by Dale Brown
“Or just as likely an equipment glitch or some kind of weird weather phenomenon,” Neary argued. “The whole Arctic region’s getting hammered by snow and ice storms right now.”
“Yes, sir,” the admiral agreed calmly. “But it’s at least a data point.”
“One that doesn’t get us much further,” the Air Force chief of staff retorted. “The North Warning System radar network creates a relatively thin air surveillance zone along the northern frontier of both Alaska and Canada. Once the perimeter is penetrated, we have almost no ability to track an unidentified aircraft flying deeper into the North American interior, especially if it’s coming in low or has stealth features.”
Chao looked unmoved. “At the very least, it suggests Colonel Petrov has chosen to conceal the bomber in territory we control, rather than inside his own country’s borders. That could provide us with a useful clue to his ultimate goals.”
“For God’s sake, Kristin,” Neary snapped, “I don’t see how you can possibly draw that conclusion—”
“Hold on there, you two,” Taylor interrupted, jumping in to tamp down what was threatening to become an open argument between the two high-ranking military officers. “You can’t fight in here. This is the War Room.”
For a moment, both the general and the admiral stared at him in astonishment. But then, almost unwillingly, they grinned sheepishly. “Sorry about that, Mr. Secretary,” Neary told him. Chao nodded her own mute apology.
“Don’t sweat it,” Taylor said mildly. “I don’t imagine anyone here got much sleep last night, so it’s no surprise if tempers are a little frayed.” He looked carefully around the table. “Which is why, right now, I’d like to focus our limited energies on the biggest question we face.”
“Which is: do we pay Petrov to get our hands on the PAK-DA prototype?” Miranda Reynolds said quietly.
“Score one for the CIA,” Taylor said with a slight smile.
Absentmindedly, Murphy rubbed at his chin, frowning a little when he felt the patches of stubble his quick shave on the way to the Pentagon had missed. “There are a lot of pluses,” he said carefully. “Sure Petrov’s asking for a lot of money, but conventional intelligence efforts to acquire accurate data on Russia’s stealth bomber program could easily end up costing us nearly as much over time. Not to mention taking years to produce results . . . and, in all probability, yielding far less useful information. The same goes for those advanced cruise missiles he says are aboard. Not only that, but just knowing that we’ve got their prototype, its electronics, and its weapons payload would compel Moscow to dramatically reengineer their stealth bomber and missile programs—at a huge expenditure in time and money.” He turned to General Neary. “How much did the B-2 Spirit program cost us?”
“Somewhere north of forty billion in current dollars, not counting procurement,” the Air Force chief of staff told him.
Murphy nodded. “Exactly. So by spending what’s basically pocket change in the context of the federal budget, we could force the Russians to pony up billions more for a whole new bomber design. It’s a win-win for us.”
Neary frowned deeply.
“You have a problem with the director’s analysis, General?” Taylor asked.
“Yes, sir, I do,” Neary said. “What if we’re wrong about this? What if Petrov didn’t steal the PAK-DA bomber prototype at all? What if this is just an elaborate ruse orchestrated by Russian intelligence . . . and the aircraft that we’re supposedly buying is still sitting safely inside a hangar on some Russian air base?”
“Jesus,” Taylor muttered. “That would be . . . bad. Very bad.”
Neary nodded. “We’d get caught paying billions of taxpayer dollars to Moscow for nothing. Not only would that inflict a lethal political blow to the president and his administration, it would humiliate the entire U.S. national security establishment as well. We’d be the laughingstock of the whole world.” He shrugged. “Sure, the video sent to Ms. Reynolds shows this guy Petrov in some kind of fancy cockpit. But none of us knows what the inside of the real PAK-DA bomber looks like. Nor are there any shots of the outside. For all we really know, the whole thing could easily have been shot on a GRU- or SVR-built film set.”
“There is another problem, even if Petrov’s offer is genuine,” Rear Admiral Chao commented. “It’s pretty clear that he’s getting a lot of help from someone we don’t know anything about. If it turns out he’s in league with Russian organized crime, or drug lords, or maybe even terrorists, the blowback from our funneling so much U.S. government money to them could be horrific.”
Taylor winced, obviously imagining how that would play out in Congress and the press. The defense secretary wasn’t a Washington insider by experience or inclination, but even a few short months on the job had taught him the savagery with which political war was waged in the nation’s capital. He sighed. “Okay, it looks like whether or not we meet Colonel Petrov’s demands is a decision that’s way above all our pay grades. I’ll brief the president as soon as I can, but my bet is that nobody in the White House is going to want to jump in with both feet on this. Not without a hell of a lot more information than we can give them right now.”
“I do have one request, Mr. Secretary,” Miranda Reynolds said. “I’d like your permission to deploy the specialist go team I’ve organized to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska.”
“The one with experts from the Air Force’s Foreign Material squadron?” Taylor asked.
She nodded. “Plus CIA and Air Force security personnel.” She looked down the table toward Chao. “If the rear admiral is correct, and Petrov has landed somewhere in northern Alaska or northern Canada, staging out of Elmendorf would put our team in position to move fast if we spot the PAK-DA bomber on the ground. Or in case we do strike a deal.”
“Good thinking,” Taylor said simply. “You’ve got my blessing. Get your team on its way to Anchorage as soon as possible.”
Twenty-Two
Totem One, over Northern Alaska
The Next Day
Totem One, a four-engine HC-130J Super Hercules combat search-and-rescue aircraft assigned to the Alaska Air National Guard’s 211th Rescue Squadron, rocked and jolted and bounced through the sky. It was flying through the upper fringes of a fierce winter storm blanketing the whole state. Patches of night sky sprinkled with stars appeared and disappeared whenever the plane crossed into towering cloud banks that cut visibility to nil and then came back out into clear air.
“Cripes,” Major Jack “Ripper” Ingalls muttered, gripping the steering yoke tight. “I think General Arcaro hates me.”
His copilot, Captain Laura “Skater” Van Horn, shook her head. “No, he doesn’t hate you, Rip.”
“He doesn’t?”
She smiled. “Nope. His feelings toward you go way beyond simple hatred. In fact, I’d say he despises you with all the passion of a thousand hot, flaming suns.” She nodded out the cockpit windows at the boiling sea of clouds. “I mean, why else assign us a ‘routine’ night training flight—right in the middle of the first really big storm of this season?”
Ingalls laughed. “Well, the general said he thought it’d be a good way to keep our flying skills honed.”
Van Horn snorted. “Uh-huh. And King David told Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah the Hittite, he wanted him to lead in battle because it was an honor.”
“You know, your analysis of this situation isn’t exactly making me feel better about myself, Skater,” Ingalls said. He kept his eyes moving over the cockpit’s multifunction displays and gauges. “Remind me to have you read that Air Force pamphlet on the importance of maintaining high crew morale once we get back to base.”
She pretended to sigh loudly. “What, again?”
“Yes, again,” the HC-130 pilot said firmly, with a quick, sidelong smile.
“You know, touchy-feely stuff like that is probably why Arcaro hates you so much,” Van Horn said with a grin of her own.
Ingalls shrugged. “A man’s gotta do
what a—” A sudden alarm and a red caution and warning light cut him off short.
“Number Two engine shutdown,” Van Horn said sharply. She toggled a switch. “Fire handle pulled.” And then another. “Engine Start switch to stop. Fuel pump secured.” Swiftly, she scanned their ACAWS—Advisory, Caution, and Warning System—message text. “Gearbox Two, no oil pressure.”
Ingalls ran his eyes over his own display. “I confirm Gearbox Two, no oil pressure.” He glanced out the cockpit window at their left wing. The six-bladed propeller on the inmost engine was stationary. “Number Two is feathered. No signs of a fire.”
“For small favors, let us be very, very grateful,” Van Horn said devoutly. She glanced at the pilot. “Okay, Rip, what now?”
“Now you take the aircraft,” he said, sounding perfectly calm and in control. “Thus allowing me, as the august aircraft commander, to focus all my attention on managing this deplorable situation.”
She nodded, settling her hands firmly on the yoke in front of her and giving it a quick shake to verify that she did indeed have her hands on the yoke. “Yes, sir. I have the aircraft.”
“You have the aircraft, Captain,” Ingalls confirmed formally, slightly relaxing his own grip. He keyed his radio mike. “Elmendorf Control, this is Totem One. I am declaring an inflight emergency. We’ve lost our Number Two engine. No fire, repeat, no fire.”
“Copy that, Totem,” an air traffic controller replied. “Advise your intention.”
Ingalls considered that. Technically, their HC-130J was rated to continue missions with the loss of a single engine. That was especially true for this training flight, without any heavy cargo or passengers aboard the aircraft. But the idea of trying to make it back to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, nearly five hundred nautical miles away, in the middle of a storm, wasn’t that appealing—especially down one engine for unknown causes. If one engine could crap out like this, there was no guarantee that a second and a third wouldn’t do the same thing at the worst possible moment. Eielson Air Force Base at Fairbanks was considerably closer, but it would still take them forty-five minutes to get there. And the most direct flight path to Eielson meant crossing the Brooks Range, some of the highest and most rugged country in all of Alaska. Yeah, no thanks on that, he decided.
“What’s the status of Deadhorse?” he radioed. The airport serving the Prudhoe Bay oil fields was just sixty nautical miles northeast of their current position. It didn’t have a control tower, but at least the runway was paved.
“Deadhorse is shut down,” the controller reported. “Visibility is currently nil, with blowing snow and very high winds.”
“Crap,” Ingalls muttered. “Okay, how about Barter Island?”
“Wait one.”
Van Horn shook her head. “Barter Island? Man, that’s the back end of nowhere. I’ve flown in there a couple of times. It’s just a gravel strip.” The aircraft hit another pocket of turbulence and shook from end to end. “Which on a night like this is going to be ass-deep in snow and ice.”
Ingalls shrugged. “Right now, I’ll take just about any runway in a storm, Skater. And if we lose another engine, I’m gonna be happy if we can even find some relatively flat piece of tundra to set down on.”
“Totem, this is Elmendorf,” the air controller’s voice said through his headset. “There’s a small security detachment posted at the radar station there. I just checked with them. They report the storm’s died down a little there, with north winds diminishing to about half of what they were an hour ago. The ceiling’s only around fifteen hundred feet and visibility’s not great, maybe a mile, maybe less. There may also be debris on the runway. Our guys are moving out now to check that and clear the strip if necessary—but they say it’ll take some time.”
“Copy that, Elmendorf,” Ingalls said, pulling up Barter Island on his navigation display. “Tell that security detachment we’re heading their way. We should be overhead in about thirty minutes. Whatever they can do to clear the runway by then will be much appreciated, but we’re going to try to set this crate down fast . . . before the storm closes in again.”
“Understood, Totem,” the controller replied. “And good luck.”
Ingalls glanced across the cockpit. “Okay, Skater, let’s come to zero-four-five. But take it real easy on your turn, okay? Keep your angle of bank well under twenty-five degrees and watch your airspeed and power settings.”
“Copy that,” Van Horn said tightly. They needed to bank left, which meant turning into their dead Number Two engine. With the aircraft’s three other engines still operational, that was doable. Still, extreme caution was necessary to avoid any risk of losing control due to asymmetric thrust. Slowly, she turned her steering yoke. Her eyes darted across her displays and gauges to make sure there were no other developing problems.
Gingerly, the Super Hercules rolled gently left—gradually coming around to the northeast as it headed directly toward Barter Island through a storm-cloud-covered night sky.
Barter Island Airport
A Short Time Later
Through his night vision goggles, Captain Nick Flynn could just about make out the far end of the snow-covered runway. Beyond that, a glittering haze of blowing snow and ice crystals obscured everything. Since he was roughly two-thirds of the way down the strip, he estimated that put current visibility at a little more than half a mile. The wind must be starting to strengthen again, he thought grimly. Not exactly great timing, since that crippled HC-130J couldn’t be more than a few minutes out.
Pairs of glowing yellow lights stretched away in both directions. They marked the edges of the hundred-foot-wide runway. Silhouetted against those lights, the soldiers and airmen of his Joint Force team were frantically clearing away pieces of windblown debris that littered the snow. The fierce blizzard that had been pounding Kaktovik and the radar station for more than two days had torn shingles, pieces of metal siding, canvas tarps, and even satellite dishes loose, along with bags of trash, broken-down cardboard boxes, empty barrels, and other abandoned objects—sending them all skittering across the open tundra. This mix of FOD, foreign object debris, was now a serious threat to the big turboprop headed here for an emergency landing. Metal shards or other solid trash sucked into the Super Hercules’s propellers or engine intakes during landing could easily cause catastrophic damage.
Painfully aware that they were running very low on time to get this job done, Flynn got back to work. He leaned over, grabbed a bent section of siding half buried in the surface, and yanked hard. Nothing. The damn thing didn’t move an inch. Grunting, he tightened his grip and yanked even harder. This time it broke free from the ice and came loose in his gloved hands. Like a discus thrower, he spun around in a single motion and hurled the piece of crumpled siding away from the runway as hard as he could. A powerful gust caught the warped metal panel and sent it spinning end over end through the air.
Senior Airman Mark Mitchell grabbed his arm. “Sir!” the radioman screamed into his ear to be heard over the north wind shrieking low across the island. He held up the handset connected to their AN/PRC-162 radio. “I’ve got contact with that Herky Bird. They’re on final right now! They want our guys off the runway, ASAP!”
Flynn snapped his head around and looked west. He spotted a faint glow low in the sky there. The HC-130J had its high-intensity landing lights on, spearing through the darkness and the curtain of blowing snow and ice. That glow was growing brighter fast. The big aircraft must be coming straight in at more than 150 knots. “Pass the word, M-Squared,” he yelled at the radioman. “Tell everyone to clear the strip! You go, too! Now!”
“Yes, sir!” Mitchell nodded frantically. Shouting into the handset to relay the order, he turned and jogged away.
Flynn swung around through a full circle and saw the rest of his men scattering off the runway. All except one. About a hundred yards away, the short, square-shouldered figure of Private First Class Cole Hynes hadn’t budged. The soldier had his head down while he stubbo
rnly wrestled with another big piece of debris. He didn’t seem to have heard the order to get clear. And he was apparently too fixated on his task to notice that everybody else around him was bailing out.
Damn it, Flynn thought. Maybe the other man’s radio was broken. Or maybe its batteries were dead, drained by the subzero temperatures. He cupped his hands and yelled as loudly as he could. “Hynes!”
It was useless. The howling wind caught his voice and tore it to shreds.
Down at the far end of the runway, the big HC-130J appeared suddenly out of the darkness and snow. It was no more than fifty feet above the ground and descending rapidly.
Shit, Flynn realized. He was out of time. Frantically, he sprinted toward Hynes, who had his back to the oncoming Super Hercules. He didn’t waste any more breath yelling.
The aircraft touched down hard, bounced once, and then settled firmly onto the ground—thundering straight down the runway right at the two men. Plumes of pulverized snow and ice sprayed out behind its massive landing gear and whirling propellers.
At the last moment, Hynes looked up, brushing at the snow dusting his goggles with an irritated gesture. His mouth opened in surprise. “Hey, Cap—”
And Flynn, still running all out, threw himself forward—and slammed straight into the shorter enlisted man. The hard, diving tackle knocked Hynes backward off his feet, with Flynn ending up on top. Desperately, he buried his face into the icy surface of the runway . . . just as the left wing of the speeding Super Hercules slashed past right overhead.
For a split second, the whole universe became a hurricane-force maelstrom of shattering, deafening noise and pounding winds, snow, and razor-sharp fragments of ice. And then, blessedly, the noise and pummeling died away.
