range Aviation himself? That’s a devil of a big fish you landed, Colonel.”
“More like a big pain in the ass,” Petrov said with a sour grin. “I’ll be glad to see the back of him once this is over.”
The other man nodded in amusement and ordered his men into the plane to bring Bunin and Mavrichev out. While the two prisoners were hustled down the ladder, he asked quietly, “Have you contacted Moscow yet? To make our little proposition?”
Petrov shook his head. “Not yet. We’ll let Zhdanov sweat awhile longer,” he said. Suddenly aware of the piercing cold, he started to shiver. He zipped up his flight suit. “First, I need more suitable clothes, hot food, and some sleep. In that order.”
“That we can arrange,” Bondarovich assured him.
With the ex-Spetsnaz officer in the lead and Petrov right behind, the whole group headed outside toward a little cluster of tents hidden among some nearby trees. Bunin and Mavrichev, untied now, stumbled along at the rear, sandwiched between two watchful guards. Their flashlight beams danced across the ground, piercing the darkness and blowing snow.
Petrov noted that the wind was picking up fast. The storm he’d outrun in the mountains was almost on top of them. In thirty minutes or less, the landing he’d just made would have been completely impossible. He allowed himself to feel a moment of complete triumph. Despite all the unexpected obstacles thrown in his path, he’d succeeded in pulling off a masterpiece of operational planning and piloting skill. And as a result, Russia’s most advanced combat aircraft was now effectively in his sole possession, along with twelve nuclear-armed cruise missiles. For one exultant instant, he understood what it must be like to be a demigod—a being far beyond the reach of other mortals.
And then everything went wrong.
As the snowmobile curved around to join the little group trudging toward camp, the shrill, high-pitched whine of its motor stabbed into Petrov’s brain. Together with the stress accumulated during his long and dangerous flight and the tumor growing unchecked inside his skull, that was more than enough to trigger a cascade of unbearable pain. Gripped by a sudden, blinding headache, he doubled over and vomited into the snow. Unable to stop himself, he moaned aloud in agony.
Taken aback by his abrupt collapse, everyone else turned to stare at him in surprise.
Everyone except Mavrichev. Seizing his opportunity, the stocky, bullnecked general stiff-armed the nearest guard, knocking the man sprawling backward into the snow. Free suddenly, he sprinted toward the idling snowmobile. And with a guttural shout, he hurled its surprised rider out of the saddle. Then, before anyone could move to stop him, he threw his leg over the machine, opened its throttle wide, and skidded away across the tundra, bent low over the handlebars as he accelerated.
“God damn it!” Petrov snarled. Furious at the guards for their carelessness and at his own weakness for distracting them, he pushed Bondarovich away, lurched upright, and fumbled for his sidearm, a 9mm pistol. Fighting past the waves of pain still spiking through his brain, he leveled the weapon, aimed, and fired several times at the speeding snowmobile.
Most of his shots went wide. But at least one 9mm round slammed into Mavrichev’s back, high up in the middle of his right shoulder blade. Bright red blood spurted into the air. A moment later, the fleeing general disappeared into a swirling curtain of wind-blown snow.
Still shaking, Petrov wiped distractedly at the vomit smearing his chin and then whirled toward Bondarovich. “Go on! Get after him!” he snapped.
“There’s no need,” the other man said callously. “That stupid son of a bitch won’t get far. You pegged him. And in this storm, he’ll either bleed to death or freeze soon enough.” He looked up at the sky and then shook his head. “No, Colonel. Don’t worry about it. We’ll retrieve the body once the weather clears.”
Nineteen
Barter Island Long Range Radar Site, near Kaktovik, Alaska
A Short Time Later
Rank had its privileges at the Barter Island station—at least to the extent that Captain Nick Flynn got his own sleeping quarters. True, the same small space also doubled as his office, and it was really just an eight-by-eight cubicle slapped together out of thin plywood partitions. But at least it offered a modicum of privacy when he needed it. Except for Sergeant Takirak, everyone else on his Joint Force security team had to share a room with two or three others.
At the knock on his open door, Flynn closed the science fiction thriller he’d been reading on his tablet. “Come in,” he said, fighting down an exasperated sigh. Between PT at what felt like oh dark thirty; a predawn foot patrol around the whole island in subzero temperatures; firing exercises out at their improvised range; a public relations–required Q-and-A session with kids at the local school; another of Takirak’s regular lectures on wilderness and winter survival tricks and tips; and the routine mound of paperwork so beloved of higher-command echelons, he felt like he’d already had a pretty full day. His fatigue was compounded by the fact that they were now down to just a little over five hours of sunlight out of every twenty-four. Spending two-thirds of the usual waking day in darkness really screwed up circadian rhythms for most people—himself included.
“Uh, sir?” Senior Airman Mark Mitchell said cautiously, poking his head around the doorframe. The redheaded communications specialist had a knack for reading other people’s emotions . . . or at least figuring out when they were pissed at him for pulling some boneheaded practical joke, usually after it was too late. Like the time a week ago when he’d excitedly brought Private First Class Hynes fake transfer orders to Hawaii’s Schofield Barracks. Luckily, the team’s brawny Carl Gustav recoilless rifle gunner, an Army specialist from New Mexico named Rafael Sanchez, had stepped between the two men before Hynes could go totally berserk.
“What is it, M-Squared?” Flynn asked patiently.
“We just got an alert message from JBER,” Mitchell said.
Flynn looked pointedly at his watch. It was well after 1900, and the sun had been below the horizon for more than four hours. “The real thing, Airman?” he asked dryly.
For Mitchell’s sake, he hoped this wasn’t another lame attempt at humor. After all, there must be worse military duty posts than this isolated radar station. Though, admittedly, none sprang readily to mind. The enlisted man was a decent radioman, but there were definitely limits to the amount of juvenile crap Flynn was willing to put up with. If pushed too far, he’d boot M-Squared out of the unit first and worry about finding a new com specialist later.
“Honest to God, sir,” Mitchell assured him earnestly. “This is the genuine article. And it’s not just us. It’s everyone. All over the whole world. The president or the Pentagon or whoever is ordering everybody—Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, Space Force, the whole bunch—to DEFCON Three.”
Flynn dropped his tablet and rolled off his cot in one smooth motion. The U.S. armed forces hadn’t gone to DEFCON Three since 9/11, in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. That was more than twenty years ago. What the hell had just happened to trigger this kind of drastic move now? “Show me!” he snapped.
He followed Mitchell down the hall to the station’s dining area in a hurry. Next to the kitchen, it was the largest open space in the station’s ramshackle living quarters, big enough for up to twenty people to eat at the same time. The airman ha
d taken over a corner table for his computers and other electronic gear. A sleeping bag nearby showed that he was sleeping there, too, probably to get away from his nominal roommate. Flynn had heard grousing that Army Private Wade Vucovich’s snoring should be classed as a prohibited nonlethal weapon under international law.
The airman dropped into his chair and pulled up the encrypted message file they’d been sent from Alaskan Command down at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. “See, sir?”
Quickly, Flynn scanned through the alert. Key phrases jumped out at him. “Unprecedented levels of military air activity observed across the entire Russian Federation.” “No immediate confirmation of hostile intent.” “Increase in readiness levels directly authorized by the National Command Authority,” which meant the president and the secretary of defense acting jointly. But there was nothing about what might be behind these sudden Russian moves that had alarmed Washington.
His mouth tightened. He didn’t know what was worse: the possibility that nobody in D.C. had a fricking clue as to why Moscow had just put its entire Air Force and air defense network on a wartime footing. Or the very real possibility that the Pentagon brass and the intel community had simply decided not to share their information with the grunts, squids, and zoomies posted out at the sharp end . . . figuring that they didn’t need to know the whys and wherefores. Just like at the C-130 crash site in the Libyan desert, he thought bitterly.
Ditch that anger for now, Flynn told himself. His most immediate problem was figuring out how to translate this unexpected DEFCON Three directive into concrete action by the troops under his command. Older, more established Army formations and Air Force bases had thick manuals stashed away in their secure safes—manuals that laid out each and every action required to comply with the new, higher alert status, all the way down to precise rules of engagement for any extra guards posted at gates and perimeters. As a brand-new, completely untested unit, the men of his Joint Force security team didn’t have any comparable manuals to tell them what to do in a sudden crisis. They were entirely dependent on his intellect, training, and instincts.
He looked up and saw the rest of the team filing into the dining room. Word that something was up had obviously gotten out fast. He supposed that wasn’t much of a surprise. All twelve of them were basically living in one another’s back pockets. Once the sun went down and temperatures plunged well below zero, their universe was essentially restricted to a small number of corridors and rooms. Certainly nobody sane had any incentive to go wandering off anywhere outside, even when they weren’t on duty. It was the closest thing to a long-duration submarine patrol that anyone not in the U.S. Navy could ever experience.
“What’s the word, sir?” one of them asked.
“As of this moment, we’re moving to DEFCON Three,” Flynn replied, “along with all other U.S. bases, ships, and air squadrons around the world. For some reason, our Russian friends have moved all of their own fighters, strike aircraft, strategic bombers, and SAM forces to full alert.”
“Holy shit,” Hynes said in amazement. “Are we at war?”
“Not as far as I know,” Flynn told him. He glanced down at the time stamp on the alert message they’d been sent. He grinned crookedly. “Well, at least we weren’t as of fifteen minutes ago.”
“That isn’t exactly comforting, Captain,” Hynes said.
Flynn shrugged. “I didn’t mean it to be, PFC.” He looked around the crowded dining area. “Anyway, as of now, y’all are just as much in the loop as I am.”
Effortlessly, Takirak shouldered his way through the group of suddenly nervous-looking soldiers and airmen. “What are your orders, sir?” he asked quietly. Alone of everyone, he seemed completely unfazed by the sudden turn of events.
Flynn nodded. “Glad you asked, Sergeant,” he said, forcing himself to sound confident and in command. “As a first step, I want you to take a six-man patrol out pronto and set up a chain of two-man observation posts somewhere between here and the west end of the island. Make sure you’ve got decent fields of fire to cover the open ground around this station.”
Takirak considered that. “It’s pretty cold out there right now, Captain. Around ten below zero. Four hours outside is the maximum time I’d recommend—unless we’re setting up camp.”
“We’ll rotate your team back inside after four hours,” Flynn assured him. “I’ll take over your OPs with the other half of the team for the next shift, while your guys get some hot food and rest. Then we’ll trade off again.”
“How long do you figure to keep this four-on, four-off rotation going?” the National Guard sergeant asked.
“However long it takes the geniuses in D.C. to pin down what the Russians are doing,” Flynn said. “If Moscow’s only running a big-assed readiness exercise, we ought to get the word to stand down pretty soon.”
“And if this isn’t just a drill?”
Flynn smiled thinly. “Then the weather will be the least of our problems, Sergeant.”
Takirak shot him an equally tight grin in response. “Point taken, sir.” He swung around and started jabbing fingers at some of the watching soldiers and airmen. “Hynes, Vucovich, Sanchez, Kim, and Boyd, you’re with me. You’ve got ten minutes to report back here in full cold weather gear, with your weapons and ammunition. So move!”
They scattered instantly, heading for their racks to grab their equipment and then struggle into multiple layers of clothing designed to protect them from extreme cold—everything from long underwear, Gore-Tex pants, and fleece jackets to thick parkas, balaclavas, goggles, boots, and gloves. Even a few days under the veteran NCO’s tutelage had taught them that “Takirak time” was precise. Ten minutes meant ten minutes and not a single second more, not unless you wanted to get seriously lit up in front of every other guy in the unit.
Flynn looked at the five men who were still left. “As for you guys, I suggest you grab some extra shut-eye while you can.” Slowly, Mitchell and the others drifted away, talking the situation over in low, worried-sounding voices.
When they were gone, Takirak lowered his voice and leaned closer to Flynn. “Just so I understand your thinking, sir, what’s the real purpose behind deploying these observation posts?”
“Meaning, have I gone loco and actually started believing that the Russians might attack this radar site with helicopters or paratroops, instead of lobbing a couple of cruise missiles our way?” Flynn said wryly.
Takirak nodded. “Something along those lines.”
“Then, no, I haven’t gone nuts. I see this as a casualty reduction measure,” Flynn told him very quietly. “If the shit really does hit the fan, this place is going to get blown to hell—and there won’t be a damned thing we can do to stop that from happening. But at least any of our guys posted outside will have a decent shot at coming through alive and unhurt.”
“Makes sense,” the older man said. He shrugged. “Well, anyway, this’ll be a good training opportunity for us.”
Flynn looked at him curiously. “You don’t think this alert could turn hot?”
“I suppose it could,” Takirak said slowly. Then he shook his head. “But I don’t see what the Russians would have to gain. Those men in Moscow aren’t fools. Why would they start a war now? Over what? And doing it by massing a bunch of their bombers and fighters in plain view like this? So we have plenty of warning? That’s nuts.”
Flynn raised an eyebrow. “What would your plan be, Andy?”
“Hell, Captain, I’d just smuggle a nuke into D.C. and set it off. Take out our top political and military leaders like that, without warning, and any war’s already halfway to being won.”
Flynn laughed. “I guess I should be glad you’re not on the Russian General Staff.”
“Who, me?” Takirak shook his head. “No, thanks. I have my hands full just keeping goofballs like Mitchell and Hynes squared away.”
“Amen to that, Sergeant,” Flynn agreed devoutly.
Twenty
Sharapovo Nuclear Comm
and Bunker, outside Moscow
The Next Morning
Buried deep beneath the ground, the massive Sharapovo command bunker was roughly thirty-three kilometers southwest of the Kremlin, at the terminus of one of Russia’s secret subway tunnels. It was also sited within a few kilometers of Vnukovo International, the oldest of the four airports around Moscow. Depending on events, that proximity allowed the possibility of evacuating some of the five thousand high-ranking officials, military officers, assistants, and dependents inside the bunker to even more distant, and presumably, safer regions.
At the moment, however, further flight was the last thing on the mind of Russia’s president, Piotr Zhdanov. He was meeting with his closest military and political advisers inside a secure command center at the bunker’s lowest level. Thick armored doors and squads of armed guards sealed this chamber off from the rest of the complex. Even in ordinary times, only those with the very highest security clearance were ever admitted inside. That was true now more than ever.
As hours passed without any sign of the missing PAK-DA stealth bomber, guesses about its possible fate had grown increasingly wild. By now, analysts concluded, its fuel reserves must be exhausted. And yet, no cruise missiles had been launched at any cities or military installations in the United States, China, or Russia itself. Nor had there been any triumphant news flashes from Washington or Beijing announcing the defection of pilots flying Russia’s most advanced experimental aircraft. Now there was speculation by some that the bomber must have crashed somewhere, either accidentally or as an act of suicidal remorse by its traitorous crew. Others suggested that perhaps Major General Mavrichev, taken prisoner originally, had been able to break loose and bring the plane down in a final act of patriotic self-sacrifice.
But now all of those comforting theories had just come crashing back to earth. Moscow’s most secure communications channels had received an encrypted signal—a signal that could only have been transmitted from the PAK-DA stealth bomber prototype. Hurriedly summoned from their quarters, barely an hour after their last futile conference broke up, Zhdanov and his most trusted advisers had convened again to hear this message.
