Black Flagged Vektor (4)

by Konkoly, Steven

  “Strobe deactivated,” Gosha said.

  “We’re at a break in the trees,” Farrington said.

  “Stand by…missile away,” Sanderson said.

  Eight seconds later, Farrington saw a bright green flash to the north. He slapped Misha’s shoulder, and the Tiger rocketed forward before the sound of the explosion reached them. Misha turned the jeep left on the gravel road just beyond the trees, searching for a westerly route. Farrington spotted what appeared to be a wide turnoff coming up on the right.

  “Try that,” he said, pointing uselessly at the turnoff.

  “Where?” Misha said, slowing.

  “Right there. Looks like a car parked at the corner, or some kind of—”

  “Got it,” he said, swinging the car onto the road and speeding up.

  “You’re clear to punch through town. The closest units to the south are three kilometers away, just entering Slavgorod,” Sanderson said.

  A few minutes later, Misha brought the Tiger to a halt in unfamiliar territory on the far western outskirts of town. They needed to connect with one of the major jeep trails headed southwest, which would feed into a network of smaller westerly trails that emptied directly into the border less than twelve kilometers away.

  “Anyone following us?” Farrington said.

  “Not that I can tell,” Gosha said.

  “You look clear from where I’m standing,” Sanderson said, eliciting a few tired laughs.

  “Anything ahead of us?” Farrington said.

  “Nothing heavy. We’ve spotted a few Tigers running up and down the border, but we’ll help you get past those. I’m going to notify control, so they can release Black Magic from the holding area,” Sanderson said.

  “Copy. We’re moving out.”

  Farrington looked at his watch and smiled. 4:27. They had nearly thirty minutes to travel twelve kilometers over flat terrain, with nobody in immediate pursuit. Maybe this hadn’t been the suicide mission he expected after all. Then again, it was too early to start thinking like that. A lot could go wrong in twelve kilometers.

  “Head out on the trail to the left at fifty miles per hour. If it stays southwest, increase your speed. Stay frosty, gentlemen. We ain’t out of the woods yet.”

  Chapter 65

  3:39 AM

  CIA Compound, Manas Airbase

  Manas, Kyrgyzstan

  Dean Canales stared at the shifting infrared image of the Tiger on his screen and manipulated the joystick at his station to decrease the magnification and display a more panoramic view. Based on the Reaper’s sensor input, Blackjack was less than three kilometers from the Kazakhstan border, with a clear path ahead of them. The nearest enemy vehicle, a heavily armed Tiger, sat four kilometers southwest of them at the end of the jeep trail in front of the border. Blackjack had jumped the trail a few kilometers back, heading due west at a conservative off-road speed that would put them on Kazakhstan soil in six minutes if they didn’t blow a tire. Even if they blew a tire at this point, they could limp across the border in time to meet their pickup.

  “Let’s do one more sweep for hostiles. Climb to three thousand feet and start a three sixty centered on Blackjack’s current position,” Canales said.

  “Roger. Climbing,” the other CIA employee said.

  “All right. Let’s see who’s out there,” he said, adjusting his joystick to sweep the area north of Blackjack.

  Commands transmitted from the mobile ground control station took 1.2 seconds to reach Black Rain through a satellite link, which made operating the drone an interesting exercise in forward thinking. Nothing happened immediately, and high-stress situations required an odd form of time-delayed patience. Former pilots had a difficult time adjusting to a video-game-style flight mode that didn’t immediately respond to their “stick” movements, and were rarely transitioned to UAV programs. The CIA preferred to steal previously trained drone pilots from the Air Force, or in the case of Dean Canales, train them from scratch.

  The Raytheon AN/DAS-1 Multi-Spectral Targeting System (MTS-B) mounted under the Reaper’s nose responded to his commands, sweeping north and panning out to an even wider view than previously established. Canales focused on the MTS-B’s infrared sensor’s input, which gave him the best chance of detecting any threats within the sensor’s view. The Siberian landscape had retained little of the previous day’s heat, providing a near perfect backdrop for the passive infrared sensor. The heat signature of a human or recently run vehicle starkly contrasted with the cold ground, making his job relatively simple. The system’s software did the rest, automatically locking onto these signatures for further investigation by human operators. Canales would make a quick assessment, based on system recommendations and his own experience, whether the Reaper needed to do a closer sweep over a detected signature.

  With his eyes fixed to the screen, he reached for an insulated coffee mug on the floor with his unoccupied hand. He found one of the mugs and lifted it, quickly determining that it was too light to be his backup supply of caffeine. He moved his hand around under the thick leather swivel seat in frustration, finally deciding to take his eyes off the screen for a brief second. He turned the seat to the right and leaned his head over the side, immediately finding the tall black mug and lifting it from the floor. Now he was back in business.

  He had crashed hard ten minutes ago, coming down off the incredible adrenaline rush initiated by the brief one-sided battle over Slavgorod. He’d fired more than his fair share of Hellfire missiles against Al Qaeda operatives or other “extremists,” and was no stranger to questionable drone missions, but what they did over Slavgorod was something different altogether. Whatever Blackjack carried in that Tiger had to be absolutely critical to national security because he had just committed an act of war against the Russian Federation to defend it.

  He couldn’t imagine the agency debrief for this operation and all of the paperwork he’d have to sign swearing this to secrecy. The only immediate upside he could foresee would be an instantaneous transfer out of this shithole back to the United States. He expected to be on the first flight out of Manas after landing the Reaper, which suited him fine. Manas Airbase was a miserable assignment that he’d reluctantly agreed to take for the hardship pay.

  When he returned his gaze to the multi-sensor input console, his eyes caught something exiting the bottom of the screen at high speed. He didn’t see enough of the image to determine what had crossed the screen, but based on the sensor’s orientation, it was travelling north to south. He nestled the coffee mug between his legs and checked the system for a software tag. Finding it at the top of the queue, he hooked the tag and clicked on the icon to slave the MTS-B turret on the Reaper to the heat signature. One point two seconds later, he experienced an adrenaline spike that felt like more of a heart attack. Two Mi-8 Hip helicopters had passed under his Reaper, headed toward Blackjack.

  Chapter 66

  4:40 AM

  2.5 Kilometers from Kazakhstan Border

  Russian Federation

  The Tiger dropped into a shallow ditch, jamming Farrington against the four-point harness that had kept his body inside the vehicle over the past several minutes. The vehicle suddenly angled skyward and cleared the ditch in a violent lurching motion.

  “You gotta watch that shit! We can’t get stuck!” Farrington said, fully aware that he was letting the conditions get the better of him.

  “You didn’t see the fucking ditch either! I’ve been driving this motherfucker in the dark for four hours. I could use a little help watching the road!” Misha said.

  “Check out the eastern horizon,” Gosha said, temporarily diffusing the tension.

  Farrington raised his night vision goggles and risked a look out of the passenger window. The horizon indeed displayed a faint blue glow, which signified the beginning of nautical twilight. Soon enough, the landscape surrounding them would start to appear without the aid of night vision, exposing them to simple observation by border patrols or aircraft. He hop
ed to be flying across Kazakhstan in a helicopter by that point.

  The vehicle bucked again, slamming the side of his head into the metal doorframe.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

  “Serves you right,” Misha said.

  The left, front side of the vehicle dropped and rebounded, shaking the entire vehicle, but sparing Farrington any further physical damage. Sasha moaned from the rear compartment, feeling the full impact of their off-road voyage, strapped against the thinly cushioned troop bench. His morphine had started to wear thin before reaching Slavgorod, but they didn’t feel comfortable giving him more painkillers without a better assessment of his condition, and so far they hadn’t been able to spare the time for a more comprehensive examination. He was moaning, which meant he was still alive, and that was about the best they could manage at the moment.

  Farrington’s satellite phone vibrated, and he immediately answered.

  “Blackjack, this is control station. Black Rain has detected helicopters inbound from the north—”

  “Is this our pickup? We’re not over the border yet,” Farrington said.

  “Negative. Two Mi-8 Hips at low altitude. Scan north to northeast of your position. We’re trying to find them on satellite…shit, check your four o’clock!” Karl Berg said.

  “Scan four o’clock for hostile helicopters!” Farrington yelled.

  “Scanning!” Gosha yelled.

  “Where the fuck are my helos, control?” Farrington said.

  “En route to primary extract. ETA three minutes,” Berg said.

  “You need to redirect them to our position. We can’t fight off armed helicopters,” Farrington said.

  “I’ll do what I can. Until then, I have one last parting gift for you,” Berg said.

  ***

  Gosha spotted the helicopters and swiveled the grenade launcher as far to the right as possible, unable to line them up in the launcher’s sight. Unlike the American “Humvee,” the GAZ Tiger didn’t feature a fully rotatable gun ring enabling gunners to engage targets in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree arc. He was limited by the Tiger’s forward direction of travel.

  “I have two helicopters coming in low at four o’clock,” Gosha said.

  “How far?” Farrington said.

  “Not far enough.”

  He couldn’t guess their distance in the dark and had no intention of taking his hands off the grenade launcher to try and mark them with his rifle-mounted laser. By the time he determined the range, projectiles of various calibers would start arriving. He assumed the helicopters hadn’t been armed with air-to-ground missiles, or they would have fired them already, serving up the same result as the Hellfire missiles fired from the drone overhead.

  Without air-to-ground missiles, the transport helicopters would have a limited number of attack options, all strictly dependent upon the types of guns installed. The most typical weapons arrangement for the Mi-8 Hip troop transport involved door guns, which would leave them with two options: high-speed strafing runs alongside the Tiger or standoff gunnery at low speed. The Tiger’s grenade launcher could outrange most of the weapons mountable in the Hip’s doors, making a slow or stationary standoff attack unlikely. One 30mm grenade could cripple the lightly armored Hip, and the pilots would be unlikely to take that chance. Gosha counted on them to favor less accurate, high-speed tactics which, combined with the one Hellfire missile still owed to them by Black Magic, gave them a fighting chance to reach the border.

  Almost on cue with this thought, the lead helicopter exploded in midair, spinning ninety degrees and dropping to the horizon. Upon impact with the ground, a secondary detonation expanded skyward, blinding his night vision goggles. He couldn’t tell if the explosion had simply masked the second helicopter from sight or enveloped the second helicopter in the storm of shrapnel and fire that illuminated the countryside. He prayed for the latter. He raised his NVGs and scanned for any sign of a second crash site, unable to see past the firestorm that appeared well within his grenade launcher’s range.

  “Splash one helo! I don’t have a visual on the second,” he said.

  “Second helo peeled off in a wide arc,” Farrington said. “We might have caught a break. Get us to the border, Misha. I don’t care how you do it.”

  Misha accelerated the Tiger forward through the rough terrain, making a final push for the border. They travelled several seconds before Farrington broke the bad news over the intrasquad radio.

  “Control reports that the second Hip appears to be back in the fight, approaching from our seven o’clock. They have a bird’s-eye satellite view of the situation and can estimate range. We’ll turn into them at 2000 meters so you can engage with the grenade launcher,” Farrington said.

  “How far to the border?” Gosha asked, pushing his NVGs down over his face.

  “One point five kilometers. We just have to stay in the game for three minutes! Control is telling me to stand by to maneuver. Three, two—” Farrington said.

  “I don’t have a visual,” Gosha said, scanning the indicated sector for a dark object hovering over the horizon.

  “Hard left! Accelerate!” Farrington said.

  The vehicle banked left, swinging Gosha into the metal lip of the hatch and breaking his grip on the grenade launcher’s handle. When the Tiger straightened on its new southerly course, Gosha swung the launcher left, expecting to see the Hip lined up within a few degrees to either side of the weapon’s barrel. Instead, he saw nothing in a one hundred and eighty degree arc.

  “I can’t see it!”

  Before Gosha figured out his error, a continuous line of green tracers hit the ground in front of the Tiger, ricocheting in every direction. Misha managed to turn the vehicle out of the rapid-fire onslaught less than a second before the flow of 7.62mm projectiles hit them. The buzz-saw sound of the Hip’s minigun filled the air, competing with the general panic on their internal communications net, as he followed the last line of tracers back to the source. The helicopter had attacked them from a high angle, which he clearly hadn’t expected.

  Misha’s quick maneuver had saved them from certain oblivion. This Mi-8 Hip was fitted with GShG 7.62mm miniguns, capable of accurately firing 6,000 rounds per minute out to 1000 meters. The gunners aboard the Hip only needed to line the Tiger up in their minigun sights for one second to shred the Tiger with over one hundred steel-jacketed projectiles. While his grenade launcher could saturate a stationary target at twice the range of the minigun, hitting a moving target was a different story altogether. The grenades took forever to reach their target and didn’t travel in a straight trajectory, making it nearly impossible to calculate the necessary trajectory to successfully lead a fast-moving target. He wasn’t the least bit optimistic about hitting a helicopter moving at 150 miles per hour with one of his grenades. Not before they were torn to pieces by the Hip’s miniguns.

  Instead, they would have to work together to dodge the obtrusively lethal green line of tracers. If they could maneuver wildly enough at the last moment, the gunners would have a hard time lining up a shot. The last gun run had lasted fewer than three seconds, which was all the time the Russian gunners would get if the pilots continued to play it safe and conduct high-speed strafing runs. He watched the Hip bank left and commence a slow turn, while Misha pointed the Tiger toward the border and floored the engine.

  Chapter 67

  5:42 PM

  White House Situation Room

  Washington, D.C.

  The president turned to General Gordon and demanded an explanation for what they had all just witnessed on the screen.

  “Did one of our helicopters just crash in Russia? I did not authorize the extraction force to cross the border!” he said, turning to Manning next. “Find out what the hell is going on there!”

  “That was not one of our helicopters. Black Magic is sitting three kilometers west of the border. I’m talking with the SOCOM air controller right now,” General Gordon said, putting his right hand over his ear
to drown out any noise from the room. “I’ve just been told that Black Magic saw the explosion. They also report another helicopter in the area firing on Blackjack.”

  “Mr. President,” Manning said, “Blackjack reports that they are under attack by Russian helicopters. Heavily armed Mi-Hip transports. Blackjack is less than a kilometer from the border and requests immediate extract.”

  “Black Magic Zero One is armed, Mr. President,” General Gordon said.

  “We don’t know how many Russian helicopters are out there. What if there are more? We don’t even know where these helicopters originated!” Jacob Remy said.

  “Our analysts are pretty sure they came from the airbase at Novosibirsk,” Manning replied. “Probably helicopters in transit to Georgia or Murmansk from a squadron based in Irkutsk. They feel confident that this is all we’ll see.”

  “All I heard was ‘pretty sure’ and ‘probably,’ Mr. Manning. We can’t afford any more surprises here. General Gordon?” the president said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Get Black Magic out of there. Roll the whole package back to Manas.”

  “Understood, Mr. President.”

  Manning couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Against all odds, Farrington’s team had made it close enough to the border to get within visual range of Black Magic, and they were still going to pull the plug on the operation.

  “We could have them onboard our helos in less than three minutes, Mr. President. We’ve come too far to give up at this point,” Manning pleaded.

  “Correction, Mr. Manning. We’ve gone too far at this point. I’m responsible for a trail of Russian corpses extending nearly two hundred miles from Novosibirsk to Kazakhstan, and now we’ve just added a Russian transport helicopter to the list. I’m already facing a hard fucking day on the diplomatic front tomorrow. I won’t risk compounding the situation with the loss of an American helicopter on Russian soil, especially not one of those prototypes. I don’t know how I let any of you convince me to authorize their use. General Gordon, are those helicopters heading back?”