The Moscow Offensive

Twenty-Seven

Brad watched the four F-16s break off their patrol orbit over Battle Mountain and fly back east. The fighters passed high over another wave of helicopters ferrying in more troops and equipment from the 4th Infantry Division. He frowned. There were already at least two full infantry battalions deployed around the Sky Masters facility and they were fortifying their perimeter — digging fighting positions and building sandbagged bunkers for machine guns, mortars, and Javelin antitank missile teams. This was no snatch-and-grab raid. This was a full-fledged military occupation.

JSTARS and AWACS radars are no longer active, his computer reported suddenly. Aircraft departing this area of operations.

The two icons representing the E-3 Sentry and E-8C JSTARS were heading north-northeast, in the same direction taken by the Black Hawks and Chinook helicopters packed full of Sky Masters scientists and engineers, he realized. Which meant they were probably bound for Mountain Home Air Force Base, too. The southern Idaho base was the only military installation the helicopters could have had the fuel to reach.

What Barbeau thought she was accomplishing with this sudden show of force was a puzzle for later, Brad decided. Right now, the JSTARS departure gave him the freedom to head back to the Ranger without the risk of being detected. “Wolf One to Wolf Two and Three,” he radioed. “Returning to base.”

“Two copies,” he heard Nadia say. “I will pass the word to Captain Schofield.”

“Thanks, Two,” Brad said. “And look, we need to talk to Poland as soon as I get back, with full audio and visuals… if we can swing it.”

“Three here,” Whack Macomber said gruffly over the same circuit. “We’ve already reported the situation to Martindale and Wilk. What more do you want? Besides, a direct audio and video connection via satellite is gonna suck up a shitload of bandwidth… which means the chances of detection go up exponentially.”

Patiently, Brad replied. “Understood, Whack. But I think it’s worth the risk now that President Barbeau just tipped the chessboard over. We’re going to have to rethink our whole strategy. Text-messaging back and forth isn’t going to cut it.”

Over the radio link, Macomber grunted. “I suppose not, Wolf One. I’ll pass your request on to our high-and-mighty lords and masters. Three out.”

A private communication from Nadia on a separate channel caught Brad’s eye. “Fear not. I will make sure the grumpy colonel is persuasive. Kocham cię. I love you.”

Thirty minutes later, safely concealed under their camouflage netting, he opened his CID’s hatch and climbed down out of the robot.

Nadia and Macomber were waiting at the foot of the XCV-62’s ladder. “We’re all set,” the colonel said tersely. “Warsaw and Powidz are standing by. And I’ve patched the signal through to the troop compartment so that Schofield and his guys can listen in. Hope you knights of the air and metal don’t mind, but I figured our poor, unfortunate ground pounders deserve to know how fucked we are in real time.”

Brad hid a smile. In his heart, Whack remained the quintessential foot soldier. Though he was a superb CID pilot, the big, powerfully built man retained the attitudes he’d developed over years of service in the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command. Machines were either transport, fire support, or trouble for the real fighters — the tough men and women who closed with and destroyed the enemy up close and personal… without anything more than bullet-resistant body armor to protect them. To this day, Macomber never really felt comfortable inside one of the robots. “When those fricking computers get done meshing with my nervous system,” he’d sometimes growl, “who’s really in charge? Me? Or the damn machine?”

Instead, Brad contented himself with politely gesturing Nadia and Macomber up the ladder ahead of him.

With three people crammed inside, it was hard to move around inside the Ranger’s small cockpit without banging into each other or some of the instruments. Brad settled into his pilot’s seat, carefully ignoring the way Nadia’s face flushed a little when she remembered the last time they’d been here together. Bright-eyed now, she clambered back into the right-hand copilot’s position while the colonel squeezed himself awkwardly into the narrow space behind their seats.

Brad tapped his MFD, bringing it live. Nadia did the same with hers. A menu appeared on their screens: SECURE SATELLITE COM LINK READY.

“Initiate satellite link,” he ordered quietly.

“Link open,” the Ranger’s computer said in a calm female voice.

Instantly, three familiar faces looked back at them from the big displays. Martindale and Piotr Wilk were in the Polish president’s private office in Warsaw. Patrick McLanahan, recognizable through his LEAF’s clear visor, was at the squadron HQ in Powidz. Because their signals were being simultaneously encrypted and then bounced through several different communications satellites, the images were grainy and slightly distorted. There was also a slight, but noticeable lag between video and audio, which added a herky-jerky quality to the conversation.

“Go ahead, Wolf Force,” Wilk said with a nod. “What is your situation?”

“Not great,” Brad admitted. “Barbeau is still flying troops in to Battle Mountain. Plus, I saw a number of civilians arriving in the most recent helicopter lift.”

“Those are probably intelligence and technical experts,” his father said. “My guess is DARPA, the CIA, and a whole alphabet soup of federal agencies are starting to dig around in Sky Masters’ databases. This is the chance they’ve been waiting for to ferret out a lot of the company’s closely held secrets — especially those concerning the construction of Cybernetic Infantry Devices.”

“Which they won’t find,” Brad pointed out. “From what Boomer told me, all of the CID-related components and data are safely hidden away somewhere off-site.”

Martindale frowned. “Unfortunately, that only ends up making Sky Masters appear even more guilty. It will look as though the company anticipated this forceful U.S. government reaction and took preemptive measures to hide its involvement in the recent attacks.”

“Swell,” Whack muttered. “So our guys do the right thing and it ends up feeding Barbeau’s paranoid fantasies.”

“That’s about the size of it, Colonel,” the Scion chief said. His mouth twisted into a frown. “Although now that the Russians have their own war robots, it might have been better if Richter and his people had simply left their CID files and materials in place for the U.S. authorities to find.”

Brad saw his father stir. “Not in a million years,” Patrick McLanahan said flatly. “The federal government has a shitty record of keeping really valuable secrets. Anything the CIA, DARPA, and the rest scooped up would end up in Gryzlov’s hands sooner or later. And right now, our rail guns and camouflage gear may be the only edge Brad and the other CID pilots have over the Russians.”

Piotr Wilk shrugged. “The point is moot, anyway. Short of extracting the location of those secrets from its Sky Masters prisoners, your government will not be able to lay its hands on this technology. At the moment, our first priority must be to decide our next course of action.” He looked straight into the screen. “Captain McLanahan, can you fly your aircraft out of there without being detected?”

“Negative, Mr. President. At least not yet,” Brad said without hesitation. “The JSTARS and AWACS planes are gone, but there’s still way too much U.S. military air and vehicle traffic in this area. Even if we could dodge radar detection, the Ranger’s not invisible. Some pilot or ground observer would be bound to spot us using the good old-fashioned Mark I eyeball. And then we’d be toast. Between the F-15E Strike Eagles based at Mountain Home and the Aggressor Squadron F-16s flying out of Nellis, we wouldn’t make it a hundred miles before being either shot down or forced to land.”

He glanced outside the cockpit windows. Even seen through their camo net, the daytime sky was still blindingly bright. “That all changes once the sun goes down. As soon as it gets seriously dark, we should be able to make a break for it… but not a moment sooner.”

“Which leaves open the question of precisely where you should go, once it is safe to fly,” Wilk said slowly.

Martindale sighed. “That’s an easily answered question, Piotr. We have to pull Brad’s team out of the U.S. and get them back to Poland. At this point, it’s the only sensible option we’ve got left.” He looked tired. “Risking an Iron Wolf unit to protect Sky Masters and its secrets from Gryzlov’s mercenaries was a reasonable gamble. But now Barbeau has preempted that mission. Staying longer in the States, even if I manage to scratch up a new covert base out in the boonies somewhere, only increases the odds of someone spotting our CIDs or the Ranger stealth aircraft… either of which would confirm all of Stacy Anne’s darker suspicions about our involvement in this mess.”

Brad opened his mouth to object, but Nadia beat him to it.

“On the contrary, Mr. Martindale, we are not simply going to run home like frightened children,” the Polish Special Forces officer said with unconcealed disgust. She eyed Martindale’s static-distorted image with cold contempt. “The situation here remains the same. Without the combat power represented by our Iron Wolf machines, your country is effectively defenseless against Gryzlov’s forces.”

“The major’s right,” Macomber said. “There’s no way those Russians are going to let themselves get sucked into a stand-up fight where our Army and Air Force can use tanks and precision-guided missiles against their robots. They’re not that dumb.”

“Ambushes happen, Colonel,” Martindale retorted. “You, of all people, ought to know that.”

Brad held his breath, waiting for Whack to explode in fury. Hitting him like that with a reminder of the disaster that killed Charlie Turlock was a very low blow.

But the big man surprised him by staying calm, on the outside at least. “The Russian cyberwar complex at Perun’s Aerie was a point-source objective,” Macomber said frostily. “It was also a setup from the beginning. And the bad guys knew right where we had to be in order to destroy it. But Gryzlov’s mercs aren’t limited the way we were. They can go after any of dozens of potential targets. There’s no way the Pentagon can assign enough forces to picket all of them.”

Exasperated, Martindale threw up his hands. “That’s precisely my point! You can’t fight someone you can’t find! If the combined air and ground forces of the United States, the FBI, the state, and local police can’t track down these Russians, what in God’s name do you really think one Iron Wolf aircraft, three CIDs, and a handful of dismounted scouts can accomplish?”

“Drawing a bead on the enemy is the core of this problem,” Patrick McLanahan agreed quietly. “We know that Gryzlov has figured out ways to move his robots and missiles around the U.S. without anyone seeing them. Once we crack the code on how he’s doing that, we ought to be able to find his mercenaries… and finish them. But we can’t do that unless we already have a team in reasonable striking range.”

“Which rules out trying to fight this war from Poland,” Brad argued. “Our base at Powidz is a minimum of twenty hours’ flying time from just about anywhere in the States — unless, of course, we decide to just barrel straight through the North American Air Defense Identification Zone—”

“Which would break the record on stupid,” Macomber interjected. “Especially with Barbeau’s itchy finger on the trigger.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Brad said, glancing over his shoulder with a quick, humorless smile. He faced the screen again. “So there’s the dilemma. We can’t hope to hit Grzylov’s forces without actionable intelligence. But by the time we could get back here from Poland, any intelligence we picked up would be stone-cold… and almost certainly useless.”

After a moment’s thought, Wilk nodded, accepting his reasoning. He turned to Martindale. “Brad and the others are right, Kevin. As are you about the dangers involved. But we have no other acceptable choice. Unless we can prove that the Russians are behind these raids, using their own war machines, Poland is in grave danger. The longer our enemies operate unchecked and undetected on American soil, the higher the risk that President Barbeau will publicly accuse Scion and the Iron Wolf Squadron of these crimes — and demand that I hand you over for punishment.” He sighed. “Refusing such an ultimatum would risk a disastrous war against both of the world’s strongest powers. But accepting it would effectively disarm us in the face of Gryzlov’s next inevitable aggression.”

“Our American friends would call that a no-win scenario,” Nadia murmured.

Wilk nodded again. “Which is why we cannot back away now. We must press on. No other honorable course is available to us.”

Brad saw his father smile approvingly. “‘He either fears his fate too much, or his deserts are small, who dares not put it to the touch, to win or lose it all!’” the older McLanahan quoted.

“Very nice,” Martindale said sourly. “Of course, the guy who said that, the Earl of Montrose, fought for the Royalists during the English Civil War. And they lost.” Then, plainly almost against his will, he shrugged his shoulders. “But at least I know when to stick to my guns and when to yield… at least to my friends. I’ll see what the Scion operatives I have positioned in the U.S. can rig up.” He looked at Brad. “What do you need most?”

“Besides a secure landing site somewhere within a thousand miles or so?” Brad ticked off their requirements on his fingers. “Jet fuel, first. By the time we land, our tanks will be almost dry. And more drinking water. We’re down to about two or three days’ supply.”

Martindale stared at him. “You’re almost out of water?” He scowled. “Are you telling me that you and I would have been having pretty much this same conversation in a couple of days… no matter what boneheaded move Stacy Anne Barbeau pulled?”

“I try never to deal in hypotheticals,” Brad said virtuously. Out the corner of his eye, he caught Nadia stifling a grin.

“I bet you don’t,” Martindale snorted. He shook his head. “Never mind. Stay put. Stay hidden. I’ll get in touch as soon I have somewhere else for you to fly.”

The big-screen monitor in Gennadiy Gryzlov’s office was tuned to one of the more excitable American cable news networks. Though their reports were often inaccurate and hopelessly one-sided, its anchors did an excellent job of conveying the conventional wisdom of Washington, D.C.’s political and chattering classes. And in some ways, that was more useful than anything else to Russia’s youthful, aggressive leader. For the pure raw facts, he had the reports of his own intelligence services. But facts were of limited use when you were trying to understand an enemy’s mind-set and psychology.

Images of attack helicopters and troop carriers clattering low over a rugged desert landscape filled the screen. They were replaced by action shots of American soldiers fanning out at the double across a large complex of office buildings, windowless machine shops and engineering labs, and huge aircraft hangars. More pictures followed, showing troops marching crowds of bewildered-looking civilians out of those same buildings at gunpoint. “While it appears there was no significant resistance at the Sky Masters Nevada facility, anonymous White House and Pentagon sources credit this success both to President Barbeau’s decision to use overwhelming force and to the complete surprise achieved by the brave soldiers and airmen involved in this high-stakes raid. Administration spokesmen stress that although no formal charges have yet been filed, federal law enforcement and intelligence officials are only at the beginning stages of this important investigation. In the meantime, the suspects seized by troops from the Fourth Infantry Division remain locked up in what is termed ‘protective custody’ at an undisclosed location—”

Shaking his head in delighted disbelief, Gryzlov muted the monitor. He turned to Vladimir Kurakin with an exultant, predatory grin. “Astounding, eh? That overstuffed, oversexed cow Barbeau has done half our work for us! And she’s done it out of sheer malice and seemingly invincible stupidity.”

Cautiously, Kurakin nodded. “Yes, Mr. President.”

Gryzlov heard the hesitation in his voice. “You still think we should have attacked Sky Masters ourselves?” he asked. “Using your KVMs and Annenkov’s cruise missiles?”

The other man shrugged. “I only worry that its scientists and engineers are still alive.”

“And dead men and women build no robots and stealth aircraft?” Gryzlov suggested dryly. He shook his head. “Don’t fret, Vladimir. Trust me, what Barbeau has done today will inflict almost as much damage on Sky Masters in the end.” He waved a hand at the screen, which was still showing video clips of heavily armed infantrymen kicking open doors and searching buildings. “Pictures like that are racing around the world at light speed. After this humiliation, where will Sky Masters find the money to design, test, and manufacture its expensive weapons and aircraft? Who will risk investing in such a company? For that matter, how many of those scientists and engineers you worry about will dare to go back to work at Battle Mountain once they’re released?”

He wagged a finger in mock reproof at Kurakin. “No, hitting Sky Masters with your robots and missiles would have put Russian fingerprints all over this operation. After all, why would the Iron Wolf mercenaries attack their own arms supplier? Not even Martindale is that crazy. Instead, we’ve managed to trick the Americans into waging war against their own best and brightest weapons designers! What could possibly be more satisfying?”

“I see,” Kurakin said slowly. “I’m afraid that I have been focused more on operational considerations than on the broader political implications. You have my apologies, Mr. President.”

With a self-satisfied air, Gryzlov waved his apology away. “No matter. You were right to let me look after the big picture.” He looked more carefully at the other man, noting his pained expression. “You still look as though you’re chewing lemons, Vladimir. What’s eating at you now?”

“Only the thought that this might be the best possible moment to withdraw our forces,” Kurakin suggested with some reluctance. “They’ve been lucky so far. They can’t be lucky forever. But if we bring them home now, before any of our men are caught or killed, the Americans will be left with no one to blame but Poland’s own mercenaries.”

Briefly taken aback, Gryzlov stared at him for a long, unpleasant moment. Nothing in the other man’s military record had suggested he was a coward or a fool — or even one of those overcautious commanders afraid to spend men’s lives to achieve a decisive victory. For an instant, he considered explaining his deeper political and strategic objectives in launching this clandestine war. But then he thought better of the impulse. Looked at rationally, Kurakin and his men and machines were nothing more than tools, weapons to be expended as he saw fit. And one did not waste time explaining higher strategy to a rifle bullet or a bomb.

Instead, he snorted. “You give our enemies too much credibility. Right now, the Americans are too busy chasing their own tails to think straight. So this is the time to close in and hit them even harder. Russia has years of humiliating defeats to avenge, Kurakin. This is not the moment to turn tail and run!”