by Dale Brown
But the big man surprised him by staying calm, on the outside at least. “The Russian cyberwar complex at Perun’s Aerie was a point-source objective,” Macomber said frostily. “It was also a setup from the beginning. And the bad guys knew right where we had to be in order to destroy it. But Gryzlov’s mercs aren’t limited the way we were. They can go after any of dozens of potential targets. There’s no way the Pentagon can assign enough forces to picket all of them.”
Exasperated, Martindale threw up his hands. “That’s precisely my point! You can’t fight someone you can’t find! If the combined air and ground forces of the United States, the FBI, the state, and local police can’t track down these Russians, what in God’s name do you really think one Iron Wolf aircraft, three CIDs, and a handful of dismounted scouts can accomplish?”
“Drawing a bead on the enemy is the core of this problem,” Patrick McLanahan agreed quietly. “We know that Gryzlov has figured out ways to move his robots and missiles around the U.S. without anyone seeing them. Once we crack the code on how he’s doing that, we ought to be able to find his mercenaries . . . and finish them. But we can’t do that unless we already have a team in reasonable striking range.”
“Which rules out trying to fight this war from Poland,” Brad argued. “Our base at Powidz is a minimum of twenty hours’ flying time from just about anywhere in the States—unless, of course, we decide to just barrel straight through the North American Air Defense Identification Zone—”
“Which would break the record on stupid,” Macomber interjected. “Especially with Barbeau’s itchy finger on the trigger.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Brad said, glancing over his shoulder with a quick, humorless smile. He faced the screen again. “So there’s the dilemma. We can’t hope to hit Grzylov’s forces without actionable intelligence. But by the time we could get back here from Poland, any intelligence we picked up would be stone-cold . . . and almost certainly useless.”
After a moment’s thought, Wilk nodded, accepting his reasoning. He turned to Martindale. “Brad and the others are right, Kevin. As are you about the dangers involved. But we have no other acceptable choice. Unless we can prove that the Russians are behind these raids, using their own war machines, Poland is in grave danger. The longer our enemies operate unchecked and undetected on American soil, the higher the risk that President Barbeau will publicly accuse Scion and the Iron Wolf Squadron of these crimes—and demand that I hand you over for punishment.” He sighed. “Refusing such an ultimatum would risk a disastrous war against both of the world’s strongest powers. But accepting it would effectively disarm us in the face of Gryzlov’s next inevitable aggression.”
“Our American friends would call that a no-win scenario,” Nadia murmured.
Wilk nodded again. “Which is why we cannot back away now. We must press on. No other honorable course is available to us.”
Brad saw his father smile approvingly. “‘He either fears his fate too much, or his deserts are small, who dares not put it to the touch, to win or lose it all!’” the older McLanahan quoted.
“Very nice,” Martindale said sourly. “Of course, the guy who said that, the Earl of Montrose, fought for the Royalists during the English Civil War. And they lost.” Then, plainly almost against his will, he shrugged his shoulders. “But at least I know when to stick to my guns and when to yield . . . at least to my friends. I’ll see what the Scion operatives I have positioned in the U.S. can rig up.” He looked at Brad. “What do you need most?”
“Besides a secure landing site somewhere within a thousand miles or so?” Brad ticked off their requirements on his fingers. “Jet fuel, first. By the time we land, our tanks will be almost dry. And more drinking water. We’re down to about two or three days’ supply.”
Martindale stared at him. “You’re almost out of water?” He scowled. “Are you telling me that you and I would have been having pretty much this same conversation in a couple of days . . . no matter what boneheaded move Stacy Anne Barbeau pulled?”
“I try never to deal in hypotheticals,” Brad said virtuously. Out the corner of his eye, he caught Nadia stifling a grin.
“I bet you don’t,” Martindale snorted. He shook his head. “Never mind. Stay put. Stay hidden. I’ll get in touch as soon I have somewhere else for you to fly.”
THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW
THAT SAME TIME
The big-screen monitor in Gennadiy Gryzlov’s office was tuned to one of the more excitable American cable news networks. Though their reports were often inaccurate and hopelessly one-sided, its anchors did an excellent job of conveying the conventional wisdom of Washington, D.C.’s political and chattering classes. And in some ways, that was more useful than anything else to Russia’s youthful, aggressive leader. For the pure raw facts, he had the reports of his own intelligence services. But facts were of limited use when you were trying to understand an enemy’s mind-set and psychology.
Images of attack helicopters and troop carriers clattering low over a rugged desert landscape filled the screen. They were replaced by action shots of American soldiers fanning out at the double across a large complex of office buildings, windowless machine shops and engineering labs, and huge aircraft hangars. More pictures followed, showing troops marching crowds of bewildered-looking civilians out of those same buildings at gunpoint. “While it appears there was no significant resistance at the Sky Masters Nevada facility, anonymous White House and Pentagon sources credit this success both to President Barbeau’s decision to use overwhelming force and to the complete surprise achieved by the brave soldiers and airmen involved in this high-stakes raid. Administration spokesmen stress that although no formal charges have yet been filed, federal law enforcement and intelligence officials are only at the beginning stages of this important investigation. In the meantime, the suspects seized by troops from the Fourth Infantry Division remain locked up in what is termed ‘protective custody’ at an undisclosed location—”
Shaking his head in delighted disbelief, Gryzlov muted the monitor. He turned to Vladimir Kurakin with an exultant, predatory grin. “Astounding, eh? That overstuffed, oversexed cow Barbeau has done half our work for us! And she’s done it out of sheer malice and seemingly invincible stupidity.”
Cautiously, Kurakin nodded. “Yes, Mr. President.”
Gryzlov heard the hesitation in his voice. “You still think we should have attacked Sky Masters ourselves?” he asked. “Using your KVMs and Annenkov’s cruise missiles?”
The other man shrugged. “I only worry that its scientists and engineers are still alive.”
“And dead men and women build no robots and stealth aircraft?” Gryzlov suggested dryly. He shook his head. “Don’t fret, Vladimir. Trust me, what Barbeau has done today will inflict almost as much damage on Sky Masters in the end.” He waved a hand at the screen, which was still showing video clips of heavily armed infantrymen kicking open doors and searching buildings. “Pictures like that are racing around the world at light speed. After this humiliation, where will Sky Masters find the money to design, test, and manufacture its expensive weapons and aircraft? Who will risk investing in such a company? For that matter, how many of those scientists and engineers you worry about will dare to go back to work at Battle Mountain once they’re released?”
He wagged a finger in mock reproof at Kurakin. “No, hitting Sky Masters with your robots and missiles would have put Russian fingerprints all over this operation. After all, why would the Iron Wolf mercenaries attack their own arms supplier? Not even Martindale is that crazy. Instead, we’ve managed to trick the Americans into waging war against their own best and brightest weapons designers! What could possibly be more satisfying?”
“I see,” Kurakin said slowly. “I’m afraid that I have been focused more on operational considerations than on the broader political implications. You have my apologies, Mr. President.”
With a self-satisfied air, Gryzlov waved his apology away. “No matter. You were right to let me l
ook after the big picture.” He looked more carefully at the other man, noting his pained expression. “You still look as though you’re chewing lemons, Vladimir. What’s eating at you now?”
“Only the thought that this might be the best possible moment to withdraw our forces,” Kurakin suggested with some reluctance. “They’ve been lucky so far. They can’t be lucky forever. But if we bring them home now, before any of our men are caught or killed, the Americans will be left with no one to blame but Poland’s own mercenaries.”
Briefly taken aback, Gryzlov stared at him for a long, unpleasant moment. Nothing in the other man’s military record had suggested he was a coward or a fool—or even one of those overcautious commanders afraid to spend men’s lives to achieve a decisive victory. For an instant, he considered explaining his deeper political and strategic objectives in launching this clandestine war. But then he thought better of the impulse. Looked at rationally, Kurakin and his men and machines were nothing more than tools, weapons to be expended as he saw fit. And one did not waste time explaining higher strategy to a rifle bullet or a bomb.
Instead, he snorted. “You give our enemies too much credibility. Right now, the Americans are too busy chasing their own tails to think straight. So this is the time to close in and hit them even harder. Russia has years of humiliating defeats to avenge, Kurakin. This is not the moment to turn tail and run!”
Twenty-Eight
WOLF SIX-TWO, IN THE BIGHORN NATIONAL FOREST, WYOMING
LATER THAT NIGHT
The XCV-62 Ranger cleared the crest of a steep forested ridge with a couple of hundred feet to spare and dove down the other side, almost skimming the treetops at just over two hundred knots. Another ridge soared black against the night sky just half a mile away. Immediately the navigation cues on Brad McLanahan’s HUD spiked right.
He banked sharply, rolling to follow the cues, and then leveled out. The Iron Wolf aircraft arrowed northeast down a narrow valley between the two higher elevations, following the trace of a gravel road. Ahead, the road dropped toward a dry streambed marked “Fool Creek” on their maps.
“We’re less than two minutes out,” Nadia said from her copilot’s position. She had her eyes firmly fixed on her navigation display. “We have a green light from the Scion ground crew.”
“Copy that,” Brad said tightly. “Hang tight.” He leaned forward and tapped a key that activated preset landing commands he’d entered earlier. Hydraulics whined as the Ranger configured itself for another very short, rough-field landing. Control surfaces opened to their maximum extent, providing extra lift they sorely needed. This high up in the Wyoming mountains, the air was already pretty thin. “Gear coming down.”
There were a series of muffled thumps below the cockpit. A slowly blinking icon on his HUD turned solid green. Their ride got bumpier right away as drag increased. “Gear down and locked.”
They crossed the dry streambed and climbed again, following the ground as it rose toward the even-steeper wooded slopes of Dry Fork East. Brad fed in a little more power to keep up his airspeed.
Not far ahead, he saw a smaller dirt road branch off to the northwest. It paralleled another winding stream, this one full of water flowing downhill toward a distant junction with a larger river. Its name appeared as a small tag on his HUD. “Nice,” he muttered ironically. “What a great omen.”
He banked left, turning to follow this new road. On their right, Dry Fork East towered another couple of thousand feet above them—a dark mass studded with fir and spruce trees and large bare patches of loose weathered scree. The ground below the ridge was mostly open, a mixture of high alpine grassland and sagebrush.
“An omen? Why?” Nadia asked, sounding puzzled.
“Because we’re going to be landing upslope from a tributary of the Little Bighorn River,” Brad explained. “And just about fifty miles north of here is where George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry stumbled into a bazillion Sioux warriors and wound up dead.”
“Then if we are going to play cowboys and Indians, I want to be the Indians,” Nadia said with a laugh.
He felt a tight smile flash across his face.
Through his HUD, he could see a small campsite just off the dirt road, which was little more than a trail now. Besides a couple of tents, there were two parked trucks, both with U.S. Forest Service markings. One was a fuel tanker.
The touch-down point the Ranger’s computer had selected blinked insistently in his HUD. He pushed a button on his stick, confirming the selection. It went solid, slashing across the trail no more than a few hundred feet beyond the trucks. Not much more than a thousand feet up the trail, a stand of tall fir trees blocked the far end of their projected landing zone.
Brad felt his mouth go dry. He was going to have to set this crate down right on the mark. There was no room for error.
Now! He pulled the throttles way back.
The Ranger slid down out of the sky. They dropped onto the rough, brush-strewn ground, bounced back up in the air a few feet, and then came back down with a jolt that rattled his teeth and threw him forward against his straps. The trees ahead loomed ever bigger as the plane roared along the gently inclined slope. Brad reversed thrust as much as he dared. He couldn’t risk skidding out of control if they hit loose gravel or dirt.
They slewed to a halt just a few yards short of the first trees.
Relieved, Brad fed a little power to the engines and swung the Iron Wolf aircraft through a tight, 180-degree. The Scion fuel tanker disguised as a Forest Service vehicle was already rolling toward them. He and Nadia got busy, working with practiced teamwork to shut down their avionics and engines.
Whack Macomber’s deep voice rumbled through his headset. “Where the hell did those guys come from?” Like the others strapped in the crowded troop compartment, he was watching a video feed from the Ranger’s cameras.
“Apparently, there’s a Scion sleeper cell operating out of a hangar at the Casper-Natrona County International Airport,” Brad told him. “Since we would have been a mite conspicuous landing there, this was the next best alternative.”
“Martindale’s got a fricking sleeper cell in Wyoming?” Macomber snorted. “Guarding against what? Another Indian uprising?”
“I don’t know, Whack,” Brad said. He winked at Nadia. “I didn’t ask—”
“And he didn’t tell,” the big man said in disgust. “Yeah, I get it. Seriously, though, kid, sometimes that guy creeps me out.”
Silently, Brad agreed. Part of him understood the former president’s habit of secrecy and his dogged determination to compartmentalize key information—keeping as much as possible about his various covert activities on a strictly need-to-know basis. Throughout recent history, loose lips had sunk far too many important American covert operations. But there were also moments—far too many for Brad’s comfort—when it seemed that Martindale kept most of his secrets simply because he craved the feeling of being the smartest man in any room.
On the other hand, Brad reminded himself, the Scion chief had again come through in the clutch. This new improvised airstrip might be a long way from anywhere that mattered, but at least they were still in the U.S.—ready to act if only they could figure where Gryzlov’s forces were hiding . . . or where they planned to strike next.
RKU FLIGHT OPERATIONS CENTER, NEAR MOAB, UTAH
THAT SAME TIME
Colonel Yuri Annenkov and his copilot, Major Konstantin Uspensky, entered the missile assembly area at the back of the crowded warehouse. Technicians were busy at several of the workbenches, systematically disassembling a new shipment of desktop computers.
Annenkov found Andrej Filippov, his ordnance specialist, hunched over an open Kh-35 fuselage. The short, balding man didn’t look up at their approach. He was completely focused on carefully plugging a new component into place in the section of the missile dedicated to its navigation systems. The two pilots waited quietly until he finished, stripped off his latex gloves, and turned to face them.
“We’re just configuring the weapons for your next attack,” Filippov said. Gently, he patted the cruise missile. “Moscow approved my request for the use of our new jam-resistant GLONASS receivers on this mission.”
Annenkov snorted. “I imagine General Kurakin was not particularly happy about that.” Upgrading their Kh-35s to receive in-flight course corrections from the GLONASS constellation of space-based navigation satellites measurably increased the odds of someone figuring out that Russia itself was hip-deep in this clandestine war.
“Not especially,” Filippov agreed. He shrugged. “But it was either that or find a different set of targets. There was simply no other way to resolve the technical and tactical problems involved.”
Annenkov and Uspenksy both nodded. To avoid detection on launch for this mission, their missiles would have to fly a long, complicated, and extremely precise path through very rough terrain. Relying on inertial navigation was a nonstarter. Too many seemingly small errors would inevitably accumulate throughout the flight—resulting not only in a large number of catastrophic crashes en route, but also in the likelihood of any surviving missiles missing their targets by dozens of meters.
“Even with satellite navigation, how many hits can we really count on scoring?” Uspensky asked bluntly. “By now the Americans must have GPS and GLONASS jammers deployed around all of their key military installations. Once they realize there are missiles inbound, they’ll bring those jammers online fast.”
“We will probably lose a few weapons to jamming-induced guidance errors,” Filippov said, with equal frankness. “Our upgraded GLONASS receivers are untested under combat conditions. On the other hand, the American jamming systems are almost equally untested. Without more data, the range of likely outcomes is difficult to accurately calculate.” For a few seconds, his narrow face took on a detached expression, almost as though he were running through a number of different scenarios in his mind. Then he shrugged his shoulders again. “Reaction time is the key, Major. Deny the enemy time to act and you greatly reduce the effectiveness of his defenses. So long as you achieve tactical surprise, your missiles will kill many Americans.”