The Kremlin Strike

Thirty-Three

The sleek, jet-black, batwinged XCV-62 Ranger swung back onto the runway and rolled slowly toward its takeoff position. Three smaller stealth aircraft — the two MQ-55 Coyotes and the EQ-55 Howler — taxied off the apron and turned into line behind it. Spooked by the shrill noise of ten turbofan engines spooling up, flocks of birds swirled up from the tundra and nearby shore and vanished in seconds, swallowed up in the low-lying dense fog that still blanketed the island.

Peter Vasey glanced across the cockpit at Nadia Rozek. “We’re ready for takeoff, on your order.”

She nodded and opened a communications window on her left-hand multifunction display. Quickly, she typed in a short message: WOLF SIX-TWO TO ALL EXTRACTION FORCE UNITS. ATTU GROUP IS DEPARTING NOW. The Ranger’s computer automatically encrypted, compressed, and then transmitted her signal via satellite uplink. It would be routed to the White House, Battle Mountain, and the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group, currently one hundred and sixty nautical miles southeast of Hokkaido, Japan. From now on, radio voice transmissions, even if encrypted, would be held to a minimum to further reduce the odds of detection.

Nadia felt keyed up and fully alert. This was the moment toward which all their planning over the past several days had been directed. Their call-sign change, back to Wolf Six-Two, was another symbol of imminent action. It was the same call sign she and Brad McLanahan had used for this same aircraft on other risky missions. Using it again was a pledge of her fidelity and determination to bring him safely out of Russia. “Z nim, albo wcale,” she murmured under her breath. “With him, or not at all.”

Leaving nothing to chance, she checked the flight status and navigation programs of the three Iron Wolf drones lined up on the runway behind them one last time. Rows of green indicators lit up across another of her displays. They were set.

“We are good to go,” Nadia told Vasey.

In answer, his hand advanced the throttles. With a steadily rising roar, the Ranger’s four jet engines ran up to full military power. Slowly at first and then with ever-increasing speed, the XCV-62 thundered down the runway. The airspeed indicator on his HUD flashed and he pulled back on the stick. “Vr… rotating,” he said calmly.

The Ranger soared off the ground and climbed into the fog. Its landing gear retracted and locked inside with a few muffled thumps.

Vasey tweaked his stick to the left, banking slightly to the southwest. The navigation cues on the HUD stabilized. They were on course. Satisfied, he throttled back a little and squeezed a paddle switch on the stick. “DTF engaged, set for two hundred feet, hard ride.”

With the terrain-following system in control, their aircraft descended again. It leveled off only two hundred feet above the fogbound sea. From now on, occasional activations of its radar altimeter would measure the distance between its belly and the waves below, confirming the information in the digital database.

From her position in the right-hand seat, Nadia focused on the three waiting Iron Wolf drones. In sequence, she activated their autonomous programs. One by one, they sped down the runway, lifted off, and turned southwest to join up with the Ranger. One of the Coyotes took station off the XCV-62’s starboard wing. The second slid into place off their port wing. The EQ-55 Howler, with its radars and jammers still inactive, brought up the rear.

Staying low, the whole formation flew on out over the Bering Sea at four hundred and fifty knots.

Surrounded by six Arleigh Burke — class guided missile destroyers and two Ticonderoga-class cruisers, the huge Nimitz-class aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan turned smoothly into the wind. Under a cloudless sky, it was almost pitch-black. The waning quarter moon would not rise for another half hour or so. Despite the darkness, none of the nine American warships were lit up. They were operating under strict wartime conditions.

Suddenly several tiny points of light appeared, then immediately shot down along the carrier’s deck and screamed into the sky. It was an F/A-18E Super Hornet launched by one of the Reagan’s steam catapults. Seconds later, another Super Hornet streaked aloft, visible only by its position lights. Launch after launch followed at regular intervals, using three of the carrier’s four catapults. As soon as each aircraft cleared the deck and configured for cruise, its regular position lights went out, replaced by night-vision-friendly position lights.

Within fifteen minutes, twenty-four Super Hornets and two EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft were airborne. Those launched earlier in the cycle orbited some miles ahead of the carrier group, waiting for the rest to form up. With that accomplished, all twenty-six planes of the navy strike force turned and flew northwest toward Hokkaido.

Imeni Poliny Osipenko was a rural village on the left bank of the Amgun River, about eighteen kilometers north of the boundary of the Oldjikan State Nature Reserve. On either side of a two-lane paved highway, red- and blue-roofed houses, barns, and sheds lined dirt roads. Behind each little cluster of buildings lay fields sown in barley and wheat.

Tired after a ten-hour drive from Komsomolsk-on-Amur’s Dzemgi Air Base, Russian Air Force Lieutenant Nikolay Khryukin parked his mud-spattered UAZ Hunter jeep and climbed out from behind the steering wheel. He looked around in bored disdain. Until now, the isolated hamlet’s only connection to the Russian Air Force was the fact that in 1939 it had been renamed after Major Polina Osipenko, holder of a women’s flight record and a Hero of the Soviet Union. What an honor, he thought cynically. It was probably just as well Osipenko had been killed in a plane crash before the politicians made her pay a visit to this one-tractor dump.

Although the sun had only gone down a couple of hours before, most of the locals already seemed to be in bed, with all their lights off. Peasant farmers need to be up early to care for their crops, I suppose, Khryukin decided. He stretched his sore back and neck muscles and wished with all his heart that the local yokels had stuck closer to their dull labors — instead of scaring themselves half to death with nonsense and then screaming for help from the military authorities.

Khryukin scowled. Apparently, a couple of days ago, some students and their teacher had stumbled back into town from a nature hike in the Oldjikan reserve with some lunatic story about finding evidence of a secret space alien landing. Their shrill request for an official investigation had been bucked up the chain to land on his commanding officer’s desk this morning. So naturally, Colonel Federov had picked his least favorite subordinate for this wild-goose chase… one Nikolay Khryukin. He was the 23rd Fighter Aviation Regiment’s meteorology officer, not an Su-35S combat pilot, and Federov harbored an instinctive dislike for those he considered “pencil pushers in uniform.”

“Go up there and settle their nerves, Lieutenant,” the colonel had ordered offhandedly. “These so-called UFO objects are probably just the remains of a weather balloon, so you’re the expert. Besides, it won’t hurt the air force to build a little goodwill with the locals… and it won’t hurt you to get out and see more of this beautiful Motherland of ours.”

Well, from what Khryukin had seen on his long, tedious drive to Imeni Poliny Osipenko along crappy roads, this part of the beautiful Motherland was trees, a lot more trees, swamp, and even more damned trees. With an audible sigh, he settled his high-peaked officer’s cap more firmly on his head and strode toward the police station.

The sergeant on duty, a thickset man whose uniform was about a size too small for him, was only too happy to see him. “I know you think we’re probably crazy,” he confided eagerly as he led Khryukin down a narrow hall to a locked storage room. “I thought so, too, until I clapped my own eyes on what those kids found out in the middle of the forest.” He fumbled for his keys, opened the door, flipped on the overhead light, and then stepped aside. “But check it out for yourself, Lieutenant.”

For a long moment, Khryukin just stood and stared at the strange artifacts the students had dug up. The most easily recognizable was the bundled remains of a large red-and-white parachute. No mystery there, he thought slowly. But what should he make of the other odd items, which included a man-sized suit of some peculiar shiny metal fabric and a helmet with a clear visor? Or that even weirder conical two-meter-wide shell covered in scorched and seared cloth on one side and some elastic substance on the other?

And then the understanding of what he saw hit him with full force. He whirled on the police sergeant. “I need a phone connection to Dzemgi Air Base! Right now!”

“See?” the policeman said, sounding pleased. “I told you it was aliens.”

“It’s not aliens, you idiot!” Khryukin snarled at him. “Those things belong to an American astronaut!”

Nadia Rozek glanced out the right side of the Ranger’s cockpit. The quarter moon hung there, just above the horizon. Its pale silvery light danced across the undulating surface of the ocean. She frowned. The moonlight was beautiful. But it was also dangerous, since that faint glow made it a bit easier for the enemy to spot her small group of jet-black aircraft as they darted in low over the water. It would have been marginally safer to make this flight into Russian territory on a moonless night. Unfortunately, the next such period was still several days away… and Brad was running out of time.

A warning tone sounded in her headset. “Monolit-B surface search radar detected at one o’clock,” her computer reported. “Estimated range is one hundred miles and closing.”

She punched up a menu on her threat-warning display and read through it quickly. “Nothing for us to worry about,” she assured Vasey. “This radar is assigned to the Russian K-300P Bastion coastal antiship missile battery on Matua.”

Vasey nodded his understanding. The lethal, long-range supersonic ship-killing missiles of the Bastion battery they’d detected were intended for use against the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers and surface warships. They could not engage aircraft.

Still, picking up that active Russian radar was a sign that they were standing into danger. Twenty minutes ago, already seven hundred nautical miles from Attu, they had altered their heading by ninety degrees. Now they were flying northwest, on a course that would cross the volcanic Kuril island chain right at the midpoint between northern Japan and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.

For the past several years, Gryzlov had been strengthening his garrisons scattered among the Kuril chain’s fifty-six mountainous islands — installing antiship batteries and antiaircraft missiles and radars at various places. His strategic goal was to seal off the Sea of Okhotsk and most of the far east region’s coast against intrusion by America’s naval forces. Fortunately, there were still a few weak spots in this island fortress barrier, at least for a small handful of stealth aircraft. The most powerful air search radars and long-range SAM units were based on the northernmost and southernmost islands, where they could protect Russia’s twin Pacific Fleet bases at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Vladivostok respectively. With a bit of luck and some help, the XCV-62 and its little flock of accompanying drones should be able to slide through where the enemy’s radar coverage was weakest, trusting to their stealth characteristics and nap-of-the-earth flight to avoid detection.

An icon flashed on Nadia’s left-hand multifunction display. She tapped it. A message opened up on the screen: REAGAN AIR GROUP AT POINT DELTA. “Our American friends are ready to make their move,” she reported.

Vasey smiled in satisfaction. “Well, God bless the U.S. Navy,” he said. He glanced at her. “Now to see if Gryzlov and his lads react the way you’ve hoped.”

“They will,” she said confidently. “Who pays attention to the little flea when confronted by a snarling mastiff?”