by Dale Brown
Schofield laughed ruefully. “There is that.”
“We will be landing to refuel and grab some quick shut-eye at a few places along the way, so you and your men can at least get out and stretch your legs,” Brad promised.
“Ah, and these landing sites of yours would be an easy stroll away from various tourist hot spots, no doubt,” Schofield said dryly.
“Well, not exactly,” Brad admitted. “Martindale has Scion teams out setting up improvised airstrips and refueling points in the western Sahara, somewhere in the middle of the Colombian jungle, and the Chihuahuan desert in northern Mexico.”
Schofield’s easy grin flashed again. “You see? I knew there’d be lots of nightlife for my lads to enjoy on this little jaunt.”
“Pardon me?”
“Nightlife as in bugs, spiders, snakes, and other slithering creatures, Captain McLanahan,” the Canadian explained patiently. “The stuff of jungles and deserts, though not perhaps of pleasant dreams.”
Brad shook his head in mock pain. “Ouch. You were this close to making me feel sorry for you, Ian.” He checked his watch. “You’d best go round up your troops. We take off in thirty minutes.”
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, BELWEDER PALACE, WARSAW, POLAND
THAT SAME TIME
Polish president Piotr Wilk fought to control his temper as he listened to Stacy Ann Barbeau’s wild, almost unhinged accusations. The American president’s normally honey-sweet voice was full of dark rage. Although her image was grainy, distorted by the need to bounce encrypted signals from her orbiting E-4B command and control aircraft through multiple communications satellites, he could tell that same anger contorted her usually smooth features.
“What in God’s name were you thinking, you stupid son of a bitch?” she snarled at him. “Are you looking for a war with the United States? Because I can assure you that is what’s headed your way if you turned a blind eye to this massacre committed by Martindale and his mercenary soldiers!”
“And I can assure you, Madam President, that no one from Scion or from the Iron Wolf Squadron played any part in that monstrous attack on your country,” Wilk said, choosing his English language words with care and precision. “I know those men and women. Whatever their political or policy disagreements with your administration, they are all patriots. Every one of them. None would harm their homeland or its armed forces. If you doubt that—”
“Oh, spare me the sentimental bullshit,” Barbeau ground out through gritted teeth. “Patriots don’t fight for profit. And they certainly don’t do so at the orders of a foreign government like yours, Wilk.” She leaned closer to the camera, an action that only magnified the ugly look of fury plastered on her face. “You Poles hired a bunch of stone-cold killers because you were scared of the Russians. I warned you that was a dangerous move at the time. Well, fine. What’s done is done. But what made you think you could control thugs like that forever? Because now it looks to me as though Martindale’s dropped you right in the shit.”
Wilk shook his head. “You are overlooking the obvious, Madam President.”
“Like what?” she snapped.
“At my urging, former president Martindale contacted you some days ago to go over intelligence reports indicating that Gennadiy Gryzlov was organizing a deniable, covert mercenary force of his own.” Wilk set his jaw. “Unfortunately, now we see what he had planned. That is why I worry that this Russian attack on your air base is only the beginning of a much bigger and even more deadly clandestine war.”
Barbeau snorted. “Nice try. But no sale.”
“What do you—”
“Martindale’s robots,” she said flatly. “His precious CIDs. They were there. I saw them. Hell, we’ve got pictures of them, shooting up our planes and our people. Too bad your so-called warning didn’t include any mention of the Russians building their own war robots. Since we all know that kind of technology is way beyond Moscow’s reach, I guess you both figured that would be one lie I wouldn’t swallow.”
Wilk winced. “At the time, we had no hard evidence that the Russians were building their own cybernetic war machines. Their appearance at Barksdale Air Force Base was as much a surprise to us as it was to you. We now suspect that Gryzlov was able to reverse-engineer CID technology from components captured when two of our machines were destroyed in action more than a year ago.”
“How wonderfully convenient,” Barbeau said with a cold edge to her voice. “So, then, Mr. President, can you prove any of that? Or am I just supposed to bob my head and grin while Martindale screws me over for his own political ends and financial gain and then walks away clean?”
For a moment, he could only stare back at her in dismay. Was the American president really so blind? So caught up in dark paranoid dreams that she believed political rivals would be willing to commit treason to throw her out of office?
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she said dismissively. After a moment’s thought, she shrugged her shoulders. “Okay, so here’s how we’re going to play this, Piotr: You say the Russians did this? With some mysterious new force of war robots? Fine. Then you give me your solemn assurance as Poland’s commander in chief, right now, with no ‘ifs, ands, or buts,’ that all of Martindale’s robots are still stationed in Polish territory or elsewhere in your piss-ass alliance.”
Frowning, Wilk glanced at the clock on his office wall. Brad and his team should still be on the ground, though only for another few minutes. He hesitated slightly, reluctant to sacrifice his personal honor in this way. Then he steeled himself. He’d sworn to defend his country and its freedom. If doing so required him to mince words to avoid confirming this woman’s obsessive fears, so be it. “You have my assurance, Madam President. All of the Iron Wolf Squadron’s CIDs are currently deployed in Poland.”
“Good.” Barbeau smiled unpleasantly. “Now that we’re on the same page, you’d better goddamned well make sure your hired killers stay put.” Her voice took on an even harder tone. “Because, if it turns out that you’ve lied to me . . . and those damned machines are operating inside this country, I promise you that my government will hold Poland and its allies directly responsible for an act of war committed against us . . . an act of war committed on our own soil.”
With that, she broke their connection.
Wilk looked away from the screen. His eyes met those of Kevin Martindale, who’d been sitting quietly in a chair listening to Barbeau’s tirade. “This is very, very bad. If any of our people are caught or killed now . . .” He let the thought trail off.
Somberly, Martindale nodded. “We’re damned if they are, and probably damned in any case. If we abort the mission, we give Gryzlov free rein to wreak havoc inside the United States.” His expression was bleak. “And if we don’t, and Brad and his team are spotted and identified, there’s a serious risk Barbeau might go off half-cocked. Which would pretty much guarantee that Poland gets crushed between the world’s two most powerful nations.”
Twenty
ABOARD THE E-4B NATIONAL AIRBORNE OPERATIONS CENTER, SOMEWHERE OVER THE UNITED STATES
THAT SAME TIME
Barbeau swiveled in her chair to look at Luke Cohen. Her chief of staff had changed out of his torn and singed clothes, donning an Air Force flight suit that was at least a couple of inches too small for his lanky frame. “Well?”
“Wilk was lying.”
She nodded. “Through his teeth. Dithering like that when I asked him to confirm the locations of those robots was the tell. So there’s our confirmation . . . we were hit by Iron Wolf CIDs.” She frowned. “The circle I can’t square is why Wilk would take a risk like this. Why allow his paid soldiers to attack us? Let’s say their plan worked perfectly and I’d been killed. Even a buffoon like Ray Summers would have to retaliate against Poland big-time once he took the oath of office. Wilk has everything to lose and nothing to gain from letting Martindale run wild.”
“Maybe the Poles really are as much in the dark about this as we are,” Cohen suggested.
“That would explain a lot.”
“You think those Iron Wolf mercs have gone totally off the reservation?” Barbeau asked. “That they’re acting without Warsaw’s approval?”
Cohen nodded.
“Then why not just admit that right off the bat?”
“Figure it like this: You go out and buy a big mean pit bull as a guard dog. And then one day, the damn dog breaks out of your yard, runs off, and mauls some kid to death. And when a cop shows up at your door, you say . . . ?”
“That’s not my dog, Officer,” Barbeau said automatically.
“Exactly. That may not be the smartest reaction, but it’s natural.”
She pondered that. All along, she’d been sure that Piotr Wilk would someday learn, the hard way, what the head of Scion was really like. She’d certainly never bought the notion that Martindale would genuinely subordinate his own will to that of anyone else. Why would he take orders from some rinky-dink leader like Poland’s president? His ego was too big. Right from the beginning, the former American president would have seen Wilk and his country as tools to be used and then cast aside when necessary.
Barbeau grimaced. It was a good enough working theory, but she was getting tired of operating on the basis of half-formed and maybe half-baked guesses.
“Okay, so it’s possible the Poles were blindsided by this like we were. But something else still bugs me,” Cohen went on slowly. The tall New Yorker looked down at his lap, deliberately not meeting her eyes—which was a sure sign that he was about to say something he was afraid might piss her off.
She sighed. “Go on, Luke. I won’t bite.”
Cohen forced a nervous half smile. “I understand what you’re saying about Martindale and how he wants someone like Farrell in the White House who’ll do things more his way.”
“Not to mention letting Scion and Sky Masters shove their snouts in a trough full of juicy, big-money Pentagon contracts,” she muttered.
“Yes, Madam President.” Distractedly, Cohen ran his hands through his disheveled hair. “But what I don’t get is why Martindale would do something so obvious.” He dropped his hands back into his lap. “I mean, why not use Scion’s capabilities for something slicker? Say, like sabotaging that B-21 prototype instead? Making sure our fancy new bomber crashed right in front of the TV cameras would have done more political damage to your campaign—without nearly as much fallout.”
Barbeau considered that. Jesus, she thought, Cohen is right. Something about this just didn’t fit. Martindale might be a sneaky, ruthless, corrupt son of a bitch, but he’d also always been a clever, calculating son of a bitch. Screwing around with the B-21’s avionics or even bribing its crew to fake an in-flight emergency would have been a lot easier and safer stunt for him to pull. The kind of pulverizing, direct, all-out assault that hammered Barksdale into smoldering ruins wasn’t his style.
In fact, it was more like something that swaggering, shoot-from-the-hip, militaristic cowboy Patrick McLanahan would have thought was brilliant. But McLanahan was dead . . .
She shivered suddenly, caught up in a memory that was three years old but that still had the power to give her nightmares. To persuade Gennadiy Gryzlov that the U.S. wasn’t covertly supporting Poland in its war with Russia, she’d ordered Army Rangers and Air Force special operations commandos to assault the Iron Wolf base. Their orders were to stop the mercenaries from carrying out a bombing raid on Russian missile bases near Kaliningrad.
But the assault failed. And then the lethal-looking combat robot piloted by McLanahan had looked straight into a camera carried by one of her captured soldiers . . . looked straight at her. “You are a traitor to your country, Barbeau,” the machine had growled in its menacing, electronically synthesized voice. “If we get out of this alive, I’ll make you pay. I promise.”
Barbeau had believed him. That was one of the reasons, besides Gryzlov’s threats that he would launch a wider war, that had prompted her to order American F-35s to shoot down every Iron Wolf plane that survived the attack on Kaliningrad. She’d been determined to make sure that Patrick McLanahan really was dead this time. It was the only way she could think of to stop him from fulfilling the terrifying promise he’d made. Her pilots had obeyed their orders—blowing the last two Iron Wolf XF-111 SuperVarks out of the sky.
No one had heard anything from the retired Air Force general since then.
Until now, maybe, she thought in growing horror. Could McLanahan somehow have survived . . . again? It seemed impossible. For all his skills, he had been a man, as mortal as any other human being. He wasn’t a machine. No, she thought desperately, Patrick McLanahan is dead. He had to be dead. Because otherwise, he’d be coming for her—
Involuntarily, Barbeau’s hands tightened on her chair’s armrests. Her face felt numb, as though it were carved from stone.
“Madam President?” Cohen said uncertainly. He looked worried.
She forced herself to let go of the chair. “I need you to get in touch with Ed Rauch right away,” she said. Her voice sounded strange in her own ears, as if it was coming from millions of miles away. “Tell him I want the NSA and the other agencies to reexamine every piece of intelligence that led them to conclude Patrick McLanahan was killed when his XF-111 went down over Poland three years ago.”
Her chief of staff stared back at her. “Do you think—?”
“I don’t know what to think!” Barbeau countered harshly. “But if there’s a chance . . . any chance at all . . . that psychotic bastard is still alive, I need to know about it!”
RKU SECURITY DETACHMENT, TX-151 LOOP W, NEAR TEXARKANA, TEXAS
A SHORT TIME LATER
Perched high in the cab of his FXR Trucking–registered eighteen-wheeler, Kirill Aristov checked his side-view mirror. He could make out the unit’s two other big rigs stuck in the traffic jammed up behind him. They were all separated by at least ten to fifteen other vehicles, which made it less obvious that they were traveling in a convoy. Not that any of us are going much of anywhere right now, the former Spetsnaz captain thought irritably. A long line of cars and trucks bottlenecked this stretch of single-lane highway looping around Texarkana. They were stopped dead.
Up ahead, maybe a mile or so, he could see what was causing the holdup. Flashing red-and-blue lights showed where police, ambulance, and fire crews were working to clear a serious accident that had blocked the highway.
“Specter Lead to Checkmate One, what’s going on up there? Why are we stopped? Is there a mechanical problem with your vehicle?” Colonel Ruslan Baryshev asked suddenly through Aristov’s headphones. They’d rigged up an intercom between the truck’s cab and the trailer it was hauling—enabling communication with the pilots of the two KVM robots hidden aboard.
“We’re fine, Colonel,” Aristov assured the other man. “We’re just stuck in traffic. The local American authorities are clearing a wreck ahead of us. Once they’re finished, we’ll be moving again.”
“Are you sure that isn’t a security checkpoint set up by the American military or spy services to hunt for us?” Baryshev snapped. “This so-called accident could be a ruse.”
Aristov exchanged glances with Nikolai Dobrynin in the passenger seat. The other veteran Spetsnaz trooper rolled his eyes. The captain shrugged his own shoulders in a wordless reply. Their passengers were still jumpy. Baryshev and his KVM pilots seemed to be taking a long time to come down off the adrenaline high they’d experienced during their attack on the American Air Force base.
“We’re already more than one hundred and twenty kilometers from Barksdale, sir,” Aristov said patiently. “That’s well beyond the zone of any likely search. The Americans would have to deploy thousands of soldiers and police to cover all the possible roads and highways this far out. And they simply do not have that kind of manpower available to them.”
“Let us hope you are right, Aristov,” the colonel replied. “Stay alert. If you are wrong and there are American police or military units blocking our path, my machines wi
ll eliminate them.” And the intercom went dead.
Dobrynin shook his head. “Those guys are a little too kill-happy for my comfort, Captain. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather make it to Dallas without having their robots burst out of those trailers and start shooting up the whole highway.”
“That makes two of us.” Aristov saw the traffic ahead of him starting to inch forward. He reached down to put the big rig in gear. “Let’s hope they calm down once we reach the warehouse and get them out of those metal suits.”
THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW
A FEW HOURS LATER
Gennadiy Gryzlov prowled back and forth across his office like a caged animal. From time to time, he paused to check the newscasts streaming across the screen of his smartphone. But never for very long. After the first deeply satisfying images of burning aircraft and dead Americans, no new information had emerged. Instead, journalists around the world were busy doing what they always did in times of crisis—replaying the same tired video clips, indulging in pointless speculation, and interviewing the usual groups of “experts,” none of whom could shed any useful light on events.
He was getting tired of waiting. In his view, patience was a virtue desirable in underlings, not for those with real power. A soft chime sounded from his phone. He stabbed the answer button icon. “Yes?”
“Mr. Kurakin has arrived, Mr. President,” his long-suffering private secretary, Ivan Ulanov, announced. “By your orders, I have not logged his arrival.”
“Good,” Gryzlov approved. Now that things were heating up, it was time to make sure there were no obvious connections between Russia’s head of state and Vladimir Kurakin’s “private” military company. “Send him in.”
He spun on his heel and sat down at his desk while Ulanov ushered the head of RKU into the office. A curt nod sent his secretary scurrying back to his post. He waited only long enough for the door to close before demanding, “Well?”