by Dale Brown
“If he said you still have illegal weapons in the field, Gryzlov, I’m sure it’s true,” Thorn said.
“We must put an end to this, Thorn,” Gryzlov said. “My analysts suggest that many of McLanahan’s bombers escaped from Yakutsk. Since they have not attacked any of their planned targets yet, and it is just a few hours until daybreak, I think perhaps my analysts are wrong. But if you could verify the whereabouts of all of McLanahan’s forces, I’m sure my commanders will see to it that our nuclear forces and air-defense units stand down, which will obviously relieve the stress on them and will undoubtedly help prevent an accidental launch of—”
“More threats, Gryzlov?” Thomas Thorn asked. “You threaten me with more nuclear attacks unless I give you the exact location and number of our bomber forces? You can go to hell, Gryzlov!”
“If you remain uncooperative, Thorn, I must give my strategic commanders full authority to respond to any threat against the Russian Federation with every weapon at their disposal,” Gryzlov said. “You do not seem to realize how serious this is, Thorn! McLanahan landed an entire bomber wing on a Russian airfield! He killed dozens of troops, captured and imprisoned nearly a thousand men and women, stole millions of rubles’ worth of fuel and weapons, and was responsible for the deaths of all his captives by keeping them in a battle zone—in essence attempting to use them as human shields!—instead of evacuating them to a safer area, as required by the Geneva Conventions. You must do more, much more to assure the Russian people, the Duma, myself, and the chiefs of the general staff that you want peace, not war.”
“I don’t have to give you anything, Gryzlov,” President Thorn said.
“Where is McLanahan?” Gryzlov asked angrily. “Have you had any contact with him?”
“Go to hell.”
“Don’t be stupid, Thorn. Tell me if he is on his way back to the United States. Do something smart for a change, Thorn! At least tell me if you have had contact with him.”
“I promise you, Gryzlov, the United States will be on guard against any other sneak attacks by Russia, and we will deal with them. The next call I get from you had better be an unconditional stand-down of all your military forces.” And Thorn terminated the call.
Gryzlov hung up the receiver and sat back in his seat, a smile spreading across his face. “What a fool,” he muttered. “If the American people are even a tenth as soft as he is, this war will be over very shortly.”
“Sir,” Stepashin said, his voice and visage tense and irritable, “you must address the general staff, the Duma, and the press regarding your actions in Yakutsk.”
“That can wait, Stepashin.”
“There are reports of hundreds of casualties coming in from the city of Yakutsk,” Stepashin said. “The nuclear bursts have damaged or destroyed billions of rubles in oil-distribution and pumping facilities. All communications in and out of the city and the civil airfield have been disrupted by the electromagnetic-pulse effects.”
“Stepashin, I did what I had to do,” Gryzlov said dismissively. “The Americans landed a dozen long-range bombers and over a hundred troops in Yakutsk and were in the process of launching attacks against us. What was I supposed to do—ask Thorn or McLanahan to sit tight on our homeland while we negotiate a cease-fire?”
Stepashin fell silent for a few moments, glancing over at his general-staff officers and receiving concerned, angry glances in return. There was no doubt that the Americans’ staging air raids from Yakutsk was a serious development—but Gryzlov’s using nuclear weapons on Russian soil, killing hundreds or perhaps even thousands of his own people and troops, did not sit well with them at all. Finally he said, “Why did you tell Thorn that we had interrogated American survivors? We have not sent in any troops or medical personnel yet to Yakutsk to see how bad the radiation levels are.”
“Thorn doesn’t know that,” Gryzlov said. “I wanted to hear his reaction when I mentioned the ballistic-missile bases—and he all but confirmed that those were indeed McLanahan’s intended targets.”
“Aren’t we obligated to search for survivors and help anyone that might really be in the shelters?” Stepashin asked.
“And risk the health of our own men by exposing them to radioactivity? Don’t be crazy, General,” Gryzlov said. “Have everyone stay away from Yakutsk and have combat engineers test the air and soil every day or so for radioactivity levels. If any Americans are there, they deserve to die—and if there are any Russian survivors, we will simply tell the world they were executed by the Americans.”
Stepashin looked down at the floor to hide his expression of disgust at the idea that they were simply going to abandon any Russians who might still be alive at Yakutsk.
“Now,” Gryzlov went on, “what more can we expect from the United States in the wake of this episode?”
“Thomas Thorn did not have much of a stomach to fight before—I see no reason to expect he’d be more willing to do so now,” Stepashin replied. “McLanahan was his Doberman pinscher—with him out of the picture, I think he will wait, size up his forces, and then open negotiations or decide how to respond. But he does not have the conventional forces available anymore to hold any strategic targets in Russia at risk. He can certainly hurt us with his sea-launched ballistic missiles, but I do not think he will respond with nuclear weapons, even in an extremely limited manner.”
“I am not concerned about Thorn, but I am worried about McLanahan and what remains of his forces—and with any other Patrick Shane McLanahans out there,” Gryzlov said. He thought for a moment, then said, “And there is still the question of the targets we failed to destroy, especially Cheyenne Mountain, Barksdale, Battle Mountain—and Sacramento, California.
“In case McLanahan surfaces again, Stepashin, he will be naming his own poison,” Gryzlov said. “Just in case one of McLanahan’s bombers does attack any of our ballistic-missile sites, I want Battle Mountain and Sacramento destroyed. Be sure one warhead hits Beale Air Force Base, just so everyone understands that it was the real target—but I want McLanahan’s home town destroyed in punishment. Hopefully, Thorn has the brains to recall him, if he is still alive, but in case he feels like acting the hero again, he and his family will suffer for it.”
At that moment the conference room’s phone rang. Nikolai Stepashin picked it up. Gryzlov was busy tamping down the tobacco on a cigarette and didn’t notice Stepashin’s confused, worried expression until he said in a loud voice, “I authorized no such thing! Get an identification on that aircraft immediately!”
Gryzlov threw the unlit cigarette to the floor. “What is it, General?”
“A large transport plane is circling Yakutsk Air Base,” Stepashin said. “It made a low approach and appeared to try to land but pulled up at the last moment.”
“Is it a combat-engineering team, checking radiation levels?”
“They use helicopters, not large transport planes, sir,” Stepashin said. “Whoever it is, he is not authorized to go anywhere near that base.”
Gryzlov’s shoulders drooped, and he felt his face drain of life. Once again, right when he felt like celebrating, something else had begun to happen….
Yakutsk Air Base
That same time
Not enough room—you’ll have to move that debris,” said the load-master of the MC-17 special-operations transport plane. He pointed out the open rear cargo doors. “That fuel truck and whatever that pile of stuff is there has got to go.”
“Got it,” said Air Force Technical Sergeant James “JD” Daniels, his voice electronically amplified by the communications suite built into his Tin Man battle armor. He and his partner, U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Johnny “Hulk” Morris, stood at the edge of the cargo ramp, one hand on a handhold, the other gripping their electromagnetic rail guns. Both men were stunned to see the carnage below them—buildings flattened, trucks and aircraft tossed around like toys in a young child’s room, and large craters of eerie gray gravel, like cremated remains. There was absolutely nothing l
eft standing aboveground for miles. Daniels nodded to Morris. “Radiation levels are moderate, Hulk—not as bad as we thought.”
“You’re shitting me, right, Sarge?” Morris asked. The MC-17 started a steep right bank over the base, lining up on the downwind side for another pass. “This place got hit by four or five nukes, and you’re saying it’s not as bad as we thought?”
“I’m picking up less than twenty rads per hour,” Brigadier General David Luger radioed from Battle Mountain Air Reserve Base. “That’s good for about six hours—and safe endurance will be much longer in the Tin Man armor. Should be more than enough time.”
“The young sergeant is a little skittish because he hasn’t had any kids yet, and he’s afraid his family jewels might get zapped, sir.”
“You’re just jealous because no woman would have you, Sarge.”
“Save it for when you’re back home, boys,” Luger said. “Get ready.”
It took a few minutes, but soon the MC-17 was making another low approach over the devastated runway. The big transport swooped in, descending to just over forty feet above the runway. As soon as the plane leveled off, at the approach end of the runway, Daniels stepped off the edge of the cargo ramp, holding the rail gun in his hands at port arms.
Morris had practiced these jumps back at Battle Mountain a few times, but he was relatively new to the unit and didn’t quite fully trust all this high-tech gear. He had made many parachute jumps of all kinds in his Marine Corps career—free-fall, static-line, HALO—and he’d even jumped from moving helicopters without a parachute before in thirty-thirty jumps—thirty feet above water, traveling thirty knots. But he had never jumped from a moving transport plane going three hundred knots—onto solid ground.
But now was not the time to question the wisdom of doing it. He briefly wondered which job was stupider—jumping off a cargo plane like this or riding in that crazy Condor insertion aircraft, like the commander and the sergeant major did: a plastic turd with wings, dropped from inside a B-52 flying at thirty-six thousand feet, then riding in it for over three hours right over the bad guys’ heads! Now, that was crazy. He gripped his rail gun tighter, took a last deep breath, and stepped off the cargo ramp just seconds after Daniels.
As they fell to Earth, gyros and accelerometers in their electronic battle-armor suits told them which way they needed to lean into the fall and at the same time measured their speed and the distance to the ground and adjusted the thrusters on their boots to compensate for being pushed by the jet blast from the MC-17. As they neared the ground, their boot thrusters fired at full power, slowing their fall—but even so, Daniels hit the ground hard and clattered to the concrete in a heap.
“You okay, Sarge?” Morris radioed.
“Affirmative,” Daniels responded. He was unhurt, but the rail gun’s data and power cable had broken. He cursed to himself and set the rifle near a distance-remaining sign on the edge of the runway so he could find it again. “Broke my damned rail gun, though. Let’s move, Hulk.”
The two Tin Man commandos in microhydraulically powered exoskeletons, working together, had the runway completely cleared of debris in minutes, including a partially crushed fuel truck. By the time they finished and stepped clear of the runway, the MC-17 had come around once again, smoothly touched down, and quickly powered to a stop using thrust reversers.
Daniels, Morris, and the others on board the MC-17 worked fast. After the transport plane lowered its cargo ramp, they unloaded what it carried: two forty-six-foot-long self-contained nuclear-biological-chemical—(NBC)—weapon-decontamination trailers, pulled by diesel tugs; two rubber water bladders on flatbed trailers, each holding three thousand gallons of fresh water and pulled alongside the decontamination trailers; and twenty NBC technicians.
Led by Daniels and Morris, the group headed toward the central west side of the runway. Beside where the west cluster of aircraft hangars used to be located were two low structures, less than four feet aboveground and, amazingly, still intact—they were each little more than a roof composed of eighteen inches of solid reinforced concrete, with a single steel door facing the aircraft parking ramp. One decontamination trailer backed up to each steel door, and the Tin Man commandos attached protective plastic tunnels to each shelter entrance and to the trailer entry door.
“Knock knock, Sergeant Major,” Daniels radioed.
“Door’s coming open,” Marine Corps Sergeant Major Chris Wohl responded. A few moments later, the steel doors swung open, and six individuals ran out of the underground shelters and directly into each door marked ENTER on both decontamination trailers. After the first group entered the trailers, Chris Wohl and Colonel Hal Briggs both emerged from the shelters, wearing Tin Man battle armor.
The two knocked fists with Daniels and Morris in greeting. “Good to see you guys,” Hal Briggs said. “What’s the situation?”
“No opposition, aircraft is code one, all personnel good to go, sir,” Daniels responded.
“What are the radiation levels?”
“We’re reading about forty rads per hour here. That’s good for about four hours’ exposure time. It’s a bit higher out on the parking ramp, but the isolation chamber inside the MC-17 and in the cockpit is about ten to fifteen rads. The max we detected inside our suits has been five rads per hour.”
“We gotta hand it to the Russkies—they know how to build bomb shelters,” Hal said. “We picked up just five rads during the attack and less than two rads per hour since then. Pretty damned good.”
“How many made it inside, sir?”
It was obvious, even concealed by his battle armor, that Briggs was sorrowful. “We have fifty-one in our shelter and forty-two in the other,” Hal said. “We were shoulder to shoulder in there. We managed to grab about thirty Russians and take them in with us.”
“My God,” Daniels breathed. He knew that the Air Battle Force had flown about a hundred fifty personnel into Yakutsk with them on the MC-17s, plus several more on the Megafortresses. That meant that about ninety American technicians had died in the attack, plus the aircrew members who were caught on the ground when the nukes hit.
The decontamination trailers had four separate stations, each of which could accommodate six people at once. Each person removed excess contaminated equipment in the first room, which was ventilated with filtered air to remove any radioactive fallout. Next each person scrubbed and showered in warm water and detergent in the second compartment, with clothes still on. In the third compartment, clothing was stripped off under water-and-detergent showers and discarded; and in the fourth compartment, each person again showered and scrubbed in warm water and detergent, then dried with warm-air blowers that exhausted to the outside. The person then dressed in clean clothes, underwent a quick medical scan to be sure as many radioactive particles as possible were removed, then were transported back to the MC-17. A positive-pressure plastic tunnel led from the decontamination trailer to a shielded waiting area set up in the forward part of the cargo compartment, with a positive-pressure filtered-air ventilation system activated to keep radioactive particles out.
“Twenty minutes to do six people per trailer, about thirty-six people per hour—we should be done in less than three hours,” Hal Briggs radioed. “I’m not sure how we’ll decontaminate the Tin Man battle armor—we might end up leaving it behind and blowing it in place.”
“Decontaminate the armor if you can,” Dave Luger said, “but don’t waste time with it. If you can’t safely decontaminate it or keep it separate from the personnel, go ahead and blow the gear, and then get the hell out. We’ll be leaving the decontamination trailers behind, unfortunately.”
“Any activity around the base?” Briggs asked.
“Lots of it, but even the aircraft are staying at least ten miles away,” Luger said. “They know you’re there, but it looks like they’re leaving you alone—at least for now.”
Ryazan’ Alternate Military Command Center, Russia
Minutes later
&nb
sp; That’s correct, sir,” General Nikolai Stepashin said. “Our reconnaissance aircraft observers believe that the aircraft is an American C-17 ‘Globemaster’ transport plane. It was carrying what they believe to be decontamination vehicles. They are attaching the vehicles to the base’s bomb shelters, waiting there a period of time, then driving over to the transport. It is apparent that the Americans are decontaminating their personnel and are preparing to airlift the survivors out of Yakutsk.”
“This is unbelievable!” President Anatoliy Gryzlov shouted. “I cannot believe the sheer audacity of these Americans! They have flown another military aircraft right past our air defenses and landed at a Russian air base again, completely disregarding the sovereignty of our airspace!”
Stepashin had to bite a lip to keep from grimacing—after what they had done to the United States of America, they had no cause to criticize anyone else’s breach of air sovereignty!
“Do they think they own that airfield now? Do they expect us to just look the other way while they load up their transport and fly away again? We should hit that transport immediately with another air strike—blow the Americans to hell, where they belong!”
“Sir, I strongly suggest we let that transport load up and leave Yakutsk unharmed,” Stepashin said measuredly, not risking angering the already frantic-looking president but trying to be firm at the same time. “They undoubtedly have Russians in those shelters with them—they could be helping our soldiers. It is a humanitarian airlift, not an offensive strike. We should not interfere with it, especially since we did nothing similar ourselves to help survivors at Yakutsk.”
“Are you saying I am a coward, Stepashin?” Gryzlov shouted. “You will be silent, Stepashin, or you will be dismissed! I will not tolerate insubordination in my own command center!”
“With all due respect, sir, I was making a recommendation,” Stepashin said, his rising anger barely restrained. “We should not attack an unarmed humanitarian rescue mission.”