Iron Wolf

by Dale Brown

  A sign in dirty, peeling white letters hung over a rusting metal roll-up door identified this as URVAD TSENTR POTACHANNYA 20—Government Supply Center 20. He scowled. This had probably once been one of the storehouses where the old Soviet-era bosses hoarded fresh food and luxury goods for the nomenklatura, the governing elite. Now it was nothing but a ruin.

  He dialed a number on his cell phone. It was answered on the first ring. “I’m here,” he said flatly, and broke the connection.

  The metal door squealed and rattled open, grinding upward.

  It slid down behind Kravchenko as soon as he walked into the abandoned warehouse, banging down with a hollow echo on the cracked and pitted concrete floor. Lights came on, revealing a big black Mercedes sedan parked in the center of the empty building.

  A man in jeans and a brown leather jacket moved in behind the Ukrainian. He must have been waiting in the shadows beside the door. “Your phone,” he said coldly. “You’ll get it back when we’re done here.”

  Shrugging, Kravchenko handed him the cell phone and then held his arms out wide, waiting patiently while the sentry frisked him for weapons or hidden recording devices.

  Satisfied that Kravchenko was clean, the other man stepped back and waved him toward the waiting car. “Go on.”

  The rear passenger door of the Mercedes opened when he got within a few meters. A second man, this one wearing an elegant business suit and sunglasses, got out and stood facing Kravchenko. He was taller than the Ukrainian partisan leader, with gray, short-cropped hair and a square jaw. The business suit fit him perfectly, but he would probably have looked equally at home in a uniform.

  “My employer is . . . unhappy, Major,” he said quietly.

  “So am I,” Kravchenko retorted.

  “You were given substantial resources to accomplish a specific objective—the liberation of the Russian-controlled areas of our motherland. To achieve this, you assured my employer that your actions would bring Moscow into direct collision with the United States, Poland, and the other NATO powers. Instead, the Russians now control half of our country, including most of our energy resources and heavy industry!”

  “The West has proved more cowardly than I imagined,” Kravchenko admitted.

  “Your lack of imagination has cost us dearly,” the man in sunglasses sneered.

  “My plans were approved at every stage,” Kravchenko pointed out coldly. “Your boss saw nothing improbable in the supposition that our attacks would lure Russia’s leaders into repeated military action against Poland, action that would trigger direct NATO involvement in this region to our ultimate benefit. If my imagination failed, so did that of your employer.”

  “It would be safer for you to avoid insulting him,” the other man said. His mouth tightened. “He is not a man inclined to forgive affronts—or failure.”

  “I don’t give a damn about my personal safety,” Kravchenko said bluntly. “I only care about winning. And killing as many Russians as possible.” He stared hard at the man in sunglasses. “My question is: Can your boss say the same? Or is he ready to quit now that things have gotten tough? Is he just a summer soldier? A patriot only when the sun is shining?”

  “My employer is equally interested in victory,” the other man replied. “He only questions your ability to achieve it.”

  “Then your boss needs to learn more patience,” Kravchenko said flatly. He shook his head in disgust. “For God’s sake, we’ve lost a single battle, not the whole damned war! And even in losing, we’ve picked up a crucial insight into what makes this Russian leader, Gryzlov, tick.”

  “Now you claim to see profit in defeat?” the other man asked skeptically.

  “The Russians reacted exactly as we had hoped to Voronov’s murder, lunging headlong into Polish territory like a maddened bull,” Kravchenko pointed out. “Our mistake was in assuming that Gryzlov and his generals would react the same way to our next attack. But we were too subtle for them.”

  “Subtle?!” The man in sunglasses seemed amused. “There are many words I would use to describe the slaughter you inflicted on that separatist base. Subtle would not have been among them.”

  “Think about it,” Kravchenko persisted. “The key difference between our two attacks was their distance from the Polish border.”

  The other man snorted. “Maybe so, but having successfully occupied our country up to the Dnieper, Moscow is not likely to send more soldiers and generals for you to shoot near the frontier. Not unless they were already invading the rest of Ukraine, which is not something we want!”

  “True,” Kravchenko said. “But you miss my point. If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain. If our Russian targets will not venture close to Poland, then . . .” He sketched out his new plan, which was far more ruthless than anything he had proposed before.

  When he was finished, the man in sunglasses stood silent for several long moments, pondering what he had heard. At last, he nodded. “What you propose does have a certain brutal elegance, Major. It may even succeed. But you ask much of my employer—in time and in money and in other, less easily replaceable, resources.”

  “Yes,” Kravchenko agreed. “I do.”

  “Very well,” the other man said. “I will present your plan to him. I will even recommend that we proceed.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But you must understand something very important, Major,” the man in sunglasses warned. “My employer will not tolerate another failure. If your plan does not work, the consequences to you will be severe. Fatal, even.”

  “If I fail, I would not wish to live anyway,” Kravchenko said simply.

  Once the Ukrainian partisan leader was gone, the man in sunglasses slid back into the rear seat of the Mercedes. He took out his phone and began composing a short text message to his real employer, Igor Truznyev, in Moscow: MEETING WITH GULL ONE SUCCESSFUL. NEW SALES PROPOSAL WILL FOLLOW. WILL REQUIRE CLOSE COOPERATION WITH WARSAW OFFICE PROSPECTS GOOD.

  DONEGAL AIRPORT,

  COUNTY DONEGAL, IRELAND

  THAT SAME TIME

  Descending on its final approach, the lead Scion-owned XF-111 SuperVark flew low over the long, rolling North Atlantic waves. Wings swept forward, it crossed over the rugged, cliff-lined Irish coast and banked back south. It touched down on the black asphalt runway and braked, rolling past the wide white sandy expanse of Carrickfinn Beach—followed a few minutes later by its counterpart.

  One after the other, the two fighter-bombers taxied toward a fuel pit not far from a small, blue-roofed terminal building. There were no other planes in sight. This quiet regional airport was used mostly by small turboprops making commuter hops to Dublin or Glasgow, or by oil-company helicopters servicing offshore installations out in the newly developed Corrib natural gas field.

  For the Scion XF-111s, this was just a refueling stop—their second since departing the North American coast. Their first stop had been at Greenland, two and half hours ago. According to their export licenses, both refurbished planes were supposedly being sold to a private Polish corporation for use as “flight and technology demonstrators.” Accordingly, they could not be transferred with drop tanks or with active air refueling systems, which limited their range to about two thousand nautical miles.

  In the lead XF-111’s left seat, Mark Darrow pulled off his flying helmet and rubbed at his eyes. “Tell the stewardess to bring me a coffee, will you, Jack?” the Englishman asked. “Black, no sugar.”

  Jack Hollenbeck, the American assigned as his copilot and systems operator for this flight, grinned. He rattled their empty thermos apologetically. “Sorry, boss. We’re fresh out. Want me to head on over to the terminal and pick you up a shot of Irish whiskey, though?”

  “Christ, no!” Darrow said. “Not unless you want to see if this big beast really can be remote-piloted from Powidz. One good dram of Bushmills and I’ll be out like a light.”

  “I reckon I’ll pass on that for now,” Hollenbeck said, p
ushing his Texas drawl up just a notch. “If God had really meant man to fly from a console, he’d have given him a built-in video monitor and a high-speed data link instead of eyes.”

  Chuckling, Darrow glanced out the canopy, eyeing the little terminal building. He sat up straighter. “Look over there, Jack. We’ve got company.”

  Hollenbeck leaned forward to get a better look. Two men in hats and overcoats stood outside the Donegal Airport terminal. Both were busy taking pictures of the parked XF-111s.

  “Plane spotters?” he wondered. “Lots of folks like to collect photos of big bad old warbirds.”

  “This early in the morning?” Darrow shook his head. “Not bloody likely.” He chewed his lower lip. “Warm up the sensors and let’s get a few pictures of our own, eh? Run what we get through that image-matching software the technical boys at Scion boast about all the time.”

  “Gotcha.” Hollenbeck busied himself with the SuperVark’s sensor systems for few minutes, humming to himself while he snapped a series of close-ups of the two men still watching them from outside the airport terminal. Then he sent them via satellite link to Scion’s powerful and highly capable computers back in the United States.

  Almost to his surprise, the software was able to identify both men.

  “Oh, man,” he murmured.

  “What?” Darrow asked.

  “That fat guy on the left is listed as an assistant commercial attaché at the U.S. embassy in London,” Hollenbeck said.

  “Which means he’s CIA,” Darrow said, disgusted.

  “Yep.”

  “And the skinny fellow on the right?”

  “Oleg Azarov, supposedly a perfume salesman for Novaya Zarya, in Moscow.” Hollenbeck shook his head. “But the computer says he’s really a captain in the GRU.” He reached for his keyboard again. “I’d better call this in and let Mr. Martindale know we’ve been tagged.”

  THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW

  THE NEXT DAY

  Sergei Tarzarov studied the satellite photos intently, moving slowly from one to another with care and precision. He made sure his face revealed nothing more than casual interest. The years he had spent as Gennadiy Gryzlov’s chief of staff had taught him the dangers of inadvertently triggering the younger man’s turbulent emotions. Opposition might send Russia’s president into a towering rage, but too-hasty agreement with some of his irrational leaps of intuition were equally likely to send Gryzlov into fits of soaring overconfidence. The psychological improvements he had covertly described to former president Igor Truznyev were real—but they were thinly rooted. No, Tarzarov decided, the wild man still lurked inside Gryzlov. And it was his unenviable job to help keep that beast of unreason chained by logic, evidence, and Russia’s true national interests.

  He looked up. “These photographs are, indeed, suggestive, Mr. President.” He tapped his chin reflectively. “They definitely prove that the Poles are developing some new military capability in secret. Unfortunately, that is all they will prove to others in the international community.”

  “You disagree that this is evidence that the Poles are training terrorists?” Gryzlov asked. His voice was dangerously calm.

  “The Poles may very well be arming those who have attacked us,” Tarzarov countered. “But from the purely technical standpoint of persuading other powers—the Americans, the other Europeans, the Chinese—these images by themselves are insufficient. If they were taken before we were attacked, that would be a very different matter. As it is, the Poles could easily pass this secret military exercise off as a response to our retaliatory strike against them after General Voronov’s assassination.”

  “You suggest that we ignore this evidence, Sergei? That we shred these photos and go skipping merrily on our way like idiot children?” Gryzlov said, even more icily than before.

  “On the contrary,” Tarzarov said patiently. “We should use this information, but as effectively as possible.” He shuffled the satellite photos together and slid them back across the desk to the president. “Foreign Minister Titeneva will meet with the American secretary of state in Geneva soon, yes?”

  Gryzlov nodded. His eyes narrowed. “You think Daria should confront the Americans with this information—and what it could mean?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Tarzarov agreed. “If the Americans know what the Poles are up to, they may tell us themselves, in order to calm our darker suspicions. And if Warsaw has kept whatever was going on at Drawsko Pomorskie secret from the Americans—”

  “We sow distrust between the Poles and their strongest ally!” Gryzlov realized. Glowing with enthusiasm, he smiled broadly at the older man. “Well done, Sergei! That is a chess move worthy of a true grandmaster. Without support from Washington, Poland would stand virtually naked.”

  OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT

  CHIEFS OF STAFF,

  THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  THE NEXT DAY

  Air Force General Timothy Spelling, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stood up from behind his desk and came over to greet his visitor, CIA director Thomas Torrey. “Nice to see you, Tom.”

  He led the other man over to a small round conference table with a view of the Potomac and invited him to sit down.

  “I’m guessing this isn’t exactly a social call?” Spelling asked. It was rare for Torrey to come all the way over to the Pentagon in person. Coordination between the higher echelons of the CIA and the Defense Department was usually handled by secure e-mail or a conference call.

  “You guess correctly,” Torrey acknowledged. He flipped open his laptop and turned it on. “It’s about the President’s Daily Brief for tomorrow. I need your help in evaluating some new intel and figuring out how to present it to President Barbeau.”

  Spelling raised an eyebrow. The whole U.S. intelligence community—the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the NSA, and the FBI, plus a host of others—helped coordinate the process of preparing the PDB, which fused intelligence from a variety of sources, but the CIA was solely responsible for the final product. And the Agency jealously guarded its prerogatives, especially in these days of constrained budgets. Having Torrey ask for his input at this stage of the process was a little bit like hearing the pope consulting a Buddhist monk about a tricky theological question.

  “Here’s what’s got me flummoxed.” The CIA director tapped through to a file and opened a series of digital images. He spun the laptop toward Spelling.

  The chairman of the Joint Chiefs took a close look. “F-111s? Two of them?” He glanced at Torrey. “Where were these pictures taken? And when?”

  “In Ireland, a couple of days ago.”

  “Who took them?” Spelling asked. “If you don’t mind telling me, of course.” Like all good intelligence officers, the CIA’s chief had a natural reluctance to reveal too much about sources and methods.

  “One of my junior people based in London,” Torrey said. “The station chief there got a tip that Sky Masters wanted to do some hush-hush refueling at a little airport in Donegal and decided to take a closer look.”

  Spelling leaned back in his chair, his eyes hooded. “Sky Masters, huh? Well, that makes sense. We retired our last F-111s almost twenty years ago. These two must be some of the old Boneyard aircraft Sky Masters refurbished on spec a couple of years ago. As the planned second stage of that interim XB-1 Excalibur bomber program Patrick McLanahan sold to President Phoenix and Vice President Page before the Chinese hit Guam.”

  “Which was one of the very first DoD programs canceled by President Barbeau,” the CIA director remembered.

  “Yeah.” There was no emotion in Spelling’s voice, but that was a matter of long training and practice. The easiest way to shake off senators and representatives trying to make names for themselves during congressional hearings by savaging the military was to sound as dull and dry as possible. “Helen Kaddiri and her people kept after us to allow them to sell the remaining aircraft overseas. But th
e Defense Security Cooperation Agency put so many restrictions on any proposed uses that I thought the company had given up. It looks like I was wrong.”

  “So it seems,” Torrey agreed.

  “Did your guys pick up any word on where those two refurbished F-111s were headed?” Spelling asked.

  “Poland.”

  “Color me not surprised,” Spelling said. He nodded. “I knew Piotr Wilk back before he got into politics. He’s always been air-minded, and one of the weapons systems Poland lacks is a dedicated long-range strike bomber.”

  “Will those planes make a difference?” Torrey asked seriously.

  “Against the Russians? Just two of them?” Spelling said. He shook his head decisively. “Not a chance in hell. McLanahan talked a lot about how much more effective the F-111s could be with all the modifications and upgrades his people were adding. But no two old warbirds like that, no matter how souped-up they might be, could tip the strategic balance in Poland’s favor.”

  “What if the Poles got their hands on more of them?” the CIA director asked.

  “Do you have any evidence of that?”

  Torrey shook his head. “Nope. It’s just a hunch so far.”

  “Well, my guess is that your hunch is pretty good,” Spelling said seriously. “President Wilk isn’t an idiot. He has to know that he’d need a hell of a lot more of those planes to make any difference at all.”

  “And if he got them?”

  The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff shook his head again. “It still wouldn’t matter. You can’t just buy an effective bomber force off the shelf. Without trained and experienced crews to fly them and top-notch technicians to maintain them, the best planes in the world are just expensive toys. Even if the Poles could somehow afford to buy thirty or forty of those old birds from Sky Masters, it would take them years to train up a decent force.”

  “Then why are they doing this?” Torrey asked.