THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW
NINETY MINUTES LATER
Russian president Gennadiy Gryzlov read through the most recent reports from Koshkin’s Q Directorate with a deep sense of pleasure. After several recent failures, his computer hackers were back on track. At last count, more than two-thirds of all the private telecommunications networks in Eastern and central Europe were down—causing havoc and hardship for tens of millions. He smiled to himself. For some reason, kicking enemies around always aroused him. Maybe he should summon Daria Titeneva for a celebratory romp around his office. His lush, full-bodied foreign minister might have deep misgivings about this cyberwar campaign, but he knew she also enjoyed being dominated. Yes, he thought lazily, bending Daria over his desk and having his way with her would end this day on a delightfully obscene note.
His phone buzzed. Irritated at being interrupted, he snatched it up. “What is it, Ulanov?”
“It’s Minister of State Security Kazyanov, Mr. President,” his secretary said. “He says it’s urgent.”
Gryzlov rolled his eyes. Dull, boring, timid Viktor Kazyanov was just about the last person he wanted to talk to right now. Then again, the intelligence chief was usually so nervous about pissing him off that whatever news he wanted to pass on might actually be important. “Very well,” he snapped. “Put him through.”
“Mr. President! Something is happening in Poland! We’ve just received a radio signal from—” Kazyanov started out, speaking so rapidly and so excitedly that he was almost tripping over his own words as they came spilling across the phone line.
“For God’s sake, slow down, Viktor,” Gryzlov said. “You sound like a demented clown!”
The other man stammered to a stop, took a deep breath, and then went on in a somewhat calmer tone. “Approximately four hours ago, our deep-cover GRU agents stationed near Powidz spotted intense activity at the Iron Wolf base. They report seeing an unidentified aircraft flying north at high speed. It has not yet returned.”
“And this happened four hours ago?” Gryzlov said through gritted teeth. “So what the hell were your precious agents doing in the meantime? Washing their damned hair?”
“They were unable to report sooner,” Kazyanov said simply. “Because our cyberwar operations have knocked out all the phone lines and Internet connections in their area.”
“Oh,” Gryzlov said blankly. That was a complication he had not foreseen. He gripped the phone tighter. “This aircraft? What can you tell me about it?”
Kazyanov gulped. “Not as much as I would like, sir,” he admitted. “The signal from our team describes it as all black, with a batwing configuration.”
“So, some kind of stealth aircraft,” Gryzlov guessed.
“Yes, Mr. President,” the other man agreed. “But from the rough estimate of its size, my analysts say it does not match anything in the known Polish or American inventory. It could be anything from a small strike bomber to a long-range covert reconnaissance drone.”
“Very well, Viktor,” Gryzlov said. “Inform me at once if you learn anything more.” He hung up.
For a moment, he sat with his fingers pressed hard against his temples, deep in thought. What were the Poles and their American mercenaries up to? If they were executing some kind of attack or prestrike reconnaissance with this mysterious new aircraft, why fly north, instead of heading east toward Russia? Then he shook his head in disgust at his own foolishness, remembering what he’d told Koshkin and the others just a couple of days ago. “Wilk and Martindale are not simpletons,” he muttered. Why should he expect them to do the obvious?
Gryzlov swung toward his computer and pulled up a map of Poland, western Russia, and the neighboring countries. Assuming this new stealth aircraft had a cruising speed of somewhere between 700 and 950 kilometers per hour, where could it be now, four hours or so after taking off? Quickly, he began laying out possible flight paths on the digital map. After all, he thought, he’d originally trained as a bomber pilot. If he were tasked with planning a deep-penetration mission into Russia, what were the best options to evade radar detection? Then he reconsidered . . . Why cast his net so widely? While there were thousands of potential targets for an Iron Wolf retaliatory strike, only one was truly important in the present circumstances.
Confidently, he erased all but one of the hypothetical flight plans he’d drawn and then ran through his calculations again—estimating where the enemy aircraft could be . . . right now.
“Sukin syn! Son of a bitch,” Gryzlov snarled, staring at the map. He grabbed his phone again. “Ulanov! Connect me with Colonel Balakin at Perun’s Aerie!”
When the cyberwar complex’s security chief came on the line, Gryzlov didn’t waste time with small talk. “Listen carefully, Balakin. You may have visitors inbound.”
“Is this a bombing raid, sir? Or . . .” The colonel hesitated. “An attack by those machines? By those combat robots?”
Gryzlov smiled unpleasantly. “I haven’t the faintest idea, Colonel.” He glanced back at the map on his computer screen. “But if I’m right, I have a hunch you’ll find out soon enough.”
“I understand, Mr. President,” Balakin said, still obviously rattled. Then he rallied. “I will order the garrison to go on full alert and bring my outer warning station online.”
NEAR KIPIYEVO, 250 KILOMETERS WEST-NORTHWEST OF PERUN’S AERIE, NORTHERN RUSSIA
THAT SAME TIME
Bundled up in his heavy winter parka, Captain Fyodor Golovkin sat drowsing by the heater in his operations van. Snores from the back told him that most of his troops were doing the same thing. No surprise there, he thought dully. This far north in winter, the nights lasted twenty hours. Between the near-perpetual darkness, the bitter cold, and the boredom of manning a radar unit continuously on standby, it was no wonder that he and his men spent most of their time practically hibernating.
An alarm buzzer jolted him more fully awake. “Sir! It’s Colonel Balakin,” said his senior sergeant, hurriedly scanning the message scrolling across his computer screen. They were linked to the Perun’s Aerie complex by a direct fiber-optic cable. “We’re ordered to activate the radar and begin scanning!”
For a moment, Golovkin couldn’t take it in. “What? Now?”
“Yes, sir,” his sergeant said, with far more patience than he would have shown to anyone of lower rank. “The colonel has set Warning Condition Red.”
Golovkin’s mouth fell open in surprise. If this was a drill, it must have been ordered by the highest command authority. And if it wasn’t a drill . . .
Wide-awake now, he scrambled out of his chair. “Get up! Up, you lazy bastards!” he roared, his voice echoing through the crowded van. “We’re on alert! Get the fucking camouflage netting off the antenna truck! Go!”
His crew hurried to obey, bolting outside into the frigid night air. Before turning to follow them, the captain swung back to his sergeant. “Power up the system, Proshkin! As soon as we’ve got the antenna erected, I want this radar fully operational. Understand?”
The sergeant nodded. He turned back to his station and began rapidly flipping a succession of switches. With a low hum, automated signals processing units, satellite navigation systems, and digital map displays started warming up.
Golovkin paused only to pull on his fur-lined gloves and then went outside into the darkness. He gasped as the raw, subzero cold hit him with sledgehammer force. But his men were hard at work, tugging and straining to pull snow-covered layers of antiradar and antithermal camouflage away from their radar antenna truck. With a creaking groan, the huge crane-mounted antenna itself rose slowly but steadily, scattering shattered chips and pieces of ice in all directions.
The captain stood watching it climb into the air. With luck, they would be online and radiating in less than six minutes.
OVER NORTHEN RUSSIA
A FEW MINUTES LATER
Brad McLanahan peered through his HUD. The Ranger’s advanced forward-looking night-vision camera systems turned the night into a green-tinged version of daylight. They were closing on the foothills of the Urals, a series of barren, boulder-strewn heights cut by twisting, tree-lined ravines.
“We are thirteen minutes out from the LZ,” Nadia reported. Her eyes were fixed on the computer-generated map shown on one of her displays.
Brad nodded. They were a little over one hundred nautical miles from their planned landing zone—a two-thousand-foot-long clearing in the forest about ten miles from Mount Manaraga and Russia’s buried Perun’s Aerie cyberwar complex. For a second, his vision blurred. Crap, he thought. Not now. He blinked rapidly a few times. His vision cleared up. He frowned, glad his expression was hidden beneath his oxygen mask. Even with the aid of the XCV-62’s digital terrain-following system, this prolonged nap-of-the-earth flight was testing his endurance.
“New VHF search radar detected at ten o’clock,” the Ranger’s computer announced suddenly. “Strong agile active frequency signal. Range estimated at thirty-three miles. Detection probability moderate.”
Damn it, Brad thought. Where the hell did that come from? Nothing in their mission planning intelligence had identified a radar site anywhere near here.
“The radar is evaluated as a KB/Agat Vostok E-type,” Nadia said. Her voice was tight. “Shall I activate SPEAR?”
“Negative,” Brad said quickly. “If we use SPEAR, the Russians will know for sure we’re coming. So let’s see if I can shake this radar loose before it firms us up.” Since it used longer wavelengths, VHF radar was extremely effective against stealth aircraft. The Vostok E system was a mobile, modern replacement for the old Soviet-era P-18 Spoon Rest units. But it was usually paired with faster L- and S/X-band fire-control radars as part of a SAM battery. What was this one doing out on its own?
“DTF disengaged,” he said, turning off the Ranger’s terrain-following system. He pushed the stick forward a bit, dropping the aircraft’s nose. They descended from two hundred feet down to just a little over a hundred—almost brushing the treetops that flashed past and below them in a rippling blur. His teeth locked together. While flying this low at 450 knots, even a momentary loss of concentration would be fatal.
Heading east, they zoomed down one of the narrow valleys. Rocky heights rose sharply on both sides. An ice-covered stream twisted and turned down the floor of the valley.
“VHF signal strength decreasing,” the computer reported. “Detection probability now low.”
“You did it!” Nadia said, exhaling.
Feeling a little safer now that they had higher ground between them and that Vostok radar, Brad switched the XCV-62’s terrain-following system back on. It pulled them back up to two hundred feet. He unclenched his teeth. “Maybe. Maybe not,” he told her. “Depends on how jumpy that radar crew is. And why they suddenly powered up.” He shrugged his shoulders against his harness. “I’m pretty sure they got some piece of us, at least for a few seconds. Now, if we’re lucky and that Russian crew was only running a routine test, they may think the blip they saw was just a systems glitch.”
“And if we are not lucky?” Nadia asked softly.
“That’s what has me worried,” Brad acknowledged. He clicked the intercom, opening a channel to the troop compartment. In a few terse phrases, he briefed Macomber, Charlie Turlock, and the others on the situation.
“So,” Macomber drawled, “it may be ‘good-bye, surprise’ and ‘hello, hornet’s nest?’”
“Could be.”
“Care to give me any odds on which one it is?” Macomber asked.
Brad shrugged again. “Maybe fifty-fifty.” He banked right, following the trace of the valley as it curved southeast. “Do you want to abort?”
“Hell, no,” the other man growled. “If those Russian sons of bitches really are awake and waiting for us, skedaddling now won’t improve the situation much. If we’re gonna have to run a missile gauntlet on the way home, let’s blow the shit out of Gryzlov’s cybergeeks first.”
“Charlie?” Brad asked.
“Suits me,” Charlie Turlock said simply. “You know, not that I would ever say I told you so, Whack . . . but I feel compelled to point out that I did strongly suggest we stop for a drink at that Finnish airport bar first.”
Despite his anxiety, Brad felt himself grinning. “Captain Schofield?”
“My lads and I are ready,” the Canadian told him. “We’re unstrapping now and getting our gear ready.”
“That’s kind of dangerous,” Brad told him. “This could be a pretty rough landing.”
“We’ll take that chance,” Schofield replied. “No offense, Captain McLanahan, but if we are heading into a hot LZ, my troops and I would rather like to get clear of this aircraft and into cover as quickly as possible.”
“Understood,” Brad said. The glowing numbers on his HUD altered slightly as the Ranger’s computer recalculated their flight plan, based on their current airspeed and heading. “We’re eight minutes out. Stand by.”
NEAR KIPIYEVO
THAT SAME TIME
“Replay that sequence, Proshkin, but slow it down this time,” Captain Fyodor Golovkin ordered. His sergeant obeyed. Together the two men watched the small blip suddenly appear on their radar display, waver, and then just as suddenly vanish. From start to finish, the blip was visible only for fifteen seconds. The captain pulled at his jaw. “What do you think?”
The sergeant shrugged. “We were still powering up, Captain. It could easily have been a false reading.” His fingers drummed lightly on the side of his console. “But since we haven’t been able to run our normal alignment, calibration, and other tests, who knows how out of whack this equipment is. Ordinarily, I’d say that we picked up something real. As it is, in these temperatures and with all that ice coating the ring element radiator—”
Golovkin nodded. He shared the other man’s frustration and uncertainty. As part of the effort to hide the existence of Perun’s Aerie, Colonel Balakin had ordered them to keep their radar completely off the air once it was deployed. Golovkin had argued that his equipment needed periodic checks to confirm its full operational readiness—especially in these harsh winter conditions. Unfortunately, the colonel had ignored his protests. Like many senior officers without a technical background, Balakin expected that fully activating complex systems like their Vostok E radar was as simple and foolproof as flipping a power switch.
He sighed. If only it were that easy. “How does the equipment look now?” he asked, still trying to decide what he should do about this possible contact.
“The antenna array seems okay,” the sergeant admitted. His tone, however, strongly suggested that he wouldn’t be surprised if bits and pieces started falling off in the next few minutes.
“Assuming that contact was genuine, what can you tell me about it?” Golovkin pressed.
The sergeant brought up the recorded sequence again and ran through it one more time. “We picked it up at about sixty kilometers,” he said carefully. “I would estimate the contact’s course as zero-eight-five degrees and its speed at more than eight hundred kilometers per hour.”
“Right, so let’s put that track on a map and then extend it along the observed direction of flight,” the captain said.
Dutifully, the sergeant obeyed. During the fifteen seconds the blip appeared on their radar display, it had covered a little more than three kilometers before disappearing. Golovkin’s eyes followed the projected track as it “stretched” almost due east—slanting toward the Urals on a course that took it within a few kilometers of Mount Manaraga and Perun’s Aerie.
“Damn,” he muttered. Still looking at the map, he picked up the direct line to Balakin’s command post. It was answered on the first ring. “This is Captain Golovkin at the Kipiyevo radar outpost. I need to speak to the colonel. Right now!”