In fact there were six missiles tracking toward the mouth of the cave.
Targeting a post-box shaped slit just above the water was no easy feat even for a missile with a trimode target seeker, when the pilot firing them was giving his orders from a hundred and fifty miles away in Lavrentiya, a full second into the past. One malfunctioned when its stub wings did not properly open and curved wide. Two hit the water a few hundred yards out. One smashed into ice overhanging the cave mouth and another slammed into the cliff beside the Slot.
But one missile flew straight into the opening of the cave, and straight toward the dock under the Rock.
NCTAMS-A4 was designed to take a punch in the guts from a Russian cruise missile or torpedo and stay operational. The cave opening led to the Pond and the hardened concrete walls of the dock beyond. The ‘flight deck’ was set off to the left behind blast deflectors, so unless a missile could stop in mid-air and turn ninety degrees left, it would slam into the dock at the end of the Pond and any explosion would dissipate among the infrastructure of the dock which was largely made up of personnel ready rooms, the lower galley and the heads. Fittings, cranes and loading gear were replaceable. The command trailer was set up high, with its own blast deflecting armor. The single missile that made it into the cave slammed into the back of the dock at two and a half times the speed of sound.
The blast from its 90kg high explosive warhead struck the already canted dock crane and cracked the concrete and wood dock fairings, while the pressure wave shattered the windows of the crew quarters, mess and ready rooms, sending glass, metal and rock flying around the cavernous space like a thousand small arrows. If Bunny and Rodriguez had been standing in the open, they would have been flayed alive.
But as soon as Bunny had screamed about the Okhotniks to Rodriguez, she had jumped from behind her console, grabbed Bunny around the neck and pushed her toward the iron door leading to the loading mechanism for the flight deck, barreling in behind the pilot and pulling the heavy blast door shut behind her.
The designers of NCTAMS-A4 had calculated the base should be able to remain drone launch-capable through such a strike. But they hadn’t planned for the roof of the cave above the Pond to be laced with demolition munitions when it got hit.
Even though they had been manually disarmed by Bunny and Rodriguez, the charges were still buried in the roof, positioned to bring it down on top of the dock and block the cave mouth. While it didn’t penetrate the cave, the missile that had struck the ice at the cave mouth detonated with enough force to trigger a sudden and catastrophic ripple of blasts, from the mouth of the cave inward towards the dock as the demolition munitions exploded, dropping tons of concrete and rock into the Pond. The mouth of the cave had received special attention and the ring of charges there collapsed the mouth of the cave so thoroughly that within seconds it was completely sealed.
Not a chink of light shone through.
Bondarev could hear the detonations below him, but if he expected the Rock to shake and tremble with their force he was mistaken. Little Diomede Island had towered over the Arctic seas for tens of thousands of years and seen two ice ages come and go — despite the outrages visited on it today, it would stand ten thousand more.
He lifted his head and looked up again. The battle for the airspace above him was over. He saw his Sukhois make another pass over him and then sweep up into a steep climbing turn. He jumped up from the hole he had been crouched in, and over to where he had left his parachute rolled into a ball, weighted down by rocks. He unfurled it and spread it out, using the rocks to hold down the edges. Then he stood in the middle of it, and waved.
A Sukhoi circling overhead broke away, and dropped low. As it passed, the pilot lowered a wing and Bondarev saw him clearly, waving from his cockpit to show he’d been seen. Bondarev watched as the fighter pulled around and made another pass, slower and lower this time. As he dropped his wing this time, Bondarev thought he saw the pilot hold up his fist and flash five fingers, twice.
Ten minutes, the pilot was saying.
Bondarev waved back to show he understood, and sat down on his chute.
The Spetsnaz quadrotor was on its way.
When the cacophony of sound on the other side of the door finally stopped, Bunny and Rodriguez tried the hydraulically operated blast door. It was jammed, the mechanism probably warped by the pressure waves from the blasts.
“No effing way,” Bunny cursed, trying the door again. They could hear bolts sliding back, could hear the hydraulic system whirring, but the blast door stayed obstinately, firmly and depressingly shut.
They had an exit — out through the tool room to the hangar level elevator shaft — but that only let down deeper under the Rock, not outside. Power to the base had not been lost — the reactor was of course not vulnerable to anything less than a nuke going off inside the base.
Rodriguez patted the door, “Well I think it is safe to assume this place is a high degree of screwed,” Rodriguez observed.
“So are we ma’am,” Bunny added, nodding at the jammed blast door. “If that’s jammed, the only way out of here is down.”
Rodriguez felt a lump in her chest as she bit down on her despair. They’d prepared for a siege, laid in food, water, weapons. Booby-trapped the environment around them to give Ivan a few surprises. They hadn’t prepared to be entombed.
“So what’s the plan ma’am?” Bunny asked. She looked around her, “It’s possible the blast door into the aircraft elevator isn’t jammed. We could access the elevator shaft, find a way to bridge the gap, get out that way.” She tried to make it sound easy.
“The elevator shaft is a 30-foot wide hole in the rock,” Rodriguez said. “We still have power, so we still have comms. I think our best idea is to get a signal out to CNAF, tell them our status, wait here for a rescue.”
“Yeah… unless Ivan comes and ‘rescues’ us first,” Bunny observed.
As Perri watched the last of the Russian jets lift off and light its burners, heading north, he pulled his hands down from his ears and then dropped on his backside, onto his sleeping bag beside Dave.
“About damn time,” Dave said. “Seriously, they have the whole Russian air force out there?”
“Not anymore,” Perri said. “I think we need to get onto Sarge, tell them they just put about everything they have into the air and sent it north.”
Dave reached across his legs to haul the car battery onto his lap and picked up the cable connecting it to the radio. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll just…”
From outside the tank, there came three sharp reports, and three small holes appeared in the tank above their heads!
Both of them froze.
“Hey, American!” came a heavily accented voice. “You hear me in there?” There was another shot and another hole appeared in the tank, lower down this time, making them both duck. “Yeah, I think you hear me.” There was a bitter laugh. “It’s me, guy you tried to kill.” Another shot, another hole in the tank, even lower this time. Dave and Perri both scuttled as far from that side of the tank as they could, but there was nowhere to go. “Hey!” the voice called. “I think you have radio in there. First thing you are going to do, you drop that radio down to me.” Another laugh. “Softly. I have been looking for that radio.”