Bering Strait

by F X Holden

  He’d added something to his plan too. The Captain? He was going to bring him along on the boat to Anadyr. Teach the guy to fish. It got boring out in the Northern Pacific at night. You could really use a guy who could recite Dostoyevsky by heart.

  “NCTAMS-A4, this is Commander Naval Air Forces Coronado, stand by for a message from Vice Admiral Lionel Solanta,” the radio in the trailer under the Rock said. After their mission against Anadyr Rodriguez and Bunny had prepped two more Fantoms and loaded one on the Cat in an air-air configuration, with the other in its cartridge loaded for ground attack with standoff missiles, fueled up and ready to roll. They hadn’t received new orders, but they had just stuck a stick into a hornet’s nest and wanted to be ready to defend the base if they needed to. The air-air loadout would let them defend themselves against another small-scale strike by attack aircraft, while the ground attack loadout would be useful if they were given a land-based target or something on the water. Rodriguez wasn’t under any illusions – if NORAD kept sending them combat tasking, it was just a matter of time before Ivan worked out where they were hiding, and came for them.

  “Standing by Coronado,” Rodriguez said.

  Once they had their two drones locked and loaded, there was nothing more Rodriguez and O’Hare could do. So they had shared a pot of coffee, grabbed some food and dropped into exhausted sleep. Both were awake and on station again at 0400 and the order to stand by their comms had come through at 0430.

  Bunny was sitting at her pilot’s console with two booted feet up on her desk beside the coffee cups, joystick and throttles and keyboards. True to her word two nights ago, she had dyed her cropped white-blonde hair black and painted her fingernails to match. As Rodriguez watched her, she was a study in intense concentration, painting small white skulls with crossbones on her black nails. Rodriguez was willing to bet she had painted her toenails black too. She found herself thinking how Bunny had never mentioned a boyfriend. She’d never mentioned a girlfriend either, for that matter.

  “Vice-Admiral eh?” Bunny stopped painting her nails and smiled. Then she said in a high sing-song voice, “Bunny go-ing to get a me-dal…”

  “Or court-martial,” Rodriguez said, smiling too. “You probably hit the wrong target. Took out a fish factory.”

  “Fish factory workers in Russia go to work in Okhotniks do they ma’am?”

  “Maybe.” They hadn’t seen a bomb damage assessment yet, but they’d rerun the nose cam footage from the two drones and had counted at least a handful of Russian fighters on the base before they hit it. Pending the BDA, the strike had made Bunny a ‘ground ace’, a pilot with five or more ground kills. And she had been pointing it out to Rodriguez at every opportunity.

  “There’s probably a promotion when you get ground ace status, right?” Bunny asked. “He’s probably calling to tell me I’ve made Captain.”

  “You’re on DARPA secondment O’Hare, any rank you have is honorary. Besides, you don’t even know those bombs exploded,” Rodriguez pointed out. “They could have been duds.”

  “All four? No way ma’am, those eggs hatched.” Bunny retorted. “They…”

  “NCTAMS this is Admiral Solanta, can I speak with Lieutenant Commander Alicia Rodriguez please?”

  Rodriguez took a deep breath, “Speaking, Admiral.”

  “And is Lieutenant O’Hare there with you?”

  “Yes sir, Admiral,” Bunny replied.

  “Good. Look, I wanted to speak with you in person to let you know I’ve been following what happened to NCTAMS-A4. I know you got hit, and hard. I heard how you got your people out from under that rock Rodriguez and I also know the two of you volunteered to stay behind and close the base down, and you’ve managed to keep it operational despite all that.”

  “Yes sir,” Rodriguez said. “Do you know how my people are?”

  There was a pause, “I’m told all the wounded are recovering well. One is still in a critical condition, but stable,” Solanta said.

  Bunny leaned over and gave Rodriguez a high five. “Sir, this is Lieutenant O’Hare,” Bunny said. “Do we have a damage assessment from our strike on Anadyr yesterday?”

  “That’s why I’m calling,” the Admiral said. “Our intel … and we have multiple source confirmation on this one … says you have rendered the Russian 573rd Army Air Force drones totally non-mission capable.”

  Bunny and Rodriguez looked at each other, “Sorry sir, can you repeat?” Rodriguez asked in shock. “Did you say we NMC’ed a whole Russian fighter regiment?”

  “Yes Lieutenant Commander, you heard me right. I don’t call active duty personnel on a whim - you whupped some serious Russian ass, ladies.” Right then, you could have lit a skyscraper from the wattage coming from Bunny and Rodriguez’s smiles. Admiral Solanta knew how to motivate his warriors. He also knew how not to. He hadn’t made mention of the massive casualty tally his intelligence staff had handed him. He also made no mention of the unconfirmed report the attack had killed a Russian General. He gave a cough and continued, “Now, I have to keep moving, but I wanted to give you a sitrep. It’s not good. While you’ve been trying to stay alive and get a little payback up there, Ivan has knocked us on our can. Eielson and Elmendorf-Richardson are out of action, at least for another three days, maybe longer. We’ve got some mobile anti-air fighting back but just as soon as they put up their radar dishes, Russia hits them. We’ve decided we aren’t going to fight Ivan’s fight on this one, not on his terms. We’re preparing a joint services counter-offensive on a scale that is going to blast him back to Siberia, and we’re looking at … other options.” The Admiral paused to let those last two words sink in. “Which we hope will never be needed. But here’s the other reason for my call. Right now, NCTAMS-A4 is the only offensive air unit I have in the Operations Area. I’m going to be asking you two to hunker down under that rock, and you’ll be flying day and night until you drop dead with fatigue, or you run out of drones, whichever comes first.”

  Rodriguez gulped. The only offensive air unit in the Operations Area? Holy hell. “Yes, sir. Understood. We’ll do our best.”

  The Admiral laughed, “You telling me I haven’t seen your best yet Lieutenant Commander? Well, I look forward to that. You two are rewriting the book on how to fight a modern air war. Keep it up, they’ll be teaching the next generation of aviators at Annapolis about the ‘NCTAMS model for bare bones kick-assery’, I guarantee you that.”

  “Yes, sir!” they both chimed at the same time, bumping fists.

  After the Admiral logged out, Bunny swiveled twice around in her seat, and then fixed Rodriguez with a fierce glare, “Ma’am, we get out of here alive, you and me have got to get tattoos.”

  Devlin McCarthy had a tattoo. And she was willing to bet none of her staff had ever even entertained the thought their greying, stress cadet of an Ambassador had a tattoo on her right upper arm. Even less that it was a tattoo she’d gotten recently. When she was wearing light shirts, she covered it with a skin toned plaster. It was only a little tattoo, just a name really, in a nice curly font. It said ‘Angel’ and there was a story behind it, of course.

  Devlin’s daughter, Cindy, had been 32 when she announced to her mother she was pregnant. She’d moved in with Devlin in Moscow a year earlier after a long-term relationship ended in disaster. A lawyer in a private practice in DC, she’d told her bosses she needed time away from work and rather than let her quit, they’d told her to take a few months and get her head together. They knew it was a better option than losing her for good. A few months had turned into a year, and Cindy had based herself in Moscow and traveled all over Europe. She and Devlin had talked about the breakup she’d been through, and how the one thing that had kept her daughter together with her partner for so long was the hope they’d have kids together one day. She’d waited and waited and then started suggesting it, more and more insistently - she was 30 dammit and she wanted kids! But it turned out he didn’t, and that was that.

  Devlin remembered every de
tail of the afternoon Cindy told her she was pregnant. It was a Sunday. Cindy had been in Saint Petersburg, with a ‘friend’ she’d met in Rome, she said. A friend she’d been seeing a lot of lately, but hadn’t brought back home.

  She’d come in from the airport, dumped her bags in her room and Devlin had made her a pot of tea. It was raining, but not in that drab melancholy way it often rains in Moscow. They were sun showers, fresh and brisk and Devlin had the windows open because she liked listening to the patter of the raindrops on the green copper of the roof above. Cindy came in, sat on the sofa with her cup of tea, one leg tucked underneath her. She was beautiful, of course, and not just because Devlin thought so. She was a young, bright, competent and together young woman with style and as Devlin walked into the lounge room and looked at her daughter sitting there in a ray of sunshine, framed in raindrops, Devlin’s heart near burst with pride.

  “I’m pregnant,” Cindy had said.

  Devlin sat next to her, taking it pretty calmly. After all, the girl wasn’t 15 years old.

  “OK, wow,” Devlin said. “You sound …actually you sound OK about it.”

  “I wanted it,” Cindy said. “I didn’t know how to tell you. But I’ve kind of been shopping while I’ve been here.”

  “For a husband?”

  “No, for a … man,” she said. She laughed. “I didn’t want to just go bonking random guys until it happened. I wanted a love affair, with someone I liked, but not so much I couldn’t say goodbye.”

  “And you found one,” Devlin said. “I’ve been wondering who you’ve been traveling with, all these places. I thought maybe … I thought you maybe had a girlfriend and were afraid to tell me.”

  Now Cindy really laughed, “A lesbian rebound? Oh Mom.” She sipped her tea. “No. I just figured it wasn’t worth introducing him because he’s not going to be a part of this.”

  “What do you mean?” Devlin asked.

  “I mean, he’s Russian and I’m going back to the States to have my baby,” she said. “I’m not sure I’ll even tell him.”

  Devlin clutched her hand, gave her a hug and yes, she cried a little. While her daughter had been talking, she had suddenly had this image of the two of them, living in Moscow, a little baby in the residence, Devlin suddenly and wonderfully a grandmother. But, no. Apparently not.

  “When I’m finished here, I’ll get something back in DC,” Devlin said, sniffling. “Maybe I could get out of the posting sooner, say next year.”

  “It’s OK Mom,” Cindy said. “We have a whole lifetime to work this out. I want you there for the birth though,” she said, holding her mother’s face. “You promise me that, OK. I wouldn’t want anyone else there.”

  And that night, the two of them had gone for drinks - mocktails for Cindy, a dozen different variations on a vodka theme for Devlin and then the two of them had gotten tattoos. And their tattoos said ‘Angel’ because Devlin had decided that’s what her grandchild was going to be and it was small enough it wouldn’t hurt too much and she could cover it with her sleeve and Cindy said ‘whatever’ she couldn’t believe she was getting a tattoo with her 55-year-old mother the US Ambassador to Moscow.

  The way she felt then, waking up the next morning with a hangover and a throbbing pain in her arm, was exactly how Devlin McCarthy felt now having been woken in person by Carl Williams and his ever-present laptop-based lifeform, HOLMES.

  “You woke me to tell me what?”

  “Ma’am, there’s no way to sugar-coat this, so I’ll let HOLMES tell it and you can decide what you do with it,” Williams said. He sat his chubby bearded self down on the end of the sofa outside her bedroom. She sat at the other end in a bathrobe, slippers and with a confused expression on her face. He took out a smartphone, turned on the speaker and sat it on the table in front of her.

  “I thought you needed him hooked up to your ‘fat pipe’?”

  “For analytical work and data exchange. Right now he’s just in conversation mode.”

  She nodded, “OK, sure. Go ahead HOLMES.”

  The tinny British voice was loud in the small room, “Hello Ambassador, do you remember saying to me that the Russian air force officer behind the attack on Saint Lawrence must be someone they really trust? ‘A party insider’, was your exact phrase?”

  Devlin had by now had dozens of conversations with HOLMES, and she didn’t share his perfect recall. “No, HOLMES, I have to admit, I don’t.”

  “Well, ma’am, you did. So working on that premise I have been looking at officers of the Eastern Military District 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command and building a database of the sons and daughters of prominent political and military leaders who would be of the right age to be leading a Russian air unit of at least Brigade strength. The interrogation of pilots downed and captured over Alaska identified they were from the Russian 6983rd Brigade, and the commander of this unit fits the profile you described. He is Yevgeny Bondarev, the grandson of the former Commander in Chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces, Viktor Bondarev. He is an active member of the Progress Party, served with distinction in the Middle East and on his return to Russia his unit, the 5th Air Regiment, was attached to the 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command. When the commander of the 6983rd retired, Bondarev was promoted.” HOLMES was talking like a military search engine, and Devlin had trouble assimilating all the detail, being as it was 0330 in the a.m. and she was still waking up.

  “Yes, so … so, what?”

  “I have examined every single piece of data currently held in US intelligence databases related to Major-General Bondarev,” HOLMES said. “I have also obtained access to his GRU personnel file and an FSB intelligence dossier compiled on him as part of his vetting for the position of Commander of the 6983rd Air Brigade.”

  Now Devlin came awake, “You hacked GRU and FSB servers?”

  “Not personally ma’am,” HOLMES replied, his voice conveying no irony. “But you don’t need to know more.”

  “No, I don’t,” Devlin agreed. She turned to Williams. “Where are we going with this?”

  Williams squirmed awkwardly, “We found something in the files, related to you.”

  We found something in the files, related to you. This was a sentence no Ambassador ever wanted to hear from a spook.

  “Tell me,” Devlin said.

  “In the FSB file, there was a US birth certificate recording a Russian national, Yevgeny Bondarev, as the father of a child born two years ago,” HOLMES said. Devlin went cold. HOLMES continued, “The mother of the child was listed as your daughter, Cindy McCarthy. The child’s name is…”

  “Angela,” Devlin said quietly. “Angela McCarthy.”

  “What I want is simple,” Bondarev was telling Arsharvin. He had just reviewed imagery from the US attack on Ugolny. His voice was low and dangerously quiet. “I want to know how the Americans managed to get two Fantoms, which have a range of only 1,500 miles when carrying a full payload of ground attack ordnance, through our long and short-range air defenses and underneath a cloud of circling drones and then hit my air base, bury me alive and kill every damn crew member of the 573rd Fighter Aviation Regiment, when the nearest US airfield out of which they could have flown is Lewis McChord in Washington State!” He took a breath. “Which is twice the range of a Fantom, or in case you need reminding, two thousand, five hundred freaking miles from Anadyr.”

  “We’re working on that, comrade Major-General,” Arsharvin said. There were other officers present, so he was sticking to formalities. He was also being very careful because he knew his friend, and he knew what he was going through. This was not a time for being defensive. “Our first theory was mid-air refueling. But they would have had to refuel over Alaska, or the north coast of Russia, and we have not been able to identify any likely radar or satellite data indicating the US managed to get a refueling aircraft into the theatre, manned or unmanned.”

  Bondarev was staring at him, waiting. They were seated across a table from each other in his temporary operatio
ns center in the harbor at Anadyr; a former harbormaster building commandeered because it was the only building with enough connectivity to support their data communication needs without choking. “You have other theories, then,” Bondarev stated, not asking.

  Arsharvin nodded to one of his junior officers, “The most likely is still that the US at some point managed to position mobile drone launch units in Alaska State and since the outbreak of the conflict, has moved these West, so that they are now in a position to threaten our rear,” the man said. “They have had the capability to launch their Fantom aircraft off the back of a heavy hauler since…”

  Bondarev cut him off, “We already discussed US mobile drone launch capabilities.” His eyes narrowed. “However my intelligence chief has not identified any such units operating within this theatre. Or was there a report that I missed?”

  “No, comrade Major-General.”

  “But you have information to that effect now?”

  “No, Comrade Major-General,” the man said. “Only speculation.”

  Bondarev stood abruptly, and Arsharvin flinched. “I cannot target ‘speculation’ Lieutenant Colonel Arsharvin,” Bondarev said. “I have an immediate and existential threat to my ability to maintain air supremacy in the Bering Strait theatre, and that threat is currently unknown, unquantified, and…” Bondarev slammed a hand down on the table, “un-located!” He was not finished. He held up a sheaf of papers Arsharvin had delivered earlier in the day. “The enemy is not playing our game, you tell me. He is putting nuclear submarines into firing positions off our coastline. He is moving a significant part of his air force to the US north-west, but holding it in reserve. Currently, I have five regiments facing his three. Within a week we will probably be evenly matched. Within two, we will be outmatched, and then he can come against us. We need to get our troops safely on the ground in Alaska before then, but …” He slammed the table again. “Instead! Instead I am being bled by an asymmetrical interdiction force of insignificant strength able to inflict significant losses because my intelligence unit was apparently deaf, dumb and blind to this threat!”