by Dale Brown
Next to him, Timonov peered intently through his binoculars. The first helicopter lifted off, climbed to about a hundred meters, and then dropped its nose slightly to gain airspeed as it crossed the runway. Accelerating, it swung north, heading straight toward them. The second Pave Hawk trailed close behind. Red, white, and green navigation lights blinked rapidly on both helicopters. He lowered the binoculars. “Here they come, Leonid. Make your shot count.”
The lieutenant nodded tightly. He pressed his eye into the SAM launcher’s sight and turned through a short arc, until he had the crosshairs settled squarely on the trailing helicopter. A speaker behind his right ear buzzed. Steadily, the buzz grew louder and shriller. “I have tone,” he confirmed. The missile’s infrared seeker head had locked on to the Pave Hawk’s heat signature.
Through the sight, Brykin saw the second Pave Hawk grow progressively larger. He estimated that it was now approximately three kilometers away and closing fast. Slowly, he pulled the launch trigger halfway back. That “uncaged” the missile’s IR sensor, allowing it to swivel freely inside the nose cone so that he didn’t have to aim manually anymore. The buzzing noise intensified. Satisfied that he had a solid lock on his target, Brykin angled the launch tube up at forty-five degrees. Anything lower risked having the missile strike the ground when it launched.
“Any day now, Leonid,” Timonov growled.
Ignoring him, Brykin squeezed the trigger all the way. Instantly, the Anza Mk III’s booster motor ignited, hurling it out of the launch tube in a dense, choking cloud of acrid smoke. The missile itself burst out of the cloud and soared skyward as its main rocket motor kicked in. Visible as a bright white dot riding a plume of smoke, it climbed high above the hill, arced over, and then darted straight at the trailing American helicopter.
Three seconds after launch, the SAM slammed head-on into the Pave Hawk’s main rotor assembly and exploded in a blinding red-and-orange flash. Trailing torn shards of rotor and fuselage, the stricken helicopter rolled over and plunged into the forest not far beyond the runway. Flames and darker black smoke eddied away from the crash site.
“Nice shot!” Timonov exulted. “Now, let’s get the hell out of here!”
Obeying, Brykin tossed the spent launcher away and followed his leader upslope and deeper into the woods. With luck, they hoped to make it back to their parked car and speed away before the base’s security personnel could react to this sudden ambush. Behind them, the surviving Pave Hawk took evasive action, spewing flares as it circled back toward the runway.
The American search-and-rescue mission had just been ruthlessly aborted.
The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
A Short Time Later
Rear Admiral Kristin Chao tapped a control on her console, bringing up a live video feed from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on the Emergency Conference Room’s largest display screen. It showed a pillar of thick, oily smoke rising from the woods just beyond the air base. The smoke column curved sharply, swept southward by rising winds from the approaching blizzard.
“Approximately thirty minutes ago, one of the two helicopters assigned to our search-and-rescue mission was shot down—apparently by a handheld SAM fired from outside the base perimeter,” she said crisply. She looked sympathetically at Miranda Reynolds. The CIA official looked sick to her stomach. “I’m afraid that was the Pave Hawk carrying your go team.”
“Are there any survivors from the downed helicopter?” Bill Taylor asked gravely. The white-haired defense secretary, who was usually more energetic than far younger men and women, appeared to have aged visibly over the past several hours.
“A handful, Mr. Secretary,” Chao replied. “All critically injured, many with severe burns.”
General Neary, the Air Force chief of staff, stirred in his seat. “And the sons of bitches who shot our bird down? Any luck finding them yet?”
Regretfully, the rear admiral shook her head. “No, sir. Personnel from the 673rd Security Forces Squadron are combing the area where that missile was launched. They found this”—she brought up a picture of the discarded SAM launcher—“but that’s it, so far.”
Jonas Murphy stared at the image. “Is that a Russian-made weapon?”
“It’s a Pakistani copy of a Chinese-designed derivative of the Russian 9K38 Igla,” Chao told him. “The type NATO labels an SA-18.”
Miranda Reynolds glowered. “That missile’s a goddamned blind. This wasn’t some random terrorist attack by Muslim extremists. This was a Russian Spetsnaz operation, from beginning to end.”
Chao nodded. “That’s almost certain, Ms. Reynolds.” She sighed. “What’s much less certain is whether this Russian special forces operation is actually at an end.”
“Meaning what?” Murphy asked.
“Meaning that we cannot be sure yet that they had only one missile team deployed outside Elmendorf-Richardson,” she said bluntly. With the press of another key, she brought up a map hurriedly put together by her operations directorate staff experts. It showed all the areas around the air base where concealed enemy SAM teams might reasonably hope to take a shot at aircraft and helicopters while they were most vulnerable—at takeoff, on landing, and in the early stages of any flight.
A quick study of this map elicited dismayed-sounding murmurs from all of the military professionals present.
Chao nodded. “You see the point.” She turned to Taylor, Murphy, and Reynolds, the only three civilians now allowed into this cavernous war room, and explained. “Even using units from the Army and Army National Guard, it will take us a minimum of several hours to search and secure these areas. And until we’ve done that, launching another search-and-rescue mission toward those crash sites would be like ordering our people to play Russian roulette.”
“Literally, in this case,” Taylor said grimly.
“I’m afraid so,” the rear admiral agreed.
“But by the time our troops manage to secure the base perimeter against a missile ambush—” Murphy began.
“That storm front will be directly overhead,” Chao confirmed. “Making further flight operations impossible until the weather clears.”
Miranda Reynolds scowled. “Don’t we have any other assets—troops, aircraft, something, for God’s sake—anywhere else in Alaska we could send into the Brooks Range to look for those downed aircraft . . . and the stealth bomber?” Her fingers drummed nervously on the conference table. “Just because we’ve paid Petrov’s price doesn’t mean Moscow’s going to give up on getting the PAK-DA back. And if the Russians beat us to the punch while we’re sitting on our asses waiting for better weather conditions, we’ve just thrown away billions of dollars and a bunch of lives for nothing!”
In answer, Chao brought up another map, this one centered on northern Alaska. “My staff has found one possibility,” she said quietly. Her fingers touched a control, highlighting Kaktovik and Barter Island. “There’s a Joint Force security team deployed here, at one of our North Warning System’s long-range radar stations. We’ve checked the records and all the personnel attached to this force have parachute training. In fact, they’ve recently completed a practice jump.”
Neary shook his head. “All the airborne training in the world’s no good without a plane to jump from. And with that blizzard socking in both Eielson and Elmendorf-Richardson, we’re screwed on that front.”
“Not quite, sir,” Chao said coolly. “There’s an Air National Guard HC-130J on the ground now at Barter Island.”
The Air Force chief of staff stared at her. “On the ground there? Why?”
“Because it lost an engine in-flight and had to make an emergency landing,” she answered. “But we’ve checked the specifications and that Super Hercules is rated to fly, even with a dud engine.”
“You’d be asking the flight crew to take a hell of a risk,” Neary commented. “Not to mention the troops you’re asking to parachute into the middle of nowhere in the tail end of a blizzard.”
Miranda Reynolds broke in
impatiently. “Everything about this mess involves risk. I say we tell them to go.” She looked at Chao. “Who’s in charge of this security team?”
The rear admiral smiled oddly at her. “A U.S. Air Force officer it appears that your agency has had some dealings with in the not-so-distant past, Ms. Reynolds. The officer in question is a certain Captain Nicholas Flynn.”
Reynolds’s mouth fell open in consternation. “You’re kidding me,” she managed to get out at last.
Chao shook her head, still smiling wryly. “No, Ms. Reynolds,” she said. “I most certainly am not.”
Thirty-One
Barter Island Long Range Radar Site, near Kaktovik, Alaska
A Short Time Later
Captain Nick Flynn unzipped his parka and stripped off his thick gloves as he sat down at the dining area table set aside for his unit’s computers and other electronic gear. He’d just been called in from a duty shift outside the radar station, freezing his ass off on outpost duty. Apparently, an encrypted message had just arrived over their link to Alaskan Command—one that only he could read.
After blowing on his hands to restore some semblance of feeling, he entered the necessary codes. Lines of text and embedded maps and images appeared on the screen. It was a task order assigning them a new mission. But any faint hope that he could stand his unit down for some much-needed rest vanished the moment he read the message header. Good news did not carry the immediate precedence designator. That was almost always reserved for situations involving serious military matters.
His mouth tightened as he read further. What the brass wanted them to do now went way beyond ordinary crazy. In fact, it was off-the-charts lunacy. Stripping out all the happy talk about achieving vitally important national security objectives, the operations staff officers cozily forted up at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson expected Flynn and his men to parachute deep into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Then, assuming they survived this hazardous nighttime drop, they were supposed to begin an immediate search-and-rescue operation—hunting for combat aircraft, two American F-22s, a big Russian Tu-142 recon plane, and two more Su-35 fighters, which had crashed somewhere among those jagged peaks and rocky valleys during an air intercept that had gone horribly wrong.
He shook his head angrily. There was no way in hell he would ask his soldiers and airmen to commit suicide chasing some staff weenie’s whim, not without pushing back as hard as he dared first. Without waiting to start second-guessing himself, Flynn stabbed the screen icon that would open a direct, secure video connection to Anchorage.
There was a moment’s delay while his signal was uplinked through a satellite and stabilized, and then a new window opened on-screen. A senior Army noncom looked back out of it at Flynn. “Yes, sir?” the NCO asked.
“This is Captain Flynn at Barter Island. I need to talk to—”
“Wait one, sir,” the other man interrupted. “I’m switching you to General Rosenthal, now.”
Flynn felt his eyebrows go up. Lieutenant General David Rosenthal was the top dog, the overall commander for every airman, soldier, sailor, and member of the Space Force based in Alaska. And despite that, he’d apparently just been sitting around anticipating this video call from a junior officer posted to the back end of nowhere? This deal looked worse and worse.
Rosenthal’s lean, squared-jawed visage flickered onto the screen. “Good afternoon, Captain. I assume you’ve got some questions about your orders?”
Flynn stiffened. “Not exactly questions, sir.”
The general smiled dryly. “More like a protest, then. As in, what kind of stupid SOB dreamed up this nightmare and dumped it in your undeserving lap?”
Despite his anger, Flynn felt an answering ironic grin flit across his own face. “Not exactly in those words, sir. But I guess that’s basically the gist of it.” He leaned a little closer to the screen. “Look, General, between the crappy weather and the prevailing winter darkness, asking my guys to make a parachute drop into those mountains goes way beyond the call of duty. Risk is one thing. They all signed on the dotted line when they enlisted. But this is more like a kamikaze run. My troops aren’t even trained for combat search-and-rescue operations.”
Rosenthal nodded grimly. “I’m well aware of that, Captain,” he said. “Unfortunately, the pararescue team we dispatched first was ambushed shortly after takeoff. A SAM brought down one of their two helicopters, with heavy casualties.” His gaze hardened. “Which makes your team it, I’m afraid. You and your men are the only airborne-qualified force we’ve got that can reach those crash sites sometime in the next twenty-four hours.”
“Someone shot down one of our helicopters?” Flynn said, staggered by the news. Carrying out a missile attack just outside the largest military base in Alaska represented an almost unthinkable escalation. “Who? The Russians?”
“Probably,” the general said tersely. He shrugged. “Look, son, for what it’s worth, your orders come straight from the top—from the SecDef and the Joint Chiefs. Their assessment is that your mission is of the utmost importance. If we’re going to have any hope of avoiding an all-out war with Russia, we’ve got to learn more about what really happened out there, both to our planes and to theirs. So it’s vital that you find any surviving aircrew and retrieve the flight recorders from every crash site you can reach.”
Flynn frowned. “That’s one hell of a tall order, sir.”
“Yes, it is,” Rosenthal said flatly. “And I don’t like this much more than you do. But there it is.” His chin came up as he looked Flynn straight in the eyes. “Your country is counting on you and your team right now. I know that may sound corny as hell, but it also happens to be true.”
Shit, shit, shit, Flynn thought irritably. He really hated these kinds of appeals to his patriotism, especially since they were practically guaranteed to work on him. Just stick a flea collar around my darned neck and call me Uncle Sam’s Pavlovian dog, he mused in disgust. That was how they got you, he knew, by invoking the danger to a land and a people you loved. And the trouble was, sometimes the danger was real. If the Russians were suddenly shooting down American planes and helicopters practically at will, it was harder and harder to see how the U.S. could avoid a major armed clash with Moscow.
“There’s one more thing that wasn’t included in the first draft of your orders,” Rosenthal continued. “But it comes straight from the Joint Chiefs, too. Apparently, there’s also a chance that you might run across another aircraft on the ground out there. An intact aircraft. And if you do, you’re to report its presence and location immediately, but you are not, repeat not, to take any further action . . . not without direct orders from either the SecDef or the JCS.”
“Exactly what kind of intact aircraft are we talking about?” Flynn asked carefully. Inside his mind, a whole new set of alarm bells were now going off. “One of ours? One of the Russians? Or one made by little green men from Mars?”
The general winced. “You now know as much about this as I do, Captain.” His expression was not happy. “I’m pushing hard for more data, especially since it may have some bearing on what happened to our Raptors and the other missing planes. And on why the Russians are being so goddamned aggressive all of a sudden. So far, though, I’m not getting very far.”
If those internal alarm bells got any louder, Flynn judged, he’d be metaphorically deaf real soon. He scowled. “Just for the record, sir, this sort of ‘need to know’ bullshit really pisses me off.”
“You’re not alone in that feeling, son,” Rosenthal said. A hint of frustration crept into his voice, confirming what he said. “And I fully understand your own particular aversion to this level of strict secrecy.”
That was true enough, Flynn realized. No matter how “prettied up” the orders justifying his exile to Barter Island may have been, the Pentagon’s version of the old boys’ network undoubtedly meant Rosenthal knew all about his earlier run-in with the CIA and its Libyan black ops arms smuggling.
“If it’s any
consolation, Captain Flynn,” the general continued, “my strong suspicion is that there are a number of people back in Washington right now who are almost equally unhappy that you’re in charge of this mission.”
Flynn shook his head. “Frankly, sir, that’s not much consolation at all.” He sat back with a resigned sigh. “Okay, we’ll do our best.”
“I know you will, Captain,” Rosenthal said. “Now, from what I understand, there’s supposed to be a lull in this blizzard later tonight, but it may not last long. So organize your team and pull together any gear you’ll need fast. We’re putting Major Ingalls and Captain Van Horn and their HC-130J on standby out at the Barter Island airport right now. They’ll be ready to take off as soon as your men are on board.”
Sweating in the station’s steam heat, Flynn strode down the corridor toward Sergeant Andy Takirak’s tiny quarters. He’d thought briefly about stopping by his own room to wriggle out of his parka and the rest of his cold weather gear to get more comfortable, but he’d resisted the temptation. They were already on the clock, without any time to waste. And any layers he took off now were only ones he’d have to squeeze back into before they headed out to the airport.
Behind him, he heard a solid door bang open. Deep voices echoed through the station as the soldiers who’d been on outpost duty came hurrying back into the dining area to get out of the bitter, bone-chilling cold.
“Hey, what are you guys doing back inside?” he heard Cole Hynes ask, sounding annoyed. “You’re not due for another couple of hours.”
“The captain called us back in,” Vucovich told him. “He said we should grab some hot food and stand by for new orders.”
“What new orders?” Hynes demanded.
“Hell if we know,” Sanchez’s bass baritone rumbled. “I was freezing my balls off out there, so I’m sure not planning on bitching.”