Iron Wolf (31 page)

O
VER THE
A
TLANTIC,

NEAR THE
S
TRAIT OF
G
IBRALTAR

A
COUPLE OF HOURS LATER

“Warning, warning, X-band target search radar, Su-33, eleven o'clock high, one hundred miles, seven hundred knots,”
the computer said suddenly.

“Signal strength?” Hollenbeck asked.

“Weak, but increasing,”
the SPEAR system told him.
“Detection probability minimal, but increasing.”

Darrow frowned. “It's getting awfully crowded in my sky, these days.” He clicked his mike. “Wolf flights, this is One-One. Stand by to go to DTF on my mark. Set for two hundred, hard ride. Let's get down in the waves and blow past these Russian buggers before they know we're here.”

More clicks acknowledged his order.

“Those Su-33 radars have a decent look-down capability,” Hollenbeck warned. “If they get close enough, they'll still detect us.”

Darrow nodded. “We'll jink to stay out of their way, if we have to, and hope SPEAR can take care of the rest. Engage DTF, clearance plane two hundred hard ride.”

“Digital terrain following engaged, clearance plane two hundred hard ride,”
the computer responded.

The XF-111 plunged down through night sky, diving toward the ocean at six hundred knots. The digital terrain-following system included occasional bursts of its radar altimeter, which measured the exact distance from its belly to the ocean. The SuperVarks leveled out at two hundred feet above the surface and streaked onward.

Darrow tweaked his stick slightly right, following the navigation cues on his HUD. Soon some distinctive rock formations began to become visible on the digital artificial terrain display. Minutes later, they zipped past a massive wall of rock on the left side of the canopy, glowing faintly white in the moonlight. Lights twinkled at its base.

“Cool,” Hollenbeck muttered, craning his head to look aft at the huge headland rising more than a thousand feet above their XF-111. “Was that—?”

“The Rock of Gibraltar,” the Englishman replied tersely. “We're over the Med now.”

Hollenbeck looked back at his displays. “Those Su-33 radars are at our ten o'clock and moving toward our nine o'clock. Signal strength is still weak and now diminishing.” He nodded in satisfaction. “I think we dodged them.”

“Let's hope so,” Darrow said, tweaking the stick back to the left. “But there still has to be a Russian carrier task force out there somewhere, so stay sharp.” He breathed out. “Give me a read on the distance to the Scrapheap on our preset course.”

“Eighteen hundred nautical miles, give or take a few,” Hollenbeck reported.

Darrow glanced at their fuel state. Between those Su-33s prowling around off to their north and the chance of bumping into the Russian carrier the fighters belonged to, his XF-111s were going to have to stay low all the way to southern Romania. And terrain-following flight burned a lot more fuel than flying higher. His mouth tightened as he ran through the calculations. Thanks to the auxiliary fuel tanks fitted by Sky Masters, it was doable—but just barely. They wouldn't exactly be arriving at the Scrapheap flying on fumes, but it would be a lot more nip and tuck than he had originally planned. Still, after a refueling stop in Romania, the final leg to Poland should be relatively easy.

“Caution, new Echo-band search radar at eleven o'clock, one hundred ten miles,”
the computer said, breaking into his thoughts.

“Identify radar,” Hollenbeck ordered.

“Fregat MAE-5 ship-based system,”
the computer replied.
“Signal characteristics match radar for Russian aircraft carrier
Admiral Kuznetsov
.”

“Can it spot us?” Darrow asked, feeling his pulse speeding up again.

“Negative,” Hollenbeck said, studying his displays. “Max range
for that system against a target our size at altitude is about one hundred forty miles, but we're so far down in the waves they won't even see a flicker on their scopes.”

They flew on in silence for another fifteen minutes or so. The radar emissions from
Admiral Kuznetsov
faded in the distance. Occasional chirps in their headsets marked civilian air traffic control and maritime surface-scanning radars sweeping all around them. Hollenbeck strained to look at something ahead. “I think we have surface traffic ahead,” he said. “Big sucker.”

“I'll go around it to the north,” Darrow said. “Five miles should be enough to avoid them getting an eyeball on us.”

But as they deviated, it was obvious that the surface traffic was getting busier. “More ship traffic,” Hollenbeck said. “I'm going to have to use the radar to snake around them.”

“Do it,” Darrow said. “If we need to fly nearer somebody, pick the smallest ones.”

“Rog.” Hollenbeck activated the AN/APG-81 digital radar and set it for surface-scanning mode . . .

. . . and the display came alive with targets, easily two dozen ships of varying size within three minutes' flight time! “Crap,” Hollenbeck exclaimed. “This is one busy pond!”

“The Med has some of the busiest shipping routes on the planet, old boy,” Darrow said, with a wry grin.

“Some of those bastards are huge,” Hollenbeck said. “Come twenty degrees right, large surface traffic at twelve o'clock, ten miles. Looks bigger than an aircraft carrier!”

“Aircraft carriers are some of the
smallest
large surface vessels on these waters,” Darrow said as he made the heading correction. “Even a typical cruise ship is bigger than a carrier.”

“Ten more right, and we should be clear,” Hollenbeck said. Darrow made the correction. “There must be some common traffic route along here running from Algeria to Spain or southern France.”

“Ah, I love traveling to Majorca on vacation,” Darrow said. “Ever been there?”

“Is that anywhere near Disney World?” Hollenbeck asked. “Be
cause that's where I usually take the kids for . . .
holy shit!
Climb!
” Darrow didn't hesitate, but hit the DTF disconnect paddle switch and pulled the bomber skyward. A huge white shape, studded with bright lights, appeared just ahead and barely below them out of the darkness, growing even bigger as they hurtled toward it. It was an enormous ship, at least ten stories high and more than a thousand feet long.

“What the
hell
—” Darrow growled. They streaked just over the ship's massive superstructure at high speed. After a second or two he released the paddle switch and allowed the flight control computer to put them back on course and altitude.

“Right at the edge of the radar scan, close in, we turned right into it . . . I never saw it on radar,” Hollenbeck said, his voice still a little shaky even minutes later. “I think we just scared the crap out of a bunch of tourists on a cruise ship.”

“Not to mention ourselves,” Darrow said, taking a few deep breaths to get his racing pulse back under control. “Time to get our heads back in the game. Plenty of time to talk about vacations later.”

A
DMIRAL
K
UZNETSOV,

IN THE
W
ESTERN
M
EDITERRANEAN

T
HAT SAME TIME

Inside the dimly lit CIC, a phone beeped. Captain Leonid Yakunin snatched it. “Yes?” He listened intently for a few moments, frowning. “I see. And the location of this ship? Very well. Keep me informed.” He hung up.

Rear Admiral Varennikov raised an eyebrow. “Well, Leonid?”

“We picked up another signal reporting unidentified aircraft,” the naval intelligence officer told him. “The Norwegian captain of the Royal Caribbean cruise liner
Independence of the Seas
is screaming his head off at the Spanish Navy about being overflown at masthead height. He claims several large, twin-engine military aircraft just buzzed his ship at high speed. They came from the west and vanished to the east.”

“Where?” Varennikov demanded. Yakunin pointed to a point on the map plot, about three hundred kilometers due east of Gibraltar.

“Our Su-33s missed them,” Varennikov muttered.

“I'm afraid so,” Yakunin agreed. “And so did our own radar.”

The Russian carrier group commander scowled, staring down at the map. “Even if we turn our fighters around now, we can't catch them. Whoever and whatever they are.”

“We could launch more Su-33s,” Yakunin pointed out.

“No, Leonid,” Varennikov said heavily. “The geometry's not right for a successful intercept. To have any chance at overtaking those mystery American planes, our fighters would have to fly all out, at full power. And even then they would run out of fuel before they caught up.”

“Then what do we do, sir?” Yakunin asked.

“We make a full and immediate report to Moscow,” the admiral said. He shook his head. “Perhaps they have other intelligence that will let them figure out what the Americans are up to. Or maybe our diplomats can somehow pry the information loose from Washington.”

V
YSHHOROD,
U
KRAINE

T
HE NEXT MORNING

The small suburb of Vyshhorod occupied the western bank of the Dnieper River just seven kilometers north of Kiev. The river here was blocked by the Kiev Hydroelectric Station, a nearly three-hundred-meter-long dam. Atop the dam, a two-lane road, Naberezhna Street, crossed the river. Ordinarily, this bridge was used only by locals or by a few tourists heading north to see the pinewoods and swamps of the Mizhrichynski Regional Park.

Now the bridge was full of Russian military traffic—all of it heading west at a slow but steady speed. Dozens of eight-wheeled BTR-80 armored personnel carriers were interspersed with BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles, 2S19 Msta-S 152mm self-propelled howitzers, and huge KamAZ transporters loaded with T-90 and T-72 tanks.

Next to the narrow, vehicle-packed bridge, Russian combat engineers were already hard at work, widening the crossing by building two new pontoon bridges and bulldozing new roads down to the water's edge. Two batteries of 9K22 Tunguska armored antiaircraft vehicles lined the riverbanks—offering short-range protection against enemy air or cruise missile attack with their two 30mm cannons and eight 9M311-M1 surface-to-air missiles. Longer-ranged S-300 SAM battalions were deployed farther back in eastern Ukraine, awaiting orders to leap forward to extend the advancing army's air defenses.

Specks orbited high overhead in the bright blue, almost cloudless sky. The Russian Air Force's MiG-29, Su-27, and Su-35 fighters were keeping their own watch over the kilometers-long military columns snaking slowly westward.

There were bigger bridges and wider roads to the south, but they all fed into the crowded city streets of Kiev itself. Thousands of troops would have been needed to secure those urban routes against the possibility of ambush by Ukrainian terrorists or Polish
commandos. Instead, Lieutenant General Mikhail Polivanov, the new commander of the 20th Guards Army, had opted to bypass the Ukrainian capital. Threading his army through the narrow Vyshhorod gap would take more time, but it also allowed him to conserve more of his combat power for the coming war with Poland.

Three miles northeast of the hydroelectric dam and Vyshhorod Bridge, a small wooded headland jutted out into the Kiev Reservoir. Two men wearing camouflage ghillie suits lay prone among the ferns and fallen trees lining the water's edge.

“By my count, that's at least four motor-rifle and tank brigades on the move,” Captain Ian Schofield murmured to the noncom next to him. The commander of the Iron Wolf Squadron's deep-penetration recon teams focused his binoculars on the bridge approaches to the east. Rows of armored vehicles and guns were lined up there, barely visible through the haze and diesel exhaust. “With a hell of a lot more on the way.”

“So we report in?” Sergeant Davis asked, checking the display on a handheld satellite phone. “We've got a good low-Earth-orbit satellite window for the next five minutes. And another one ten minutes after that.”

The Canadian nodded. Mentally, he ran through the prearranged code words he'd set up with Wayne Macomber before infiltrating into the Russian-occupied zone. He and the Iron Wolf Squadron ground component leader had created a whole list of easily memorized words they could use to exchange vital information disguised as otherwise innocuous-seeming messages. VANYA, for example, stood for Vyshhorod. “Text
DYADYA VANYA POSYLAYE LYUBOV ANASTASIYI
. UNCLE VANYA SENDS LOVE TO ANASTASIA.”

“Yes, sir,” Davis said, quickly punching keys on the phone. “Text sent,” he reported. “And received.” Letters streamed across the phone's small display. “Reply coming in:
BABUSYA KATERNYA KHOTIV NOVYY SYNYE PAL'TO
.”

“Grandma Katherine would like a new blue coat,” Schofield translated. He whistled softly. “Well, Sergeant, that's it. You may consider yourself at war. Try not to let it unnerve you, eh?”

Davis, a grizzled veteran of at least a dozen covert operations, both while serving the U.S. Special Forces and working for Scion, snorted. “Hell, Captain. I'm always at war. It's peacetime I find scary.”

Schofield grinned. “Good point.” He jerked his head away from the shoreline. “We need to round up the rest of the team. Major Macomber wants us well east of here by nightfall.”

“To do what, exactly?” Davis asked, turning off the satellite phone. He slid it into one of the concealed pockets of his camouflage suit.

“Our orders are to secure a landing zone,” Schofield said calmly. “The Iron Wolves are going to come calling on a few of our Russian friends tonight.”

It's fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

—
B
ILL
G
ATES,
A
MERICAN BUSINESSMAN AND PHILANTHROPIST

O
UTSIDE
K
ONOTOP
A
IRFIELD,

R
USSIAN-
O
CCUPIED
U
KRAINE

T
HAT NIGHT

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.