Eagle Station

by Dale Brown

  Sam typed in a short text message: krak eng, but held her finger off the send button. She raised her binoculars again, watching the Russian helicopter as it slowed into a hover just over the clearing. Its fast-beating rotors churned up a swirling cloud of dust and dead grass.

  The Mi-8 drifted carefully lower, gradually settling below the level of the treetops.

  Deliberately, Sam pushed the send button on her smartphone.

  During her reconnaissance, she’d decided to rig a welcoming present for any Russians who decided to crash their party, using some of the special equipment that had been hidden inside their van. Her “gift,” a small, soda-can-sized plastic tube packed with C-4, was fixed to the trunk of a tall Siberian pine tree right at the edge of the clearing.

  Now, triggered by her text message, the Krakatoa shaped-demolition charge exploded with enormous force. In a blinding flash, the detonation sent a colossal shock wave sleeting straight into a thin, inverted copper plate set at the plastic tube’s open mouth, converting it instantly into a lethal jet of molten metal that speared outward at thousands of miles per hour. Hit squarely, the Russian helicopter blew up, killing every man aboard.

  WHUMMP.

  A huge ball of orange and red flame erupted above the treetops, momentarily outshining the late afternoon sun. Shards of torn and pulverized metal spiraled away from the center of the blast.

  “Bet that hurt,” Sam said under her breath. She turned away from the window and hurried downstairs. Outside, a thick pillar of oily, black smoke from the burning wreckage curled higher into the sky.

  David Jones met her as she darted around the side of the log cabin. The young Welshman’s face was tight. “Those Spetsnaz bastards weren’t out on their own. There are more helicopters on the way . . . including gunships.”

  Off in the distance, the sound of clattering rotors could be heard growing steadily louder.

  Marcus Cartwright looked up when they joined him near the back of the battered delivery van. Discarded boxes and parcels were strewn across the ground behind its open rear doors. “This situation’s just gone from bad to worse,” he said grimly.

  “It’s definitely not ideal,” she said, more lightly. “But at least our ride’s on the way.” She checked her watch. “McLanahan and Rozek can’t be more than ten minutes out now.”

  “Unfortunately, we don’t have ten minutes, Ms. Kerr,” he pointed out. “Those Russian helicopters are going to be on top of us inside of five. Which means we need to buy some time.”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed. “You’re going all formal on me, Marcus. That’s never a good sign.”

  Cartwright forced a wry smile. “True.” He reached into the back of the van and dragged a small motorbike out from under the remaining boxes. Weighing just one hundred and eighty pounds, the Taurus was a Russian-built all-terrain vehicle with bulbous balloon tires. With a top speed of only twenty-two miles per hour, the motorcycle wasn’t fast, but it was amazingly compact and agile. And it was even designed to fold up into a bag that would fit in a car trunk.

  Sam glanced at Jones. He shrugged. “Mr. Cartwright asked me to put the machine together last night, while you were out scouting around. He thought it might come in handy, see?”

  “And just how is this supposed to come in handy?” Sam asked, turning back to face Cartwright.

  “You take the bike,” he told her. “And then you head cross-country to the LZ as fast as you can.”

  “Leaving you and Davey behind, I suppose?” She shook her head stubbornly. “Not happening, Marcus.”

  Cartwright sighed. “Look, Sam, this is a Little Bighorn situation. And all the Indians in the world are about to charge over the hills. So Davey and I’ll take the van and head to the LZ by road. Maybe we’ll get lucky. And maybe we won’t. But what really matters is that splitting up is the best chance for any of us to make it out alive.”

  “He’s right, Ms. Kerr,” Jones said softly. “So let us do our job, will you now?”

  Wordlessly, Sam just stared at the two men for several seconds. Then, surrendering for the first time ever, she hugged them both tight, one after the other. She turned away with tears streaking her face, straddled the motorbike, and kick-started it. The Taurus’s little Honda motor whirred to life.

  Without looking back, she sped off into the woods. Behind her, the clattering roar of the approaching Russian helicopters grew louder still.

  Three kilometers away but closing fast from the south, two Ka-52 Alligator helicopters darted low over the forest. Twin pairs of counterrotating, coaxial three-blade rotors blurred above each gunship. Each bristled with armament, including 30mm cannons, 122mm unguided rocket launchers, and laser-guided antitank missiles.

  Aboard the trailing helicopter, Major Yuri Drachev scowled, seeing the thick black column of smoke from the downed Mi-8 rising above the forest. Twenty-one Russian soldiers and airmen dead, including a detachment of elite special forces troops, he thought bitterly. All because the higher-ups had foolishly believed these Western spies would meekly throw up their hands and surrender at the first sight of superior force.

  But despite those appalling and unexpected casualties, their orders were unchanged.

  “Listen carefully, Kingfisher Six,” he heard the Spetsnaz brigade commander snap over the radio. “You will not engage the enemy with lethal force! Moscow still wants the enemy agents alive. Is that clear to you?”

  “Yes, that is completely fucking clear, Kingfisher Base,” Drachev growled. “Six out.” He glanced across the cockpit at his gunner, Senior Sergeant Pekhtin. “You know this is total bullshit.”

  Pekhtin nodded carefully, not daring to express his own opinion out loud. There was no percentage in getting caught in the middle of a shit storm between two senior officers.

  “Six, this is Five,” the lead helicopter suddenly radioed. “I have a visual contact at my ten o’clock—a vehicle moving fast along a dirt track, heading northwest.”

  Drachev craned his head, peering through the Ka-52’s cockpit canopy. There, beyond and slightly to the left of the other gunship, he saw a plume of dust rising above the trees, drifting slowly away on the wind. “Five, this is Kingfisher Six. Stop that vehicle. But don’t scratch its paint if you can help it, understand? Command wouldn’t like that. We’ll hang back half a klick and cover your ass.”

  “Acknowledged, Six,” the other pilot replied. “Moving to engage.”

  Drachev watched the lead helicopter’s long nose swing a few degrees left and banked his own Ka-52 to follow. They were flying along the trace of a narrow dirt logging road as it wound back and forth. Through the trees ahead, he caught a flicker of pale blue in that drifting cloud of dust. They were chasing the enemy agents’ fake delivery van, he suddenly realized.

  Abruptly, Kingfisher Five veered left and then cut back sharply to the right in order to cross ahead of the speeding vehicle. Flashes lit the helicopter’s starboard side as it fired its 30mm cannon. A stream of high-explosive shells hammered the ground scarcely a hundred meters ahead of the van—smashing trees to splinters and blowing craters in the dirt road.

  Coming in behind the lead gunship, which was now turning to make another pass, Drachev saw the blue van suddenly slew broadside across the logging track. Spraying more dust and dirt from under its spinning tires, it slid frantically to a dead stop. He bared his teeth in a fiercely satisfied grin. Now they had these bastards.

  Through the haze, he saw someone scramble out of the passenger side of the vehicle. That was one big son of a bitch, he thought. The man reached back into the van’s cab and came back out holding a long green tube over his shoulder. He pivoted toward Kingfisher Five just as the gunship finished its turn and straightened out.

  Drachev’s eyes widened in shock. That was a handheld SAM. “Five, look out!” he radioed frantically. “You’re under missile attack—”

  In a puff of white exhaust and dazzling flame, the surface-to-air missile slashed across the sky with incredible speed. It exploded ju
st above the other helicopter’s rotor assembly. Spewing smoke and shattered rotor fragments, the stricken Ka-52 spiraled down and crashed among the trees.

  Beside Drachev, Senior Sergeant Pekhtin reflexively triggered a full salvo of 122mm S-13 rockets. In less than a second, five unguided rockets streaked downrange and slammed straight into the blue van. It vanished amid a rippling series of powerful explosions as the rockets’ armor-piercing fragmentation warheads detonated.

  When the smoke cleared away, there was nothing left of the vehicle or its occupants but a few smoldering pieces of blackened and twisted metal.

  Pekhtin swallowed. “Oh, shit,” he muttered.

  Drachev nodded grimly. “Nice work, Sergeant,” he bit out through gritted teeth. “Now we’re totally fucked.”

  Twenty

  Scion Seven-Zero, Northwest of Lesosibirsk

  That Same Time

  “We are four minutes out from the LZ,” Nadia announced. She glanced up from the computer-generated map showing their projected course. “Still no further signals from Ms. Kerr or anyone else in the covert ops team.”

  Despite her deliberately unruffled tone, Brad could sense her growing tension. He shared it. Apart from a brief acknowledgment of their first message, they’d heard nothing more from Scion’s intelligence agents. But by now Sam and the others should have reached the edge of their planned landing zone and reported whether or not it was clear. Their continued radio silence was increasingly worrying.

  He looked ahead through his HUD. They were flying south at four hundred knots, skirting along the western edge of the Yenisei valley. Low, forested hills rose off to the right. Higher, more rugged elevations were visible across the river on the left. At this altitude, the clearing they’d selected was still just over his visual horizon.

  Brad banked a couple of degrees, starting a wide, curving turn that would bring them in from the northwest, along the LZ’s long axis. He frowned. “We’re getting really close to a ‘go’ or ‘no go’ decision on landing.”

  If he waited much longer to start configuring the Rustler for a rough field landing, they’d be coming in too hot and have to go around again—wasting precious time and fuel . . . which was definitely not a good idea this deep in hostile territory. To buy a little more time, he throttled back and climbed slightly, reducing their airspeed to three hundred knots. He pushed a button on his stick, shutting off their terrain-following system to take full control over the aircraft. “DTF disengaged.”

  A cursor flashed onto Brad’s HUD, marking a lighter-colored patch among the otherwise almost unrelieved green of the pine forest. “Okay, I have the LZ in sight.” He glanced across the cockpit. “See if you can get a better read on this situation. I really don’t want to land blind.”

  “Copy that,” Nadia said. Her fingers flew across one of her MFDs, ordering their computer to scan through multiple radio frequencies for any indication of trouble. Abruptly, she stiffened as a slew of frantic Russian voice transmissions sounded in her ears. “Brad! Something very bad is happening!”

  She switched the active channel to his headset.

  “Zimodorok Piyat’ ne rabotayet! Sem’ po marshrutu!” he heard through hissing static. “Baza, nam nuzhno bol’she voysk zdes’! Seychas!”

  Suddenly Brad spotted columns of smoke curling up out of the woods ahead of them. Simultaneously, the Rustler’s threat-warning system went active—bracketing three distant green-brown specks. It identified them as a Russian Ka-52 helicopter gunship and two Mi-8 troop transports. They were clattering just over the treetops, circling low above the rising smoke. More threat icons blazed across the horizon, highlighting another wave of enemy helicopters much farther out, but definitely coming this way. He shook his head in disbelief. “Christ, it looks like we’re headed straight into a pitched battle. So much for the subtle approach.”

  Reacting fast, Nadia brought the XCV-70’s forward-looking passive thermal sensors online. In fractions of a second, the aircraft’s computer analyzed the data it was receiving and transferred the resulting images to one of her MFDs. “I count two downed helicopters and the wreckage of one ground vehicle.” She hesitated. “It could be the team’s van.”

  “Hell,” Brad said, feeling sick. “We’re too late.”

  “Maybe not,” Nadia said quickly. She leaned forward, zooming in on another faint thermal image their sensors had just picked up. Whatever it was, it was headed toward the LZ, weaving back and forth at high speed between the trees. Was that some kind of motorcycle?

  A com icon flashed urgently in the corner of her left-hand display. She stabbed at it. “Scion aircraft, this is Sam Kerr,” a familiar voice gasped through their headsets. “I’m coming as fast as I can . . . But Marcus and Davey aren’t with me. . . . I don’t know if they’re alive or dead.”

  Brad made an instant decision. “We’re go for landing,” he snapped. He clicked the intercom. “Ian, you’d better get set. We’re coming in hard and fast. And the LZ is about to turn hot.”

  “So I guessed,” Major Schofield replied crisply from the troop compartment. The Canadian special forces expert sounded cool—almost as though he’d just heard they were arriving at a vacation resort. “I’ll be ready to move the second you drop the ramp.”

  Nadia swore under her breath. “Gówno. Shit.”

  “More trouble?” Brad asked, entering a short command on one of his own displays. He’d just instructed his flight computer to configure the aircraft for a short-field rough landing.

  “New Russian radio transmissions,” she told him. “That gunship pilot is claiming they killed at least two enemy agents. He says they were trying to escape in a vehicle his gunner destroyed with rocket fire.”

  Brad grimaced. That made Sam Kerr the only survivor of the Scion covert ops unit.

  Another quick control press on his stick selected a touchdown point at the western edge of the clearing. Obediently, his computer drew a glowing line across his HUD—giving him a visual cue. They were about three nautical miles out.

  He throttled back more. Losing speed fast, the Rustler slid lower. Hydraulics whirred as computer-directed control surfaces opened. The muted roar from their four turbofan engines diminished. “Sixty seconds.”

  “Vrazheskiy samolet v pole zreniya!” he heard a Russian pilot yell over the radio circuit. “Enemy aircraft in sight!”

  Nadia looked out her side of the cockpit, seeing the Ka-52 swinging toward them. “Hostile inbound!”

  Focused entirely on the clearing rushing up toward them at nearly two hundred knots, Brad could only spare a single glance at his threat display. “That guy’s not carrying air-to-air missiles.”

  Nadia shook her head decisively. “He has antitank missiles and a 30mm cannon. And we will be a sitting duck once we are on the ground.” Her fingers flashed across her displays. “Weapons control transferred to my station.”

  “Make it fast,” he warned. “I’m getting ready to lower the gear.”

  Nadia nodded. The moment that happened the Rustler’s computer would automatically lock out all their offensive weapons. No sane aircraft crew wanted to risk firing a missile right through their own landing gear.

  An image of the Russian gunship, now approximately five miles off their starboard wing tip, appeared on one of her MFDs. The glowing brackets highlighting the Ka-52 flashed red and a shrill, warbling tone sounded in her headset. “Target locked on.” She tapped a missile-shaped icon. “Fox Two!”

  Bay doors whined open. Instantly, an AIM-9X Sidewinder heat-seeking missile dropped out into the open air. The Sidewinder’s solid rocket motor ignited before it had fallen more than a few feet . . . and it streaked out from under the Rustler—already curving hard to the right as it homed in on the Ka-52 at nearly two thousand miles per hour.

  Alerted to the missile launch by his own sensors, the Russian pilot did his best to evade. The Ka-52’s long nose dipped as it banked into a tight turn. Flares tumbled away from under the wildly maneuvering enemy helicopter,
each a miniature sunburst against the bright blue afternoon sky.

  The Sidewinder ignored them—slashing in to explode just a few feet from the gunship. Thousands of razor-edged titanium shards sleeted through its cockpit and fuselage with enormous destructive force. Caught partway through its evasive turn, the Russian helicopter tumbled out of control, plunged into the forest, and blew up.

  “Good kill,” Nadia confirmed. She saw the two surviving Mi-8 troop carriers in range suddenly veer away. Staying low, they fled southeast. The phalanx of other approaching Russian helicopters farther off altered course at the same time, also turning away. She smiled fiercely. Like all scavengers, they were afraid of any prey that bared its own teeth and claws.

  With muffled bumps and thumps below the cockpit, the Rustler’s landing gear came down and locked in position. The clearing they were aiming for grew steadily larger through the forward canopy.

  They came in low and slow, practically brushing against the treetops. Suddenly the green line marking Brad’s preselected touchdown position flared brighter.

  “Hang on!” he warned, chopping his throttles almost all the way back.

  Robbed of the last few knots of airspeed that kept it aloft, the Scion aircraft dropped out of the sky and touched down with a tooth-rattling jolt. Brad swiftly reversed thrust to brake even faster, slamming them forward against their straps. Decelerating hard, the batwing-shaped Rustler bounced across the ground in a whirling storm cloud of dust and torn grass. They rolled to a stop not far from the tall trees lining the eastern edge of the clearing.

  Grinning with relief, Brad pushed his throttles forward just a notch, feeding their engines just enough power to let him swing the Rustler through a 180-degree turn. Once he was lined up and ready for an immediate takeoff, he throttled back again and hit the ramp release.

  Cameras set to cover the XCV-70’s rear arc caught Ian Schofield darting out into the clearing. Bulky in his body armor, the Canadian dropped prone, covering the southern edge of the clearing through the sights of a long-barreled HK416 carbine. He had a man-portable antitank missile launcher slung across his back. Evidently, he’d taken his assignment as their one-man army quite seriously.