Bering Strait Page 10

  So Perri pretty quickly worked out the bug-like shapes of the choppers now flaring over the runway a hundred yards away were Russian Mi-26s. And he was old enough and quick enough to realize that was Not A Normal Thing. Before the first machine had settled on its wheels and the rear cargo bay doors began opening, Perri had opened the throttle on his ATV and was racing back down the runway toward Gambell!

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw men dressed in white and brown camouflage suits come tumbling out of the door of the chopper and fan out before throwing themselves down on the ground, facing out. More men jumped out behind them. Perri cursed. He was still halfway along the spit, because the Amazon drones usually put down midway along the runway. He had his throttle turned all the way back, but the old ATV couldn’t do more than 40 mph, and that was with a good tailwind.

  If there was any warning shouted, he couldn’t hear it above the clatter of helicopter rotors and whine of his engine, but there was no mistaking the crack of a heavy rifle and the sideways shove he felt as the round from a Spetsnaz AMR 12.7mm rifle slammed into the rear of his ATV and his engine shat itself. He felt the bike and sled scissoring dangerously, and turned into the skid, trying desperately to avoid flipping over, but even as he tried he could sense the ATV begin to tilt and realized with a lurching stomach it was going over. He launched himself into the air so that he didn’t get two hundred pounds of rolling metal and plastic landing on top of him, hit the dirt beside the runway in a welter of gravel and rolled with his hands over his head. The ATV flipped twice and stopped, the sled behind it cartwheeling free and flying over Perri’s body to land on the other side of him with a scraping crunch. His first thought as he looked at the wrecked ATV was that he was so, so, busted. Then he saw Russian troops up and running along the runway toward him and realized that was the least of his worries. They had shot at him!

  The Russian soldiers were still a hundred yards away, and he saw one of them waving at him to lie down. Or that’s what it seemed like. They all had guns, and at least two were down on one knee with rifles pointed at him, with another laying on his stomach, feet spread wide, a huge long-barreled rifle on a tripod pointed right at him.

  Forget this, Perri thought. He scrambled to the sled and threw himself over it, putting it between himself and the Russian troops. The sled was on its back, so he quickly felt underneath it for the rifle wrapped in a sealskin blanket that had been tied to the grill at the back. Thank god, it was still there! He took a quick look over the sled, and saw the nearest soldier was fifty yards away now, and sprinting hard.

  The guy had his rifle in his hands, but it was on a strap across his chest, not pointed at Perri.

  Perri looked desperately down the runway. It was a hundred yards more of open ground. He knew he wouldn’t make it twenty yards before he was crash tackled, or worse, got himself shot. Looking behind him, Perri saw that the crash of the ATV had thrown him across the ground beside the runway toward the rocks lining the spit. On the other side of them was the bay, and on the other side of that, Gambell township. Perri put a loop of the rope tied around the rifle around his neck.

  His thick fur-lined jacket was shredded, but it had probably saved him from getting his hide scraped off in the crash. It hung in tatters from one shoulder, so he pulled it off. Without hesitating another second, he rose into a crouch and then sprinted for the sea. He ignored the shouting behind him, shoulders hunched, expecting to feel a bullet slam into his back any second, as he jumped from the shore onto one rock, then another, hopping like a demented Arctic fox and then threw himself into the waters of the bay.

  Private Zubkhov of the 14th Special Purpose Brigade, 282nd Squadron, covered his comrades with the anti-material rifle until they gave up chasing the man who jumped into the bay. He had been the one who had fired the shots that had brought the guy down. When it was clear there was no other target, he ran over to where the man jumped into the water, and resting his barrel on one of the rocks the man had used to make his escape he sighted down at the figure splashing through the water. The man was a strong swimmer, but he hadn’t made it across the bay yet. It was an easy shot.

  A hand pushed up the barrel of his rifle, and he lifted his face away from the sights, to see his commanding officer, Captain Demchenko, standing beside him, also watching the man swim away.

  “Let him go, private,” the officer said. “Minimal casualties, either military or civilian, remember?”

  “Yes sir,” Zubkhov replied, folding up the bipod on his barrel and slinging the rifle across his back. He watched the man slice through the water. Shame. Zubkhov looked back at the runway. He saw the other men of his unit doubling down the runway in the direction of the road to the village. They had estimated it would take fifteen minutes to reach by foot.

  “Permission to re-join the squadron sir?” Zubkhov asked.

  “You won’t catch them,” Demchenko said. He looked back at the ATV. “You made that mess, you can clean it up. Pull that wreck further away from the runway and check the compartment under the seat for anything useful. Papers, maps, whatever you can find.”

  Zubkhov looked ruefully at the backs of his comrades as they reached the road at the bottom of the runway and wound around to their right and out of sight. “Yes sir,” he said, disappointed to already be out of the fight. Such as it was.

  “When you’re finished you can make yourself useful unloading the choppers,” his Captain said, adding insult to injury. He saw the private’s face fall, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Cheer up man. That was a nice takedown you made there. If it makes you feel better, I suspect it was the only shot this whole squadron will fire today,” he said.

  Bondarev joined his second section at 50,000 feet over Eastern Saint Lawrence and they fell into formation briefly behind him, while he reviewed their dispositions and then ordered three of the six Su-57s to set up a combat air patrol to the northeast while he took the southeast, the most likely direction from which enemy fighters would approach. He expected a probing reaction from the Americans at first, giving him time to scale his response.

  The leader of his second flight was a combat veteran, but his other pilots were not battle tested, whereas all three men in Bondarev’s flight were veterans of Syria, men who had flown with him for years. He set up a combat air patrol that gave them control of a two hundred mile bubble of airspace, and then contacted the Beriev A-50W early warning aircraft that was coordinating the airspace over Saint Lawrence. Its Active Phased Array Radar (APAR) could detect airborne targets out to 600km and warships out to 400. Although Russia bragged the A-50W was capable of detecting stealth fighters, Bondarev knew from experience that at best it could give a general vector, not a precise lock. The A-50W was supplemented by ground-based long-range radar and saturation satellite coverage as well though, so Bondarev was not worried they would get jumped without warning.

  “Raptor Control, this is Swan 1, we are on station and available for tasking,” Bondarev reported.

  “Acknowledged Swan 1, we see you, hold station,” the controller onboard the A-50W responded.’ “All quiet here. We are moving to phase II. Out.”

  This was war, Bondarev reflected, running his eyes across his instruments and checking them against what his heads-up display was showing him. Hours of total tedium, interrupted by moments of sheer terror. But his old grandmother had once said to him, “May you never live in exciting times.” Unfortunately, her wish hadn’t come true in the past, but he fervently hoped it would at least hold for today.

  “I have Foreign Minister Kelnikov on the line for you Ambassador,” Devlin McCarthy’s assistant said over the phone. McCarthy was in the back of her car, on the way out to a dinner with the Canadian delegation in Moscow.

  She sighed. More bluster about that lost ship no doubt, she thought. What Russia hoped to achieve with it wasn’t clear. “Put him on,” she said. She heard static on the line, and coughing in the background. “Minister Kelnikov,” she said. “How are you?”

&nbs
p; “Rather busy I am afraid,” the man said. “I am calling to advise you we have another nautical emergency in the Bering Sea, this time off the coast of your island of Saint Lawrence.”

  McCarthy leaned forward in her seat and tapped her aide on the shoulder, motioning him to get the car to pull over. “What emergency Minister?”

  “One of our Kazan class submarines has suffered a flash fire and as a precaution, the Captain has chosen to scram the vessel’s reactor. We have lost contact but his last report said he was unable to surface. We have mobilized rescue assets from Anadyr and Lavrentiya and air-sea rescue reconnaissance units are over the submarine’s last known position.”

  McCarthy thought quickly, “Are you requesting our assistance?”

  Kelnikov grunted, “No Ambassador. We have the matter in hand and have notified your Coast Guard in Alaska. But I am advising you so that you can pass the message up your chain of command, that they should not be alarmed to see Russian military vessels and aircraft in the area of Saint Lawrence while we stabilize this terrible situation.”

  “I will advise our military attaché and the Pentagon immediately,” McCarthy said. “But I suggest your President also contact my President to open a channel of communication if the situation worsens. There will be concern about the risk of nuclear contamination.”

  “He is already doing so I believe,” Kelnikov said. “Our ambassador in Washington is also on his way into your State Department.”

  “We stand ready to assist in any way we can,” McCarthy said. “I imagine a nuclear sub reactor scram is not a small matter Minister. I suspect our military chiefs will want to move emergency response assets to Saint Lawrence just in case they are needed.”

  There was hesitation at the other end. “That may be prudent,” Kelnikov said. “Can you please arrange to give us the contact details for whichever officer you put in charge, so that we can speak with them directly? It would be best to let our two militaries manage this event between themselves so that no confusions arise.”

  “I’ll personally see that you receive those details,” McCarthy said. “Was there anything else?”

  “No, that will do for now. I will keep you advised as best I can, but I do not expect any new information in the next hour or so. As I said, we have lost contact with our vessel; our military command will decide how to respond.”

  “Our thoughts and prayers are with those men,” McCarthy said. “Can I ask what the name of the vessel was? It was a Kazan class submarine you said?”

  “That is all I know at this point,” Kelnikov said, clearly dissembling. “Which of our Kazan class vessels is involved, I am sorry I cannot say.”

  She hadn’t expected him to identify the vessel, but it was worth a try. ‘Cannot say’ was not the same as ‘do not know’, but in the same situation, US Pacific Fleet Command wouldn’t rush to identify to the Russians which of their nuclear missile capable vessels was currently bottomed out on the seabed off a foreign coast. It was probably already a breach of about ten different nuclear disarmament treaties that the submarine was even operating in the sea off Saint Lawrence.

  “I had better start making some phone calls,” McCarthy said. “If you will excuse me Minister.”

  “Certainly, goodbye for now.”

  She cut the connection and leaned back in her seat. “Get us to the compound, stat,” she told her aide and he pulled up a list of destinations and tapped it in. This wasn’t the sort of thing she could discuss over a cell phone, even an encrypted cell. As the car accelerated into traffic she made a mental list of who she should call and in which order. As she tapped her fingers on the window pane nervously, she bit her lip. You lying sack of dung, she thought. Nuclear sub reactor scram off Saint Lawrence my broad ass.

  First the Ozempic Tsar, now this. What the hell are they up to?

  IN COMMISSION

  Air Boss Alicia Rodriguez was deeply asleep, dreaming of lying on a field of warm green grass staring up at a blue sky filled with rolling white clouds. There was someone beside her and they were playing games finding shapes in the clouds.

  “That one is an ambulance,” the mystery person beside her was saying. “Or a fire truck. It sounds like a fire truck.”

  “Sounds like a firetruck?” Rodriguez was about to respond in her dream, when she suddenly realized she wasn’t dreaming. There was an emergency siren ringing out through the base. At exactly that moment, the phone charging at her bedside began to buzz. She grabbed it.

  “Lieutenant Commander, this is Commander Halifax. We have a situation, get down to the flight deck,” he said. “I’ll brief you when you get there. I’m calling all hands to action stations.” He hung up.

  Rodriguez stared confused at her handset for a second before her adrenaline kicked in. Within two minutes she had pulled on her flight suit and boots, pulled her black hair into a ponytail and was running at full pelt from the officer’s quarters at the back of the docks and up metal stairs toward her command trailer; her position when action stations were sounded. There were men and women also swarming up the steps and she shouted at them to stand aside and let her through, pulling at a couple of shoulders as she bustled past taking the steps two at a time.

  Halifax was already in the trailer when she pulled the door open and jumped inside, and she saw Bunny at her pilot console, punching buttons and bringing her systems online. Which was kind of pointless since they didn’t have a drone on alert…

  “Lieutenant Commander,” Halifax barked. “How quickly can you get a Fantom onto that Cat?”

  Rodriguez didn’t hesitate. If the station had been at readiness, there would be a Fantom hanging in the loading crane on alert, able to be dropped onto the Cat with five minutes warning. But it wasn’t. She did have a hex of Fantoms pre-flighted and loaded into their cartridges already fueled. They could be fitted with ordnance for a range of mission types from the auto-loading magazines with the tap of a few keys.

  “Seventeen minutes Sir,” she said. “Ten to load mission ordnance package, five to get flight systems online, two to verify system status and spool up for launch.”

  Halifax looked at her, “You have ten minutes. I want a drone headed out the chute in ten minutes tops and a second Fantom loading as soon as it is away, is that clear?”

  “Mission profile from the Operations Order sir?” she asked.

  “OPORD says unarmed reconnaissance,” he replied tersely.

  She grabbed a tablet from the rack over her desk and powered it on, bringing up her inventory screen. Unarmed recon meant no weapons other than guns, and a recon pod in the ordnance bay. Immediately she saw a problem – recon pods were not part of the auto-load system, they had to be fitted manually and that would take additional time.

  “Sir, is this another exercise?” Bunny asked, pulling her virtual-reality helmet over her platinum stubble.

  “No, Lieutenant,” Halifax said. “A Russian nuclear sub has declared a reactor emergency off the coast of Saint Lawrence Island. Alaska NORAD indicates the sky over the island is swarming with Russian aircraft, and the Russians are actively jamming. The situation with that sub is clearly worse than Ivan is letting on. With all the jamming we can’t get through to our radar station base at Savoonga, so we need eyes over Saint Lawrence an hour ago. NORAD is repositioning satellites and scrambling a drone out of Eielson, but we can get over Saint Lawrence before anyone else can.” He looked at Rodriguez. “So we need to launch stat.”

  “Then we can either go with the birds I have on the rack, which can be launched with a multi-role loadout, or take an extra thirty minutes to fit dedicated recon payloads.”

  Halifax considered briefly, “Go with what you have ready.”

  “Rules of Engagement sir?” Bunny asked. “Standing Rules?”

  “No,” Halifax said clearly. Standing Rules of Engagement allowed a pilot to fire back if they were fired upon first. “You will not engage Russian aircraft, even if fired upon. That’s why ANR has tasked us – they don’t want to r
isk piloted aircraft, or create an international incident. And we do not want to give away the existence of this base. Set your waypoints so it looks like your origin is Nome.”

  Rodriguez didn’t need more encouragement. She called up two fighters and authorized them to be delivered on the conveyor belt from the magazine to the catapult bay.

  “Permission to go down to the flight deck Sir?” Rodriguez asked, clear that she would need to be close to the action if they were to shave precious seconds off every step of the regimented launch process.

  “Granted,” Halifax said.

  Her crews were milling around down by the flight deck; aircraft handlers, catapult crew, ground equipment trouble-shooters… half of them looking like she felt (tumble dried and freaked out) and the other half just standing around ready to be told what to do. She headed out of the trailer and before she even finished running she was barking orders.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is not an exercise, this facility is now officially open for business!” she said, and couldn’t help grinning. “I’ve dialed up two Fantoms – we’ll launch immediately. You have eight minutes to get the first machine onto that Cat, systems online and ready to fire. Five minutes for the machine after that. Questions?”

  “Bring two reserve machines into the bays, just in case we get a dead boot ma’am?” one of the crew quickly asked. He was a young, pimply plane captain she’d seen at work on the Trump under one of her aircraft handling officers but in the flat structure they’d adopted under the Rock he had no qualms about speaking up.

  “Good idea Collins, I’ll pull two machines into the reserve bays, you get them prepped with recon pods. Now, lock and load people!” She stayed as long as it took for the conveyor belt to deliver the first Fantom and watched as a robot arm lifted it out of its cartridge and dropped it onto the guide rails of the catapult. Two crewmen got to work dropping the wings, locking it to front and rear bars and tensioning the launch wire. While they were doing that, two electronics technicians booted up the drone’s A.I. system and began speeding through the pre-flight checklist. There was a ‘fast boot’ mode made for combat environments that gave the A.I. enough resources to get itself in the air, and left it to run its own ‘pre-mission’ checks during the first few minutes of flight. They didn’t have to check with Rodriguez, it was obvious this was the mode they should load given the urgency in her voice.