by Dale Brown
“We’re ready, Mr. President,” the officer in charge of the command center’s audiovisual systems said quietly. “My technical people have finished decrypting and decompressing the signal. Naturally, there may be some minimal degradation of video and audio quality.”
“Screw the technobabble,” Zhdanov rasped. With hands that shook slightly, he lit another cigarette. Nicotine and strong tea were taking the place of sleep during this crisis. He nodded angrily. “Go on, Colonel. Just play the damned video.”
Silently, the colonel pushed a control on the console in front of him. A large screen mounted on one wall came to life. Seconds later, the faintly flickering, recorded image of Colonel Alexei Petrov appeared before them. The video had been shot inside the cockpit of the PAK-DA prototype.
“Good morning, Mr. President,” Petrov began without preamble. His expression was serious. “By now, you must realize that I have taken control over this aircraft and its weapons. At this very moment, the bomber is safely on the ground, far outside your reach. You can no more hope to recover it through your own efforts than you can hope to put a man on the moon before the sun sets tonight.”
Zhdanov bit down on a curse. This traitor was mocking him. His inability to promise a manned Russian lunar landing any time sooner than the next twenty years—at a time when both the American and Chinese space programs were racing ahead—was a source of long-standing irritation and shame.
“Which brings me to the crux of this matter,” Petrov continued somberly. “If you want the PAK-DA stealth bomber, its deadly payload, and all of its many secrets back safely, you will have to pay for them all . . . and pay dearly. To the tune of two hundred billion rubles.”
That created a stir of disbelief and dismay among the watching officers and government officials. Two hundred billion rubles was more than 2.6 billion U.S. dollars. Such a figure represented a huge sum for Russia’s increasingly cash-strapped government and military.
“I have attached an additional file to this signal. It contains the detailed instructions required to make this payment,” Petrov went on.
Zhdanov glanced at the colonel. The younger man nodded. “We found such a file, sir. It’s been relayed to Federal Security Service experts for analysis.”
Petrov leaned closer to the camera. “But let me be blunt. There will be no bargaining, no haggling. In fact, for every seventy-two hours that elapses from the transmission of this signal without full payment, the price you must pay will increase. The longer you delay, the more it will cost you to regain the stealth bomber and the twelve nuclear-armed Kh-102 cruise missiles currently in my sole possession.” He shrugged. “Should you be tempted to play foolish games and ignore this warning, consider this: While I remain a Russian patriot, despite the weakened, corrupted state of your government and our society, my patience, and that of those who have backed me, is not limitless. If necessary, we will sell the PAK-DA prototype and its weapons to a foreign power—one that will welcome the opportunity to pry open our nation’s most tightly held technological and military secrets.” On the screen, the camera zoomed in on the renegade colonel’s utterly determined face. “Consider the consequences carefully, Mr. President. Don’t fuck this up. Petrov out.” The screen blanked.
For a few moments more, Zhdanov said nothing. Then he glared around the table. “Well?” he demanded. “What do we do now?”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Somewhat understandably, none of the assembled generals and senior government officials wanted to be the first to stick his neck out on what could all too easily become the president’s chopping block. Finally, Rogozin reluctantly cleared his throat. “I think it would be best if we took some additional time to analyze the available data, Mr. President.” The Air Force chief looked pale. “The situation we now confront is . . . unprecedented.” Other heads inclined marginally in agreement.
“True,” Zhdanov said harshly. “If by unprecedented, you mean a complete catastrophe.” He glanced at his watch. “Very well, you have one hour.” The expression in his cold eyes hardened. “But not a single minute more. Clear?”
Then, without waiting for further responses, he got up and walked out—leaving his silent advisers still seated, warily staring at each other.
True to his word, Piotr Zhdanov returned to the command center precisely sixty minutes later. Briefly, he’d toyed with the idea of delaying longer, knowing the wait would further unnerve the generals and officials who’d failed him so singularly thus far. But faced with Petrov’s own hard deadline, he’d finally decided the pleasure of making them sweat wasn’t worth the loss of more time.
He dropped into his chair. “All right, gentlemen. Let’s get started.” He stabbed a finger at the now-blank wall screen. “First, can we trace that son of a bitch Petrov’s message back to its point of transmission?”
Rogozin shook his head. “I’m afraid not. The PAK-DA prototype’s strategic communications system is completely secure. We designed it specifically to handle signals between strike aircraft and higher headquarters under wartime conditions. It’s essentially undetectable by any enemy, and, unfortunately, equally untraceable by us now.”
“Explain that,” Zhdanov said.
“The system automatically encrypts any message and compresses it to a microsecond burst,” Rogozin said. “Those blips are then relayed to our orbiting Meridian-class military communications satellites and beamed back down to receiving stations here.”
Zhdanov frowned. “Don’t our satellites record where the signal originated?”
“No, sir,” Rogozin said uncomfortably. “As a precaution against the possibility of American hacking which could allow them to track our bombers in flight, our programmers deleted that function.”
“Wonderful,” the Russian president said dryly. “A piece of brilliant software design that’s just bitten us in the ass.” He turned toward a paunchy, gray-haired man farther down the table. Konstantin Yumashev was the director of the Federal Security Service, the FSB. Largely responsible for counterintelligence, counterterrorism, border security, and political surveillance, the FSB’s ranks also included specialists in cybersecurity and financial crimes. “Can your people exploit that file containing Petrov’s payment instructions, Yumashev?”
The FSB director looked apologetic. “It’s highly unlikely, Mr. President. My experts tell me the funds transfer instruction the colonel attached appears uncrackable. If we agree to meet his demands, any money we deposit will undoubtedly vanish deeper into an intricate web of secret accounts within minutes, perhaps only seconds. With a tremendous expenditure of time and effort, my people might be able to pry their way into the top layer of financial institutions used as transfer nodes, but, ultimately, the odds are very much against our ever finding the ultimate destination.”
Zhdanov nodded his understanding. Like many of those in this room, he maintained his own network of private, offshore bank accounts. So he was already intimately familiar with the methods required to shield certain . . . dubious . . . financial transactions from inconvenient public or regulatory scrutiny. His brow furrowed in thought. The fact that a relatively junior Air Force officer like Petrov apparently knew how to game the international banking system so effectively strongly suggested the colonel’s boast about having powerful backers was accurate.
He frowned, wondering who they might be. Between enemies he’d made here at home and enemies he’d made abroad, the list of possible suspects would be very long. Then he shrugged. First things first, he reminded himself. Right now, recovering the PAK-DA bomber prototype had to be his top priority. For the moment, vengeance would have to take second place.
Once more, Zhdanov ran his cold gaze around the crowded table. “Recommendations?” he snapped.
Of them all, bald-headed Gennadiy Kokorin was the first one with the guts to speak up. The elderly minister of defense was very close to retirement. Perhaps between that and his long years of loyal service, he felt he had relatively little to lose. “Meeting
Colonel Petrov’s demands might be safest, Piotr,” he said quietly. “Admittedly, his price is very steep, but seeing the Americans or the Chinese get their hands on our new bomber prototype would be much worse.”
Zhdanov shook his head. “I will not pay this traitor so much as a single kopek, let alone two hundred billion rubles.” His jaw tightened. No matter how hard they tried to keep such a decision secret, word that he’d yielded so tamely to blackmail would be sure to leak out. It would make him appear fatally weak at a time of growing political unrest. Essentially, if he caved in to Petrov’s terms, he’d be signing his own political death warrant. Besides, such cowardice would also open the door to other greedy fools throughout Russia’s armed forces and other government ministries—fools who might decide to imitate the colonel’s criminal example for their own gains.
“But the Americans—” Kokorin began to protest.
“Screw the Americans,” Zhdanov said coarsely, cutting the older man off. “And screw the Chinese, too. For the record, Gennadiy, we’re not going to let Beijing or Washington buy the PAK-DA out from under our noses.”
“Then what do you want us to do?” the defense minister asked.
“If possible, I want the stealth bomber recaptured,” Zhdanov replied. “But if necessary, I want the aircraft completely destroyed. If we can’t have it, no one else will.” He saw his advisers nod enthusiastically in agreement. Of course they agree, he thought sourly. Now that I’ve made the hard decision on my own, they’ll back me up. And then deny having had any responsibility if things go wrong. He turned back to Rogozin. “Which means our first step must be to find out where Petrov has landed.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” the Air Force commander agreed. He sighed. “One thing is clear: this is an organized conspiracy. While it might be possible for the colonel and his copilot to have stolen the PAK-DA on their own, it would be absolutely impossible for them to find a suitable landing field and then conceal the bomber without substantial help on the ground.”
Kokorin nodded somberly. “Very true, General.” He shook his head. “Since Petrov hasn’t yet turned the aircraft over to a foreign government, he’s almost certainly in league with a powerful criminal cabal.” He rubbed a weary hand across his bald scalp. “Probably the Mafiya or some other organized crime group.”
Zhdanov noticed that some of his advisers looked even more worried by that possibility. That was no surprise, he supposed. Many of Moscow’s political and military elites had at least an arm’s-length relationship with the capital’s wealthier crime bosses. Like was attracted to like, he thought cynically. Now, no doubt, some of them were nervously considering the prospect that those ties might suddenly land them in very hot water, at least if any of their Mafiya “friends” turned out to be involved in Petrov’s scheme. He made a note to himself to consult with Yumashev after this meeting. Many of the FSB’s agents were probably on the take, too, but an investigation might still bear fruit—especially if it became a choice between a firing squad on the one hand or losing a little extra under-the-table income on the other.
“We’ll worry about who’s helping the traitor later,” he said impatiently. “Right now, I want your best guesses as to where the PAK-DA could be.”
In answer, Rogozin tapped a control on the computer keyboard at his place. The wall screen lit up again, this time showing a digital map of the entire world. “Determining its hiding place will be very difficult,” he warned. “Fully fueled, the stealth bomber prototype had a maximum range of eleven thousand kilometers.” On the screen, a bright red circle centered on the bomber’s last-known position, the refueling rendezvous point over the Yenisei River in central Russia, rapidly expanded outward until it reached a radius of eleven thousand kilometers. “And, as you can see, that means almost all of the world’s landmasses and major islands were within its reach.”
Zhdanov nodded grimly, astonished despite himself at what he saw. Petrov could theoretically have flown anywhere in all of Russia, North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and most of Australia. It was an enormous area, containing dozens of separate countries and close to two hundred million square kilometers, much of it sparsely populated forests, jungles, steppes, deserts, and mountains.
“Fortunately,” Rogozin continued, “we can rule out certain major areas immediately.” He touched another key. Europe blanked off the large digital map. “Given Europe’s population density, high level of law enforcement, and the sheer numbers of other civilian and military aircraft operating inside its tightly monitored airspace last night, there is virtually no chance that Petrov could have flown anywhere there without being detected. Nor could he have hoped to land unobserved.”
Another swipe by Rogozin’s fingers eliminated a second large swath of the globe, this time the Middle East and Africa.
“How can you eliminate those regions as possible hiding places? Especially so quickly?” Zhdanov objected. “Huge portions of Africa and the Middle East are only thinly peopled. And in many of those same areas, there are almost no functioning governments, only warring tribes and rival religious and political factions.”
“That’s true, Mr. President,” Rogozin acknowledged. He entered a new command on his computer. Icons depicting military aircraft, alerted air defense radars, and missile sites suddenly appeared on the wall map. They were deployed along a wide band from Turkey and Georgia through Turkmenistan and all the way to Afghanistan. “But we observed intense American and American allied air activity all across this zone last night. True, the PAK-DA’s stealth features might have allowed it to evade their observation, but Petrov would know that he could not count on that, at a time when even a fleeting detection could lead to disaster.”
The defense minister nodded his concurrence. “Yvgeny is right, Piotr,” Kokorin said. “Besides, where could Petrov hope to find safety on the ground in Africa or the Middle East, in places where the real power is in the hands of terrorists, murderous chieftains, and religious fanatics? It would be madness for him to assume he could hide a large aircraft from such people for any real length of time.”
Zhdanov shrugged. Perhaps they were right. He waved a hand at the digital map. “What about some isolated spot in Southeast Asia, then? Or maybe a desert landing strip out in the empty Australian Outback?”
Rogozin shook his head. “It’s highly unlikely. Reaching either place would have required the PAK-DA to penetrate some of the most heavily defended airspace in the world—by flying across the People’s Republic of China, the Korean Peninsula, or Japan.”
“So you believe Petrov flew our stolen bomber north,” Zhdanov realized.
“Yes, Mr. President.” The general touched more keys, highlighting all of northern Russia, the unclaimed Arctic, Alaska, and much of northern Canada. “Most of these regions are almost completely unsettled. And while the idea that anyone could have constructed a hidden airfield somewhere in these tens of millions of square kilometers of wilderness might seem far-fetched at first—”
“Some bastards have done it, nonetheless,” Zhdanov said tersely.
Rogozin nodded. “So it appears.”
Zhdanov stared at the highlighted zones of the map, almost mesmerized by its enormous extent. This was not a comparatively simple case of finding a needle in a farmer’s haystack, he realized grimly. This was more like hunting for a single grain of sand in the wastes of the Gobi Desert. For a moment, he felt sure the task was impossible. But then he dismissed this feeling as unnecessarily pessimistic, the product of too little sleep and too much stress. He reminded himself that what one man could hide, other men, especially those equipped with sophisticated satellites, air-to-ground radars, and high-resolution cameras, could find.
He spun back to Rogozin and Kokorin. “All right! I want a full mobilization of every reconnaissance asset in our arsenal. All our satellites, all our aircraft, all our drones! Everything! Scour this entire area, starting with our own territory.”
The Air Force general frowned, deep in th
ought. “We only have four of our frontline Tu-214R recon planes in service,” he admitted. “But I can convert some of our Tu-95 strategic bombers for reconnaissance, perhaps as many as ten in the next twenty-four hours.”
“That’s not enough!” Zhdanov said curtly. “Only fourteen aircraft? You’d still be looking for Petrov when the Last Judgment arrives!” He swiveled toward a short, compact officer seated directly across the table. Admiral Nikolai Golitsyn commanded the Russian Navy. Throughout the entire discussion, he’d been very quiet—undoubtedly grateful that this was an Air Force mess and not one that involved his own officers and men. “How many Tu-142 and IL-38 maritime patrol planes can you provide, Golitsyn?”
Both the larger Tu-142 and smaller IL-38 multi-engine turboprops were equipped with powerful surface search radars and infrared sensors. While they were ordinarily tasked with hunting enemy warships and submarines at sea, it wouldn’t be difficult for their crews to learn to use the same equipment to look for the PAK-DA bomber hidden somewhere in forests, mountains, or trackless tundra and ice fields.
The admiral looked blank for a moment. Then a junior aide seated behind him leaned forward and hurriedly whispered the answer in his ear. “Approximately twenty of each type, Mr. President,” he said confidently.
“Good!” Zhdanov said. “Transfer them all to Rogozin immediately. I don’t want any confusion caused by mixed chains of command.”
For an instant, Golitsyn opened his mouth to protest, but then he closed it just as quickly. This was not a sensible time to insist on the Russian Navy’s prerogatives, not with the president so obviously eager to find scapegoats to blame for this unfolding disaster.
