by F X Holden
A bead of sweat appeared above the Russian’s brow. “Abort!” he said. “I’ll guarantee you safe passage out of here.”
“Abort Lieutenant!” Rodriguez called. “Head for the deck, evade and retire.”
“Roger that ma’am,” Bunny said, tapping at her keyboard. “Ivan never got a lock on me anyway. Going ninja.”
Rodriguez lowered her gun, but kept her gaze fixed on the VVS officer, “She can call that Fantom back anytime,” she warned him. “So what’s your best offer?”
“I’ll tell the troops above to return to base,” he said. “My other patrols have already been recalled and I’ll stand down the fighters overhead. If you let me depart with my men, I’ll guarantee there will be no more attacks on this base.”
“Oh, now they’re your men?” O’Hare said, pulling off her helmet.
“Thank you Lieutenant,” Rodriguez snapped. She gestured with her rifle toward the chute, “Your exit is that way General.”
Devlin McCarthy’s office was chaos defined. There was an ugly mob at the gates of the Embassy compound, waving placards, throwing rocks and the occasional Molotov cocktail, not a Russian police officer in sight and the head of her Marine security detail was down there, asking her for permission to fire warning shots over the heads of the crowd.
She had three technicians trying to pull a built-in cabinet away from a wall to get at the wiring they needed to try to patch her into a new secure satellite uplink so that she could re-establish communications with Washington after someone, probably Russian cyber-intelligence services, cut all landlines and fiber in and out of the compound and jammed their usual satellite signal.
She had a dozen department heads either asking her what was going on, or telling her what she should be doing, and on top of this, she had Carl Williams hovering at the door with his damned laptop trying to get her attention and arguing with her personal security detail.
“Let him in,” she barked at them, then turned to the three technicians. “I don’t care if that cabinet is three hundred years old, pull it off that wall and get me a link to DC. What is it Carl?”
“NORAD has reported that the Russian bombers were destroyed, and I have Major-General Yevgeny Bondarev on the line for you,” the analyst panted. Clearly he had run from the New Annex over to her office, laptop in hand.
“How do you have comms?” she asked, and then realized it was a stupid question. “Did you call him or did he…”
“He called NORAD,” Williams said. He pushed the laptop across her desk and she saw he had a video feed running.
She looked for the first time into the face of the man who was the father of her granddaughter and right now, her enemy in war.
“Hello Ambassador,” he said. He seemed to be standing outside, wind blowing his hair. She could see a quadrotor helicopter in the background.
She took a deep breath, “Major-General Bondarev. Did you stop those bombers?”
He nodded, “I did. Or rather, you did. One of your pilots did. The immediate threat has passed but I need you to give some information to your political masters. Can you do that?”
She looked across at the three technicians, one of who held up five fingers.
“We lost our uplink but I’m told it will be restored soon,” she said. “What is the information?”
“There has been a coup attempt in Moscow. The attempted nuclear attack on Anchorage was not authorized by our President or Prime Minister, but by the coup plotters, led by the Defense Minister and the head of the 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command Potemkin. The situation is currently highly fluid.”
“Do these coup plotters still have access to your strategic nuclear arsenal?” Devlin asked, horrified.
“No,” Bondarev told her. “Our military intelligence service is still loyal to the President and has secured the codes. They are currently in the process of determining which military and police units the coup plotters have turned, and which we can trust. It will take some hours.”
“What do you want Major-General?” she asked.
“I have ordered the arrest of the 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command Commander, General Potemkin. The aircraft and support units of my 6983rd Brigade and 25th PVO Brigade are being withdrawn from the Bering Strait area of operations, as we speak. Ground forces should start withdrawing to their pre-conflict bases tomorrow. I just ask for time to get the situation under control, that is all.”
“I’ll pass that on,” she told him. “Thank you.”
“Ambassador,” he said. “There may be men on your side who see this as the ideal opportunity to attack us, while we are riven with internal division.” He leaned forward toward the camera. “Tell them that would be very unwise. The President of the Federation is back in control of our strategic rocket, space and submarine forces and will not hesitate to use them if necessary.”
She swallowed, “I will be sure to make them aware of that.”
Someone called to Bondarev from off camera and he looked away, then looked back. “I must go. There is one more thing. Your facility under Little Diomede Island will not be allowed to operate so close to our border. You have 48 hours in which to evacuate any personnel there, after which we will mine the entrance.”
Devlin had little idea what he was talking about but she could see in Carl’s face that he did.
Something in his tone annoyed her, “I don’t think you are in a position to be making more threats,” she said.
“Nonetheless,” he said, and gave her a casual salute, “Give my regards to your daughter,” he said, and reached forward to cut the call.
Alicia Rodriguez and Bunny O’Hare watched on Bunny’s laptop as the icon from Bondarev’s quadrotor headed south, escorted by four Su-57s. To the east, their last remaining Fantom was starting its final approach to the airfield at Juneau. Bunny shut her laptop down.
They’d watched Bondarev exit the chute on the rope he swung in on, and had lain in wait with rifles trained on the small square of sky at the end of the chute in case it was all just a ploy to allow a larger Spetsnaz force to take them on. But they’d eventually had to allow that perhaps the Russian officer had kept his word.
This time, after they contacted CNAF and briefed them on developments, and with Russian aircraft clearly pulling out of the Operations Area, Navy agreed to send a chopper from Port Clarence to lift them off.
“Not that I don’t like it down here ma’am,” Bunny said. “But perhaps we could wait topside?”
“They could still be up there,” Rodriguez said. “A few hours ago he led a Spetsnaz team in here to kill us.”
“I know Boss,” Bunny sighed. “But I’ll take the chance that the killing is over for now - the trust has to start again somewhere.”
It wouldn’t be easy, that much she knew. Too many people had died. As they had walked him across the bridge toward the chute, Bunny trailing watchfully with her rifle ready in the crook of her arm, Rodriguez had stopped him.
“Tell me something?” she’d asked. “I couldn’t follow your conversation earlier. A lot of good people died. Can you tell me why?”
He’d looked away, “Why did we go to war? For all the usual reasons, I suppose. Power. Greed. Survival.” He’d looked back at her and tapped the star on her flight suit. “Ours is not to reason why Lieutenant Commander.”
Bunny had shaken her head and prodded him up the ramp with the barrel of her gun, “Yeah, right. See that’s the difference between us, right there,” she’d told him. “Decades ago, you stopped asking your leaders why. We never will.”
Dave was asking himself why. Why he’d left. Why he hadn’t got back faster. Why he hadn’t taken the shot when he had it. Why he’d let the Russian get inside the water tank and shoot his friend.
But he’d nailed the guy. As Dave climbed down inside the water tank again, the Russian was slumped against the wall behind Perri, gasping, a new bloodstain spreading across the front of his chest. He wasn’t dead, but he couldn’t be far away from it this
time. Dave ran a couple of steps and picked up his pistol, just to be sure, then knelt down beside Perri.
He was cold.
So he’d been dead a while. Was probably already dead when the Russian shot him a few minutes ago. In a way, Dave was relieved; relieved it hadn’t been his gutlessness that had killed his friend. Then he felt bad about feeling relieved. And that led to anger.
He looked up at the Russian, still taking heaving, shuddering breaths with his eyes fixed on Dave.
Dave didn’t want to listen to him anymore. He lifted his rifle, chambered a round.
The Russian held up a hand, feebly, as if to stop him.
Dave hesitated, lowered his rifle. No, the guy was offering him something.
Dave frowned and looked at it.
Oh, it was a grenade. The Russian was offering him a grenade.
POSTSCRIPT
In the sub-Arctic autumn of Saint Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, a cadaver can keep for months without spoiling. Whether a whale on a black volcanic beach, a walrus caught in the rocks along the coast, or the body of a man.
So there was no tell-tale stink when Sergeant Dan Kushniruk of the Canadian Mounted Police approached the water tank in the last brief light of day, and noticed it was full of bullet holes.
There were shrapnel holes too, and one of the four legs of the tower the water tank was standing on was broken and splintered, but there was no mistaking the perfectly circular pattern of holes stitched across one side of the water tank. He looked at the ground by his feet and saw shell casings.
He knelt and picked one up. Russian, 9mm. Favored short round of the Spetsnaz special forces.
He looked around him. This must be the place.
With a sigh, he tightened the straps on his backpack, hitched a rope over his shoulder and walked over to the ladder that led from the ground, up to the platform on which the tank was resting, and then up the side of the tank to an open manhole cover at the top.
The metal was cold, even through his gloves. Kushniruk was used to the cold. He was a cop from Whitehorse in the Canadian Yukon Territory, and the only difference between the Yukon and this place, as far he was concerned, was a distinct lack of trees, leaving nothing to protect you from the biting wind except the rise and fall of the ground - and the blackened ruins of the US base in which the water tank stood.
As he reached the top of the ladder, he hesitated. He had a pretty good idea what he’d find inside.
Or thought he did.
He’d come to look for a local Yup’ik man. Man? Just a kid really. A lone, brave, hard as nails kid who had single-handedly turned the tide of a war, not that anyone except Kushniruk would ever know it. Kushniruk had come to Saint Lawrence to find him; he’d been out to the overflowing Savoonga medical clinic but there was no record of him there. Instead he had found the kid’s name on a list in the town hall in Savoonga, along with hundreds of others … ‘missing, presumed dead’.
His heart had fallen, even though he’d prepared himself. There was a woman there, a round-faced weary woman wearing three sweaters inside the hall because the power and heating weren’t reliable yet, and Kushniruk had asked her how he could find the cantonment, or what was left of it.
“Why?” she’d asked. “Nothing out there. We exhumed all the bodies from the graves, gave them a proper burial here in town.”
“I’m looking for a water tower?” he’d said. “Might be the only thing left standing. You know it?”
“You a photographer?” the woman had asked. “You need a permit to take photographs out there. Folks around here are pretty sensitive about it.”
Kushniruk had shown her his Canadian Mounted Police ID, “No, I’m just following something up. Sorry, I can’t really discuss it.”
The woman had shrugged, and drawn him a map. Told him he’d have to hustle if he wanted to get out there today, because it would be dusk in two hours.
“You have to declare anything you find to Savoonga police,” she’d said. “We don’t hold with souvenir hunters.”
“I will,” he’d told her, and hoped he wouldn’t have to. After it all, it was still possible the kid had made it. He wasn’t from Savoonga, he was from Gambell, a town about fifty miles west. He could have headed back there without registering. Kushniruk hadn’t been able to reach his family, because communications with Gambell were still down. The kid could be back home, ripping through the snow on his ATV, or out fishing for halibut with his father and brothers.
Kushniruk paused on his way up the ladder, looking across the blasted wasteland that had until recently been the new US Savoonga radar facility. He could see why the boy had climbed up here. It had a perfect view of the single long runway of the Savoonga airfield - vehicles and aircraft parked alongside it - and he watched as a small two engined air ambulance began its landing. He grabbed the lip of the manhole and hauled himself up. It was dark inside, the grey light filtering through the shrapnel and bullet holes not enough to light the interior of the tank, so he pulled a flashlight from his belt and held it up.
He panned the light around.
The first thing he saw was that he would have to come back tomorrow.
He’d only brought one body bag.
“He’s been dying for you to arrive,” Williams told Ambassador McCarthy with a wry smile. He pulled out his only other chair and turned on his electric kettle, putting out two paper coffee cups and spooning instant coffee into them. “How are things above ground?”
She settled wearily on the chair and leaned her head back against the wall, “Getting back to normal.” She sighed, “It’s amazing how quickly a near nuclear holocaust becomes yesterday’s news. State is obsessing over what Navalny is going to do with the coup plotters while CIA is doing its damndest to recruit them before they get arrested and shot.”
“May I deliver my briefing ma’am?” HOLMES plummy English voice interrupted. “I enjoy delivering briefings,” HOLMES said.
“You enjoy showing off is more like it,” Williams said. “I know you do, because I taught you to.”
“You have something big?” Devlin asked. HOLMES had been forwarding her a daily summary of all critical intelligence on the fast-moving situation within the Russian regime as President Navalny acted to neutralize the coup plotters and re-establish control of his government and armed forces. He was pulling down intel from the CIA, DIA; NSA, FBI, State Department, Cybercommand and sources inside the five-eyes nations of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand too. It meant she had a more complete overview of the situation inside the Kremlin than even the CIA head of station for Moscow, and that was something she greatly enjoyed. But HOLMES had asked today to deliver his report ‘in person’. “Whatever it is, can you start with a sitrep please? Highlights on predefined interests only.”
Carl smiled at how quickly the Ambassador had adjusted to the protocol for talking to his AI system, and now just took it in her stride.
“Yes Ma’am,” HOLMES began. “Topic, Coup Leaders: all members of the so-called ‘Committee for the Special Regime’ including former Foreign Minister Kelnikov and VVS General Potemkin have now surrendered to Russian authorities and are being held at Lefortovo Prison for interrogation. None have yet been charged. Topic, Civil Unrest: Riots between members of the Russian ultra-right wing ‘Wolves’ movement and the ‘Citizens for Protection of the Constitution’ continued for a third day with deaths reported in Ekaterinburg, Vladivostok and Moscow. Topic: US cyber-attacks on Russian infrastructure: Russian banking systems were restored yesterday and Moscow stock exchange reopened. Power supplies in major cities are approaching pre-conflict norms except for St. Petersburg. Cell phone and television broadcast networks have been restored in 70% of the country. Topic, military dispositions: All air, ground and sea units except for interior ministry forces in areas of urban unrest have returned to their pre-conflict bases and readiness levels, however a continued heightened level of signals traffic across the country persists. Topic, Political: President Navaln
y has declared that the current nationwide State of Emergency will remain in force until civil unrest subsides. Decrees issued since yesterday include; a decree to disband leftist and nationalist political parties, a decree to ban the New Pravda media group, a decree to postpone elections planned for October indefinitely, a decree to establish a new committee to investigate the coup attempt and propose criminal charges and constitutional amendments. Do you have any specific questions Ma’am?”
“Threats to embassy property and personnel?” Devlin asked.
“A CIA source in the Moscow chapter of the ‘Wolves’ reported yesterday that the group is preparing Molotov cocktails and smoke bombs for use in a protest at the Embassy next Monday. The source is rated as ‘usually reliable’, the report as ‘probably true.’ No other reports of note.”
“Still, thanks for telling me,” Devlin said, looking annoyed, “That seemed to have slipped the CIA head of station’s attention.”
“Ma’am, what he really wants to tell you…” Williams started.
“May I please continue the briefing Carl?” HOLMES broke in over the top of the analyst again. It was the first time Devlin had heard the AI interrupt its programmer, and even Williams looked surprised.
“Uh, sure. Go for it.” He poured water into the paper cups and handed one to Devlin.
“Thank you Carl. Ma’am, I have identified with an assessed probability of 96 percent why Russia initiated this conflict.”
Devlin sat in the chair opposite the desk. “I’m listening,” she said.
“I have prepared a small presentation,” HOLMES said, and the screen on the laptop blinked to life, showing a map of what Devlin quickly realized was the Russian Federation, from West to East. The map was divided into the 46 states or oblasts that comprised the Federation, colored various shades of green. HOLMES continued, “This is a map showing the total freshwater supply available for drinking, irrigation or industry in each of the states of Russian Federation. Green indicates that supply exceeds demand. This map and the timeline I am about to show starts in 1991 with the dissolution of the former Soviet Union. I will now advance the timeline at one year every two seconds.” Devlin saw the map begin to change, as time moved forward and several provinces went from deep green to light green. Around 2001 one of the oblasts went yellow. “Yellow indicates occasional supply shortages, red will indicate critical supply shortages.”