Bering Strait

by F X Holden

  She had cut her teeth on F-35s in the Royal Australian Air Force before an ‘attitude problem’ got her assigned to an Australian coalition unit trialing drone modded F-22s in the Turkey-Syrian conflict and she found herself sitting in a trailer ‘flying’ via virtual-reality goggles, rather than in a cockpit. But she acquitted herself so well as a drone pilot that she came to the attention of recruiters at DARPA and was headhunted into their dedicated J-UCAV program, which had delivered a new weapons platform to specification, but now needed a new breed of pilot to fly it. DARPA was looking for pilots whose flying and social skills were less important than a talent for continuous partial attention and an ability to contribute to AI coding and development. For the first time in her life, Bunny’s attention deficit disorder was actually an asset.

  The aircraft that had emerged from the revitalized J-UCAV program, the N-G Boeing F-47, was a real killer. Twenty-six feet long, with a wingspan of 33 feet, it was powered by a hydrogen-fuelled Reaction Engine Scimitar powerplants giving it the ability to hit a maximum airspeed of Mach 1.8 or 1,300 mph and carry a payload of 10,000 lbs. - ranging from recon pods and GPS guided precision air-to-ground munitions, to the latest Cuda air-to-air, hit-to-kill missiles.

  Unlike Rodriguez, and despite her frustrations, Bunny liked Little Diomede. She had grown up in the Australian outback, and she liked it being cold. She also liked the idea of being the only pilot on an island with two dozen aircraft to fly. Did she miss bossing her F-35 around the sky in the real? Hell yeah, but unlike a lot of other aviators, Bunny already lived in the future and the future was remote-piloted, semi-autonomous and she would never go back. In her F-35 Bunny only ever felt in control of her own machine, even flying as flight leader. Hell, half the time whatever fool she had on her wing didn’t do as they were ordered, or screwed it up. Chewing out one too many fellow pilots for shitty results in training exercises was one of the things that got her transferred to drones, but she couldn’t help calling human error for what it was - dumb ass error. And you couldn’t afford a wide margin of error in modern combat where the distance between dead and alive was measured in milliseconds.

  At the stick of a Fantom though, she commanded not one machine, but six. Not one wingman, but five. She flew the queen bee in the formation, and the other five machines were slaved to hers, executing her orders exactly as she issued them, right or wrong. If she screwed up, lost a machine, missed a target, there was no one to blame but herself.

  She didn’t often screw up, but when she did, Rodriguez was glad they had a few hundred feet of solid rock over their heads, because she was sure the Russians could have heard Bunny swearing down in Vladivostok. And right now Bunny was only getting flight time on simulators, so Rodriguez could only imagine what she’d be like if she was in a fight for real. Like a lot of combat pilots Rodriguez had met, Bunny seemed to start every day looking for a target to hit.

  And today, that target was Air Boss Alicia Rodriguez’s catapult officer.

  “With respect you said ‘tomorrow’ three days ago Lieutenant,” Bunny was saying, staring at the ops ready Fantom waiting to be loaded onto the electromagnetic aircraft launch system, or catapult, down on the flight deck. She was facing down Rodriguez’s shooter, Lieutenant KC Severin and several of Rodriguez’s flight operations personnel were sitting on their asses on a rock shelf behind her, enjoying the show.

  “And that aircraft has been ready for two days, as promised, Lieutenant,” Severin said. He was a small man, but he was all muscle and had been Rodriguez’s assistant on the Trump. “It’s the Cat that’s the problem. No matter what we dial into the catapult, it’s delivering 196,000 pounds of thrust and by our reckoning, that will send your little paper planes into the lip above the egress chute like bugs into a windscreen.”

  “So I’ll punch in a little elevator trim,” Bunny said. “Stick the drone to the rails.”

  “Good idea Lieutenant,” Severin said, irony his voice. “Tell you what, why don’t we tie your butt to the shuttle, send you through that chute with 196,000 lbs. of thrust, you hold your arms out and flap, see if you can stick to those rails.”

  They’d had to come up with their own terminology for the world under the rock. The drones were launched through a fifty by fifty-foot smooth bored tunnel straight through the rock that emerged from a cliff face five hundred feet above sea level. It was called ‘the chute’. The drones landed by flying under the overhanging rock and into the mouth of the cave at sea level, which was called ‘the slot’. The artificial harbor inside the cave consisted of a simple rectangular submarine dock beside which the drones launched, and the seawater filling the cavern was known as ‘the Pond’.

  The chute exited the Rock directly east, toward Alaska, masking the egress of the drones from anything but a luckily placed satellite or high altitude recon overflight. To further confuse any imaging, a mooring had been created outside the egress port, and several old fishing boats were tied up there, the remnants of the fishing fleet that had once sailed out of Little Diomede. Demasted, they were small enough that there was no risk to the drones taking off and landing, but numerous enough that any overhead image would just see a cluster of ships, with a launching drone, if it was unlucky enough to be caught entering and leaving, just a blurred dot.

  “This base is supposed to go to Phase II in six months, you know that Lieutenant,” Bunny sighed and turned to appeal to Rodriguez. “Between now and then I have to do the forms on 30 drones ma’am. There’s going to be a submarine full of Secretaries of this and Admirals of that, docking in the Pond in about 20 something weeks, and after six hours underwater in some stinking tin can, followed by a shower, some strong coffee and crappy food, they are going to stand right here…” she pointed at the platform they were standing on next to the flight deck, “… expecting to see me fly a Hex of Fantoms out that chute, dodge a few lurking F-35s, blow the hell out of some barge in the Eastern Strait, and then watch as I gracefully and professionally glide them back through the slot to a perfect water landing and recovery.”

  No matter how annoying, arrogant and disagreeable she could be, Bunny O’Hare was seldom wrong, and although she was bitching she did it with a smile and a rolling Australian brogue. Rodriguez turned to her catapult officer. “How much longer Lieutenant?”

  Severin bought himself some time to answer, looking down at a tablet screen, “We’re reconfiguring the catapult software ma’am. Four hours. Then we have to test and recalibrate. Six hours total. If we can, we’ll get it done by 2300, midnight latest. Next shift can do the fueling and pre-flight for the Fantom, 2 hours. If all goes well, we’ll be good to launch at 0300.”

  To anyone else but Bunny O’Hare, laying down a flight time of 0300 would have gotten Rodriguez at least a groan. The Australian just smiled, “Permission to get some beauty sleep ma’am,” she said, before saluting and turning on her heel.

  Rodriguez watched her go, then returned to Severin and his smirking team, “If that Cat hasn’t been reconfigured, test fired and made ready by 0200 it’s your asses I’ll be launching off that catapult, gentlemen.”

  OPERATION LOSOS

  Headquarters of the Russian Federation 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command, Khabarovsk, Russian Eastern Military District.

  Major-General Yevgeny Bondarev, Commanding Officer of the Russian 6983rd Air Brigade, stared at his unshaven, grey-skinned reflection in a mirror, stuck in the act of trying to decide whether to shave or throw up.

  A lot of things made Bondarev feel like throwing up, but this time it was the 13 glasses of brandy he’d put down yesterday afternoon and evening with his Division staff and as a man who didn’t drink heavily, he was hurting badly. It had started innocently enough, a group of his officers inviting him to dinner to mark the anniversary of the death of his grandfather, Hero of the Russian Federation, Nikolaevich Bondarev. After a nice three -course meal with wine however, the night had descended into speeches, each accompanied by a toast to his famous grandfather, but when the sp
eeches ran out, there was still brandy left, so there were more toasts; to absent wives, newly born children, newly married daughters or sons, recently departed fathers or mothers and of course, to the apparently immutable President Navalny, now in his 10th year at the helm of a resurgent Russia.

  There was something else too. He was trying to remember, had he proposed a toast to his own daughter? It had crossed his drunken mind, but had he said it out loud? Damn – he couldn’t remember! He’d kept his daughter a secret until now because the mother was a foreigner with whom he’d only had a casual fling before she had moved back home. But if it became known he’d had a relationship with a foreigner without declaring it – worse, had a child with the woman - that kind of ‘oversight’ could bite you on the ass. He grabbed his razor in one hand and his shaving cream in the other, then dropped them both as the bile rose in his gut and he spun around to face the toilet.

  Wiping his mouth with a towel, he rested his forehead against the cool tiles. He’d know soon enough if he’d been indiscreet.

  Usually Bondarev would doze through a staff meeting like today’s, his brain numbed by the reading of minutes, follow up on administrative actions, edicts about the misuse of supplies and a long list of transfers. He was a combat commander, not a bureaucrat, one of the few at the table who had actually led in war and personally downed three enemy pilots over Turkey, though it had given him no satisfaction.

  Today however, despite the rising acid in his gut and the pounding in his head, he was focused on the figure at the end of the long mahogany meeting table, General Lukin; one of the few in the Air Army hierarchy who had Bondarev’s respect, because Lukin was known to be fiercely loyal to his pilots and ground crews, and not afraid to stand up to Kremlin stupidity. What got Bondarev’s attention right now, was that Lukin appeared to be more interested in reading the room, than the papers in front of him. Bondarev got the sense that whatever he was about to announce, it was well rehearsed. The man was no longer in his physical prime, was carrying a few pounds more than was probably healthy for him, but he was still a fairly fit 50 years old. He was sweating. And he looked like he’d aged five years since Bondarev had seen him on video link two days earlier when the Ozempic Tsar had been lost.

  “Gentlemen, you are all aware that two days ago the United States, without provocation, attacked and sank a merchant ship of the Russian Federation in the Bering Strait, well inside the Russian Exclusive Economic Zone,” he said and paused. “An ultimatum was given to the United States to acknowledge its responsibility, apologize and offer reparations to the owners of this advanced and very expensive vessel.” He looked around the room, “The ultimatum has expired, and as expected the United States has not accepted responsibility for the destruction of the Ozempic Tsar.”

  As the General finished, he looked up, and nodded to an aide at the back of the room who had been standing there holding a stack of lightweight tablet PCs. The man began walking around and distributing them, and Bondarev put his thumb on the DNA lock that woke the screen. He saw a dozen folders on the home screen, all of which started with ‘LOSOS’, the Russian word for Salmon.

  “Operation LOSOS,” Lukin said, guessing their thoughts. “What you are holding are your personal orders for the upcoming operation to secure the Bering Strait from future acts of piracy by the US or any other nation and guarantee free passage for international shipping traffic.” The large OLED screen behind the General came to life and an intelligence officer that Bondarev recognized as a young Lieutenant from his own Division staff stepped forward. He remembered she had been seconded to the 3rd Command staff for a special project - now he knew what it was. Whatever was going down, it had not been triggered just two days ago, it must have been in preparation for months. He got a sudden feeling he was about to be a part of a major chapter in the history of his nation, but on the right or wrong side? That was yet to be seen.

  Lieutenant Ksenia Butyrskaya drew a big breath and straightened her back. Bondarev noticed she kept her hands firmly clasped behind her back, probably so that their trembling didn’t give her away. “Our intelligence indicates that the attack on the Ozempic Tsar was most likely conducted by an unmanned US warship which fired two PIKE anti-ship missiles. Operation LOSOS…” she began. She swiped a hand quickly across the touchscreen to show an aerial reconnaissance photograph of a small airfield. Bondarev noted the presence of a light aircraft, helicopters that were probably air-sea rescue machines, and what might have been a military transport aircraft. He saw nothing of real significance. Butyrskaya continued, “… has a single objective. In an internationally sanctioned peacekeeping action we will take and hold the US island of Saint Lawrence, specifically the airfield and radar installation at Savoonga, capture any US military personnel on the island and leverage control of the island to ensure the safe passage of international air and maritime traffic through the Bering Strait.” Butyrskaya paused, expecting the room to immediately explode with questions.

  In fact, there was a stunned silence.

  Bondarev spoke first, “Are we declaring war on the USA?”

  Butyrskaya looked to Lukin. He shook his head slowly, “There will be no formal declaration of war. And our objective is to take St Lawrence with minimal use of deadly force. The US keeps only a small military police force at its radar base, there are no ground troops garrisoned there. The forces allocated will be more than adequate to contain them. Operation LOSOS will involve more shouting, than shooting.”

  Bondarev looked across the table at an old friend, Lieutenant Colonel Tomas Arsharvin. One of those he’d been drinking with last night, they’d served together in Syria during the border conflict with Turkey and saved each other’s asses more than once. Bondarev guessed he would be the one who knew what was really going on, but he couldn’t ask him here. He’d have to save that until after this charade of a briefing. Arsharvin caught his look and tried to read his mind, “We are acting under the authority of the Barents Euro-Arctic Council to preserve the rights of all international shipping to traverse the northern polar seas without interference.” His voice sounded hollow, letting Bondarev know what he thought of that flimsy diplomatic cover.

  Bondarev couldn’t help himself. “Sweden supports us taking military action against the US?” he asked disbelievingly. The Barents Council was a subset of Arctic nations comprising Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia that had come together to lobby for fishing rights in the Arctic waters that were opening up as the icecap receded. Norway had dropped out after a dispute several years ago but the other three nations continued to make treaties with each other under the name of the Barents Council - even if, until now, no other country had paid them any mind.

  “Sweden abstained,” Arsharvin said, his voice betraying nothing of what Bondarev knew he must be thinking. “The vote was carried on a majority.”

  And what the hell have we promised Finland? Bondarev was going to ask, but kept that question to himself. “The United States will not let Russia occupy its territory in the name of a tinpot fishing coalition. It will react with violence such as we have never before seen,” Bondarev commented, looking around the room. No one was meeting his gaze.

  “Perhaps they should have thought of the consequences before they sank the Ozempic Tsar Comrade Major-General,” Butyrskaya said, clearly wanting to say more.

  General Lukin held up his hand, “Thank you Lieutenant,” he said. He brushed at an invisible hair on his lapel and then spoke to the officers at the table, not to Bondarev in particular. “The United States is riven with internal division. It has shown a reluctance to engage in international affairs of any consequence and our activities in Africa, the Pacific and the Baltics have brought only bluster from their President and State Secretary and whining in the United Nations. In every situation where we have moved our agenda forward, the United States has conceded and returned to its own political bickering.”

  Another silence followed, into which Butyrskaya unwittingly stepped, “If they were strong, t
hey would have challenged our navy with theirs. Instead, they resort to an ambush on unarmed civilian shipping.”

  Finally Bondarev heard a voice other than his own. Major-General Artem Kokorin, commander of the 573rd Army Air Force Base, slapped a hand down on the table. “We are not fools here. I do not believe we are risking all-out war with the USA for the sake of a freighter owned by a rich fool and piloted by a robot!”

  Lukin fixed him with an ice cold glare, “Russia does not want war comrade. The Bering Strait is a strategically important waterway and the USA has seen fit to challenge the freedom of our ships to traverse that waterway. This peacekeeping action will assert the rights of all shipping to move through the Strait and we will withdraw as soon as the USA acknowledges its perfidity and gives assurances it will pay reparations and guarantee freedom of navigation.”

  Kokorin nodded then leaned towards Bondarev and whispered under his breath, “Bullshit.” Lukin waved at Butyrskaya to continue her briefing. She pointed at the tablets in front of them. “Your unit level orders are being sent to you as we speak and your officers recalled for detailed briefings. Operation LOSOS will be initiated at 0100 hours on the 24th of August.” She saw faces tighten and nodded, “Yes, that is six days from now. As soon as special forces have secured the airfield and radar station garrison at Savoonga on Saint Lawrence, Major-General Bondarev’s 6983rd Air Brigade will provide air-to-air and air-to-ground cover for ground operations then will stay on station to protect the airlift of ground-air defense units and garrison troops by the 573rd Army Air Force. We expect to have full control of both air and sea in the operations area within 24 hours of the arrival of special forces troops in the target area and full control of the territory of Saint Lawrence within 36 hours.”

  “If my Sukhois and Migs are running CAP over a US territory at the same time as their radar and airfield there goes dark, there will be a reaction. I predict a maximum of ten minutes before the first US F-35s arrive to order us to leave their airspace. What are we to tell them, if they bother to ask before they shoot?” Bondarev asked.