Price of Duty

EIGHTEEN

Unlike his colleague Yuri Akulov, Taras Ivchenko looked like a man to be reckoned with. Tall, broad-shouldered, and square-jawed, the former intelligence officer had played ice hockey from the age of five up through his graduation from Moscow State University. On the ice, his ferocity and daring allowed him to score more goals than other players, while also spending more time in the penalty box and hospital emergency rooms. He’d stopped playing hockey after the KGB recruited him. Instead, he’d channeled his aggressive instincts into the more exciting game of espionage.

Over the course of his career with the KGB and later the FSB, Ivchenko had become a master of black-bag operations. His elite team of burglars had broken into more than a dozen Western embassies and consulates, stealing secrets, planting listening devices, and accumulating information on cryptographic methods that helped crack some of the codes and ciphers used by the Americans and their allies.

Now he was using those same skills on behalf of Igor Truznyev.

Breaking into the ultramodern building housing Russian Railways’ central staff offices had been child’s play in comparison to the exploits of his glory days. The security guards hired by the state-owned railroad firm spent most of their time and energy trying to stop employees from pilfering computers and other expensive equipment. The idea that a visitor might stay past normal working hours and then break into a senior executive’s office would have struck them as ludicrous. Who would be dumb enough to risk going to prison doing something so pointless? After all, the Kalanchevskaya Street building wasn’t a bank or even a repository of precious secrets.

But they were wrong.

So far in their joint investigation for Truznyev, Ivchenko and Akulov had been impressed by the thoroughness with which President Gryzlov and Major General Koshkin had camouflaged Russia’s cyberwar operation. Between them, the two men had gone to great lengths to keep any knowledge of their Perun’s Aerie complex within a tightly restricted circle. They’d even made sure that databases belonging to the FSB, the Kremlin, and Russia’s armed forces contained no electronic records of its construction, location, defenses, or staffing.

Any foreign spy service poking and prying in all the usual ways would never pick up any actionable intelligence about the massive cyberwar center. They might not be able to confirm that it even existed.

Taras Ivchenko grinned to himself, imagining the stunned looks on Gryzlov and Koshkin’s faces if they ever learned how their carefully spun web of secrecy had been penetrated. Despite all their technological prowess, they’d overlooked the simplest of things — ordinary human weakness and the information routinely collected and stored by any modern railway company. First, the drunken babbling of Ivan Budanov, the Atomflot engineer, had revealed that a special mixed freight and passenger train was used to move nuclear-reactor components from Murmansk to the Perun’s Aerie complex. From there it was simply a question of gaining access to Russian Railways’ signal and traffic logs. Every train moving anywhere along the sixty-two thousand kilometers of Russia’s railroads under centralized control automatically triggered a computer-generated report whenever it passed through a signal or a station.

Which was what brought Ivchenko to Konstantin Apraksin’s office in the middle of the night. As a senior Russian Railways executive, Apraksin had unrestricted access to its entire corporate database. Best of all, like many computer illiterates, he kept a helpful cheat sheet with all of his passwords and user names taped to the side of his desktop monitor.

Patiently, Ivchenko clicked through page after page of Murmansk freight-yard records. He was looking for any train departures that matched the range of possible dates Akulov had picked out of Budanov’s vodka-soaked memories.

A third of the way through, his eyes narrowed. Train Number 967 seemed a possible fit. That was a three-digit code used to identify mixed freight and passenger trains, although it was usually reserved for short-haul commuter runs. He clicked on the number, opening up more detailed records.

“Kush! Jackpot!” he murmured.

Number 967 included four heavy-duty electric locomotives. That was no commuter train. Just as revealing was the small tag that told the rail-control system to award it top priority along all sections of high-density track. Nor was there a slated destination. The only thing that didn’t fit was its cargo — listed as imported factory machinery supposedly brought in through the city’s warm-water port.

Ivchenko shook his head in disgust at such sloppiness. Imported machinery? That was a damned thin cover story. Then he reconsidered. It was probably good enough to fool any railway inspector who checked the train’s freight cars. One jumble of steam pipes, pumps, conduits, turbines, and generators probably looked like another to the untrained eye.

Slowly, carefully, he began searching through the database — painstakingly tracking the progress of special Train Number 967 as it made its way from Murmansk south to St. Petersburg and from there to Moscow. At Moscow, it turned west onto the Trans-Siberian Railway and then north toward Volgoda. At the Konosha rail hub, Number 967 stopped briefly to replace its electric freight locomotives with diesel engines, and then continued northwest on the nonelectrified line to Pechora and Vorkuta.

Ah, he thought, here we go. Both cities were near the foothills of the northern Ural Mountains.

As it happened, Pechora was the end of the line for Train Number 967. The station logs showed that it arrived and was shunted off to a siding. And from that point on, it simply vanished.

Smiling to himself, Ivchenko closed the files he’d opened and turned off the computer. Between them, he and Akulov had narrowed down the location of the Perun’s Aeria cyberwar complex. It was located somewhere in the Urals near Pechora. And that was close enough for nongovernment work, the former FSB officer thought.

He supposed Truznyev might want someone to actually visit the distant city to dig up more, but he would strongly recommend against that course. Gryzlov and Koskhin may have missed this particular hole in their security, but neither would be foolish enough to leave Pechora itself unwatched. As soon as anyone connected to Truznyev’s private espionage network stepped off a plane or a train in Pechora, alarms would start ringing all the way from the Urals to the Kremlin.

Besides, Ivchenko thought, why bother? Once he reported in, his boss would have all the information he needed to make trouble for Gennadiy Gryzlov, should he decide that was either necessary or might be profitable.

Brad McLanahan finished taxiing the XCV-62 off the runway and into one of the squadron’s largest camouflaged aircraft shelters. By the time he and Nadia finished their postflight checklists, the hangar doors were already closed.

Martindale and Whack Macomber were waiting for them at the foot of the Ranger’s crew ladder.

“Well, how did it fly?” Martindale demanded, not wasting any time on pleasantries. “Is the Ranger really as capable as Jon Masters claimed it would be?”

“Why yes, thank you, Mr. Martindale. It is very nice to see you too,” Nadia said bitingly. “So kind of you to ask.”

Macomber chuckled — he enjoyed watching the smug, condescending, lordly former U.S. president receiving a shot from someone who wasn’t afraid of his power or authority.

To his credit, the older man ducked his head in apology. “Forgive me, Major,” he said, with a disarming smile. “I know that you and Brad are tired, but the situation’s a bit tense here… and I’ve missed you both.”

Brad decided to let that bit of politician’s insincerity pass without further comment. Personally, he figured it was just as well that Nadia wasn’t carrying her sidearm. She probably wouldn’t have shot Martindale, but she might have scared the crap out of him. After logging more than twenty hours of total flight time and ten thousand nautical miles, they were both pretty frazzled.

Instead, he patted the underside of the wing just above his head. “She’s a beaut, sir,” he said. “The XCV-62 may not handle like a high-performance jet fighter, but she’s a heck of a lot more agile than the B-2 bombers I’ve flown in Sky Masters simulators — despite having the same kind of tailless configuration. And based on the real-world fuel-consumption figures we saw, my guess is the Ranger has significantly more range than Uncle Jon claimed.”

Macomber laughed quietly. “That bastard always did like to play it close to his vest.”

“It’s a good sales technique,” Martindale allowed, with a slight smile of his own. “Always deliver more than you promised.”

Folding her arms, Nadia tapped her foot impatiently on the floor of the hangar. They all turned to look at her. “You said the situation was bad, Mr. President,” she reminded Martindale. “How bad?” Her eyes were worried. “Have there been new cyber attacks? Is our power grid still down?”

“I said tense,” the older man corrected her gently. “Which isn’t quite the same thing.”

“But close enough, for fuck’s sake… sir,” Macomber muttered.

Martindale shrugged. “I won’t argue semantics, Whack.” He turned back to Nadia and Brad. “We’ve made some limited progress in restoring the electrical grid in Poland and the other AFN nations. Between my Scion experts and the various national CERT teams, we’ve flushed the Russian malware out of all the infected transmission-control computers. But it’s going to take a lot longer to restore everything.”

“If the viruses are gone, why not bring everything back online right now?” Brad asked.

“Because the initial power surges and blackouts fried a shitload of generators and slagged several hundred kilometers’ worth of high-voltage transmission lines,” Macomber said bluntly. “That kind of equipment doesn’t exactly grow on trees.”

“Sadly, no,” agreed Martindale. “President Wilk and the other alliance leaders are buying replacement generators and supplies of transmission line wherever they can, but the fact remains that we’re lucky if most of the major cities have electricity eight to ten hours a day at the moment.”

“And the outlying areas?” Nadia asked. Her grandparents lived in a small village outside Kraków. “How long until they have power?”

“It could take weeks. Maybe months,” Martindale told her.

“Jesus,” Brad muttered.

Martindale nodded. “Which is why the leaders of the AFN are gathering in Warsaw tomorrow evening for an emergency summit. Under the pressure of this unrelenting wave of cyberwar attacks, confidence in the alliance is fraying. President Wilk wants to remind his fellow presidents and prime ministers that we have considerable military and technological capabilities of our own. That’s why Piotr wants us there too — all of the top people in Scion and the Iron Wolf Squadron.”

“Does that include my dad?” Brad asked quietly. “Because I notice he’s not here to welcome us back to Poland.”

“I’ve got the general out running maneuvers with Charlie Turlock and Captain Schofield’s team,” Macomber said quickly. “He was kind of going stir-crazy just sitting around the base. So I figured it would be better to keep him busy doing useful stuff.”

Stir-crazy or just plain crazy? Brad wondered. At least his dad wouldn’t be charging around with a load of live ammo during a training exercise.

“Your father is invited to the summit,” Martindale said. He looked pensive. “But I’ve cautioned against bringing him openly into any discussions. Word that he was still alive would almost surely leak out—”

“Which could push Gryzlov right over the edge,” Brad realized. Over the past several years, the Russian president had conducted a reckless personal vendetta against the McLanahans — a vendetta triggered long ago when an air strike commanded by Patrick McLanahan killed Gryzlov’s own father. Scion psychologists who’d studied the Russian’s behavioral patterns believed he would be willing to go to almost any lengths to make sure the older McLanahan was dead, no matter how much collateral damage he inflicted on innocents or even on his own people.

Martindale nodded. “Exactly. This underground war we’re locked in is bad enough. There’s no point in setting off an escalation beyond our ability to manage or withstand.”

“And that works the same way in reverse, doesn’t it?” Brad asked, eyeing the other man narrowly. “I mean, right now my dad would jump at the chance to take a shot at Gryzlov.”

“That’s true,” Martindale agreed. “Hearing him pushing for an all-out counterattack on the Russians could easily backfire against us with the other alliance leaders. They might begin to wonder if we were only interested in dragging them into a war of revenge that might destroy us all.”

Brad grimaced. “Yeah, and that’s exactly the propaganda line Moscow’s been pushing… that we’re all fanatical warmongers.”

“President Wilk sees the dangers,” Martindale said. “So you and Major Macomber here will serve as the Iron Wolf Squadron’s official representatives. We’ll keep your father out of the room, but close by for consultation on any… tactical questions.”

“You’d better make sure he isn’t carrying any live ammunition,” Brad said reluctantly.

Macomber snorted. “Hell, he’s not going to be carrying any weapons. Period. Plus, I’ll have Charlie suited up and along as a backup, just in case your dad decides to crash the meeting. Literally.”

“Yeah, he does get a kick out of smashing through walls,” Brad said, with a wry, sad grin.

After Martindale left, Whack Macomber walked Brad and Nadia over to the base living quarters.

Brad fought down a jaw-cracking yawn. He was just about out on his feet. Man, I’m going to need a few hours of shut-eye and some hot food before I start feeling halfway human again, he thought. Then he felt Nadia’s hand slip into his. Her fingers gently caressed his palm. Suddenly feeling more awake, he caught the playful sparkle in her beautiful blue-gray eyes.

Okay, he decided with a lazy grin, maybe sleep could wait.

“There is some good news in this mess,” Macomber told them. “The AFN politicos may be getting antsy, but most of the ordinary civilians are hanging tight. If that son of a bitch Gryzlov was hoping to provoke more riots and looting, he must be pretty goddamned disappointed right now.”

“Thanks to martial law?” Brad asked.

Macomber shook his head. “Not really. Sure, a few skinheads and other troublemakers got popped early on, but mostly the troops are busy distributing emergency supplies and making sure the civvies don’t freeze to death.”

Nadia raised an eyebrow in surprise. “That is surprising.”

“Because so many Poles panicked when the banking system crashed?” Brad said.

She nodded. “I thought the chaos would be worse this time. Especially since the damage was so much more widespread.”

“You can thank the Russians for that,” Macomber said, with a quick, humorless grin. “At first, the banking crash looked like a royal fuckup by the big, bad capitalists that everybody loves to hate on. But when the power grid went down… well, then this crap started to look like enemy action. And most folks in this part of the world really do not enjoy being pushed around by Moscow.”

“Gryzlov overplayed his hand,” Brad realized.

Macomber nodded. “Yeah, that’s the way it looks.” He shrugged. “For now anyway. But the longer this cyberwar crap goes on without us being able to hit back, the more impatient they’re going to get.”

“So you think my dad’s right?” Brad said. “That we need to punch back twice as hard?”

“Right in the sense that we should drop into Moscow and start shooting up the place? No,” Macomber said, shaking his head. “But right in the sense that we’re not going to win this thing staying curled up in a defensive crouch? Hell, yes.”