by Dale Brown
Several hours later, wearing a white camouflage smock over his cold weather gear, Captain Nick Flynn crouched behind a row of rusting, ice-covered oil drums on the outskirts of Kaktovik. This stretch of waste ground behind the town was covered with tarpaulin-sheathed whale boats, old cars up on blocks, abandoned shipping containers, and other junk. Clouds covered the night sky, and, except for a few lights shining among the town’s ramshackle houses and buildings, it was pitch-dark. The temperature was well below zero. Despite his heavy clothing, his bones ached with cold, and he had to lock his jaws shut to keep his teeth from chattering. Every minute spent motionless here in the dark robbed him of precious body heat, but even the slightest movement could be fatal to his plans.
“Comanche Six, this is Comanche One,” Senior Airman Mark Mitchell’s voice said quietly through his radio earpiece. There was an undercurrent of excitement in the young radioman’s voice. “I think the balloon is going up, sir. We just got a flash message from the RAOC. They report that our radar here is being jammed.”
“Copy that,” Flynn replied, suddenly feeling warmer. The Regional Air Operations Center was located hundreds of miles south at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. It was an underground command and communications center crammed full of sophisticated computers and displays. Every piece of data gathered by the North Warning System air defense radars lining Alaska’s thousands of miles of frontier was fed straight back to the RAOC, where trained specialists sorted the wheat from the chaff—deciding which unidentified air contacts were genuine and which were nothing more than flocks of migratory birds or wind-driven ice crystals. So the center’s report that signals from Barter Island’s long-range radar were being turned into electronic hash was a sure sign of imminent trouble. “All Comanches, this is Six,” he said into his mike. “Stand by. Don your owl eyes and scan your sectors.”
Disciplined acknowledgments from the five two-man teams he’d deployed earlier that evening flooded smoothly over the radio. He felt a moment’s pride. The soldiers and airmen of his small security team still had some rough edges that needed sanding, but the intensive physical and tactical training he and Andy Takirak had put them through was paying off now. And right when it mattered most.
Flynn opened an insulated pack, pulled out a pair of night vision goggles, and put them on. In the Arctic, extreme cold depleted batteries with frightening speed, which was why it was essential to keep any electronic equipment as warm as possible until it was really needed. He switched the goggles on. Instantly, the world around him brightened into a monochrome vista that was almost as clear as natural daylight. Then he settled back to keep watch over his own chosen sector.
It shouldn’t be long now, he thought calmly. That radar jamming had to be a trigger for some other enemy action.
Sure enough, only moments later, he spotted four figures as they slid cautiously around the corner of a small hotel about a hundred yards from his position. All four wore bulky equipment packs and carried weapons in their hands. “Hostiles in view,” he whispered into his mike. “They’re moving into Sector Bravo. Stand by.”
Again, quiet responses ghosted through his radio earpiece.
Flynn crouched lower, watching closely while the four armed men drew nearer to his hiding place. They were moving along a bearing that would take them directly to the radar station, only a few hundred yards away across the tundra.
Sixty yards. Forty. Twenty.
Close enough, he decided, taking a deep breath. Letting it out in a whoosh, he reared up from behind the oil drums and leveled his weapon, sighting on the lead figure. “Now, Comanches! Hit ’em!” he shouted.
Flynn squeezed the trigger. As his weapon bucked backward with a muffled cough, he heard the same sound repeated from other scattered points around the iced-over junkyard, mixed in with excited whoops and yells.
Caught by surprise and completely out in the open, the four hostiles rocked under sudden, splattering impacts and went down in the snow. All around them, more rounds kicked up snow in brief spurts.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Flynn ordered. Smiling now, he flipped up his night vision goggles. “Y’all okay out there?” he called to the prone figures.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” a disgusted voice replied. “Pink paint? You hit us with fucking pink paint?”
Flynn hefted his paintball gun. “Sorry, guys,” he said with an even bigger grin. “MILES gear freezes up in this climate.” Like all battery-powered devices, the laser weapons and target sensors that were used in the U.S. military’s Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System drained fast in subzero temperatures. “So we had to improvise a little.”
Later, back in the warmth of the radar station’s rec room, Flynn apologized again to their disgruntled would-be attackers. They were U.S. Army Green Berets, part of the First Special Forces Group based at Fort Lewis in Washington State. Their parkas, ski masks, and snow pants were now stained bright pink by multiple paintball hits.
“I really wanted blue or even red ammunition,” he told them. “But all the store down at Fairbanks had in stock was pink.”
“Neon pink,” the senior Green Beret noncom pointed out, still sounding aggrieved.
Flynn nodded, firmly controlling his own urge to laugh. “Yeah, but you’ve got to admit, it sure stands out in the dark.”
The Special Forces sergeant looked down at himself for a moment. A wry smile twitched at the side of his hard-bitten face. “I can’t deny that, sir.” He shrugged. “What I don’t quite get is how you tumbled to us so fast.”
Flynn could understand the other man’s dismay. Tonight’s readiness exercise had been cooked up by overly eager staff officers down at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. He’d been given a heads-up to get ready for a training drill, but nothing more. He certainly hadn’t been warned about the possibility of a surprise attack on Barter Island by “Spetsnaz” commandos infiltrating the area disguised as American civilians. That “jamming” attack reported against the radar was a piece of misdirection intended to draw his security team out of position by suggesting the Russians planned an airborne drop from the north, from across the frozen Arctic Ocean. Instead, the highly trained Green Beret raiding party had run head-on into the buzz saw of Flynn’s carefully planned ambush . . . winding up “dead” in the snow in seconds.
“Well, to be honest, I cheated,” he explained. “I figured someone might try to secretly slip an assault force into Kaktovik ahead of time, so I took a few precautions of my own.”
“Like what?” the Green Beret wondered.
In answer, Flynn raised his voice slightly. “Sergeant Takirak? Would you come in here for a second, please?”
Obeying, the National Guard sergeant entered the rec room. Although he was now back in uniform, the four Special Forces soldiers recognized him immediately. They shook their heads in disbelief.
“Ah, shit,” one muttered. “The goddamned bus driver.”
“Yep.” Flynn nodded, smiling openly now. “I posted Andy at the airport to keep us in the loop on any new arrivals.” He looked his paintball-stained guests over with a considering eye. “Particularly any fit, military-aged men. Fake Fish and Wildlife badges or not.”
“Crap. No wonder you blew us away,” the senior Green Beret noncom said, sounding even more disgusted. Flynn nodded again.
Ruefully, the Special Forces sergeant shook his head. “Well, sir, I’ve got to admit that you and your boys sure kicked our asses.” Then he looked around the rec room, taking in its worn furnishings, old movie posters peeling off the insulated walls, and the faint smell of too many men crammed together in living quarters that weren’t quite big enough. Outside, the wind rose to a howling pitch, shrieking through the guy wires supporting the radar platform and rattling loose pieces of metal siding. “On the other hand, I got a feeling tonight’s show might just be the high point of excitement around here for the next couple of months.”
Thinking about the fast-approaching and seemingly endless Arctic winter night
s, Flynn had to concede that was probably true.
Twelve
National Defense Management Center, Moscow
Several Days Later
Russia’s primary military command center occupied a massive white concrete compound of Stalinist-era buildings on the north bank of the Moskva River, roughly three kilometers from the Kremlin. Two six-story-high arches joined two wings to a central structure topped by the hammer-and-sickle coat of arms of the old Soviet Union and bas-reliefs of soldiers and flags. The imposing arches were closed off with triumphalist stained-glass windows. One bore the image of a sword-armed knight. The other depicted a modern female soldier carrying both a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a young child.
A new addition to the complex had been built in one of the older courtyards. It contained three large auditoriums equipped with wall-sized, wraparound screens and tiers of computer control stations with hardwired connections to an ultrafast supercomputer. Those were mostly for use as propaganda showcases and backdrops for political figures who wanted to impress their own people and those of other nations with images conveying high-tech Russian military prowess.
Smaller command centers and other facilities buried underground handled the real work of coordinating military action across Russia and around the globe. Now, inside a highly secure subterranean conference room, Colonel Alexei Petrov strode confidently to the podium set directly in front of a semicircular table. He looked out across his audience, comprised of the nation’s most senior military leaders and government officials, including its president, Piotr Zhdanov. They were all men. Like the old Soviet Union, the Russian Federation paid a great deal of lip service to equality of the sexes, but its higher-echelon positions were always reserved for men with the right connections.
Zhdanov himself, usually depicted by a compliant government-controlled media as physically powerful and a paragon of perfect health, had aged rapidly over the past several months. His round face was pale and pudgy, and he looked thicker around the waist. There were visible shadows under his hard, brown eyes, and even his hair had thinned and turned gray. Well, Petrov thought dispassionately, death and illness come to us all sooner or later. If Russia’s autocratic president had expected his run of good fortune to continue forever, recent events must have shown him how wrong he had been.
Now Zhdanov eagerly leaned forward in his chair. “I understand you have a special proposal to present to us this afternoon, Colonel?”
“Da, Mr. President,” Petrov said. Outwardly calm, inside he battled a storm of swirling emotions. In a very real sense, his fate now rested entirely on his ability to persuade these men, especially Zhdanov, to approve the plan he was about to present. He tapped a virtual control on the podium’s computer display. Right away, the wall screen behind him lit up to show a detailed topographic map of the Russian Federation—all the way from its disputed land border with the Ukraine to the Pacific coast around Vladivostok.
He nodded to the junior officers waiting at the back of the room. They fanned out to present Zhdanov and the others with pairs of sleek, futuristic-looking eyewear. “Gentlemen, please put on the AR smart glasses you’ve been given.”
They obeyed, and Petrov heard a series of stifled gasps as they saw the world around them instantly transform. The augmented-reality technology embedded in each pair of smart glasses had just studded the huge map with three-dimensional representations of the military hardware deployed across Russia—everything from fighter aircraft to main battle tanks, warships, submarines, surface-to-air missiles, strategic bombers, and nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
He smiled a bit, observing their awed reaction. Pavel Voronin was the one who had pressed him to make full use of this new technology in his briefing. “Salesmanship is showmanship,” Grishin’s urbane henchman had pointed out. “Dazzle those old farts and they’ll be eating out of your hand by the time you’re finished.” It appeared that Voronin’s cynical assessment might be correct.
Petrov tapped another control on the podium. In response, the map zoomed in to show the region of southern Russia around Akhtubinsk and the Chkalov State Flight Test Center. New three-dimensional pictures appeared. These showed the PAK-DA stealth bomber prototype effortlessly performing a series of complicated aerial maneuvers. They finished with image-enhanced video shot from one of the Su-34 chase planes when the bomber launched its Kh-102 practice cruise missile. That drew more excited murmurs, especially when the augmented-reality program depicted a realistic-looking nuclear fireball rising from the intended target.
“As you can see, Mr. President,” Petrov said smoothly, “our flight tests of the new stealth bomber prototype are progressing rapidly and with complete success so far.”
Zhdanov nodded gravely. “That is a testament to your own skills and courage, Colonel.”
Petrov bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment of the president’s fulsome praise. “But despite those successes, we still face a long road ahead to certify the design ready for operational deployment and full-scale production,” he warned.
“How long a road?” Zhdanov asked.
“At least twelve more months,” Petrov told him truthfully. “And perhaps as long as two full years, if we adhere slavishly to conventional flight-test procedures.”
The president frowned. “Two years?” he muttered. “That’s too long. Far too long.” Based on current trends, he could easily be out of power, dead, in prison, or in exile by then. He needed a visible military success, and soon—an obvious triumph that would persuade Russia’s fickle masses that his much-touted plans to rebuild their nation’s greatness and its status as a world superpower were paying real dividends . . . despite these temporary economic hardships.
“I agree completely, Mr. President,” Petrov told him. “But this is what we have left ahead of us if we follow ordinary, peacetime evaluation protocols.” He activated another control. The sleek, manta-shaped PAK-DA bomber vanished from his audience’s sight, replaced by a long, dreary-looking, official Air Force timetable that listed, in mind-numbing detail, the remaining technical milestones required to qualify Tupolev’s prototype aircraft for production. He watched the president’s frown deepen to an exasperated scowl and exulted inside. “That’s why I would like your permission to try something very different: a rigorous, complex, and realistic exercise designed to assess the full range of our new strategic bomber’s strike capabilities. A single difficult flight test that would cut through much of the typical bureaucratic bullshit if it succeeds—and shave months off the timetable even if it fails.”
With the ostentatious wave of a single hand, he erased the image of the official schedule from their smart glasses. In its place, a glowing phrase appeared, big enough to cover the digital map of Russia from west to east: Operatsiya Prizrachnyy Udar.
“Operation Ghost Strike?” Zhdanov said slowly.
Petrov nodded. He touched another control. It triggered a series of exciting, computer-generated visuals that matched his verbal presentation perfectly—thanks to advanced voice-recognition software that sent specific graphics to their high-tech eyewear whenever he used the appropriate keywords. “Under Ghost Strike, the PAK-DA prototype will be tasked with conducting a simulated cruise missile strike against the Pacific Fleet’s anchorage and its Naval Aviation air bases around Vladivostok, in the Far East. To enhance the realism of this exercise, the aircraft will carry its full wartime payload of Kh-102 cruise missiles, K-74M2 heat-seeking missiles for self-defense, and fuel. Thus loaded, it will depart from base at 1700 hours and proceed toward its assigned targets in darkness, on a moonless night—”
As he laid out the plan, an image of the bomber prototype took off from Russia’s primary strategic bomber base, Engels-2, seven hundred kilometers southeast of Moscow. It turned east, flying low across the Central Asian steppes and onward toward the towering Ural Mountains. “Naturally, the fleet itself and all of our other Eastern Military District air defense forces will be on full alert, ready for just such an attack.�
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More images appeared before the audience’s eyes, depicting a web of intricate, layered defenses around Petrov’s intended targets. These included sophisticated radars, surface-to-air missile regiments, and roving fighter patrols. “No easy task,” the Russian Navy’s senior admiral commented dryly. “One bomber against dozens of SAM launchers and some of our best interceptors? No matter how impressive the technology built into this new prototype of yours truly is, Colonel, you’ll still be massively outnumbered. And after all, quantity has a quality all its own,” he finished, quoting Stalin.
Petrov nodded. “That’s precisely the point, Admiral.” He turned to Zhdanov. “Win or lose, this exercise will yield a huge amount of invaluable real-world data on the PAK-DA—including its long-range endurance, air-to-air refueling capability, low-level penetrating stealth characteristics, and electronic warfare systems. We would be compressing months of more conventional testing and validation into a single demonstration flight.”
“Allowing us to field a force of combat-ready stealth bombers that much more quickly?” the president asked.
“Yes, sir,” Petrov said firmly.
Zhdanov was visibly impressed. Besides speeding up the progress of the PAK-DA program, the colonel’s proposal offered the possibility of scoring a propaganda coup of the first magnitude—one that should rouse patriotic spirits here at home and unnerve potential enemies abroad. Best of all, it wouldn’t matter whether or not the bomber prototype actually succeeded in scoring simulated hits on its targets this time. If Petrov and his copilot actually managed to penetrate the powerful defenses arrayed against them, it would show the world that Russia now had its own highly capable strategic stealth bomber. And even a failure could be spun to “prove” that America’s own vaunted B-2 Spirit and B-21 Raider stealth aircraft were no match for Russia’s combination of powerful radars, deadly surface-to-air missiles, and fast, agile interceptors.