Price of Duty

by Dale Brown

  “You pull on your jacket and gloves, Sergeant,” his supervisor growled. “And then you leave your nice cushy kiosk and do your job the way you were trained, with a logbook, a pencil, your brain, and your eyes.”

  In all the confusion over the next several hours, it never occurred to Edvardas Noreika to connect the two big semi-trailer trucks he’d cleared through his control point with the malware infection raising hell in Vilnius.

  A couple of kilometers up the road, Spetsnaz lieutenant Mikhail Kuritsyn checked the text he’d just received. He glanced across the cab at the driver, Major Pavel Berezin. “Ringmaster confirms the Vilnius network is down, sir.”

  “Khorosho. Good,” the major said, keeping his eyes on the road. “It’s nice to know that Koshkin’s geeks managed to pull off phase one without stepping on their dicks.”

  Kuritsyn nodded. He turned away, hiding a lopsided smile. Like Captain Chirkash, Berezin was a technophobe. The lieutenant suspected the major had never met a computer he didn’t want to put a bullet in.

  Idly, he swiped at the truck cab’s passenger-side window. As the weather turned even colder, it was starting to fog up. His hand froze in midmotion.

  They were driving through a narrow belt of forest. There, in among the trees, he could see tracked vehicles parked under camouflage netting. They were American-made M113 armored personnel carriers. Several dozen soldiers in winter camouflage parkas were gathered around tiny field stoves, heating food or boiling water to make tea or coffee.

  “Don’t look now, but we have company, Major,” Kuritsyn murmured.

  “Relax, Mikhail,” Berezin said. “Our friends out there belong to the Grand Duchess Birutė Uhlan Battalion.” He chuckled. “They’re deployed to protect Lithuania against an invasion by those dastardly Russians.”

  “The ones who wear uniforms, you mean,” Kuritsyn said, matching the major’s sarcastic tone. “Not like us.”

  “Invade Lithuania? Us? Perish the thought, Lieutenant,” Berezin said with a grin. “Remember, we’re just passing through.”

  PODWOJPONIE BORDER-CONTROL POINT, POLAND

  SEVERAL HOURS LATER

  Although it was still early afternoon, it was already getting dark. Bright arc lights gleamed ahead. They were coming up to the Polish border checkpoint. Headlights flickered dimly in the distance, showing long lines of cars and trucks backed up waiting for permission to enter Poland.

  Berezin spun the wheel slightly, turning into the lane reserved for Polish-registered vehicles. Traffic there was moving, inching ahead in fits and starts. He and Chirkash had switched their Lithuanian license plates and registration documents for those from Poland not long after leaving Vilnius.

  When they reached the head of the line, he rolled down his window and offered his papers to the young Polish Customs Service officer who’d flagged him over to her station. Her breath steamed around her as she jotted down information in a thick logbook. “When did you leave Vilnius?” she asked.

  “This morning,” Berezin told her. “Right after breakfast.” He shook his head. “Man, things are screwed up on the Lithuanian side of the border. Their computers are down and it took us an hour to clear customs.”

  She nodded. “The same thing’s going on here.” She shrugged. “It’s a good thing you’re Polish. We’ll have you out of here in a jiffy.”

  “I appreciate it,” the Spetsnaz major said. He jerked a thumb at Kuritsyn. “So does my nephew. He promised his girlfriend he’d be home in time for a late dinner.”

  The customs officer pointed toward the long trailer behind their cab. “So what’s your load?”

  “Furniture,” Berezin replied. “A consignment of oak desks, bed frames, and dining room sets.”

  “Furniture? With this cold snap hitting and all the power outages, you might get a higher price selling it for kindling,” the young woman said with a bitter smile.

  Berezin matched her expression. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  “And what’s your destination today?” she asked, still taking notes.

  “Warsaw.”

  She nodded, handing back his papers. “Well, you should have an easy time of it from this point on. The snow’s not too bad yet, so the roads are still clear.”

  With that, she waved them on through the checkpoint. Berezin pulled back onto the highway and drove south. Behind them, the truck driven by Andrei Chirkash pulled up to the same customs officer.

  Sitting next to the major, Kuritsyn pulled out his secure cell phone and sent another short text, this one informing Ringmaster, Major General Glazkov, that they were proceeding toward their designated operational area.

  OVER RUSSIA

  SEVERAL HOURS LATER

  Cruising at forty thousand feet, Kalmar Airlines Flight 851 flew onward over Russia at 490 knots. The Boeing 777-300ER was on a long-haul red-eye flight from Shanghai in the People’s Republic of China to Helsinki, Finland. A large majority of the hundred and fifty or so passengers aboard were Chinese business executives headed west to explore new investment opportunities or oversee existing ventures. More than six hours after takeoff, most of them and some of the flight attendants were dozing in their seats, lulled by the pervasive roar of the wide-body jet’s powerful twin GE90-115B turbofan engines.

  Far off to the north, a few lights signaling the presence of small towns or cities dotted an otherwise pitch-black landscape. Apart from that, there was nothing to catch the attention of anyone peering down at the passing countryside. This part of Russia just west of the Urals was almost uninhabited—a vast region dominated by primeval forests and swampland.

  In the cockpit, Captain Kaarle Markkula ran through a routine check of the engine readouts shown on the large color flat-panel LCD display set squarely in the middle of the instrument panel. Everything was normal.

  To his right, First Officer Tuomas Saarela muttered something incomprehensible in his sleep, twisted awkwardly against his shoulder straps, and then drifted off again without ever really waking up. His mouth fell open as he snored.

  Markkula shook his head in envy. Saarela was one of those lucky people who seemed able to fall asleep almost anywhere in the blink of an eye if given half a chance. Night flights were the younger man’s favorite, since their passengers only wanted to grab some shut-eye themselves. They never wanted or expected the usual running monologues from the flight deck that were the bane of most airline flight crews’ existence.

  For one brief second, he was sorely tempted to take to the 777’s intercom. “On your right, you will see a vast expanse of nothing at all,” he could say. “And for those of you on the left side of the aircraft, you are fortunate enough to observe even more emptiness.”

  Instead, the Kalmar Airlines captain once more busied himself with scanning through his instrument readouts and displays. He decided to let Saarela sleep until they were ready to begin their descent toward Helsinki. Since they were still almost nine hundred nautical miles out from the Finnish capital, that wouldn’t be for at least another ninety minutes or so.

  What neither Kaarle Markkula nor anyone else aboard the 777 noticed was the large, twin-engine jet aircraft steadily closing on them from above and astern. Its navigation and running lights were off, rendering it almost invisible against the night sky.

  ABOARD THE TUPOLEV 214-R ELECTRONIC INTELLIGENCE AIRCRAFT, OVER RUSSIA

  THAT SAME TIME

  The Tu-214R was Russia’s most advanced electronic intelligence aircraft. Bulges studded its fuselage, containing the sensors and antennas that allowed it to intercept, analyze, and record a wide range of enemy radars, radio transmissions, and other forms of communication.

  For more than a week, its flight crew had practiced intercepting and flying undetected in ever-closer formation with a number of different foreign and domestic airliners traversing Russian airspace. But tonight’s mission was not another drill. This was the real thing.

  Inside the Tu-214R’s darkened main cabin, two dozen Russian Air Force officers occupie
d the computer and electronic intelligence workstations lining the sides of the fuselage. Specially selected from among the top graduates of the Zhukov Air and Space Defense Academy in Tver, they were each expert in different fields of signals intelligence collection and analysis. None of them really understood why they were operating so far inside Russian airspace, where all they could detect were friendly radar emissions and radio and cell-phone traffic. Ordinarily, their aircraft flew intelligence-gathering missions along the periphery of potentially hostile nations—including flights that took them right up to the edge of American airspace.

  Despite their curiosity, the Tu-214R’s regular crew avoided paying too much attention to the two men seated at a console close to the cockpit. Orders from the top were clear: showing excessive interest in these men or their work would earn the culprit a one-way transfer to a remote outpost above the Arctic Circle.

  One of the pair appeared much younger than the other air-force officers around him. A mop of unkempt hair hung low over his wrinkled, ill-fitting flight suit. He sat hunched over a computer keyboard, peering intently at a series of numbers and characters scrolling up across his display. His companion, older and more polished, wore the twin-headed eagle shoulder flash of the FSB.

  The young man hissed in annoyance. “The signal is still too weak. This is crap. I can’t work with static. I need a coherent data stream.” He glanced away from his screen. “Tell the pilot he needs to get closer, much closer.”

  “I’m sure that Colonel Annenkov is doing his best, Stepan,” the other man said mildly.

  “Well, his best right now isn’t damned well good enough,” the young man said irritably. “What’s the point of my wasting all this time riding around in this glorified sardine can if this jet jockey and his guys can’t do their jobs?” His voice rose higher. “If these air-force zeroes are too gutless to do what’s necessary, we should just return to base.”

  “Calm down,” the FSB officer said, unruffled. “I’ll see what I can do.” He clicked his mike. “Colonel, this is Major Filatov.”

  “Go ahead,” the pilot’s tense voice said in his headphones.

  “Our specialist requests that you continue your approach. He needs a stronger signal from the target.”

  “Does your pet komp’yutershchik want me to rip a hole in their fucking fuselage so he can just run a data cable into their flight-management computer?” Annenkov asked acidly.

  Filatov permitted himself a pained smile. Acting as the intermediary between Koshkin’s hacker and the Tu-214R commander was never a pleasant task. In their own ways, both were highly skilled, but neither had much patience for anyone outside his respective closed fraternity. “I hope that will not prove necessary,” he said calmly.

  Slowly, carefully, Annenkov edged closer to the unsuspecting 777, careful to stay slightly above the bigger jetliner to avoid hitting any wake turbulence.

  Major Filatov listened to the conversation between Annenkov and his copilot as they maneuvered.

  “Two hundred meters, sir.”

  “Understood. Coming up a little on the throttles,” Annenkov replied, the strain evident in his voice.

  The Tu-214R bucked, catching a minor curl of turbulence coming off the wide-body passenger jet’s wings.

  “Airspeed now nine hundred twenty kilometers per hour. Range to target is one hundred fifty meters,” the copilot reported.

  “Easing back on the throttles,” Annenkov said.

  “Range now one hundred meters and holding.”

  Suddenly the young computer hacker stabbed a finger at his display. Lines of code had flashed onto the screen. “Ah! There we go!” His fingers rattled across his keyboard.

  “Can you break in?” Filatov asked.

  The younger man sneered, still intent on his work. “This is not a movie, Major. There is no way to ‘break in’ to a computer system on the fly, merely by typing. What I’m doing is uploading a special hacking tool I developed for this mission. It’s a program designed to exploit weaknesses I’ve already identified in Kalmar’s security protocols.”

  Filatov fought for patience. “Will this special tool of yours do the job?” he asked.

  “It already has. I’m inside their system,” the hacker said smugly. “Their protocols were childish. That 777’s computer is predisposed to accept what it believes is navigational data from satellites.”

  Triumphantly, he tapped a key. More lines of code scrolled across his display, too fast to read, and then disappeared. He swiveled to face his FSB handler with his arms folded across his chest. “Mission complete, Major.”

  Filatov breathed out. He keyed his mic again and relayed the good news to the Tu-214R’s cockpit crew.

  Gradually, the twin-engine Russian spy plane decreased its speed, falling farther and farther behind until it was a safe distance from the Kalmar Airlines passenger jet. Then it banked away, disappearing into the pitch-dark sky.

  TWENTY

  THE BLUE HALL, PRESIDENTIAL PALACE, WARSAW

  THAT SAME TIME

  Polish troops in full combat gear were deployed around the elegantly classical Presidential Palace—guarding every entrance of the enormous, floodlit building. Squads of riot-control police backed them up. Two-man BOR sniper teams were posted on the surrounding rooftops. Tracked Leopard 2 main battle tanks and eight-wheeled Wolverine armored personnel carriers were stationed at every major intersection around the palace. As a final precaution, F-16 Vipers patrolled the skies over Warsaw, ready to react immediately to any Russian air strike.

  With every major political leader in the Alliance of Free Nations in Warsaw for this emergency summit, Piotr Wilk and his government were taking no chances with security. This meeting had to go off without a hitch.

  It was crucial that the AFN’s leaders craft a united response to Russia’s clandestine cyberwar onslaught. Otherwise, as the wave of malware attacks against vital infrastructure continued, Moscow’s increasingly obvious attempts to pick off the alliance’s weaker, less stable members might start bearing fruit. Rumors were already circulating about possible parliamentary impeachment proceedings against Romania’s president Dumitru.

  The presidents and prime ministers had assembled in the palace’s Blue Hall. They were seated around a long conference table. Senior aides and translators filled the rest of the large chamber. Portraits of two of Poland’s greatest patriots, Prince Józef Poniatowski and Tadeusz Kościuszko, looked down at them from the hall’s ornately decorated walls.

  Wearing his rifle-green Iron Wolf Squadron jacket, collared shirt, and black tie, Brad McLanahan sat stiffly in a chair placed directly behind Polish president Piotr Wilk and Martindale. Whack Macomber had the seat on his left. Nadia Rozek, stunning as always in her full dress uniform as a major in Poland’s Special Forces, sat on his right.

  Throughout the long, wearying discussions—most of them conducted in English, since that was the one language common to most of the AFN’s leaders—Brad had been all too aware that the three of them were there mostly for symbolic purposes. Their task at this summit was to act as living, breathing reminders that Poland and its allies possessed formidable military and technological powers of their own. Or, as Whack had memorably put it during one of the brief recesses, “It’s like we’re sitting here with a big red sign that says ‘In Case of a Shooting War, Break Glass and Send These Guys out to Bust Some Russian Heads.’”

  “And do you mind that?” Brad had asked.

  “I don’t mind the part about busting heads,” Macomber had growled. “But I hate being window dressing. And I hate wearing a fricking uniform. On top of all that, spending too much time around politicians gives me hives.”

  The memory brought a smile to Brad’s face, which he quickly suppressed. Symbols of high-tech military might were not supposed to grin like idiots.

  “This is Wolf Two. Check. Check,” Charlie Turlock said quietly. Her voice sounded over the tiny, lightweight, and almost invisible radio earpiece he wore. Whack reached into hi
s jacket pocket, found the slim tactical radio there, and squeezed the squelch button once, confirming that he’d heard her.

  Superficially, Charlie’s brief signal was a routine test to make sure their communications were working properly. In reality, she was letting him know that his father was under her observation and still appeared to be in control over his actions and emotions. The two CIDs were concealed in a large room down a corridor from the Blue Hall. Some of Major Stepniak’s best BOR agents were posted on guard outside.

  If President Wilk thought it necessary to stiffen the spines of any of his alliance peers, he planned to show them the lethally agile combat machines—whose nature and capabilities remained the stuff of myth and rumor to almost everyone outside a tight-knit group in Poland. Even Brad’s intervention to prevent a full nuclear meltdown at Cernavodă had yielded little hard data, since the press had been kept far enough back to render their pictures and videos little more than a succession of blurred, grainy images.

  Privately, Brad hoped the Polish president would find a way to avoid summoning the CIDs. In his judgment, the risks were just too high. It would be one thing for the leaders of the alliance to see they were defended by remarkable war machines. It would be quite another for them to believe one of those deadly robots was in the hands of an uncontrolled madman.

  As much as Brad hated to admit it, with every passing day, Patrick McLanahan acted less and less like a human being trapped inside a robot and more like a soulless automaton focused entirely on war and killing. He’d tried to talk to his father several times since returning from Nevada. Nothing had worked. His attempts had either been met by utter silence or by repeated demands that they push for violent, unrelenting action against the Russians.

  He swallowed hard, fighting down a wave of sorrow. For the first time since learning two years ago that his father was miraculously alive, he felt the same pangs of loss he’d experienced when he’d believed the older man dead.