Price of Duty

TWELVE

Two Polish F-16C Vipers slid through a clear night sky above the Polish capital. Since it was peacetime and they were operating in Warsaw’s often crowded airspace, both fighters had their navigation lights on. Otherwise, their mottled light and dark gray camouflage would have rendered them almost invisible at anything more than a couple of hundred yards.

“Tiger flight, fly heading zero-nine-zero, climb and maintain five thousand meters,” a calm voice said through Colonel Pawel Kasperek’s headset. “Nearest civilian traffic is a LOT Polish Airlines 737–400 thirty-five kilometers away at your eleven o’clock and descending. No bogeys detected at this time.”

Kasperek glanced back over his left shoulder through the F-16’s clear canopy. There, well below his current altitude and far off in the distance, he could see the airliner’s bright white anticollision strobes as it came in for a landing at Warsaw’s Chopin International Airport. The regularly scheduled night flight from London Heathrow was arriving on schedule. He clicked his mike. “Acknowledged, Warsaw Operations Center, Tiger flight, heading zero-nine-zero degrees, climbing to five thousand.”

Without prompting, Kasperek’s wingman, Captain Tomasz Jagielski, piloting another Polish F-16, responded simply with “Two.” Tomasz was a young but experienced F-16 pilot. Last year, before Poland’s alliance with the United States collapsed, his skills and hard work were rewarded with a deployment to America’s ultrarealistic war games known the world over as Red Flag. Red Flag was designed to give aircrew members their first ten combat missions, considered vital to survival in real combat, and Jagielski took full advantage of this rare opportunity, minimizing the partying and maximizing his studying, and won awards for his performance during the war games.

As a good wingman, Tomasz stayed off the radio unless prompted by his leader — he knew well the wingman’s edict that he was expected to utter only three phrases without question: his place in the formation; the words “Lead, you’re on fire;” or while in the bar: “Lead, I’ll take the ugly one.” But now Kasperek thought it was getting too quiet, so he clicked the mic button and spoke: “Doing okay, Tomasz?”

“Roger that, sir,” Jagielski responded. Given his cue to speak, he went on: “Too bad it looks like the Russians aren’t going to come out to play tonight, though. I need another couple of kills to make ace.”

Smiling under his oxygen mask, Kasperek tugged his stick gently left, pulling back a bit at the same time. His Viper rolled into a gentle turn and climbed at 340 knots. Young for his rank, the Polish Air Force commanding officer made sure he rotated through regular patrol missions with all of the pilots in his squadron. Seeing at first hand how each of them flew and reacted was crucial to his leadership style. If their current cold war with Russia turned hot again, he needed to know exactly what he could expect from the men and women under his command.

Jagielski, for example, was unfailingly aggressive. If you wanted someone ready and willing to tangle with an enemy fighter force, even badly outnumbered, he was your guy. By the same token, it was sometimes necessary to ride herd on him, as the Americans would say, in those situations where the slightest wrong move could accidentally set off a shooting war.

Polish F-16 and MiG-29 fighters patrolling along the border with Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave often encountered Su-30s and Su-35s on the same kind of mission. Sometimes no more than a kilometer or two separated the rival forces. Flying in such close proximity to potential hostiles took nerves of steel. No matter how hard the Russians tried to provoke an incident — say by locking on their fire-control radars or maneuvering in a threatening manner — it was vital that Poland’s pilots refuse to take the bait. President Wilk’s orders were clear. If open hostilities began again, it was essential that Russia be seen as the aggressor.

Thankfully, tonight’s mission should be far less nail-biting, the colonel thought. He and Jaglieski were slated for a routine patrol along their country’s border with Belarus. For all practical purposes, the Belarussians were firmly under Moscow’s thumb. Russian troops operated freely within the country’s borders. So did FSB, SVR, and GRU spies. But last year’s destructive Iron Wolf CID raids had shown the Russians the folly of stationing combat aircraft so close to the frontier. They seemed content to maintain a close watch over their own airspace and that of occupied eastern Ukraine.

Unfortunately, Kasperek thought coldly, it was equally evident that the Russians had found other ways to make his country suffer. He glanced aft again, seeing the lights of Warsaw spread out in a glowing arc along the black ribbon of the Vistula River. Fires still burned in a few places near the city’s center, set by rioters in the aftermath of the bank system’s collapse.

Resolutely, he turned away. He and his pilots could do nothing to stop the cyberwar attacks aimed at Poland. Their sacred duty was to keep watch over her skies, standing ready in case Moscow’s conventional armed forces tried to take advantage of the political and economic chaos its computer hackers were creating.

Right now Pawel Kasperek and his wingman could see a huge expanse of their beloved country. At 5,000 meters, their visual horizon extended out almost 250 kilometers. Besides Warsaw, patches of warm yellow light marking cities and towns like Lublin, Białystok, Łódź, and Częstochowa were plainly visible. Thinner strings of light traced out Poland’s network of major highways and rail lines.

Abruptly, one of those bright blotches winked out, going black in an instant. Another followed seconds later. And then another.

“Jezus Chrystus, Tomasz,” Kasperek said into his mike. “Do you see what I’m seeing?”

By now, a vast stretch of the countryside below them had plunged into sudden, near-absolute darkness.

“I do,” Jaglieski radioed. His voice was tight. “The whole damned electrical grid may be going down.”

Piotr Wilk was sure he had never seen the commander of Poland’s national police force, General Inspector Marek Brzeziński, so weary. From the rumpled state of his blue-gray uniform and his disheveled white hair, it seemed likely that he’d been awake since the cyberwar attack on the banks occurred, or, at best, catnapping in his office.

Despite his obvious fatigue, however, there was no doubt that Brzeziński still had a firm grip on the situation. He turned to Wilk. “We are making progress in restoring order, Mr. President. Not as quickly as I would like, naturally. But progress, nonetheless.”

He gestured toward one of the two large maps covering one wall of the emergency command center. It showed the city streets of Warsaw. Colored overlays were pinned across the map, each marking a different trouble spot. Black X’s across many of them indicated places where police action already had quelled mobs or suppressed large-scale criminal activity like organized looting or arson. “Riot-control teams from the Preventative Police have now succeeded in regaining control over most areas of the capital. Hundreds of looters and hooligans are under arrest. Ongoing investigations by the Criminal Police should enable us to press charges against most of the worst offenders.”

“Good work, Marek,” Wilk said. He pointed to the other map, the one showing all of Poland. “And what about the rest of the country?”

“Even better,” Brzeziński said. Unconsciously, he tugged at his loosely knotted tie, straightening it. “The disturbances in most other cities and towns were on a much smaller scale than those we saw here.”

Wilk nodded his understanding. Warsaw lay at the center of much of Polish national life, of its economy, culture, and politics. Its growing wealth and prosperity drew many of the country’s best and brightest. Unhappily, that same prosperity also attracted a number of troublemakers, an ugly mix of anti-Semitic skinheads and far-left anarchists, along with the more commonplace thieves, rapists, and murderers. When Poland’s banks shut down and the streets filled with tens of thousands of fearful citizens, these thugs had seized the opportunity to run wild.

But now that the banks were beginning to reopen, however shakily and tentatively, the public unrest and panic should gradually subside. Without the cover provided by massive crowds of protestors, any skinheads, crooks, and anarchists still at large ought to hurriedly scuttle back to their squalid haunts.

Brzeziński agreed with his reasoning. “We hope to tamp down the last outbursts of violence and disorder by the morning, Mr. President,” he said. “Or by noon at the—”

All the lights suddenly snapped off.

For a brief moment, Wilk sat frozen in his seat. Then he pulled out his smartphone and tapped its flashlight app, a move imitated by others in the command center. Startled faces appeared in the different beams, seeming strangely disembodied in the sudden darkness.

“I think your schedule may have to be revised, Marek,” he said grimly. “Unless this is only a very local problem.”

In less than a minute, emergency generators in the basement kicked in, restoring power to the headquarters building.

Wilk glanced down at his phone. Dozens of texts were already flooding in, from every ministry in his government. “Shit,” he muttered. He turned toward the somber-faced man in charge of his security detail. “We’re heading for the roof, Major,” he said, rising to his feet.

Major Dariusz Stepniak frowned. “I think that would be most unwise, sir.” He glanced up at the lights. “It’s possible this power outage is intended to lure you out into the open. If so, there could be a sniper targeting the roof, hoping you’ll make an appearance there. It would be safer to return to the Belweder Palace immediately.”

With an effort, Wilk fought down the temptation to tell the other man he was being a paranoid idiot. Like all agents in Poland’s BOR, the Bureau of Government Protection, its version of the U.S. Secret Service, paranoia was practically part of Stepniak’s job description. It was his job to imagine the sniper on every rooftop, the pistol-wielding assassin in every crowd, the suicide bomber at every public gathering.

But that didn’t mean it was necessary for Wilk to indulge every one of the major’s fears.

He rose and jerked his head toward the door. “I’ll just have to take that chance, Dariusz. If you’re right and someone shoots me, you can tell me how fucking stupid I was. But in meantime, I need to see what the hell is going on outside for myself.” He held up his smartphone, showing the sea of urgent messages, all highlighted in red, flicking onto its small screen. “Because whatever it is, I can assure you that it’s really bad.”

Minutes later, Wilk, Stepniak, Brzeziński, and a number of aides were on the roof of the five-story headquarters building, staring out across Warsaw’s skyscraper-studded skyline. It was utterly dark, marked only by a few tiny points of light that showed other buildings with working emergency generators.

His phone buzzed sharply, signaling a Priority One call. “Wilk, here.”

Prime Minister Klaudia Rybak was on the other end. Ordinarily perfectly cool and collected, she now sounded flustered and out of breath. “I’ve been in touch with the top people at Polski Siece Elektroenergetyczne,” she said.

Wilk nodded to himself. PSE was the state-owned company in charge of Poland’s national power grid. “And?”

“They say their voltage-control software is malfunctioning,” the prime minister said quickly. “They don’t yet know how or why, but their computer programs are apparently misallocating power — shunting power to portions of the grid that are already at maximum capacity and siphoning electricity away from areas that need it. Voltage surges all over the country are knocking out transmission lines and generators.”

“How bad is it?”

She gulped. “Their best guess is that more than fifty percent of the country is already completely blacked out.”

Wilk closed his eyes. He and the rest of his inner circle had all been on edge wondering where Russia’s hackers would strike next. Well, now they knew. Not that it was any comfort, he thought bleakly.

“I’m afraid there’s more, Piotr,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Andrzej says he’s getting frantic calls from his opposite numbers all across the Alliance.”

Wilk felt himself tensing up. Andrzej Waniek was his foreign minister.

“They’ve been hit by the same kinds of transmission outages,” she told him. “The Baltic states, Hungary, Romania, and the rest are all going dark.”

A slowly rising moon turned the woods around the Polish air base into a dreamlike world where pitch-black shadows mingled with splotches of pale gray light. Tree branches rustled, swayed by gusts of cold wind from the east.

Captain Ian Schofield, his senior NCO, Sergeant Andrew Davis, and Whack Macomber lay prone in a clump of brush growing over and around the charred trunk of a tree felled by lightning. They were on a shallow rise overlooking the perimeter fence. All three wore ghillie suits that included the most efficient antithermal linings available. While motionless, they were effectively undetectable by the human eye or most IR sensors. Despite that, none of them was under any illusion he could hide for long from the lithe gray-and-black shape prowling slowly along the fence several hundred meters away — not if it decided to come looking for them, anyway.

“Tell me again why we’re out here, Major?” Schofield murmured into Macomber’s ear. With luck, even the CID’s razor-sharp audio pickups would have trouble picking out his whisper at this distance amid the noise of the wind whistling through the woods.

“We need you and your guys to keep an eye on CID One out there,” Macomber said softly. “We’re… well, let’s say we’re a little worried about the pilot.”

“Worried as in you think maybe the guy’s catching cold? Or worried as in he might go loco?” Davis growled.

Macomber shot him a sour grin. “The latter, Sergeant. As I suspect you’d already guessed.”

“Maybe so,” the noncom said with a glint in his eye. “But since you’re asking us to keep tabs on a potentially homicidal maniac who just happens to be riding around in a practically invincible combat machine, I kinda figured it made sense to hear the bad news straight up. Without any of the usual HQ happy talk.”

“Fair enough,” Macomber agreed. He understood Davis. Like him, the sergeant was a seasoned veteran with multiple covert operations under his belt, first with the U.S. Special Forces and then with Scion and the Iron Wolf Squadron. And one of the first things anyone learned in Special Ops was to figure that whatever the rear-echelon guys told you was about 70 percent sugarcoating, 25 percent pure BS, and maybe, on a good day, about 5 percent fact.

Schofield frowned. “If this man could be a threat, why not simply wait until he climbs out of the CID and then send him in for a psych evaluation?”

“Because, in this particular case, that’s not an acceptable option, Captain,” Macomber said flatly, making it very clear to both men that he’d gone as far as he was going to go down that road. The fact that Patrick McLanahan was still alive, never mind that he could not survive for very long outside a CID, was a tightly held secret, even within Scion and Iron Wolf.

“Swell,” Davis muttered. “Ain’t nothing so joyful as being voluntold to babysit a killing machine.”

This time it was Schofield who shot him a warning glance before turning back to Macomber. “Very well, Major,” the Canadian said. “What are your orders if we do see this pilot going off the reservation? Do you want us to engage him?”

“Hell, no,” Macomber answered. “I try not to send guys out on suicide missions.” He shook his head. “No, if you spot trouble, you call it in to me or Charlie Turlock and then vamoose as fast as you can.”

“And then what happens?” Davis wanted to know.

Macomber was silent for a moment. At last, he sighed. “Then Charlie and I gear up in other robots and do our best to put him down, without getting ourselves or anyone else killed.”

When he’d crawled far enough back down the rise to be safely out of sight, Whack Macomber slowly climbed back to his feet. He winced as his knees popped. “Man, I may be getting too old for this snake-eating commando shit.”

Charlie Turlock jumped up from the tree stump she’d been sitting on while waiting for him. She grinned. “Maybe so, Whack. That’s why CIDs are so cool. You get a nice cushy ride and you let the robot do all the work.”

“Yeah, they’re just peachy-keen,” he retorted. “Right up to that point where they drive you nuts.” He jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “Like the general, for example.”

Charlie’s mouth turned down. “We don’t know that yet. Not for sure.”

Macomber shrugged. “Maybe not. But it’s for damned sure that he’s getting awfully close to the line between sane and crazy — assuming, for argument’s sake, that he’s not already way, way over it.” He looked closely at the slender woman. “You heard Piotr Wilk and most of the other AFN leaders have declared martial law, right?”

She nodded. The news coming down from on high wasn’t good.

No one knew how long it would take the various national computer emergency response teams and Scion’s technical specialists to flush the Russian viruses that were screwing up power transmission systems across most of Eastern and central Europe. That left Poland’s president and his counterparts in an ever-worsening bind. The longer their people were left without electricity, the colder, hungrier, and more pissed off they were likely to get. In the circumstances, deploying military units to help maintain order and distribute emergency supplies was probably the least-bad option, but it certainly wasn’t something anyone would celebrate.

“Well, our friend Patrick out there has been pinging Wilk, Martindale, and me every few minutes, telling us we should deploy the Iron Wolf CID force to stamp out any new riots,” Macomber said grimly.

Charlie’s eyes widened. “But that’s—”

“Crazy, yeah,” he finished for her. “See the problem?”