Iron Wolf

TEN

The Cybernetic Infantry Device piloted by Patrick McLanahan lay prone in a shallow drainage ditch a few hundred meters outside the perimeter of Kontop Airfield. Like pondering a complex problem and imagining possibilities, images and data flashed through his consciousness as his passive and narrow-beam active sensors scanned the Russian-occupied base. The enormous amount of work the Russians had done to improve their defenses since the last reported “terrorist” raid was clear.

Minefields densely sown with antipersonnel and antivehicle mines paralleled the chain-link perimeter fence. Remotely run, IR-capable cameras mounted on the fence swiveled back and forth, hunting for signs of intruders trying to breach the minefields. Low background tones at different pitches marked the multiple radar emissions picked up by the CID. There were Big Bird radars from the long-range S-300 SAM batteries deployed around the airfield’s approaches. Patrick could also “hear” the 3D F-band pulsed Doppler target acquisition radars used by the shorter-ranged Tor SAM units parked around the runway itself. Not only was the Tor system, known to NATO as the SA-15 “Gauntlet,” highly effective against aircraft and helicopters, it could also achieve decent kill percentages against precision-guided munitions, including laser-guided bombs.

Thick three-sided earthen revetments now surrounded rows of Kevlar aircraft shelters, offering protection against direct fire from antitank weapons like the Carl Gustav recoilless rifle used in the earlier “terrorist” attack. Other berms shielded pits dug for 122mm mortars and howitzers. Earth-and-log bunkers sited around the perimeter offered hard cover for machine-gun, RPG, and antitank missile teams. Four-wheeled BRDM-2 armored scout cars made periodic patrol sweeps through the surrounding farm fields, woodlots, small villages, and built-up areas.

All in all, Patrick thought, Konotop’s base commander had done a superb job of setting up defenses that would stop a conventional ground or air attack cold. He smiled crookedly. That Russian general and his subordinates were about to learn a very expensive lesson.

“CID Two, this is One,” he said over his radio. “Give me a status check.”

The robot’s computer simultaneously encrypted and compressed his signal before transmitting it as a several-millisecond-long burst. Coordinating this mission required secure tactical communication. The combination of encryption, compression, and frequency hopping should make it almost impossible for any Russian monitoring stations to intercept his transmissions, let alone understand them.

“CID One, this is Two,” Patrick heard Captain Nadia Rozek reply. “I am in position six hundred meters north of you and ready to proceed on your order.”

The same microburst transmission included biometric data showing the Polish Special Forces captain’s heart rate was slightly elevated, but all her other vital signs were pegged solidly in the normal spectrum. He shook his head admiringly. That young woman was one cool customer. Sure she’d had a lot of intensive combat training, both inside and outside the CIDs, but very few people could manage to stay so calm and collected this close to real action.

Wayne Macomber wasn’t very happy about giving up his ringside seat to Captain Rozek, but President Wilk had insisted that a Polish officer be included at the sharp end in this first Iron Wolf mission. “If you are willing to risk your lives for Poland and its people, then you must also allow some of us to share the risks with you,” the Polish president had told them firmly.

Privately, Patrick wished Piotr Wilk hadn’t been so insistent. He knew how Brad felt about Nadia Rozek. He also knew, only too well, that CIDs were not invulnerable — not up against the kind of firepower assembled at the Russian air base. If she were killed or badly wounded in this raid, his son might never forgive him. For that matter, he wasn’t too sure that he would be able to forgive himself. Depressing memories of his wife’s horrific death at the hands of Libyan terrorists many years ago crowded into his mind.

Impatiently, he shook his head. Get on with it, Muck, he told himself. Stay focused. Hell, maybe Whack Macomber was right and he was getting too old for this shit. “Coyotes One and Two, say your status,” he radioed.

“We’re holding at Point Charlie, just outside predicted Big Bird detection range,” Brad replied. “All flight and navigation systems are go. JDAM GEM-III GPS receivers are initialized. Ready to move in and data-link on your order.”

Inside the CID’s pilot compartment, Patrick nodded, seeing their estimated position displayed on a map put up by his computer. The two MQ-55 Coyotes, remotely piloted by Brad and Mark Darrow back at Powidz, were orbiting low about thirty miles away. Even with their stealth characteristics and special radar-absorbent paint, that was as close as they dared come… for now. But once he ordered them in, the two drones could be overhead in three minutes or so — and within striking range a lot quicker.

Swiftly, he made contact with the rest of the Iron Wolf Squadron strike force, making sure they were ready, too. The three-man CID rearmament and recharge unit, with their speedy little Mercedes Wolf 4x4, was securely hidden in a belt of forest about ten miles outside Konotop. Not far away, Captain Schofield’s deep-penetration recon team guarded the patch of open ground marked out as their extraction point. And the squadron’s XV-40 Sparrowhawk tilt-rotor aircraft and its MH-47 Chinook helicopter were standing by at interim fields in western Ukraine, ready to come and get them if things went well — or to rescue any survivors if the mission cratered.

Satisfied, Patrick focused again on the data flowing into his brain from his sensors. Two BRDMs were driving out of the base’s vehicle park. Radio chatter picked up by his CID indicated they were starting a scheduled patrol of the inner perimeter. The fingers of his left hand twitched slightly as if typing revised targeting priorities into the robot’s attack software — no need to type, of course: he thought about where the data needed to go and they went there — and then sending the altered list to CID Two.

“Targets received,” Nadia confirmed, still sounding as cool as if she were only out on another training maneuver.

“Commence blackout in ten seconds,” Patrick ordered. His right hand flexed, bringing the war machine’s netrusion capabilities online. The CID’s active radars could be reconfigured to transmit malicious code to enemy digital electronic systems — radars, targeting computers, and communications networks — creating false images or even commanding them to shut down. Since netrusion had been used several times before against the Russians, they were likely to have developed some countermeasures that would ferret out the inserted codes and regain control over any affected electronics and computer systems. But doing that would take time… and time was what the Iron Wolf Squadron needed most right now. “Five… four… three… two… one… Go!”

His CID jumped to its feet, already swiveling from side to side as it streamed a sequence of new commands into a preplanned series of Russian radars, sensors, and computer systems. Off to the north, CID Two, piloted by Nadia Rozek, moved out into the open, taking down its own list of netrusion targets.

Along the perimeter fence, the remotely controlled IR cameras suddenly froze. Everywhere across the base, phones went dead as the local telecommunications network went down. The high-powered radio transmitter used to communicate directly with the Russian high command went off the air in midsignal, a victim of the linked computer it used to encrypt and decrypt secure messages. Suddenly dozens of panicked-sounding Russian voices crackled across the airwaves — drowning each other out in a babbling, shouting blur of static and noise. With so many separate tactical radio sets in use, there was no way a netrusion attack could knock them all out. But the chaos and confusion caused among the base’s defenders by the unexpected loss of their other computer and electronic systems was the next best thing.

And then Patrick heard what he’d been waiting for. The constant, warbling hum of multiple Russian SAM radars abruptly faded to silence. “Coyotes, this is CID One,” he said. “Their eyes are blinded for now! Come in fast and link up with me.”

“Understood, One,” Brad said. “On the way.”

“CID Two, let’s go!” Patrick radioed, already sprinting at high speed toward the perimeter fence.

Riding snugly in the cockpit of CID Two, Nadia Rozek leaped high into the air — soaring over the Russian minefield in one long bound. Her Iron Wolf robot crashed straight through the perimeter fence without slowing. Moving at more than eighty kilometers an hour, she detached a 25mm autocannon from her right weapons pack and opened fire on the closest Russian bunkers. Hammered by multiple armor-piercing rounds, the bunkers were smashed in seconds. Jagged shards of wood and bullet-shredded sandbags cartwheeled away into the darkness.

Still running forward onto the concrete runway, she fired again and again, systematically knocking out every Russian weapons emplacement within range. Return fire whipcracked past her war machine’s armored head. A BRDM scout car wheeled toward her. Muzzle flashes erupted from its conical turret. The gunner manning its 14.5mm heavy machine gun was trying desperately to bring his weapon to bear, but she was too fast, too agile — effortlessly dodging away from the stream of tracer rounds chasing after her. Another quick burst from her autocannon ripped the BRDM open from front to back. It skidded off to the side and flipped over, already starting to burn.

Nadia laughed aloud, suddenly intoxicated by the power the CID gave her. This was beyond anything she had experienced in training. For an instant, she was tempted to hurl herself headlong straight into the midst of the nearest clump of panicked defenders. Her pulse started to spike as adrenaline flooded her system.

“Keep it under control, Two,” she heard the other CID pilot snap. “Stay focused and stick to the plan!”

Startled, Nadia shook her head, pushing back against the wave of mad exhilaration that had threatened to swamp her rational mind. “Will comply, CID One,” she radioed. She breathed out slowly, feeling her heart rate slowing in time with her breathing. Calmer now, she noticed that the robot’s attack computer was highlighting new targets in her field of view — large, gray-painted metal tanks full of aviation fuel. She moved right to get a better shot while simultaneously reloading her autocannon with incendiary rounds.

Another series of short bursts punctured the tanks and set off thousands of gallons of fuel. Huge sheets of flame roared high into the air, bright enough to turn night into day.

Backlit now by the fires burning all along the flight line, Nadia Rozek’s Iron Wolf robot loped deeper into the Russian air base, hunting new prey.

Four hundred yards south, Patrick swiveled his CID’s torso. More targets appeared, a dispersed group of four Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile launch vehicles and their mobile command post. With one robotic hand, he slung the 40mm grenade launcher he’d been using to blow holes in the terminal buildings the Russians were using as barracks for their garrison, pilots, and ground crews. With the other hand, he uncoupled his electromagnetic rail gun and powered it up.

CCRRRAACK!

He fired five times, pausing only briefly to center the rail gun on a new target. Brief, blinding flashes of superheated plasma from the rail gun were eclipsed by larger and even brighter explosions as small dense projectiles moving at Mach 5 tore the Russian missile launchers and their command vehicle apart.

Movement alert, the CID’s computer warned. Two enemy aircraft taxiing for takeoff.

Patrick swung back to the left, accelerating to get clear of the thick columns of smoke boiling away from burning vehicles and buildings. Even his superb thermal sensors were being degraded by all the heat billowing off wreckage strewn across the airfield.

He bounded over an overturned BRDM and came down right in the middle of a group of stunned Russian soldiers. Mouths and eyes widened in horror as they took in the huge, lethal machine suddenly in their midst. One of them shook off his fear fast enough to bring his AK-74 up and start shooting. Bullets smacked into the CID’s torso and ricocheted away.

Growling, Patrick spun around — blurring into motion while seizing panicked, screaming enemy soldiers with his open robotic hand. One after another, he tossed them toward the nearest building. Their screams ended in dull, wet thuds as they slammed into metal and concrete walls and slid dead to the ground.

Su-27s on takeoff, the computer reported.

He swung back to the right, following the cues provided by his CID’s navigation system. Suddenly he came out of the smoke and haze and into clearer air.

A couple of hundred yards away, two twin-tailed gray-, white-, and black-camouflaged Russian fighters were rolling down the runway — picking up speed fast as their pilots went to afterburner to get into the air as quickly as possible. The two Su-27s must have been on ready alert, prepped to take off at the first sign of any attack. Those were brave airmen, Patrick thought with a brief touch of sadness, but foolish. Still, he couldn’t blame them for trying. It was the duty of any pilot to get his plane off the ground under enemy fire.

And it was his job to stop them.

He swung his rail gun toward the lead Su-27 as it lifted off the runway.

CCRRAACK!

The tungsten-steel alloy slug ripped through the Russian fighter’s fuselage and blew out the other end in a spray of burning metal and wiring. Knocked out of control, the Su-27 rolled off to the right, slammed back onto the runway, and blew up in a massive orange fireball. The second fighter, moving too fast to steer and too slow to take off, raced straight into the flaming, tangled remains of the first Su-27. Its undercarriage ripped away with an enormous screech and it slid on down the runway in a dazzling cloud of pinwheeling sparks and burning fuel. Suddenly it exploded. Twisted bits of debris pattered down across the airfield.

Two green dots pulsed at the edge of Patrick’s vision.

“CID One, this is Coyote One and Two. Good data links established,” he heard Brad radio. “We’re inbound at four hundred and fifty knots. Altitude one thousand. Range twelve miles. Ready for your targets.”

Patrick could hear a low background hum building in his ears. Warning. Big Bird radars reenergizing, the computer reported. He nodded. The Russian SAM crews must have finally managed to flush the malicious code he and Captain Rozek had loaded into their systems. He turned and ran toward the rows of earthen revetments holding the remaining Russian aircraft based at Konotop. At the same time, he keyed in and sent a series of GPS coordinates via data link to the incoming MQ-55 drones.

“Target sets received, CID One,” Brad told him. “And downloaded into our weapons.”

“Then take ’em out, Coyotes,” Patrick ordered.

Remote piloting was a damned odd experience, Brad thought. Most of him felt as though he were flying inside Coyote One — streaking at high speed toward the burning Russian air base. But at the same time, he also knew he was actually seated in a darkened control station more than six hundred miles to the west, watching screens that showed views and data gathered from the cameras and limited sensors mounted on the MQ-55 drone.

“Coyote One to Two,” he said. “Execute toss attack.”

“Two copies,” Mark Darrow replied from the station next door. “Attacking now.”

Brad double-checked the attack computer settings as he closed in to the target. Through his headset, he heard the bomb doors whine open as directed by the computer. He saw the flight-director bars suddenly skitter to the left and upward and he held his breath as the MQ-55 banked hard left and roared skyward at a steep angle, climbing fast through five thousand feet.

He saw three “GBU32” indications on his computer screen flash, then blink, then extinguish in rapid succession. One after another, three one-thousand-pound GBU-32 JDAMs, Joint Direct Attack Munitions, released, fell out of the bay, and flew onward, arcing up through the sky. The toss maneuver gave the bombs more range from low altitude than a conventional level bomb run, and the turn allowed the Coyote to escape while the bombs were still in the air. As the bombs hurtled through the air, receivers aboard each bomb were already picking up position data from the GPS satellite constellations high above in Earth orbit.

Inside each JDAM, a Honeywell HG1700 Ring Laser Gyro inertial unit constantly measured velocity, position, and acceleration, feeding this data through a microprocessor in its guidance and control unit. Together with the GPS signals it picked up, the GCU gave the bomb a continuous and highly accurate fix on its current position. Control surfaces in its tail flexed and swiveled, making the tiny adjustments necessary to “fine-tune” the bomb’s trajectory as it flew — screaming down from the top of its “toss” to strike within two meters of its programmed coordinates.

Brad’s Coyote rolled away, closed its bay doors, and dove back to low altitude. In the screens, he could see the light and dark patchwork of the fields and small towns surrounding the city of Konotop and its airfield rising up to meet him. He leveled off at just over five hundred feet, high enough to clear any buildings and low enough to be more difficult to detect on radar.

“JDAMs away,” he heard Darrow say. “Returning to base.”

Brad frowned. That was the plan. Once their bombs were gone, the Coyotes were useless and defenseless — dependent for survival entirely on their limited stealth capabilities. By any measure of common sense, he should follow Mark and slide out of the Konotop area while the getting was good. But he couldn’t shake the knowledge that Nadia was still in combat and in danger there below him. No matter what the plan said, it felt wrong to fly off to safety, leaving her behind.

Six huge explosions lit the sky, each set at a different point in a complete circle around the airfield. As the biggest flashes faded, he could see small bursts of orange and white fire — secondary detonations as missile propellant and warheads cooked off.

“Those Big Bird radars are down!” his father said. “Good hits on all JDAMs. Nice work, Coyotes. Many thanks.”

“Wolf Ferry One taking off,” the pilot of the XV-40 Sparrowhawk tilt-rotor transport reported from its hidden position in western Ukraine. “ETA to extraction point is roughly thirty minutes.”

“Ferry Two also in the air,” said another voice, this one belonging to the pilot flying the Iron Wolf Squadron’s MH-47 helicopter. Since the huge Chinook was much slower than the XV-40, it had been concealed even closer to the Dnieper River.

Still undecided, Brad tweaked his joystick slightly to the right, starting a gentle turn that would keep him close to Konotop for just a few more minutes.

Piloting CID Two, Nadia Rozek ran straight up the sloping side of one of the aircraft revetments. Hard-packed dirt and netting tore away beneath the weight of her armored feet, but she was moving so fast that it didn’t matter. At the top of the revetment, she jumped again, bounding high over the Kevlar tent sheltering a Russian plane. She came down hard on the other side, right in the middle of a taxiway. She swung around, seeing the long, pointed nose of a Su-24M fighter-bomber poking out of the shelter.

She fired a short burst from her autocannon into the Su-24 at point-blank range. Pieces spiraled away as the shells hit home, gutting its avionics and controls. The autocannon whirred and fell silent. Ammunition expended, her computer reported.

Nadia snapped it back into place in her weapons pack and drew her rail gun. It whined shrilly, powering up.

Something big thudded down to her left, only meters away. Startled, she swung toward it — raising her weapon. And lowered it, just as fast. It was CID One, piloted by the nameless stranger who commanded this mission. Of all the peculiar experiences she’d had since joining the Iron Wolf Squadron, realizing that one of their only two war robots was manned by someone no one ever saw was surely one of the oddest.

“Easy there, Captain,” the other pilot said, somehow sounding amused even through an encrypted and compressed radio transmission. “You take the aircraft shelters on the right. I’ll go left. Make your shots count. We’re both running low on ammo and power.”

“Understood, One,” Nadia said stiffly, aware that her face was reddening with embarrassment. She turned right and loped down the row of parked Russian aircraft, destroying them with single shots from her rail gun. Behind her, she could hear the other CID doing the same thing. Caught on the ground inside their shelters, Su-24 fighter-bombers, Su-25 ground-attack planes, and MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters all went up in flames or were torn apart by high-velocity impacts.

The two Russian Su-35 single-seat fighters were flying east at ten thousand meters, heading for the barn at Voronezh Malshevo airfield after finishing another routine patrol over eastern Ukraine. The lead pilot, Major Vladimir Cherkashin, yawned under his oxygen mask and then fought down the urge to go on yawning. These night flights were deadly dull. Pilots assigned to provide air cover over the armies advancing on Poland during the day at least got to see the seemingly endless columns of tanks, self-propelled guns, and infantry fighting vehicles on the move. At night, there was nothing to see but the occasional pattern of lights from some drab little Ukrainian farm village and the vast sea of stars blinking overhead. And in the absence of any opposition from the Poles or the Ukrainians, there was nothing to do.

“Drobovik Lead, this is Voronezh Control. Stand by for new orders,” a tense voice crackled through his headphones.

“Control, this is Shotgun Lead. Standing by,” Cherkashin said, jolted to full awareness. “Did you hear that, Oleg?” he asked his wingman, flying about two kilometers off his right wing.

“Da, Major,” the other pilot, Captain Oleg Bessonov, replied. “It’s nice to know that we’re not the only ones awake this late.”

“Shotgun Lead, Voronezh Control,” a new voice said urgently. To his surprise, Cherkashin recognized it as the voice of Major General Kornilov, commander of the 7000th Air Base at Malshevo. His eyebrows rose. Whatever new orders were coming were not routine. “Proceed immediately to Konotop. Repeat, immediately. Exercise caution! We’ve just lost all radio and telephone communication with the airfield there, including the S-300 battalion. Orbit over the airfield at five thousand meters and await target vectors. Say state and estimated time en route.”

Shit, Cherkashin thought, that didn’t sound good. Five thousand meters put them high enough to protect them from shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. Was this another terrorist attack? Or something much bigger? “Understood, Control, stand by,” he said, quickly bringing up a digital map on his left multifunction display. His two Su-35s were about two hundred kilometers due east of Konotop. Another key press switched the MFD back to a view of his fighter’s systems and fuel state. They still had plenty of gas. “ETE less than eight minutes.”

“Acknowledged,” Kornilov said. “The airspace is clear of all friendly aircraft. If you detect hostiles, you are cleared to engage without further orders. Repeat: weapons hot. Acknowledge.”

“Yes, sir, understood, weapons hot,” Cherkashin acknowledged. His jaw tightened. Letting them off the command and control leash like this meant the brass was definitely spooked. He keyed his mike, signaling Bessonov. “Shotgun Two, this is Lead. Follow me!”

Cherkashin tugged his stick hard left, yanking the Su-35 into a tight, high-G turn back to the west. At the same time, he shoved his throttle forward, feeding more power to the fighter’s big Saturn 117S turbofans. As he rolled out of the turn on a course toward Konotop, the aircraft accelerated smoothly. A quick finger press on his stick powered up his Irbis-E multimode electronically scanned array radar. Whatever the hell was going on up ahead, he and Bessonov were not going to be flying in blind.

Patrick reached the end of the row of parked aircraft and bounded back over the revetment. Between them, he and Nadia Rozek had just wrecked more than twenty Russian fighter and attack planes. Everywhere he looked, there were ruined, burning buildings, trucks, and armored cars… and dead soldiers. Lots of dead Russian soldiers and airmen. He winced. There were probably a few terrified survivors hiding in the debris, but he was willing to bet that none of them had ever gotten a real look at the two robots who had just smashed Konotop Airfield. They’d killed any Russian who’d come close enough to see them clearly.

Still moving, he checked his ammunition and power status. He was out of ammunition for his autocannon and down to just a few shots with the 40mm grenade launcher. Even his electromagnetic rail gun was on its last clip, with just two shots remaining. His CID was down to about 40 percent power, more than enough to make it back to the Iron Wolf recharge and rearmament team, but not enough for another prolonged engagement. Query CID Two status, he thought.

The information relayed from the other robot’s automated systems appeared almost instantly in his consciousness, as if he was reading the information in his mind’s eye. He frowned. The Polish Special Forces captain’s machine was in much the same state, although her rail gun was completely empty. She did have a couple of mini-Stinger antiaircraft missiles left in one weapons pack, but not much else that would be of real use in ground combat.

He nodded. They’d done what they came to do. Now it was time to break off, before the Russians were able to react. “CID Two, this is One,” he signaled. “Rally and recover as planned. Repeat, rally and recover.”

“Acknowledged,” Nadia replied.

The two Iron Wolf CIDs turned and sprinted away through the thickening clouds of oily, black smoke rolling across the ravaged Russian air base. They jumped over the still-active perimeter minefields and bounded northeast, moving toward the distant extraction point at a steady forty miles an hour.

Warning, Patrick’s computer suddenly pulsed in his consciousness. Two Su-35s east of your position. Range sixty miles. Closing at seven hundred knots. Altitude fifteen thousand feet. One X-band radar active.

“Well, that’s torn it,” he muttered. Those Russian fighters would have a difficult time locking on to the CIDs, but the other Iron Wolf units — especially the XV-40 tilt-rotor and Chinook helicopter coming in to pick them up — would be sitting ducks. And once their robots ran out of battery and fuel-cell power, he and Captain Rozek would be just as dead.

“CID One, this is Two,” Nadia said crisply, seeing the same alert. “Suggest we move east and deploy for antiair ambush. Here.” She highlighted a group of several drab, six-story-tall, Stalinist-era apartment buildings on the northern outskirts of Konotop.

Patrick nodded, seeing her suggested ambush site mirrored on his own display. Despite the pressure on her, Captain Rozek was thinking clearly, calmly, and showing superb tactical sense. The buildings there would give them good cover from radars and IRSTs, infrared search and tracking systems, on those incoming Su-35s. “Agreed, CID Two. Let’s go!”

Brad listened to their quick, terse transmissions with mounting despair. His MQ-55 Coyote was still orbiting at low altitude just five miles west of the city. Stealth design or not, the powerful Irbis-E phased-array radars on those fast-approaching Russian fighters were sure to pick his defenseless drone up in the next couple of minutes. Should he bolt to the west right now, hoping to draw the Su-35s away from Nadia and his father? No, he thought bitterly, that would accomplish nothing. Once those Su-35 pilots locked him up, they could easily knock him out of the sky with a single long-range missile shot. He wouldn’t buy the CIDs and the other Iron Wolf ground teams more than a minute or two. At most. Worse yet, breaking west would only lead the Russians that much closer to the even more visible and vulnerable friendly aircraft heading for the planned extraction point.

He bit his lip. There had to be something else he could try. Somewhere else he could fly. He pushed the joystick forward a bit, sliding down to within a couple of hundred feet of the ground. Flying really low and really slow might buy him a few extra seconds to think.

Quickly, Brad brought up a digitized satellite map of Konotop on his secondary display. The two CIDs were going to try hiding among the “clutter” of the city’s buildings. Could he try the same thing?

A four-lane avenue cutting northeast right through the heart of Konotop caught his eye. Streetlights, telephone poles, and trees lined both sides of the road, but that street looked as though it might barely be wide enough. Maybe. If there weren’t any cars or trucks blocking the stretch he picked. Jesus, he thought, what a crazy stunt. He must be nuts. Then he smiled and shrugged. Since every other option was a literal dead end, what choice did he really have?

Still smiling, Brad tweaked the stick right, rolling the MQ-55 into a gentle turn. The television cameras mounted on the Coyote showed him a flickering picture of the terrain sliding past the small turbojet. There, he thought, spotting a set of train tracks running almost due east. That was his way into the city. He took the Coyote lower still and flew along the tracks at one hundred knots, not much above its rated stall speed.

Houses, streets, trees, and light poles flashed past his virtual cockpit, looming up with startling swiftness out of the darkness. He gritted his teeth, flying on pure nerve and instinct now. One tiny twitch at the wrong time and he’d smack the MQ-55 into the ground or a building, turning it into a mangled heap of debris. And all for nothing.

Ahead, the railroad tracks split, with some lines veering off to sidings, huge brick warehouses, and other large buildings set up for locomotive repair and maintenance. That had to be Konotop’s main rail yard. Which meant he was roughly twelve hundred feet from his turn point. Twelve hundred feet at one hundred knots per hour. He peered intently at the screen, counting down silently. Four. Three. Two. One.

Now.

He rolled the Coyote sharply left, powering up to keep the drone from falling right out of the sky. And then back sharply right. A wide avenue, blessedly empty of traffic at this time of night, appeared straight ahead of him.

Gently, gently, Brad thought. He tapped a key and heard the MQ-55’s landing gear whir down and lock. Down a bit. Down a bit more. The buildings, trees, and streetlights flashing past the screen grew much bigger in a hurry. His digital altitude readout wound down. Fifty feet. Thirty feet. Ten feet.

He chopped the throttles suddenly and the Coyote touched down, rolling fast right down a street in the heart of Konotop. He braked, bringing the small aircraft to a full stop within fifteen hundred feet. The avenue stretched on ahead for another mile or so.

Now to wait, Brad decided. But not for very long.

Thirty kilometers out from Konotop, the images captured by the Su-35’s OLS-35 electro-optical search-and-track system came up with appalling clarity on Major Vladimir Cherkashin’s large right-hand MFD. Stunned by what he was seeing, he keyed his radio mike. “Voronezh Control, this is Shotgun Lead. Konotop Airfield is burning. Repeat, the whole damned base is on fire! I see multiple wrecked aircraft and vehicles.”

“Are there any signs of hostile air or ground forces?” the controller asked.

“Negative!” Cherkashin snapped. “I have no unidentified radar or IR contacts yet.” He thumbed a switch on his joystick, activating his fighter’s automated defensive suite. “Shotgun Two. Go active on all countermeasures now!”

“Two,” his wingman reported.

“Arm weapons,” Cherkashin ordered, pushing another switch on the joystick.

“Two,” the other Su-35 pilot said. “Standing by.”

“We’re going to make a quick, hard pass over the field at two thousand meters,” Cherkashin said. “Whoever hit our guys can’t be far away. Keep your eyes open and be ready to nail them.”

“You don’t think Konotop was hit by a long-range missile or artillery barrage?” his wingman asked.

Cherkashin shook his head. “No, Oleg. Look at your screen. There are no craters. None. What kind of missile or artillery attack is that accurate? Konotop must have been attacked by an infantry or armor force using direct-fire heavy weapons. So we find those bastards and then we blow the shit out of them.”

“Copy that,” the other pilot, Captain Bessonov, said grimly.

The two Su-35s dove lower, racing west toward the ruined airfield at high speed.

Patrick stood with the armored back of his CID squarely against the dirty brick wall of the apartment building. Row after row of rusting metal balconies draped with laundry rose above high his head. He aimed the electromagnetic rail gun skyward, waiting.

Twenty yards to his left, Nadia Rozek’s Iron Wolf robot copied him, except that she held a mini-Stinger missile ready to fire. The mini-Stinger missiles employed by the CIDs were not designed to take down fast-moving, high-flying aircraft, but it was all she had, and she was hoping for one more bit of good luck tonight. “Standing by,” she said softly. “I will take the lead plane, CID One.”

“Understood,” Patrick said. “I have the wingman.” Based on its last sensor reading from the incoming Russian fighters, his computer was running a continuous prediction program — estimating where and when the enemy aircraft would come back into view. Following the visual cues it presented, he swung the rail gun just a couple of degrees to the right.

And suddenly a huge twin-tailed aircraft howled low overhead, racing toward the airfield. Off to the right, another Su-35 appeared, not far behind the lead plane.

“Tone!” Nadia shouted. She fired the Stinger. It flashed skyward in a bright plume of exhaust. Reacting with lightning speed, she loaded the second Stinger and fired again.

The two missiles streaked after the speeding Russian fighter. But its pilot was already reacting, strewing dozens of decoy flares across the sky as he banked hard, breaking away from the Stingers in a high-G turn. The first missile homed in on one of the flares and exploded too far behind the Su-35 to do any damage. The second Stinger flew straight through the expanding cloud of IR decoys but couldn’t reacquire the wildly maneuvering enemy plane. It raced on through the night sky and vanished.

Patrick shifted his rail gun slightly, barely leading the second Su-35. He fired. CCRRAACK! Plasma flared and then vanished. A miss. One round remaining. He leaned forward slightly, forcing himself to relax, following the cue set by his targeting computer. The distant image of the Russian aircraft pulsed green. Now! He squeezed the trigger again.

Hit with enormous force at supersonic speed, the Su-35 broke in half. Trailing debris, the two pieces tumbled out of the air and smashed into the ground at nearly a thousand miles an hour.

Patrick felt something akin to hunger, but he knew what it really meant: all rail-gun ammunition was expended.

One down, Patrick thought grimly. But that left one Russian fighter plane still in the fight — and neither CID had any weapons left that could touch it. Far off in the sky, he could see the Su-35 curving back toward their position, clearly intent on avenging its downed comrade. “Any ideas, Captain Rozek?” he asked.

“We might be able to hide for a time among the city buildings,” she said. “But my power levels are dropping fast.”

“Coyote One to CIDs,” Patrick heard Brad radio suddenly. “Don’t hide! There’s a big avenue a couple of blocks away. Head southeast on it at high speed. And make it obvious! Get that pilot to chase you.”

“And then what?” Nadia asked, puzzled.

“Leave that to me,” Brad told her quietly.

Major Vladimir Cherkashin rolled out of his tight turn and came wings level — slashing back toward Konotop at full military power. His defensive systems were fully automatic now, continuously launching flares and chaff to decoy any new enemy heat-seeking or radar-guided missiles. A pillar of fire off to his right marked the funeral pyre of Bessonov’s Su-35.

Cherkashin swore viciously. He and Oleg Bessonov had been friends and flying comrades since their days as cadets at the Air Academy. And now the other man had been swatted out of the sky without even seeing who had killed him.

Small flashes lit the jumble of buildings and streets ahead. Grenades exploding? Or mortar rounds? Were the Poles or Ukrainian terrorists who had attacked the airfield fighting their way into Konotop itself?

Cherkashin turned slightly to the left, closing in on those repeated flashes. He glanced down at images shown on his right-hand display. Whether they were out in the open or taking cover in buildings, his IRST system should be able to spot the missile teams who had ambushed him and killed Bessonov. He chopped his throttles, dumping airspeed to give himself more time to find and engage the enemy.

A glimmer of movement far down a wide street caught his eye. The Su-35’s cameras had picked up two flickering shapes moving southeast at more than eighty kilometers an hour, but his IRST system couldn’t lock on to them. They were just a jumble of seemingly unconnected hot spots racing down the middle of the avenue. He frowned. What the hell were those things?

He rolled right and then left to line up on the street. Still no lock.

Fuck it, Cherkashin thought coldly. Throw enough 30mm shells into the middle of those weird thermal images and he’d hit something. He thumbed the guns switch on his stick and felt the Su-35 judder slightly as the GSh-301 cannon in its starboard wing root fired a short burst.

A fusillade of armor-piercing incendiary rounds lashed the street just behind the fast-moving targets — blowing huge smoking holes in the pavement and ripping parked cars to shreds. Damnation, the Russian pilot thought. He was undershooting — they were much faster than he thought. He lowered his aircraft’s nose slightly to gain a bit more speed. The glowing guns pipper on his heads-up display slewed toward the two weird, skittering vehicles.

Any second now.

“Warning! Air target at three o’clock low! Range close!” the Su-35’s automated system said urgently. “Collision aler—”

Horrified, Cherkashin flicked his eyes right. He just had time to see a strange, batwinged aircraft streaking off the ground — heading straight for his fighter at high speed. He yanked the stick hard left, desperately trying to evade.

And failed.

The MQ-55 Coyote hit the Su-35’s port wing squarely and tore it off in a hailstorm of shredded metal and carbon fiber. Razor-edged fragments slashed through both mangled aircraft. Trailing fire and smoke, the Russian fighter and the Iron Wolf drone fell out of the sky, slammed into a row of homes and shops, and blew up.

Two Iron Wolf aircraft — their Sparrowhawk tilt-rotor and their MH-47 Chinook helicopter — nearly filled the darkened forest clearing. Several recon troopers in camouflage were busy rolling up the electroluminescent panels they’d used to warn the flight crews away from tree stumps and boggy ground. The little Mercedes-Benz Wolf 4x4 was already safely stowed in the tilt-rotor. The two Cybernetic Infantry Devices, fully rearmed and recharged, stood motionless, ready to walk aboard the two aircraft.

Wearily, Nadia Rozek crawled out through the hatch in the back of CID Two and slowly swung herself down to the ground. She felt drained and shaky, almost as though she had aged twenty years in the past hour.

“Nice work, Captain,” a tall, broad-shouldered man in a black flight suit said. She recognized the American CID Operations commander, Major Wayne Macomber. “You guys did a real number on Konotop.” He grinned evilly. “A bunch of Russians just learned they picked the wrong people to screw around with.”

Nadia nodded somberly. “Perhaps. But most of them are now dead.”

“That’s the way it usually works,” Macomber agreed. He climbed up the CID’s leg and paused near the open hatch. “Better them than us is the way I always figure it.” He looked down at her. “Anyway, grab some food and shut-eye once you’re aboard the Chinook.” He slapped the armored side of the war machine. “It’s my turn next to take this goddamned bundle of gears and circuits out for a little spin.”

She nodded again. The squadron’s operational plan called for another rapid-fire attack on a second Russian forward operating airfield — this one five hundred kilometers to the northwest, in Belarus. By striking two widely separated targets in quick succession, they hoped to knock the Russians off balance, and to fool them into believing they were facing a much larger force.

Fighting off another wave of fatigue, Nadia turned toward the waiting helicopter. But then she swung back as a sudden thought struck her. “What about the pilot for CID One, Major?” she asked. “Where is his replacement?”

Whack was staring inside the CID at the gray, gelatinous membrane that made up the system that literally sucked up central-nervous-system signals from the body, processed them, and translated the signals into movement, and at the same time transmitted signals from the CID’s several hundred haptic and sensor systems directly into the body’s central nervous system. It always made him feel a little queasy lying on that oozy surface, like swimming in warm mud. He also had to remember to hold his breath for about thirty seconds until the hatch behind him closed, the CID locked on to his central nervous system, matched it to his preprogrammed patterns, activated, and then started its life-support systems. “What about him?” he asked distractedly.

“Who replaces him for this next mission?” Nadia wondered.

“No one,” the big American said quietly, lowering his voice. “That Iron Wolf machine is a one-man show.”

She frowned. “Surely, that is impossible. When will he eat? Or sleep?”

Macomber sighed. “Captain, I wish I could give you a straight answer for that. Because I have the feeling our armored friend over there only plans to sleep when he’s dead.” With that, he sketched her a quick salute, steeled himself, and slid inside the CID. The hatch sealed behind him.

Still frowning, Nadia moved past the silent, motionless shape of CID One and climbed into the waiting helicopter. There was a mystery here that troubled her. Even with her limited experience inside these powerful and deadly Cybernetic Infantry Devices, she knew that no ordinary human could pilot one without the chance to rest and recover. Not and stay sane. So what did that say about the mysterious man hidden away inside that other Iron Wolf?

President Stacy Anne Barbeau worked very hard to keep her face an expressionless mask as Luke Cohen ushered General Timothy Spelling, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Thomas Torrey, the director of the CIA, and Admiral Kevin Caldwell, the director of the National Security Agency, into the Oval Office. Usually she kept a flock of tame reporters hanging around just outside, ready to file flattering little stories about her meetings with foreign dignitaries, film stars, and other celebrities, but the corridor was empty this afternoon. There was no way she wanted any pictures or news of this particular meeting appearing in the press.

Still stone-faced, she remained seated, not bothering to get up for the usual round of phony “we’re all friends and coworkers here” glad-handing. Cohen showed the three men to a row of straight-backed chairs set out in front of her desk. Once they were seated, he dropped casually onto a comfortable couch positioned off to the side.

“I hope I don’t need to tell you gentlemen how goddamned tired I am of being blindsided by the Russians,” Barbeau said scathingly, without any preamble. She nodded to the secure phone on her desk. “I just had another call from Foreign Minister Titeneva. She is demanding immediate information about these mystery aircraft we’re supposedly flying secretly across the Atlantic and Mediterranean. And frankly, I want some straight answers myself!”

Spelling cleared his throat. “Madam President, we’ve been investigating those Russian charges ever since Moscow first made them public.”

“Well?” Barbeau demanded.

“One of our F/A-18F crews flying off the Bush did intercept a group of six aircraft, identified as F-111s, refueling from a KC-10 Extender aerial tanker at the time in question,” Spelling said.

“An F-111?” Barbeau exclaimed. She knew her Cold War — era aircraft — she was an Air Force brat and loved every minute of her time on air bases all over the world. “That was an old Strategic Air Command and Tactical Air Command bomber from the eighties. I thought they were all mothballed.”

“These were very much flyable, ma’am,” Spelling said. “They were flying without transponder codes and not on an international flight plan. The Hornet crew reported this contact to the carrier, but their report never went any further up the chain of command.”

Barbeau’s eyes flashed angrily. “Why the hell not, General? Are you telling me that officers of my Navy are conspiring to withhold information from their lawful superiors?”

“No, Madam President,” Spelling said. He looked acutely uncomfortable. “The pilots flying those unidentified F-111s gave the carrier’s air operations officer a special code phrase to check. When he ran that through Bush’s computer, it confirmed they were part of a DoD-authorized Top Secret, operations and support Special Access Program — one with instructions specifically requiring him to avoid logging or reporting the contact. That’s why it took a direct query from Admiral Fowler, the chief of naval operations, to confirm this incident.”

“You’re talking about this EIGHTBALL-whatever code the Russians picked up?” Luke Cohen asked, sitting up a little straighter on the couch.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs nodded. “That’s right, Mr. Cohen.”

“That code is dead after right now,” Barbeau snapped. “No one else gets to use it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And those F-111s were probably planes refurbished by Sky Masters and sent on their way to Poland, right?” Cohen asked.

No one in the Oval Office saw it, but Stacy Anne Barbeau’s face turned a sickening shade of pale when she heard the name “Sky Masters”—she had not had favorable encounters with that company or some of their people and products over the years.

Again, Spelling nodded, as Thomas Torrey, the CIA director, said, “That’s the most logical conclusion. Sky Masters claims they sold the planes to a number of different customers, but it’s fairly clear these other companies were acting as intermediaries for the Polish government. Or they might be shell corporations created by Warsaw itself. We’re still digging into that.”

“Let’s cut to the chase, gentlemen,” Barbeau snarled. “What all of this proves is somebody in the Pentagon is running a covert operation to help the Poles — against my direct orders! And I want that insubordinate son of a bitch’s head on a platter. Now! Understand?”

There was a moment of strained, embarrassed silence before General Spelling spoke up. “With all due respect, Madam President, that is not accurate. We’ve run a complete internal cross-check on the EIGHTBALL HIGH code phrase. And what is very clear is that no one—not a single uniformed officer or civilian in the Defense Department, or anywhere else in the federal government — is cleared for access to this so-called Top Secret program.”

“Which means what, exactly?” Cohen asked. Barbeau nodded slightly to him, signaling her approval. Everyone knew her chief of staff focused almost entirely on politics, not on the details of national security policy. That meant he could ask the kinds of basic-sounding questions she couldn’t — at least not without the risk of revealing weakness or seeming ignorant to these military men.

The head of the NSA, Admiral Caldwell, fielded Cohen’s question. The admiral’s almost painfully ordinary features concealed a brain of remarkable power. He’d worked his way up through the National Security Agency’s ranks on pure merit and sheer technical brilliance. “What it means, Mr. Cohen, is that EIGHTBALL HIGH is a fake — a phrase entirely without a real-world reference. There is no EIGHTBALL HIGH program. It’s just a designation deliberately created to conceal the activities of anyone who can parrot the code in response to questions from U.S. government officials or members of the military.” He shrugged. “Or at least questions from anyone with access to a secure Defense Department computer system.”

Cohen raised an eyebrow. “So how did this phony piece of code get into our computers in the first place?”

“That is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Caldwell said grimly. He frowned. “At General Spelling’s request, I’ve put my best analysts from the Information Assurance Directorate to work on the problem. But so far, they’ve drawn a blank. The EIGHTBALL HIGH code phrase doesn’t appear in the system’s most recent backups, so we know it wasn’t there a week ago. Which means this is a very recent intrusion — one probably intended specifically to cover this secret transfer of aircraft.”

“Do you seriously expect me to tell Gennadiy Gryzlov that the Poles have hacked our most secure national security computer systems?” Barbeau snapped. “If he doesn’t believe me, he’ll be sure we’re secretly backing Poland. And if he does believe me, that Russian lunatic will know that our so-called cybersecurity is a freaking joke!”

Before Caldwell could respond, Cohen said, “Nope.” He shrugged. “We lie to him.” He looked around the room. “We tell Gryzlov that we did send a few aircraft to one of our bases in Europe, maybe to Italy or somewhere like that. Don’t we still have a NATO air base at Aviano, or somewhere else, like Romania? But that we only did it as a limited precaution in case the war Gryzlov is planning spreads out of control. And we stress that we’re definitely not taking sides as long as this crisis is confined to Poland.”

Barbeau nodded slowly, thinking it through. “That could work, Luke.” Her fingers drummed lightly on her desk. “But the Russians will want to know more details — what kinds of aircraft did we send and where are they based, for example? Damn it, I can’t just make up something out of whole cloth or Gryzlov will smell a rat as soon as his spooks don’t find the planes.”

“Then we send some aircraft,” Cohen said, smiling slightly. “Maybe some of those fancy new F-35 stealth fighters General Spelling is so proud of. Once they’re safely on the ground overseas, we leak the deployment to the press. We just have to make sure anyone who talks to the media stays tight-lipped about just when they flew in.”

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs shook his head. “Our first squadron of F-35s isn’t fully operational, Mr. Cohen. I don’t think we could send more than six fighters to Europe at this point.” He grimaced. “The F-35 is a very capable aircraft, but one flight is too weak a force to have any real impact.”

“Which is perfect for our purpose, General,” Barbeau said pointedly. “If you know that, so will Gryzlov and his advisers. They won’t feel threatened — and we cover our asses while Admiral Caldwell and his NSA whiz kids figure out just who the fuck is screwing around in our secure computer systems.”

Spelling started to protest. “Madam President, I still don’t believe—”

“Can it, General!” Stacy Anne Barbeau snapped, not bothering to conceal her irritation and contempt. Maybe she couldn’t fire the Air Force general now, not with a major international crisis brewing. But she could sure as hell make it crystal clear that he’d better start planning his retirement soon. “I’m giving you a direct order as your commander in chief. You will covertly transfer six F-35s to Aviano or somewhere else, I don’t care, as soon as possible. Is that understood?”

Stiffly, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs nodded. His eyes were equally cold. “Yes, Madam President.”

A cell phone beeped loudly, breaking the awkward, thoroughly uncomfortable hush that had fallen across the Oval Office.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Admiral Caldwell said. Barbeau and Cohen looked angry enough to chew nails at the interruption, so he added, “Only the most urgent call would ring through. Excuse me.” He stood, crossed toward the door away from the president’s desk, and took his secure cell phone of his jacket pocket. “Yes? What is it?” What little color he had drained out of his face as he listened intently. “Good Lord, Lydia, are you sure? When was this? Have you passed the intelligence on to the NRO so they can check the images from their most recent satellite pass? Very well, keep on it and keep me posted.”

He ended the connection and turned to Barbeau. “That was the head of our National Security Operations Center, Madam President. Our satellites and other SIGINT collection stations report that the Russian-occupied air base at Konotop has just been completely destroyed. From the available evidence, it looks like a massive air- or ground-attack caught the Russians by surprise.”

Barbeau stared back at him, caught completely off guard. “Destroyed? But that’s impossible! The Russian ultimatum doesn’t even expire for another three and a half days!”

“It seems that President Wilk and Poland’s armed forces decided not to wait that long,” Caldwell said drily. “They have opted to strike the first blow. This war just turned hot.”

Secure inside CID Two’s pilot compartment, Wayne Macomber had the large Iron Wolf robot lie prone on the deck of the big MH-47 Chinook. It was the only way a manned Cybernetic Infantry Device would fit inside the helicopter’s cargo area. He tapped his fingers twice, tying his machine into the other visual, radar, and electronic sensors aboard the Chinook.

They were flying west at low altitude to evade radar detection, practically hugging the dirt. Behind them, the night sky was growing paler, the first sign of the approaching dawn. Far off in the distance, pillars of black smoke and flickering fires marked the site of Baranovichi’s 61st Assault Air Base — the Iron Wolf Squadron’s second target.

Macomber smiled grimly. With the Russians rattled by the earlier attack on Konotop, the Iron Wolf raiding force hadn’t achieved complete surprise. Some elements of the garrison had been on alert, prowling around their outer perimeter on the lookout for trouble. But it really hadn’t mattered in the end. Lightly armored scout cars and fixed defenses were no match for the faster, more agile, and better-equipped CIDs. A defense built around main battle tanks like the T-90 or the T-72 might have offered stiffer resistance — but the bulk of the Russian heavy armor was grinding toward Poland as part of their two invasion armies. The Russians had never imagined anyone could hit their forward operating air bases so hard and so soon.

Well, he thought, now they knew differently.

He switched his attention to the cramped interior of the MH-47. Captain Nadia Rozek sat slumped in one of the fold-down seats. She looked deeply asleep, crowded in beside the rest of Ian Schofield’s exhausted recon troopers and the second three-man CID resupply team. He frowned, seeing them. It was time for a little after-action chat with the commander of CID One.

Macomber lifted another finger, bringing up a secure radio link to the other Iron Wolf robot. CID One was flying far ahead of him, crammed into the fuselage of the Sparrowhawk tilt-rotor, along with the other half of the ground strike force.

“Go ahead, Major,” Patrick McLanahan said.

“Want to tell me why you almost fucked up so badly at Konotop, General?” Macomber asked. He kept his tone conversational.

“Captain Rozek and I blew Konotop to pieces, Whack,” Patrick said coolly. “I don’t see that as a problem.”

Macomber set his jaw. “Cut the crap, General. You helped write the battle drill for these gadgets, remember? Including all the warnings about the need to maintain minimum ammunition and power levels, right? All that shit about CID pilots remembering the importance of firepower and speed in successfully breaking off an action?”

The other man was silent.

“Which makes me wonder how you let yourself and Rozek expend practically every frickin’ round of ammo before bailing out of that base,” Macomber went on. “You put this whole operation and this whole outfit at risk. If your kid hadn’t had the brains and balls to kamikaze that Su-35, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. We’d probably both be dead.”

“We still had targets to hit, Whack,” Patrick said stubbornly.

“Hell, General,” Macomber said in disgust, “there will always be more targets to hit. We’re going up against half of the goddamned Russian Army and Air Force, for Christ’s sake! Which means we have to fight smart, not brave and stupid. Save the Charge of the Light Brigade shit for some day when nobody else is relying on you, okay?”

There was another long silence.

“Do you hear me, General?” Macomber growled.

Patrick sighed. “I hear you, Major.” He forced a laugh. “I guess I got a little too fixated in that first raid.”

“Yeah, you did,” Macomber agreed. He hesitated slightly and then went on. “Look, I need you to know where I’m coming from, boss. If I think that metal suit you’re strapped into is starting to drive you kill-crazy, I’ll yank you out of it before you can say Jack Robinson. You hear me?”

“You know that would kill me, Wayne,” Patrick said quietly.

“Yeah, I know,” Macomber said. His voice rasped. “And I would hate like hell to have to do it. But I can’t allow any one man — not even you — to jeopardize this whole squadron and its mission. Too much is riding on this, General. Too many other lives. Too many other people’s freedoms. Do you read me?”

“Loud and clear, Major,” Patrick said. “You’re absolutely right. About the stakes and about the dangers. I’ll keep a tight grip on this Iron Wolf I’m riding. I promise. And, Whack?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you,” Patrick said simply.

Whack smiled despite himself. That was Patrick fucking McLanahan, he thought. The guy was a retired three-star general and ex-president of one of the most successful high-tech firms in the world… but you could always talk to him like any other grunt. If you had something to say to him you could always do so. Rank or status didn’t matter. They rarely saw eye to eye on stuff, especially ground or special ops tactics and procedures, but he had his respect. He was a good guy…

… living one hell of a nightmarish existence. He, Whack thought, wouldn’t trade lives with him for all the silver stars in the Pentagon — or all the sausage in Poland.

During his years as an instructor at the Yuri Gagarin Military Air Academy, Colonel General Valentin Maksimov had earned a nickname from the cadets. They had called him “the Old Roman” because nothing — neither personal triumph nor tragedy — seemed able to shake his stoic, taciturn demeanor.

Well, thought Gennadiy Gryzlov disdainfully, his fellow cadets should see their revered former instructor now. Overnight, the so-called Old Roman, currently the commander of Russia’s air force, seemed to have collapsed in on himself, becoming almost visibly smaller and older. He sat hunched over in his seat at the conference table. Beneath his short-cropped mane of white hair, Maksimov’s once-ruddy, square-jawed face was now gray and lined.

“Well, Colonel General?” Gryzlov snapped. “Are your losses as serious as first reported?”

“Mr. President, I am afraid they are… worse… than we initially believed,” the old man admitted.

Murmurs of shock and dismay raced around the table. For many of Russia’s top-ranking political and military leaders, this emergency session was their first real news of the twin disasters at Konotop and Baranovichi. Officially, according to the state-controlled media, Poland’s treacherous decision to strike first, before Moscow’s ultimatum expired, had inflicted only minor losses in futile, small-scale attacks. Confirmation that both Russian forward air bases had actually been completely destroyed was an ugly surprise for men and women who been assured that any real war against the Poles would inevitably result in a swift and easy victory.

Gryzlov quelled the murmuring with an icy look. He turned back to Maksimov. “Worse? How much worse?”

Dry-mouthed, the air-force commander took a deep gulp from a water glass handed him by a worried-looking aide and then, reluctantly, made his report. “Our losses at both air bases total fifty-three aircraft completely destroyed. Plus another handful that we deem damaged but repairable. Of those planes wrecked beyond repair, roughly half were fighters, mostly Su-27s and MiG-29s, while the rest were Su-24 and Su-25 strike aircraft.”

Gryzlov stared at him. “You’ve lost more than fifty planes? And you let most of them get blown to hell on the damned ground?”

“Several of our pilots based at Baranovichi made attempts to sortie,” Maksimov said, in feeble protest. “As did both the alert fighters at Konotop.”

“And succeeded only in getting themselves shot down while they were taking off!” Gryzlov snarled. “Wonderful, Maksimov. Just grand. Perhaps we should name them posthumous Heroes of the Russian Federation, eh?”

Greatly daring, Foreign Minister Daria Titeneva intervened. “Excuse me, Mr. President, but this news seems absolutely incredible. I thought Poland had fewer than fifty modern combat aircraft? And that most of those planes were air superiority fighters, not bombers?” She shook her head in disbelief. “How was it possible for the Polish Air Force to destroy our bases without even being detected? Or without suffering any losses of their own?”

“These were not primarily air attacks, Daria,” Gryzlov said flatly. “They were commando operations of some kind, using advanced weapons of types we did not know the Poles possessed.”

“Advanced weapons?” Titeneva asked. “Of what kind, precisely?”

“That is unclear, Madam Foreign Minister,” Maksimov said heavily. “Many of our aircraft, armored vehicles, and missile batteries were clearly destroyed by conventional rapid-fire cannons, grenades, and explosives. But many others show massive impact damage, damage that could only be achieved by nonexplosive rounds traveling at enormous speeds.”

“What about the data collected by our sensors?”

“In both attacks, all of our radars, communications, and cameras were knocked off-line first,” Masksimov told her.

“But surely the survivors can tell you what happened? What they saw?” Titeneva pressed.

“Those who survived saw nothing,” the aged colonel general admitted. His face sagged. “Our personnel casualties were severe, with more than a thousand dead or seriously wounded. Only those who sought shelter immediately survived unscathed.” He shook his head. “All we do know is that both raids were carried out with ferocity and astounding precision and speed.”

Gennadiy scowled, looking at Viktor Kazyanov, the minister of state security. “So now we know what Warsaw was hiding from us at Drawsko Pomorskie.”

Kazyanov nodded gravely. “Da, Mr. President. My people are still studying the reports, but there seems to be a clear correlation between what we saw on the satellite photos from that Polish training ground and the new weapons and tactics employed against us last night at Konotop and Baranovichi.”

“But do we really know who used these mysterious weapons?” Tarzarov asked quietly.

Gryzlov eyed his chief of staff. “What are you suggesting, Sergei?”

The older man shrugged. “I am not suggesting anything. I simply wonder whom we are really fighting now. Poland? Employing strange new devices and weapons that do not appear in any intelligence assessment I have ever seen? Or the United States — either indirectly, using the Poles as surrogates… or directly, with its own Special Forces?”

“The American President Barbeau has assured me repeatedly that her country is neutral in our dispute with Poland,” Gryzlov said slowly. His jaw tightened. “And she has promised that she is abandoning the aggressive policies of her predecessors, especially those two madmen, Martindale and Phoenix.”

“Do you think President Barbeau is lying to us?” Daria Titeneva asked Tarzarov, watching him closely.

Again, the older man shrugged. “Deliberately lying? Perhaps not. But can we be sure that she herself is not being misled or lied to by her own military? Or even by some small secret faction inside the Pentagon?” He turned back to Gryzlov. “Such lies have been told to American presidents in the past — as we all know only too well. And to our sorrow.”

The Russian president flushed, easily catching Tarzarov’s oblique reference to the repeated and unauthorized American air raids that had finally pushed his father over the edge. The massive revenge attack ordered by the older Gryzlov had led directly to his own death in yet another bombing raid led by the same renegade American who had hit Russia earlier. He grimaced. “Patrick McLanahan is dead, Sergei! Dead, with even his stinking ashes pissed away into a sewer somewhere!”

“Yes, he is,” Tarzarov agreed calmly. “But then we must hope that no other American military commander is ruthless enough and criminal enough to adopt McLanahan’s illegal, but highly effective methods.” He spread his hands. “Until we know more about what really happened last night, however, it might be wise to slow the advance of our armies toward the Polish frontier. At least temporarily.”

“You want me to respond to this sneak attack against our air bases by showing fear? By cowering in a corner?” Gryzlov demanded. He glared at his chief of staff. “Let me be very clear, Sergei. Extremely clear. I will not show such weakness! Russia will not show such weakness! Not while I am the president, you understand?”

Calmly, Tarzarov nodded. “I understand, sir.”

Plainly fighting to regain control over his temper, Gryzlov looked around the table, meeting the troubled eyes of his senior advisers with a challenging stare. “Whether we are fighting the Poles alone or the Poles in combination with some secret ally is immaterial. If anything, now we know Poland is too dangerous to be left alone — at least not under its current leaders. Between Warsaw’s earlier terrorist attacks and now these sneak raids, no one can doubt they are the real aggressors in this conflict, not us!”

Slowly, tentatively, the others around the conference table nodded.

“Then we go forward, as planned,” Gryzlov said. New thoughts were beginning to percolate in his mind.

“But these new enemy commando forces do pose a serious threat to our armies — a threat we must address, Mr. President,” General Mikhail Khristenko pointed out.

“You think so?” Gryzlov asked, smiling thinly now. Now that he’d had a little more time to think through the implications of last night’s disasters, he was beginning to see a range of alternative plans to retrieve the situation. He regretted more than ever having shown any uncertainty or concern in front of these sycophants.

Surprised, Khristenko stared back at him. “You don’t? Even after what happened to our air bases last night?”

“We made a mistake — a mistake the Poles took full advantage of,” Gryzlov told him drily. “Basing so many of our aircraft so far forward only allowed our enemies the luxury of planning and carrying out a meticulous and coordinated surprise attack on fixed positions. But they will find trying the same sort of raid against our field armies a much more difficult proposition. No matter how well equipped and trained they may be, no small band of commandos can hope to go head-to-head and win against tens of thousands of alert and mobile troops with heavy armor and artillery.”

Khristenko nodded. “True, Mr. President. But they may continue attacking our forward air bases, instead.”

Gryzlov shook his head. “The Poles will find no such easy targets for their secret forces.”

Colonel General Maksimov raised his haggard face from the tabletop. “What?”

“Effective immediately, I order you to withdraw all our aviation regiments and their ground components to secure bases deep inside Russian territory,” Gryzlov said. “The only other way to secure our forward bases would require ringing them with the tanks and troops and artillery we need for our field armies.”

Defense Minister Sokolov cleared his throat nervously. “Pulling our air units back to Russia itself will significantly reduce their effectiveness, sir. Many of our aircraft will be operating near the edge of their combat radius. Either they’ll need to carry external fuel tanks, greatly reducing their weapons loads, or we’ll have to accept the serious risks involved in air-to-air refueling in a battle zone.”

“That is so,” Gryzlov agreed. “But it doesn’t really matter.”

“It doesn’t, Mr. President?” Sokolov asked uncertainly.

“How far will the effectiveness of our aircraft be reduced by basing them farther back?” Gryzlov asked Maksimov, in turn. “By as much as fifty percent?”

The elderly air-force commander frowned. “Possibly. But I would think less — with good planning and sound tactics.”

Russia’s young president smiled, more genially this time. “And how many capable aircraft can you commit to this war, even after last night’s losses?”

“Perhaps as many as five hundred fighter and strike planes,” Maksimov said.

Gryzlov smiled even more broadly. “So… the Poles have, at best, fifty modern combat aircraft and we can still oppose them with the equivalent of two hundred and fifty. Tell me, Colonel General, all other factors being equal, who wins an air battle where the odds are five to one?”

For the first time in hours, Maksimov looked a little more alive. He sat up a bit straighter in his chair. “We do, Mr. President.”

“Exactly,” Gryzlov said. He snorted. “Let the Poles and their hidden allies, if they truly exist, savor this first, fleeting success. If we all do our jobs right, it will be their last.”

Maksimov sat up even straighter. His face seemed to be recovering some of its normal tone. “Well said, Gennadiy!”

Gryzlov let that bit of unwanted informality pass. After all, the old man had once been his teacher.

“And in that vein, let me strike back at the Poles,” Maksimov went on, even more enthusiastically. “Even harder than they hit us!”

Gryzlov raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Our Su-34 fighter-bomber squadrons can launch a deep-penetration raid on Warsaw itself,” Maksimov told him. “We can hit this Polish bastard Wilk and his fellow fascists right where they live and work.”

“The Polish Air Force will fight to defend its capital, Valentin,” Gryzlov pointed out. “Your bomber force will bring every flyable Polish F-16 and MiG-29 down on its head.”

The older man nodded vigorously. “Of course, Gennadiy! And that’s when our own Su-35s and Su-27s will pounce! If the Poles really do rise to the bait, we’ll wipe their whole effective air force out of the sky in one battle!”

Gryzlov smiled again, as much in admiration of Maksimov’s astonishing powers of recuperation — or self-deception — as in approval of his plan. “Put your staff to work on the operational orders for such a strike, Colonel General. Then, once they’re ready, bring them to me for my consideration.”

Later, after the rest of the generals and cabinet ministers had filed out, Sergei Tarzarov looked across the table. The older man had a skeptical look in his eyes. “Do you really believe that a single bombing raid on Warsaw can accomplish what Maksimov claims it will? Destroy Poland’s airpower in one fell swoop?”

Gryzlov shrugged. “It might.” He smiled crookedly. “But even if it does not, a serious air strike aimed at the heart of Poland’s military and political leadership should be… clarifying.”

His chief of staff looked puzzled. “I do not pretend to be a trained military strategist, Mr. President, so the illustrative effects of a failure, or even a partial success, escape me.”

“This is not a purely military matter,” Gryzlov told the other man, savoring the pleasure of being able to lecture Tarzarov — of all people! — on international politics. “A serious air strike on Warsaw may not achieve all of the good colonel general’s admittedly grandiose objectives. But one thing is certain, Sergei,” he said, with a smug smile. “It will force the Americans to tip their hand. If they are secretly backing the Poles with advanced weaponry or commandos, the Americans will have to come out into the open to protect their ally’s capital from a devastating attack, and then we can destroy them. But if the Americans do nothing, we destroy Poland while NATO and the Americans watch. That will be the end of their alliance.”

Polish President Piotr Wilk sat alone in his private office. Conferring with the representatives of the Iron Wolf Squadron and some of his senior military commanders via video links imposed some additional security risk in these days of widespread hacking, but it was still safer than gathering in person. Now that the battle had been joined, a roomful of high-ranking military and political leaders was nothing more than a juicy target for Russian bombs or cruise missiles.

He looked across the array of five serious faces displayed on his monitor — the two Americans, Brad McLanahan and President Kevin Martindale, and three Poles, two of them major generals, Tadeusz Stasiak and Milosz Domanski, and the last a colonel in the air force, Paweł Kasperek. Stasiak and Domanski commanded the two Polish task forces assembling to meet the oncoming Russian 6th and 20th Guards Armies. Kasperek, the commander of Poland’s 3rd Tactical Squadron, was the young officer he’d tasked with coordinating the country’s F-16s with the Iron Wolf Squadron’s XF-111s and drones.

“I congratulate you on the success of your first raids, gentlemen,” Wilk said to Brad and Martindale. “The results achieved by your forces surpassed anything I imagined possible.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” Martindale replied. “I think we batted the Russian bear across the back of the head rather nicely.” He smiled wryly. “Of course, now we’ve really pissed him off.”

Wilk matched the gray-haired American’s crooked grin with one of his own. “That much was inevitable. What matters more is how this first defeat affects Moscow’s strategy. I assume it is unlikely to make our friend Gryzlov more cautious.”

“Probably not on the ground,” Martindale agreed. “As far as he’s concerned, his armies outnumber yours so heavily that the sooner they move into contact, the sooner he wins.”

“And in the air?”

“If Gryzlov is dumb enough to keep basing aircraft within our striking range, we’ll keep clobbering them on the ground,” Brad McLanahan said confidently. “But I don’t think he’s that dumb. Now that we’ve given him a bloody nose, he’s likely to pull his aviation regiments back out of our reach.”

“Which would still leave us heavily outnumbered in the sky,” Wilk commented.

Brad nodded. “Yes, sir.” Then he shrugged. “But we’ll still have significantly degraded Russia’s air capability — especially its air-to-ground strike capability, which was our primary objective. For example, pushing those Su-25 Frogfoots back to Russian bases makes them a lot less effective. Their unrefueled combat radius is only three hundred and seventy-five kilometers. If Grzylov pulls them back to safety, they’ll have to fly three times that far just to reach the battlefield.” He inclined his head toward the two Polish Army officers. “Which will make life a heck of a lot easier for your armor formations.”

Wilk nodded. Russia’s Su-25 Frogfoots were aging, but still effective, close air support planes. Roughly equivalent to the American A-10 Thunderbolt, they were designed to smash tank forces using 30mm cannons, rockets, missiles, and laser-guided bombs. Reducing the threat of attack from the Su-25s would allow his field commanders to use their Leopard 2, T-72, and Polish-manufactured PT-91 main battle tanks more aggressively.

“Anyway, if the Russians do abandon their forward air bases, the Iron Wolf Squadron is ready to move to Phases Two and Three of our plan,” Brad continued. “But obviously we won’t initiate any serious action until everybody else is set.”

“Excellent,” Wilk said.

“There is one further consideration, sir,” Colonel Kasperek said, speaking up plainly. “Neither Brad nor I believe Gryzlov or his air commanders will stay passive — even if they do pull their air units back to better-defended bases.”

“You think they will launch a retaliatory strike?” Wilk asked. He’d known Paweł Kasperek since the other man had flown MiG-29s under his command as a young lieutenant. Kasperek was a very good pilot, and an even better tactician.

“We do,” the colonel said bluntly. “And soon. Perhaps within the next several hours.”

“And are your F-16s ready to meet such an attack?”

“Yes, sir,” Kasperek said. “We have prepared a number of different plans, depending on what the Russians throw at us.” He hesitated, looking somber. “But our losses may be high. Very high, if we are unlucky, or if we have miscalculated.”

“That is likely,” Wilk agreed quietly. “Look, Paweł, chance and error are always a part of war. You can try to minimize their effects, but you cannot erase them. Not entirely.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” the younger man said. His expression was still very grave.

Wilk studied him for one more moment. “Listen carefully, Colonel. If you are forced to choose between losing your entire squadron and allowing the Russians through to bomb some of our cities, even Warsaw itself, you must preserve as many of your planes and pilots as possible. We have been bombed before. Many times. If necessary, we can rebuild. But we need an intact air force to have any chance of surviving this war. So, no death and glory flights, eh? You understand?”

Briefly, the younger air-force officer looked stubborn, prepared to argue against this order. After all, no one joined Poland’s military to allow an enemy to kill their fellow Poles without a fight. But faced by his commander in chief’s steady gaze, he grudgingly nodded.

“Very good,” Wilk said. He switched his gaze to the two Polish Army officers. “Well, gentlemen? General Stasiak? Are your troops ready?”

Major General Tadeusz Stasiak, older and heavier-set than his counterpart, Milosz Domanski, nodded confidently. “My units are moving into position on schedule, Mr. President.” Stasiak commanded the vast majority of Poland’s hastily mobilized ground forces — the 11th Armored Cavalry Division, the 12th Mechanized Division, and two-thirds of the 16th Mechanized Division. These troops were rapidly deploying along the Polish border with Belarus and digging in. Their job was to stop the Russian 6th Army cold, blocking one prong of Gryzlov’s two-pronged invasion force. Given their numbers, which were close to those of the Russians advancing on them, and the advantages of fighting defensively on their own home ground, Stasiak’s men had a good chance of success.

“And you, Milosz?” Wilk asked. “Are your officers and men prepared? Do they understand their mission?”

Domanski, as tall and wiry as Stasiak was short and stout, didn’t hesitate. “Yes, sir.” He grinned at the two Americans. “Though after seeing what these Iron Wolves can do, my boys are a lot less likely to see our role as a form of noble and patriotic suicide.”

Wilk snorted. “Let us hope so!”

By training and temperament, Milosz Domanski was a cavalryman — though one thoroughly schooled in the tactics of modern armored warfare. He had a well-earned reputation as a bold, intelligent, and innovative military thinker and leader. That was good, because the mission assigned to him by Poland’s war plan would demand every ounce of skill, dash, and daring.

To confront Russia’s 20th Guards Army — a formation with more than fifty thousand troops and hundreds of heavy tanks and artillery pieces — Domanski had been given one armored brigade and one independent rifle brigade. Which meant he and his soldiers faced odds of more than ten to one. According to conventional military thinking, that kind of disparity was a recipe for inevitable defeat and destruction. But Domanski’s mission was not conventional.

Stasiak’s much larger force had no choice but to accept a head-on defensive battle with the invading Russians. Advancing against them into Belarus was politically impossible, since Poland wanted to avoid giving Moscow’s puppet government in Minsk any more reasons to join the war openly.

Domanski’s soldiers, though, had the freedom to maneuver beyond the frontier. Military weakness forced Ukraine’s pro-Western government to allow the Russians free passage through its remaining territory, but that same weakness gave them every excuse to let the Poles do the same. And that, in turn, meant the general’s troops and tanks could wage a fast-moving war of hit and run against the advancing 20th Guards Army — working in tandem with the Iron Wolf Squadron’s cybernetic war machines and aircraft.

With luck and skill, they could buy Poland time she would not otherwise have. Though, Wilk admitted grimly to himself, he still wasn’t able to see a good outcome, no matter how much delay they were able to impose on the Russians. If he could have counted on NATO and American reinforcements, prolonging the war would make good sense. But could he justify the likely cost in blood and treasure only to delay the inevitable?

“Cheer up, Mr. President,” Martindale said, obviously reading his dour mood. “We’re in the position of that thief condemned to death by the king. The one who begged for a year of life so that he could teach the king’s horse to sing.”

Wilk raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Martindale smiled. “When someone told him he was crazy, the thief laughed and said: Who knows what will happen in a year? Perhaps I will die. Or maybe the king will die—”

“Or perhaps the horse will learn to sing,” Brad finished for him. The tall, young American showed his teeth in a defiant grin. “Well, that’s our job, Mr. President. That’s why you hired the Iron Wolf Squadron. We’re here to teach that stubborn, damned nag to sit up and sing.”