Iron Wolf

FOUR

“So, are you just a beach bum here on your family’s dime, or are you really a brilliant young Internet billionaire in disguise?” a husky voice asked, pitched just high enough to be heard over the sound of the surf curling up on the beach.

Brad McLanahan looked up from the e-book science-fiction thriller he’d been reading. He tipped his sunglasses up to get a better look at the young woman who’d stopped by his shaded beach chair. She was a good-looking redhead in a bikini that left little to the imagination, including the fact that she was in incredibly good shape. Silhouetted against the white sand beach and the emerald-green waters of the Caribbean, she stood looking down at him with a faint smile. His pulse quickened. Play it cool, he told himself. Well, a little cool anyway.

“Neither,” he said gravely. “I’m actually a lonely fugitive on the run from an international spy ring.”

“Not likely,” she said with a laugh. “If you’d said you were fleeing a paternity suit, I might have bought it.”

Brad grinned.

“Mind if I sit down?” the woman asked, nodding to the empty beach chair next to his.

“Not at all.” Brad laid his e-book reader aside and sat up a little straighter.

Maybe this day would be more interesting than the past several, he thought hopefully. Since arriving in Cancún, he’d done nothing but swim, sit on the beach, read, catch up on his sleep, and wait for the next signal from his father or Martindale. At first, after the rigors of his Sky Masters internship, he’d welcomed the chance to relax and rest. But now it was getting kind of boring. A little light vacation romance, or at least a fun, no-strings-attached roll in the sack, might be just the ticket to break the monotony.

“Samantha Kerr,” the woman said, holding out her hand. “My friends call me Sam.”

Brad shook it politely. “John Smith,” he said. “My friends call me John.”

She raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “John Smith? Really? That’s what you’re going with?”

“International fugitive. On the run. Remember?” he said, grinning wider now.

“Silly me,” the redhead said. “It slipped my mind.”

“Can I get you a drink, Sam?” Brad asked. “The guy at the beach bar makes a really good margarita.”

“Sorry, but no.” She shook her head. “It’s getting a bit hot out here for my taste, so I think I’ll head indoors.”

Brad hid his disappointment. Oh, well, he thought, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“But I do have a comfortable air-conditioned suite,” she went on, with a heavy-lidded glance up and down his body. “And a fully stocked bar. Care to join me?”

“Oh. Er, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, yes.” Keep it together, Brad told himself, quickly helping her up from the beach chair. Her fingers felt cool and dry in his hand. “That sounds like a great idea, Sam.”

“I was hoping you’d say that, Mr. McLanahan,” the woman said even more quietly. She smiled sweetly. “It’ll make things so much easier.”

Brad froze. He narrowed his eyes, tightening his grip on her hand slightly. “Who the hell are you? And what do you really want?”

“Easy, tiger,” the woman said. “My name really is Samantha Kerr.” With a quick twist of her fingers, she broke his grip. “As to why I’m here, let’s just say that I’m Pharaoh’s daughter come to pull your reed basket out of the Nile.”

Oh, Christ, Brad thought, flushing slightly in embarrassment. EXODUS again. She must be a contact with word from his father or from Martindale. “You’re with Scion,” he guessed.

She nodded. “I work in the security and countersurveillance division.” Smiling again, she took his hand and brought it around her waist. “Which is exactly why we’re going to saunter off this beach to my room — acting for all the world like we’re heading in for an afternoon of really wild sex.”

“Which isn’t going to happen,” Brad said sadly.

She laughed. “Maybe another time, McLanahan.” Then she turned serious and gently urged him into motion, bringing him along with her toward the steps leading up off the beach and deeper into the resort. “But, no. Not right now. I prefer my personal pickups to be a little less public. And definitely not made right in front of a bunch of strange guys peeping through zoom lenses and binoculars.”

Ah, Brad thought. He looked down at her. “I’m tagged.”

“Oh, yeah. That you are. It took us a couple of days to zero in on the surveillance team dogging you, which is why you’ve had such a lovely, restful vacation. But now it’s time to go.”

“Who are they?”

“Mexico’s CNI,” she told him. “Their National Intelligence Center is the equivalent of our FBI and CIA.”

That surprised him. “The Mexicans?”

“They’re acting for the FBI,” she said.

“Oh.”

“And the Russian SVR.”

Brad stopped dead. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.” She shook her head and started walking again. “Double-dipping is an old game in the intelligence trade, McLanahan — especially in a routine operation like this. It looks as though both Washington and Moscow only want to keep tabs on your whereabouts right now, with nothing darker in mind. So the locals are perfectly comfortable getting paid twice for the same work.”

“Jesus.” Brad glanced at the beautiful woman nestled in his arm. “No offense, Ms. Kerr, but you work in a very weird world.”

“That I do,” she agreed.

Back in her suite, Samantha Kerr quickly bolted the door and made sure all the blinds were closed. Satisfied they could not be seen, she reached into her purse and handed him a sheaf of documents. “Welcome to your new and very temporary life, Mr. Jackson.”

Quickly, Brad leafed through the papers. Right on top was a Canadian passport made out in the name of Paul Jackson. He flipped it open and stopped. The face staring back at him from the passport photo was his… only it wasn’t, somehow. Instead of his own natural blond hair, the photo showed him with dark brown hair. And the face in the picture was, well, fatter. He looked up at Sam and showed her the photo with a raised eyebrow.

“Ah, the wonders of Photoshop,” she told him cheerfully. “And a little hair dye and a couple of cheek pads will put you in the right shape to clear international customs and board your flight.”

“My flight?”

“Air France direct to Paris,” Sam said. “Lucky you.” She glanced at her watch. “You leave in about four hours.”

“And what happens after I get to Paris?” Brad asked.

“That’s above my pay grade, Mr. McLanahan,” she said. “But I’m sure you’ll be met and briefed more extensively on arrival.”

“Hold on,” Brad said, raising a hand in protest. “You say I’m under surveillance, right?”

“Yes.”

“So when I just up and disappear, both the FBI and the Russians are going to go nuts trying to find me,” he pointed out.

Samantha only grinned. “Who says you’re going to disappear?”

“Huh?”

She turned toward the bedroom door and raised her voice slightly. “Time to make your appearance, Brad.”

Moving quietly, a man moseyed out into the suite’s living room. He leaned back against the nearest wall with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t say anything. But there was just the faintest hint of a shit-eating grin on his face.

Brad suddenly realized they were just about the same height and had the same build.

“See?” Samantha said impishly. “You’re not going anywhere, Mr. McLanahan… rather, Mr. Smith. You’re going to be having the time of your life here in Cancún. With me.” She shrugged her tanned shoulders and sighed dramatically. “It is a rough job, but I guess someone has to do it.”

Hunter “Boomer” Noble stood off to the side of the long runway, scanning the sky through a pair of binoculars. He squinted, fiddling with the focus as he zoomed in on a small flying-wing aircraft turning toward the field at low altitude. Heat rolling off the tarmac shimmered in the air. Summers in the high desert of north-central Nevada were always hot and bone-dry.

A voice sounded in his earbud. “McLanahan Tower, Masters Five-Five, level at one thousand, airspeed one-eight-zero knots. Five miles southeast of runway three-zero, full stop.”

Boomer hid a grin. Tom Rogers always sounded so serious on the radio, just as if he were really up there in the aircraft instead of sitting in an air-conditioned office in front of a remote piloting console.

“Masters Five-Five, McLanahan Tower, winds calm, cleared to land straight-in runway three-zero,” the controller responded.

Boomer stood watching while the remotely piloted plane slid lower, touched down gently with a small puff of gray smoke from its landing gear, and taxied past him. Its wing-buried turbofan engines were already spooling down. Seen up close, the aircraft was tiny, about the size of a small business jet. No windows or cockpit canopy broke its smooth lines.

“I assume this little bird is what you wanted to show me, Dr. Noble?” a smooth, resonant voice said suddenly from over his shoulder.

Startled, Boomer swung around. He found himself staring into the amused eyes of a much shorter man with long gray hair and a neatly trimmed gray beard. Two bigger men, wearing sunglasses, suits, and ties, were posted about twenty feet away. Slight bulges marked the holstered weapons concealed under their jackets. Kevin Martindale, former president of the United States and the current president and CEO of Scion, never went anywhere without armed bodyguards.

Boomer finally noticed the big black limousine parked next to the airport tower and shook his head ruefully at the newcomers. How the hell does Martindale do it? Boomer wondered. How does he manage to pop up unannounced whenever and wherever he likes? Sky Masters didn’t run ordinary flight operations with total military-grade security, but there were still fences, sensors, and guarded gates. Somebody should have spotted Scion’s CEO on his way in and notified him.

He felt his pulse settle and forced a smile of his own. Spooky son of a bitch or not, Martindale was one of Sky Masters best customers, and he was closely tied in with the company’s head honchos.

“That’s right, sir,” he said. He nodded toward the unmanned aircraft as it swung slowly off the runway and rolled to a stop on a nearby ramp. “Meet the MQ-55 Coyote.”

“Give me the basic rundown, Dr. Noble,” Martindale said. He looked the small aircraft over with a critical eye. “From the shape and engine placement, I assume it’s designed for stealth?”

“Reasonably so,” Boomer told him. “Besides using a flying-wing configuration and wing-buried turbofans, we’ve also covered it with a special radar-absorbent coating created by an Israeli company, Nanoflight. This coating sucks up most of the electromagnetic energy from a radar wave and shunts it off as heat. Some energy gets back to the emitter, of course, but only in a really reduced and scattered form.”

“Interesting,” Martindale said.

“Oh, yeah,” Boomer agreed. “The stuff’s not cheap, but it’s a lot less expensive than most of the other stealth materials on the market.”

“So how stealthy is this Coyote of yours?” Martindale asked. “Could it penetrate heavily defended airspace without being detected?”

“On its own? Nope.” Boomer shook his head. “But the MQ-55 isn’t designed for that mission. It’s designed to operate in a combat environment full of violently maneuvering aircraft all emitting like hell with every radar and ECM system they’ve got. In the middle of a fight like that, the Coyote doesn’t have to slide through the air like it’s not really there. It just has to be less visible and quieter than everything else.”

“Which makes it what exactly?” Martindale wondered.

“The MQ-55 is a missile truck, sir,” Boomer said. “A low-cost platform built with mostly off-the-shelf components and designed for one primary task — dumping a lot of long-range missiles out into the sky in a hurry for our fighter jocks to control. We started working on the concept right after that Chinese sneak attack on Andersen Air Force Base on Guam a couple of years ago.”

“I remember,” Martindale said softly. “We were bushwhacked in the air, blinded when they knocked down our AWACS plane, and then our base took heavy damage and terrible casualties from Chinese supersonic cruise missiles. If Patrick McLanahan and a few of our other XB-1F Excalibur bombers hadn’t gotten off the ground first and been able to hit back, we might have lost everything in the Pacific.”

Boomer nodded. “We analyzed every piece of data we could get from that first fight, the one between the two F-22A Raptors that were on patrol west of Guam and the Chinese strike force. Unfortunately, the picture we put together matched up right down the line with the results of a computer war simulation Rand Corporation ran way back in 2008. Plane for plane and pilot for pilot, our Raptors were superior to those Chinese J-20 fighters they tangled with, but the Raptors ran out of missiles before the Chinese ran out of jets… and that was it. Game over.”

Boomer headed toward the parking ramp. Martindale came with him. “We figured there was no way the Air Force or the Navy could afford to build enough F-22s or F-35s to match the Chinese or the Russians in numbers,” Boomer said. He pointed to the Coyote. “So this was the answer we came up with. The MQ-55 is relatively cheap, reasonably fast, has decent range, and it can carry enough long-range, air-to-air missiles to even up a fight against superior numbers of enemy aircraft.”

“Go on,” Martindale said, clearly intrigued.

“The airframe is new, but we modeled it closely after our other successful flying-wing designs,” Boomer said. “That cut our development and flight-testing costs dramatically. Since it’s remotely piloted, we don’t need a lot of complicated avionics — just enough so that a ground- or air-based pilot can fly it safely and perform a few basic maneuvers. The engines are off-the-shelf Honeywell TFE731s, the same kind flown on most business jets.”

“What about sensors?” Martindale asked. “What kind of radar does it carry?”

“None,” Boomer told him. He saw the surprise on the older man’s face and explained. “We don’t need it. The Coyote is a missile truck, not really a recon or dedicated strike bird. All it needs are communications links so the human fighter pilots in the same battle can pass targeting data and firing commands. It uses some short-range area sensors for formation flying with other aircraft, but that’s it. It flies in, launches at whatever it’s told to attack, and then splits.”

“And the payload?”

“Up to ten AIM-120 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles in an internal weapons bay.”

Martindale nodded, absorbing what he was being told. That was more than the number of AIM-120s an F-22 Raptor configured for stealth could carry. And it was two and half times the missile capacity of the F-35 Lightning’s internal weapons bays. “Can this Coyote of yours deploy other weapons?”

“The MQ-55’s bay is also big enough to hold up to three satellite-guided GBU-32 joint direct-attack munitions or four GBU-53 small-diameter bombs,” Boomer said. “We could drop JDAMs using targeting data supplied by other aircraft. But we haven’t really tested an air-to-ground strike configuration yet.”

“Impressive,” Martindale said. He looked at Boomer. “What’s your flyaway cost for these birds?”

“Right around twenty million dollars each for the first four Coyotes we’ve built,” Boomer told him. “But I think we can cut that down to about fifteen million per in sustained production, once we iron out all the kinks and streamline our manufacturing processes.”

Martindale whistled softly. Those cost estimates were astoundingly low, especially compared to the price of the manned fighter aircraft the MQ-55s were designed to support. “So how many of these Coyotes are you building for the U.S. Air Force?”

“None,” Boomer said, not hiding his bitterness. He sighed. “President Barbeau’s administration only wants to build existing airframes, preferably ones that require pilots and carry big price tags. New weapons systems are not welcome, especially inexpensive ones involving out-of-the-box thinking.”

“Or that have the Sky Masters label on them,” Martindale guessed.

“That, too,” Boomer admitted. “Ever since Barbeau and her crowd went to town smearing Ken Phoenix and the Starfire Project to win the last presidential election, our corporate name has been mud inside Congress and the Pentagon.”

“And so you thought about me and my little company?” Martindale said with a low chuckle.

“The thought that Scion might be interested in this kind of capability did cross my mind,” Boomer said warily.

“I’m touched, Dr. Noble,” Martindale said, grinning wider now. “Really touched.” He moved closer to the parked MQ-55, gently kicked its tires, and then looked back at Boomer. “You say you’ve built four of these already?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long before you work out the kinks?”

Boomer shrugged. “Not long. We’ve been working on this design concept for four years, so it’s pretty mature technology — we tweak it now and then to keep up with the state of the art.”

“Excellent,” Martindale said. “I love them. Wrap all four of them up for me, Dr. Noble. If I could, I’d take them home with me right now.” Smiling broadly, he came back to Boomer and threw an arm around his shoulders. “Now let’s talk about that fleet of XF-111 SuperVarks you’ve finished refurbishing. I may need them, too.”

“Zagreb Control, Pilatus Six-Eight November on final to Bjelovar Airfield,” the pilot of the Swiss-made Pilatus PC-12 turboprop said. “And thank you very much for your assistance.”

“Roger, Pilatus,” the controller radioed back in lightly accented English. “You are welcome. Switch to common traffic advisory frequency approved. Enjoy your stay in Croatia.”

Making sure his mike was switched off, the pilot, a short, broad-shouldered Englishman named Mark Darrow, glanced across the cockpit at Brad McLanahan with a wry grin. “Enjoy our stay in Croatia? Oh, that we will, right? All five dull minutes of it. Then things are likely to get a wee bit exciting.”

Watching the long grass landing strip ahead growing larger through the turboprop’s windshield, Brad wondered what the other man meant. Bjelovar was a typical small, noncommercial airfield, used mostly by flying clubs and those wealthy enough to own their own planes. A white-painted wood building and an old-fashioned hangar sat off to one side, with a variety of small, single-engine aircraft parked beside the strip. It didn’t exactly look like a hotbed of intrigue or action.

Darrow had met him on arrival in Paris, taken him in tow to a hotel to sleep off some of his jet lag, and then driven him out to Le Bourget Airport. Once the center of French flying and the place where Charles Lindbergh had landed in The Spirit of St. Louis, Le Bourget was now used only for general aviation traffic. The Pilatus PC-12 was parked there, waiting for them.

According to its registration papers, the sleek turboprop was owned by a man named Jan Beneš.

“He’s a rather eccentric Czech multimillionaire,” Darrow had explained. “The fellow has homes all over Europe, but he never takes the train or drives. Hence this plane.”

“Will I meet him?” Brad had asked.

That was the first time he’d seen the other man’s quick, lopsided grin. “I shouldn’t think so,” Darrow had said. “Our Mr. Beneš is totally fictional. But he pays quite a lot in tax, which is rather a point in his favor as far as the authorities are concerned.”

Now, two hours after taking off from Le Bourget, they were landing at Bjelovar, roughly forty miles east of Zagreb, the Croatian capital. The late-afternoon sun cast long shadows across the grass.

Humming to himself, Darrow brought the Pilatus in low and dropped gently onto the soft grass surface. Slowing gradually, they rolled almost all the way to the end of the strip and then swung around, with the prop still turning.

“Now what?” Brad asked.

“Now we head for our real destination,” Darrow said. “But first I do this.” He reached down to the center instrument panel and turned a series of knobs.

“You’re turning off all the transponders?” Brad remarked, not trying to hide his surprise. Darrow gave him a sly wink. Aircraft transponders were a key component in air traffic control and safety. When interrogated by radar, a transponder automatically sent back a code identifying the plane and reported its current altitude. Flying without your transponder on was a definite no-no in civil aviation, because air traffic control then had to rely on radar “skin paint” for aircraft position, which was not very reliable. In some countries, especially in Eastern Europe, an aircraft without a transponder was automatically considered a hostile and was engaged without warning. He looked at Darrow. “Oh, man. We are going to be in so much trouble.”

The Englishman laughed. “Only if we get caught.” He pushed the throttles forward. The Pilatus rolled back down the grass strip, gathering speed fast. “And all it takes to avoid that little bit of unpleasantness is keeping right down on the deck for a few hundred kilometers or so. Then we stay off everybody’s radar.”

“A few hundred kilometers on the deck. At night,” Brad said flatly. “In this crate.”

“Relax,” Darrow told him cheerfully. “I used to fly Tornado fighter-bombers for the RAF before I hired on with Scion. We always said that if you were more than fifty meters above the treetops, you were too bloody high.”

Brad looked pointedly around the cockpit. “This isn’t exactly a Tornado.”

“Quite true,” the Englishman admitted. Then he grinned again. “But squadrons in your own U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command use these same aircraft for low-level night infiltration and resupply missions. That’s one of the reasons Mr. Martindale likes them so much.”

He pulled gently back on the yoke and the Pilatus soared off the runway, heading east into the rapidly darkening sky. “Next stop, the Scrapheap.”

“The Scrapheap?”

“Our own private air base,” Darrow said. He winked at Brad. “It’s a strange little place, full of odd aircraft and rather unusual people. I think you’ll like it.”

A long line of dingy, rusting yellow dump trucks crawled south along the highway. Piled high with coal, the big KrAZ trucks were headed from nearby mines to factories elsewhere in the Russian separatist-controlled Donbass region. Before the war, railroads moved the coal, but most of the rail lines had been wrecked in the fighting and never fully repaired. Clouds of black coal dust swirled across the road behind the slowly moving convoy.

Men rode in the back of each dump truck, uneasily perched atop the swaying, shifting mounds. From their faded clothing and soot-stained faces, they were miners sent along to help shift the coal once it reached its destination. In war-ravaged eastern Ukraine, men were cheaper than machines.

Near the rear of the convoy, one of the riders kept his eyes fixed on the western sky, squinting against the reddish glare from the setting sun. There, he thought, catching sight of a speck moving so slowly that it almost seemed to be hovering. It was flying low, perhaps less than a thousand meters off the ground. It appeared to be paralleling their course.

After several minutes, though, he saw the glint of sunlight on wings as the object banked back to the north. Moving unhurriedly, he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a short-range tactical radio. It was not much bigger than a cell phone and its signals were far less likely to be intercepted.

“I have a drone in sight,” Pavlo Lytvyn reported. “But it’s checked us out and seems to be moving away to the north. We should be clear in five minutes.”

“Any idea who it belongs to?” Fedir Kravchenko radioed back. “The OSCE or our friends from Moscow?”

“The Russians,” Lytvyn said, continuing to follow the drone as it flew slowly away, still heading north. “One of their Israeli-made Forpost models, I think.” He watched the drone until it disappeared in the distance. “That’s it, Fedir,” he said. “We are alone.”

Below him, riding inside the dump truck’s cab, Kravchenko peered out through a coal-dust-coated windshield. In the growing darkness it was difficult to make out much more than the glowing red taillights of the vehicle they were following.

He glanced at the driver, a wizened little man who sat perched behind the wheel, industriously puffing away on a foul-smelling cigarette. “How much further to the turnoff?”

The driver took another drag on his cigarette and then stubbed it out in the overflowing ashtray perched on the seat between them. “About twenty-five kilometers, Major.”

Kravchenko summoned up a mental image of the map he had memorized. Given their current speed, it would be fully dark when the time came for this truck and the others driven by his men to break away from the main group. A cold, satisfied smile flitted across his maimed face. It was perfect. They should be completely unobserved when they headed for the scheduled rendezvous with the rest of his partisan group. And by the time the Russians or their traitorous separatist allies realized several dump trucks were missing from the coal convoy, it would be too late for them to do anything about it.

Far, far too late.

“Hang on, McLanahan,” Mark Darrow said, banking the Pilatus PC-12 turboprop into a tight turn. Below the night-vision goggles he’d donned shortly after they took off from Bjelovar, the English pilot’s mouth twisted into another crooked smile. “This next bit may be just a little rough.”

“Gee, thanks for the warning,” Brad said drily, tugging his seat belt tighter for what seemed the thousandth time. What the hell did this crazy ex-RAF pilot consider “rough” compared to the last couple of hours when they’d been hedgehopping across a pitch-black rural countryside? He’d spent most of the bumpy, turbulent flight low over Croatia, Hungary, and southern Romania gritting his teeth and staring out into the night sky beyond the cockpit — trying to figure out if he’d have time to see the power pylon, tree-studded hillside, or church steeple that killed them before they were, well, actually dead. At more than two hundred and fifty knots, that seemed unlikely.

Oh, he had to admit that Darrow was a damned good pilot. Even with the benefit of high-quality night-vision goggles, pulling off a stunt like this without terrain-following radar required incredible skill. But part of him kind of wished the Englishman weren’t acting as though this was nothing more than a fun-filled jaunt on the world’s longest thrill ride. Just a little show of nerves would make him seem more human somehow.

“Ah, there you are, you sneaky little bitch,” Darrow said gleefully, rolling the turboprop back level. He chopped the throttles back and dropped the nose. The Pilatus slid down through the night sky, rapidly losing altitude.

“Mind telling me exactly what you’re doing?” Brad asked, staring ahead into blackness. Glowing lights off in the distance marked what looked like a small village. He could just make out what looked like a long patch on the ground, a surface that was only slightly paler than the darker fields and woodlots they were skimming over.

Darrow flashed another wild, madcap grin in his direction. He pushed a lever down and Brad heard and felt the hydraulic whine as the turboprop’s landing gear came down. “Oh, didn’t I say? We’re here.”

Abruptly, the Pilatus touched down, bounced back up in the air, and then came down again with a teeth-rattling jolt. Suddenly the plane was rolling along a badly cracked and overgrown runway, lurching, rocking, and shuddering through the clumps of brush and tall grass growing between each slab of old concrete. There were no lights. Everything outside was perfectly dark and still. The ex-RAF pilot applied beta, using the big propeller as a huge speed brake; a few seconds of reverse thrust; then tapped the brakes gently, gradually slowing the turboprop in its madcap, bounding rush.

A ray of light shot onto the unlit runway ahead of them, widening fast as two big hangar doors slid open off to their right.

Sliding the prop lever forward again, Darrow slewed the Pilatus toward the opening door and taxied straight into the hangar. He cut off the engine and turned toward Brad with a faint smile. “Welcome to the Scrapheap, Mr. McLanahan.” The hangar doors were already rolling shut behind them.

For the next hour, Brad followed the Englishman on a quick, guided tour through an array of aircraft hangars and other facilities. Everywhere he looked, he saw a bewildering mix of old and new. The pattern, though, was clear. Seen from the outside, the onetime Romanian Air Force base was nothing more than a collection of worn-out buildings surrounding a runway that looked as though it hadn’t been used for at least a decade. But seemingly dilapidated hangars were full of sophisticated manned and unmanned aircraft. Garages with peeling paint were crowded with upgraded Humvees, Land Rovers, and other vehicles. And the airfield’s tower, warehouses, and other buildings were jam-packed with the latest computers, communications gear, and sensors.

“We try to keep a low profile,” Darrow explained, leading the way through an old barracks that had been extensively renovated, though only on the inside, and partitioned into separate living quarters for the Scion personnel stationed at the Scrapheap. “As far as the locals are concerned, this place belongs to an international holding company with more cash reserves than business sense. From time to time, the nominal owners float various proposals to reactivate the field as an air freight depot, but nothing ever seems to come of them.”

“Which is why that runway is left in such crappy shape,” Brad realized.

“Exactly,” Darrow said, grinning. He shrugged. “It’s actually in much better condition that it looks. A number of camouflage experts put rather a lot of work in on it. In daylight, it may look like an overgrown rubbish pile, but quite naturally we don’t want any real FOD left lying about.”

Brad nodded. FOD, foreign object damage, was a constant menace for any field operating jet aircraft. Small rocks and other bits of solid trash sucked into a jet-engine air intake could seriously mangle turbine blades.

They left the barracks and headed toward what looked like a rusting equipment shed. It was surrounded by mounds of worn-out tires and empty oil barrels. “Well, this is where I leave you,” Darrow announced.

“Here?” Brad asked, staring at the ramshackle building in front of them.

“Go on, McLanahan,” the other man said matter-of-factly, nodding toward a pair of large doors. “There’s someone inside who very much wants to see you.” He yawned. “As for me, I’m off to get some kip. All play and no sleep makes Mrs. Darrow’s fair-haired lad a very dull flier.”

Brad waited until the Englishman was gone and then slowly, almost reluctantly, pushed open one of the big doors to the shed. He stepped inside and closed it behind him.

The interior was brightly lit and clean. Various pieces of electronic gear and a few metal canisters lined the walls. Other than a single, sleek, twelve-foot-plus-tall shape standing motionless facing the door, the center of the shed was completely empty.

Brad stared up at the enormous, humanlike machine. Spindly-looking arms and legs were joined to a long torso, which sloped from broad shoulders to a narrower waist and hips. A six-sided head studded with sensor panels rested atop the robot’s shoulders.

It was a Cybernetic Infantry Device — a human-piloted robot first developed by a U.S. Army research lab years ago. Sheathed in highly resistant composite armor, the CID’s hydraulically powered exoskeleton was faster, more agile, and stronger than any ten men put together. A special haptic interface translated its pilot’s muscle and limb motions into movement by the exoskeleton’s limbs, enabling the CID to move with almost unnatural grace and precision, despite its size and power. Sensors of all kinds, coupled with a remarkably advanced computer interface, gave its pilot incredible situational awareness, and the ability to aim and fire a wide array of weapons with astonishing speed and accuracy. Boiled down to the essentials, a single CID could carry heavier firepower and possessed more mobility and recon capability than an entire U.S. Army infantry platoon.

Brad took a deep breath and then let it out. He stepped closer. “Hi, Dad.”

“Hello, son,” said the electronically synthesized voice of former Air Force Lieutenant General Patrick McLanahan. “Welcome to Romania.”

Sited forty kilometers south of the industrial city of Donetsk, the Russian-allied separatist base served several purposes. Its location, near the junction of several country roads, made it easier for the rebels and their Russian military “advisers” to terrorize, tax, and otherwise dominate the surrounding villages and farms. In addition, the base — set among wheat fields and orchards — made a good training site. Drafts of new recruits, mostly drawn from the urban streets of Donetsk and Luhansk, were taught the basics, discipline, small-arms marksmanship, and open-field combat tactics, before being sent on to active-duty units for more advanced training. Finally, the compound was a storage depot for RPGs, shoulder-launched SAMs, and other heavy weapons, including a battery of the BM-21 Grad launchers whose 122mm rockets had proved so deadly during the 2014 “hot war.”

The separatist rebels and their Russian masters felt secure behind a minefield and a barrier made up of long coils of barbed wire. A heavy metal mesh gate offered the only way in or out past the defenses — and it was flanked by solid earth-and-log bunkers bristling with machine guns and antitank weapons.

They were about to learn an old lesson of war. Fortifications were only as effective as the soldiers who manned them. And static defenses were no match for a determined enemy given the time to prepare an assault.

Thirty meters from the western perimeter of the camp, Fedir Kravchenko slithered cautiously through tufts of tall grass growing among brown stalks of dead wheat and tangled weeds. He followed a narrow, winding path marked out by torn pieces of reflective tape. Before the Russians and their lackeys built their base, this fertile patch of ground had been planted in wheat. Now it was sown with antipersonnel mines.

Kravchenko moved slowly, allowing his eyes to pick out the faint glimmer from each piece of tape and then confirming what he saw by touch. It was almost completely dark. The new moon had set hours before and now there were only the stars speckling the night sky. Beyond the barbed wire, a few moving red sparks glowed.

Sentries smoking cigarettes, the Ukrainian decided. His mouth twisted in disgust. Amateurs.

He crawled out into a more open patch of ground, only a few meters from the wire. The tape-marked path had ended. He moved to the side, clearing the way for the other men coming up behind him.

Pavlo Lytvyn loomed up at his shoulder. Leaning in close, the big man showed him the bayonet he held in his right hand and shook his head emphatically three times. No more mines, Kravchenko translated. Lytvyn was one of the men he’d selected to lead the three partisan assault teams through the minefield, probing for mines hidden among the grass and wheat with nothing more sophisticated than their fingers and bayonets.

As more and more dark-clad men came crawling out into the safer ground in front of the wire, he motioned them to deploy to the left and right. He collared the last two, both of whom were hauling heavy packs. Moving carefully and cautiously, they opened their packs and began screwing together threaded sections of explosives-packed pipe — assembling improvised Bangalore torpedoes that should blow holes in the separatist barbed-wire entanglement when they were detonated.

Kravchenko pulled a small, handheld radio out of his equipment vest. He pushed the power on and inserted a tiny earpiece. A soft hiss marked an open channel. He clicked the transmit button three times and then waited.

Two faint clicks came back.

Kravchenko switched the radio off and put it away. Gently, he tapped Lytvyn’s shoulder, signaling the bigger man that they were ready.

Off in the distance, they heard the dull growling roar of a heavy truck motor. It was drawing nearer.

Teeth clenched against constant pain, Hennadiy Vovk reached out with his good hand and shoved the dump truck’s gearshift down, slowing its 330-horsepower diesel engine. His prosthetic hook was firmly anchored to the steering wheel. Sweat trickled from under his cap. His last dose of morphine had worn off about an hour ago. He had another ampule, but he couldn’t risk fogging his mind with painkillers. Nor slowing his reflexes. Not now.

Cranking the wheel to the right, Vovk turned off the paved road. He drove slowly up a rough dirt track, heading toward the Russian separatist base. There, caught in the dump truck’s headlights, he could make out the metal mesh gate closing off the entrance. The hummocky shapes of camouflaged bunkers loomed up in the shadows on either side of the track.

Several uniformed guards were visible near the gate, already unslinging Russian-supplied assault rifles. Another waved a handheld flashlight from side to side, signaling him to stop.

“Ostanovka! Halt!” one of the guards yelled, stepping forward with a hand held up palm out.

Vovk braked, stamping down hard on the pedal with his right foot. His left leg ended in a stump just below the knee. More agony flamed through his damaged body. He hissed out through his teeth, fighting off the pain.

“You there!” an angry voice snapped. “What the devil are you doing here?”

The truck driver looked up. Two of the guards had moved right up to the side of dump truck, peering into the darkened cab. Four or five others, eyes slitted against the glare of his headlights, were aiming their assault rifles at the windshield.

“Hey, easy there, Comrade,” Vovk stammered, keeping his good hand in view. “I’ve got a load of coal for the Vuhlehirska Power Station. But I must have gotten turned around somewhere.” He forced a shaky laugh. “It’s damned dark out here.”

One of the guards scowled. “You are way fucking lost, idiot. Vuhlehirska is at least thirty kilometers from here. Back that way.” He gestured off to the north.

The other guard was staring at Vovk’s prosthetic hook and missing left leg. “Jesus, what a cripple,” he sneered. “How’d you lose them, gimp? In a crash because of your shitty driving?”

Suddenly Vovk felt perfectly calm, perfectly at peace. He smiled broadly at the soldier who’d taunted him. “Oh, no,” he said gently. “It wasn’t an accident. You bastards took them from me three years ago.”

Before they could react, he reached out and tripped a switch rigged up on the dump truck’s dashboard. Twenty kilograms of Russian-made PVV-5A plastic explosive planted beneath the left fuel tank detonated. In a blinding flash of searing white light, an enormous blast ripped through the huge KrAZ dump truck, obliterating it in a single split second. The guards, gate, and nearby bunkers vanished in that same instant, torn to shreds by the huge explosion. Hurled outward by the blast, jagged shards of smoking metal rained down across the compound. This deadly hailstorm of shrapnel killed even more Russian-allied separatist soldiers.

One hundred kilometers to the north, a pair of Russian Sukhoi-24M2 fighter-bombers orbited at ten thousand meters. Assigned to patrol over the separatist-controlled regions of eastern Ukraine, they had already been on station for two hours. None of the four Russian airmen aboard the two planes was particularly happy with their mission. Su-24M2s were high-speed, low-level strike aircraft, modeled on the American-made F-111. Slated for eventual replacement as more of the newer and more capable Su-34s entered Russia’s inventory, they were not designed for high-altitude routine surveillance. Besides that, the crews found the routine mind-numbingly dull.

Their protests were ignored. Given the Kremlin’s new insistence on maintaining constant armed patrols over Belarus and this part of Ukraine, the commanders of Russia’s air force were forced to use every plane in their inventory — whether perfectly suited to the mission or not. It was the only way they could avoid burning through engines and flight crews faster than was wise.

The lead Su-24 was banking, turning onto the next leg of its fuel-conserving racetrack holding pattern, when an enormous flash lit the sky to the south, briefly turning night into day.

“What the hell? Did you see that, Stepan?” the pilot, Captain Leonid Davydov, radioed his wingman.

“See what?”

“Some sort of explosion to the south. A big one,” Davydov said.

“Negative,” Captain Stepan Nikolayev reported. There was a pause. “Lieutenant Orlov and I both had our heads down, checking some of the engine readouts.”

“Do you have trouble?”

“Maybe,” Nikolayev admitted. “The second-stage turbine pressures on our number two engine are fluctuating a lot more than I would like.”

Davydov swore under his breath. Even with all the upgrades added to this model, Su-24s were forty-plus-year-old airframes and their Lyulka AL-21F3 turbojet engines were even older technology. And no matter how much maintenance their ground crews did, things were bound to go wrong eventually. Engine failures were high up among the leading accident causes for any military aircraft, especially in Russia’s aging Su-24 fleet.

He keyed his mike. “Right. Now listen to me, Stepan. Don’t screw around with this. Break off and head for the barn. Belinsky and I will fly the rest of the mission on our own. Got it?”

“Understood,” Nikolayev said reluctantly. “Heading for home now.”

Davydov looked aft out of the canopy and saw the other Su-24M2 curving away, flying east. He glanced back at his weapons officer, Lieutenant Yuri Belinsky. “Well, there goes our foursome for vint.”

Belinsky smiled dutifully. The Russian card game vint, similar to bridge, was a passion for his commanding officer. “That’s a real shame, Captain.”

“Now get busy and call in a report on that explosion I just saw,” the pilot ordered. “Find out if Vornezh Control knows what on earth is going on down there.”

Before the last shattering echoes of the truck-bomb blast faded, Kravchenko signaled the two partisans carrying their improvised Bangalore torpedoes forward. Bent low, they scuttled up to the edge of the barbed-wire entanglement, thrust the two lengths of pipe in under the wire, and raced back to the others — unreeling lengths of detonator cord as they ran.

“Down!” Kravchencko shouted to his assault teams. “Get your heads down!” He threw himself flat, pressing his face to the ground.

WHUUMMP! WHUUMMP!

Both Bangalores went off — shattering the darkness again. Smoke and dust boiled away along with tiny pieces of blackened and twisted wire.

Kravchenko got up on one knee, peering through the blast-created haze. The breaching charges had worked perfectly, blowing meter-wide gaps through the barbed-wire entanglement.

He jumped up, readying his AKS carbine. “Attack! Attack!” he yelled. “Nemaye uv’yaznenykh! No prisoners! Take no prisoners!”

“Vbty! Vbty! Kill! Kill!” his partisans roared, pouring through the gaps and into the heart of the enemy compound. Assault rifles stuttered and grenades went off with earsplitting cracks as they advanced — systematically clearing barracks buildings and huts. There were screams and panicked shouts from the bomb-stunned defenders, but no organized resistance.

Kravchenko and Lytvyn charged in right behind them, followed by ten more men. They skidded to a halt near one of the buildings, checking their bearings.

“Take your sapper team and blow the shit out of those damned Grads, Pavlo,” Kravchenko snapped. “You’ve got five minutes.”

Lytvyn nodded once and moved off at a trot, followed by five partisans carrying heavy backpacks stuffed full of satchel charges. Destroying the deadly 122mm rocket launchers so prized by the separatists was one of their chief objectives.

But Kravchenko had other plans, too. With a sharp hand signal, he led the remaining partisans around the corner of the building and deeper into the enemy base. Crumpled bodies littered the ground, many clad only in T-shirts and their underwear. The Ukrainian smiled cruelly. His attack had caught the Russian-loving bastards in their sleep.

A dazed separatist soldier staggered out of the nearest barracks. Blood dripped from a deep gash on his forehead. He was unarmed.

Kravchenko raised his carbine, shot the reeling man twice at point-blank range, and jogged on without pausing. He had once remembered that these men were fellow Ukrainians — they could even be relatives, for all he knew — but the last time he had that thought seemed a very, very long time ago. Now they were just targets to be eliminated. They weren’t even collaborators or turncoats to him anymore — they were just targets that had to be put down so he could accomplish his mission.

Another building loomed up out of the darkness. This one had no windows and its door was padlocked. The Ukrainian nodded. This was what he’d been looking for. He dropped to one knee, covering the others while they went to work with bolt cutters.

“We’re in, Major!” he heard one of them yell.

And then the whole eastern edge of the compound lit up in a series of dazzling explosions that sent huge orange and red sheets of fire rippling skyward. The ground rocked.

“Nice work, Pavlo,” Kravchenko murmured. So much for the Grads.

He ducked through the low door of the building his team had broken into. It was a weapons storage bunker. The Ukrainian already had a flashlight out, waving the beam across wooden racks holding meter-and-a-half-long green tubes. Other racks held white-painted missiles. “Those are what we want,” he said. “Take as many as you can carry!”

One by one, his partisans grabbed 9K38 Igla “Needle” shoulder-fired antiaircraft launchers and missiles and hurried back out into the burning compound. The fires set by the detonation of their truck bomb and by the big artillery rocket launchers Lytvyn had destroyed were spreading fast.

Outside the storage bunker, Kravchenko pulled out a whistle and blew three short, shrill blasts. That was the signal for his assault teams to break off their attack and fade back into the pitch-black countryside. Once away from the blazing, ruined base, they would break up into small groups and disperse.

By the time the Russians or their separatist lackeys managed to push an armored or truck-mounted reaction force out from Donetsk, the partisans would be long gone.

The Ukrainian raised his head, eyeing the night sky. No, there was only one enemy threat left that he had worried about.

Then he smiled to himself. And now he didn’t really have to fear even that.

“My God,” Captain Leonid Davydov said sharply, staring out through the canopy of his Su-24M2. Far off to the south, multiple explosions went off one after another and then faded out — leaving a flickering red and orange glow. “I don’t care what Voronezh Control says, Belinsky. They may not have any reports of trouble, but something damned big is burning down there!”

He rolled the big swept-wing fighter-bomber into a tight turn toward the south, pulled the wings back to sixty-nine degrees sweep, and shoved his throttles forward. Driven by two massive turbojet engines producing almost thirty-four thousand pounds of thrust, the Su-24 accelerated fast. Settling on course toward the distant fires, Davydov rolled hard left, letting the loss of lift pull the fighter-bomber’s nose toward the ground. He felt himself floating up against his harness as the gentle dive produced a zero-G-like condition. Unloaded, with the aircraft’s nominal weight reduced almost to nothing, the Su-24 picked up even more speed.

“Inform Voronezh that we are investigating,” he told his weapons officer as he rolled wings level.

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant replied.

“And get the Kaira-24 optical system up and running,” Davydov ordered. The Kaira-24 was a combined laser designator and infrared television scanner system. Comparable to the Pave Tack target detection and designation pods first used by American F-111F strike planes, it sent thermal images to a TV screen at Belinsky’s station. If necessary, the Su-24’s weapons officer could use those images to pick out targets for the laser-guided bombs they were carrying.

Five minutes later, Davydov leveled off at about five hundred meters, reduced his throttles, and pushed the fighter-bomber’s wings forward to forty-five degrees for the slower-speed ingress. Now that he had a good fix on the fires burning ahead, coming in too hot would only make it more difficult to figure out just what was going on. The airspeed indicator on his HUD dropped steadily.

“Five kilometers out,” Belinsky said, peering intently at the grainy infrared images on his monitor. “I see multiple fires burning in what looks like some kind of complex, possibly a military base.”

“Christ,” Davydov muttered. “That must be one of ours. Go active on all countermeasures, now.” He thumbed a button on his stick. “Arming cannon.” For strafing runs, the Su-24 carried an internal GSh-6-23 cannon with five hundred rounds.

“There are bodies on the ground in the complex!” Belinsky said suddenly, still staring at his screen. “Many bodies. None moving.”

Davydov swallowed hard. “Warn Voronezh! Tell them this is a terrorist—”

Suddenly there were more bright flashes lighting up the dark ground ahead of them. Streaks of flame slashed up into the air at incredible speed, already curving toward the Su-24 as it streaked past overhead.

“Missile attack!” Davydov yelled. Desperately, he slammed the defensive countermeasures button on his stick, simultaneously yanking the fighter-bomber into a gut-wrenching, high-G turn to the left. White-hot magnesium flares blossomed behind the rolling Su-24, trying to decoy the heat-seeking missiles homing in on the wildly maneuvering aircraft.

It was no use. Ambushed at low altitude, and without enough maneuvering room or airspeed to evade successfully, the Su-24M2 was easy prey.

Two of the five shoulder-launched SAMs fired by Kravchenko’s partisans were spoofed by flares and blew up hundreds of meters behind the fleeing Russian fighter-bomber. One never locked on. It climbed wildly into the night sky before exhausting its solid-rocket propellant and plunging back to earth. But two smashed home and detonated, shredding the Su-24’s control surfaces. Still rolling off to the left, the Russian plane slammed into the ground at several hundred kilometers an hour and blew up, strewing burning pieces of itself across Ukrainian wheat fields in a tumbling ball of fire and scorched earth. It happened so fast that neither crewmember had a change to reach their ejection handles.