Eagle Station

Nineteen

Captain Oleg Panov peered forward through the Mi-8MTV-5 helicopter’s windshield, looking for his next allotted target. He was flying low, practically skimming across the treetops at just one hundred kilometers per hour. In the left-hand seat, his copilot was eyes down, updating their mission plan on the center console computer. Since refueling at Krasnoyarsk’s airport earlier in the day, they’d been sweeping these forests from the air — systematically overflying supposedly deserted hunting cabins and logging huts, looking for any signs of life. More than a dozen other Mi-8 helicopter troop carriers and Ka-52 gunships were engaged in this same task. So to avoid wasting time and fuel, it was important to check off each building they’d cleared and report the results to the Spetsnaz brigade staff back at headquarters.

Not more than a kilometer ahead and just off to his left, Panov caught the faint glint off a metal roof nestled among the trees. He swung the helicopter toward it. “Stand by on the sensors, Leonid,” he ordered.

Obediently, his copilot looked up from their computer. “Standing by,” he confirmed. “I am receiving good data from both pods.”

The Mi-8MTV-5’s upgraded cockpit had five modern multifunction displays set across its instrument panel — enabling its crew to rapidly and easily switch between different system readouts. Currently, the two leftmost displays were set to show imagery gathered by the sensor pods attached to their helicopter’s pylons — one equipped with a forward-looking infrared camera and the other containing a ground surveillance radar.

Panov took them in right over the log cabin he’d spotted, coming in so low that his tricycle landing gear almost knocked over a thin metal stovepipe chimney rising above the roof. He only had time to see that it was two stories high and maybe big enough for a couple of separate rooms on each floor. A black plastic tarp covered what was probably a large woodpile. It fluttered wildly, hammered by their rotor wash.

Then they were past, clattering on across the top of the forest.

“Contact! Contact!” his copilot shouted. “I show heat emissions in that cabin. Human-sized. Multiple sources.” He tapped a button, rewinding the thermal scanner images to show the moment of their pass. Green glowing shapes appeared briefly against the cooler background of the cabin’s interior. Then he punched another control. “And look what our radar picked up at the same time!”

Panov whistled. Instead of a woodpile, that black tarp had been concealing a vehicle, some sort of van by its shape and size. Which meant that they’d found the American spies for sure. He keyed his radio mike. “Kingfisher Three to Kingfisher Base. Positive contact at Location Bravo Eight. Repeat, contact at Bravo Eight.”

“Base to Kingfisher,” the Spetsnaz brigade commander’s excited voice sounded in his earphones. “I’m vectoring in additional helicopters and action teams. Deploy your troops to secure the perimeter. Remember, we want these foreigners alive, if at all possible.”

“Understood, Base,” Panov said. He pulled the helicopter into a tight turn back around. He’d spotted an opening in the woods not far from the hunting cabin. Though comparatively small, it looked big enough to set down in. He switched to intercom. “Did you hear all of that, Captain Kuznetsky?”

From the aft passenger compartment, Spetsnaz Captain Vladimir Kuznetsky replied, “Loud and clear, Pilot.” His clipped tones conveyed a clear impression of predatory eagerness. “My boys are ready.”

“Right then,” Panov said. “Stand by. We’re going in now.” Kuznetsky had two nine-man Spetsnaz teams under his direct command. Most of them were hardened veterans of combat in Ukraine, Chechnya, and Poland. Once they were on the ground, they shouldn’t have any trouble keeping a handful of enemy agents from escaping into the surrounding woods.

At one of the second-floor windows of the cabin, Sam Kerr lowered a pair of compact binoculars. “Hell,” she said coolly. “That tears it.”

Beside her, Marcus Cartwright nodded. “They must know we’re here.” He looked up at the Russian helicopter as it circled back toward them. “They’re headed for that clearing you found last night.”

“Looks like it,” Sam agreed. When they’d first arrived at this deserted building, she’d made a thorough reconnaissance of their immediate surroundings. It was standard Scion covert ops procedure to scout out possible enemy approaches to any safe house. That break in the trees — big enough for a helicopter, she’d judged — had been number one on her list, aside from the dirt road they’d driven in on.

She glanced at the big man. “Help Davey get that tarp off our van, Marcus.” She pulled out her smartphone. “I’ll handle this end.” Cartwright nodded again and clattered down the stairs.

Sam typed in a short text message: krak eng, but held her finger off the send button. She raised her binoculars again, watching the Russian helicopter as it slowed into a hover just over the clearing. Its fast-beating rotors churned up a swirling cloud of dust and dead grass.

The Mi-8 drifted carefully lower, gradually settling below the level of the treetops.

Deliberately, Sam pushed the send button on her smartphone.

During her reconnaissance, she’d decided to rig a welcoming present for any Russians who decided to crash their party, using some of the special equipment that had been hidden inside their van. Her “gift,” a small, soda-can-sized plastic tube packed with C-4, was fixed to the trunk of a tall Siberian pine tree right at the edge of the clearing.

Now, triggered by her text message, the Krakatoa shaped-demolition charge exploded with enormous force. In a blinding flash, the detonation sent a colossal shock wave sleeting straight into a thin, inverted copper plate set at the plastic tube’s open mouth, converting it instantly into a lethal jet of molten metal that speared outward at thousands of miles per hour. Hit squarely, the Russian helicopter blew up, killing every man aboard.

WHUMMP.

A huge ball of orange and red flame erupted above the treetops, momentarily outshining the late afternoon sun. Shards of torn and pulverized metal spiraled away from the center of the blast.

“Bet that hurt,” Sam said under her breath. She turned away from the window and hurried downstairs. Outside, a thick pillar of oily, black smoke from the burning wreckage curled higher into the sky.

David Jones met her as she darted around the side of the log cabin. The young Welshman’s face was tight. “Those Spetsnaz bastards weren’t out on their own. There are more helicopters on the way… including gunships.”

Off in the distance, the sound of clattering rotors could be heard growing steadily louder.

Marcus Cartwright looked up when they joined him near the back of the battered delivery van. Discarded boxes and parcels were strewn across the ground behind its open rear doors. “This situation’s just gone from bad to worse,” he said grimly.

“It’s definitely not ideal,” she said, more lightly. “But at least our ride’s on the way.” She checked her watch. “McLanahan and Rozek can’t be more than ten minutes out now.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have ten minutes, Ms. Kerr,” he pointed out. “Those Russian helicopters are going to be on top of us inside of five. Which means we need to buy some time.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “You’re going all formal on me, Marcus. That’s never a good sign.”

Cartwright forced a wry smile. “True.” He reached into the back of the van and dragged a small motorbike out from under the remaining boxes. Weighing just one hundred and eighty pounds, the Taurus was a Russian-built all-terrain vehicle with bulbous balloon tires. With a top speed of only twenty-two miles per hour, the motorcycle wasn’t fast, but it was amazingly compact and agile. And it was even designed to fold up into a bag that would fit in a car trunk.

Sam glanced at Jones. He shrugged. “Mr. Cartwright asked me to put the machine together last night, while you were out scouting around. He thought it might come in handy, see?”

“And just how is this supposed to come in handy?” Sam asked, turning back to face Cartwright.

“You take the bike,” he told her. “And then you head cross-country to the LZ as fast as you can.”

“Leaving you and Davey behind, I suppose?” She shook her head stubbornly. “Not happening, Marcus.”

Cartwright sighed. “Look, Sam, this is a Little Bighorn situation. And all the Indians in the world are about to charge over the hills. So Davey and I’ll take the van and head to the LZ by road. Maybe we’ll get lucky. And maybe we won’t. But what really matters is that splitting up is the best chance for any of us to make it out alive.”

“He’s right, Ms. Kerr,” Jones said softly. “So let us do our job, will you now?”

Wordlessly, Sam just stared at the two men for several seconds. Then, surrendering for the first time ever, she hugged them both tight, one after the other. She turned away with tears streaking her face, straddled the motorbike, and kick-started it. The Taurus’s little Honda motor whirred to life.

Without looking back, she sped off into the woods. Behind her, the clattering roar of the approaching Russian helicopters grew louder still.

Three kilometers away but closing fast from the south, two Ka-52 Alligator helicopters darted low over the forest. Twin pairs of counterrotating, coaxial three-blade rotors blurred above each gunship. Each bristled with armament, including 30mm cannons, 122mm unguided rocket launchers, and laser-guided antitank missiles.

Aboard the trailing helicopter, Major Yuri Drachev scowled, seeing the thick black column of smoke from the downed Mi-8 rising above the forest. Twenty-one Russian soldiers and airmen dead, including a detachment of elite special forces troops, he thought bitterly. All because the higher-ups had foolishly believed these Western spies would meekly throw up their hands and surrender at the first sight of superior force.

But despite those appalling and unexpected casualties, their orders were unchanged.

“Listen carefully, Kingfisher Six,” he heard the Spetsnaz brigade commander snap over the radio. “You will not engage the enemy with lethal force! Moscow still wants the enemy agents alive. Is that clear to you?”

“Yes, that is completely fucking clear, Kingfisher Base,” Drachev growled. “Six out.” He glanced across the cockpit at his gunner, Senior Sergeant Pekhtin. “You know this is total bullshit.”

Pekhtin nodded carefully, not daring to express his own opinion out loud. There was no percentage in getting caught in the middle of a shit storm between two senior officers.

“Six, this is Five,” the lead helicopter suddenly radioed. “I have a visual contact at my ten o’clock — a vehicle moving fast along a dirt track, heading northwest.”

Drachev craned his head, peering through the Ka-52’s cockpit canopy. There, beyond and slightly to the left of the other gunship, he saw a plume of dust rising above the trees, drifting slowly away on the wind. “Five, this is Kingfisher Six. Stop that vehicle. But don’t scratch its paint if you can help it, understand? Command wouldn’t like that. We’ll hang back half a klick and cover your ass.”

“Acknowledged, Six,” the other pilot replied. “Moving to engage.”

Drachev watched the lead helicopter’s long nose swing a few degrees left and banked his own Ka-52 to follow. They were flying along the trace of a narrow dirt logging road as it wound back and forth. Through the trees ahead, he caught a flicker of pale blue in that drifting cloud of dust. They were chasing the enemy agents’ fake delivery van, he suddenly realized.

Abruptly, Kingfisher Five veered left and then cut back sharply to the right in order to cross ahead of the speeding vehicle. Flashes lit the helicopter’s starboard side as it fired its 30mm cannon. A stream of high-explosive shells hammered the ground scarcely a hundred meters ahead of the van — smashing trees to splinters and blowing craters in the dirt road.

Coming in behind the lead gunship, which was now turning to make another pass, Drachev saw the blue van suddenly slew broadside across the logging track. Spraying more dust and dirt from under its spinning tires, it slid frantically to a dead stop. He bared his teeth in a fiercely satisfied grin. Now they had these bastards.

Through the haze, he saw someone scramble out of the passenger side of the vehicle. That was one big son of a bitch, he thought. The man reached back into the van’s cab and came back out holding a long green tube over his shoulder. He pivoted toward Kingfisher Five just as the gunship finished its turn and straightened out.

Drachev’s eyes widened in shock. That was a handheld SAM. “Five, look out!” he radioed frantically. “You’re under missile attack—”

In a puff of white exhaust and dazzling flame, the surface-to-air missile slashed across the sky with incredible speed. It exploded just above the other helicopter’s rotor assembly. Spewing smoke and shattered rotor fragments, the stricken Ka-52 spiraled down and crashed among the trees.

Beside Drachev, Senior Sergeant Pekhtin reflexively triggered a full salvo of 122mm S-13 rockets. In less than a second, five unguided rockets streaked downrange and slammed straight into the blue van. It vanished amid a rippling series of powerful explosions as the rockets’ armor-piercing fragmentation warheads detonated.

When the smoke cleared away, there was nothing left of the vehicle or its occupants but a few smoldering pieces of blackened and twisted metal.

Pekhtin swallowed. “Oh, shit,” he muttered.

Drachev nodded grimly. “Nice work, Sergeant,” he bit out through gritted teeth. “Now we’re totally fucked.”